ORCID Profile
0000-0002-4600-6323
Current Organisation
University College London
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Publisher: Hogrefe Publishing Group
Date: 05-2021
DOI: 10.1027/1618-3169/A000517
Abstract: Abstract. Studies of unconscious mental processes often compare a performance measure (e.g., some assessment of perception or memory) with a measure of awareness (e.g., a verbal report or forced-choice response) of the critical cue or contingency taken either concurrently or separately. The resulting patterns of bivariate data across participants lend themselves to several analytic approaches for inferring the existence of unconscious mental processes, but it is rare for researchers to consider the underlying generative processes that might cause these patterns. We show that bivariate data are generally insufficient to discriminate single-process models, with a unitary latent process determining both performance and awareness, from dual-process models, comprising distinct latent processes for performance and awareness. Future research attempting to isolate and investigate unconscious processes will need to employ richer types of data and analyses.
Publisher: American Psychological Association (APA)
Date: 2012
DOI: 10.1037/A0024885
Abstract: A fundamental principle of learning is that predictive cues or signals compete with each other to gain control over behavior. Associative and propositional reasoning theories of learning provide radically different accounts of cue competition. Propositional accounts predict that under conditions that do not afford or warrant the use of higher order reasoning processes, cue competition should not be observed. We tested this prediction in 2 contextual cuing experiments, using a visual search task in which patterns of distractor elements predict the location of a target object. Blocking designs were used in which 2 sets of predictive distractors were trained in compound, with 1 set trained independently. There was no evidence of cue competition in either experiment. In fact, in Experiment 2, we found evidence for augmentation of learning. The findings are contrasted with the predictions of an error-driven associative model of contextual cuing (Brady & Chun, 2007).
Publisher: University of California Press
Date: 2020
DOI: 10.1525/COLLABRA.310
Abstract: It is well-established that decision makers bias their estimates of unknown quantities in the direction of a salient numerical anchor. Some standard anchoring paradigms have been shown to yield pervasive biases, such as Tversky and Kahneman’s (1974) classic 2-step task which includes a comparative question followed by an estimation question. In contrast there is much less evidence for the claim that incidental environmental anchors can produce assimilative effects on judgments, such as the amount people are willing to pay for a meal being greater at a restaurant calledStudio 97 compared to one called Studio 17. Three studies are reported in which the basic incidental environmental anchoring method of Critcher and Gilovich (2008) is employed to measure consumer price estimations. No statistically significant evidence of incidental anchoring was obtained. In contrast, robust standard anchoring effects were found. The results suggest that anchoring is limited to situations which require explicit thinking about the anchor.
Publisher: American Medical Association (AMA)
Date: 06-2006
DOI: 10.1001/ARCHPSYC.63.6.611
Abstract: Establishing a neurobiological account of delusion formation that links cognitive processes, brain activity, and symptoms is important to furthering our understanding of psychosis. To explore a theoretical model of delusion formation that implicates prediction error-dependent associative learning processes in a pharmacological functional magnetic resonance imaging study using the psychotomimetic drug ketamine. Within-subject, randomized, placebo-controlled study. Hospital-based clinical research facility, Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge, England. The work was completed within the Wellcome Trust and Medical Research Council Behavioral and Clinical Neuroscience Institute, Cambridge. Fifteen healthy, right-handed volunteers (8 of whom were male) with a mean +/- SD age of 29 +/- 7 years and a mean +/- SD predicted full-scale IQ of 113 +/- 4 were recruited from within the local community by advertisement. Subjects were given low-dose ketamine (100 ng/mL of plasma) or placebo while performing a causal associative learning task during functional magnetic resonance imaging. In a separate session outside the scanner, the dose was increased (to 200 ng/mL of plasma) and subjects underwent a structured clinical interview. Brain activation, blood plasma levels of ketamine, and scores from psychiatric ratings scales (Brief Psychiatric Ratings Scale, Present State Examination, and Clinician-Administered Dissociative States Scale). Low-dose ketamine perturbs error-dependent learning activity in the right frontal cortex (P = .03). High-dose ketamine produces perceptual aberrations (P = .01) and delusion-like beliefs (P = .007). Critically, subjects showing the highest degree of frontal activation with placebo show the greatest occurrence of drug-induced perceptual aberrations (P = .03) and ideas or delusions of reference (P = .04). These findings relate aberrant prediction error-dependent associative learning to referential ideas and delusions via a perturbation of frontal cortical function. They are consistent with a model of delusion formation positing disruptions in error-dependent learning.
