The MARCS Institute for Brain, Behaviour and Development, New South Wales, Australia.
Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Germany; Berlin School of Mind and Brain, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany; University Psychiatric Clinics Basel, Switzerland.
Conscious Cogn. 2022 Nov;106:103418. doi: 10.1016/j.concog.2022.103418. Epub 2022 Oct 14.
Research suggests that at the core of paranormal belief formation is a tendency to attribute meaning to ambiguous stimuli. But it is unclear whether this tendency reflects a difference in perceptual sensitivity or a decision bias. Using a two-alternative forced choice task, we tested the relationship between paranormal belief and perceptual sensitivity. Participants were shown two stimuli presented in temporal succession. In one interval an ambiguous Mooney Face (i.e., signal) was presented, in the other interval a scrambled version of the image (i.e., noise) was presented. Participants chose in which of the two intervals the face appeared. Our results revealed that participants with stronger beliefs in paranormal phenomena were less sensitive to discriminating signal from noise. This finding builds on previous research using "yes/no" tasks, but importantly disentangles perceptual sensitivity from response bias and suggests paranormal believers perceive things differently.
研究表明，超自然信仰形成的核心是一种将意义归因于模糊刺激的倾向。但目前尚不清楚这种倾向是反映了感知敏感性的差异，还是决策偏差。我们使用了二选一强制选择任务来测试超自然信仰与感知敏感性之间的关系。参与者被展示了两个先后呈现的刺激。在一个间隔内，呈现一个模糊的 Mooney 面孔（即信号），在另一个间隔内，呈现图像的乱序版本（即噪声）。参与者选择在哪个间隔内出现了面孔。我们的结果表明，超自然现象信仰较强的参与者对区分信号和噪声的敏感性较低。这一发现建立在使用“是/否”任务的先前研究基础上，但重要的是，它将感知敏感性与反应偏差区分开来，并表明超自然信仰者以不同的方式感知事物。
