Temptation shapes dishonesty and can alter working memory

This study shows that participants tend to remember an ambiguous, directional cue as biased towards stimuli associated with a high reward that can be attained dishonestly. Participants saw eight digits presented in a circular arrangement. On some trials, they were asked to report the digit (“Target Digit”) indicated by a jittery cue that was slightly biased in the direction of another digit (“Second Cued Digit”), which was either higher or lower than the Target Digit. Participants were paid based on the reported digit (higher digits meant higher pay) and not based on the accuracy of their report. In this setting, they could make self-serving mistakes by dishonestly reporting the Second Cued Digit when it was higher than the Target Digit. Replicating prior work, participants frequently made such self-serving mistakes. On other trials, after the digits disappeared, participants were asked to reproduce the direction of the jittery cue, without receiving any pay. Results showed that that participants’ reports of the cue were more biased toward high-rewarding digits than low-rewarding digits. This research provides preliminary evidence of a link between attention, dishonesty, and memory, offering an important constraint for theories in behavioral ethics.

Temptation Shapes Dishonesty and can Alter Working Memory

This study shows that participants tend to remember an ambiguous, directional cue as biased towards stimuli associated with a high reward that can be attained dishonestly. Participants saw eight digits presented in a circular arrangement. On some trials, they were asked to report the digit (“Target Digit”) indicated by a jittery cue that was slightly biased in the direction of another digit (“Second Cued Digit”), which was either higher or lower than the Target Digit. Participants were paid based on the reported digit (higher digits meant higher pay) and not based on the accuracy of their report. In this setting, they could make self-serving mistakes by dishonestly reporting the Second Cued Digit when it was higher than the Target Digit. Replicating prior work, participants frequently made such self-serving mistakes. On other trials, after the digits disappeared, participants were asked to reproduce the direction of the jittery cue, without receiving any pay. Results showed that that participants’ reports of the cue were more biased toward high-rewarding digits than low-rewarding digits. This research provides preliminary evidence of a link between attention, dishonesty, and memory, offering an important constraint for theories in behavioral ethics.

We remember the past as more rewarding than it was: effects of temptation on cheating and visual working memory

Here we report that participants’ visual working memory of an ambiguous cue is biased towards stimuli that are associated with a high reward. Participants saw eight digits presented in a circular arrangement. On some trials, they were asked to report the digit (“Target Digit”) indicated by a jittery cue that was slightly biased in the direction of another digit (“Second Cued Digit”), which was either higher, or lower than the Target Digit. Participants were paid based on the reported digit (higher digits meant higher pay) and not based on the accuracy of their report. In this setting, they could make self-serving mistakes by dishonestly reporting the Second Cued Digit when it was higher than the Target Digit. Replicating prior work, we found that participants frequently made such self-serving mistakes. On other trials, after the digits disappeared, participants were asked to reproduce the direction of the jittery cue, without receiving any pay. This allowed us to test whether participants’ memory of the cue was biased toward high-rewarding digits, and our results showed that it was. We cautiously suggest that self-serving mistakes might result from automatic biases in working memory, which provides an important constraint for theories in behavioral ethics

The Battle between the Correct and Mirror Writings of a Digit in Children’s Recognition Memory

Recent research into character reversals in writings produced by occidental children has shown that they mainly reverse the left-oriented digits (1, 2, 3, 7, and 9) and therefore appear to apply a right-orienting rule. But do they produce similar reversal errors when asked to recognize the digits? In an experiment, based on eye-tracking observations of 50 children (Mage = 5.4 years), children had to point towards a target digit in a 2 × 2 matrix also containing three distractor digits, one of which was the mirror-reversed writing of the correctly written target digit. This recognition task led to a true “battle” in children’s memory between the two writings of the target digit. This battle is shown in the graphical abstract that represents a heat map from a sub-sample of children (on the left side) and the fixation points map from an individual child (on the right side). Rather than following the predicted right-orienting rule, the children’s responses appeared to be biased towards digits in the right-hand column of the 2 × 2 matrices (when the reversed target digit was not in the same column as the correctly written target digit). As a whole, these findings support the hypotheses that many 4- to 6-year-old’s representations of the digit writings are unoriented in their memory and that these children may adopt different solutions to overcome this lack of orientation depending on whether they write or read.

Expert Attention: Attentional allocation depends on the differential development of multisensory number representations

Traditional models developed within cognitive psychology suggest that attention is deployed flexibly and irrespective of differences in expertise with to-be-attended stimuli. However, everyday environments are inherently multisensory and observers differ in familiarity with particular unisensory representations (e.g., number words, in contrast with digits). To test whether the predictions of the traditional models extend to such naturalistic settings, six-year-olds, 11-year-olds and young adults (N=83) searched for predefined numerals amongst a small or large number of distractor digits, while distractor number words, digits or their combination were presented peripherally. Concurrently presented number words and audiovisual stimuli that were compatible with the target digit facilitated young children’s selective attention. In contrast, for older children and young adults number words and audiovisual stimuli that were incompatible with their visual targets resulted in a cost on reaction time. These findings suggest that multisensory and familiarity-based influences interact dynamically as they shape selective attention. Therefore, models of selective attention should include multisensory and familiarity-dependent constraints.

