Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Cognition and Perception Commons™

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Singapore Management University

Discipline
Keyword
Publication Year
Publication
Publication Type

Articles 31 - 56 of 56

Full-Text Articles in Cognition and Perception

Seeing The Forest And Not The Trees: When Impact Uncertainty Heightens Causal Complexity, Evelyn W. M. Au Jun 2017

Seeing The Forest And Not The Trees: When Impact Uncertainty Heightens Causal Complexity, Evelyn W. M. Au

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This study attempts to isolate the effects of experiencing uncertainty on people's cognitive processes. I argue that people can believe that their actions affect the outcome (i.e. outcome control), but still face uncertainty regarding the extent to which actions will make a difference (i.e. impact uncertainty). To this end, I introduce a novel experimental paradigm which isolates the effects of impact uncertainty from outcome control. The findings revealed that after experiencing impact uncertainty, participants demonstrated greater causal complexity (i.e. more likely to make situational attributions and judge outcomes as having a “ripple effect”), but did not make fewer …


Is The Smartphone A Smart Choice? The Effect Of Smartphone Separation On Executive Functions, Andree Hartanto, Hwajin Yang Nov 2016

Is The Smartphone A Smart Choice? The Effect Of Smartphone Separation On Executive Functions, Andree Hartanto, Hwajin Yang

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Despite a huge spike in smartphone overuse, the cognitive and emotional consequences of smartphone overuse have rarely been examined empirically. In two studies, we investigated whether separation from a smartphone influences state anxiety and impairs higher-order cognitive processes, such as executive functions. We found that smartphone separation causes heightened anxiety, which in turn mediates the adverse effect of smartphone separation on all core aspects of executive functions, including shifting (Experiment 1) and inhibitory control and working-memory capacity (Experiment 2). Interestingly, impaired mental shifting was evident regardless of the extent of smartphone addiction, whereas smartphone addiction significantly moderated the negative effect …


Find Your Own Meaning In Life, David Chan Jun 2016

Find Your Own Meaning In Life, David Chan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

‘Mortality saliency’ happens when a lovedone, friend or someone we know is suddenlystruck down by illness, and we start realisingafresh that life is fragile and want to live a lifeof meaning. A psychology professorsuggests how.


Bilingual Effects On Deployment Of The Attention System In Linguistically And Culturally Homogeneous Children And Adults, Sujin Yang, Hwajin Yang Jun 2016

Bilingual Effects On Deployment Of The Attention System In Linguistically And Culturally Homogeneous Children And Adults, Sujin Yang, Hwajin Yang

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

We investigated the impact of early childhood and adulthood bilingualism on the attention system in a group of linguistically and culturally homogeneous children (5- and 6-year olds) and young adults. We administered the child Attention Network Test (ANT) to 63 English monolingual and Korean-English bilingual children and administered the adult ANT to 39 language- and culture-matched college students. Advantageous bilingual effects on attention were observed for both children and adults in global processing levels of inverse efficiency, response time, and accuracy at a magnitude more pronounced for children than for adults. Differential bilingualism effects were evident at the local network …


Age Matters: The Effect Of Onset Age Of Video Game Play On Task-Switching Abilities, Andree Hartanto, Wei Xing Toh, Hwajin Yang May 2016

Age Matters: The Effect Of Onset Age Of Video Game Play On Task-Switching Abilities, Andree Hartanto, Wei Xing Toh, Hwajin Yang

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Although prior research suggests that playing video games can improve cognitive abilities, recent empirical studies cast doubt on such findings (Unsworth et al., 2015). To reconcile these inconsistent findings, we focused on the link between video games and task switching. Furthermore, we conceptualized video-game expertise as the onset age of active video-game play rather than the frequency of recent gameplay, as it captures both how long a person has played video games and whether the individual began playing during periods of high cognitive plasticity. We found that the age of active onset better predicted switch and mixing costs than did …


Perceptions, Stereotypes And Cognitive Resources Of Female Businesspersons: A Social Identity Approach, Amy J. Y. Lim Nov 2015

Perceptions, Stereotypes And Cognitive Resources Of Female Businesspersons: A Social Identity Approach, Amy J. Y. Lim

