Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

Bayesian decision theory proposes that people make statistically rational decisions by combining prior knowledge with sensory information (likelihoods). This framework successfully explains many aspects of human behaviour. However, debate persists over whether people perform precise Bayesian computations (i.e., explicit Bayesian strategy) or rely on less demanding strategies - such as approximations or heuristics - that produce Bayesian-like behaviour (i.e., implicit Bayesian strategy). To address this, we examined people's sensitivity to metamers: different prior-likelihood combinations yielding identical optimal policies. An explicit Bayesian observer would show a temporary performance drop immediately after a switch of prior-likelihood combination, followed by recovery, reflecting prior updating. In two studies, we trained participants to estimate hidden target locations drawn from a Gaussian prior. On each trial, scattered dots provided likelihood information. Over time, participants learned the prior and combined it with likelihood information to infer target locations. We then covertly introduced an untrained prior-likelihood metamer. Unlike explicit Bayesian observers, participants' performance declined after the switch and persisted throughout the untrained pair presentation. This finding challenges strict Bayesian interpretations of task performance and suggests that participants rely instead on likelihood-sensitive strategy that is neither explicit Bayesian nor does it not fully integrate prior information. Our study demonstrates how metamer manipulations can distinguish behaviour that merely appears Bayesian, from behaviour genuinely produced by Bayesian computations, and calls for the use of metamers for ruling out alternative explanations of Bayesian-like behaviours.

The Sense of Agency (SoA), the experience of being in control of ones own actions, is thought to emerge from the comparison of internal sensorimotor predictions with afferent feedback. Classical comparator models treat SoA as arising from a prediction-feedback comparison. Volitional action likely engages multiple forward models that predict distinct features of an outcome, such as its timing and spatial trajectory. Whether prediction errors arising from these distinct forward models are integrated into a domain-general representation of agency, and if so by what computational logic, remains unresolved. We addressed this question using a Virtual Reality reaching task. Participants observed a virtual hand replicating their movements while we independently manipulated two sensorimotor domains: temporal delay and spatial angle deviation, in isolation and in factorial combinations. After each trial, participants made an SoA judgment. We examined whether SoA responses show computational hallmarks of integration between different features of sensorimotor prediction. Specifically, we pre-registered three computational models (Multiplicative, Minimum, and Mean) and compared their fit to per-trial responses. Across an exploratory sample (N = 16) and a pre-registered replication (N = 38), SoA declined monotonically with conflict magnitude in both domains. Critically, a Multiplicative integration rule consistently outperformed the Minimum and Mean rules. These results provide direct evidence for domain-general integration between prediction errors in SoA, governed by a multiplicative computational logic.

The attentional blink is a well-known phenomenon illustrating the limitations of human attention: When two visual targets are presented in rapid succession, identification of the second target is often impaired. While the attentional blink is known to attenuate when targets share perceptual features or category membership, real-world objects are also linked through contextual associations, shaped by objects typically occurring within the same environments. Here, we devised an attentional blink experiment in which we orthogonally manipulated contextual and categorical relationships between the two targets while controlling for their perceptual similarity. As the key result, contextual associations facilitated identification of the second target but impaired identification of the first target. These findings suggest that contextual associations yield distinct benefits and costs for visual cognition, where enhanced attentional access to subsequent targets is traded off against increased interference between targets.

Working memory (WM) is often assumed to play a stronger role in mental operations than in pure storage. However, much of the evidence comes from tasks using novel stimuli requiring active maintenance. Everyday cognition, in contrast, often involves operating on information retrieved from long-term memory (LTM), which may not always require sustained WM storage. Moreover, prior evidence for enhanced WM involvement relies on univariate measures, which cannot separate procedural demands of operations from representational strength of operation-relevant items. Here, we used EEG to test how WM supports mental operations on LTM. First, participants studied color-position associations. Then, on each trial, a color cue prompted retrieval of its associated position, followed by a novel position. Across blocks, participants either performed a mental operation to compute the positions' spatial midpoint or judged whether the probe matched one of the memory positions. Representations of task type and memory position were assessed using MVPA and inverted encoding models on alpha-band power, respectively. Task type was decoded throughout the trial, reflecting persistent task-set representations. In contrast, LTM position was represented in WM more strongly for integration than recognition early in the retention and operation periods, but these differences were transient. These findings challenge the view that mental operations inherently demand enhanced WM engagement: when information is available in LTM, increased WM involvement is transient, not sustained.

