Subjects: Psychology >> Cognitive Psychology submitted time 2023-04-21
Abstract： Action video games (AVG) require players to process and quickly respond to multiple complex and rapidly changing pieces of information in a wide field of view. Previous research has debated whether AVG can promote the development of attentional skills. We used a meta-analysis approach to analyze the effects of AVG on attention and its sub-networks. The effects of behavioral indicators as moderating variables in the relationship between them were also examined. Atotal of 28eligible papers with 71 effect sizes involving 3359 subjects was included. The results showed that AVGhad the most significant effect on attentional alertness, with a relatively high effect, while attentional orientation and executive control had a relatively low effects. Additionally, the effect of AVGonattention was moderated by behavioral indicators, with reaction times being greater than the effect of accuracy, suggesting that reaction times are more sensitive when examining attention functions. These findings suggest that AVG are most closely related to the alertness function and are influenced by the performance of reaction times. The present study clarifies the relationship between AVG and attentionand provides a basis for comparison of results across studies.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-27 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： Increasing evidence has indicated that emotional information, and particularly threatening visual input, elicits faster behavioral responses than non-threatening stimuli. This superior processing of threatening information is also found under conditions where consciousness is absent. However, recent studies found that faster unconscious detection of emotion-associated stimuli than neutral stimuli may be due to their unmatched physical characteristics, rather than by their emotional content. Thus, it is necessary to test whether emotional stimuli still have the processing advantage over neutral ones in unconscious conditions when low-level visual properties are matched. In order to investigate whether unconsciously prioritized processing still occurs with emotion-associated stimuli which are physically identical, we used the conditioning paradigm to manipulate the affective significance of Gabor patches. Participants performed two challenging visual detection tasks under the breaking Continuous Flash Suppression (b-CFS) paradigm. In experiment 1, differently oriented Gabor patches (45° and 135°) were used as material. During an initial learning phase, one oriented Gabor patch (e.g., 45°) was paired with an alarm sound (CS+), whereas the other was never paired with the alarm sound (CS–). The emotional rating indicated that negative emotion could be elicited by the alarm sound in the participants. The orientation of CS+ Gabor patches was counterbalanced across participants. In the subsequent testing phase, participants were required to discriminate the location of the Gabor patch relative to the central fixation as quickly and accurately as possible. In this phase, Gabor patches were suppressed by dynamic noise using b-CFS. The procedure in experiment 2 was the same with that in experiment 1, except that the color of the Gabor patches was also varied, between red and green. In experiment 1, there was no difference in the accuracy rates between CS+ stimuli and CS– stimuli (99% vs. 99%). Suppression time results showed that CS+ stimuli emerged from suppression faster than CS– ones. In experiment 2, there was no difference in the accuracy rates for different learning condition. For the analysis of suppression time, the “learning effect” was computed to represent difference between experimental conditions and control condition. Integrated learning showed a significant learning effect, while there was no remarkable learning effect in orientation learning or in color learning condition. These findings revealed an unconscious processing advantage for aversive conditioned stimuli. Furthermore, the learning effect was specific to the conditioned stimuli and could not generalize to other similar objects. Taken together, this study provided further evidence for the optimized processing of affectively significant visual stimuli in unconscious conditions.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-27 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： Global motion perception (GMP) is an important aspect of visual perception. Numerous studies have found that GMP of cognitively healthy elderly declines with aging and it cannot be explained by age differences in the visual system. The neural mechanism of aging on GMP remains unclear. Resting-state fMRI has been widely used to detect the internal spontaneous activity of the aging brain. Thus, whether the functional activity of brain regions related to the GMP for the elderly in the resting state is an effective indicator of their global motion sensitivity (GMS) still needs further investigation. To reveal the neural basis of GMP decline for the elderly, the relationships between the resting-state functional activities of GMP related brain areas (Regions of Interest, ROI: V1, V2, V3, and MT/V5) and individuals’ motion coherence threshold (MCT) were analyzed by using rs-fMRI technology. In this study, Random Dot Kinematogram (RDK) paradigm was used to evaluate an individual’s GMS with the MCT as the indicator. A higher threshold of the RDK task meant lower sensitivity. Meanwhile, the rs-fMRI data of 36 younger adults (M = 22.04 years old) and 31 older adults (M = 65.05 years old) were