Learned cognitive control counteracts value-driven attentional capture.

Stimuli formerly associated with monetary reward capture our attention, even if this attraction is contrary to current goals (so-called value-driven attentional capture [VDAC], see Anderson (Ann N Y Acad Sci 1369:24-39, 2016), for a review). Despite the growing literature to this topic, little is known about the boundary conditions for the occurrence of VDAC. In three experiments, we investigated the role of response conflicts and spatial uncertainty regarding the target location during the training and test phase for the emergence of value-driven effects. Thus, we varied the occurrence of a response conflict, search components, and the type of task in both phases. In the training, value-driven effects were rather observed if the location of the value-associated target was not predictable and a response conflict was present. Value-driven effects also only occurred, if participants have not learned to deal with a response conflict, yet. However, the introduction of a response conflict during learning of the color-value association seemed to prevent attention to be distracted by this feature in a subsequent test. The study provides new insights not only into the boundary conditions of the learning of value associations, but also into the learning of cognitive control.

Improving parameter recovery for conflict drift-diffusion models.

Several drift-diffusion models have been developed to account for the performance in conflict tasks. Although a common characteristic of these models is that the drift rate changes within a trial, their architecture is rather different. Comparative studies usually examine which model fits the data best. However, a good fit does not guarantee good parameter recovery, which is a necessary condition for a valid interpretation of any fit. A recent simulation study revealed that recovery performance varies largely between models and individual parameters. Moreover, recovery was generally not very impressive. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to introduce and test an improved fit procedure. It is based on a grid search for determining the initial parameter values and on a specific criterion for assessing the goodness of fit. Simulations show that not only the fit performance but also parameter recovery improved substantially by applying this procedure, compared to the standard one. The improvement was largest for the most complex model.

Time pressure affects the efficiency of perceptual processing in decisions under conflict.

The negative correlation between speed and accuracy in perceptual decision making is often explained as a tradeoff, where lowered decision boundaries under time pressure result in faster but more error-prone responses. Corresponding implementations in sequential sampling models confirmed the success of this account, which has led to the prevalent assumption that a second component of decision making, the efficiency of perceptual processing, is largely independent from temporal demands. To test the generality of this claim, we examined time pressure effects on decisions under conflict. Data from a flanker task were fit with a sequential sampling model that incorporates two successive phases of response selection, driven by the output of an early and late stage of stimulus selection, respectively. The fits revealed the canonical decrease of response boundaries with increasing time pressure. In addition, time pressure reduced the duration of non-decisional processes and impaired the early stage of stimulus selection, together with the subsequent first phase of response selection. The results show that the relation between speed and accuracy not only relies on the strategic adjustment of response boundaries but involves variations of processing efficiency. The findings support recent evidence of drift rate modulations in response to time pressure in simple perceptual decisions and confirm their validity in the context of more complex tasks.

Golden spiral or Fibonacci spiral: Which is more beautiful and why?

Spirals, with their widespread presence in both nature and culture, are universally admired. Although there are different types, such as the Archimedean, logarithmic, and golden spirals, they are indiscriminately considered as beautiful. This universal view might explain the lack of studies investigating aesthetic differences among spirals. To show that there are indeed differences, the beauty of the golden spiral was compared with that of the Fibonacci spiral in this empirical study. Since the curvature of the golden spiral changes continuously, whereas that of the Fibonacci spiral does so in steps, the golden spiral was predicted to be aesthetically preferred. The results clearly confirmed this prediction. That the difference in preference was really based on the continuity versus discontinuity of the curvature is supported by the further result that an Archimedean spiral was preferred over a Dürer spiral, which similarly differed in their continuity.

The effect of expertise on the creation and evaluation of visual compositions in terms of creativity and beauty.