Working memory is capacity-limited, but interactions with episodic memory may offset this constraint. We tested moment-by-moment contributions of episodic representations to working memory by combining the N-back and Mnemonic Similarity tasks. Thirty-one participants, undergoing eye-tracking, first encoded items in a one-back task, classifying them as "same" or "similar" to their predecessor. In a subsequent two-back task, mnemonic discrimination showed a graded, item-specific benefit of prior experience: performance was best for previously compared items, whereas recognition of identical repeats was unaffected. Successful discrimination of previously compared items was accompanied by greater pupil dilation, gradually emerging gaze patterns resembling those elicited by their similar pair-mate, and higher gaze-similarity between one-back and two-back target viewing. Diverging gaze patterns between pair-mates during one-back further predicted two-back discrimination. These findings challenge working memory's characterization as an isolated system, demonstrating how it recruits episodic computations - encoding distinct traces, predicting upcoming content, and reinstating it at retrieval.

Predicting patterns of behavioural coordination that emerge in small interacting groups is challenging because goal-directed social action is shaped by complex reciprocal and compensatory dynamics. In this study, we examined whether formal symmetry principles derived from group theory could explain coordination patterns among children performing a triadic jumping task. We investigated how geometric symmetries of the task environment and dispositional (a)symmetries associated with leader-follower tendencies jointly constrain collective behaviour. Forty-seven children were classified into symmetric or asymmetric triads based on teacher evaluations of leadership dispositions. Each triad completed multiple trials of a synchronized jumping game requiring movement between adjacent hoops arranged in triangular or square configurations. Results showed that temporal asymmetries in inter-child movement (first, second, or last to jump) were consistent with group-theoretic predictions. In triangular configurations, observed asymmetries corresponded to the highest-order subgroup defined by task and dispositional symmetries. These findings demonstrate that environmental symmetry exerts a hierarchically dominant constraint on collective coordination, within which actor dispositional (a)symmetries further modulate emerging patterns.

Attention enables the prioritisation of task-relevant information, whether encountered in the external world or maintained as internal representations. While the mechanisms of attention have been extensively studied within perception and working memory, everyday cognition often confronts us with competing demands from both domains simultaneously. How attention is divided under such cross-domain demands remains poorly understood. Here, participants performed a combined perception and working-memory task in which an informative cue appeared between a working-memory display and a subsequent perceptual display. On most trials, this cue simultaneously indicated two items for prioritisation: either two encoded working-memory items or two upcoming perceptual items (within-domain attention), or one item from each domain (cross-domain attention). Combining behavioural measures with electroencephalography allowed us to characterise how dividing attention across domains shapes performance and neural activity relative to dividing attention within one domain. Behaviourally, we observed a striking asymmetry: perceptual performance benefited from cross-domain versus within-domain attention, whereas working-memory performance showed the opposite pattern. Mirroring this behavioural imbalance, time-resolved decoding revealed distinct cross-versus within-domain competition in both perception and working memory, suggesting that external and internal attention are neurally separable even when engaged simultaneously. This competition between domains was also evident in neural markers of spatial attentional orienting: while initially impaired during cross-domain attention, orienting progressively favoured external over internal information. Together, these findings show that when perception and working memory compete, attention is not divided evenly. Instead, cross-domain attention constitutes a distinct attentional state, with its own prioritisation dynamics and neural representation. Significance statementPerception and working memory are typically studied as separate targets of attention, yet real-world behaviour requires continuous negotiation between what is currently available in the external environment and what is held in mind. This study addresses how that negotiation unfolds when both sources of information become relevant at once. By directly comparing divided attention across versus within domains, we show that competition between perception and working memory is not neutral: it produces asymmetric behavioural consequences, distinct neural states, and a progressive bias in attentional prioritisation towards upcoming perceptual input. These findings suggest that cross-domain attention is not a balanced extension of within-domain attention, but a domain-biased prioritisation regime in which perception and working memory systematically trade off against each other.

