Stick to the script: The effect of witnessing multiple actors on children’s imitation

What kinds of cues increase imitative fidelity in early childhood? The effects of multiple models and verbal framing were examined in preschool children (N = 259, 3–6-year-olds). Each participant was presented with one of eight possible combinations of type of modeling and verbal frame. The type of modeling involved: (i) a single model offering two demonstrations, (ii) two successive models each offering a single demonstration, (iii) two synchronous models each offering two demonstrations, or (iv) two synchronous models each offering a single demonstration. The verbal frame preceding the demonstrations emphasized either the instrumental outcome of the actions or their conventionality. Imitative fidelity was highest for the synchronous models (types iii and iv) and lowest for the single model (type i). Imitative fidelity was also higher for the convention-oriented than the outcome-oriented frame and higher for older than younger children. Children also provided more conventional explanations for their actions after viewing the synchronous models and after the convention-oriented framing. The results indicate that children’s imitative fidelity depends on the number of actors and the way the actions are framed.     

The effect of language cues on infants' representational flexibility in a deferred imitation task

Twelve- and 15-month-old infants who received simple verbal cues at encoding and retrieval exhibited superior representational flexibility on an imitation task compared to infants who did not receive those cues. Verbal cues can help early-verbal infants overcome perceptual dissimilarity and express knowledge in novel situations.     

The effect of cognitive load and hyperarousal on negative intrusive memories

Clinical theories of post-traumatic stress suggest that encoding processes at the time of a trauma are critical in determining whether intrusive memories will develop. Potential mechanisms that might influence the development of intrusive memories were studied, as was objective memory performance. In an analogue design, 65 participants were randomised to three conditions (cognitive load, hyperventilation, and control), and then watched a film of traumatic content. Intrusive memories were recorded during the experimental phase and at 1-week follow-up. Support was found for the prediction that verbal cognitive load and hyperventilation would facilitate intrusion development immediately following exposure to the trauma film; however, this was not maintained at follow-up. Consistent with cognitive models of post-traumatic stress, thought suppression and the distress associated with intrusive experiences mediated the relationship between distress caused by the film and intrusions at 1-week follow-up. Objective memory testing indicated that the three experimental groups showed similar recall and recognition performance for the content of the film; however, relative to the control group, individuals in the cognitive load condition were significantly less able to place film scenes in the correct order.     

Behavioral and fMRI evidence that cognitive ability modulates the effect of semantic context on speech intelligibility

Text cues facilitate the perception of spoken sentences to which they are semantically related (Zekveld, Rudner, et al., 2011). In this study, semantically related and unrelated cues preceding sentences evoked more activation in middle temporal gyrus (MTG) and inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) than nonword cues, regardless of acoustic quality (speech in noise or speech in quiet). Larger verbal working memory (WM) capacity (reading span) was associated with greater intelligibility benefit obtained from related cues, with less speech-related activation in the left superior temporal gyrus and left anterior IFG, and with more activation in right medial frontal cortex for related versus unrelated cues. Better ability to comprehend masked text was associated with greater ability to disregard unrelated cues, and with more activation in left angular gyrus (AG). We conclude that individual differences in cognitive abilities are related to activation in a speech-sensitive network including left MTG, IFG and AG during cued speech perception.     

Differential effects of cue specificity and list length on the prospective and retrospective prospective-memory components

Event-based prospective memory (PM) refers to the ability to remember to perform an intended action at an appropriate moment that is indicated by some cue. It has been shown that increasing the number of PM cues as well as decreasing the cues' specificity can impair PM performance. Although both manipulations result in similar detrimental effects to PM accuracy, they may affect different underlying cognitive processes. To test this hypothesis, we manipulated both the number of cues and cue specificity and found the expected detrimental effects on PM accuracy. Analyses with the multinomial model of PM, which considers false PM responses and accounts for guessing biases, imply that the cue-list-length manipulation affected cue singularisation as well as intention retrieval, whereas cue specificity selectively affected intention retrieval. These results are original evidence that the performance decrements from the two manipulations have different cognitive underpinnings.     

The effects of age-of-acquisition and frequency-of-occurrence in visual word recognition: Further evidence from the Dutch language

It has been claimed that the frequency effect in visual word naming is an artefact of age-of-acquisition: Words are named faster not because they are encountered more often in texts, but because they have been acquired earlier. In a series of experiments using immediate naming, lexical decision, and masked priming, we found that frequency had a clear effect in lexical tasks when age-of-acquisition is controlled for. At the same time, age-of-acquisition was a significant variable in all tasks, whereas imageability had no effect. These results corroborate findings previously reported in English and Dutch.     