The identification of artistically creative individuals is an important matter in the fields of art, design, and psychology. One promising approach involves assessing a person's products rather than his or her personality or cognitive processes. However, the necessity of expert involvement in such evaluations is still debated. To investigate this issue, two experiments were conducted, each consisting of a production phase and an evaluation phase. In Experiment 1, participants were asked to compose a most beautiful picture, which was subsequently assessed in terms of beauty. Experiment 2 was analogous, but participants were asked to compose a most creative picture, which was then assessed in terms of creativity and beauty. The results revealed that expertise did not play a crucial role in the creation or evaluation of beauty. Both experts and non-experts largely agreed on what constitutes beauty. However, when it came to the production and assessment of creative pictures, experts had an advantage. They were the only group that was able to predict a person's creativity based on the evaluation of his or her product.

Functional hemispheric asymmetries of global/local processing mirrored by the steady-state visual evoked potential.

While hemispheric differences in global/local processing have been reported by various studies, it is still under dispute at which processing stage they occur. Primarily, it was assumed that these asymmetries originate from an early perceptual stage. Instead, the content-level binding theory (Hübner & Volberg, 2005) suggests that the hemispheres differ at a later stage at which the stimulus information is bound to its respective level. The present study tested this assumption by means of steady-state evoked potentials (SSVEPs). In particular, we presented hierarchical letters flickering at 12Hz while participants categorised the letters at a pre- cued level (global or local). The information at the two levels could be congruent or incongruent with respect to the required response. Since content-binding is only necessary if there is a response conflict, asymmetric hemispheric processing should be observed only for incongruent stimuli. Indeed, our results show that the cue and congruent stimuli elicited equal SSVEP global/local effects in both hemispheres. In contrast, incongruent stimuli elicited lower SSVEP amplitudes for a local than for a global target level at left posterior electrodes, whereas a reversed pattern was seen at right hemispheric electrodes. These findings provide further evidence for a level-specific hemispheric advantage with respect to content-level binding. Moreover, the fact that the SSVEP is sensitive to these processes offers the possibility to separately track global and local processing by presenting both level contents with different frequencies.

Investigating the speed-accuracy trade-off: better use deadlines or response signals?

Deadlines (DLs) and response signals (RSs) are two well-established techniques for investigating speed-accuracy trade-offs (SATs). Methodological differences imply, however, that corresponding data do not necessarily reflect equivalent processes. Specifically, the DL procedure grants knowledge about trial-specific time demands and requires responses before a prespecified period has elapsed. In contrast, RS intervals often vary unpredictably between trials, and responses must be given after an explicit signal. Here, we investigated the effects of these differences in a flanker task. While all conditions yielded robust SAT functions, a right-shift of the curves pointed to reduced performance in RS conditions (Experiment 1, blocked; Experiments 2 and 3, randomized), as compared with DL conditions (Experiments 1-3, blocked), indicating that the detection of the RS imposes additional task demands. Moreover, the flanker effect vanished at long intervals in RS settings, suggesting that stimulus-related effects are absorbed in a slack when decisions are completed prior to the signal. In turn, effects of a flat (Experiment 2) versus a performance-contingent payment (Experiment 3) indicated that susceptibility to response strategies is higher in the DL than in the RS method. Finally, the RS procedure led to a broad range of slow responses and high accuracies, whereas DL conditions resulted in smaller variations in the upper data range (Experiments 1 and 2); with performance-contingent payment (Experiment 3), though, data ranges became similar. Together, the results uncover characteristic procedure-related effects and should help in selection of the appropriate technique.

On the beauty of vases: Birkhoff's aesthetic measure versus Hogarth's line of beauty.

Vases continue to be important aesthetic objects in almost all developed cultures. Nevertheless, there is little to no systematic research on the shape characteristics that determine their beauty. A famous exception is Birkhoff, who in his 1933 book used the geometric ratios of vases to calculate their beauty. One form factor that he discussed theoretically but did not include in his aesthetic measure is the outline curvature of vases. This is despite the fact that William Hogarth recognized curvature as relevant to the aesthetic evaluation of forms as early as 1753, demonstrating this with his Line of Beauty. Given the great influence of these two ideas, the aim of the present study was to examine their contribution to the aesthetics of vases. For this objective, we designed a set of symbolic vases by systematically varying width and curvature, and asked participants to rate their beauty in an online experiment. The results show that both geometric ratios and curvature contribute to the beauty of the vases.