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

According to the Stereotype Content Model (SCM), female businesspersons are often stereotyped and labeled either as a Career Women, competent but cold, or as a Traditional Women, warm but incompetent. This suggests that female businesspersons are generally perceived to be either competent or warm individuals, but not both. However, this may not reflect female businesspersons’ own perceptions of their competence and warmth in the workplace. Contrary to the stereotypes, evidence has demonstrated that some female businesspersons display behaviors that signal both competence and warmth. Employing a social identity approach, I propose that gender-professional identity integration (G-PII), an individual difference that …


Sweet Love: The Effects Of Sweet Taste Experience On Romantic Perceptions, Ren Dongning, Kenneth Tan, Ximena B. Arriaga, Kai Qin Chan Nov 2015

Sweet Love: The Effects Of Sweet Taste Experience On Romantic Perceptions, Ren Dongning, Kenneth Tan, Ximena B. Arriaga, Kai Qin Chan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Terms of endearment such as sweetie, honey, and sugar are commonly used in the context of describing romantic partners. This article explores how a relatively subtle manipulation, namely taste sensations, might influence romantic perceptions of a nonestablished relationship. Consistent with predictions, results from Studies 1 and 2 (n = 280) showed that participants evaluated a hypothetical relationship, but not an existing relationship, more favorably when exposed to sweet taste compared to non-sweet taste control. Study 3 (n = 142) further showed that participants indicated greater interest in initiating a relationship with a potential partner when exposed to sweet taste, as …


Positive Affect Facilitates Task Switching In The Dimension Change Card Sort Task: Implications For The Shifting Aspect Of Executive Functions, Hwajin Yang, Sujin Yang Oct 2014

Positive Affect Facilitates Task Switching In The Dimension Change Card Sort Task: Implications For The Shifting Aspect Of Executive Functions, Hwajin Yang, Sujin Yang

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Using the modified Dimensional Change Card Sort task, we examined the influence of positive affect on task switching by inspecting various markers for the costs, including restart cost, switch cost and mixing cost. Given that the executive-control processes that underlie switching performance—i.e., inhibition or shifting—are distinct from the component processes that underlie non-switching performance—i.e., stimulus evaluation, resource allocation or response execution—we hypothesised that if positive affect facilitates task switching via executive-control processes, rather than via component processes, positive affect would reduce both switch and restart costs, but not mixing cost, because both switch and restart costs rely on executive processes, …


The Motivation To Comply With Internal Or External Moral Expectations: Is Just One Motivation Enough?, Huey Woon Lee Jul 2014

The Motivation To Comply With Internal Or External Moral Expectations: Is Just One Motivation Enough?, Huey Woon Lee

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Although researchers have shown how the need to reduce internal discrepancies between one’s current level of morality and one’s moral standard and the need to reduce negative social judgment drive pro-social behaviors, it remains unclear if the presence of both these motivations has additive effects on pro-social behaviors. I propose that the answer is no: people operate on a sufficient motivation principle when deciding to behave prosocially, that is, they should be equally prosocial whether one or both motivations are present. I further argue that individual differences in public (PUSC) and private (PRSC) self-consciousness affect people’s attention to the two …


The Role Of Social Relationships And Culture In The Cognitive Representation Of Emotions, Sharon Koh, Christie N. Scollon, Derrick Wirtz Apr 2014

The Role Of Social Relationships And Culture In The Cognitive Representation Of Emotions, Sharon Koh, Christie N. Scollon, Derrick Wirtz

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

There are individual and cultural differences in how memories of our emotions are cognitively represented. This article examines the cognitive representation of emotions in different cultures, as a result of emotional (in)consistency in different cultures. Using a continuous semantic priming task, we showed in two studies that individuals who were less emotionally consistent across relationships have stronger associations of their emotions within those relationships. Further, we found (in Study 2) that in a culture characterised by higher levels of emotional inconsistency across relationships (Singapore), stronger associations between emotions within relationships were found than in a culture characterised by emotional consistency …


Aligning Inside And Outside Perspectives Of The Self: A Cross-Cultural Difference In Self-Perception, Young-Hoon Kim, Chi-Yue Chiu, Sinhae Cho, Evelyn W. M. Au, Sunyoung Nicole Kwak Mar 2014

Aligning Inside And Outside Perspectives Of The Self: A Cross-Cultural Difference In Self-Perception, Young-Hoon Kim, Chi-Yue Chiu, Sinhae Cho, Evelyn W. M. Au, Sunyoung Nicole Kwak

