The dual nature of working memory deficits: methamphetamine abusers have more impaired social working memory capacity than canonical working memory capacity.

Social working memory (WM) temporarily retains and manipulates various aspects of social information. Extensive research has highlighted impaired social cognitive functions in individuals with substance addiction. However, the specific deficit in social WM within this population remains notably understudied. Bridging this gap, we investigated social WM capacity using biological motion (BM) stimuli in methamphetamine (MA) abusers compared to an inmate control group, alongside contrasting these findings with their canonical WM deficits. Across two studies, we recruited female MA abusers (N = 80) undergoing post-isolation rehabilitation within a mandatory confinement circumstance. To ensure a pertinent comparison, we recruited female inmates (N = 80) subjected to comparable confinement. Results show substantial BM WM impairment in MA abusers, yet non-BM WM remains mostly intact. These findings highlight a pronounced social WM deficit in MA abusers, surpassing their canonical WM deficit relative to inmate controls. This suggests a distinct dissociation between social and canonical WM processing.

The Basic Units of Working Memory Manipulation Are Boolean Maps, Not Objects.

Determining the manipulation unit of working memory is one of the fundamental questions in understanding how working memory functions. The prevalent object-based theory in cognitive research predicts that memory manipulation is performed on the level of objects. Here we show instead that the basic units of working memory manipulation are Boolean maps, a data structure describing what can be perceived in an instant. We developed four new manipulation tasks (with data from 80 adults) and showed that manipulation times only increased when the number of Boolean maps manipulated increased. Increasing the number of orientations manipulated did not induce longer manipulation times, consistent with a key prediction of the Boolean map theory. Our results show that Boolean maps are the manipulation unit of working memory.

Dissociation between temporal attention and Consciousness: Unconscious temporal cue induces temporal expectation effect.

The debate over the independence of attention and consciousness is ongoing. Prior studies have established that invisible spatial cues can direct attention. However, our exploration extends beyond spatial dimensions to temporal information as a potent guide for attention. A intriguing question arises: Can unconscious temporal cues trigger attentional orienting? To investigate, we employed a modified reaction-time task in Experiments 1 and 2, using Gabor stimuli or human facial stimuli as temporal cues rendered invisible through continuous flash suppression. We aimed to uncover temporal expectation effects (TE effects) without conscious awareness. Moreover, Experiments 3 and 4 probed the boundaries of this unconscious processing, assessing whether conscious temporal cues could modulate TE effects. Our results confirm that invisible temporal cues can induce TE effects, and these effects can be overridden by conscious temporal cues. This dissociation between temporal attention and consciousness provide a new perspective on our understanding of their relationship.

Direct evidence for proactive suppression of salient-but-irrelevant emotional information inputs.

It has long been debated whether emotional information inherently captures attention. The mainstream view suggests that the attentional processing of emotional information is automatic and difficult to be controlled. Here, we provide direct evidence that salient-but-irrelevant emotional information inputs can be proactively suppressed. First, we demonstrated that both negative and positive emotional distractors (fearful and happy faces) induced attentional capture effects (i.e., more attention allocated to emotional distractors than neutral distractors) in the singleton-detection mode (Experiment 1), but attentional suppression effects (i.e., less attention allocated to emotional distractors than neutral distractors) in the feature-search mode that strengthened task motivation (Experiment 2). The suppression effects in the feature-search mode disappeared when emotional information was disrupted through face inversion, showing that the suppression effects were driven by emotional information rather than low-level visual factors (Experiment 3). Furthermore, the suppression effects also disappeared when the identity of emotional faces became unpredictable (Experiment 4), suggesting that the suppression was highly dependent on the predictability of emotional distractors. Importantly, we reproduced the suppression effects using eye-tracking methods and found that there was no attentional capture by emotional distractors before the appearance of the attentional suppression effects (Experiment 5). These findings suggest that irrelevant emotional stimuli that have the potential to cause distraction can be proactively suppressed by the attention system. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Biological motion gains preferential access to awareness during continuous flash suppression: Local biological motion matters.

