Cognitive-motor interference refers to the interaction between cognitive and motor processes occurring at the same time. Recently, balance control parameters while standing on a force plate were analysed using an event-related approach while participants performed a Simon task. Resolving response conflict in incongruent trials reduced balance adjustments prior to manual response execution, suggesting a bottleneck for concurrent cognitive and balance control. In the present study, we combined this approach with a cognitive dual task which comprised a visual-vocal short-term memory task with a delayed vocal response and an auditory-manual reaction time (RT) task. This hybrid psychological refractory period (PRP) paradigm created a functional processing bottleneck during memory consolidation in the visual-vocal short-term memory task. To examine how this cognitive bottleneck influences balance control, 48 participants per experiment stood quietly on a force plate, and balance control was quantified as moment variability (mN·m) in 100 ms sliding windows. We varied the stimulus-onset asynchrony (SOA: 100 vs. 1,000 ms) between the targets (Experiment 1) and task load (report vs. ignore the visual object; Experiment 2). As expected, auditory-manual RTs increased at short SOA, showing dual-task interference that persisted in ignore trials, consistent with task-set inertia. Force-plate data were analysed using cluster permutation analysis to identify time-specific effects. Participants were less likely to adjust balance during cognitive task processing and more likely after task completion, independent of the presence of a cognitive bottleneck. These findings suggest that balance control flexibly delays or advances balance adjustments based on cognitive demands, thereby reducing cognitive-motor interference. PUBLIC SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT: This study shows that when people are performing demanding cognitive tasks, such as remembering information while responding to auditory signals, balance adjustments can be temporarily reduced or altered, particularly when the cognitive tasks are difficult. These findings highlight the interaction of cognitive tasks and balance and specifically provide insights into how cognitive processes influence stability during standing. Our understanding of the mechanisms linking cognition and balance may guide future studies on how such interactions change with age or cognitive impairment.

The Corsi Block Tapping Test (CBT) assesses short-term visuospatial memory, while the Walking Corsi Test (WalCT) introduces greater motor and spatial demands. The impact of visual trajectory presentation on these tests remains debated.

While reward cues have long been considered to enhance creative performance, little is known about can rewards affect creative problem solving by manipulate the flexibility and persistence state. Real and hypothetical rewards and two creative problem-solving tasks were used to answer this question. We tested the hypothesis that real rewards would positively affect creativity tasks that benefit from a persistence state (e.g., compound remote associate, CRA), while hypothetical rewards would positively impact tasks that benefit from a flexibility state (e.g., chunk decomposition, CD). Additionally, we hypothesized that low rewards would yield better solution performance than high rewards. The results revealed that hypothetical-high rewards resulted in lower solution performance compared to other reward conditions. Furthermore, hypothetical rewards enhanced performance in novel CD tasks requiring reconfiguration. Participants motivated by real rewards exhibited higher persistence compared to those motivated by hypothetical rewards. Hypothetical rewards during the preparation interval induced a metacontrol bias favoring flexibility. These findings could lead to new views about how the reward impact a creative mindset.

Pre-crastination is the tendency to hasten task completion, even at the expense of extra effort. Discovered in 2014, it is a widespread phenomenon hypothesized to reduce cognitive effort. We sought to determine whether pre-crastination holds for multi-step path planning. In Experiments 1 and 2, our university-student participants saw all but one of the numbers from 1 to 6 on a computer screen and, when ready, hit the spacebar (Experiment 1) or touched the trackpad (Experiment 2) to reveal the missing number. In both experiments, they then clicked on the targets sequentially as quickly as possible. The time for the first target was longer than for any other target even when noninitial targets were withheld from the preview. A third experiment confirmed that the lengthening of the first response was due to resolution of response uncertainty. The results as a whole confirmed that participants hastened task completion by expending extra effort up front (spending extra time to set up all the responses they would perform). The study extends the reach of pre-crastination and points to the general tendency, now manifest in a growing number of contexts, that, when possible, people complete decision-making about forthcoming response sequences as soon as they can. We refer to this tendency as cognitive frontloading and offer it as a new companion to cognitive offloading, which has been much studied. Both methods reduce memory demands, but in different ways.