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Past research shows that European Americans tend to take a first-person perspective to understand the self and are unlikely to align the inside look with the outside gaze, whereas Asians tend to take a third-person perspective and are likely to shift their inside look in the direction of the outsize gaze. In three experiments, we compared Asians and European Americans' self-perceptions when the presence of their parents in the background of self-perception was primed or otherwise. Without the priming, both European Americans and Asians viewed themselves more positively from their own perspective than from their parents' perspective. With the priming, …


Opening The Creative Mind Of High Need For Cognitive Closure Individuals Through Activation Of Uncreative Ideas, Lay See Ong, Angela K. Y. Leung Aug 2013

Opening The Creative Mind Of High Need For Cognitive Closure Individuals Through Activation Of Uncreative Ideas, Lay See Ong, Angela K. Y. Leung

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Drawing on the integrative system theory of creativity combining the person, process, and press perspectives, this research offers the first evidence of how high-need-for-cognitive-closure (NFC) individuals’ creative mind can be opened up, by making them become more cognizant of uncreative ideas as consensually invalid solutions to creative problems. A validation study was conducted to first establish the utility of a newly developed chocolate design task. In the second study, half of the participants were made aware of conventional chocolate designs by drawing these designs before generating a revolutionized design of chocolate; the other half did not have to draw out …


Meta-Knowledge Of Culture Promotes Cultural Competence, Angela K.-Y. Leung, Sau-Lai Lee, Chi-Yue Chiu Aug 2013

Meta-Knowledge Of Culture Promotes Cultural Competence, Angela K.-Y. Leung, Sau-Lai Lee, Chi-Yue Chiu

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

A behavioral signature of cross-cultural competence is discriminative use of culturally appropriate behavioral strategies in different cultural contexts. Given the central role communication plays in cross-cultural adjustment and adaptation, the present investigation examines how meta-knowledge of culture—defined as knowledge of what members of a certain culture know—affects culturally competent cross-cultural communication. We reported two studies that examined display of discriminative, culturally sensitive use of cross-cultural communication strategies by bicultural Hong Kong Chinese (Study 1), Chinese students in the United States and European Americans (Study 2). Results showed that individuals formulating a communicative message for a member of a certain culture …


The Role Of Instrumental Emotion Regulation In The Emotions-Creativity Link: How Worries Render Neurotic Individuals More Creative, Angela K.-Y. Leung, Letty Kwan, Shyhnan Liou, Chi-Yue Chiu, Lin Qiu, Jose C. Yong Jun 2013

The Role Of Instrumental Emotion Regulation In The Emotions-Creativity Link: How Worries Render Neurotic Individuals More Creative, Angela K.-Y. Leung, Letty Kwan, Shyhnan Liou, Chi-Yue Chiu, Lin Qiu, Jose C. Yong

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Based on the instrumental account of emotion regulation, the current research seeks to offer a novel perspective to the emotions-creativity debate by investigating the instrumental value of trait-consistent emotions in creativity. We hypothesize that emotions such as worry (vs. happy) are some trait-consistent experiences for neurotic individuals and experiencing these emotions can facilitate performance in a creativity task. In two studies, we found support for our hypothesis. First, individuals higher in neuroticism had a greater preference for recalling worrisome (vs. happy) events in anticipation of performing a creativity task (Study 1). Moreover, when induced to recall a worrisome (vs. happy) …


Positive Affect Improves Working Memory: Implications For Controlled Cognitive Processing, Hwajin Yang, Sujin Yang, Alice M. Isen Apr 2013

Positive Affect Improves Working Memory: Implications For Controlled Cognitive Processing, Hwajin Yang, Sujin Yang, Alice M. Isen

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This study examined the effects of positive affect on working memory (WM) and short-term memory (STM). Given that WM involves both storage and controlled processing and that STM primarily involves storage processing, we hypothesised that if positive affect facilitates controlled processing, it should improve WM more than STM. The results demonstrated that positive affect, compared with neutral affect, significantly enhanced WM, as measured by the operation span task. The influence of positive affect on STM, however, was weaker. These results suggest that positive affect enhances WM, a task that involves controlled processing, not just storage processing. Additional analyses of recall …


Daily Experiences And Well-Being: Do Memories Of Events Matter?, William Tov May 2012

