Cross-cultural comparison of beauty judgments in visual art using machine learning analysis of art attribute predictors among Japanese and German speakers.

In empirical art research, understanding how viewers judge visual artworks as beautiful is often explored through the study of attributes-specific inherent characteristics or artwork features such as color, complexity, and emotional expressiveness. These attributes form the basis for subjective evaluations, including the judgment of beauty. Building on this conceptual framework, our study examines the beauty judgments of 54 Western artworks made by native Japanese and German speakers, utilizing an extreme randomized trees model-a data-driven machine learning approach-to investigate cross-cultural differences in evaluation behavior. Our analysis of 17 attributes revealed that visual harmony, color variety, valence, and complexity significantly influenced beauty judgments across both cultural cohorts. Notably, preferences for complexity diverged significantly: while the native Japanese speakers found simpler artworks as more beautiful, the native German speakers evaluated more complex artworks as more beautiful. Further cultural distinctions were observed: for the native German speakers, emotional expressiveness was a significant factor, whereas for the native Japanese speakers, attributes such as brushwork, color world, and saturation were more impactful. Our findings illuminate the nuanced role that cultural context plays in shaping aesthetic judgments and demonstrate the utility of machine learning in unravelling these complex dynamics. This research not only advances our understanding of how beauty is judged in visual art-considering self-evaluated attributes-across different cultures but also underscores the potential of machine learning to enhance our comprehension of the aesthetic evaluation of visual artworks.

Different judgment frameworks for moral compliance and moral violation.

In recent decades, the field of moral psychology has focused on moral judgments based on some moral foundations/categories (e.g., harm/care, fairness/reciprocity, ingroup/loyalty, authority/respect, and purity/sanctity). When discussing the moral categories, however, whether a person judges moral compliance or moral violation has been rarely considered. We examined the extent to which moral judgments are influenced by each other across moral categories and explored whether the framework of judgments for moral violation and compliance would be different. For this purpose, we developed the episodes set for moral and affective behaviors. For each episode, participants evaluated valence, arousal, morality, and the degree of relevance to each of the Haidt's 5 moral foundations. The cluster analysis showed that the moral compliance episodes were divided into three clusters, whereas the moral violation episodes were divided into two clusters. Also, the additional experiment indicated that the clusters might not be stable in time. These findings suggest that people have different framework of judgments for moral compliance and moral violation.

Cultural transmission and religious belief: An extended replication of Gervais and Najle (2015) using data from the International Social Survey Programme.

Beliefs in supernatural agents or religious beliefs are pervasive, yet there are individual differences in such beliefs. Although various factors have been proposed as relevant, recent research has increasingly emphasized the importance of cultural learning, showing that enthusiastic religious behavior (credibility enhancing displays; CREDs) from parents predicts increased religious beliefs among their children. In addition to this kin-biased learning, Gervais and Najle (2015) analyzed data from the World Values Survey to demonstrate that the number of adults who show religious CREDs is also an important predictor of people's beliefs, indicating that individuals develop their religious beliefs through conformist learning. This pre-registration study aimed to replicate and extend these findings by analyzing data from the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP), which is another large social survey. We examined the generalizability of the results by analyzing multigenerational samples. Multilevel regression and signal detection analyses revealed that the presence of both kin-biased and conformist learning cues was significantly associated with respondents' religious beliefs. Moreover, they suggested tension between the two cultural learning cues, thereby suggesting that the effect of kin-biased learning on religious beliefs becomes stronger (weaker) when the cue for conformist learning is unclear (clear). These results support the idea that these two types of cultural learning are crucial to the development of religious beliefs.

Comparing experience- and description-based economic preferences across 11 countries.

Recent evidence indicates that reward value encoding in humans is highly context dependent, leading to suboptimal decisions in some cases, but whether this computational constraint on valuation is a shared feature of human cognition remains unknown. Here we studied the behaviour of n = 561 individuals from 11 countries of markedly different socioeconomic and cultural makeup. Our findings show that context sensitivity was present in all 11 countries. Suboptimal decisions generated by context manipulation were not explained by risk aversion, as estimated through a separate description-based choice task (that is, lotteries) consisting of matched decision offers. Conversely, risk aversion significantly differed across countries. Overall, our findings suggest that context-dependent reward value encoding is a feature of human cognition that remains consistently present across different countries, as opposed to description-based decision-making, which is more permeable to cultural factors.