Uncanny sums and products may prompt “wise choices”: Semantic misalignment and numerical judgments

Automatized arithmetic can interfere with numerical judgments, and semantic misalignment may diminish this interference. We gave 92 adults two numerical priming tasks that involved semantic misalignment. We found that misalignment either facilitated or reversed arithmetic interference effects, depending on misalignment type. On our number matching task, digit pairs (as primes for sums) appeared with nouns that were either categorically aligned and concrete (e.g., pigs, goats), categorically misaligned and concrete (e.g., eels, webs), or categorically misaligned concrete and intangible (e.g., goats, tactics). Next, participants were asked whether a target digit matched either member of the previously presented digit pair. Participants were slower to reject sum vs. neutral targets on aligned/concrete and misaligned/concrete trials, but unexpectedly slower to reject neutral versus sum targets on misaligned/concrete-intangible trials. Our sentence verification task also elicited unexpected facilitation effects. Participants read a cue sentence that contained two digits, then evaluated whether a subsequent target statement was true or false. When target statements included the product of the two preceding digits, this inhibited accepting correct targets and facilitated rejecting incorrect targets, although only when semantic context did not support arithmetic. These novel findings identify a potentially facilitative role of arithmetic in semantically misaligned contexts and highlight the complex role of contextual factors in numerical processing.

Normalization in human somatosensory cortex

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to measure activity in human somatosensory cortex and to test for cross-digit suppression. Subjects received stimulation (vibration of varying amplitudes) to the right thumb (target) with or without concurrent stimulation of the right middle finger (mask). Subjects were less sensitive to target stimulation (psychophysical detection thresholds were higher) when target and mask digits were stimulated concurrently compared with when the target was stimulated in isolation. fMRI voxels in a region of the left postcentral gyrus each responded when either digit was stimulated. A regression model (called a forward model) was used to separate the fMRI measurements from these voxels into two hypothetical channels, each of which responded selectively to only one of the two digits. For the channel tuned to the target digit, responses in the left postcentral gyrus increased with target stimulus amplitude but were suppressed by concurrent stimulation to the mask digit, evident as a shift in the gain of the response functions. For the channel tuned to the mask digit, a constant baseline response was evoked for all target amplitudes when the mask was absent and responses decreased with increasing target amplitude when the mask was concurrently presented. A computational model based on divisive normalization provided a good fit to the measurements for both mask-absent and target + mask stimulation. We conclude that the normalization model can explain cross-digit suppression in human somatosensory cortex, supporting the hypothesis that normalization is a canonical neural computation.

Nasotemporal ERP differences: evidence for increased inhibition of temporal distractors

Previous research has demonstrated behavioral advantages for stimuli in the temporal relative to the nasal visual hemifield. To investigate whether this nasotemporal asymmetry reflects a genuinely attentional bias, we recorded event-related potentials in a task where participants identified a color-defined target digit in one visual hemifield that was accompanied by an irrelevant distractor in the opposite hemifield ( experiment 1). To dissociate the processing of stimuli in nasal and temporal visual hemifields, an eye-patching procedure was used. Targets triggered N2pc components that marked their attentional selection. Unexpectedly, these N2pc components were larger and emerged earlier for nasal relative to temporal targets. Experiment 2 provided evidence that this nasotemporal asymmetry for the N2pc is linked to an increased attentional inhibition of temporal distractors. Relative to nasal distractors, temporal distractors elicited an increased inhibition-related contralateral positivity, resulting in more pronounced differences between contralateral and ipsilateral event-related potentials on trials with temporal distractors and nasal targets. These results provide novel evidence for a genuinely attentional contribution to nasotemporal asymmetries and suggest that such asymmetries are associated with top-down controlled distractor inhibition.

The Limited Readability of Lansdell Numerals

In contrast with earlier research showing Lansdell numerals superior in legibility to conventional number shapes during brief exposure of single digits, the present study found that Lansdell numerals are read at least 15% more slowly than Mackworth or Elite numbers when groups of five symbols are scanned for a target digit, and are read 34% more slowly when the five digits in each group must be added. This lower readability indicates that Lansdell numerals should not be used in situations requiring interpretation of displayed numbers, i.e., should not be used for most display applications.

Eye-Movement Patterns in Scanning Numeric Displays

Eye movements of three Ss during visual scanning of 15° 2′ 6 × 6 numeric matrices were studied, using a modification of the Mackworth eye-marker apparatus, as a function of frequency of target numeral (0 to 7), digit scanned for, and learning (176 trials). The results indicated that time to scan varied significantly with both frequency and target digit, and these time differences were reflected by significant departures from the over-all average number of fixations (18), while average duration of fixations (.31 sec.) remained relatively constant. The average durations of fixations on target numbers (.32 sec.) and non-target numbers (.30 sec.) were not statistically significantly different. Average center-to-center distance between the closest fixation and a target number was 2° 28′ and this distance differed among digits, being 2° 42′ for the most quickly recognized and 1° 36′ for the most difficult to recognize. The results indicated the possible role of eye movements in information processing.