Four fundamental dimensions underlie the perception of human actions.

We evaluate the actions of other individuals based upon a variety of movements that reveal critical information to guide decision making and behavioural responses. These signals convey a range of information about the actor, including their goals, intentions and internal mental states. Although progress has been made to identify cortical regions involved in action processing, the organising principles underlying our representation of actions still remains unclear. In this paper we investigated the conceptual space that underlies action perception by assessing which qualities are fundamental to the perception of human actions. We recorded 240 different actions using motion-capture and used these data to animate a volumetric avatar that performed the different actions. 230 participants then viewed these actions and rated the extent to which each action demonstrated 23 different action characteristics (e.g., avoiding-approaching, pulling-pushing, weak-powerful). We analysed these data using Exploratory Factor Analysis to examine the latent factors underlying visual action perception. The best fitting model was a four-dimensional model with oblique rotation. We named the factors: friendly-unfriendly, formidable-feeble, planned-unplanned, and abduction-adduction. The first two factors of friendliness and formidableness explained approximately 22% of the variance each, compared to planned and abduction, which explained approximately 7-8% of the variance each; as such we interpret this representation of action space as having 2 + 2 dimensions. A closer examination of the first two factors suggests a similarity to the principal factors underlying our evaluation of facial traits and emotions, whilst the last two factors of planning and abduction appear unique to actions.

Rapid detection of social interactions is the result of domain general attentional processes.

Using visual search displays of interacting and non-interacting pairs, it has been demonstrated that detection of social interactions is facilitated. For example, two people facing each other are found faster than two people with their backs turned: an effect that may reflect social binding. However, recent work has shown the same effects with non-social arrow stimuli, where towards facing arrows are detected faster than away facing arrows. This latter work suggests a primary mechanism is an attention orienting process driven by basic low-level direction cues. However, evidence for lower level attentional processes does not preclude a potential additional role of higher-level social processes. Therefore, in this series of experiments we test this idea further by directly comparing basic visual features that orient attention with representations of socially interacting individuals. Results confirm the potency of orienting of attention via low-level visual features in the detection of interacting objects. In contrast, there is little evidence for the representation of social interactions influencing initial search performance.

Remembered together: Social interaction facilitates retrieval while reducing individuation of features within bound representations.

When encountering social scenes, there appears to be rapid and automatic detection of social interactions. Representations of interacting people appear to be bound together via a mechanism of joint attention, which results in enhanced memory, even when participants are unaware that memory is required. However, even though access is facilitated for socially bound representations, we predicted that the individual features of these representations are less efficiently encoded, and features can therefore migrate between the constituent interacting individuals. This was confirmed in Experiment 1, where overall memory for interacting compared with non-interacting dyads was facilitated but binding of features within an individual was weak, resulting in feature migration errors. Experiment 2 demonstrated the role of conscious strategic processing, where participants were aware that memory would be tested. With such awareness, attention can be focused on individual objects allowing the binding of features. The results support an account of two forms of processing: an initial automatic social binding process where interacting individuals are represented as one episode in memory facilitating access and a further stage where attention can be focused on each individual enabling the binding of features within individual objects.

Intergroup preference, not dehumanization, explains social biases in emotion attribution.

Psychological models can only help improve intergroup relations if they accurately characterise the mechanisms underlying social biases. The claim that outgroups suffer dehumanization is near ubiquitous in the social sciences. We challenge the most prominent psychological model of dehumanization - infrahumanization theory - which holds outgroup members are subtly dehumanized by being denied human emotions. We examine the theory across seven intergroup contexts in thirteen pre-registered and highly powered experiments (N = 1690). We find outgroup members are not denied uniquely human emotions relative to ingroup members. Rather, they are ascribed prosocial emotions to a lesser extent but antisocial emotions to a greater extent. Apparent evidence for infrahumanization is better explained by ingroup preference, outgroup derogation and stereotyping. Infrahumanization theory may obscure more than it reveals about intergroup bias.

Spontaneous first impressions emerge from brief training.

People have a strong and reliable tendency to infer the character traits of strangers based solely on facial appearance. In five highly powered and pre-registered experiments, we investigate the relative merits of learning and nativist accounts of the origins of these first impressions. First, we test whether brief periods of training can establish consistent first impressions de novo. Using a novel paradigm with Greebles-a class of synthetic object with inter-exemplar variation that approximates that seen between individual faces-we show that participants quickly learn to associate appearance cues with trustworthiness (Experiments 1 and 2). In a further experiment, we show that participants easily learn a two-dimensional structure in which individuals are presented as simultaneously varying in both trustworthiness and competence (Experiment 3). Crucially, in the final two experiments (Experiments 4 and 5) we show that, once learned, these first impressions occur following very brief exposure (100 ms). These results demonstrate that first impressions can be rapidly learned and, once learned, take on features previously thought to hold only for innate first impressions (rapid availability). Taken together, these results highlight the plausibility of learning accounts of first impressions.

