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A growing body of research on episodic memory in interpersonal interaction divides it into two subtypes: source memory (i.e., memory for the match between inputted information and its sources) and destination memory (i.e., memory for the association between outputted information and its destinations). A topic related to this is memory for episodes involving cooperation and cheating. However, previous studies only examined source memory for cooperation and cheating, and neglected destination memory. The current study involved an event-related potential (ERP) experiment exploring destination memory and its retrieval-relevant ERP correlates in the social dilemma game. Participants interacted with virtual partners in the game, where both players were assigned either cooperation or cheating. Their destination memory for cooperative and cheating behaviors was later tested. Behaviorally, a clear self-positivity bias (i.e., enhanced memory for self-relevant positive information) was revealed: destination memory was more accurate for cooperation than cheating. The ERP correlates were also considered since they could reveal whether cooperation and cheating influenced different subprocesses of destination retrieval differently. Results indicated that the familiarity-driven FN400 and the recollection-based late positive complex (LPC) were more widely distributed or enhanced for cooperation than for cheating. In addition, late posterior negativity (LPN), which indexes efforts to reconstruct encoding episodes and evaluate retrieval outcome, lasted longer temporally for cooperation versus cheating, which might reflect greater difficulty in binding the self with morally unfavorable cheating behaviors. Altogether, both behavioral and ERP results constitute evidence for the self-positivity bias.

Inhibition of return (IOR) prevents the immediate reorientation to previously attended locations, such that unattended locations are prioritized. In the current study, we were interested in whether saccadic IOR is affected by the storage of visuospatial information in working memory (WM) during a visual search task. To this end, participants searched a display for a target letter once while holding no, two, or four object locations in their spatial WM. During the search, either a previously inspected or an uninspected item was probed, and the participants were instructed to immediately saccade to this probed item before resuming the search. The results showed that saccadic latencies to previously inspected items were longer than to uninspected items, indicating the presence of IOR during the search. However, this effect was observed regardless of the number of item locations held in the spatial WM. This finding suggests that saccadic IOR does not rely on visuospatial WM in visual search.

The retrieval of proper names in memory is particularly prone to failure. Several authors have suggested that being unable to retrieve someone’s name is likely to be an embarrassing or irritating experience. However, empirical data showing that name recall failures actually elicit embarrassment and annoyance are particularly sparse. In an online questionnaire study, participants were asked about their negative feelings associated with the occurrence of retrieval failures. The strongest negative feeling reported was annoyance rather than embarrassment. The highest rated factor favouring recall failures was mental fatigue. We also asked participants whether they interpreted name recall failures as an early-warning sign of Alzheimer’s disease. Participants did not believe this to be the case. In the second part of the study, participants responded to questions related to the strategies they use to resolve recall failures. Contextual strategies were reported more frequently than other strategies, such as searching for biographical details about the target person or searching for phonological or orthographic information about the name to be retrieved. Moreover, participants considered that retrieving a name by themselves was more likely to help them recall the name later than using external aids. This result suggests that people are aware of the self-resolution effect.

Collision is usually accompanied by a sound (e.g., a car crash) and thus inherently involves multisensory integration. To date, most studies on collision have focused on the visual modality. Here, we combined the classic launching effect paradigm and the simultaneity judgment task to investigate how collision affects multisensory integration. The unity assumption theory predicts that collision should extend the temporal binding window (TBW) of multisensory integration because of causality perception induced by collision. Participants viewed a ball (the launcher) that moves toward a stationary ball (the target) until they collided (perceptual causality condition, PC), or were gapped by a short distance (visual angle: 2.4 °, non-perceptual causality condition, NPC), at which point the launcher stopped and the target started moving along the same path. A pure tone was presented at different stimulus onset asynchronies (-500-500 ms) with respect to the onset of the target moving. Participants were asked to judge whether the tone and the onset of the target moving (Experiment 1A) or the offset of the launcher moving (Experiment 1B) were simultaneous. Results showed that TBW was narrower in the PC than the NPC conditions, which was inconsistent with the unity assumption theory. In Experiment 2, this effect no longer existed when collision was controlled for. We suggest that the attention boost induced by collision rather than perception of causality, might be a key mediating factor for multisensory integration in the context of collision.

