On the relationship between mind perception and social support of chatbots.

The social support provided by chatbots is typically designed to mimic the way humans support others. However, individuals have more conflicting attitudes toward chatbots providing emotional support (e.g., empathy and encouragement) compared to informational support (e.g., useful information and advice). This difference may be related to whether individuals associate a certain type of support with the realm of the human mind and whether they attribute human-like minds to chatbots. In the present study, we investigated whether perceiving human-like minds in chatbots affects users' acceptance of various support provided by the chatbot. In the experiment, the chatbot posed questions about participants' interpersonal stress events, prompting them to write down their stressful experiences. Depending on the experimental condition, the chatbot provided two kinds of social support: informational support or emotional support. Our results showed that when participants explicitly perceived a human-like mind in the chatbot, they considered the support to be more helpful in resolving stressful events. The relationship between implicit mind perception and perceived message effectiveness differed depending on the type of support. More specifically, if participants did not implicitly attribute a human-like mind to the chatbot, emotional support undermined the effectiveness of the message, whereas informational support did not. The present findings suggest that users' mind perception is essential for understanding the user experience of chatbot social support. Our findings imply that informational support can be trusted when building social support chatbots. In contrast, the effectiveness of emotional support depends on the users implicitly giving the chatbot a human-like mind.

Coordinated anatomical and functional variability in the human brain during adolescence.

Adolescence represents a time of unparalleled brain development. In particular, developmental changes in morphometric and cytoarchitectural features are accompanied by maturation in the functional connectivity (FC). Here, we examined how three facets of the brain, including myelination, cortical thickness (CT), and resting-state FC, interact in children between the ages of 10 and 15. We investigated the pattern of coordination in these measures by computing correlation matrices for each measure as well as meta-correlations among them both at the regional and network levels. The results revealed consistently higher meta-correlations among myelin, CT, and FC in the sensory-motor cortical areas than in the association cortical areas. We also found that these meta-correlations were stable and little affected by age-related changes in each measure. In addition, regional variations in the meta-correlations were consistent with the previously identified gradient in the FC and therefore reflected the hierarchy of cortical information processing, and this relationship persists in the adult brain. These results demonstrate that heterogeneity in FC among multiple cortical areas are closely coordinated with the development of cortical myelination and thickness during adolescence.

Aging and guided visual search: the role of visual working memory.

In the present study, we examined age-related differences in utilizing learned associations to guide visual search. Participants viewed an object cue that was associated with 1 or 2 target colors, followed by a search array. Older adults showed slower RTs, larger visual search slopes, and reduced cue-target association knowledge than did younger adults. We also found increased search RTs and higher error rates when the cue was associated with 2 colors instead of 1. However, visual search slopes did not vary with the number of associated colors. This indicates that participants could activate multiple templates simultaneously to guide the search or retrieve associative information directly from the long-term memory. Furthermore, regression analyses showed that VWMC can predict both visual search performances and cue-target association knowledge. More broadly, our results demonstrate that VWMC can modify the effects of age on cued visual search performance.

Personality and attention: Levels of neuroticism and extraversion can predict attentional performance during a change detection task.

The present study demonstrates that levels of extraversion and neuroticism can predict attentional performance during a change detection task. After completing a change detection task built on the flicker paradigm, participants were assessed for personality traits using the Revised Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ-R). Multiple regression analyses revealed that higher levels of extraversion predict increased change detection accuracies, while higher levels of neuroticism predict decreased change detection accuracies. In addition, neurotic individuals exhibited decreased sensitivity A' and increased fixation dwell times. Hierarchical regression analyses further revealed that eye movement measures mediate the relationship between neuroticism and change detection accuracies. Based on the current results, we propose that neuroticism is associated with decreased attentional control over the visual field, presumably due to decreased attentional disengagement. Extraversion can predict increased attentional performance, but the effect is smaller than the relationship between neuroticism and attention.

Explicit awareness supports conditional visual search in the retrieval guidance paradigm.