Young children learn first impressions of faces through social referencing.

Previous research has demonstrated that the tendency to form first impressions from facial appearance emerges early in development. We examined whether social referencing is one route through which these consistent first impressions are acquired. In Study 1, we show that 5- to 7-year-old children are more likely to choose a target face previously associated with positive non-verbal signals as more trustworthy than a face previously associated with negative non-verbal signals. In Study 2, we show that children generalise this learning to novel faces who resemble those who have previously been the recipients of positive non-verbal behaviour. Taken together, these data show one means through which individuals within a community could acquire consistent, and potentially inaccurate, first impressions of others faces. In doing so, they highlight a route through which cultural transmission of first impressions can occur.

Profiling COVID-19 Genetic Research: A Data-Driven Study Utilizing Intelligent Bibliometrics.

The COVID-19 pandemic constitutes an ongoing worldwide threat to human society and has caused massive impacts on global public health, the economy and the political landscape. The key to gaining control of the disease lies in understanding the genetics of SARS-CoV-2 and the disease spectrum that follows infection. This study leverages traditional and intelligent bibliometric methods to conduct a multi-dimensional analysis on 5,632 COVID-19 genetic research papers, revealing that 1) the key players include research institutions from the United States, China, Britain and Canada; 2) research topics predominantly focus on virus infection mechanisms, virus testing, gene expression related to the immune reactions and patient clinical manifestation; 3) studies originated from the comparison of SARS-CoV-2 to previous human coronaviruses, following which research directions diverge into the analysis of virus molecular structure and genetics, the human immune response, vaccine development and gene expression related to immune responses; and 4) genes that are frequently highlighted include ACE2, IL6, TMPRSS2, and TNF. Emerging genes to the COVID-19 consist of FURIN, CXCL10, OAS1, OAS2, OAS3, and ISG15. This study demonstrates that our suite of novel bibliometric tools could help biomedical researchers follow this rapidly growing field and provide substantial evidence for policymakers' decision-making on science policy and public health administration.

Exploring patterns of ongoing thought under naturalistic and conventional task-based conditions.

Previous research suggests that patterns of ongoing thought are heterogeneous, varying across situations and individuals. The current study investigated the influence of multiple tasks and affective style on ongoing patterns of thought. We used 9 different tasks and measured ongoing thought using multidimensional experience sampling. A Principal Component Analysis of the experience sampling data revealed four patterns of ongoing thought: episodic social cognition, unpleasant intrusive, concentration and self focus. Linear Mixed Modelling was used to conduct a series of exploratory analyses aimed at examining contextual distributions of these thought patterns. We found that different task contexts reliably evoke different thought patterns. Moreover, intrusive and negative thought pattern expression were influenced by individual affective style (depression level). The data establish the influence of task context and intrinsic features on ongoing thought, highlighting the importance of documenting how thought patterns emerge in cognitive tasks with different requirements.

Searching for people: Non-facing distractor pairs hinder the visual search of social scenes more than facing distractor pairs.

There is growing interest in the visual and attentional processes recruited when human observers view social scenes containing multiple people. Findings from visual search paradigms have helped shape this emerging literature. Previous research has established that, when hidden amongst pairs of individuals facing in the same direction (leftwards or rightwards), pairs of individuals arranged front-to-front are found faster than pairs of individuals arranged back-to-back. Here, we describe a second, closely-related effect with important theoretical implications. When searching for a pair of individuals facing in the same direction (leftwards or rightwards), target dyads are found faster when hidden amongst distractor pairs arranged front-to-front, than when hidden amongst distractor pairs arranged back-to-back. This distractor arrangement effect was also obtained with target and distractor pairs constructed from arrows and types of common objects that cue visuospatial attention. These findings argue against the view that pairs of people arranged front-to-front capture exogenous attention due to a domain-specific orienting mechanism. Rather, it appears that salient direction cues (e.g., gaze direction, body orientation, arrows) hamper systematic search and impede efficient interpretation, when distractor pairs are arranged back-to-back.

No convincing evidence outgroups are denied uniquely human characteristics: Distinguishing intergroup preference from trait-based dehumanization.

According to the dual model, outgroup members can be dehumanized by being thought to possess uniquely and characteristically human traits to a lesser extent than ingroup members. However, previous research on this topic has tended to investigate the attribution of human traits that are socially desirable in nature such as warmth, civility and rationality. As a result, it has not yet been possible to determine whether this form of dehumanization is distinct from intergroup preference and stereotyping. We first establish that participants associate undesirable (e.g., corrupt, jealous) as well as desirable (e.g., open-minded, generous) traits with humans. We then go on to show that participants tend to attribute desirable human traits more strongly to ingroup members but undesirable human traits more strongly to outgroup members. This pattern holds across three different intergroup contexts for which dehumanization effects have previously been reported: political opponents, immigrants and criminals. Taken together, these studies cast doubt on the claim that a trait-based account of representing others as 'less human' holds value in the study of intergroup bias.