Evidence that the aesthetic preference for Hogarth's Line of Beauty is an evolutionary by-product.

In 1753, artist William Hogarth declared a specific S-shaped line to be the 'Line of Beauty' (LoB). Hogarth's assertion has had a profound impact on diverse fields over the past two and a half centuries. However, only one recent (2022) study has investigated whether Hogarth's assertion accurately captures humans' actual aesthetic preferences, and no research has explored why people find the LoB beautiful. We conducted two studies testing the hypothesis that the LoB's perceived beauty is an incidental by-product of cognitive systems that evolved to attend to fitness-relevant morphological features in people. In Study 1, we replicated the finding that female bodies whose lumbar curvature approximates the biomechanical optimum for dealing with the exigencies of pregnancy are rated as more attractive. In Study 2, we found that abstract lines extracted from these bodies were perceived as more beautiful than other lines. These results suggest that the preference for Hogarth's LoB is an incidental by-product of psychological mechanisms that evolved for other purposes. More broadly, these findings suggest that an evolutionary psychological approach - in particular the concept of evolutionary by-product - may be useful for understanding, explaining, and predicting people's aesthetic preferences for certain abstract symbols, which otherwise might seem arbitrary and inexplicable.

The cerebral hemispheres differ in their capacity for content-to-level binding but not for identification: evidence from conjunction errors obtained with bilateral hierarchical stimuli.

It is widely assumed that the right and left cerebral hemispheres are specialised for processing the global and local information of hierarchical stimuli, respectively. This idea has further been specified in the content-to-level binding theory (Hübner & Volberg, 2005) by stating that the hemispheres differ in their efficiency for binding the contents of a stimulus to their respective level. In contrast, it is assumed that the hemispheres do not differ in their capacity for the identification of the information at the two levels. This latter hypothesis was tested in the present experiment by presenting a hierarchical letter to each visual field. As expected, there were visual field effects only for errors involving the erroneous binding between a letter and a level. For errors that result from the mislocalisation of a letter, there were no visual field effects. Together, the data support the hypothesis that the hemispheres do not differ in their identification capacity.

Position biases in sequential location selection: Effects of region, choice history, and visibility of previous selections.

In some situations, e.g., when filling out lottery tickets, it can be advantageous to select random locations. However, people usually have difficulties with this, because they are biased by preferences for certain regions, such as the center of an area. According to ideas from art theory, the preferred regions reflect the hidden structure of perceptual forces within an area. In the present study, these structures were investigated and modeled under different conditions for areas with square and rectangular shape. The general task was to sequentially place a number of dots at random locations in an area by clicking with the computer mouse at corresponding positions on the screen. Whereas in a single-dot condition each dot had to be placed in an empty area, the previously placed dots remained visible in a multiple-dots condition. In three experiments it was found that dots were preferentially placed at the center, the diagonals, and the principal axes. This preference was more pronounced in the single than in the multiple-dot condition. Moreover, sequential analyses revealed that dot placing was not only planned in advance, but that the participants also agreed to some extent in their sequential selections, which produced surprisingly similar sequential spatial patterns across participants, at least for the first dots. Altogether, the results indicate that people have great difficulties with the random selection of locations. Their selections are strongly affected by the attraction of specific regions, by previous selections, and by sequential habits.

Is Hogarth's 'Line of Beauty' really the most beautiful? An empirical answer after more than 250 years.

