Fluctuation in cognitive engagement during listening and reading of erotica and horror stories.

The present study examined whether emotional text content influences cognitive engagement and transportation during listening (Experiment 1) and reading (Experiment 2) of neutral, horror and erotic stories. In Experiment 1, fluctuation in arousal and cognitive engagement were measured by continuous arousal judgments and head movement recordings during story listening. Participants rated experienced transportation and emotional valence after each story. The results showed that emotional texts were more arousing and induced more transportation than neutral stories. There was less head motion overall and a steeper decrease in head motion across time for erotic than neutral or horror stories. In Experiment 2, participants' head movements and reading times were recorded during reading, and participants rated experienced transportation, arousal, and valence after each text. The results showed that emotional texts were more arousing and induced higher transportation than neutral stories. There was less head motion during reading of erotic than neutral or horror texts. Horror texts were read slower and recalled better than neutral or erotic texts. The present results show that emotional text content impacts cognitive engagement during listening and reading of literary texts and demonstrates the importance of methodological triangulation when examining cognitive engagement.

The role of look-backs in the processing of written sarcasm.

Previous eye-tracking studies suggest that when resolving the meaning of sarcastic utterances in a text, readers often initiate fixations that return to the sarcastic utterance from subsequent parts of the text. We used a modified trailing mask paradigm to examine both the role of these look-back fixations in sarcasm comprehension and whether there are individual differences in how readers resolve sarcasm. Sixty-two adult participants read short paragraphs containing either a literal or a sarcastic utterance while their eye movements were recorded. The texts were presented using a modified trailing mask paradigm: sentences were initially masked with a string of x's and were revealed to the reader one at a time. In the normal reading condition, sentences remained visible on the screen when the reader moved on to the next sentence; in the masked condition, the sentences were replaced with a mask. Individual differences in working memory capacity (WMC) and the processing of emotional information were also measured. The results showed that readers adjusted their reading behavior when a mask prevented them from re-examining the text content. Interestingly, the readers' compensatory strategies depended on spatial WMC. Moreover, the results showed that the ability to process emotional information was related to less processing effort invested in resolving sarcasm. The present study suggests that look-backs are driven by a need to re-examine the text contents but that they are not necessary for the successful comprehension of sarcasm. The strategies used to resolve sarcasm are mediated by individual differences.

Digital Gaming for Improving the Functioning of People With Traumatic Brain Injury: Randomized Clinical Feasibility Study.

BACKGROUND: Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a major health problem that often requires intensive and long-term rehabilitation. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to determine whether rehabilitative digital gaming facilitates cognitive functioning and general well-being in people with TBI. METHODS: A total of 90 Finnish-speaking adults with TBI (18-65 years) were recruited from an outpatient neuroscience clinic. The participants were randomly allocated to one of the three groups: a rehabilitation gaming group (n=29, intervention), an entertainment gaming group (n=29, active control), or a passive control group (n=32). The gaming groups were instructed to engage in gaming for a minimum of 30 min per day for 8 weeks. Primary and secondary outcomes were measured at three time points: before the intervention, after the intervention, and 3 months following the intervention. The primary outcome was cognitive status measured by processing speed and visuomotor tasks (The Trail Making Test; Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Fourth Edition, WAIS-IV, symbol search, coding, and cancellation tasks). Secondary outcomes were attention and executive functions (Simon task), working memory (WAIS-IV digit span and Paced Auditory Serial Addition Test, PASAT), depression (Patient Health Questionnaire-9), self-efficacy (General Self-efficacy Scale), and executive functions (Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function-Adult Version). Feasibility information was assessed (acceptability, measurement instruments filled, dropouts, adherence, usability, satisfaction, and possible future use). Cognitive measurements were conducted in face-to-face interviews by trained psychologists, and questionnaires were self-administered. RESULTS: The effects of rehabilitation gaming did not significantly differ from the effects of entertainment gaming or being in a passive control group. For primary outcomes and PASAT tests, the participants in all three groups showed overall improvement in test scores across the three measurement points. However, depression scores increased significantly between baseline and after 8 weeks and between baseline and after 3 months in the rehabilitative gaming group. No differences were found in patients' self-efficacy between the three measuring points in any of the groups. Participants did use the games (rehabilitation group: 93%, 27/29; entertainment group 100%, 29/29). Games were seen as a usable intervention (rehabilitation group: 70%, 14/29; entertainment group: 83%, 20/29). The rehabilitation group was less satisfied with the gaming intervention (68%, 13/29 vs 83%, 20/29), but they were more willing to use the game after the intervention period (76%, 16/29 vs 63%, 15/29). Total time spent on gaming during the intervention period was low (15.22 hour rehabilitation gaming group, 19.22 hour entertainment gaming group). CONCLUSIONS: We did not find differences between the groups in improvement in the outcome measures. The improvements in test performance by all three groups may reflect rehearsal effects. Entertainment gaming had elements that could be considered when rehabilitative games are designed for, implemented in, and assessed in larger clinical trials for persons with TBI. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT02425527; https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02425527 (Archived by WebCite at http://www.webcitation.org/6esKI1uDH).