Predictive person models elicit motor biases: The face-inhibition effect revisited.

Using an established paradigm, we tested whether people derive motoric predictions about an actor's forthcoming actions from prior knowledge about them and the context in which they are seen. In two experiments, participants identified famous tennis and soccer players using either hand or foot responses. Athletes were shown either carrying out or not carrying out their associated actions (swinging, kicking), either in the context where these actions are typically seen (tennis court, soccer Pitch) or outside these contexts (beach, awards ceremony). Replicating prior work, identifying non-acting athletes revealed the negative compatibility effects: viewing tennis players led to faster responses with a foot than a hand, and vice versa for viewing soccer players. Consistent with the idea that negative compatibility effects result from the absence of a predicted action, these effects were eliminated (or reversed) when the athletes were seen carrying out actions typically associated with them. Strikingly, however, these motoric biases were not limited to In-Context trials but were, if anything, more robust in the Out-of-Context trials. This pattern held even when attention was drawn specifically to the context (Experiment 2). These results confirm that people hold motoric knowledge about the actions that others typically carry out and that these actions are part of perceptual representations that are accessed when those others are re-encountered, possibly in order to resolve uncertainty in person perception.

Culturally learned first impressions occur rapidly and automatically and emerge early in development.

Previous research indicates that first impressions from faces are the products of automatic and rapid processing and emerge early in development. These features have been taken as evidence that first impressions have a phylogenetic origin. We examine whether first impressions acquired through learning can also possess these features. First, we confirm that adults rate a person as more intelligent when they are wearing glasses (Study 1). Next, we show this inference persists when participants are instructed to ignore the glasses (Study 2) and when viewing time is restricted to 100 ms (Study 3). Finally, we show that 6-year-old, but not 4-year-old, children perceive individuals wearing glasses to be more intelligent, indicating that the effect is seen relatively early in development (Study 4). These data indicate that automaticity, rapid access and early emergence are not evidence that first impressions have an innate origin. Rather, these features are equally compatible with a learning model.

Three minutes to change preferences: perceptual fluency and response inhibition.

Perceptual fluency and response inhibition are well-established techniques to unobtrusively manipulate preference: objects are devalued following association with disfluency or inhibition. These approaches to preference change are extensively studied individually, but there is less research examining the impact of combining the two techniques in a single intervention. In short (3 min) game-like tasks, we examine the preference and memory effects of perceptual fluency and inhibition individually, and then the cumulative effects of combining the two techniques. The first experiment confirmed that perceptual fluency and inhibition techniques influence immediate preference judgements but, somewhat surprisingly, combining these techniques did not lead to greater effects than either technique alone. The second experiment replicated the first but with changes to much more closely imitate a real-world application: measuring preference after 20 min of unrelated intervening tasks, modifying the retrieval context via room change, and generalization from computer images of objects to real-world versions of those objects. Here, the individual effects of perceptual fluency and inhibition were no longer detected, whereas combining these techniques resulted in preference change. These results demonstrate the potential of short video games as a means of influencing behaviour, such as food choices to improve health and well-being.

Investigating the formation and consolidation of incidentally learned trust.

People make inferences about the trustworthiness of others based on their observed gaze behavior. Faces that consistently look toward a target location are rated as more trustworthy than those that look away from the target. Representations of trust are important for future interactions; yet little is known about how they are consolidated in long-term memory. Sleep facilitates memory consolidation for incidentally learned information and may therefore support the retention of trust representations. We investigated the consolidation of trust inferences across periods of sleep or wakefulness. In addition, we employed a memory cueing procedure (targeted memory reactivation [TMR]) in a bid to strengthen certain trust memories over others. We observed no difference in the retention of trust inferences following delays of sleep or wakefulness, and there was no effect of TMR in either condition. Interestingly, trust inferences remained stable 1 week after learning, irrespective of the initial postlearning delay. A second experiment showed that this implicit learning occurs despite participants' being unable to explicitly recall the gaze behavior of specific faces immediately after encoding. Together, these results suggest that gist-like, social inferences are formed at the time of learning without retaining the original episodic memory and thus do not benefit from offline consolidation through replay. We discuss our findings in the context of a novel framework whereby trust judgments reflect an efficient, powerful, and adaptable storage device for social information. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Competing for affection: Perceptual fluency and ambiguity solution.