Since the Renaissance, different line types have been distinguished by artists and art theorists. However, it took another hundreds of years until the British artist William Hogarth attributed different degrees of beauty to them. Particularly, in his book "The Analysis of Beauty" (1753) he depicted seven waving lines, declared line number 4 as the most beautiful, and called it the "line of beauty". Until today, the line of beauty has a persistently strong influence in many areas such as landscape art and design, calligraphy, furniture design, architecture, dance, etc. It is astonishing that Hogarth's assumptions have never been empirically tested. Therefore, we asked participants to rate Hogarth's lines by their beauty. As a result, line number 4 was indeed the most preferred, although number 5 was judged similarly. An analysis revealed that curvature was nonlinearly related to beauty and explains more than 90% of the variance in the mean aesthetic judgments.

Value Associations Modulate Visual Attention and Response Selection.

Every day, we are confronted with a vast amount of information that all competes for our attention. Some of this information might be associated with rewards (e.g., gambling) or losses (e.g., insurances). To what extent such information, even if irrelevant for our current task, not only attracts attention but also affects our actions is still a topic under examination. To address this issue, we applied a new experimental paradigm that combines visual search and a spatial compatibility task. Although colored stimuli did not modulate the spatial compatibility effect more than gray stimuli, we found clear evidence that reward and loss associations attenuated this effect, presumably by affecting attention and response selection. Moreover, there are hints that differences in these associations are also reflected in a modulation of the spatial compatibility effect. We discuss theoretical implications of our results with respect to the influences of color, reward, and loss association on selective attention and response selection.

On the difficulty of overcoming one's accuracy bias for choosing an optimal speed-accuracy tradeoff.

Under time pressure, it is usually not possible to respond quickly and accurately at the same time. Therefore, people must trade speed for accuracy, depending on the current payoff conditions. Ideally, they should choose a speed-accuracy tradeoff (SAT) that optimizes their monetary reward. However, this is hardly the case. Rather, persons exhibit an accuracy bias, which is often disadvantageous. To further investigate the role of errors for optimizing reward, we conducted a flanker-task study with different payoff and framing conditions. Whereas the reward for correct responses always increased continuously with speed, the costs of errors varied. In three of four conditions, responding very fast, even with low accuracy, was favorable. Furthermore, in addition to the usual gain framing, half of our participants were instructed according to a loss frame. Whereas framing had little effect on performance, we found a substantial accuracy bias. Only in the most extreme condition some participants overcame their bias and responded very quickly. To examine how SAT strategies differed between participants, we modeled the performance with a sequential-sampling model. The results suggest that various mechanisms were involved in realizing specific SATs. However, they were hardly applied to optimize reward. Rather, participants seem to have optimized their well-being. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Effects of response-set size on error-related brain activity.

To study the effect of response-set size on action monitoring processes, the error-related negativity (Ne/ERN), the correct-related negativity (Nc/CRN), and behavioral indicators of action monitoring were compared across three groups of participants performing a two-choice, a four-choice, or an eight-choice version of the flanker task. After controlling for differential contribution of stimulus-related activity to response-locked averages resulting from large differences in response times across conditions, response-set size had strong effects on Ne/ERN and Nc/CRN. With increasing response-set size, the Ne/ERN amplitude decreased, but the Nc/CRN amplitude increased. Moreover, post-error behavioral adjustments were impaired with an increasing response-set size. These results suggest that action monitoring severely suffers when response-set size is increased. Implications of these findings for present theories of Ne/ERN and Nc/CRN are discussed.

On the relation between perceived stability and aesthetic appreciation.

Perceived stability is an important feature of pictures with respect to their aesthetic appreciation. Pictures whose composition is perceived as stable are usually liked more than those with unstable arrangements. However, there are exceptions. In a recent study, we found that unstable Japanese calligraphies were preferred to stable ones. From this result, we hypothesized that instability is liked when it implies movement. Therefore, we systematically tested these two types of instability. In our first experiment, we used multiple-element pictures of varying stability as stimuli and show that perceived instability has a negative effect on liking. In a second experiment, we used dynamic paintings by the artist K.O. Götz, which largely vary in implied movement. As expected, for these dynamic pictures, instability was positively related to liking. Taken together, our findings indicate that perceived instability reduces the aesthetical appreciation of a picture unless it implies movement.

