Correction to: 'Raising the value of research studies in psychological science by increasing the credibility of research reports: The Transparent Psi Project' (2023) by Kekecs et al.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1098/rsos.191375.][This corrects the article DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2022.2500.].

Backward illusory line motion: Visual motion perception can be influenced by retrospective stimulation.

When a visual cue appears beside a horizontal line segment before the line appears, the illusory motion is perceived as a line extending from the side closest to the side farthest from the cue. This is known as illusory line motion (ILM). In Experiment 1, we presented the cue after the line onset and found that the line seemed to extend toward the side of the cue (backward ILM). In Experiment 2, we confirmed the robustness and replicability of the backward ILM. In Experiments 3 to 5, we investigated the role of endogenous and exogenous attention in the generation of backward ILM and found effects of attention, but not large enough to explain the backward ILM in Experiments 1 and 2. The current findings suggest that the direction of ILM depended on the temporal relation of whether the cue precedes or follows the stimulus appearance, and that attentional shift played a role in the perception of backward ILM.

Raising the value of research studies in psychological science by increasing the credibility of research reports: the transparent Psi project.

The low reproducibility rate in social sciences has produced hesitation among researchers in accepting published findings at their face value. Despite the advent of initiatives to increase transparency in research reporting, the field is still lacking tools to verify the credibility of research reports. In the present paper, we describe methodologies that let researchers craft highly credible research and allow their peers to verify this credibility. We demonstrate the application of these methods in a multi-laboratory replication of Bem's Experiment 1 (Bem 2011 J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 100, 407-425. (doi:10.1037/a0021524)) on extrasensory perception (ESP), which was co-designed by a consensus panel including both proponents and opponents of Bem's original hypothesis. In the study we applied direct data deposition in combination with born-open data and real-time research reports to extend transparency to protocol delivery and data collection. We also used piloting, checklists, laboratory logs and video-documented trial sessions to ascertain as-intended protocol delivery, and external research auditors to monitor research integrity. We found 49.89% successful guesses, while Bem reported 53.07% success rate, with the chance level being 50%. Thus, Bem's findings were not replicated in our study. In the paper, we discuss the implementation, feasibility and perceived usefulness of the credibility-enhancing methodologies used throughout the project.

Language-Based Modulation of the Stream/Bounce Judgment.

When two identical objects on a screen move toward each other, coincide at the center of the screen, and then continue to move along their original trajectories to the opposite starting points, observers perceive these visual stimuli as showing one of the two possible scenarios: streaming through or bouncing off each other (stream/bounce perception). Previous research has shown that when a high-arousal face is presented along with the two moving objects, the bouncing percept was predominant, as compared with when a middle- or low-arousal face is presented. In this study, however, such a modulatory effect of the emotional face was eliminated when participants did not judge stream or bounce and the terms "bouncing/streaming" were not used in the experiments. These results suggest that the modulatory effect of emotional stimuli on the stream/bounce judgment cannot be explained solely by the emotional processing per se but, rather, can be modulated by language-based processing.

The sound-free SMARC effect: The spatial-musical association of response codes using only sound imagery.

This study provides clear evidence that the human cognitive system automatically codes sound pitch spatially. The spatial-musical association of response codes (SMARC) effect, in which a high-pitched (low-pitched) tone facilitates an upper (lower) response, is considered to reflect the spatial coding of sound pitch. However, previous studies have not excluded the directional effects of sound localization. Because a high-pitched (low-pitched) tone is automatically misperceived as originating from a spatially high (low) location, the location of a perceived sound source might artificially elicit the SMARC effect. This study challenged this unresolved issue. Participants were trained to associate visual stimuli (novel contoured shapes) with sound pitches (high-pitched or low-pitched pure tones). After training, participants completed a discrimination task in which the vertically aligned keys were associated with the visual stimuli in the absence of sound. Even without sound, the SMARC effect was observed in response to the trained visual stimuli (Experiment 1). However, this sound-free SMARC effect was eliminated when training was omitted (Experiment 2). Therefore, the SMARC effect was observed based solely on the activation of sound imagery that was spatial.

Spatial congruency bias in identifying objects is triggered by retinal position congruence: Examination using the Ternus-Pikler illusion.