The Other-Race Effect (ORE), characterized by superior recognition of same-race (SR) faces, remains poorly understood in children despite robust adult evidence. Developmental studies yield conflicting results, reflecting immature social categorization systems and limited cross-race experience. Drawing on the Categorization-Individuation Model, this study integrates behavioral and eye-tracking measures to investigate how social categorization (via country labels) and motivational incentives shape racial face recognition in Chinese children. Using both real and cartoon faces, we demonstrate three key findings: (1) Own-country labels enhance recognition accuracy and attentional engagement (longer fixations, larger pupil diameters) for labeled faces, overriding racial features; (2) Strong motivation eliminates the ORE by increasing configural processing for other-race (OR) faces; (3) Cartoon faces show comparable label and motivation effects, though with reduced magnitude. These results advance the CIM by demonstrating that top-down social cognition-not just bottom-up expertise-scaffolds early face processing. This research provides novel insights into children's racial face processing and has implications for bias mitigation interventions.

Research on level 1 visual perspective taking (L1-VPT) has been debating whether L1-VPT is an implicit socially rooted or rather a non-social process. Using online versions of the Dot Perspective Task by Samson et al. (Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 36(5), 1255-1266, 2010) we approached this question by comparing L1-VPT for robot vs. human avatars. In line with the assumption that visual perspective taking is due to mentalizing, we predicted that perspective taking, leading to altercentric intrusions, should occur more strongly for the human avatars than for the robot avatars. In two experiments, a within-participant design was applied: 2 (avatar: human vs. robot) × 2 (avatar perspective: consistent vs. inconsistent) × 2 (task: avatar perspective vs. self-perspective). The human avatar was a male in Experiment 1 (n = 120) and a female in Experiment 2 (n = 113). The analyses of reaction times and error rates showed significant, medium to large egocentric intrusions and significant, small to medium altercentric intrusions for both avatar types, suggesting interference from the irrelevant perspective. Against the prediction, the altercentric intrusions for human avatars were not significantly larger than for robot avatars. Taking into account methodological concerns and suggesting future experimental variations, we argue that the submentalizing approach assuming that visual perspective taking is based on domain general processes provides a good explanation for our results.

Road sign comprehension is integral to safe driving, with age and driving experience influencing individuals' ability to interpret signs effectively. This study conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis to synthesise research data from 2004 to 2024 to understand how age and driving experience affect the ability to comprehend road signs. The review identified factors influencing comprehension, including personal characteristics and cognitive design features. Meta-analyses revealed significant differences in accident rates between young and older drivers and novice and experienced drivers. Specifically, the analysis of 3,330 participants (1,746 young drivers and 1,584 older drivers) showed that young drivers were involved in 15.88% points more accidents than older drivers, with high heterogeneity across studies (I² = 99%, P < 0.00001). Similarly, among 1,958 participants (721 novice drivers and 1,237 experienced drivers), novice drivers were involved in 8.68% points more accidents than experienced drivers, also with substantial variability (I² = 98%, P < 0.00001). The review proposed future research directions to improve road sign design, enhance drivers' understanding, and promote road safety, emphasising the importance of advanced cognitive design features and contextual signage solutions. Insights for policymakers, transportation authorities, and researchers were highlighted, stressing the need to assess traffic sign comprehension and to regularly incorporate user-centred design approaches. Sensitivity analyses and publication bias assessment further strengthened the review's findings, laying the groundwork for evidence-based interventions to enhance road safety worldwide.

Wayfinding skills are known to decay in older age. The present study investigated the differential effects of older age on five cognitive strategies that travelers can use for decision-making at intersections. To avoid interindividual and methodological biases, we used a within-person approach, and designed similar environments for all strategies. Thirty young and thirty older adults were asked to navigate five mazes that required decision-making by either the serial order strategy, the associative cue strategy, the beacon strategy, the relative location strategy, or the cognitive map strategy. The order of the five mazes was counterbalanced using a Latin square design; to reduce fatigue, the mazes were administered over two separate sessions. In agreement with extant research, we found that older participants' wayfinding accuracy was poorer than that of young ones. Contrary to literature, however, this age-related decrement was not more pronounced for the cognitive map strategy than for the serial order and the associative cue strategy. We also found that the correlation between wayfinding performance with different strategies decreased to virtually zero in older age. Further regarding the cognitive map strategy, we found that older adults showed reduced ability to acquire incidental knowledge during wayfinding, but with no evidence that they compensated for these deficits by relying on auxiliary environmental cues. We interpret this pattern of findings as evidence that age-related wayfinding deficits are sensitive to task difficulty and are associated with a disintegration of the cognitive mechanisms involved in wayfinding, particularly in tasks with high visuospatial demands and multitasking requirements.