Publisher: Psychology Press
Date: 02-08-2004
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 23-12-2019
DOI: 10.1038/S41562-019-0812-2
Abstract: An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 07-2021
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 09-2022
DOI: 10.1016/J.CORTEX.2022.05.019
Abstract: It is usually easier to find objects in familiar contexts that we have seen before. The type of learning that underlies this facilitation, known as contextual cueing, has been understood as an incidental and automatic process given that, among other reasons, it seems to be independent of working memory (WM) resources. This claim has found support in previous research showing that contextual cueing can be acquired latently, while participants perform a demanding WM task. However, previous studies have not always found this pattern of results and, in general, the available evidence is far from conclusive. The aim of the present study was to clarify the role of WM in contextual learning with two large-s le, confirmatory experiments. Our results show a robust contextual cueing effect even when visuospatial working memory resources were recruited by a demanding secondary task.
Publisher: American Psychological Association (APA)
Date: 10-2020
DOI: 10.1037/XHP0000852
Publisher: American Psychological Association (APA)
Date: 2020
DOI: 10.1037/XGE0000632
Abstract: Recent debate about the reliability of psychological research has raised concerns about the prevalence of false positives in our discipline. However, false negatives can be just as concerning in areas of research that depend on finding support for the absence of an effect. This risk is particularly high in unconscious learning experiments, where researchers commonly seek to demonstrate that people can learn to perform a task in the absence of any explicit knowledge of the information that drives performance. The fact that some unconscious learning effects are typically studied with small s les and unreliable awareness measures makes false negatives especially likely. In the present article we focus on a popular unconscious learning paradigm, probabilistic cuing of visual attention, as a case study. First, we show that, at the meta-analytic level, previous experiments reveal positive signs of participant awareness, although in idual studies are severely underpowered to detect this. Second, we report the results of 2 empirical studies in which participants' awareness was tested with alternative and more sensitive dependent measures, both of which manifest positive evidence of awareness. We also show that, based on the predictions of a formal model of probabilistic cuing and given the reliabilities of the dependent measures collected in these experiments, any statistical test aimed at detecting a significant correlation between learning and awareness is doomed to return a nonsignificant result, even if at the latent level both constructs are actually related and participants' knowledge is completely explicit. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).
Publisher: American Psychological Association (APA)
Date: 2015
DOI: 10.1037/XGE0000116
Abstract: Interventions aimed at influencing spending behavior and risk-taking have considerable practical importance. A number of studies motivated by the costly signaling theory within evolutionary psychology have reported that priming inductions (such as looking at pictures of attractive opposite sex members) designed to trigger mating motives increase males' stated willingness to purchase conspicuous consumption items and to engage in risk-taking behaviors, and reduce loss aversion. However, a meta-analysis of this literature reveals strong evidence of either publication bias or p-hacking (or both). We then report 8 studies with a total s le of over 1,600 participants which sought to reproduce these effects. None of the studies, including one that was fully preregistered, was successful. The results question the claim that romantic primes can influence risk-taking and other potentially harmful behaviors.