The role of perceptual processing in the oddball effect revealed by the Thatcher illusion.

When a novel stimulus (oddball) appears after repeated presentation of an identical stimulus, the oddball is perceived to last longer than the repeated stimuli, a phenomenon known as the oddball effect. We investigated whether the perceptual or physical differences between the repeated and oddball stimuli are more important for the oddball effect. To manipulate the perceptual difference while keeping their physical visual features constant, we used the Thatcher illusion, in which an inversion of a face hinders recognition of distortion in its facial features. We found that the Thatcherized face presented after repeated presentation of an intact face induced a stronger oddball effect when the faces were upright than when they were inverted (Experiment 1). However, the difference in the oddball effect between face orientations was not observed when the intact face was presented as the oddball after repeated presentation of a Thatcherized face (Experiment 2). These results were replicated when participants performed both the intact-repeated and Thatcherized-repeated conditions in a single experiment (Experiment 3). Two control experiments confirmed that the repeated presentation of the preceding stimuli is necessary for the difference in duration distortion to occur (Experiments 4 and 5). The results suggest the considerable role of perceptual processing in the oddball effect. We discuss the discrepancy in the results between the intact-repeated and Thatcherized-repeated conditions in terms of predictive coding.

Increase in speed eliminates duration expansion of a novel motion stimulus.

A novel motion stimulus is perceived to last longer than the subsequent motion stimulus moving in the opposite direction. A previous study suggested that the discrepancy in the processing latency for different onset types, as measured by reaction time, may play a role in this duration expansion. The present study examined whether the speed of motion stimuli influences this duration expansion. Experiment 1 demonstrated that the duration expansion ceased to occur when the stimulus speed increased. Experiment 2 showed that the increase in the speed reduced the reaction time for various onset types. However, the size of the changes in the reaction time did not match the reduction in the magnitude of the duration expansion observed in Experiment 1. These results suggest that the increase in speed eliminates the duration expansion of the novel motion stimulus, but the difference in the processing latency alone may not be the sole mechanism.

Electrocardiographic activity depends on the relative position between intimate persons.

Interpersonal space (IPS) refers to the area surrounding the body in which we engage in social interactions while maintaining our comfort. Numerous previous studies have reported the psychological and physiological changes associated with the proximity of two people engaged in face-to-face interaction. Currently, there is limited knowledge about how the relative position between two socially intimate individuals affects their psychological and physiological states. This research measured the subjective discomfort and electrocardiographic responses of participants when standing static at various relative positions. The highest discomfort, lowest heart rate, and highest heart rate variability (HRV; parasympathetic activity index) were observed when the friend stood in the face-to-face position. Interestingly, heart rate also decreased when the friend stood on the right side, although HRV did not change. We interpreted the results as suggesting that the presence of a familiar person elicits the electrocardiographic responses associated with an increase in parasympathetic activity.

Face adaptation induces duration distortion of subsequent face stimuli in a face category-specific manner.

Studies have shown that duration perception depends on several visual processes. However, the stages of visual processes that contribute to duration perception remain unclear. This study examined the effects of categorical differences in face adaptation on perceived duration. In all the experiments, we compared the perceived durations of human, monkey, and cat faces (comparison stimuli) after adapting to a human face. Results revealed that the human comparison stimuli were perceived shorter than the monkey and cat comparison stimuli (categorical face adaptation on duration perception [CFAD]). The difference between the face categories disappeared when the adapting stimulus was rendered unrecognizable by phase scrambling, indicating that adaptation to low-level visual properties cannot fully account for the CFAD effect. Furthermore, CFAD was preserved but attenuated when the adapting stimulus was inverted or a 1,000-ms interval was inserted before the comparison stimuli, which implied that CFAD occurred as long as the adapting stimulus was perceived as a face and not simply based on conceptual category processes. These findings indicate that face adaptation affects perceived duration in a category-specific manner (the CFAD effect) and highlights the involvement of visual categorical processes in duration perception.