When two different objects are sequentially presented at the same location, the viewer tends to misjudge them as identical (spatial congruency bias). The present study examined whether the spatial congruency bias would involve not only retinotopic but also non-retinotopic processing using the Ternus-Pikler illusion. In the experiments, two objects (central and peripheral) appeared in an initial frame. The target object was presented in the central area of the display, while the peripheral object was either on the left or right side of the target object. In the second frame, the target object was again presented in the central area, and the peripheral object was on the opposite side. Two kinds of inter-stimulus intervals were used. In the no-blank condition, the target object was perceived as stationary, and the peripheral object appeared to move to the opposite side. However, in the long-blank condition, the two objects were perceived to move together. Participants judged whether the target objects in the two frames were identical. As a result, the spatial congruency bias occurred irrespective of the ISI conditions. Our findings suggest that the spatial congruency bias is mainly based on retinotopic processing.

Task Difficulty Modulates the Disrupting Effects of Oral Respiration on Visual Search Performance.

Previous research has suggested that oral respiration may disturb cognitive function and health. The present study investigated whether oral respiration negatively affects visual attentional processing during a visual search task. Participants performed a visual search task in the following three breathing conditions: wearing a nasal plug, wearing surgical tape over their mouths, or no modification (oral vs. nasal vs. control). The participants searched for a target stimulus within different set sizes of distractors in three search conditions (orientation vs colour vs conjunction). Experiment 1 did not show any effect due to respiration. Experiment 2 rigorously manipulated the search efficiency and found that participants required more time to find a poorly discriminable target during oral breathing compared with other breathing styles, which was due to the heightened intercept under this condition. Because the intercept is an index of pre-search sensory processing or motor response in visual search, such cognitive processing was likely disrupted by oral respiration. These results suggest that oral respiration and attentional processing during inefficient visual search share a common cognitive resource.

Implicit Attitudes About Agricultural and Aquatic Products From Fukushima Depend on Where Consumers Reside.

Japanese consumers are still hesitant to purchase products from Fukushima, although 7 years have passed since the Fukushima nuclear disaster, and these products are officially considered safe. In this study, we examined whether Japanese consumers have negative implicit attitudes toward agricultural and aquatic products from the Fukushima region and whether these attitudes are independent of their explicit attitudes. Japanese students completed an implicit association test and a questionnaire to assess their implicit and explicit attitudes toward products from Fukushima relative to another region. The results of two experiments reliably demonstrated that the public has negative implicit attitudes toward Fukushima products, whereas their explicit attitudes are consistently positive. These observations predominantly held for participants living close to Fukushima (Tokyo) as opposed to participants living far away (Hiroshima): Experiment 1 (n = 40). Furthermore, individual differences in aversion to germs contributed to the implicit attitudes; the implicit negative attitudes were attenuated among the participants with a relatively low aversion to germs: Experiment 2 (n = 60). These results suggest that the implicit attitudes associated with the behavioral immune system, which is conceptualized as a suite of psychological mechanisms designed to proactively resist pathogenic threats, may underlie the hesitation to purchase products from Fukushima.

Spatial-musical association of response codes without sound.

Humans tasked with pressing a key on a computer keyboard in response to a pitch can respond more quickly to a high-pitched sound by pressing a key higher on the keyboard and to a low-pitched sound by pressing a lower key, compared with the opposite configuration. This so-called spatial-musical association of response codes (SMARC) has been considered to reflect the spatial coding of sound pitch rather than to be an artefact of the verbal labels denoting spatial positions for localising sounds. In this study, we completely excluded the latter possibility, that is, the directional effects of automatic sound localisation on the SMARC effect. We did this by examining whether the SMARC effect occurs without sound; that is, we investigated whether the effect would be elicited by written pitch names alone. We found that when musically trained participants judged pitch height labelled by visually presented word stimuli, the SMARC effect still occurred. This also happened among musically naïve participants when the height of the pitch was explicitly comparable with that of a referential pitch. We also found that musically trained participants exhibited the SMARC effect in response to pitch names even when the indicated pitch height was irrelevant to the task they were asked to perform. These results suggest that the SMARC effect can occur at the semantic level in the absence of sound, clearly excluding the directional effects of automatic sound localisation.

Reading habits contribute to the effects of display direction on product choice.

It has been shown that people process assortment variety more efficiently in horizontal displays than in vertical displays, owing to human visual characteristics that favor the horizontal direction. Consequently, the number and variety of products chosen tends to increase when they are arranged horizontally. I show that this horizontal display advantage can be modulated by culture, especially writing and reading habits. When Japanese participants, who write and read text vertically as well as horizontally, chose products in horizontal and vertical displays, horizontal displays did not consistently increase the variety of products chosen. In other words, the horizontal display advantage was eliminated (Experiments 1A and 1B). However, when Japanese readers initially read horizontally, it led to a robust advantage for the horizontal display. Similarly, initial vertical reading resulted in a vertical display advantage (Experiments 2 and 3). These results suggest that horizontal displays are not always advantageous, and that optimal display direction for product choice is affected by reading habits.