Publisher: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Date: 30-06-2016
Publisher: American Psychological Association (APA)
Date: 05-2018
DOI: 10.1037/XLM0000467
Abstract: Two experiments examined biases in selective attention during contextual cuing of visual search. When participants were instructed to search for a target of a particular color, overt attention (as measured by the location of fixations) was biased strongly toward distractors presented in that same color. However, when participants searched for targets that could be presented in 1 of 2 possible colors, overt attention was not biased between the different distractors, regardless of whether these distractors predicted the location of the target (repeating) or did not (randomly arranged). These data suggest that selective attention in visual search is guided only by the demands of the target detection task (the attentional set) and not by the predictive validity of the distractor elements. (PsycINFO Database Record
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 02-03-2017
DOI: 10.1111/DESC.12552
Publisher: The Royal Society
Date: 10-2021
DOI: 10.1098/RSOS.210544
Abstract: Research on goal priming asks whether the subtle activation of an achievement goal can improve task performance. Studies in this domain employ a range of priming methods, such as surreptitiously displaying a photograph of an athlete winning a race, and a range of dependent variables including measures of creativity and workplace performance. Chen, Latham, Piccolo and Itzchakov (Chen et al. 2021 J. Appl. Psychol. 70 , 216–253) recently undertook a meta-analysis of this research and reported positive overall effects in both laboratory and field studies, with field studies yielding a moderate-to-large effect that was significantly larger than that obtained in laboratory experiments. We highlight a number of issues with Chen et al .'s selection of field studies and then report a new meta-analysis ( k = 13, N = 683) that corrects these. The new meta-analysis reveals suggestive evidence of publication bias and low power in goal priming field studies. We conclude that the available evidence falls short of demonstrating goal priming effects in the workplace, and offer proposals for how future research can provide stronger tests.
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 30-06-2015
Publisher: American Psychological Association (APA)
Date: 04-2019
DOI: 10.1037/XGE0000597
Abstract: Shanks et al. (2015) challenged the evidence that various forms of decision making can be influenced by romantic/mating primes. In their comment, Sundie, Beal, Neuberg, and Kenrick (2019) question both the meta-analysis and the 8 studies Shanks et al. reported, and describe an alternative p-curve analysis that they interpret as showing that romantic priming is a genuine phenomenon. In this reply, we comment on several contradictions in Sundie et al.'s article. First, they suggest that Shanks et al.'s replication experiments yielded different results from the original studies because we failed to appreciate the contextual sensitivity of romantic priming effects, but this argument rests largely on evidence from the very studies we were unable to replicate, and a wealth of other evidence suggests that social priming effects are largely invariant across s les and settings. Second, Sundie et al. criticize the selection rule by which Shanks et al. identified relevant priming studies, but then go on to include exactly the same set of studies in their p-curve analysis. Third, they criticize Shanks et al.'s selection of statistical results from these studies and propose a much wider selection, but then acknowledge that their selection process is poorly suited to assessing publication bias and p-hacking. Fourth, we show that their p-curve analysis, far from demonstrating that this literature is unaffected by p-hacking, in fact shows the exact opposite. Sundie et al. claim that Shanks et al.'s priming manipulation was demonstrably weak, but their argument is based on a confusion between different dependent measures. We conclude that romantic priming remains unproven, and urge researchers in this field to undertake high-powered preregistered replication studies. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).
Publisher: American Psychological Association (APA)
Date: 05-2016
DOI: 10.1037/XGE0000157
Publisher: American Psychological Association (APA)
Date: 06-2023
DOI: 10.1037/XAP0000440
Abstract: Testing facilitates subsequent learning of new information, a phenomenon known as the
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 2015
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 23-11-2021
DOI: 10.3758/S13423-021-02025-5
Abstract: In studies on probabilistic cuing of visual search, participants search for a target among several distractors and report some feature of the target. In a biased stage the target appears more frequently in one specific area of the search display. Eventually, participants become faster at finding the target in that rich region compared to the sparse region. In some experiments, this stage is followed by an unbiased stage , where the target is evenly located across all regions of the display. Despite this change in the spatial distribution of targets, search speed usually remains faster when the target is located in the previously rich region. The persistence of the bias even when it is no longer advantageous has been taken as evidence that this phenomenon is an attentional habit. The aim of this meta-analysis was to test whether the magnitude of probabilistic cuing decreases from the biased to the unbiased stage. A meta-analysis of 42 studies confirmed that probabilistic cuing during the unbiased stage was roughly half the size of cuing during the biased stage, and this decrease persisted even after correcting for publication bias. Thus, the evidence supporting the claim that probabilistic cuing is an attentional habit might not be as compelling as previously thought.