Evidence indicates that faces are rapidly detected and prioritized in visual processing due to their social relevance. Crucially, research has shown that faces capture attention even when they are task-irrelevant, suggesting the existence of an automatic, domain-specific attentional mechanism. This prioritization appears to extend to face pareidolia-the illusory perception of faces in objects-indicating that face detection may rely on a broadly tuned mechanism that classifies stimuli as faces or non-faces based on relatively minimal information, such as the T-shaped configuration common to all faces. To explore whether such a configuration is sufficient to automatically capture attention, we conducted three behavioral experiments using a visual search paradigm. In Experiments 1A (online) and 1B (lab-based), participants searched for a butterfly target while either a real or an illusory face appeared among object distractors. Contrary to expectations, neither real nor illusory faces captured attention. In Experiment 2, in different blocks, participants were asked to search for a real face, an illusory face, or a butterfly presented among object distractors. The results showed that real faces were detected more efficiently than illusory faces or butterfly targets. Crucially, illusory faces showed a search disadvantage even compared to butterflies. Overall, these findings challenge the assumption that a minimal face configuration automatically captures attention. More importantly, these findings challenge the notion that attentional capture by irrelevant faces is entirely automatic, suggesting instead that such capture may be influenced by contextual factors or task demands.

We explore the concept of an expanded present by examining how individuals perceive the "age" of an event, product, or artefact in relation to their own age. We hypothesized that a certain age acts as a kind of tipping point for an "old" versus "new/recent/current" connotation. Events occurring before that age connote a halo of "oldness," whereas events occurring after that age connote a halo of "recency." We used movies as a case study and employed a response priming design, presenting movie posters from different decades (1960s to 2010s) as briefly presented primes, preceding target movie posters from the 1960s and 2010s, which had to be categorized as "old" or "new." Participants were from four age cohorts (born in the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s). Results supported the hypothesis, showing that individuals tend to spontaneously categorize movies released in their adolescence or later as "new/current" and earlier movies as "old."

Interval timing is essential for adapting behaviour in dynamic environments. While previous research has shown that time perception is influenced by movement, the role of movement type in this interaction remains poorly understood. The present study aimed to further investigate this interaction, by comparing temporal performance (i.e., temporal accuracy and precision) across two movement types: whole-body reaching (WBR) movements and finger movements. Fourteen participants reproduced time intervals while performing both movement types using five target durations centred around the natural duration of the WBR movement. We observed lower temporal variability with WBR movements compared to finger movements. This can be explained by a Bayesian cue combination framework or an increase of the pacemaker rate within the Scalar Expectancy Theory. Regarding temporal accuracy, intervals were over-reproduced with finger movements compared to WBR movements, possibly due to fluctuations in attentional allocation during finger movements or an increase of the pacemaker rate during WBR movements. Additionally, within the WBR condition, shorter intervals were over-reproduced, which may reflect either subjective time compression induced by faster movements, or the influence of biomechanical constraints. These findings extend current models by suggesting that motor execution actively shapes temporal performance, serving as more than just a final output mechanism. This could hold implications for training and rehabilitation strategies, where engaging whole-body movements may help reduce temporal variability.

Instruction-based learning (IBL) is an essential human skill, enabling flexible and efficient application of novel rules. Previous studies focused on instructions specifying affirmative (or positive) stimulus-response (S-R) rules (i.e., if condition A, then execute action X). Despite their frequent occurrence in our daily lives, negative instructions (i.e., if condition B, then do not execute action X but execute alternative action Y or Z) remain underrepresented in IBL research. In the present study, we conducted three experiments in order to assess the basic behavioral characteristics of this particular instruction type. Experiment 1 revealed reduced implementation efficiency relative to positive instructions as indicated by persistently prolonged response times, suggesting a continued impact of the negated 'instruction-related' S-R (B-X) association. At the same time, a distinct affirmative 'implementation-related' S-R (B-Y or B-Z) association gained strength over the course of repeated rule implementation, as evidenced by a decreasing tendency to alternate between correct response options. This pattern was replicated in Experiment 3. Experiment 2 employed neutral S-R instructions for which type information (positive or negative) was available only during later implementation. The comparison between Experiments 1 and 2 revealed an implementation benefit of advance instruction type information for negative instructions. This suggests that the negation is proactively integrated into the task model for the benefit of upcoming implementation. Overall, our results highlight the unique properties of negative instructions in the context of IBL. In particular, the dual representational nature could enable disambiguation of functional states in rule transformation processes crucial to rapid, novel learning.