Human perceptual processes are highly efficient and rapidly extract information to enable fast and accurate responses. The fluency of these processes is reinforcing, meaning that easy-to-perceive objects are liked more as a result of misattribution of the reinforcement affect to the object identity. However, some critical processes are disfluent, yet their completion can be reinforcing leading to object preference through a different route. One such example is identification of objects from camouflage. In a series of 5 experiments, we manipulated object contrast and camouflage to explore the relationship between object preference to perceptual fluency and ambiguity solution. We found that perceptual fluency dominated the process of preference assessment when objects are assessed for "liking". That is, easier-to-perceive objects (high-contrast and noncamouflaged) were preferred over harder-to-perceive objects (low-contrast and camouflaged). However, when objects are assessed for "interest", the disfluent yet reinforcing ambiguity solution process overrode the effect of perceptual fluency, resulting in preference for the harder-to-perceive camouflaged objects over the easier-to-perceive noncamouflaged objects. The results have implications for preference and choice in a wide range of contexts by demonstrating the competition between perceptual fluency and ambiguity solution on preference, and by highlighting the critical factor of the form of preference decision. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Bound together: Social binding leads to faster processing, spatial distortion, and enhanced memory of interacting partners.

The binding of features into perceptual wholes is a well-established phenomenon, which has previously only been studied in the context of early vision and low-level features, such as color or proximity. We hypothesized that a similar binding process, based on higher level information, could bind people into interacting groups, facilitating faster processing and enhanced memory of social situations. To investigate this possibility we used 3 experimental approaches to explore grouping effects in displays involving interacting people. First, using a visual search task we demonstrate more rapid processing for interacting (vs. noninteracting) pairs in an odd-quadrant paradigm (Experiments 1a and 1b). Second, using a spatial judgment task, we show that interacting individuals are remembered as physically closer than are noninteracting individuals (Experiments 2a and 2b). Finally, we show that memory retention of group-relevant and irrelevant features are enhanced when recalling interacting partners in a surprise memory task (Experiments 3a and 3b). Each of these results is consistent with the social binding hypothesis, and alternative explanations based on low level perceptual features and attentional effects are ruled out. We conclude that automatic midlevel grouping processes bind individuals into groups on the basis of their perceived interaction. Such social binding could provide the basis for more sophisticated social processing. Identifying the automatic encoding of social interactions in visual search, distortions of spatial working memory, and facilitated retrieval of object properties from longer-term memory, opens new approaches to studying social cognition with possible practical applications. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Motion fluency and object preference: Robust perceptual but fragile memory effects.

In 8 experiments, we investigated motion fluency effects on object preference. In each experiment, distinct objects were repeatedly seen moving either fluently (with a smooth and predictable motion) or disfluently (with sudden and unpredictable direction changes) in a task where participants were required to respond to occasional brief changes in object appearance. Results show that (a) fluent objects are preferred over disfluent objects when ratings follow a moving presentation, (b) there is some evidence that object-motion associations can be learned with repeated exposures, (c) sufficiently potent motions can yield preference for fluent objects after a single viewing, and (d) learned associations do not transfer to situations where ratings follow a stationary presentation, even after deep levels of encoding. Episodic accounts of memory retrieval predict that emotional states experienced at encoding might be retrieved along with the stimulus properties. Though object-emotion associations were repeatedly paired, there was no evidence for emotional reinstatement when objects were seen stationary. This indicates that the retrieval process is a critical limiting factor when considering visuomotor fluency effects on behavior. Such findings have real-world consequences. For example, a product advertised with high perceptual fluency might be preferred at the time, but this preference might not transfer to seeing the object on a shelf. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Young children perceive less humanness in outgroup faces.

We investigated when young children first dehumanize outgroups. Across two studies, 5- and 6-year-olds were asked to rate how human they thought a set of ambiguous doll-human face morphs were. We manipulated whether these faces belonged to their gender in- or gender outgroup (Study 1) and to a geographically based in- or outgroup (Study 2). In both studies, the tendency to perceive outgroup faces as less human relative to ingroup faces increased with age. Explicit ingroup preference, in contrast, was present even in the youngest children and remained stable across age. These results demonstrate that children dehumanize outgroup members from relatively early in development and suggest that the tendency to do so may be partially distinguishable from intergroup preference. This research has important implications for our understanding of children's perception of humanness and the origins of intergroup bias.

Preference for illusory contours: Beyond object symmetry, familiarity, and nameability.

It has previously been reported that individuals prefer figures from which they can extract shapes via illusory contours (Kanisza figures) over figures in which this is not possible. However, based on the past research in this area, it is not possible to distinguish the influence of illusory contour perception from other factors such as the symmetry, familiarity, prototypicality, and nameability of the perceived shape. Here, we investigate the influence of illusory contours in the absence of these confounding variables by measuring participants' aesthetic/liking ratings for symmetric Kanisza figures and for unfamiliar and asymmetric Kanisza figures. Results show that illusory contours do indeed influence preference above and beyond any effects of these other factors. (PsycINFO Database Record