Beholder
Mental Imagery Induces Cross-Modal Sensory Plasticity and Changes Future Auditory Perception
Christopher Berger & Henrik Ehrsson
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Can what we imagine in our minds change how we perceive the world in the future? A continuous process of multisensory integration and recalibration is responsible for maintaining a correspondence between the senses (e.g., vision, touch, audition) and, ultimately, a stable and coherent perception of our environment. This process depends on the plasticity of our sensory systems. The so-called ventriloquism aftereffect — a shift in the perceived localization of sounds presented alone after repeated exposure to spatially mismatched auditory and visual stimuli — is a clear example of this type of plasticity in the audiovisual domain. In a series of six studies with 24 participants each, we investigated an imagery-induced ventriloquism aftereffect in which imagining a visual stimulus elicits the same frequency-specific auditory aftereffect as actually seeing one. These results demonstrate that mental imagery can recalibrate the senses and induce the same cross-modal sensory plasticity as real sensory stimuli.
Collective satiation: How coexperience accelerates a decline in hedonic judgments
Rajesh Bhargave, Nicole Montgomery & Joseph Redden
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, April 2018, Pages 529-546
Abstract:
Individuals often mutually experience a stimulus with a relationship partner or social group (e.g., snacking with friends). Yet, little is currently understood about how a sense of coexperiencing affects hedonic judgments of experiences that unfold over time. Research on the shared attention state has suggested that hedonic judgments are intensified when individuals coexperience a stimulus (vs. experiencing it alone), and other related work has found that the social environment influences hedonic judgments in shared (vs. solo) experiences. Although this past work has focused on judgments of single instances of a stimulus, the present work examines how coexperience affects hedonic judgments of stimuli over time. This work documents the ‘collective satiation effect’ wherein satiation — a diminished enjoyment of pleasant stimuli with repeated experience — is accelerated by a sense of coexperiencing the stimulus with others. We propose that this happens because shared attention makes the repetitive nature of the experience more salient, by promoting and incorporating thoughts of others also repeatedly having the same shared experience. Five studies document the collective satiation effect, support the proposed mechanism, and show moderators of the effect. Taken together, this research contributes to an understanding of how the social environment influences the experience of hedonic stimuli, which has broad implications for the value individuals place on the time that they spend with others.
An Optimistic Outlook Creates a Rosy Past: The Impact of Episodic Simulation on Subsequent Memory
Aleea Devitt & Daniel Schacter
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
People frequently engage in future thinking in everyday life, but it is unknown how simulating an event in advance changes how that event is remembered once it takes place. To initiate study of this important topic, we conducted two experiments in which participants simulated emotional events before learning the hypothetical outcome of each event via narratives. Memory was assessed for emotional details contained in those narratives. Positive simulation resulted in a liberal response bias for positive information and a conservative bias for negative information. Events preceded by positive simulation were considered more favorably in retrospect. In contrast, negative simulation had no impact on subsequent memory. Results were similar across an immediate and delayed memory test and for past and future simulation. These results provide novel insights into the cognitive consequences of episodic future simulation and build on the optimism-bias literature by showing that adopting a favorable outlook results in a rosy memory.
Weather impacts expressed sentiment
Patrick Baylis et al.
PLoS ONE, April 2018
Abstract:
We conduct the largest ever investigation into the relationship between meteorological conditions and the sentiment of human expressions. To do this, we employ over three and a half billion social media posts from tens of millions of individuals from both Facebook and Twitter between 2009 and 2016. We find that cold temperatures, hot temperatures, precipitation, narrower daily temperature ranges, humidity, and cloud cover are all associated with worsened expressions of sentiment, even when excluding weather-related posts. We compare the magnitude of our estimates with the effect sizes associated with notable historical events occurring within our data.
Production Practice During Language Learning Improves Comprehension
Elise Hopman & Maryellen MacDonald
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Language learners often spend more time comprehending than producing a new language. However, memory research suggests reasons to suspect that production practice might provide a stronger learning experience than comprehension practice. We tested the benefits of production during language learning and the degree to which this learning transfers to comprehension skill. We taught participants an artificial language containing multiple linguistic dependencies. Participants were randomly assigned to either a production- or a comprehension-learning condition, with conditions designed to balance attention demands and other known production–comprehension differences. After training, production-learning participants outperformed comprehension-learning participants on vocabulary comprehension and on comprehension tests of grammatical dependencies, even when we controlled for individual differences in vocabulary learning. This result shows that producing a language during learning can improve subsequent comprehension, which has implications for theories of memory and learning, language representations, and educational practices.
Making Each Unit Count: The Role of Discretizing Units in Quantity Expressions
Christophe Lembregts & Bram Van Den Bergh
Journal of Consumer Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
Consumers typically infer greater quantity from larger numbers. For instance, a 500 gram box of chocolates appears heavier than a 0.5 kilogram box. By expressing quantities in alternative units or attribute dimensions, an otherwise identical quantity can also be represented in a more versus less discretized manner (e.g., a box containing 25 chocolates versus a box weighing 500 grams). Seven experimental studies show that a difference between more discretized quantities (e.g., 25 versus 50 chocolates) appears larger relative to a difference between less discretized quantities (e.g., 500 grams versus 1,000 grams), above and beyond effects of number magnitude. More discretized quantity expressions enhance the consumers’ ability to discriminate between choice options and can also nudge consumers to more favorable choices. Because more discretized quantities are more evaluable, expressing a quantity in terms of a collection of elements particularly helps individuals who are less numerically proficient. By identifying how discretization functions as a novel antecedent of evaluability and by distinguishing two different conceptualizations of numerosity (i.e., symbolic and perceptual numerosity), this article draws important connections between the numerical cognition literature and General Evaluability Theory.
Extraversion predicts a preference for high-chroma colors
Adam Pazda & Christopher Thorstenson
Personality and Individual Differences, 1 June 2018, Pages 133-138
Abstract:
The multitude of research on human color preferences has primarily focused on hue. Only a modicum of research has focused on preferences along the chroma dimension of color. The present research examines how extraversion relates to a preference for high and low-chroma colors (with chroma being manipulated while holding hue and lightness constant). Results from two studies revealed that extraversion was positively associated with a preference for high-chroma colors, but not low-chroma colors. This relationship remained significant after controlling for the other Big Five traits, sensory-processing sensitivity, positive/negative affect, and sex.