Salience
Attention Drives Emotion: Voluntary Visual Attention Increases Perceived Emotional Intensity
Kellen Mrkva, Jacob Westfall & Leaf Van Boven
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Attention and emotion are fundamental psychological systems. It is well established that emotion intensifies attention. Three experiments reported here (N = 235) demonstrated the reversed causal direction: Voluntary visual attention intensifies perceived emotion. In Experiment 1, participants repeatedly directed attention toward a target object during sequential search. Participants subsequently perceived their emotional reactions to target objects as more intense than their reactions to control objects. Experiments 2 and 3 used a spatial-cuing procedure to manipulate voluntary visual attention. Spatially cued attention increased perceived emotional intensity. Participants perceived spatially cued objects as more emotionally intense than noncued objects even when participants were asked to mentally rehearse the name of noncued objects. This suggests that the intensifying effect of attention is independent of more extensive mental rehearsal. Across experiments, attended objects were perceived as more visually distinctive, which statistically mediated the effects of attention on emotional intensity.
Social interaction in augmented reality
Mark Roman Miller et al.
PLoS ONE, May 2019
Abstract:
There have been decades of research on the usability and educational value of augmented reality. However, less is known about how augmented reality affects social interactions. The current paper presents three studies that test the social psychological effects of augmented reality. Study 1 examined participants’ task performance in the presence of embodied agents and replicated the typical pattern of social facilitation and inhibition. Participants performed a simple task better, but a hard task worse, in the presence of an agent compared to when participants complete the tasks alone. Study 2 examined nonverbal behavior. Participants met an agent sitting in one of two chairs and were asked to choose one of the chairs to sit on. Participants wearing the headset never sat directly on the agent when given the choice of two seats, and while approaching, most of the participants chose the rotation direction to avoid turning their heads away from the agent. A separate group of participants chose a seat after removing the augmented reality headset, and the majority still avoided the seat previously occupied by the agent. Study 3 examined the social costs of using an augmented reality headset with others who are not using a headset. Participants talked in dyads, and augmented reality users reported less social connection to their partner compared to those not using augmented reality. Overall, these studies provide evidence suggesting that task performance, nonverbal behavior, and social connectedness are significantly affected by the presence or absence of virtual content.
Holding a real object during encoding helps the learning of foreign vocabulary
Florence Bara & Gwenael Kaminski
Acta Psychologica, May 2019, Pages 26-32
Abstract:
This study aims at assessing and comparing two different methods for learning new vocabulary words in a foreign language. Learning vocabulary with images as non-verbal aids was compared to learning vocabulary with real objects. The Rwandan children who participated in this study learnt French as a third language. They took part in training sessions to learn different French words either seeing the corresponding image or holding the corresponding object. The training program was implemented in a Rwandan primary school with children of different ages (from five to 10 years old). The results showed that the words associated to objects that were held by the children during learning were better memorized than the words associated with images. The global memory performance was lower for the youngest children; however, learning with objects proved to be superior over learning with images for all ages. Taken together, the findings underscore that learning vocabulary with real objects is particularly efficient and support the idea that the embodied theory of language is a key element to effectively master a foreign language.
A genome-wide association study of bitter and sweet beverage consumption
Victor Zhong et al.
Human Molecular Genetics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Except for drinking water, most beverages taste bitter or sweet. Taste perception and preferences are heritable and determinants of beverage choice and consumption. Consumption of several bitter- and sweet-tasting beverages has been implicated in development of major chronic diseases. We performed a genome-wide association study (GWAS) of self-reported bitter and sweet beverage consumption among ~370 000 participants of European ancestry, using a two-staged analysis design. Bitter beverages included coffee, tea, grapefruit juice, red wine, liquor and beer. Sweet beverages included artificially and sugar sweetened beverages (SSBs) and non-grapefruit juices. Five loci associated with total bitter beverage consumption were replicated (in/near GCKR, ABCG2, AHR, POR and CYP1A1/2). No locus was replicated for total sweet beverage consumption. Sub-phenotype analyses targeting the alcohol, caffeine and sweetener components of beverages yielded additional loci: (i) four loci for bitter alcoholic beverages (GCKR, KLB, ADH1B and AGBL2); (ii) five loci for bitter non-alcoholic beverages (ANXA9, AHR, POR, CYP1A1/2 and CSDC2); (iii) 10 loci for coffee; six novel loci (SEC16B, TMEM18, OR8U8, AKAP6, MC4R and SPECC1L-ADORA2A); (iv) FTO for SSBs. Of these 17 replicated loci, 12 have been associated with total alcohol consumption, coffee consumption, plasma caffeine metabolites or BMI in previous GWAS; none was involved in known sweet and bitter taste transduction pathways. Our study suggests that genetic variants related to alcohol consumption, coffee consumption and obesity were primary genetic determinants of bitter and sweet beverage consumption. Whether genetic variants related to taste perception are associated with beverage consumption remains to be determined.
The Frozen Effect: Objects in motion are more aesthetically appealing than objects frozen in time
Malerie McDowell & Jason Haberman
PLoS ONE, May 2019
Abstract
Videos of moving faces are more flattering than static images of the same face, a phenomenon dubbed the Frozen Face Effect. This may reflect an aesthetic preference for faces viewed in a more ecological context than still photographs. In the current set of experiments, we sought to determine whether this effect is unique to facial processing, or if motion confers an aesthetic benefit to other stimulus categories as well, such as bodies and objects — that is, a more generalized ‘Frozen Effect’ (FE). If motion were the critical factor in the FE, we would expect the video of a body or object in motion to be significantly more appealing than when seen in individual, static frames. To examine this, we asked participants to rate sets of videos of bodies and objects in motion along with the still frames constituting each video. Extending the original FFE, we found that participants rated videos as significantly more flattering than each video’s corresponding still images, regardless of stimulus domain, suggesting that the FFE generalizes well beyond face perception. Interestingly, the magnitude of the FE increased with the predictability of stimulus movement. Our results suggest that observers prefer bodies and objects in motion over the same information presented in static form, and the more predictable the motion, the stronger the preference. Motion imbues objects and bodies with greater aesthetic appeal, which has implications for how one might choose to portray oneself in various social media platforms.