Using support vector machines to identify literacy skills: Evidence from eye movements.

Is inferring readers' literacy skills possible by analyzing their eye movements during text reading? This study used Support Vector Machines (SVM) to analyze eye movement data from 61 undergraduate students who read a multiple-paragraph, multiple-topic expository text. Forward fixation time, first-pass rereading time, second-pass fixation time, and regression path reading time on different regions of the text were provided as features. The SVM classification algorithm assisted in distinguishing high-literacy-skilled readers from low-literacy-skilled readers with 80.3 % accuracy. Results demonstrate the effectiveness of combining eye tracking and machine learning techniques to detect readers with low literacy skills, and suggest that such approaches can be potentially used in predicting other cognitive abilities.

Task relevance induces momentary changes in the functional visual field during reading.

In the research reported here, we examined whether task demands can induce momentary tunnel vision during reading. More specifically, we examined whether the size of the functional visual field depends on task relevance. Forty participants read an expository text with a specific task in mind while their eye movements were recorded. A display-change paradigm with random-letter strings as preview masks was used to study the size of the functional visual field within sentences that contained task-relevant and task-irrelevant information. The results showed that orthographic parafoveal-on-foveal effects and preview benefits were observed for words within task-irrelevant but not task-relevant sentences. The results indicate that the size of the functional visual field is flexible and depends on the momentary processing demands of a reading task. The higher cognitive processing requirements experienced when reading task-relevant text rather than task-irrelevant text induce momentary tunnel vision, which narrows the functional visual field.

Tailoring interventions to suit self-reported format preference does not decrease vaccine hesitancy.

Individually tailored vaccine hesitancy interventions are considered auspicious for decreasing vaccine hesitancy. In two studies, we measured self-reported format preference for statistical vs. anecdotal information in vaccine hesitant individuals, and experimentally manipulated the format in which COVID-19 and influenza vaccine hesitancy interventions were presented (statistical vs. anecdotal). Regardless of whether people received interventions that were in line with their format preference, the interventions did not influence their vaccine attitudes or vaccination intentions. Instead, a stronger preference for anecdotal information was associated with perceiving the material in both the statistical and the anecdotal interventions as more frustrating, less relevant, and less helpful. However, even if the participants reacted negatively to both intervention formats, the reactions to the statistical interventions were consistently less negative. These results suggest that tailoring COVID-19 and influenza vaccine hesitancy interventions to suit people's format preference, might not be a viable tool for decreasing vaccine hesitancy. The results further imply that using statistics-only interventions with people who hold anti-vaccination attitudes may be a less risky choice than using only anecdotal testimonies.

The impact of hyperlinks, skim reading and perceived importance when reading on the Web.

It has previously been shown that readers spend a great deal of time skim reading on the Web and that this type of reading can affect comprehension of text. Across two experiments, we examine how hyperlinks influence perceived importance of sentences and how perceived importance in turn affects reading behaviour. In Experiment 1, participants rated the importance of sentences across passages of Wikipedia text. In Experiment 2, a different set of participants read these passages while their eye movements were tracked, with the task being either reading for comprehension or skim reading. Reading times of sentences were analysed in relation to the type of task and the importance ratings from Experiment 1. Results from Experiment 1 show readers rated sentences without hyperlinks as being of less importance than sentences that did feature hyperlinks, and this effect is larger when sentences are lower on the page. It was also found that short sentences with more links were rated as more important, but only when they were presented at the top of the page. Long sentences with more links were rated as more important regardless of their position on the page. In Experiment 2, higher importance scores resulted in longer sentence reading times, measured as fixation durations. When skim reading, however, importance ratings had a lesser impact on online reading behaviour than when reading for comprehension. We suggest readers are less able to establish the importance of a sentence when skim reading, even though importance could have been assessed by information that would be fairly easy to extract (i.e. presence of hyperlinks, length of sentences, and position on the screen).