Daily Experiences And Well-Being: Do Memories Of Events Matter?, William Tov

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Retrospective subjective well-being (SWB) refers to self-reported satisfaction and emotional experience over the past few weeks or months. Two studies investigated the mechanisms linking daily experiences to retrospective SWB. Participants reported events each day for 21 days (Study 1) or twice a week for two months (Study 2). The emotional intensity of each event was rated: (1) when it had recently occurred (proximal intensity); and (2) at the end of the event-reporting period (distal intensity). Both sets of ratings were then aggregated across events and used to predict retrospective SWB at the end of the study. Path analyses showed that …


Inspiring Change: The Roles Of Women And Their Communities, Singapore Management University Sep 2011

Inspiring Change: The Roles Of Women And Their Communities, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

'Change' is a word often employed (and frequently abused) by politicians, industrialists, artists and leaders of various domains as a rallying call. Its effects can be profound on those discontented with the status quo and perhaps uninviting for those already contented with the way things are.


Embodied Cultural Cognition: Situating The Study Of Embodied Cognition In Socio-Cultural Contexts, Angela K. Y. Leung, Lin Qiu, Lay See Ong, Kim-Pong Tam Sep 2011

Embodied Cultural Cognition: Situating The Study Of Embodied Cognition In Socio-Cultural Contexts, Angela K. Y. Leung, Lin Qiu, Lay See Ong, Kim-Pong Tam

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Embodiment research has demonstrated that cognition is grounded in bodily interactions with the environment and that abstract concepts are tied to the body’s sensory and motor systems. Building upon this embodiment perspective and advancing our understanding, we discuss the extension of embodied cultural cognition. We propose that some associations between bodily experiences and abstract concepts are not randomly formed; rather, the development of such associations is situated in a socio-cultural context, informed by cultural imperatives, values, and habits. We draw evidence supporting this view of embodied cultural cognition in body–mind linkages manifested in construal of emotions, time perception, person perception, …


Effects Of Appearance And Functions On Likability And Perceived Occupational Suitability Of Robots, Sau-Lai Lee, Ivy Yee-Man Lau, Ying-Yi Hong Jun 2011

Effects Of Appearance And Functions On Likability And Perceived Occupational Suitability Of Robots, Sau-Lai Lee, Ivy Yee-Man Lau, Ying-Yi Hong

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This article reports three experiments that examined the association between (a) appearances and perceived capabilities of robots, (b) appearance and capabilities of robots and liking for the robots, and (c) perceived capabilities of robots and judgments concerning their suitability for different occupations. In Experiment 1, the authors found that participants perceived human- and animal-like robots to have relatively more warmth-related (e.g., emotion) capabilities than machinelike robots have. In Experiment 2, the authors found that liking for robots was not affected by their human likeness or their having warmth or competence capabilities. In Experiment 3, participants generally thought that robots should …


Mad Enough To See The Other Side: Anger And The Search For Disconfirming Information, Maia J. Young, Larissa Z. Tiedens, Heajung Jung, Ming-Hong Tsai Jan 2011

Mad Enough To See The Other Side: Anger And The Search For Disconfirming Information, Maia J. Young, Larissa Z. Tiedens, Heajung Jung, Ming-Hong Tsai

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The current research explored the effect of anger on hypothesis confirmation the propensity to seek information that confirms rather than disconfirms one's opinion. We argued that the moving against action tendency associated with anger leads angry individuals to seek out more disconfirming information than sad individuals, attenuating the confirmation bias. We tested this hypothesis in two studies of experimentally primed anger and sadness on the selective exposure to hypothesis confirming and disconfirming information. In Study 1, participants in the angry condition were more likely to choose disconfirming information than those in the sad or neutral condition when given the opportunity …


The Effects Of Action, Normality, And Decision Carefulness On Anticipated Regret: Evidence For A Broad Mediating Role Of Decision Justifiability., Jochen Reb, Terry Connolly Dec 2010

The Effects Of Action, Normality, And Decision Carefulness On Anticipated Regret: Evidence For A Broad Mediating Role Of Decision Justifiability., Jochen Reb, Terry Connolly

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Two distinct theoretical views explain the effects of action/inaction and social normality on anticipated regret. Norm theory (Kahneman & Miller, 1986) emphasises the role of decision mutability, the ease with which one can imagine having made a different choice. Decision justification theory (Connolly & Zeelenberg, 2002) highlights the role of decision justifiability, the perception that the choice was made on a defensible basis, supported by convincing arguments or using a thoughtful, comprehensive decision process. The present paper tests several contrasting predictions from the two theoretical approaches in a series of four studies. Study 1 replicated earlier findings showing greater anticipated …


