Department of Psychology

Introduction

Methods

Results

Conclusions

Two hypotheses have been advanced for when motor sequence learning occurs: offline between bouts of practice or online concurrently with practice. A third possibility is that learning occurs both online and offline. A complication for differentiating between those hypotheses is a process known as reactive inhibition, whereby performance worsens over consecutively executed sequences, but dissipates during breaks. We advance a new quantitative modeling framework that incorporates reactive inhibition and in which the three learning accounts can be implemented. Our results show that reactive inhibition plays a far larger role in performance than is appreciated in the literature. Across four groups of participants in which break times and correct sequences per trial were varied, the best overall fits were provided by a hybrid model. The version of the offline model that does not account for reactive inhibition, which is widely assumed in the literature, had the worst fits. We discuss implications for extant hypotheses and directions for future research.

Childhood is marked by the rapid accumulation of knowledge and the prolific production of drawings. We conducted a systematic study of how children create and recognize line drawings of visual concepts. We recruited 2-10-year-olds to draw 48 categories via a kiosk at a childrens museum, resulting in >37K drawings. We analyze changes in the category-diagnostic information in these drawings using vision algorithms and annotations of object parts. We find developmental gains in childrens inclusion of category-diagnostic information that are not reducible to variation in visuomotor control or effort. Moreover, even unrecognizable drawings contain information about the animacy and size of the category children tried to draw. Using guessing games at the same kiosk, we find that children improve across childhood at recognizing each others line drawings. This work leverages vision algorithms to characterize developmental changes in childrens drawings and suggests that these changes reflect refinements in childrens internal representations.

Parenting by lying is a practice in which parents lie to their children to influence their emotions or behavior. Recently, researchers have tried to document the nature of this phenomenon and to understand its causes and consequences. The present research provides an overview of the research in the emerging field, describes some key theoretical and methodological challenges in studying this topic, and proposes a theoretical framework for understanding parenting by lying and for guiding future research to advance our knowledge about this understudied parenting practice.

What psychological mechanisms underlie aesthetic judgements? An influential account known as the Hedonic Marking of Fluency, later developed into a Processing Fluency Theory of Aesthetic Pleasure, posits that ease of processing elicits positive feelings and thus enhances stimulus evaluations. However, the theory faces empirical and conceptual challenges. In this paper, we extend it by integrating insights from predictive processing frameworks (PPF) and the epistemic motivation model (EMM). We propose four extensions. First, fluency of a stimulus depends on perceivers expectations-their internal model of the world. Second, perceivers also form expectations about fluency itself and thus can experience surprising fluency. These expectations can come from the individuals history, their current task and their environment. Third, perceivers can value fluency but also disfluency, reflecting their non-directional epistemic goals. Fourth, perceivers also have directional epistemic goals, preferring specific conclusions or belief content. Consequently, affective reactions depend on whether the stimulus satisfies those goals. These directional epistemic goals may override concerns about fluency or change the value of fluency associated with specific content. We review supporting evidence and introduce novel predictions. By integrating insights from PPF and EMM, our framework can better capture established fluency effects and highlights their limitations and extensions. This article is part of the theme issue Art, aesthetics and predictive processing: theoretical and empirical perspectives.

Background and aims

Design and setting

Cases

Measurements

Findings

Conclusion

The ability to infer others' prosocial vs. antisocial behavioral tendencies from minimal information is core to social reasoning. Aesthetic motivation (the value or appreciation of aesthetic beauty) is linked with prosocial tendencies, raising the question of whether this factor is used in interpersonal reasoning and in the attribution of mental capacities. We propose and test a model of this reasoning, predicting that evidence of others' aesthetic motivations should impact judgments of others' prosocial (and antisocial) tendencies by signaling a heightened capacity for emotional experience. In a series of four pre-registered experiments (total N = 1440), participants saw pairs of characters (as photos/vignettes), and judged which in each pair showed more of a mental capacity of interest. Distractor items prevented participants from guessing the hypothesis. For one critical pair of characters, both characters performed the same activity (music listening, painting, cooking, exercising, being in nature, doing math), but one was motivated by the activities' aesthetic value, and the other by its functional value. Across all activities, participants robustly chose aesthetically-motivated characters as more likely to behave compassionately (Exp. 1; 3), less likely to behave selfishly/manipulatively (Exp. 1; 3), and as more emotionally sensitive, but not more intelligent (Exp. 2; 3; 4). Emotional sensitivity best predicted compassionate behavior judgements (Exp. 3). Aesthetically-motivated characters were not reliably chosen as more helpful; intelligence best predicted helpfulness judgements (Exp. 4). Evidence of aesthetic motivation conveys important social information about others, impacting fundamental interpersonal judgments about others' mental life and social behavior.

Joint attention (JA) is an early-developing behavior that allows caregivers and infants to share focus on an object. Deficits in JA, as measured through face-following pathways, are a defining feature of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and are observable as early as 12 months of age in infants later diagnosed with ASD. However, recent evidence suggests that JA may be achieved through hand-following pathways by children with and without ASD. Development of JA through multimodal pathways has yet to be studied in infants with an increased likelihood of developing ASD. The current study investigated how 6-, 9- and 12-month-old infants with (FH+) and without (FH-) a family history of ASD engaged in JA. Parent-infant dyads played at home while we recorded the interaction over Zoom and later offline coded for hand movements and gaze. FH+ and FH- infants spent similar amounts of time in JA with their parents, but the cues available before JA were different. Parents of FH+ infants did more work to establish JA and used more face-following than hand-following pathways compared to parents of FH- infants, likely reflecting differences in infant motor or social behavior. These results suggest that early motor differences between FH+ and FH- infants may cascade into differences in social coordination.