acquired using rapid echo-planar imaging (EPI) sequence from a 3T Siemens Prisma magnetic resonance scanner, with TR = 2s, TE = 30ms, Time points = 240 (young) or 246 (old). Rs-fMRI data were preprocessed and processed using SPM (http://www. fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/spm) and DPABI (http://rfmri.org/dpabi) toolbox to obtain the functional activities of the ROIs, including ReHo, ALFF, voxel-wise FC, and ROI-wise FC. Then, the regional measures including three nodal centrality metrics (degree K, efficiency Enodal and betweenness b) and the global measures including small-world parameters (clustering coefficient Cp, characteristic path length Lp, normalized clustering coefficient γ, normalized characteristic path length λ, and small-worldness σ) and network efficiency (global efficiency Eglob and local efficiency Eloc) were calculated using GRETNA (http//www.nitrc.org/projects/gretna/) graph toolbox. To determine whether there were significant group differences in these functional properties, two-sample t-tests were performed on each metric. When significant between-group differences in any functional metrics were obtained, the Pearson correlation coefficients among these metrics and individuals’ MCT were further calculated to assess the relationship between changes in brain function and GMP aging. Results showed that 1) the ReHo values of right V3 and bilateral MT/V5 for older adults were significantly lower than that of younger adults, as well as the ALFF of bilateral MT/V5, and these functional metrics were significantly negatively correlated with individuals’ MCT; 2) The FCs between V2 and left primary motor cortex, V3 and left secondary visual cortex, MT/V5 and left premotor cortex, as well as the FCs between V1, V2, V3 and MT/V5 regions for the older adults were significantly stronger than that of younger adults, and these FCs were correlated with individuals’ MCT; 3) Older adults’ K, Enodal and b of most nodes in temporal lobe were significantly lower than younger adults, and the Enodal of the right temporal cortex were significantly negatively correlated with individuals’ MCT; 4) Older adults’ global network properties including small-world parameters (Cp, γ, Lp, λ, and σ) and network efficiency (Eglob and Eloc) were all significantly lower than younger adults’, with CP and Eloc significantly negatively correlated with their MCT.These findings suggested that the decline of GMS for the elderly was associated not only with functional changes in the dorsal visual pathway, especially in the MT/V5, but may also with functional changes in broader areas of the whole brain, which supported the theory of “dedifferentiation”.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-27 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： Accurate perception of motion direction depends on current and prior information. However, it is not clear how the uncertainty of the current stimulus and the validity of expectation from prior information can be integrated into the decision-making for the directional perception. In our experiment, the validity of expectation from a cue, which appears before the stimulus, belongs to the proactive control system, while the uncertainty of stimulus, which changes by the signal-to-noise ratio, belongs to the reactive control system. It is unclear whether the proactive and reactive control systems engage in standard processing or work independently. In order to verify the integrated mechanism of the uncertainty of current sensory information and the validity of expectation from prior cue information on the perceptual decision of motion direction, two experiments were conducted. Experiment 1 employed random dot motion patterns (RDPs) to investigate the appropriate high and low uncertainty conditions. Participants should distinguish the moving direction of coherent dots (in the same direction) while noise dots move in a random direction. The PR (perceptual accuracy) values were compared for various ratios of coherent dots (100%, 80%, 70%, 60%, 20%, 0%). The results indicated that the PR of 60% ratio was significantly lower than that of 100%, while the PR of 20% ratio was significantly different from that of 0% and 60%. Consequently, 20% and 60% ratios can be considered as high and low uncertainty conditions in Experiment 2, respectively. Experiment 2 employed a task combined of associated learning and RDPs paradigm, in which a cue with high (90% correct) or low (10% correct) validity of expectation appeared before moving dots. Results showed that the PR of high uncertainty was significantly lower than that of low uncertainty and reflected a significant increase in PR with a valid cue, demonstrating an expectation effect. Moreover, there was considerable interaction between validity and uncertainty, while the expectation effect was found in both uncertainty conditions. However, the magnitude of expectation effect was lower in low uncertainty than in high uncertainty conditions, suggesting that uncertainty and validity can be influenced in standard cognitive processing. In summary, based on the present results, the prior and sensory information can be integrated into motion perception decision-making. The results can support the cooperation mechanism of proactive and reactive control systems and provide a theoretical basis to prevent traffic accidents. Investigating the effects of uncertainty and validity on the perceptual decision of motion direction of specific individuals (such as veteran or aged drivers) can be considered a future research topic.
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