Cognition

New article: “Emotion meets attention: The role of left-to-right valence mapping in an exogenous cueing task"

Authors: Federico D’Atri, Mauro Murgia, Valter Prpic, Carlo Fantoni

Read it here: authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S...

...we found that this effect influences voluntary (Tvol), not reflexive (Tref), attention, nor motor reactivity (Treact) —revealing how emotional valence subtly steers goal-directed behavior through a left-to-right spatial mapping.

The Target-dependent Emotional Attentional Spatial Compatibility (TEASC) effect: people react faster to negative faces on the left and positive faces on the right. By applying a new latency decomposition analysis (the General Chronometric Framework, GCF)...

Even when emotions aren’t relevant to a task, they still guide our focus. Using a Posner cueing task for exogenous attention orientation —a paradigm designed to isolate reflexive attention— we discovered the TEASC effect:

Strategic reasoning under pressure: Testing heuristics in higher-order theory of mind Higher-order Theory of Mind (ToM+)—the recursive ability to understand that others have thoughts about thoughts—is pivotal to complex social interacti…

"Strategic reasoning under pressure: Testing heuristics in higher-order theory of mind"

📢New paper from: Gregory Stanley

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

We think about others’ thoughts about our thoughts to navigate romance, sarcasm, gossip, and nuclear standoffs. But recursive mentalizing is hard. In a model contest, I show that under pressure our inner vision goes blurry, not blind. #TheoryOfMind

For everyday arguments prior beliefs play a larger role on perceived argument quality than argument quality itself Not all arguments are equally convincing, and whilst a given argument may be persuasive to some people, it is often seen as inadequate by others. We a…

"For everyday arguments prior beliefs play a larger role on perceived argument quality than argument quality itself"

📢New paper from: Calvin Deans-Browne & Henrik Singmann @singmann.bsky.social

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Our research suggests trying to persuade people who have inaccurate beliefs with accurate information may not be as effective as previously thought as people’s evaluation of new information is skewed by their prior (potentially inaccurate) beliefs.

The effect of prior belief was larger than the effect of argument quality, which was manipulated by comparing arguments making strong cases (e.g., using statistical evidence) with those making a weak case (e.g., relying on a non-expert authority).

We find that participants’ prior beliefs are correlated with how favourably they rate the quality of socio-political arguments. People perceive arguments as being of good quality when in line with what the person already believes.

In our study, we investigated how people evaluate everyday socio-political arguments in the context of their prior beliefs about the topics being discussed.

"Learning to be confident: How agents learn confidence based on prediction errors"! Now out in @cognitionjournal.bsky.social led by @pierreledenmat.bsky.social

Paper: desenderlab.com/wp-content/u... Thread ↓↓↓

#AcademicSky #PsychSciSky #Neuroscience #Neuroskyence

"How to show that a cruel prank is worse than a war crime: Shifting scales and missing benchmarks in the study of moral judgment"

📢New paper from: @vladchituc.bsky.social, @mjcrockett.bsky.social, & Brian Scholl

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Tracing truth through conceptual scaling Conceptions of truth have shifted considerably, adapting to the changing cultural and intellectual contexts of our time. In this paper we employ a con…

"Tracing truth through conceptual scaling"

📢New paper from: Lukas Shuber, David-Elias Künstle, & Kevin Reuter

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

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Our studies show that people’s concepts of truth are diverse yet stable. This matters not only for philosophical debates but also for everyday discourse, because without a shared concept of truth, even perfect facts can’t guarantee agreement.
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Study 2 (3 months later): People’s conceptual maps predicted how they later applied the concept of truth in a contextualized scenario—showing that conceptual scaling captures facets of the conceptual structure people draw on when applying truth.
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A closer look shows many participants hold pluralistic views: their concept of truth sits between theories. The most common “blend”? correspondence + authenticity. Others are more monistic, sticking with just one theory.
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At first glance, roughly half of people understand truth as correspondence with factual reality. Many others see truth as indicating authenticity or honesty. Few hold that something is true because it fits within a coherent belief system.
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Study 1: Participants made thousands of triplet similarity judgments. From these, we derived a conceptual map for each participant quantifying their individual understanding of truth in relation to three central notions of truth: correspondence, coherence, and authenticity.
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We often argue about what’s true, without ever asking what we mean by ”truth”. Different ideas of truth can derail a debate long before facts are discussed. In this work, we use conceptual scaling to explore how people understand truth.
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A signaling theory of self-handicapping People use various strategies to bolster the perception of their competence. One strategy is self-handicapping, by which people deliberately impede th…

"A signaling theory of self-handicapping"

📢New from: @yangxiang.bsky.social @gershbrain.bsky.social @tobigerstenberg.bsky.social

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

By offering a systematic explanation of self-handicapping, we hope to lay the groundwork for developing effective interventions that target academic self-handicapping, helping people to realize their full potential.

Consistent with the theory, our experiments show that self-handicapping increases naive observers’ evaluations, but not for sophisticated observers when the actor fails. The theory also explains past experiments with different setups and methods.

The theory involves a naive observer who evaluates the actor’s competence, an actor who seeks to impress the naive observer through strategic self-handicapping, and a sophisticated observer who considers the actor’s decision whether to self-handicap.

Self-handicapping is a strategy where people deliberately impede their performance to protect perceived competence in case of failure, or enhance it in case of success. We developed a signaling theory to explain when and how it happens.

When do people self-handicap? We model self-handicapping in terms of rational signaling, showing how it depends on assumptions about whether observers are naive or sophisticated. More in thread!

(1/7)📢 New paper by Vera Hoorens, felixhermans.bsky.social, and Susanne Bruckmüller in @cognitionjournal.bsky.social : “Why Boys Cry and Don’t Cry. The Contextual-Statistical (ConStat) Approach to the Perceived Validity of Generics”. A small 🧵and link to the paper below!

The impact of distractor processing on semantic memory retrieval: The role of interference-by-process and inhibition The retrieval of concepts from semantic memory is fundamental to higher-order cognitive functions and complex behaviors. Despite its vulnerability to …

"The impact of distractor processing on semantic memory retrieval: The role of interference-by-process and inhibition"

📢New paper from: Martin Marko, Adam Kubinec, Veronika Zelenayová, & Igor Riečanský

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

How do background voices derail our thoughts? Our study shows that distracting words disrupt deliberate memory retrieval not necessarily by grabbing attention, but because they are processed incidentally, forcing us to suppress their meaning.

New paper: The moral pull of “women and children”

Authors: Anastasiia Grigoreva Crean, Stella Lourenco , & Arber Tasimi

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...