Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance

JEP: HPP Vol. 1 and current research.
The 50th birthday of the JEP: Human Perception and Performance is an appropriate occasion to salute its influence in the field. In this celebratory article, the author tries to trace some of the work reported in Volume 1 to current research. He hopes that this might be inspirational to some of its readers. His selection was guided by his familiarity with some areas of research, but almost all of the articles can be related to current trends. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)
Perspective editorial for Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance.
This editorial reflects on the significant role of the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance in the author's career and outlines key changes that demonstrate its evolution. She discusses three key areas she has focused on over the years: the diversity of our journal’s contributors and editors (focusing on gender representation), the quality standards of our research (specifically, study sample sizes), and the analytical methodologies we endorse (namely, the use of Bayesian statistics). She compares how the journal fared when she started in 2017 compared to its first year, and the progress the journal has made since 2017. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 2000–2005.
The present author was honored to serve as editor of Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance (JEP:HPP) for the 2000–2005 volumes, carrying on the work of his predecessors. Along with the happiness and pride he felt during his time as editor, he also experienced disquiet. He captures the source of the unease with an anecdote from when he was an independent researcher. These comments are not the mournful expressions of an-about-to-become dinosaur. Rather, they are motivated by the conviction that approaches which have proven useful should continue to be supported. Others have argued this point as well vis à vis the simultaneous pursuit of neural and behavioral science. Pursuing both paths is an imperative for the community at large. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)
Submentalizing: Clarifying how domain general processes explain spontaneous perspective-taking.
Demonstrations of spontaneous perspective-taking are thought to provide some of the best evidence to date for “implicit mentalizing”—the ability to track simple mental states in a fast and efficient manner. However, this evidence has been challenged by a “submentalizing” account proposing that these findings are merely attention-orienting effects. The present research aimed to clarify the cognitive processes responsible by measuring spontaneous perspective-taking while controlling for attention orienting. Four experiments employed the widely used dot perspective task, modified by changing the order that stimuli were presented so that responses would be less influenced by attention orienting. This modification had different effects on speed and accuracy of responding. For response times, it attenuated spontaneous perspective-taking effects for avatars as well as attention-orienting effects for arrows. For error rates, robust spontaneous perspective-taking effects remained that were unaffected by manipulations targeting attention orienting, but contingent upon there being two competing active task sets (self- and other perspectives). These results confirm that attention orienting explains response time effects revealed by the original version of the dot perspective task. Error rate results also reveal the crucial role played by domain-general executive processes in enabling selection between perspectives. The absence of independent evidence for implicit mentalizing lends support to a revised submentalizing account that incorporates executive functions alongside attention orienting. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)
The effects of gender and gender (in)congruency on level-2 visuo-spatial perspective-taking performance: An individual participant data meta-analysis.
Level-2 visuo-spatial perspective-taking (VPT) helps us to understand how the world appears for another person. The process has been linked to conceptual forms of perspective-taking, such as empathic perspective-taking. The present study tested whether similarity to the target of the process, as indicated by gender (in)congruency, affects its embodiment and conclusively answers the question whether there are gender differences in VPT performance. To address these questions, data of N = 2,226 female and male participants, completing K = 107,535 trials of a Level-2 VPT task involving female and male targets, were subjected to an independent participant meta-analysis. Confirmatory analyses revealed that gender (in)congruency did not affect Level-2 VPT performance, speaking against an effect of perceived similarity on the embodiment of Level-2 VPT. Additionally, we observed a significant performance advantage for female participants. Exploratory analyses showed gender-congruency effects can be detected if attentional task demands are low, likely making it easier for participants to process target features such as their gender. These findings clarify the disputed nature of gender differences in Level-2 VPT performance and inform theorizing about embodied and nonembodied strategies used to solve Level-2 VPT tasks, as well as process models of Level-2 VPT performance more generally. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)
Regulation of automatic imitation: Domain-specific versus domain-general control processes.
The tendency to automatically imitate others’ behavior is well documented. Successful interactions with others require some control of automatic imitation, but the nature of these control mechanisms remains unclear. The present study investigated whether the regulation of automatic imitation involves domain-specific versus domain-general control processes. Automatic imitation was assessed using the imitation-inhibition task, in which participants responded to an imperative stimulus with finger movements while seeing imitatively congruent versus incongruent, task-irrelevant movements. In Experiment 1, the imitatively congruent/incongruent trials ratio was manipulated, and increasing the amount of incongruent trials reduced the imitative congruency effect—as typically observed in “nonsocial” conflict tasks. In Experiment 2a, the imitation-inhibition task was intermixed with the Simon (spatial congruency) task. The ratio of spatially congruent/incongruent trials in the Simon task was varied while keeping the ratio of imitatively congruent/incongruent trials constant. Results indicate that increasing the amount of Simon conflict reduced both Simon and imitative congruency effects. Thus, control adaptations related to Simon congruency transferred to automatic imitation. In Experiments 2b and 3, the manipulation of the proportion of incongruent trials in the imitation-inhibition task did not exert an influence on the Simon effect. We discuss the domain-specific versus domain-general nature of the mechanisms regulating imitation in the light of these conflicting findings. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)
Sense of object ownership changes with sense of agency.