How conceptual knowledge is organized in the mind remains difficult to observe directly in natural behavior. Here we show that explaining knowledge to others brings out spatially structured representations of conceptual memory in naturalistic speech. Participants with varying schizotypy traits learned associations between two conceptual dimensions through either image-based or language-based input, and subsequently described their memory strategies or explained how they would teach the information to others. Spatial structure was more likely to emerge during teaching than reflection, particularly following image-based learning. As predicted by prior evidence that visual input requires the active construction of internal relational scaffolding, cognitive disorganization selectively attenuated spatial expression after image-based, but not language-based, learning. These findings establish naturalistic speech as a behavioral readout of conceptual map structure, and suggest that a common mechanism links map construction and cognitive disorganization across task performance and verbal communication.

Adaptive behaviour often requires deciding when to act in the absence of an explicit sensory cue. While temporal expectations are known to optimize behaviour when anticipated events trigger responses, it remains unclear how learned temporal regularities are transformed into internally generated decisions. Here, we developed the Temporal Inference Task, a novel virtual reality paradigm designed to isolate this transformation. Participants repeatedly observed an identical visual sequence in which a virtual object approached their hand. On most trials, a brief tactile No-Go signal instructed them to withhold their response, whereas on the remaining trials its omission required them to respond. Because Go trials were never accompanied by an explicit cue, participants had to infer when the expected No-Go signal could no longer occur before initiating a response. Across blocks, the timing of the No-Go signal was systematically varied, allowing participants to learn distinct temporal regularities while Go trials remained physically identical. Participants systematically shifted their response timing according to the learned temporal regularities. This behavioural adaptation was accompanied by corresponding shifts in parietal alpha- and beta-band desynchronization, with steeper pre-response desynchronization consistently preceding faster responses. Together, these findings identify a candidate neural mechanism through which learned temporal regularities are transformed into internally generated decisions about when to act.

Analysis does not always enhance aesthetic experience. Philosophical accounts have long suggested that decomposing an aesthetic experience into determinate components may weaken it, yet this possibility has rarely been tested experimentally. To examine whether, when, and how analysis produces divergent effects on aesthetic experience, we conducted two experiments manipulating analysis depth. Experiment 1 showed that, during affective analysis of visual art, deep analysis produced a significantly weaker increase in aesthetic ratings than shallow analysis. In Experiment 2, we selected this condition to investigate the underlying mechanism. The behavioral effect was replicated: deep analysis removed the increase produced by shallow analysis without reducing ratings below the image baseline. Frequency-resolved brain network analysis further revealed a stronger task-related component and higher spatial entropy within the default mode network under deep analysis. Network-behavior correlations observed under shallow analysis were absent under deep analysis, suggesting reduced correspondence between the default-mode network (DMN) organization and aesthetic experience. Exploratory analyses further showed that spatial weights in the lateral temporal cortex and inferior parietal lobule were associated with smaller increases in aesthetic ratings. Together, these findings indicate that deeper analysis can selectively weaken improvements in aesthetic experience by altering how affective information is organized within the DMN.