Humans have developed excellent capabilities for the detection of biological motion (BM) that facilitate survival and interpersonal interactions. However, whether and how such capabilities allow BM to access our awareness remain unanswered questions. Therefore, this study aimed to explore these questions across four experiments that relied on the breaking continuous flash suppression paradigm (b-CFS). We found that intact BM, which consists of both global-configuration and local BM information, gained preferential access to awareness compared with inverted BM and non-BM (Experiment 1). Subsequently, we tested two opposing hypotheses regarding factors that modulate the prioritized effect: (a) the global-precedence hypothesis (global configuration plays a major role in BM's preferential access) and (b) the local-precedence hypothesis (local BM information plays a major role in BM's preferential access). The results showed that scrambled BM consisting of only local BM information-but not limited-lifetime BM consisting of global-configuration information and disrupted local BM information-had the same conscious accessibility level as intact BM (Experiment 2). Moreover, scrambled BM-but not limited-lifetime BM-had preferential access to awareness compared with non-BM (Experiment 3). Furthermore, using a reverse-correlation method, we showed that the conscious accessibility of local BM was not governed by a priori body structure (Experiment 4). This study provides substantial evidence that BM gains preferential access to awareness during b-CFS. Moreover, local BM information rather than global configuration plays a major role in conscious accessibility. These findings support the local-precedence hypothesis and suggest that local BM information can serve as a "life detector" in the visual system. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Selective attention operates on the group level for interactive biological motion.

How do we distribute attention to interactive biological motion (BM)? There are 2 main hypotheses: (a) distribution-by-individual hypothesis, suggesting that interactive BM will not be taken as one unit in attention distribution, and an individual BM is independently selected; and (b) distribution-by-group hypothesis, indicating that interactions between BM can integrate them as one attention unit. We examined these hypotheses using a modified cueing paradigm. Participants observed 4 upright BM interacting in pairs (paired condition) or not interacting (unpaired condition), and after a cue for 1 agent, they determined whether the probe was the letters T or L (Experiment 1, sample size = 20). The results demonstrated better performance for probes presented on BM in the same interaction compared to BM equidistant but in different interactions. These differences were not present in the unpaired condition or for inverted BM (Experiment 2, sample size = 20), excluding a possible influence of low-level features. The findings indicate that interactive BM can serve as the elementary unit of attention in accordance with the distribution-by-group hypothesis. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Distance perception warped by social relations: Social interaction information compresses distance.

Though distance perception feeds the fundamental input that constructs a visual structure of the world, the suggestion has been made that it is constrained by this constructed structure. Instead of focusing on the physically defined structure, this study investigates whether and how social relations, especially the quality of social interaction (how individuals interact) rather than its content (what type of social interaction), precisely influences distance perception. The quality of social interaction was framed as an actor's intent and incurred outcome regarding another individual, whether helpful or harmful. Through visual animations, intent was operationalized as an agent's (i.e., actor's) intentional or unintentional act having an influence on another agent (i.e., affectee). Two experiments were conducted. In Experiment 1, the act was helpful, resulting in small or great beneficial consequences to the affectee. In Experiment 2, the act was harmful and resulted in small or great losses to the affectee. We found that when the help or harm had a large effect on others (the great-benefits or great-losses conditions), distance was perceived as shorter than when help or harm was minor, and the actor's intent did not affect distance perception. This suggests that, regardless of the type of social interaction, distance perception is mainly influenced by the outcome of an act not by the actor's intent. It implies that the perceived quality of social interaction creates a social constraint on distance perception. These findings are consistent with the idea that the intent and outcome of an action are assessed differently, and they help us understand how social relation penetrates the perceptual system.

Can I Choose a Throwable Object for You? Perceiving Affordances for Other Individuals.

Throwing is an important motor skill for human survival and societal development. It has been shown that throwers could select throwable balls for themselves and ball throwability was determined by its size and weight. In this study, we investigated whether throwers could perceive ball throwability for other throwers (experimental confederates) and whether the perceived throwability for others also followed a size-weight relation. Like other types of affordances, throwability entails a scaling between the thrower and the throwing object. This requires knowledge about the thrower and the object. In this study, knowledge about the objects was gained by hefting balls of various sizes and weights; knowledge about the throwers was gained by interacting with throwers in person (Experiment 1) and by viewing videos of confederates throwing (containing kinematic and anthropometric information) or photographs of the confederates standing (containing anthropometric information; Experiment 2). By comparing observers' perceived throwability for others using various materials, we attempted to uncover whether scaling of throwability was based on kinematic or anthropometric information. In this study, participants ranked throwability of balls of various sizes and weights for confederates of different sexes and fitness levels. In all experimental conditions, observers' ranking and confederates' actual throwing performances yielded linear relationships with slopes close to 1 and moderate to high r 2 values. These suggested that participants were able to accurately perceive throwability and choose throwable balls for the confederates. The throwable balls followed a size-weight relation, where bigger balls had to weigh more to be perceived as throwable as smaller balls. Furthermore, there was no difference between throwability perception based on in-person interaction, watching videos of confederates throwing and seeing pictures of the confederates standing. This suggested that the scaling of throwability was likely to be based on anthropometric information. These results enriched our understanding of whether one could perceive the action opportunities for others, and extended the canonical Gibsonian concept of affordance to a social setting and thus could be important for understanding team coordination in sports and interpersonal action collaboration in general.