Color-taste correspondence tested by the Stroop task.

People consistently associate colors with tastes (e.g., pink-sweet, yellow-sour). However, little has been known on the strength of those color-taste correspondences. The current study examined the congruency effect of color-taste correspondence using two Stroop word categorization tasks. The visual stimuli consisted of food names associated with sweet and sour tastes, presented in different shades of pink and yellow font colors. Participants were instructed to categorize the taste (sweet or sour) of the words in the Stroop word-taste categorization task and to discriminate the font color (pink or yellow) of the words in the Stroop word-color discrimination task. Results showed that participants responded faster in congruent conditions (sweet-pink and sour-yellow) than incongruent conditions (sweet-yellow and sour-pink) in both tasks. Specifically, yellow font colors facilitated the categorization of sour taste words compared to pink font colors, whereas sweet taste words facilitated the discrimination of pink font colors compared to sour taste words. These results provide further evidence for the congruency effect of color-taste correspondence in facilitating the processing of taste-related words and colors. Furthermore, the congruency effect was shown to operate bidirectionally, influencing both the conceptual meaning of tastes and perceptual color perception. This study highlights the significant interference effect of color-taste correspondence on cognitive processing as assessed by the Stroop task.

Systematic bias in representation of reaction time distribution.

A correct perception of one's own abilities is essential for making appropriate decisions. A well-known bias in probability perception is that rare events are overestimated. Here, we examined whether such a bias also exists for action outcomes using a simple reaction task. In Experiment 1, after completing a set of 30 trials of the simple reaction task, participants were required to judge the probability that they would be able to respond before a given reference time when performing the task next. We assessed the difference between the actual reaction times and the probability judgement and found that the represented probability distribution was more widely distributed than the actual one, suggesting that low-probability events were overestimated and high-probability events were underestimated. Experiment 2 confirmed the presence of such a bias in the representation of both one's own and another's reaction times. In addition, Experiment 3 showed the presence of such a bias regardless of the difference between the representation of another's reaction times and the mere numerical representation. Furthermore, Experiment 4 found the presence of such a bias even when the information regarding actual reaction times was visually shown before the representation. The present results reveal the existence of a highly robust bias in the representation of motor performance, which reflects the ubiquitous bias in probability perception and is difficult to eliminate.

Fear in action: Fear conditioning and alleviation through body movements.

Fear memories enhance survival especially when the memories guide defensive movements to minimize harm. Accordingly, fear memories and body movements have tight relationships in animals: Fear memory acquisition results in adapting reactive defense movements, while training active defense movements reduces fear memory. However, evidence in humans is scarce because their movements are typically suppressed in experiments. Here, we tracked adult participants' body motions while they underwent ecologically valid fear conditioning in a 3D virtual space. First, with body motion tracking, we revealed that distinct spatiotemporal body movement patterns emerge through fear conditioning. Second, subsequent training to actively avoid threats with naturalistic defensive actions led to a long-term (24 h) reduction of physiological and embodied conditioned responses, while extinction or vicarious training only transiently reduced the responses. Together, our results highlight the role of body movements in human fear memory and its intervention.

Automatic imitation in children: Age-related change and comparison to adults.

Automatic imitation, in which one person's movement is affected by the observation of another person's movements, has been widely reported. However, it remains unclear how automatic imitation changes over a wide age range, particularly during childhood. In this study, we examined the differences in the tendency for automatic imitation between adults and children and the cross-sectional age-related changes in children aged 5-12 years, using a stimulus-response conflict paradigm. In this task, participants perform a choice-reactive finger movement corresponding to a given response stimulus while observing another participant's compatible or incompatible movement stimuli. The tendency for automatic imitation was assessed based on the reaction time, correct rate, and inverse efficiency score. The results showed that the degree of automatic imitation was weak until the children were 7 years old. Interestingly, our results show that the tendency for automatic imitation during childhood changed to an inverted U-shape, indicating nonlinear changes in automatic imitation during childhood. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Visual images of disgusting creatures facilitated attentional orienting and delayed attentional disengagement.