Attentional capture by spatiotemporally task-irrelevant faces: supportive evidence for Sato and Kawahara (2015).

Visual attention is captured exogenously by stimuli that are congruent with the viewer's current behavioral goals or intentions. However, Sato and Kawahara (Psychol Res 79:523-533, 2015) recently suggested that distractor faces capture attention in an entirely stimulus-driven manner without top-down control of attention, which then attenuates subsequent target identification, using a rapid serial visual presentation paradigm. We tested this suggestion, developing a hypothesis that the faces used in the previous study served as task-relevant temporal cues that predicted target timing. To evaluate this hypothesis, we eliminated the task relevance by widely varying distractor-target temporal lags (Experiment 1) and by counterbalancing the distractor-target temporal order (Experiment 2). In both experiments, the deterioration in performance resulting from attentional capture by the peripheral distractor face preceding the target remained robust; this effect was, however, eliminated when the face was inverted (Experiment 3). The present results provide clear evidence that upright faces capture attention exogenously even when they are spatiotemporally task irrelevant.

The Gaze-Cueing Effect in the United States and Japan: Influence of Cultural Differences in Cognitive Strategies on Control of Attention.

The direction of gaze automatically and exogenously guides visual spatial attention, a phenomenon termed as the gaze-cueing effect. Although this effect arises when the duration of stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) between a non-predictive gaze cue and the target is relatively long, no empirical research has examined the factors underlying this extended cueing effect. Two experiments compared the gaze-cueing effect at longer SOAs (700 ms) in Japanese and American participants. Cross-cultural studies on cognition suggest that Westerners tend to use a context-independent analytical strategy to process visual environments, whereas Asians use a context-dependent holistic approach. We hypothesized that Japanese participants would not demonstrate the gaze-cueing effect at longer SOAs because they are more sensitive to contextual information, such as the knowledge that the direction of a gaze is not predictive. Furthermore, we hypothesized that American participants would demonstrate the gaze-cueing effect at the long SOAs because they tend to follow gaze direction whether it is predictive or not. In Experiment 1, American participants demonstrated the gaze-cueing effect at the long SOA, indicating that their attention was driven by the central non-predictive gaze direction regardless of the SOAs. In Experiment 2, Japanese participants demonstrated no gaze-cueing effect at the long SOA, suggesting that the Japanese participants exercised voluntary control of their attention, which inhibited the gaze-cueing effect with the long SOA. Our findings suggest that the control of visual spatial attention elicited by social stimuli systematically differs between American and Japanese individuals.

Early Visual Perception Potentiated by Object Affordances: Evidence From a Temporal Order Judgment Task.

Perceived objects automatically potentiate afforded action. Object affordances also facilitate perception of such objects, and this occurrence is known as the affordance effect. This study examined whether object affordances facilitate the initial visual processing stage, or perceptual entry processes, using the temporal order judgment task. The onset of the graspable (right-handled) coffee cup was perceived earlier than that of the less graspable (left-handled) cup for right-handed participants. The affordance effect was eliminated when the coffee cups were inverted, which presumably conveyed less affordance information. These results suggest that objects preattentively potentiate the perceptual entry processes in response to their affordances.

[Expansive personal space: Distance between personal belongings reflects the interpersonal distance of their owners].

People feel uncomfortable when someone else comes spatially near and thus encroaches on their personal space (PS). Although many social psychologists have explored characteristics of PS of/between/among individuals so far, there is currently no empirical research on whether the PS of individuals expands into space surrounding their belongings (or objects) that are away from their body. This study measured the spatial distance between bags which participants and confederates left behind, and thus demonstrated that the distance between bags was modulated in response to the interpersonal relationship of their owners. The present study suggests new evidence for expansive PS, which is the concept that an individual's PS expands into space surrounding his/her belongings.

[The price-based certainty of purchase influences consumer behavior for discount].

Tversky & Kahneman (1981) reported that most participants decided to drive when they could save money on a low-price good as compared to when they could save on a high-price good, even though the discount prices were same. Although this irrational decision making has been interpreted as a rate-dependent estimation of value (prospect theory), this study newly proposes that it can be explained by the certainty of purchase based on the price of goods. Experiment 1 replicated the previously reported difference in decision making, and additionally demonstrated that participants' certainty of purchase was lower for a high- than a low-price good. When it was emphasized that participants' intention to purchase high- and low-price goods were equally sure, decision making did not significantly differ (Experiment 2). Furthermore, decision making differed based only on the certainty of purchase even,when prices of goods were-same (Experiment 3). Consumers' decision making may be rather rational, depending straightforwardly on the certainty of purchase that is susceptible to price.