In four experiments we explored whether participants would be able to use probabilistic prompts to simplify perceptually demanding visual search in a task we call the retrieval guidance paradigm. On each trial a memory prompt appeared prior to (and during) the search task and the diagnosticity of the prompt(s) was manipulated to provide complete, partial, or non-diagnostic information regarding the target's color on each trial (Experiments 1-3). In Experiment 1 we found that the more diagnostic prompts was associated with faster visual search performance. However, similar visual search behavior was observed in Experiment 2 when the diagnosticity of the prompts was eliminated, suggesting that participants in Experiment 1 were merely relying on base rate information to guide search and were not utilizing the prompts. In Experiment 3 participants were informed of the relationship between the prompts and the color of the target and this was associated with faster search performance relative to Experiment 1, suggesting that the participants were using the prompts to guide search. Additionally, in Experiment 3 a knowledge test was implemented and performance in this task was associated with qualitative differences in search behavior such that participants that were able to name the color(s) most associated with the prompts were faster to find the target than participants who were unable to do so. However, in Experiments 1-3 diagnosticity of the memory prompt was manipulated via base rate information, making it possible that participants were merely relying on base rate information to inform search in Experiment 3. In Experiment 4 we manipulated diagnosticity of the prompts without manipulating base rate information and found a similar pattern of results as Experiment 3. Together, the results emphasize the importance of base rate and diagnosticity information in visual search behavior. In the General discussion section we explore how a recent computational model of hypothesis generation (HyGene; Thomas, Dougherty, Sprenger, & Harbison, 2008), linking attention with long-term and working memory, accounts for the present results and provides a useful framework of cued recall visual search.

The influence of action on visual search: behavioral response toward stimuli modifies the selection process.

In five experiments, we investigated how simple actions (as assessed via a go/no-go task) influence visual search. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants responded (go) when a color name (cue) matched a colored shape (prime), and did not respond (no-go) when they mismatched. Participants then searched a visual array for a tilted line, either embedded within the prime (valid prime) or within a different shape of a different color (invalid prime). For go trials, but not for no-go trials, the validity of the prime influenced search behavior so that faster RTs were observed when the prime was valid as compared with when it was invalid. In Experiment 3, the go/no-go task was based on the shape of the prime. The color of the prime, but not the shape, was re-presented in the search array, and its validity produced a similar pattern as in Experiments 1-2. In Experiment 4, participants responded when the color name and prime mismatched. Reaction times indicated that attentional set had an influence on the validity differences in Experiments 1-3. In Experiment 5, the go/no-go task was based on whether a digit matched a digit appearing within the prime. Go trials produced similar validity effects as observed in Experiments 1-3.

The effect of behavioral response on affective evaluation.

In the present research we investigated how action influences affective evaluation. In three experiments, participants conducted a sequence of go/no-go tasks, then evaluated the pleasantness of a novel shape. The results of Experiments 1 and 2 show that participants evaluated the shapes that appeared in the go trials more positively than the shapes that appeared in the no-go trials. In Experiment 3, the go/no-go task was conducted without the to-be-evaluated shapes present in the display. The results show that the shape stimuli following the go trials were evaluated more positively than the shape stimuli following the no-go trials, even when the shapes were not directly associated with the go/no-go task. Based on the present study, we suggest that activating or inhibiting a motoric action may play a critical role in modifying one's affective evaluation. Additionally, the present results suggest that effortful and non-default responses can negatively modulate affective evaluation by taxing an individual's cognitive load. Furthermore, we argue that individuals can potentially control their affective states through behavioral activation and inhibition.

Top-down guidance in visual search for facial expressions.

Using a visual search paradigm, we investigated how a top-down goal modified attentional bias for threatening facial expressions. In two experiments, participants searched for a facial expression either based on stimulus characteristics or a top-down goal. In Experiment 1 participants searched for a discrepant facial expression in a homogenous crowd of faces. Consistent with previous research, we obtained a shallower response time (RT) slope when the target face was angry than when it was happy. In Experiment 2, participants searched for a specific type of facial expression (allowing a top-down goal). When the display included a target, we found a shallower RT slope for the angry than for the happy face search. However, when an angry or happy face was present in the display in opposition to the task goal, we obtained equivalent RT slopes, suggesting that the mere presence of an angry face in opposition to the task goal did not support the well-known angry face superiority effect. Furthermore, RT distribution analyses supported the special status of an angry face only when it was combined with the top-down goal. On the basis of these results, we suggest that a threatening facial expression may guide attention as a high-priority stimulus in the absence of a specific goal; however, in the presence of a specific goal, the efficiency of facial expression search is dependent on the combined influence of a top-down goal and the stimulus characteristics.