Publisher: Frontiers Media SA
Date: 19-05-2015
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 31-10-2017
DOI: 10.1038/MP.2017.222
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 04-03-2019
DOI: 10.1111/DESC.12813
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 02-12-2019
Publisher: American Psychological Association (APA)
Date: 04-2021
DOI: 10.1037/BUL0000309
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 21-02-2018
Abstract: Dijksterhuis and van Knippenberg (1998) reported that participants primed with a category associated with intelligence (“professor”) subsequently performed 13% better on a trivia test than participants primed with a category associated with a lack of intelligence (“soccer hooligans”). In two unpublished replications of this study designed to verify the appropriate testing procedures, Dijksterhuis, van Knippenberg, and Holland observed a smaller difference between conditions (2%–3%) as well as a gender difference: Men showed the effect (9.3% and 7.6%), but women did not (0.3% and −0.3%). The procedure used in those replications served as the basis for this multilab Registered Replication Report. A total of 40 laboratories collected data for this project, and 23 of these laboratories met all inclusion criteria. Here we report the meta-analytic results for those 23 direct replications (total N = 4,493), which tested whether performance on a 30-item general-knowledge trivia task differed between these two priming conditions (results of supplementary analyses of the data from all 40 labs, N = 6,454, are also reported). We observed no overall difference in trivia performance between participants primed with the “professor” category and those primed with the “hooligan” category (0.14%) and no moderation by gender.
Publisher: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Date: 25-04-2016
Abstract: Reconsolidation-updating theory suggests that existing memory traces can be modified, or even erased, by postretrieval new learning. Compelling empirical support for this claim could have profound theoretical, clinical, and ethical implications. However, demonstrating reconsolidation-mediated memory updating in humans has proved particularly challenging. In four direct and three conceptual replication attempts of a prominent human reconsolidation study, we did not observe any reconsolidation effects when testing either procedural or declarative recall of sequence knowledge. These findings suggest that the considerable theoretical weight attributed to the original study is unwarranted and that postretrieval new learning does not reliably induce human memory updating via reconsolidation.
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 13-10-2023
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 03-01-2017
DOI: 10.1038/SREP39645
Abstract: Locating a target among distractors improves when the configuration of distractors consistently cues the target’s location across search trials, an effect called c ontextual cuing of visual search (CC). The important issue of whether CC is automatic has previously been studied by asking whether it can occur implicitly (outside awareness). Here we ask the novel question: is CC of visual search controllable? In 3 experiments participants were exposed to a standard CC procedure during Phase 1. In Phase 2, they localized a new target, embedded in configurations (including the previous target) repeated from Phase 1. Despite robust contextual cuing, congruency effects – which would imply the orientation of attention towards the old target in repeated configurations – were found in none of the experiments. The results suggest that top-down control can be exerted over contextually-guided visual search.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 03-2012
DOI: 10.1016/J.CONCOG.2011.09.020
Abstract: The demonstration of a sequential congruency effect in sequence learning has been offered as evidence for control processes that act to inhibit automatic response tendencies (Jiménez, Lupiáñez, & Vaquero, 2009) via unconscious conflict monitoring. Here we propose an alternative interpretation of this effect based on the associative learning of chains of sequenced contingencies. This account is supported by simulations with a Simple Recurrent Network, an associative (connectionist) model of sequence learning. We argue that the control- and associative-based accounts differ in their predictions concerning the magnitude of the sequential congruency effect across training. These predictions are tested by reanalysing data from a study by Shanks, Wilkinson, and Channon (2003). The results support the associative learning account which explains the sequential congruency effect without appealing to control processes (either conscious or unconscious).