Object Affordances Potentiate Responses but Do Not Guide Attentional Prioritization.

Handled objects automatically activate afforded responses. The current experiment examined whether objects that afford a response are also prioritized for attentional processing in visual search. Targets were pictures of coffee cups with handles oriented either to the right or the left. Subjects searched for a target, a right-handled vs. left-handled coffee cup, among a varying number of distractor cups oriented in the opposite direction. Responses were faster when the direction of target handle and the key press were spatially matched than mismatched (stimulus-response compatibility (SRC) effect), but object affordance did not moderate slopes of the search functions, indicating the absence of attentional prioritization effect. These findings imply that handled objects prime afforded responses without influencing attentional prioritization.

The social-devaluation effect: interactive evaluation deteriorates likeability of objects based on daily relationship.

Although previous research has explored the effects of discussion on optimal and collective group outcomes, it is unclear how an individual's preference for an object is modulated by discussion with others. This study investigated the determinants of likeability ratings under two conditions. In Experiment 1, pairs of participants consisting of friends evaluated various photographic images. Under the interactive condition, the participants discussed their impressions of each image for 30 s and then independently rated how much they liked it. Under the non-interactive condition, the participants did not interact with each other but instead only thought about their impressions of each image for 30 s before rating its likeability. The results indicate that the exchange of impressions between the participants affected the individual likeability ratings of objects. More specifically, the interactive participants generally rated the images as less likeable than did the non-interactive participants (social-devaluation effect). However, in Experiment 2, the effect was eliminated when the pairs consisted of strangers. These findings suggest that shared information modulates individual preferences but only when a daily relationship exists within a group.

[Facilitation and inhibition of insightful problem solving based on social comparison].

Intuitively, insight emerges unexpectedly. However, some previous views proposed that insight emerges with a high probability after people recognize their failure in solving a problem. In order to empirically investigate this failure-insight relationship, this study manipulated when participants recognized failure by using social comparison. It presumed that participants who had not yet solved the problem but knew others had already solved it would recognize that their currently adopted strategy was a failure; the timing of this was manipulated in the experiment. As expected, participants who were given a cover story regarding others' fast performance for the T-puzzle completed the same puzzle more successfully, as compared to those who were given a story of others' slow performance. The results suggest that the occurrence of insight was influenced by when participants recognized their failure. Providing social reality information (i.e., others' good/poor performance) might be a method to facilitate or inhibit insightful problem solving.

Brief and rare mental "breaks" keep you focused: deactivation and reactivation of task goals preempt vigilance decrements.

We newly propose that the vigilance decrement occurs because the cognitive control system fails to maintain active the goal of the vigilance task over prolonged periods of time (goal habituation). Further, we hypothesized that momentarily deactivating this goal (via a switch in tasks) would prevent the activation level of the vigilance goal from ever habituating. We asked observers to perform a visual vigilance task while maintaining digits in-memory. When observers retrieved the digits at the end of the vigilance task, their vigilance performance steeply declined over time. However, when observers were asked to sporadically recollect the digits during the vigilance task, the vigilance decrement was averted. Our results present a direct challenge to the pervasive view that vigilance decrements are due to a depletion of attentional resources and provide a tractable mechanism to prevent this insidious phenomenon in everyday life.

Erroneous selection of a non-target item improves subsequent target identification in rapid serial visual presentations.

The second of two targets (T2) embedded in a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVSVP) is often missed even though the first (T1) is correctly reported (attentional blink). The rate of correct T2 identification is quite high, however, when T2 comes immediately after T1 (lag-1 sparing). This study investigated whether and how non-target items induce lag-1 sparing. One T1 and two T2s comprising letters were inserted in distractors comprising symbols in each of two synchronised RSVSVPs. A digit (dummy) was presented with T1 in another stream. Lag-1 sparing occurred even at the location where the dummy was present (Experiment 1). This distractor-induced sparing effect was also obtained even when a Japanese katakana character (Experiment 2) was used as the dummy. The sparing effect was, however, severely weakened when symbols (Experiment 3) and Hebrew letters (Experiment 4) served as the dummy. Our findings suggest a tentative hypothesis that attentional set for item nameability is meta-categorically created and adopted to the dummy only when the dummy is nameable.