IDEST: International Database of Emotional Short Texts.

We introduce a database (IDEST) of 250 short stories rated for valence, arousal, and comprehensibility in two languages. The texts, with a narrative structure telling a story in the first person and controlled for length, were originally written in six different languages (Finnish, French, German, Portuguese, Spanish, and Turkish), and rated for arousal, valence, and comprehensibility in the original language. The stories were translated into English, and the same ratings for the English translations were collected via an internet survey tool (N = 573). In addition to the rating data, we also report readability indexes for the original and English texts. The texts have been categorized into different story types based on their emotional arc. The texts score high on comprehensibility and represent a wide range of emotional valence and arousal levels. The comparative analysis of the ratings of the original texts and English translations showed that valence ratings were very similar across languages, whereas correlations between the two pairs of language versions for arousal and comprehensibility were modest. Comprehensibility ratings correlated with only some of the readability indexes. The database is published in osf.io/9tga3, and it is freely available for academic research.

Influence of text cohesion on the persuasive power of expository text.

The present study examined how global text cohesion affects persuasion and memory for message arguments presented in expository text. Sixty-nine participants who held a neutral prior attitude towards NATO read a persuasive text about NATO that was either high or low in global cohesion. After reading, participants voted whether Finland should seek NATO membership and filled in an attitude questionnaire. After a 1-week delay they returned for a surprise recall task. The results showed that the high cohesion text was more persuasive than the low cohesion text. Moreover, attitude after reading but not text cohesion predicted later recall of the message arguments. The results show that global text cohesion increases text's persuasive power and that readers who form a positive attitude have better memory of the persuasive arguments after a delay than readers who are less persuaded.

Processing of irony in text: A systematic review of eye-tracking studies.

Theoretical models of irony comprehension pose different hypotheses about the time course of resolving ironic interpretation of an utterance, and they propose several context-, phrase-, and reader-related factors that influence the ease or difficulty of processing irony. In recent years, these factors have been examined using eye tracking, which allows a detailed analysis of time course of reading processes. In this article, we present a meta-analysis of the eye-tracking studies on irony and then present a systematic review of the factors that have been shown to influence the time course of irony processing. The review will point to future directions in how eye tracking could best be applied to further develop the current theoretical views. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Eye Movements during Dynamic Scene Viewing are Affected by Visual Attention Skills and Events of the Scene: Evidence from First-Person Shooter Gameplay Videos.

The role of individual differences during dynamic scene viewing was explored. Participants (N=38) watched a gameplay video of a first-person shooter (FPS) videogame while their eye movements were recorded. In addition, the participants' skills in three visual attention tasks (attentional blink, visual search, and multiple object tracking) were assessed. The results showed that individual differences in visual attention tasks were associated with eye movement patterns observed during viewing of the gameplay video. The differences were noted in four eye movement measures: number of fixations, fixation durations, saccade amplitudes and fixation distances from the center of the screen. The individual differences showed during specific events of the video as well as during the video as a whole. The results highlight that an unedited, fast-paced and cluttered dynamic scene can bring about individual differences in dynamic scene viewing.

The Effect of Sex and Perpetrator-Victim Relationship on Perceptions of Domestic Homicide.

Previous research on how stereotypes affect perceptions of intimate partner violence and domestic homicide has found that violence committed by men is perceived as more severe and judged more harshly than violence committed by women. The present mock jury study investigated how perpetrator sex (male or female), crime type (familicide or filicide), and relatedness between perpetrator and child victims (biological or step) affect laypeople's perceptions of the appropriate consequence of the crime, the reason for the offense, responsibility of the perpetrator, the likelihood of certain background factors being present, and the risk of future violence. One hundred sixty-seven university students read eight fictive descriptions of cases of multiple-victim domestic homicides, in which the sex of the perpetrator, the crime type, and the relatedness between the perpetrator and the child victims were manipulated. We found that participants recommended equally severe punishments to and placed the same amount of responsibility on male and female offenders. Female offenders were, however, regarded as mentally ill to a larger extent and perceived more likely to have been victims of domestic violence compared with male offenders. Male offenders were seen as more likely to have committed domestic violence in the past, having been unemployed, have substance abuse, hold aggressive attitudes, and commit violent acts in the future. Participants also perceived offenders killing biological children as more mentally ill than those killing stepchildren. The present study extends the literature on the possible effect of stereotypes on decision making in psychiatric and judicial contexts.