Aging and visual search: automatic and controlled attentional bias to threat faces.

Using a visual search paradigm, we investigated how age affected attentional bias to emotional facial expressions. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants searched for a discrepant facial expression in a matrix of otherwise homogeneous faces. Both younger and older adults showed a more effective search when the discrepant face was angry rather than happy or neutral. However, when the angry faces served as non-target distractors, younger adults' search was less effective than happy or neutral distractor conditions. In contrast, older adults showed a more efficient search with angry distractors than happy or neutral distractors, indicating that older adults were better able to inhibit angry facial expressions. In Experiment 3, we found that even a top-down search goal could not override the angry face superiority effect in guiding attention. In addition, RT distribution analyses supported that both younger and older adults performed the top-down angry face search qualitatively differently from the top-down happy face search. The current research indicates that threat face processing involves automatic attentional shift and a controlled attentional process. The current results suggest that age only influenced the controlled attentional process.

Static scene analysis for the perception of heading.

In the current study, we explored observers' use of two distinct analyses for determining their direction of motion, or heading: a scene-based analysis and a motion-based analysis. In two experiments, subjects viewed sequentially presented, paired digitized images of real-world scenes and judged the direction of heading; the pairs were presented with various interstimulus intervals (ISIs). In Experiment 1, subjects could determine heading when the two frames were separated with a 1,000-ms ISI, long enough to eliminate apparent motion. In Experiment 2, subjects performed two tasks, a path-of-motion task and a memory-load task, under three different ISIs, 50 ms, 500 ms, and 1,000 ms. Heading accuracy decreased with an increase in ISI. Increasing memory load influenced heading judgments only for the longer ISI when motion-based information was not available. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that the scene-based analysis has a coarse spatial representation, is a sustained temporal process, and is capacity limited, whereas the motion-based analysis has a fine spatial resolution, is a transient temporal process, and is capacity unlimited.

Multidimensional set switching.

The present study examined the organization of preparatory processes that underlie set switching and, more specifically, switch costs. On each trial, subjects performed one of two perceptual judgment tasks, color or shape discrimination. Subjects also responded with one of two different response sets. The task set and/or the response set switched from one to the other after 2-6 repeated trials. Response set, task set, and double set switches were performed in both blocked and randomized conditions. Subjects performed with short (100-msec) and long (800-msec) preparatory intervals. Task and response set switches had an additive effect on reaction times (RTs) in the blocked condition. Such a pattern of results suggests a serial organization of preparatory processes when the nature of switches is predictable. However, task and response set switches had an underadditive effect on RTs in the random condition when subjects performed with a brief cue-to-target interval. This pattern of results suggests overlapping task and response set preparation. These findings are discussed in terms of strategic control of preparatory processes in set switching.

Age-related effects of attentional and oculomotor capture by onsets and color singletons as a function of experience.

The present experiment examined the degree to which experience with different stimulus characteristics affects attentional capture, particularly as related to aging. Participants were presented with onset target/color singleton distractor or color singleton target/onset distractor pairs across three experimental sessions. The target/distractor pairs were reversed in the second session such that the target in the first session became the distractor in the second and third sessions. For both young and old adults previous experience with color as a target defining feature influenced oculomotor capture with task-irrelevant color distractors. Experience with sudden onsets had the same effect for younger and older adults, although capture effects were substantially larger for onset than for color distractors. Experience-based capture effects diminished relatively rapidly after target and distractor-defining properties were reversed. The results are discussed in terms of top-down and stimulus-driven effects on age-related differences in attentional control.