Hear me out: the role of competent and warm vocal tones in risk communication.

Risk communication involves conveying potential risks to the audience. It's crucial for shaping behavior and influencing individual well-being. Previous research predominantly focused on verbal and written aspects of risk communication, with less emphasis on nonverbal cues like vocal tone. Addressing this gap, our study explores the impact of competent and warm vocal tones on risk communication across two risky decision-making paradigms, the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART) in Study 1 and the Gambling Task in Study 2. Results show that competent and warm vocal tones are more persuasive than neutral tones, and their effectiveness varies in different decision-making scenarios. Additionally, participants' perceived competence and warmth of vocal tones mediate this persuasiveness. This study enhances our theoretical understanding of risk communication by incorporating the impact of vocal tones. Also, it carries practical implications for marketers and practitioners, demonstrating the importance of using voice as a medium to persuade in real-world scenarios.

Mental States: A Key Point in Scam Compliance and Warning Compliance in Real Life.

The internet's convenience and anonymity have facilitated different types of covert fraud, resulting in economic, mental, and social harm to victims. Understanding why people are deceived and implementing appropriate interventions is critical for fraud reduction. Based on the Bayesian brain theory, individuals' mental states may be a key point in scam compliance and warning compliance. Fraud victims with different mental states may construct various hypotheses and explanations about the fraud they are exposed to, causing different cognition and behavior patterns. Therefore, we first conducted a semi-structured in-depth interview with online fraud victims to investigate the individual and social factors that affect victims' mental states. Grounded theory analysis showed five core factors influencing scam compliance: psychological traits, empirical factors, motivation, cognitive biases, and emotional imbalance. Based on our findings of psychological processes and deception's influential factors, we then designed warnings to inform victims of fraud, particularly for those involving novel types of scams. Tested on a real-life setting, our designed warnings effectively enhanced warning compliance, allowing more fraud victims to avoid financial losses.

Chinese App User's Needs Profile: From Questionnaire Measurement to Behavior Analysis.

With the widespread use of mobile devices, the Apps people install and use could be closely linked to their needs. A precise profile of the needs of the user has become a vital foundation of the experience of the user. Previous studies mainly rely on self-reporting to understand the subjective attitudes of the App user toward a single App. This research combined questionnaire measurement and behavior analysis to profile the needs of the App user from a broader perspective. Based on the theoretical model of previous research studies, study 1 developed a novel needs questionnaire measurement of a Chinese App user, which showed good reliability and validity. In study 2, authorized App usage data were collected to construct the behavioral needs profile of a Chinese user. The results showed that the primary needs of the Chinese user remained a relatively high consistency between the questionnaire and the behavior data. The questionnaire-based and behavioral data-based needs profiles provide a reference for further personalized user experience design.

The Role of Hand Movement in Spatial Serial Order Memory.

Research on serial order memory has traditionally used tasks where participants passively view the items. A few studies that included hand movement showed that such movement interfered with serial order memory. In the present study of three experiments, we investigated whether and how hand movements improved spatial serial order memory. Experiment 1 showed that manual tracing (i.e., hand movements that traced the presentation of stimuli on the modified eCorsi block tapping task) improved the performance of backward recall as compared to no manual tracing (the control condition). Experiment 2 showed that the facilitation effect resulted from voluntary hand movements and could not be achieved via passive viewing of another person's manual tracing. Experiment 3 showed that it was the temporal, not the spatial, signal within manual tracing that facilitated spatial serial memory.

Cross-situation consistency of mobile App users' psychological needs.

Previous studies showed that individuals' traits could be used to explain the similarity of behavioral patterns across different occasions. Such studies have typically focused on personality traits, and have not been extended to psychological needs. Our study used a large dataset of 1,715,078 anonymous users' App usage records to examine whether the individual's needs-based profiles of App usage were consistent across different situations (as indexed by categories of App functions). Results showed a high level of consistency across situations in a user's choice of Apps based on the needs the Apps could satisfy. These results provide clear evidence in support of cross-category App recommendation systems.

Grasping and Pointing - Visual Conflict and Interference.

There have been many debates of the two-visual-systems (what vs. how or perception vs. action) hypothesis that was proposed by Goodale and his colleagues. Many researchers have provided a variety of evidence for or against the hypothesis. For instance, a study performed by Aglioti et al. offered good evidence for the two-visual-systems theory using the Ebbinghaus illusion, but some researchers who used other visual illusions failed to find consistent results. Therefore, we used a perceptual task of conflict or interference to test this hypothesis. If the conflict or interference in perception had an influence on the processing of perception alone and did not affect the processing of action, we could infer that the two visual systems are separated, and vice versa. In the current study, we carried out two experiments which employed the Stroop, Garner and SNARC paradigms and used graspable 3-D Arabic numerals. We aimed to find if the effects resulting from perceptual conflicts or interferences would affect participants' grasping and pointing. The results showed that the interaction between Stroop and numeral order (ascending or descending, or SNARC) was significant, and the SNARC effect significantly affected action, but the main effects of Stroop and Garner interference were not significant. The results indicated that, to some degree, perceptual conflict affects action processing. The results did not provide evidence for two separate visual systems.

Repetition benefit in mental rotation is independent of stimulus repetition.

In this study, we investigated whether there is a repetition benefit in mental rotation that is independent of stimulus repetition (i.e., due to increased efficiency in postencoding processing). Three experiments were conducted, in which different conditions of stimulus repetition (different letters on consecutive trials in Experiment 1, letters of different orientations on consecutive trials in Experiment 2, and priming of rotation direction in Experiment 3) were used, and the extent of repetition of rotation direction between two consecutive trials was manipulated. The results of all three experiments showed clear evidence of a repetition benefit without repeating the stimulus, suggesting that this effect is independent of stimulus repetition and lending support to the notion of increased efficiency in mental rotation as a result of repeated rotation direction per se.