Personal objects are known to have several psychological effects on their owners. However, the formation of a sense of object ownership (SoOO) remains unclear. This study tested the hypothesis that a sense of agency (SoA) is related to the formation of SoOO. As such, we conducted nine experiments: participants played a simple game on a computer, where they controlled colored balls using a mouse. We manipulated the SoA for the balls by altering the delay or consistency between the participants’ actions and the ball movements; the participants felt a strong SoA when they controlled the ball without delay or when the ball moved correspondingly to their mouse movements. After the game, participants evaluated the extent to which they felt that the ball was their object. The results consistently showed that the SoOO for the ball was stronger when the SoA was higher than when it was lower. Moreover, this modulation occurred independently of the preference for balls, and the SoOO was higher when the action stemmed from one’s own will rather than from another’s. Our findings suggest that intended action plays an important role in forming SoOO. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)
Lack of integrated number sense among college students: Evidence from rational number cross-notation comparison.
Growing evidence highlights the predictive power of cross-notation magnitude comparison (e.g., 2/5 vs. 0.25) for math outcomes, but whether these relations persist into adulthood and the underlying mechanisms remain unknown. Across two studies during the 2021–2022 academic year, we investigated undergraduates’ cross-notation and within-notation comparison skills given equivalent fractions, decimals, and percentages (Study 1, N = 220 and Study 2, N = 183). We found participants did not perceive equivalent rational numbers equivalently. Cluster analyses revealed that approximately one-quarter of undergraduates exhibited a bias to select percentages as larger in cross-notation comparisons. Compared with the other cluster of undergraduates who showed little-to-no bias, the percentages-are-larger bias cluster performed worse on fraction number line estimation and fraction arithmetic (exact and approximate), as well as reporting lower Scholastic Aptitude Test/American College Test (SAT/ACT) scores. Hierarchical linear regression analyses demonstrated that cross-notation comparison accuracy accounted for variance in SAT/ACT beyond within-notation accuracy. Mediation analyses were consistent with a potential mechanism: Stronger cross-notation knowledge equips individuals to evaluate the reasonableness of fraction arithmetic solutions. Together, these results suggest the importance of an integrated understanding of rational number notations, which may not be fully assessed by within-notation measures alone. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)
Frequency and predictability effects for line-final words.
Computational models of eye movement control during reading have revolutionized the study of visual, perceptual, and linguistic processes underlying reading. However, these models can only simulate and test predictions about the reading of single lines of text. Here we report two studies that examined how input variables for lexical processing (frequency and predictability) in these models influence the processing of line-final words. The first study was a linear mixed-effects analysis of the Provo Corpus, which included data from 84 readers reading 55 multiline texts. The second study was a preregistered eye movement experiment, where 32 participants read 128 items where frequency, predictability, and position (intraline vs. line-final) were orthogonally manipulated. Both studies were consistent in showing that reading times were shorter on line-final words. While there was mixed evidence for frequency and predictability effects in the Provo Corpus, our experimental data confirmed additive effects of frequency and predictability for line-final words, which did not differ from those for intraline words. We conclude that while models that make additive assumptions about the role of frequency and predictability may be better suited to modeling the current findings, additional assumptions are required if models are to be capable of modeling shorter reading times on line-final words. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)
Semantically congruent auditory primes enhance visual search efficiency: Direct evidence by varying set size.
Task-irrelevant sounds that are semantically congruent with the target can facilitate performance in visual search tasks, resulting in faster search times. In three experiments, we tested the underlying processes of this effect. Participants were presented with auditory primes that were semantically congruent, neutral, or incongruent to the visual search target, and importantly, we varied the set size of the search displays. According to seminal accounts of semantic priming, priming effects can be explained by processes not related to search (i.e., facilitation of target encoding; McNamara, 2013), which would predict a priming effect that is independent of set size. Alternatively, we tested if auditory priming can serve as a source of guidance for visual attention toward the primed target (i.e., in terms of altering attention-directing priorities; Wolfe, 2021), as indexed by higher search efficiency with congruent priming. Experiment 1 found that auditory color word primes resulted in faster responses and, importantly, flatter search slopes for congruent compared to incongruent color targets, indicating a more efficient search. As with many naturalistic search behaviors, we used multiple-target search. Experiment 2 replicated the findings of Experiment 1 with a reduced target set. Experiment 3 extended these findings to complex audiovisual objects. Our results provide direct evidence that cross-modal priming can guide visual selective attention, as reflected by enhanced visual search efficiency. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance - Vol 51, Iss 1