Publisher: American Psychological Association (APA)
Date: 2021
DOI: 10.1037/XHP0000780
Publisher: American Psychological Association (APA)
Date: 07-2014
DOI: 10.1037/DEC0000016
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 15-06-2021
DOI: 10.3758/S13423-021-01923-Y
Abstract: Experimental psychologists often neglect the poor psychometric properties of the dependent measures collected in their studies. In particular, a low reliability of measures can have dramatic consequences for the interpretation of key findings in some of the most popular experimental paradigms, especially when strong inferences are drawn from the absence of statistically significant correlations. In research on unconscious cognition, for instance, it is commonly argued that the lack of a correlation between task performance and measures of awareness or explicit recollection of the target stimuli provides strong support for the conclusion that the cognitive processes underlying performance must be unconscious. Using contextual cuing of visual search as a case study, we show that given the low reliability of the dependent measures collected in these studies, it is usually impossible to draw any firm conclusion about the unconscious character of this effect from correlational analyses. Furthermore, both a psychometric meta-analysis of the available evidence and a cognitive-modeling approach suggest that, in fact, we should expect to see very low correlations between performance and awareness at the empirical level, even if both constructs are perfectly related at the latent level. Convincing evidence for the unconscious character of contextual cuing and other effects will most likely demand richer and larger data sets, coupled with more powerful analytic approaches.
Publisher: American Psychological Association (APA)
Date: 2016
DOI: 10.1037/XHP0000185
Abstract: Two experiments were conducted to explore the role of configural representations in contextual cuing of visual search. Repeating patterns of distractors (contexts) were trained incidentally as predictive of the target location. Training participants with repeating contexts of consistent configurations led to stronger contextual cuing than when participants were trained with contexts of inconsistent configurations. Computational simulations with an elemental associative learning model of contextual cuing demonstrated that purely elemental representations could not account for the results. However, a configural model of associative learning was able to simulate the ordinal pattern of data. (PsycINFO Database Record
Publisher: American Psychological Association (APA)
Date: 2002
Publisher: American Psychological Association (APA)
Date: 2002
Publisher: eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd
Date: 09-11-2021
DOI: 10.7554/ELIFE.72185
Abstract: Any large dataset can be analyzed in a number of ways, and it is possible that the use of different analysis strategies will lead to different results and conclusions. One way to assess whether the results obtained depend on the analysis strategy chosen is to employ multiple analysts and leave each of them free to follow their own approach. Here, we present consensus-based guidance for conducting and reporting such multi-analyst studies, and we discuss how broader adoption of the multi-analyst approach has the potential to strengthen the robustness of results and conclusions obtained from analyses of datasets in basic and applied research.
Publisher: eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd
Date: 05-10-2021
Publisher: Oxford University Press (OUP)
Date: 09-2007
DOI: 10.1093/BRAIN/AWM173
Publisher: American Psychological Association (APA)
Date: 2015
DOI: 10.1037/XLM0000033
Abstract: Contextual cuing is the enhancement of visual search when the configuration of distractors has been experienced previously. It has been suggested that contextual cuing relies on associative learning between the distractor locations and the target position. Four experiments examined the effect of pre-exposing configurations of consistent distractors on subsequent contextual cuing. The findings demonstrate a facilitation of subsequent cuing for pre-exposed configurations compared to novel configurations that have not been pre-exposed. This facilitation suggests that learning of repeated visual search patterns involves acquisition of not just distractor-target associations but also associations between distractors within the search context, an effect that is not captured by the Brady and Chun (2007) connectionist model of contextual cuing. We propose a new connectionist model of contextual cuing that learns associations between repeated distractor stimuli, enabling it to predict an effect of pre-exposure on contextual cuing.
Location: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
No related grants have been discovered for David Shanks.