Navigating daily tasks requires working memory to retain information, formulate plans, and execute goal-directed actions. While frequent distractions may momentarily disrupt planned actions, individuals typically exhibit the cognitive resilience necessary to regroup and resume goal-directed behavior. How people adapt to these perturbations in dynamic environments remains unclear. To address this, we developed a working memory paradigm inspired by the arcade game Snake, in which participants navigated an agent to collect memorized targets while EEG and eye-tracking data were recorded. On each trial, participants encoded the location of one or two targets (apples), maintained them during a delay, and then guided a virtual agent (snake) to collect them. Critically, on 50% of trials, a secondary task introduced high-value novel targets that required immediate pursuit; these interruptions altered the agents spatial position, necessitating a re-evaluation of the original plan upon returning to the primary goal. Behaviorally, participants prioritized the target proximal to the agent and flexibly revised their collection order after distraction according to the agents updated position. Eye-movement analyses showed structured gaze sweeps during encoding that were consistent with efficient route planning. Representational similarity analyses of EEG data revealed that agent-centered object vectors were represented more strongly than absolute object locations during the delay. Following distraction, object vectors were recomputed relative to the agents new position, and representational strength was redistributed when the action plan was updated. Whereas neural representations were biased toward the distal, future-relevant target, gaze was preferentially directed toward the proximal, immediately relevant target, suggesting complementary roles for internal attention and external attention in multistep planning. During distraction, backward gaze sweeps revisited memorized target locations, indicating that replanning unfolded dynamically while the intervening task was still ongoing. These data demonstrate that prospective neural coding and attentional sampling coordinate to adapt behaviors to the shifting demands of goal pursuit in dynamic environments.

Confidence evaluates the likely accuracy of a current decision. However, to be maximally informative about accuracy, confidence judgments should incorporate information about ones broader decision tendencies, such as their propensity to favor specific alternatives. We distinguish bias-aware confidence, which considers such tendencies, from bias-blind confidence, which relies only on evidence available on the current trial. To adjudicate between bias-aware and bias-blind confidence, we identified a signature of bias-aware confidence: the down-weighting of confidence for alternatives that a participant is biased toward. We then used a large dataset (N = 200) spanning 4- and 8-choice digit-classification tasks to show that humans reliably exhibit this signature of bias-aware confidence. This effect was reduced under speed pressure and could not be explained by guessing. In contrast to the human results, artificial neural networks (ANNs) trained for object recognition lacked this signature of bias- aware confidence. Importantly, augmenting ANNs with a metacognitive module that allows confidence to take the networks biases into account led to the emergence of human-like bias- aware confidence. These findings show that human confidence incorporates not only information from the current trial but also longer-term decision tendencies, and that this capacity - absent in standard ANNs - can be conferred through specialized metacognitive mechanisms.

This study characterizes how people combine visual and tactile directional cues while acting in a fully immersive 360{degrees} virtual environment. Participants used a vibrotactile belt and VR headset to localize targets while we manipulated visual reliability and the spatial discrepancy between visual and tactile signals. Behaviorally, degraded visual input made visual responses slower, less precise, and more susceptible to tactile pull, whereas tactile-guided responses remained comparatively stable. We then asked whether these behavioral changes reflected a change in multisensory binding or a change in sensory uncertainty. A Bayesian Causal Inference (BCI) framework captured the structure of behavior under high visual reliability and continued to track individual differences under low visual reliability, even though its absolute goodness-of-fit decreased. Under extreme visual noise, Bayesian Information Criterion sometimes favored a simpler Maximum Likelihood Estimation (MLE) model, but MLE showed poor absolute fit and did not capture meaningful behavioral variability. This dissociation shows that statistical parsimony and explanatory validity can diverge when behavior becomes highly variable. BCI-derived parameters further indicated that degraded vision increased visual uncertainty, while the prior tendency to bind visual and tactile cues remained stable. Kinematic analyses added a complementary insight: early movement trajectories were strongly shaped by tactile signals, even when final localization was visually guided. Together, these findings suggest that visual-tactile integration in 360{degrees} environments depends on sensory reliability and task demands, with tactile cues providing fast body-centered guidance when visual information is limited.