Numerous studies have suggested that threatening stimuli induce a spatial attention bias; however, only a few studies have investigated spatial attention biases for disgusting stimuli. Moreover, past studies generally reported that the spatial attention bias to disgusting images is not robustly in normal individuals. We hypothesized that this was due to the unfamiliar of the images, so we prepared the creature's images that were clearly categorized as disgusting and examined the effects of disgusting images on spatial attention bias. A disgusting or an emotionally neutral image was paired and presented with an (emotionally neutral) filler image. After a temporal interval, a target appeared at either the position where a disgusting or a neutral image was presented (valid condition) or where a filler image was presented (invalid condition). Participants pressed a key corresponding to the target's position as quickly and accurately as possible. We varied the position-response correspondence among three experiments. The results showed that the RTs in the invalid condition was longer for the disgusting images than for the neutral images when the position of a disgusting image was not naturally associated with the left-right hand position. We interpreted the results in that that disgusting images generally slowed down attentional disengagement process but the manual responses were inhibited for the position where a disgusting image appeared when the locations of keys and targets were congruent. The present results suggest that disgusting images affect not only attentional processes but also manual responses related to the selection and initiation of responses.

Autism Detection in Children using Common Spatial Patterns of MEG Signals.

Autism exhibits a wide range of developmental disabilities and is associated with aberrant anatomical and functional neural patterns. To detect autism in young children (4-7 years) in an automatic and non-invasive fashion, we have recorded magnetoencephalogram (MEG) signals from 30 autistic and 30 age-matched typically developing (TD) children. We have used a machine learning classification framework with common spatial pattern (CSP)-based logarithmic band power (LBP) features. When comparing the LBP feature to the conventional logarithmic variance (LV) spatial pattern, CSP + LBP (92.77%) has performed better than CSP + LV (90.66%) in the 1-100 Hz frequency range for distinguishing autistic children from TD children. In frequency band-wise analysis using our proposed method, the high gamma frequency band (50-100 Hz) has shown the highest classification accuracy (97.14%). Our findings reveal that the occipital lobe exhibits the most distinct spatial pattern in autistic children over the whole frequency range. This study shows that spatial brain activation patterns can be utilized as potential biomarkers of autism in young children. The improved performance signifies the clinical relevance of the work for autism detection using MEG signals.

Red biases sex categorization of human bodies.

Color is associated with gender information (e.g., red-female). However, little has been known on the effect of color on sex recognition of human bodies. This study aimed to investigate whether the color red could influence the categorization of human bodies by sex, and the effect of contextual information. Visual stimuli were created using body silhouettes varying along the waist-to-hip ratio from female to male shapes. These stimuli were presented in conjunction with red, green, and gray colors, which were used either as body color (Experiment 1) or background color (Experiment 2). Participants were instructed to categorize the sex of the body stimuli as either male or female by pressing labeled keys. The results showed that when red was used as a body color, it induced a bias toward feminine body perception, while when used as a background color, it induced a bias toward masculine body perception. Thus, the color red influenced the sex categorization of human bodies, which being modulated by contextual information. These findings provided novel insights into the effect of contextual color cues in sex recognition of human bodies.

Crossmodal correspondences between visual features and tastes in preschoolers: an exploratory study.

