Visuospatial perspective-taking of a protagonist during narrative comprehension: the effects of task load and individual differences in visuospatial working memory.

Introduction: This study examined whether visuospatial perspective uses the character perspective during narrative comprehension. Method: Participants read narrative stimuli depicting the spatial positional relationships between characters and objects and judged whether the objects were on the left or right from the character's perspective. We manipulated whether the spatial positional relationships between characters depicted in the narrative stimuli resulted in a visuospatial perspective. We hypothesized that the high-load perspective-taking condition would indicate longer reaction times compared to the low-load perspective-taking condition, as shifting perspectives between characters in the high-load condition require more time for visuospatial perspective-taking. Results: As predicted, the reaction time was longer for high-load perspective-taking than for low-load perspective-taking. Discussion: During narrative comprehension, the reaction time for visuospatial perspective-taking must move virtually within the representation from the main character's perspective to that of another character. Visuospatial perspective-taking is involved in narrative comprehension.

People underestimate their capability to motivate themselves without performance-based extrinsic incentives.

Research has shown that we are endowed with a remarkable capacity to motivate ourselves in the absence of extrinsic incentives (i.e. intrinsic motivation). However, little research has been conducted to investigate whether we accurately appreciate the power of intrinsic motivation. The current research aimed to examine the metacognitive accuracy of the extent to which people can motivate themselves without performance-based extrinsic incentives. Participants were presented with a relatively long and repetitive task without extrinsic incentives, and before doing the task, they were asked to predict their motivation on completion of the task. Across seven experiments using a variety of tasks with different populations from different countries, participants were consistently engaged in the task more actively than they predicted. When participants were provided with performance-based monetary rewards, however, this bias was diminished. These results indicate that we tend to underappreciate our capability to sustain our motivation without extrinsic incentives. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11031-022-09996-5.

Development of a Japanese version of the Psychological Ownership Scale.

The present study addresses the need for a valid instrument for measuring dimensions of psychological ownership, including that of owned and non-owned objects, for use in the language and culture of Japan. Although the theory of psychological ownership has expanded self-extension theory, the most widely used scale of psychological ownership does not measure the extent to which one feels that it (the owned object) is a part of them. Thus, the present study aimed to develop a Japanese version of the Psychological Ownership Scale (POS-J) and examine its reliability and validity. Study 1 measured the POS-J of an owned object, finding the POS-J to have a two-factor structure (possession-self link and feeling of ownership) and its internal consistency and reliability to be adequate. Moreover, POS-J scores were positively correlated with perceived control and self-extension tendency, but not monetary value, indicating that conceptual validity was generally supported. To confirm whether the POS-J could be used for a non-owned object, Study 2 rephrased the expressions of item descriptions and examined the effect of imagining touching a non-owned object on the POS-J scores, showing that doing so increased the POS-J scores for the object. Our findings suggest that the POS-J is a reliable and valid measure of the psychological ownership of owned and non-owned objects for use in Japan.

How Semantically Labeled Scent-Gender Associations Influence the Evaluations of Scent and Texture.

Sensory evaluation can be influenced by semantic information such as gender descriptions. Gender categories are associated with tactile information (e.g., female = soft/smooth, while male = hard/rough). Feminine scents (e.g., floral) are typically perceived as soft and smooth. Thus, semantic labels of gender (feminine/masculine qualities) may influence congruent sensory evaluation (i.e., female = soft/smooth, male = hard/rough). This study examined how semantically labeled scent-gender associations influence the evaluation of scent and texture. Specifically, we examined whether "feminine" and "masculine" labels applied to neutral scents that have not been associated with gender influence scent and haptic evaluation. Participants sniffed a feminine-labeled or masculine-labeled scent embedded on soft and rough papers. They then evaluated the scent (e.g., gender perception) and texture (e.g., hedonic evaluation). The results demonstrated that participants who sniffed a feminine-labeled (vs. masculine-labeled) scent perceived it as more feminine. However, contrary to our expectations, gender labeling of scent did not influence haptic evaluation. These findings indicate that semantic labeling of scents (i.e., feminine/masculine) may alter the gender perception of a scent but not the tactile evaluation. Practical implications for (online) sensory marketing are discussed.

An Extension of a Parallel-Distributed Processing Framework of Reading Aloud in Japanese: Human Nonword Reading Accuracy Does Not Require a Sequential Mechanism.

Humans can pronounce a nonword (e.g., rint). Some researchers have interpreted this behavior as requiring a sequential mechanism by which a grapheme-phoneme correspondence rule is applied to each grapheme in turn. However, several parallel-distributed processing (PDP) models in English have simulated human nonword reading accuracy without a sequential mechanism. Interestingly, the Japanese psycholinguistic literature went partly in the same direction, but it has since concluded that a sequential parsing mechanism is required to reproduce human nonword reading accuracy. In this study, by manipulating the list composition (i.e., pure word/nonword list vs. mixed list), we demonstrated that past psycholinguistic studies in Japanese have overestimated human nonword reading accuracy. When the more fairly reevaluated human performance was targeted, a newly implemented Japanese PDP model simulated the target accuracy as well as the error patterns. These findings suggest that PDP models are a more parsimonious way of explaining reading across various languages.

Why Verbalization of Non-Verbal Memory Reduces Recognition Accuracy: A Computational Approach to Verbal Overshadowing.