Fluctuation in Pupil Size and Spontaneous Blinks Reflect Story Transportation.

Thirty-nine participants listened to 28 neutral and horror excerpts of Stephen King short stories while constantly tracking their emotional arousal. Pupil size was measured with an Eyelink 1000+, and participants rated valence and transportation after each story. In addition to computing mean pupil size across 1-sec intervals, we extracted blink count and used detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA) to obtain the scaling exponents of long-range temporal correlations (LRTCs) in pupil size time-series. Pupil size was expected to be sensitive also to emotional arousal, whereas blink count and LRTC's were expected to reflect cognitive engagement. The results showed that self-reported arousal increased, pupil size was overall greater, and the decreasing slope of pupil size was flatter for horror than for neutral stories. Horror stories induced higher transportation than neutral stories. High transportation was associated with a steeper increase in self-reported arousal across time, stronger LRTCs in pupil size fluctuations, and lower blink count. These results indicate that pupil size reflects emotional arousal induced by the text content, while LRTCs and blink count are sensitive to cognitive engagement associated with transportation, irrespective of the text type. The study demonstrates the utility of pupillometric measures and blink count to study literature reception.

Cognitive engagement during reading on digital tablet: Evidence from concurrent recordings of postural and eye movements.

The present study utilised a novel combination of eye movement and motion capture recordings to examine cognitive engagement during reading on a hand-held tablet computer. Participants read a multiple-page text with a specific task in mind and after reading recalled the main contents of text from memory. The results showed that head distance from screen was slightly shorter, and readers spent longer time reading task-relevant than irrelevant segments of text and had better memory for task-relevant than irrelevant text information, indicating that there are task-induced momentary changes in engagement during reading. Moreover, head motion and individual fixation durations decreased during the course of reading of relevant segments, and even though there was an overall increase in table motion during reading, the slope of this increase was steeper for irrelevant than relevant text segments. These results suggest that readers become more engaged with relevant and less engaged with irrelevant text segments across the text. The novel methodological combination of eye and postural movements seems to provide valuable information about cognitive engagement during reading in digital environments. The cumulation of evidence from this and previous studies suggests that reading on a tablet affords different interactions between the reader and the text than reading on a computer screen. Reading on a tablet might be more similar to reading on paper, and this may impact the attentional processes during reading.

The ability to recognise emotions predicts the time-course of sarcasm processing: Evidence from eye movements.

A core feature of sarcasm is that there is a discrepancy between the literal meaning of the utterance and the context in which it is presented. This means that a sarcastic statement embedded in a story introduces a break in local coherence. Previous studies have shown that sarcastic statements in written stories often elicit longer processing times than their literal counterparts, possibly reflecting the difficulty of integrating the statement into the story's context. In the present study, we examined how sarcastic statements are processed when the location of the local coherence break is manipulated by presenting the sarcastic dialogues either before or after contextual information. In total, 60 participants read short text paragraphs containing sarcastic or literal target statements, while their eye movements were recorded. Individual differences in ability to recognise emotions and working memory capacity were measured. The results suggest that longer reading times with sarcastic statements not only reflect local inconsistency but also attempt to resolve the meaning of the sarcastic statement. The ability to recognise emotions was reflected in eye-movement patterns, suggesting that readers who are poor at recognising emotions are slower at categorising the statement as sarcastic. Thus, they need more processing effort to resolve the sarcastic meaning.

Selective attention to question-relevant text information precedes high-quality summaries: Evidence from eye movements.

Comprehension and summarizing are closely related. As more strategic and selective processing during reading should be reflected in higher quality of summaries, the aim of this study was to use eye movement patterns to analyze how readers who produce good quality summaries process texts. 40 undergraduate students were instructed to read six expository texts in order to respond a causal question introduced in the end of the first paragraph. After reading, participants produced an oral summary of the text. Based on the quality of the summaries, participants were divided into three groups: High, Medium and Low Quality Summaries. The results revealed that readers who produced High Quality Summaries made significantly more and longer fixations and regressions in the question-relevant parts of texts when compared to the other two summary groups. These results suggest that the summary task performance could be a good predictor of the reading strategies utilized during reading.