Introduction: Adults possess a natural inclination to associate sensory cues derived from distinct modalities, such as the pairing of sweet with pink. However, studies exploring crossmodal correspondences in children, particularly in the sensory pairing of visual features and tastes, are scant, leaving unanswered questions regarding the developmental trajectory of crossmodal correspondences. The present study investigates whether Japanese preschool children demonstrate specific biases in shape-color, shape-taste, and color-taste associations. Methods: In a series of in-person experiments, 92 children between 3 to 6 years of age completed matching tasks utilizing paper stimuli. Results: Children exhibit crossmodal correspondences in shape-color (circle-red and asymmetrical star-yellow), shape-taste (triangle-salty and circle-sweet), and color-taste (yellow-sour, black-bitter, and pink-sweet) associations. Moreover, children's choices are not influenced by their individual preferences. Discussion: The crossmodal correspondences observed in this study have been observed in previous research on adults from the same (Japanese) culture, although adults showed more crossmodal correspondences than the children in this study (e.g., pink-circle, triangle-sour, and green-bitter). Thus, while some crossmodal correspondences emerge during childhood, others may require additional time to develop, thereby highlighting the importance of understanding the cognitive mechanisms underlying crossmodal correspondences from an ontogenic perspective.

An automatic red-female association tested by the Stroop task.

Colors have been reported to be associated with genders (e.g., reddish color-females). Here, we investigated color-gender associations (red-female/green-male) among Japanese participants using two Stroop-word categorization tasks. Ten Japanese gendered words were chosen as visual stimuli. In Experiment 1 (N = 23), participants were instructed to indicate whether a target word presented in either red, green, or gray font color was a masculine or feminine word. Results showed a congruency effect of red-female association that red font color facilitated the categorization of feminine words and inhibited the categorization of masculine words compared to other colors. No significant effect of green-male association was observed. Experiment 2 (N = 23 newly recruited participants) examined whether the congruency effect of color-gender associations could bias perceptual font color categorization. Participants were asked to discriminate whether the font color, with low saturation, was red or green while ignoring the word's meaning. Results showed that participants responded faster and made fewer errors when categorizing red font colors for feminine words than masculine words. Additionally, a congruent effect of green-male association on performance accuracy was observed, although it did not affect response times. These results indicate the existence of an automatically activated red-female association, which can influence both conceptual gender categorization and perceptual color processing.

Children attribute higher social status to people who have extraordinary capabilities.

Throughout history, individuals believed to have extraordinary capabilities were generally highly ranked in their communities; this suggests a universal "extraordinary-dominant expectation" in human minds, which may play a key role in religious thought, even in modern societies. This study shows that 5-6-year-old children, who begin to understand real-world causalities regarding how the body and mind of human beings work, predict that individuals who exhibit extraordinary capabilities have higher social status in interactions with individuals who exhibit ordinary capabilities. In Experiment 1, we showed children two individuals achieving goals using either humanly possible or impossible methods, the latter involving simple forms of violation of intuitive psychology (knowing without seeing), physics (flying), or biology (fire breathing). The children clearly judged the latter as surprising and unusual. More importantly, the children predicted that individuals showing extraordinary capabilities will gain contested resources and play a dominant role in interactions with ordinary individuals, indicating a higher social status. Further investigations suggested that the children specifically linked extraordinary capacities to social status, as they did not attribute dominance to individuals who apply surprising/unusual but possible methods (Experiment 2), and that they did not indiscriminately attribute positive characteristics to extraordinary capabilities despite a strong extraordinary-dominant expectation being replicated (Experiment 3). These findings demonstrate that extraordinary-dominant expectations can be observed in childhood across different intuitive knowledge domains, helping understand the cognitive mechanisms of religious thought and the cognitive foundations of hierarchical social systems.

The evasive truth: do mere exposures at the subliminal and supraliminal levels drive the illusory truth effect?

The subjective truth of a statement is boosted by mere exposure to itself or a part of itself. This phenomenon is referred to as the illusory truth effect. We examined whether subliminal pre-exposure to the statement topic would increase its subjective truth. In the exposure phase, participants observed the topic, which was presented supraliminally or subliminally. After the exposure phase, they rated the subjective truth of the statement. If unconscious processing contributed to the illusory truth effect, subliminal exposure to the topic would increase the subjective truth of the statement. On the other hand, if the illusory truth effect required conscious and controlled processing, increases in the subjective truth of a statement would be induced only by supraliminal exposure to the topic. The results showed that the illusory truth effect was not found in either supraliminal or subliminal groups. Our findings provide no reliable evidence that pre-exposure to the statement topic saliently promotes its subjective truth.