The effect of emotional context on cognitive inhibition and attentional processing in dissociative identity disorder

In light of previous research, the current study tested the hypothesis that dissociative identity disorder (DID) would be characterised by effective cognitive inhibitory functioning when tested in a neutral context, but weakened inhibition when tested in an emotionally negative context. Using a negative priming task (i.e. the flanker task) to assess inhibitory ability 11 DID, 11 depressed, and 11 general population participants were tested in the two differing experimental contexts. The contexts were manipulated by instructions and word stimuli, and following the completion of this task participants completed the Dissociative Experiences Scale and the Schizotypal Personality Scale. DID participants displayed a greater degree of self-reported anxiety in the negative context and as expected displayed a reduction in inhibition in this context but not in the neutral context. The degree of negative priming for the depressed and general population samples remained stable across contexts as did their anxiety levels. The DID sample displayed slower response times to negative compared to neutral words but this attentional bias was not evident for the two comparison groups. The relationship between increased arousal, inhibitory functioning, dissociation and information processing in DID is discussed.     

The influence of positive and negative reinforcement on selective attention in the rat

In Experiments 1 and 2 rats were trained under two multiple schedules of reinforcement. In one, bar pressing during a tone-light compound stimulus was reinforced under a variable-interval food reinforcement schedule. In the other multiple schedule, bar pressing avoided grid shock on a free-operant schedule. In both multiple schedules, a discrimination was maintained by an extinction schedule that was operative during the absence of the tone-light compound. In Experiments 1 and 2 the intensity of the tone-light compound was manipulated over three levels. Subsequent extinction tests revealed that light was attended to, almost exclusively of the tone, when food reinforcement had maintained bar pressing. On the other hand, the tone gained considerable attentional control under the shock avoidance schedule. This stimulus-reinforcer interaction was maintained for all three levels of the compound intensity. In Experiment 3 it was investigated whether this interaction was associative by presenting shock during the absence of the tone-light compound when food reinforcement maintained responding, and food during the absence of the compound when shock avoidance maintained responding. Since both food and shock were presented during a single session for both schedules, nonassociative effects of the reinforcing stimuli were equivalent across the schedules. Nevertheless, the stimulus-reinforcer interaction was maintained, indicating that the interaction was an associative effect.     

Negative self-focused cognitions mediate the effect of trait social anxiety on state anxiety

The cognitive model of social anxiety predicts that negative self-focused cognitions increase anxiety when anticipating social threat. To test this prediction, 36 individuals were asked to anticipate and perform a public-speaking task. During anticipation, negative self-focused cognitions or relaxation were experimentally induced while self-reported anxiety, autonomic arousal (heart rate, heart rate variability, skin conductance level), and acoustic eye-blink startle response were assessed. As predicted, negative self-focused cognitions mediated the effects of trait social anxiety on self-reported anxiety and heart rate variability during negative anticipation. Furthermore, trait social anxiety predicted increased startle amplitudes. These findings support a central assumption of the cognitive model of social anxiety.     

The effect of age of acquisition on older individuals with and without cognitive impairments

The present study compared the effects of age of acquisition (AoA) on object naming across groups of older individuals with cognitive impairments, healthy older controls, and young healthy controls. All participants named a set of 80 pictures, within which both AoA and frequency were manipulated orthogonally. Early-acquired objects were named faster than late-acquired objects across all groups. Response time also declined with age and with cognitive impairment between the groups. The effect of AoA differed across groups, with AoA effects being largest for the older group with cognitive impairments and smallest for the young control group. The present study adds strength to the suggestion that AoA of picture names is one of the factors that influence survival or loss of memories in dementia and cognitive decline, and this could therefore be used as a potential screening test for cognitive impairment disorders in the future.     

The effect of mere presence on social facilitation: An unobtrusive test

An unobstrusive experimental manipulation was used to test the hypothesis that the mere presence of others can influence an individual's performance. A task was employed for which there were no clear performance criteria, and which was very unlikely to engender evaluation aprehension. Performance times on this task (dressing and undressing in familiar and unfamiliar clothing) were compared for subjects working alone, in the presence of a passive inattentive person, and in the presence of an attentive spectator. In contrast with the Alone condition, both social conditions (Audience and Incidental Audience) enhanced performance on the well-learned aspects of the task (dressing and undressing with one's own clothing) and hindered performance on the more complex aspects (working with unfamiliar clothing). It is concluded that the mere presence of others is a sufficient condition for social facilitation and social interference effects.     

Typhoid Pollyanna: The effect of category valence on retrieval order of positive and negative category members

Previous research suggests that people process pleasant information more efficiently than unpleasant information. This phenomenon has been illustrated in a variety of contexts and paradigms, and is frequently referred to as the Pollyanna principle. One important aspect of the Pollyanna principle is that people tend to retrieve pleasant members of a category from semantic memory prior to unpleasant members of the same category. However, we propose that the retrieval advantage of favourably viewed category members holds only for positive categories and that prototypicality of category members might be a better predictor of ease of retrieval than favourability. These possibilities were tested in two studies. In Study 1, favourability effects on retrieval order were observed for positive categories but not for neutral or negative categories. In Study 2, prototypical category members were retrieved before less prototypical category members for both positive and negative categories. These results suggest that the Pollyanna principle might be the result of a confound between favourability and prototypicality for members of favourable categories.     