The mental model theory (MMT) provides a unified account of causal representation and inference. The theory claims that a causal assertion “A causes B” has a deterministic meaning that refers to three temporally ordered possibilities: A and B, not A and B, not A and not B. Furthermore, MMT proposes that causal relations depend only on these possibilities, and not on causal powers or mechanisms. In this paper, the MMT account of causation is critiqued by arguing that mental models alone are not sufficient to define the meaning of causal relations, and that if MMT adhered to its own principles, then its account of causation would fall into an infinite regress.

Studies show that gamers experience altered sensory perceptions, automatic thoughts and behaviors with video game content when not playing. These experiences are referred to as Game Transfer Phenomena (GTP). The first aim of the current study was the psychometric assessment of the Polish version of the GTP Scale (GTPS). The second aim was to analyze gender invariance, which is important due to the gender differences in game playing habits, motivations and game preferences. The study comprised 675 gamers (340 female gamers) aged 15 to 45 years. The participants' mean age was 31.74 years (SD = 7.75). Confirmatory factor analysis showed that the Polish version of the GTPS is reliable, valid, and adequate for assessing GTP. Findings also indicated that strict gender invariance exists. Consequently, the GTPS is an instrument by which GTP can be compared and assessed in female and male gamers. Additionally, findings showed that GTP was associated with hours played per week across all game genres and devices, except for smartphones.

Vigilance is the maintenance of attention over prolonged periods, often required when attempting to detect infrequent and/or difficult to detect stimuli, such as in baggage screening or sonar monitoring. This type of attention is characterized by the vigilance decrement: longer reaction times and decreased accuracy as time-on-task increases. Research previously demonstrated the vigilance decrement in auditory and visual vigilance tasks. However, little research has compared the strength and onset of the vigilance decrement in unimodal (auditory or visual) versus bimodal (auditory and visual) modalities. This knowledge gap was investigated in an experiment that first equated the discriminability of stimulus type at ~80% to control for stimulus difficulty and then by tracking subjects’ target identification rate and reaction time for a target intermixed with a nontarget across three conditions: auditory, visual, and audiovisual. Overall, accuracy was worse in the bimodal condition relative to the unimodal condition. Target detection accuracy in the auditory bimodal condition declined more over time relative to the auditory unimodal task, with reaction time data suggesting the decrease was not due to a speed-accuracy trade-off. Results indicate that monitoring for targets in two modalities is more difficult, resulting in a greater vigilance decrement than unimodal vigilance.

Thus far, there has been no face in the crowd research that also considers the level of self-criticism. This is despite the fact that self-criticism is the key underlying factor in psychopathology and that having objective criteria to diagnose it would be highly beneficial. Therefore, the aim of the current study was to explore fixation duration on all seven primary emotions (happiness, sadness, fear, disgust, contempt, anger, and surprise) as well as embarrassment and neutral face expression in relation to the level of self-criticism using a 3 × 3 face in the crowd grid. The convenience nonclinical sample contained 119 participants gathered through social media; 63.03% were women and 36.97% were men. We used The Forms of Self-Criticizing and Self-Reassuring Scale for measuring self-criticism, the Tobii X2 eye tracker, and the Amsterdam Dynamic Facial Expression Set–Bath Intensity Variations for eye-tracking of emotions. Results showed that highly self-critical people exhibited significant anger avoidance in attention and an attention avoidance tendency in relation to most emotions. The present findings may explain why highly self-critical people have difficulty identifying emotional expressions: They probably avoid looking at faces, which makes it harder for them to identify the expressions correctly.