Browsing by Author "Voyer, Daniel"

Now showing 1 - 8 of 8
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    A meta-analysis of sex differences in human navigation skills
    (Springer, 2019) Nazareth, Alina; Huang, Xing; Voyer, Daniel; Newcombe, Nora
    There are inconsistent reports regarding behavioral sex differences in the human navigation literature. This meta-analysis quantifies the overall magnitude of sex differences in large-scale navigation skills in a variety of paradigms and populations, and examines potential moderators, using 694 effect sizes from 266 studies and a multilevel analytic approach. Overall, male participants outperform female participants, with a small to medium effect size (d = 0.34 to 0.38). The type of task, the type of dependent variable and the testing environment significantly contribute to variability in effect sizes, although there are only a few situations in which differences are either nonexistent or very large. Pointing and recall tasks (and the deviation scores associated with them) show larger sex differences than distance estimation tasks or learning to criterion. Studies with children younger than 13 years showed much smaller effect sizes (d = .15) than older age groups. We discuss the implications of these findings for understanding sex differences in human spatial navigation and identify avenues for future navigation research.
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    Auditory semantic priming and the dichotic right ear advantage
    (Elsevier, 2019) Voyer, Daniel; Hearn, Natalie
    The current study presents two experiments that aimed to explore the effects of auditory semantic priming on the dichotic right ear advantage. In Experiment 1, a classic fused dichotic words task was modified with the addition of auditory associative primes with three levels of relatedness (right, left, or neither ear). In Experiment 2, a new dichotic listening task was developed based on a binaural task used in a published auditory priming study. In both experiments, we expected that priming would produce a large right ear advantage when related to the right ear target but that the magnitude of this advantage would decrease for left ear related targets. Although evidence of priming (faster responses for related than unrelated primes) was found in both experiments, only Experiment 2 confirmed our prediction of an ear by prime relatedness interaction. Results are interpreted in the context of models concerned with the role of each cerebral hemisphere in semantic processing as well as models of perceptual asymmetries.
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    Embodied cognition, cognitive strategies, and gender differences in mental rotation performance
    (University of New Brunswick, 2015) Doyle, Randi; Voyer, Daniel
    On average, men outperform women on mental rotation tasks. The aim of Article I was to re-examine previous findings in which the magnitude of the male advantage in mental rotation abilities increased when participants mentally rotated occluded versus nonoccluded items, and decreased when participants mentally rotated human figures versus blocks. Mainly, the study aimed to address methodological issues noted on previous human figure mental rotation tests as the block and human figure test items used were likely not equivalent in terms of their cognitive requirements. Results did not support previous research on embodied cognition as mental rotation performance decreased among both men and women when mentally rotating human figures compared to blocks. However, for women, the effect of occlusion was decreased when mentally rotating human figures. Results are discussed in terms of task difficulty and gender differences in confidence and guessing behavior. The aim of Article II was to provide a better understanding of participants reduced accuracy when rotating human figures compared to blocks reported in Article I, and the role of image familiarity, embodied cognition and cognitive strategies on gender differences in performance when rotating blocks and bodies. Two new mental rotation tests were created: one using photographs of real human models positioned as closely as possible to computer drawn figures from the human figures mental rotations test used in Article I, and one using analogous block figures. It was hypothesized that when compared to the analogous blocks, the real human figures would lead to improved accuracy among both men and women, a reduced magnitude of gender differences in accuracy, and a reduced effect of occlusion on women’s accuracy when compared to analogous block figures. The three-way interaction between test, gender and occlusion reported in Article I was not replicated. However, women's scores on the real human figures improved more than men's scores on the real human figures test compared to the block figures test. This finding points to a greater strategy shift among women than men when rotating human figures. Results suggest that individuals struggling with mental rotation may benefit from training that encourages embodied cognition and holistic processing.
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    Examining the mental representations formed by programmers during parallel program comprehension
    (University of New Brunswick, 2024-06) Bidlake, Leah; Aubanel, Eric; Voyer, Daniel
    Modifying, debugging, optimizing, and extending existing code are common tasks programmers perform that require them to understand code by forming mental representations. Understanding these mental representations is important for informing instructional practices and the development of visualizations and tools that are effective in assisting programmers with these tasks. This work represents the first published empirical research on mental representations formed during program comprehension using parallel code. The systematic literature review conducted in Article I found that no empirical research on mental representations formed during program comprehension had previously been conducted using parallel code. Prior work on mental representations using sequential code found that programmers form a program model and a situation model of varying strengths depending on the task, expertise, and programming language. Given the considerable differences between sequential and parallel programming, it was not possible to determine if the results of the research using sequential code would resemble the mental representations formed during parallel program comprehension. An execution model had been proposed but had not previously been empirically studied. Due to the lack of prior work on program comprehension using parallel code, a pilot study was conducted in Article II involving expert parallel programmers. The pilot study determined that the level of difficulty of the stimuli and parameters of the study were appropriate for the target population. The pilot study was followed by the main study in Article III. The results of this study provided the first empirical evidence that programmers form an execution model during the comprehension of parallel code. Article IV studied the progression of mental representations of experienced programmers while they were learning parallel programming. This study also introduced a novel method for externalizing and analyzing mental representations formed during program comprehension. Article IV found that as programmers learn parallel programming they form a stronger execution model while their situation model becomes weaker. Article III and IV also identified themes related to the components of code programmers use to determine the presence of data races in parallel code. This work forms a basis for future research on program comprehension in the parallel programming paradigm.