Anger, Fear, And Escalation Of Commitment, Ming-Hong Tsai, Maia J. Young Sep 2010

Anger, Fear, And Escalation Of Commitment, Ming-Hong Tsai, Maia J. Young

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Two studies examined how discrete emotions influence escalation of commitment. Study 1 demonstrated that anger was associated with more escalation of commitment than fear in a personnel hiring-appraisal context. In addition, it revealed the mediating effect of risk perception; angry compared to fearful individuals perceived lower risk in their initial decision, which in turn increased the tendency to escalate commitment. Study 2 replicated the pattern of results of Study 1 in a financial decision-making situation. Contrary to conclusions drawn from the results of prior research, the current studies suggest that not all negative emotions alleviate escalation of commitment.


On Being A Mindful Authoritarian: Is Need For Cognition Always Associated With Greater Tolerance Of Deviant And Stigmatized Groups?, Kim-Pong Tam, Angela K. Y. Leung, Chi-Yue Chiu Jan 2008

On Being A Mindful Authoritarian: Is Need For Cognition Always Associated With Greater Tolerance Of Deviant And Stigmatized Groups?, Kim-Pong Tam, Angela K. Y. Leung, Chi-Yue Chiu

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Previous research shows that the motivation to be mindful is associated with less intolerance toward deviant and stigmatized groups. The present research examines authoritarianism as a possible moderator of this seemingly robust finding. We obtained consistent evidence from two studies that authoritarianism (right-wing authoritarianism, social dominance orientation) moderates the relationship between need for cognition and punitiveness. Among low authoritarians, need for cognition was negatively associated with punitiveness and dispositional attribution of crimes and positively associated with support for rehabilitation of criminals. However, among high authoritarians, the pattern reversed. These results are discussed in the context of some recent advances in …


I Know What You Know: Assumptions About Others' Knowledge And Their Effects On Message Construction, Ivy Yee-Man Lau, Chi-Yue Chiu, Ying-Yi Hong Dec 2001

I Know What You Know: Assumptions About Others' Knowledge And Their Effects On Message Construction, Ivy Yee-Man Lau, Chi-Yue Chiu, Ying-Yi Hong

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Current models of interpersonal communication assume that estimation of listener's knowledge is a basis for message formulation. By introducing methodological modifications to the Fussell and Krauss paradigm, the present study provides more definitive evidence for the use of knowledge estimation in message productions.


Probabilistic Principles In Unsupervised Learning Of Visual Structure: Human Data And A Model, Shimon Edelman, Benjamin P. Hiles, Hwajin Yang, Nathan Intrator Jan 2001

Probabilistic Principles In Unsupervised Learning Of Visual Structure: Human Data And A Model, Shimon Edelman, Benjamin P. Hiles, Hwajin Yang, Nathan Intrator

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

To find out how the representations of structured visual objects depend on the co-occurrence statistics of their constituents, we exposed subjects to a set of composite images with tight control exerted over (1) the conditional probabilities of the constituent fragments, and (2) the value of Barlow's criterion of "suspicious coincidence" (the ratio of joint probability to the product of marginals). We then compared the part verification response times for various probe/target combinations before and after the exposure. For composite probes, the speedup was much larger for targets that contained pairs of fragments perfectly predictive of each other, compared to those …


The Linguistic Relativity Of Person Cognition: An English-Chinese Comparison, Curt Hoffman, Ivy Yee-Man Lau, David R. Johnson Dec 1986

The Linguistic Relativity Of Person Cognition: An English-Chinese Comparison, Curt Hoffman, Ivy Yee-Man Lau, David R. Johnson

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Examined the possibility that distinct languages are capable of exerting language-specific effects on people's impressions of and memory for other individuals. Parallel English- and Chinese-language descriptions were created of 2 characters exemplifying personality schemas with economical labels in English but not in Chinese, and 2 characters exemplifying personality schemas with economical labels in Chinese but not in English. Three groups of 12 undergraduates participated as Ss-English monolinguals, Chinese-English bilinguals who read and responded in English, and Chinese-English bilinguals who read and responded in Chinese. It was predicted that Ss processing the target descriptions in English would show greater evidence of …