Functional hemispheric differences for the categorization of global and local information in naturalistic stimuli.

Up to now functional hemispheric asymmetries for global/local processing have mainly been investigated with hierarchical letters as stimuli. In the present study, three experiments were conducted to examine whether corresponding visual-field (VF) effects can also be obtained with more naturalistic stimuli. To this end, images of animals with a pattern placed on their body were displayed as stimuli. The task for the global level and for the local level was to categorize the animals and the patterns, respectively. As a result, VF-effects were also found for these stimuli and tasks. It is concluded that the hemispheric differences observed for hierarchical letters also hold for naturalistic stimuli.

Strategic capacity sharing between two tasks: evidence from tasks with the same and with different task sets.

The goal of the present study was to investigate the costs and benefits of different degrees of strategic parallel processing between two tasks. In a series of experiments with the dual-task flanker paradigm, participants were either instructed to process the tasks serially or in parallel, or--in a control condition--they received no specific instruction. Results showed that the participants were able to adjust the degree of parallel processing as instructed in a flexible manner. Parallel processing of the two tasks repeatedly led to large costs in performance and to high crosstalk effects compared to more serial processing. In spite of the costs, a moderate degree of parallel processing was preferred in the condition with no specific instruction. This pattern of results was observed if the same task set was used for the two tasks, but also if different ones were applied. Furthermore, a modified version of the central capacity sharing (CCS) model (Tombu and Jolicoeur in J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform 29:3-18, 2003) was proposed that accounts also for crosstalk effects in dual tasks. The modified CCS model was then evaluated by fitting it successfully to the present data.

Perceptual Balance, Stability, and Aesthetic Appreciation: Their Relations Depend on the Picture Type.

It is widely assumed that the aesthetic appreciation of a picture depends, among others, on how well the picture's composition is perceptually balanced, where "perceptual balance" is often defined analogous to mechanics. To what extent this metaphor holds for different picture types, however, is still open. Therefore, in this study, we examined the relationship between balance, liking, and some objective measures with pictures from an aesthetic sensitivity test. These stimuli could be divided into single-element, multiple-element, and dynamic-pattern pictures. The results show that "balance" is interpreted differently, depending on the stimulus type. Whereas "mechanical" balance was applied to assess single-element pictures, the balance of multiple-element and dynamic-pattern pictures was rated more in the sense of gravitational stability. Only for the multiple-element stimuli, there was a positive relation between balance/stability and liking. Together, our findings show that there are different types of balance, and that their relation with liking depends on the picture type.

Conflict resolution in the Eriksen flanker task: Similarities and differences to the Simon task.

In the Eriksen flanker task as well as in the Simon task irrelevant activation produces a response conflict that has to be resolved by mental control mechanisms. Despite these similarities, however, the tasks differ with respect to their delta functions, which express how the congruency effects develop with response time. The slope of the delta function is mostly positive for the flanker task, but negative for the Simon task. Much effort has been spent to explain this difference and to investigate whether it results from task-specific control. A prominent account is that the temporal overlap between irrelevant and relevant response activation is larger in the flanker task than in the Simon task. To test this hypothesis, we increased the temporal distance in a flanker task by presenting the flankers ahead of the target. This not only produced negatively sloped delta functions but also caused reversed congruency effects. We also conducted a Simon-task experiment in which we varied the proportion of congruent stimuli. As a result, the delta function was negatively sloped only if the proportion was low. These results demonstrate that a long temporal distance is necessary but not sufficient for observing negatively sloped delta functions. Finally, we modeled the data with drift-diffusion models. Together, our results show that differently sloped delta functions can be produced with both tasks. They further indicate that activation suppression is an important control mechanism that can be adapted rather flexibly to the control demands.