Self-directed learning allows learners to actively control their learning experience and has been shown to enhance memory compared with matched yoked learning. However, it remains unclear when and how active control modulates memory-related neural activity during learning and retrieval. We recorded electroencephalography (EEG) while participants encoded objects under active and yoked learning conditions and again during a delayed recognition test approximately 24 h later. We examined event-related potential (ERP) activity across earlier processing windows, including pre-stimulus slow potentials and early N2 activity, and later processing windows, including P300, late slow-wave, and post-stimulus slow-potential activity. We also examined encoding-retrieval similarity (ERS) between neural patterns during encoding and retrieval. Behaviorally, active control improved delayed recognition, with the advantage selectively expressed in detailed recognition. In the ERP analyses, earlier processing windows showed memory-related effects, with pre-stimulus slow-potential and N2 activity differentiating subsequently remembered from forgotten items, but were not modulated by active control. By contrast, active control modulated later memory-related ERP activity, with remembered-forgotten differences expressed during late stimulus-related and immediate post-stimulus processing only in the active condition. ERS showed a similar active-control modulation: memory-related encoding-retrieval pattern similarity was evident under active learning, but not under yoked learning, with this effect involving relatively late encoding and retrieval windows. Together, these findings support a constructive-processing account, suggesting that memory formation under active control depends more strongly on rich, detailed encoding representations that can be reinstated during retrieval.

BACKGROUND: An individual's adaptation to threatening environments under uncertainty is reflected in stress responses. Predictability (the ability to anticipate events) and controllability (the ability to control outcomes) are central to how one adapts, yet their joint influence on aversive learning remains unclear. METHODS: Thirty healthy adults completed a probabilistic aversive learning task in which cue-outcome contingencies varied across levels of predictability and controllability, i.e. whether shock intensity depended on prediction accuracy. Prediction accuracy, reaction time, subjective stress ratings, and skin conductance responses were recorded throughout. Trial-wise learning dynamics were estimated using the Volatile Kalman Filter. RESULTS: Prediction accuracy reduced as environments became less predictable and negatively associated with higher learning rates across predictability levels, with the strongest relationship observed in highly predictable blocks. Skin conductance responses showed that moderately predictable environments elicited responses like those in highly predictable environments when accurate predictions reduced shock intensity, but resembled responses in unpredictable environments when shock intensity was uncontrollable. Model comparison revealed a double dissociation between subjective stress ratings and skin conductance responses. Subjective ratings were best explained by model-derived volatility when prediction accuracy determined shock intensity and by belief uncertainty when it was independent of prediction accuracy, whereas skin conductance responses showed the reverse pattern. Reaction times were best explained by belief uncertainty when predictions influenced shock intensity. Higher anxiety was associated with elevated learning rates in highly and moderately predictable blocks when predictions did not control shock intensity.

Response inhibition is a key control function that allows humans to perform safe, goal-directed behaviors. The dominant behavioral-computational model holds that response inhibition fails when the inhibition process is too slow to intercept unwanted movements. However, many have hypothesized that some inhibitory failures instead result from a failure to launch the inhibition process altogether. Since no method exists to identify individual trigger failure (TF) trials, they are hitherto a largely hypothetical phenomenon. We combined Bayesian process-mixture modeling with likelihood ratio testing and jackknife resampling to identify TF trials in 253 humans. We find that TF indeed represent a separate category from other inhibitory failures. Unlike other inhibitory failures, TF do not result from premature responses. Furthermore, TF lack a stop-signal P3 event-related potential, a neural index of response inhibition. Surprisingly, TF do not result from perceptual/attentional lapses. Thus, TF are a qualitatively distinct class of executive failure during response inhibition.