The present experiments measure a form of preparatory control over selective attention in a two-target task. We used a skeletal two-target method in which the first of two target words (T1) is presented with or without an accompanying distractor word. When T1 is displayed with a distractor, a stark identification deficit (an attentional blink) is produced for the second target word (T2). In our adaptation of this method, we inserted a stimulus immediately prior to each two-target trial to measure sequence effects on selective attention to T1, and the resulting two-target cost for T2. Generally speaking, neither T1 nor T2 identification were influenced by the stimulus/response features of the event that preceded T1. However, both T1 and T2 identification were influenced by the task instructions for the event that preceded T1. These results point to a strong contribution of preparatory state on selective attention in a two-target task.

Observing others' emotional expressions facilitates individuals' expectations about the evaluations shared within a social group. This is useful for interpreting ambiguous cultural content, such as unfamiliar actions performed by others. This study investigated whether observed emotional reactions to instrumental actions are used to predict novel individuals' evaluations of those same actions (i.e., generalization), and whether they are more likely to be generalized for unfamiliar compared to familiar actions. Participants were presented with emotional expressions of observers reacting to individuals performing instrumental actions, before selecting the reaction they expected from a novel observer watching the same action performed by a new individual - generalization meaning that the novel observer was expected to elicit the same emotional expression as the initial observer. Experiment 1 found that negative reactions are generalized to predict negative evaluations of unfamiliar but not familiar actions, whereas Experiments 2 and 3 demonstrated differences in generalization and influence on expectations of positive and negative displays depending on whether familiar and unfamiliar actions were present. This study sheds light on the affective components of cultural learning, showing that the observation of others' emotional displays enables us to interpret unfamiliar social situations in the absence of direct communication.

This study aims to investigate if predictions can influence subsequent language production in monolingual and bilingual situations. The possibility to correctly predict an upcoming response was operationalized by means of semantic classifier congruency. Participants were instructed to name a picture (e.g., firemen) after seeing or hearing a semantically congruent vs. incongruent classifier (e.g., a crew of). In Experiment 1 with English monolinguals, better performance was observed in semantically congruent trials (a crew of firemen) than in semantically incongruent trials (a packet of ants). In Experiments 2 and 3 with Chinese-English bilinguals, this semantic classifier congruency effect was replicated, but the effect differed in size as a function of the language (larger for L1 Chinese than for L2 English). Additionally, bilingual language control was influenced as the language-switch cost was smaller in congruent than in incongruent trials. Together, these findings suggest that prediction influences both L1 and L2 language production and that this facilitation of language production through prediction had a further impact on language control during language switching.

We investigated the impact of motor skills on performance in two pen-and-paper tests of selective attention, the d2-R and the FAIR-2. Both tests require a visual search for target stimuli presented in a random order with distractor stimuli. In the d2-R, participants have to mark each target with a short stroke. In the FAIR-2, participants are required to draw a continuous line under each stimulus series that remains below the distractors, whereas targets are marked by drawing an upward spike into the target. The purpose of continuous marking in the FAIR-2 is to make the direction and order of participants' visual search apparent to the experimenter. We tested 120 participants with the d2-R, the FAIR-2, and five subtests (aiming, pegboard, steadiness, tapping, line-tracking) of the MLS, a test battery of fine motor skills. Our results revealed similarities and differences between the motor demands of the two tests. Performance on both tests correlated with tapping (hits) and line-tracking (time). In contrast, only FAIR-2 performance correlated with pegboard (time) and steadiness (errors). Regression analyses showed that MLS performance explained a significant amount of variance in FAIR-2 performance, but not in d2-R performance. When directly compared, the differences in explained variance were not significant, however. Hence, the results suggest that the sum of motor demands in the d2-R and the FAIR-2 are comparable, although there are some differences in specific motor requirements.

