Effects of Monitoring and Social Reprimands on Instruction-Following in Undergraduate Students

The effects of the magnitude of nonverbal consequences, monitoring, and social consequences on instruction-following were evaluated. Twenty-four undergraduates were exposed to a matching-to-sample procedure. The undergraduates underwent four experimental phases that differed regarding the presence or absence of the observer and the correspondence or non-correspondence of the instructions with the nonverbal contingency. In Experiments 1 and 2, the magnitudes of the nonverbal consequences were manipulated, and in Experiment 3, the effects of verbal reprimands on instruction-following were evaluated. The results revealed that alterations in the magnitudes of nonverbal consequences did not influenced the performances of the participants and that monitoring increased the probability that the participants would follow the instructions but not to an extent sufficient to maintain performance when the consequences did not correspond to the nonverbal contingency. The inclusion of verbal reprimands was necessary to achieve this effect. These results support the proposition that social control is important for maintaining instruction-following.

     

The influence of natural contour and face size on the spatial frequency tuning for identifying upright and inverted faces

Psychological Research - It has previously been proposed that holistic face processing is based on low spatial frequencies (SFs) whereas featural processing relies on higher SFs, a hypothesis still...     

Modified decision processes marked by linguistic forms in a problem solving task

The aim of this paper is to formalize, from linguistic markers, the on-line modifications of decision processes in terms of detachments from the spatio-temporal situation. For that, a 10-year-old’s verbal protocol, obtained during four successive trials on the Tower of Hanoi puzzle, is analyzed in the line of current cognitive linguistics, notably Culioli’s theory of enunciative operations. A first modification is inherent to decision process themselves according to their status, defining a distribution of representations between internal vs external problem spaces. That is marked by the presence or not of aggregates and of “starting terms”. A second kind of modifications is marked by modal terms. The formalization relies on a cognitive interpretation of enunciative operations involved in these detachments and suggests a new approach of information processing. Results show a progressive identification of constraints, and the reconstruction of the spatio-temporal situation at detached levels. Several kinds of partial articulations and compositions intervene in the on-line construction of elementary classes and between declarative and procedural aggregates.     

Linguistic markers of decision processes in a problem solving task

Two distinct decision processes, involved in the construction of chunks, were characterized from the cognitive interpretation of Culioli’s enunciative operations in 80 thinking aloud verbal reports for the Tower of Hanoi puzzle. The instructions presented the tower to 20 participants, 10 years old, during four consecutive trials, with two distinct verbal labels, either as a collection or as a class, i.e. as Tower vs. Disks. Two studies analysed the repartition of linguistic markers: enunciative Locations between consecutive moves, interpreted as markers of automatic entailments and of attentional focusing; and Starting Terms, as markers of a categorizing process, reconstructing external occurrences at a higher level of control, and regulating the access to abstraction. In the first study sections were demarcated on every solution path by the achievement of subgoals, and by points of obligatory passage, and, in the second one, two distinct batches of moves were distinguished. Results allowed to characterize micro-processes involved in the interaction between internal and external spaces. A process of internalization and externalization, entailing perseverations, was observed in the case of holistic structure, at the beginning in condition Tower, and later in condition Disks where the emergence of this structure was attested. A third study analyzed individual differences in performance, showing two mechanisms of generalization, one in interactive processing, the other along the optimal strategy in the external space. These exploratory results open the way to a number of issues going far beyond the case of the Tower of Hanoi puzzle.     

An investigation of young infants' perceptual representations of speech sounds

The present study examined the ability of newborns and 2-month-olds to detect phonetic differences between syllables. By relying on the modified high-amplitude sucking procedure, which did not permit the infants to use a simple same-different response, the present experiments tapped the perceptual representations of the speech sounds. Infants as young as a few days old displayed some capacity to represent differences in a set of syllables varying in their phonetic composition, although there was no convincing evidence that their representations were structured in terms of phonetic segments. Finally, evidence of developmental changes in speech processing were noted for the first time with infants in this age range. The change noted was a tendency from global toward more specific representations on the part of the older infants.     

Before and after the vocabulary spurt: two modes of word acquisition?

This paper focuses on early lexical development, and especially the period around 18 months known as the vocabulary spurt. We first propose that this period corresponds to a shift from an associationist to a referential lexical acquisition mechanism following the developmental coupling of specific pre‐linguistic and cognitive abilities. This latter mechanism would allow the acquisition of genuine words, i.e. links between phonetically specified sound patterns and object categories. We then review the literature on early lexical acquisition by typically developing infants and infants with Down and Williams syndrome, and report some data that were recently collected on this issue. We conclude that the data so far are congruent with our proposal, but because they remain insufficient, we propose some future research that focuses on the relation between pre‐linguistic and cognitive developments.     

Networks of self-defining memories as a contributing factor to emotional openness

Emotional openness is characterised by a capacity to tolerate threatening self-relevant material and an interest towards new emotional situations. We investigated how specific networks of memories could be an important contributing factor to emotional openness. At Phase 1, participants completed measures of personality traits and emotional intelligence, described a self-defining memory, provided other memories associated with it, and rated the valence of each of their memories. A score assessing the complexity of this memory network, comprising the number of memories reported and their valence diversity, was created. Two weeks later, in laboratory, participants watched an anxiety-inducing film and took part in an interview assessing their emotional openness to the film. They completed a cognitive task before and after the film to measure ego depletion. Controlling for traits and emotional intelligence, memory network complexity was positively associated with emotional openness and negatively with ego depletion. The mental organisation of self-defining memories thus appears to be a critical factor contributing to emotional openness.     

Dichotic perception and laterality in neonates

Groups of 4-day-old neonates were tested for dichotic discrimination and ear differences with the High-Amplitude-Sucking procedure. In the first experiment, dichotic speech discrimination was attested by comparison with a control group. Furthermore, among those subjects who showed a substantial recovery of sucking response at least after one of the two syllable changes, it was observed that significantly more subjects manifested a stronger reaction to a right-ear change than to a left-ear change. In the second experiment, 4-day-old neonates were tested on syllable and music timbre discrimination. The significant Stimulus Type x Ear interaction observed suggests perceptual asymmetries indicative of very precocious brain specialization.