Ocular drift along the mental number line.

We examined the spontaneous association between numbers and space by documenting attention deployment and the time course of associated spatial-numerical mapping with and without overt oculomotor responses. In Experiment 1, participants maintained central fixation while listening to number names. In Experiment 2, they made horizontal target-direct saccades following auditory number presentation. In both experiments, we continuously measured spontaneous ocular drift in horizontal space during and after number presentation. Experiment 2 also measured visual-probe-directed saccades following number presentation. Reliable ocular drift congruent with a horizontal mental number line emerged during and after number presentation in both experiments. Our results provide new evidence for the implicit and automatic nature of the oculomotor resonance effect associated with the horizontal spatial-numerical mapping mechanism

The oculomotor resonance effect in spatial-numerical mapping.

We investigated automatic Spatial-Numerical Association of Response Codes (SNARC) effect in auditory number processing. Two experiments continually measured spatial characteristics of ocular drift at central fixation during and after auditory number presentation. Consistent with the notion of a spatially oriented mental number line, we found spontaneous magnitude-dependent gaze adjustments, both with and without a concurrent saccadic task. This fixation adjustment (1) had a small-number/left-lateralized bias and (2) it was biphasic as it emerged for a short time around the point of lexical access and it received later robust representation around following number onset. This pattern suggests a two-step mechanism of sensorimotor mapping between numbers and space - a first-pass bottom-up activation followed by a top-down and more robust horizontal SNARC. Our results inform theories of number processing as well as simulation-based approaches to cognition by identifying the characteristics of an oculomotor resonance phenomenon

Anxiety mediates the relationship between multidimensional perfectionism and insomnia disorder

Individuals with insomnia often report aspects of perfectionism alongside symptoms of anxiety and depression. However, there has been limited examination of these factors together. The current study investigated whether in- dividuals with insomnia report increased perfectionism compared to normal-sleepers. Further, the mediating role of anxiety and depression was examined. Participants were 39 individuals with DSM-5 defined Insomnia Disorder, and 39 normal-sleepers, who completed two measures of multidimensional perfectionism and the Hospital Anxi- ety and Depression Scale. Results demonstrated that, compared to normal-sleepers, individuals with insomnia dis- play increased perfectionistic traits of: concern over mistakes, doubts about action, and parental criticism. In addition, these differences were partiality mediated by symptoms of anxiety, but not depression. Our findings high- light the significance of treating symptoms of anxiety with the prospect of alleviating negative thoughts concerning one's mistakes, doubts about action, and perception of parental criticism, which may contribute to insomnia

Speaker- versus listener-oriented disfluency: A re-examination of arguments and assumptions from autism spectrum disorder

We re-evaluate conclusions about disfluency production in high-functioning forms of autism spectrum disorder (HFA). Previous studies examined individuals with HFA to address a theoretical question regarding speaker- and listener-oriented disfluencies. Individuals with HFA tend to be self-centric and have poor pragmatic language skills, and should be less likely to produce listener-oriented disfluency. However, previous studies did not account for individual differences variables that affect disfluency. We show that both matched and unmatched controls produce fewer repairs than individuals with HFA. For silent pauses, there was no difference between matched controls and HFA, but both groups produced more than unmatched controls. These results identify limitations in prior research and shed light on the relationship between autism spectrum disorders and disfluent speech

Integrating Mechanisms of Visual Guidance in Naturalistic Language Production

Situated language production requires the integration of visual attention and lin-guistic processing. Previous work has not conclusively disentangled the role of perceptual scene information and structural sentence information in guiding visual attention. In this paper, we present an eye-tracking study that demonstrates that three types of guidance, perceptual, conceptual, and structural, interact to control visual attention. In a cued language production experiment, we manipulate percep-tual (scene clutter) and conceptual guidance (cue animacy), and measure structural guidance (syntactic complexity of the utterance). Analysis of the time course of lan-guage production, before and during speech, reveals that all three forms of guidance affect the complexity of visual responses, quantified in terms of the entropy of atten-tional landscapes and the turbulence of scan patterns, especially during speech. We find that perceptual and conceptual guidance mediate the distribution of attention in the scene, whereas structural guidance closely relates to scan-pattern complexity. Furthermore, the eye-voice span of the cued object and its perceptual competitor are similar; its latency mediated by both perceptual and structural guidance. These results rule out a strict interpretation of structural guidance as the single dominant form of visual guidance in situated language production. Rather, the phase of the task and the associated demands of cross-modal cognitive processing determine the mechanisms that guide attention

Many Labs 2: Investigating Variation in Replicability Across Samples and Settings

We conducted preregistered replications of 28 classic and contemporary published findings, with protocols that were peer reviewed in advance, to examine variation in effect magnitudes across samples and settings. Each protocol was administered to approximately half of 125 samples that comprised 15,305 participants from 36 countries and territories. Using the conventional criterion of statistical significance (p < .05), we found that 15 (54%) of the replications provided evidence of a statistically significant effect in the same direction as the original finding. With a strict significance criterion (p < .0001), 14 (50%) of the replications still provided such evidence, a reflection of the extremely highpowered design. Seven (25%) of the replications yielded effect sizes larger than the original ones, and 21 (75%) yielded effect sizes smaller than the original ones. The median comparable Cohen’s ds were 0.60 for the original findings and 0.15 for the replications. The effect sizes were small (< 0.20) in 16 of the replications (57%), and 9 effects (32%) were in the direction opposite the direction of the original effect. Across settings, the Q statistic indicated significant heterogeneity in 11 (39%) of the replication effects, and most of those were among the findings with the largest overall effect sizes; only 1 effect that was near zero in the aggregate showed significant heterogeneity according to this measure. Only 1 effect had a tau value greater than .20, an indication of moderate heterogeneity. Eight others had tau values near or slightly above .10, an indication of slight heterogeneity. Moderation tests indicated that very little heterogeneity was attributable to the order in which the tasks were performed or whether the tasks were administered in lab versus online. Exploratory comparisons revealed little heterogeneity between Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (WEIRD) cultures and less WEIRD cultures (i.e., cultures with relatively high and low WEIRDness scores, respectively). Cumulatively, variability in the observed effect sizes was attributable more to the effect being studied than to the sample or setting in which it was studied.UCR::Vicerrectoría de Investigación::Unidades de Investigación::Ciencias Sociales::Instituto de Investigaciones Psicológicas (IIP

Perceptual priming and structural choice in Russian sentence production

We report the results of a study that used perceptual priming paradigm to investigate how attentional focus on a referent influences structural choice in Russian sentence production. Experimental hypotheses were based on two previously reported findings. First, some sentence production studies using English demonstrated that perceptually priming a referent of a visual event improves its chances of assignment as the Subject of a sentence about this event and triggers the resulting choice between active and passive voice (Gleitman, et al., 2007; Tomlin, 1995, 1997). Second, a study by Ferreira (1996) showed that English speakers alternate between the structures easier and faster when they have a wider battery of structural alternatives available to them. Our data confirmed both findings with important detalization. First, Russian speakers were more likely to assign the sentential starting point but not the Subject to the perceptually primed referent alternating between the agent-initial and the patient-initial structural alternatives. This finding suggests that perceptual priming leads to the positional but not the preferential assignment of grammatical roles in Russian. Second, Russian speakers having a seemingly wider inventory of structural options than their English counterparts were more reluctant to alternate structure as a function of the perceptual prime. This tendency may result form the necessity to maintain early commitments to the case-marked noun forms, which effectively binds structural selection to a much smaller number of available alternatives than the normative grammar of Russian suggests