Ma Chunyu, Jin Yimeng, Lauwereyns Johan
Graduate School of Systems Life Sciences, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan.
School of Interdisciplinary Science and Innovation, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan.
Cogn Neurodyn. 2024 Dec;18(6):3691-3714. doi: 10.1007/s11571-024-10151-8. Epub 2024 Jul 30.
In human perceptual decision-making, the speed-accuracy tradeoff establishes a causal link between urgency and reduced accuracy. Less is known about how speed relates to the subjective evaluation of visual images. Here, we conducted a set of four experiments to tease apart two alternative hypotheses for the relation between speed and subjective evaluation. The hypothesis of "Speed-Polarization Tradeoff" implies that urgency causes more polarized evaluations. In contrast, the "Ease-of-Processing" hypothesis suggests that any association between speed and polarization is due to the salience of evaluation-relevant image content. The more salient the content, the easier to process, and therefore the faster and more extreme the evaluation. In each experiment, we asked participants to evaluate images on a continuous scale from - 10 to + 10 and measured their response times; in Experiments 1-3, the participants rated real-world images in terms of morality (from "very immoral," -10, to "very moral," +10); in Experiment 4, the participants rated food images in terms of appetitiveness (from "very disgusting," -10, to "very attractive," +10). In Experiments 1, 3, and 4, we used a cueing procedure to inform the participants on a trial-by-trial basis whether they could make a self-paced (SP) evaluation or whether they had to perform a time-limited (TL) evaluation within 2 s. In Experiment 2, we asked participants to rate the easiness of their SP moral evaluations. Compared to the SP conditions, the responses in the TL condition were consistently much faster, indicating that our urgency manipulation was successful. However, comparing the SP versus TL conditions, we found no significant differences in any of the evaluations. Yet, the reported ease of processing of moral evaluation covaried strongly with both the response speed and the polarization of evaluation. The overall pattern of data indicated that, while speed is associated with polarization, urgency does not cause participants to make more extreme evaluations. Instead, the association between speed and polarization reflects the ease of processing. Images that are easy to evaluate evoke faster and more extreme scores than images for which the interpretation is uncertain.
在人类感知决策中，速度 - 准确性权衡在紧迫性和准确性降低之间建立了因果联系。关于速度与视觉图像主观评价之间的关系，人们了解得较少。在这里，我们进行了一组四个实验，以梳理速度与主观评价之间关系的两种替代假设。“速度 - 极化权衡”假设意味着紧迫性会导致更两极分化的评价。相比之下，“加工易度”假设表明速度与极化之间的任何关联是由于与评价相关的图像内容的显著性。内容越显著，加工越容易，因此评价越快且越极端。在每个实验中，我们要求参与者在从 -10 到 +10 的连续量表上对图像进行评价，并测量他们的反应时间；在实验 1 - 3 中，参与者根据道德性（从“非常不道德”，-10，到“非常道德”，+10）对真实世界图像进行评分；在实验 4 中，参与者根据食欲（从“非常恶心”，-10，到“非常有吸引力”，+10）对食物图像进行评分。在实验 1、3 和 4 中，我们使用了一种提示程序，逐次告知参与者他们是可以进行自定节奏（SP）评价，还是必须在 2 秒内进行限时（TL）评价。在实验 2 中，我们要求参与者对他们的 SP 道德评价的易度进行评分。与 SP 条件相比，TL 条件下的反应始终快得多，表明我们对紧迫性的操纵是成功的。然而，比较 SP 与 TL 条件，我们发现在任何评价中都没有显著差异。然而，报告的道德评价加工易度与反应速度和评价的极化都密切相关。数据的总体模式表明，虽然速度与极化相关，但紧迫性并不会导致参与者做出更极端的评价。相反，速度与极化之间的关联反映了加工的易度。易于评价的图像比解释不确定的图像能唤起更快且更极端的评分。
