Deceived and distorted: game outcome retrospectively determines the reported time of action.

Previous work suggested the association between intentionality and the reported time of action was exclusive, with intentionality as the primary facilitator to the mental time compression between the reported time of action and its effect (Haggard, Clark, & Kalogeras, 2002). In three experiments, we examined whether mental time compression could also be observed in an unintended action. Participants performed an externally cued key press task that elicited one of two possible tones.

We infer rather than perceive the moment we decided to act.

A seminal experiment found that the reported time of a decision to perform a simple action was at least 300 ms after the onset of brain activity that normally preceded the action. In Experiment 1, we presented deceptive feedback (an auditory beep) 5 to 60 ms after the action to signify a movement time later than the actual movement. The reported time of decision moved forward in time linearly with the delay in feedback, and came after the muscular initiation of the response at all but the 5-ms delay.

Recognition and source memory as multivariate decision processes.

Recognition memory, source memory, and exclusion performance are three important domains of study in memory, each with its own findings, it specific theoretical developments, and its separate research literature. It is proposed here that results from all three domains can be treated with a single analytic model. This article shows how to generate a comprehensive memory representation based on multidimensional signal detection theory and how to make predictions for each of these paradigms using decision axes drawn through the space.

How much work can a quale do?

It is argued that theoretical models cannot use qualia as explanatory tools, and cannot explain them either; thus, there is no way to make qualia do any useful work at all, at least in a theory. However, qualia do occur in both imagery and perception, and this article presents some ways of thinking about qualia from a functional perspective. Imagery differs from perception in its function.

Semantic congruity and expectancy in symbolic judgments.

These experiments assess the degree to which the semantic-congruity effect in comparative judgment can be explained by such expectancy effects as priming, perceptual "set," or strategies used in the task. The first experiment mixed a lexical-decision task with the comparative-judgment task and showed that neither automatic semantic priming nor deliberate preparation can account for the congruity effect. Experiments 2-4 assessed expectancy effects in a different way by presenting the instructions for comparative judgment either before or after the pair to be judged.

Assessing relations between imagery and perception.

Direct comparisons between perceptual performance and reports made under imagery instructions are uninterpretable except in cases where (a) the perceptual phenomenon is well understood and (b) experimental constraints are sufficient to establish imagery causally in the effect. Neither condition seems to be satisfied in Finke and Kurtzman's article. Furthermore, if imagery is an internal medium conceived in introspective terms, the second condition can never be met because the medium is not accessible to operational definition.

Perceptual differences between reading handwritten and typed words.

Perceptual differences between reading handwritten and typed words were investigated in a series of three experiments. In the first two experiments, a Sternberg memory search paradigm was employed, with either typed or handwritten probes. The reaction time to classify handwritten probes was slower than for typed probes, but memory search took place at the same rate for both kinds of probe.