Fluctuation in cognitive engagement during reading: Evidence from concurrent recordings of postural and eye movements.

The present study utilized a novel methodological combination of eye tracking and postural movement recordings to study task-induced changes in cognitive engagement during expository text reading. Thirty-three participants read an expository text with a specific task in mind while their eye and postural movements were concurrently recorded, and after reading recalled the text from memory. The results showed that readers spent longer total fixation time and had better memory for task-relevant than irrelevant text information. During the course of reading, head-to-screen distance and the speed of head motion decreased more for relevant than irrelevant text segments. The results support the dynamic engagement hypothesis: there is task-induced fluctuation in cognitive engagement during reading. Moreover, the results suggest two types of engagement processes: transient and sustained engagement. The former refers to fast, momentary changes, whereas the latter refers to slower changes in the level of engagement observed across the reading task. The novel combination of eye and postural movement recordings proved to be useful in studying how readers embody the cognitive task demands during reading. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

Synaesthesia-type associations and perceptual changes induced by hypnotic suggestion.

Are synaesthetic experiences congenital and so hard-wired, or can a functional analogue be created? We induced an equivalent of form-colour synaesthesia using hypnotic suggestions in which symbols in an array (circles, crosses, squares) were suggested always to have a certain colour. In a Stroop type-naming task, three of the four highly hypnotizable participants showed a strong synaesthesia-type association between symbol and colour. This was verified both by their subjective reports and objective eye-movement behaviour. Two resembled a projector- and one an associator-type synaesthete. Participant interviews revealed that subjective experiences differed somewhat from typical (congenital) synaesthesia. Control participants who mimicked the task using cognitive strategies showed a very different response pattern. Overall, the results show that the targeted, preconsciously triggered associations and perceptual changes seen in association with congenital synaesthesia can rapidly be induced by hypnosis. They suggest that each participant's subjective experience of the task should be carefully evaluated, especially when studying hypnotic hallucinations. Studying such experiences can increase understanding of perception, automaticity, and awareness and open unique opportunities in cognitive neuroscience and consciousness research.

Would Adults with Autism be less likely to Bury the Survivors? An Eye Movement Study of Anomalous Text Reading.

In a single eye movement experiment we investigated the effects of context on the time course of local and global anomaly processing during reading in adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). In one condition short paragraph texts contained anomalous target words. Detection of the anomaly was only possible through evaluation of word meaning in relation to the global context of the whole paragraph (Passage Level Anomalies). In another condition the anomaly could be detected via computation of a local thematic violation within a single sentence embedded in the paragraph (Sentence Level Anomalies). For the sentence level anomalies the ASD group, in contrast with the typically developing (TD) group, showed early detection of the anomaly as indexed by regressive eye movements from the critical target word upon fixation. Conversely, for the passage level anomalies, and in contrast with the ASD group, the TD group showed early detection of the anomaly, with increased regressive eye movements once the critical word had been fixated. The reversal of the pattern of regression path data for the two groups, for the sentence and passage level anomalies, is discussed in relation to cognitive accounts of ASD.

Individual differences in the processing of written sarcasm and metaphor: Evidence from eye movements.

The present study examined individual differences in the processing of different forms of figurative language. Sixty participants read sarcastic, metaphorical, and literal sentences embedded in story contexts while their eye movements were recorded, and responded to a text memory and an inference question after each story. Individual differences in working memory capacity (WMC), need for cognition (NFC), and cognitive-affective processing were measured. The results showed that the processing of metaphors was characterized by slow-down during first-pass reading of the utterances, whereas sarcasm produced mainly delayed effects in the eye movement records. Sarcastic utterances were also harder to comprehend than literal or metaphorical utterances as indicated by poorer performance in responses to inference questions. Individual differences in general cognitive factors (WMC and NFC) were related to the processing of metaphors, whereas individual differences in both general cognitive factors (WMC) as well as processing of emotional information were related to the processing of sarcasm. The results indicate that different forms of figurative language pose different cognitive demands to the reader, and show that reader characteristics play a prominent role in figurative language comprehension.