Several theories propose that perception and attention are governed by rhythmic processes that give rise to periodic fluctuations in behavior. However, empirical support for behavioral rhythms has been derived largely from paradigms involving brief, static stimuli. Here, we introduce a temporal averaging task requiring integration of rapidly unfolding visual features. Across three experiments, we tested averaging of orientation, size, and color under different eccentricity conditions. We used a temporally weighted averaging model to assess whether the influence of individual stimulus samples on perceptual estimates exhibits periodic modulation over time. We found no common rhythmic signature across tasks. Instead, orientation and size judgments showed reliable low-frequency modulations (<2.5 Hz), whereas color judgments showed only weak trends. Higher-frequency components (~3.5-8 Hz), often linked to theta and alpha rhythms, were observed only in a subset of participants and were limited to parafoveal orientation processing. These findings challenge the notion of universal behavioral rhythms and instead suggest that temporal dynamics are task-dependent, with slow oscillatory processes emerging as the most consistent feature.

Where and how we move our eyes through a natural scene depends jointly on the scene and on the viewer. How the spatial and temporal organization of viewing changes across the lifespan, and whether those changes relate to memory, remains unclear. We recorded eye movements from a lifespan cohort (N = 179, ages 5-79) during free viewing of naturalistic scenes, then tested recognition across graded levels of image degradation. Characterizing each observer by how closely their viewing corresponded to that of age peers, young adults, and a stimulus-driven salience model, we found a developmental dissociation: consistency in where the eyes were directed increased monotonically with age, whereas consistency in how they moved -- saccade direction, length, and fixation duration -- followed an inverted-U peaking in young adulthood. Recognition sensitivity followed an inverted-U of the same form. Across all three reference frames, typicality in how the eyes moved, but not in their spatial targeting, predicted recognition.

The present study examined the relationship between the DSM-5 diagnostic criteria for gambling disorder (GD) and gambling severity via an item response theory (IRT) analysis in two large German population survey data sets (Buth et al. (2022, 2024)). IRT-based person fit analyses may reveal atypical response patterns (e.g. endorsing criteria linked to higher levels of disorder severity, but not criteria linked to lower levels). We examined the link of such atypical response patterns and mental health as measured by the MHI-5, employing a 2-parameter-logistic (2PL) IRT model and a linear mixed model with random intercepts. Results largely replicated previously reported item severity rankings across both samples: GD criteria such as loss chasing and a preoccupation with gambling were generally linked to lower severity levels, whereas criteria such as withdrawal symptoms or job/family problems where generally linked to higher severity levels. Modelling revealed a reduced assessment sensitivity in lower gambling severity ranges. Furthermore, person fit analyses suggest that atypical symptom patterns may be linked to poorer mental health (MHI-5). Implications for the interpretability of total scores of endorsed criteria and the validity of diagnostic practices determining eligibility for treatment and financial compensation are discussed.

The vestibular system has been implicated in several aspects of self-representation, including bodily self-location, yet its role in episodic source and reality monitoring remains unclear. Moreover, symptoms of depersonalisation and derealisation (DPDR) have been associated with both vestibular dysfunction and altered source and reality monitoring. We tested whether noisy galvanic vestibular stimulation (nGVS) modulates source and reality monitoring during a word-encoding paradigm and whether this increased symptoms of DPDR. Sixty young adults (N = 30 active nGVS, N = 30 sham) encoded words that varied by context (spoken vs. imagined), agentic source (self vs. other), and valence (positive vs. threat) before completing source/reality judgments. Active nGVS reduced overall accuracy relative to sham on both reality and source monitoring. Across conditions, self-referential items were remembered with greater sensitivity compared to other-referential items, and spoken items were recalled with greater sensitivity than imagined items. We additionally show an interaction effect whereby active nGVS reduced accuracy specifically for imagined and threat-valenced items. Trait DPDR did not moderate the effects of stimulation, although higher trait DPDR was associated with a more liberal reality-monitoring response criterion. Results indicate that transient vestibular perturbation via nGVS can impair source monitoring for internalised and threatening stimuli and impairs cognitive distinctions between internally and externally generated events in general, supporting a role for vestibular input in maintaining self-other and reality boundaries in episodic memory.