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    Expectation expands subjective duration for repeated stimuli by altering perception
    (American Psychological Association, 2019) McFeaters, Corinna D.; Voyer, Daniel
    Repeated stimuli are generally perceived to be shorter in duration than novel stimuli. Matthews (2015), however, demonstrated that when repetition is predictable, expectations of repetition may expand subjective duration for repeated stimuli. Although this effect is hypothesised to be perceptual, this has yet to be empirically established. The present study, therefore, examined perceptual and decisional factors in the repetition effect by using psychophysical methods while varying probabilities of repetition, in addition to replicating Matthews’ original paradigm. Using faces with neutral expressions, 60 participants completed 2 judgment tasks, indicating whether a comparison stimulus was longer or shorter in duration than a standard stimulus preceding it. Comparison stimuli were presented for the same duration as the 500-ms standard in the replication task and for 1 of 7 durations (from 200–1,250 ms) in the crucial extension task, allowing for examination of sensitivity and bias. No evidence of bias was observed, but modulating participants’ expectations of repetition affected perception, such that discrimination was more difficult under high than low repetition conditions. Overall, participants were more likely to judge stimuli that met expectations as longer, regardless of whether the expectation was repetition or novelty. Implications for models of repetition, context effects, and time estimation are discussed.
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    Implications for school achievement and causality: A commentary
    (Elsevier, 2019) Voyer, Daniel; Voyer, Susan
    This article is a commentary on a study published in this issue by Levine et al. (2019). They reported that the relation they observed between sex-related discrepancies in success on standardized tests and health outcomes is significant only in males. We suggest that this finding has important implications for educators and future research and we examine possibilities related to sex differences in school achievement. We also offer arguments suggesting that it is premature to propose a causal explanation for the results presented by Levine and colleagues, given that crucial conditions to establish such causality are not met in their studies. We conclude with a proposal for a study that could potentially determine whether the temporal ordering required to establish causality arises in the relation between health outcomes and the sex-related discrepancies.
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    Sex differences in face recognition in a clinical and non-clinical sample
    (University of New Brunswick, 2014) McDowell, Petra; Szeligo, Frank; Voyer, Daniel
    Two articles reporting the results of studies examining sex differences on face recognition tests in a non-clinical and clinical population (i.e., patients with temporal lobe epilepsy/surgery; TLE/S) are presented. The goals were to determine whether sex differences are present on a clinical test of face recognition, and whether these results apply differently based on the hemisphere implicated in seizures. In Study 1, sex differences at the level of the participant, stimulus (i.e., male/female faces) and distractor/target were examined on the Wechsler Memory Scale (Third Edition; WMS) - Immediate and Delayed Faces Subtests and on a non-clinical test of face recognition (Experimental Face Test; EFT). Participants’ performance on the two tests was compared to determine whether conflicting results in the literature are due to sampling or test differences. No participant sex differences were found. Female faces were recognized more accurately on the EFT and WMS-Delayed, but male faces were recognized more accurately on the WMS-Immediate. Women evidenced a same-sex bias on the WMS-Immediate and EFT. Results suggest that inconsistencies in the literature may be due to sampling and test characteristics. Findings have implications for test and stimulus selection in research and for the use of clinical tests with clinical populations. Study 2 used the WMS Faces Subtests with individuals with TLE/S to determine whether sex differences exist in this group, and whether there were differences based on the hemisphere implicated in seizures. Patients with right TLE/S were more impaired than patients with left TLE/S both pre-and post-surgically, especially on distractor and female target faces. Moreover, sex of stimulus, time of assessment, and sex of patient interacted, whereby male faces were recognized more accurately than female faces by both sexes pre-surgically, but only by men post-surgically. The results suggest that the WMS-FS is sensitive to TLE/S damage pre- and post-operatively, and that considering sex and type of stimulus may provide useful information when interpreting test results. These findings have implications for test developers and for professionals working with individuals at risk of face recognition deficits.
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    Time flies when you're surprised: exploring expectation's influence on the repetition effect for time perception
    (University of New Brunswick, 2021) McFeaters, Corinna D.; Voyer, Daniel
    Many factors affect the experience of subjective duration. One such factor, immediate repetition, typically results in a subjective contraction of duration for the repeated stimulus, but Matthews (2015) demonstrated that the effect of repetition is modulated by expectations of repetition. Matthews hypothesized a perceptual basis for this effect and proposed a mechanism of action whereby subjective duration is related to the strength of the representation - that is, a stronger representation corresponds to a longer subjective duration - which was later termed the Processing Principle (Matthews & Meck, 2016). Article 1 replicated Matthews' findings and extended them using signal detection methodology to examine the proposed perceptual basis for the effect of expectation. Expectation affected discrimination sensitivity but not response bias, supporting the perceptual hypothesis. The direction of the sensitivity effect, however, suggested that representation for expected repeated stimuli may have been poorer, contrary to the Processing Principle. Implications for our understanding of expectation's effects and their role in related tasks are discussed. Article 2 directly examined the relationship between representation and perceived duration by manipulating the visual clarity of task stimuli in order to weaken the perceptual representation of the stimulus. Although weaker representations should result in shorter subjective durations according to the Processing Principle, stimulus degradation did not affect the relationship between repetition and expectation. Furthermore, perceived duration was uniformly longer, rather than shorter, for trials that contained a degraded stimulus, regardless of trial type, expectation of trial type, or which stimulus of the trial pairs was degraded. The results suggested, however, that participants formed a second, global expectation for degradation, and longer subjective durations for trials with expected degradation could reflect representational sharpening processes at this level. Altogether, findings for Article 2 are not wholly consistent with the Processing Principle, but neither can the relationship between representation and subjective duration be ruled out at this time.