The familiar-size Stroop effect shows how prior knowledge of an object's real-world size influences visual size judgments, slowing reactions when familiar and visual sizes conflict. This study examined how space-magnitude associations, specifically mental number line (MNL) compatibility, interact with Stroop congruency. Participants compared the visual sizes of two objects, ignoring real-world sizes, and identified either the smaller or the larger object across four conditions: Stroop-congruent/MNL-compatible, Stroop-congruent/MNL-incompatible, Stroop-incongruent/MNL-compatible, and Stroop-incongruent/MNL-incompatible. Tasks followed small-then-large or large-then-small identification sequences. Results showed MNL compatibility modulates Stroop interference: MNL-compatible (small-left, large-right) presentations reduced interference, while MNL-incompatible (large-left, small-right) presentations increased it, depending on task type and order. RT distribution analyses revealed MNL effects emerged in slower bins for Stroop-congruent trials and faster bins for Stroop-incongruent trials within small-then-large sequences. These findings suggest that space-magnitude associations shape the familiar-size Stroop effect, revealing a complex relationship between spatial and conceptual representations in size judgment.

We investigated how separately and sequentially acquired visual and motor experiences shape action prediction mechanisms. There is evidence that physical practice leads to an implicit, motor-based prediction process, compared to visual practice, which is more strategic. However, the relative dominance or flexibility of these mechanisms is not well understood. Here we used a motor secondary task paradigm to evaluate effector-specific interference in action predictions, which has previously given evidence for a motor simulation-based prediction process after physical practice. Participants across two groups (N = 40) received both isolated and sequentially combined motor and visual practice across two days; either throwing darts to three different sections of a dartboard "motor" or watching and predicting outcomes of occluded throws "visual". The Motor-to-Visual group threw on Day 1 and watched on Day 2 and the Visual-to-Motor group did the reverse. Prediction tasks were performed pre and post practice each day, with some trials involving motor secondary tasks, performed with the observed (right) or non-observed hand. Consistent with previous work, the Motor-to-Visual group after physical practice improved prediction accuracy on Day 1, except when performing the secondary task with their right hand. After visual practice on Day 2, prediction accuracy was maintained, but without secondary task interference. The Visual-to-Motor group also improved predictions, but with no secondary task interference on either day, resulting in greater accuracy overall. These data support the suggestion that separately acquired motor and visual experiences either allow flexibility in prediction strategies or lead to a dominance of the visually-acquired strategy.

The current study is a novel investigation of remembered affordances using the analytic framework of memory psychophysics, which generally demonstrates memory degradation for stimulus magnitudes even after short delay intervals. Participants made perceived and remembered reports of the affordance reach-with-ability and length (a proportional physical dimension of reach-with-ability) of a series of rods. The results were similar to past research on affordance perception, demonstrating a lower scaling exponent (i.e., discriminability) for remembered reach-with-ability than remembered length. Furthermore, we found no evidence of memory decay in either length or reach-with-ability after a 1 min delay interval with a distractor task. The findings demonstrate that memory psychophysics offers a useful framework to study perception, memory, and cognition.

Previous studies have established that coarse discrimination (e.g., left/right, forward/backward) of point-light walker (PLW) direction is modulated by multiple factors including global/local motion information, biological/social factors, and egocentric reference frames. However, the specific contributions of local motion information and egocentric referencing to fine-grained PLW direction estimation remain unclear. Drawing upon principles of biomechanical asymmetry and right-lateralized motor dominance, we hypothesized a systematic overall rightward bias in PLW direction estimation. Through three carefully controlled experiments, we demonstrated that: (1) right-handed participants showed consistently overall rightward estimation bias; (2) this bias was selectively enhanced by right-sided body stimuli while remaining unaffected by left-sided stimuli; and (3) spatial decoupling of stimulus center from egocentric coordinates revealed persistent egocentric coding in the direction estimation. Moreover, prolonged stimulus exposure led to expanded gaze distribution alongside heightened local information processing, underscoring the pivotal role of local information. These findings suggest that biomechanical asymmetries may shape PLW direction perception and reveal the interplay between local information analysis and egocentric referencing in fine-grained biological motion estimation.