Verbal overshadowing refers to a phenomenon whereby verbalization of non-verbal stimuli (e.g., facial features) during the maintenance phase (after the target information is no longer available from the sensory inputs) impairs subsequent non-verbal recognition accuracy. Two primary mechanisms have been proposed for verbal overshadowing, namely the recoding interference hypothesis, and the transfer-inappropriate processing shift. The former assumes that verbalization renders non-verbal representations less accurate. In contrast, the latter assumes that verbalization shifts processing operations to a verbal mode and increases the chance of failing to return to non-verbal, face-specific processing operations (i.e., intact, yet inaccessible non-verbal representations). To date, certain psychological phenomena have been advocated as inconsistent with the recoding-interference hypothesis. These include a decline in non-verbal memory performance following verbalization of non-target faces, and occasional failures to detect a significant correlation between the accuracy of verbal descriptions and the non-verbal memory performance. Contrary to these arguments against the recoding interference hypothesis, however, the present computational model instantiated core processing principles of the recoding interference hypothesis to simulate face recognition, and nonetheless successfully reproduced these behavioral phenomena, as well as the standard verbal overshadowing. These results demonstrate the plausibility of the recoding interference hypothesis to account for verbal overshadowing, and suggest there is no need to implement separable mechanisms (e.g., operation-specific representations, different processing principles, etc.). In addition, detailed inspections of the internal processing of the model clarified how verbalization rendered internal representations less accurate and how such representations led to reduced recognition accuracy, thereby offering a computationally grounded explanation. Finally, the model also provided an explanation as to why some studies have failed to report verbal overshadowing. Thus, the present study suggests it is not constructive to discuss whether verbal overshadowing exists or not in an all-or-none manner, and instead suggests a better experimental paradigm to further explore this phenomenon.

Consolidation power of extrinsic rewards: reward cues enhance long-term memory for irrelevant past events.

Recent research suggests that extrinsic rewards promote memory consolidation through dopaminergic modulation processes. However, no conclusive behavioral evidence exists given that the influence of extrinsic reward on attention and motivation during encoding and consolidation processes are inherently confounded. The present study provides behavioral evidence that extrinsic rewards (i.e., monetary incentives) enhance human memory consolidation independently of attention and motivation. Participants saw neutral pictures, followed by a reward or control cue in an unrelated context. Our results (and a direct replication study) demonstrated that the reward cue predicted a retrograde enhancement of memory for the preceding neutral pictures. This retrograde effect was observed only after a delay, not immediately upon testing. An additional experiment showed that emotional arousal or unconscious resource mobilization cannot explain the retrograde enhancement effect. These results provide support for the notion that the dopaminergic memory consolidation effect can result from extrinsic reward.

Neuroscientific information bias in metacomprehension: the effect of brain images on metacomprehension judgment of neuroscience research.

In the present study, we investigated how brain images affect metacomprehension judgments of neuroscience research. Participants made a prereading judgment of comprehension of the text topic and then read a text about neuroimaging findings. In Experiment 1, participants read text only or text accompanying brain images. In Experiment 2, participants read text accompanying bar graphs or text accompanying brain images. Then participants were asked to rate their comprehension of the text. Finally, they completed comprehension tests. The results of Experiment 1 showed that the text accompanying brain images was associated with higher metacomprehension judgments than was the text only, whereas the performance of the comprehension test did not differ between each condition. The results of Experiment 2 showed that the text accompanying brain images was associated not only with credibility of the text, but also with higher metacomprehension judgments than was the text accompanying the bar graphs, whereas the performance of the comprehension test did not differ between each condition. The findings suggest that the readers' subjective judgments differ from actual comprehension.

Plagiarism as an illusional sense of authorship: the effect of predictability on source attribution of thought.

Previous studies have shown that contextually high-predictability ideas are essential for one to sense the authorship of thoughts and that having the sense that one came up with an idea of one's own, instead of through hearing of another's idea, results in the feeling that one has output the ideas. In this study, we investigated the effects of an idea's predictability on the misattribution of another's thought to oneself. The participants were asked to write down two original ideas about how to use various objects while avoiding the duplication of another's ideas that had been presented beforehand in an input-output phase. In the monitoring phase (1 week and 1 month after the input-output phase), the participants were asked whether each idea had been generated by them, by another, or not generated at all. We found that a high-predictability idea is likely to be regarded with the notion "I generated the idea." This tendency increased with time, suggesting that participants were more likely to have a sense of authorship when high-predictability ideas were presented. We also discovered that they were more likely to conclude that the source of high-predictability ideas was the "Self." We discussed the results from the viewpoint of the participant's sense of agency as well.

Information processing of pictograms and the visual field difference.

The main purpose was to investigate how we process pictograms and to examine the effects of learning on visual field differences when participants overlearn the meaning of each pictogram. 15 students were required to judge whether the referent of each symbol was either larger or smaller than the referent of the standard stimulus (Test 1). Several days later the same task was conducted (Test 2). Although a right visual field advantage was observed in Test 1, it was not apparent at Test 2 after participants had studied the pictogram list repeatedly. These results suggest that pictograms might be processed in much the same way as other ordinary verbal stimuli at a very early stage of learning. Participants could, however, comprehend the pictograms by employing a kind of imagery processing after they were familiar with the symbols.