The effects of social anxiety and depression on the evaluation of facial crowds

Facial crowds of emotion connoting approval or criticism are linked to the fears of socially anxious individuals. We examined evaluation ratings and decision latencies of mixed facial displays by individuals with generalized social phobia (GSPs, n = 18), individuals with comorbid depression and GSP (COMs, n = 18), and normal controls (CONs, n = 18). First, we postulated that GSPs will assign more negative ratings to predominantly disapproving audiences as compared to CONs, and that GSPs will be faster in their evaluation of these audiences (negative bias hypothesis). Second, we expected depression, but not social anxiety, to be associated with diminished positive evaluation of audiences containing predominantly happy expressions and with a slower processing of such positive cues (the impaired positivity hypothesis). Results supported the negative bias hypothesis, and provided partial support for the impaired positivity hypothesis. The importance of examining the processing of complex non-verbal cues in social anxiety and in depression is discussed.     

A preliminary investigation of the effect of hypomanic personality on the specificity and speed of autobiographical memory recall

There is some evidence that patients with bipolar disorder recall more overgeneral than specific autobiographical memories, a pattern widely reported in depression. However, there are also theoretical arguments (Barnard, Watkins, & Ramponi, 2006) suggesting that experiential processing should predominate during mania/hypomania, with an associated prediction of an increase in specific rather than overgeneral memories. This hypothesis was explicitly tested using the Autobiographical Memory Test (AMT). The specificity and speed of autobiographical recollection was compared for those with high or low levels of hypomanic personality as indexed by the Hypomanic Personality Scale (HPS). High HPS scorers recalled specific autobiographical memories in response to unpleasant cues more frequently and faster than low scorers. These results provide partial support for the hypothesis, but only for unpleasant cues.     

The effect of the feeling of resolution and recognition performance on the revelation effect

The fact that engaging in a cognitive task before a recognition task increases the probability of “old” responses is known as the revelation effect. We used several cognitive tasks to examine whether the feeling of resolution, a key construct of the occurrence mechanism of the revelation effect, is related to the occurrence of the revelation effect. The results show that the revelation effect was not caused by a visual search task, which elicited the feeling of resolution, but caused by an unsolvable anagram task and an articulatory suppression task, which did not elicit the feeling of resolution. These results suggest that the revelation effect is not related to the feeling of resolution. Moreover, the revelation effect was likely to occur in participants who performed poorly on the recognition task. The result suggests that the revelation effect is inclined to occur when people depend more on familiarity than on recollection process.     

Power becomes you: The effects of implicit and explicit power on the self

Some power cues are explicit, obvious and salient, while others are implicit, subtle and harder to detect. Drawing from research demonstrating that people assimilate to implicit cues and contrast from explicit ones, we suggest that implicit and explicit power cues have different effects on people. Two laboratory experiments found that when power cues were implicit, people in high power conditions assimilated to stereotypes of power; they had relatively higher independent self construals, and they were more likely to see themselves as autonomous from, rather than connected to, others. The opposite effect emerged when power cues were explicit. These effects were replicated in a third study, where working adults rated their own power at work and the explicitness of power cues in their workplaces. We also found that power and cue explicitness predicted co-worker support, and that this effect was mediated by self construals. These results suggest that the way power is conveyed and expressed can influence important outcomes in organizations.     

The effect of bilingualism on lexical learning and memory across two language modalities: some evidence for a domain-specific,but not general,advantage

ABSTRACT

The present study was conducted to replicate bilingual advantages in short-term memory for language-like material and word learning in young adults and extend this research to the sign domain, ultimately with the goal of investigating the domain specificity of bilingual advantages in cognition. Data from 112 monolingual hearing non-signers and 78 bilingual hearing non-signers were analysed for this study. Participants completed a battery of tasks assessing sign and word learning, short-term memory, working memory capacity, intelligence, and a language and demographic questionnaire. Overall, the results of this study suggested a bilingual advantage in memory for speech-like material – no other advantage (or disadvantage) was found. Results are discussed within the context of recent large-scale experimental and meta-analytic studies that have failed to find bilingual advantages in domain-general abilities such as attention control and working memory capacity in young adults.     

The development and coherence of future-oriented behaviors during the preschool years

Although previous research has identified a number of interesting aspects of future thinking in adults, little is known about the developmental trajectory and coherence of future-oriented behaviors during early childhood. The primary goal of this study was to explore these issues by administering a battery of tasks assessing different aspects of future thinking, including mental time travel, delay of gratification, planning, and prospective memory, to 72 preschoolers. Results revealed that performance on all of the tasks increased significantly between 3 and 5 years of age. Although most tasks were correlated, suggesting “behavioral” coherence, many of these significant correlations dropped out once age and receptive vocabulary were controlled. These results are discussed with respect to theories about, and measurement of, future orientation.     

Within a hair's breadth of buying the product: The impact of tangible and intangible bodily cues of contamination: The role of disgust and mental imagery

In most retail environments, customers can handle products. However, the downside of this freedom to touch products is product contamination. The objectives of this paper are threefold: (a) to examine the effects of contamination cues (tangible vs. intangible) on consumer responses; (b) to show the mediating role of contamination, disgust, and mental imagery; and (c) to assess the robustness of the results on three product categories for different levels of contact intimacy. Three experimental laboratory studies on different product categories (a book [n = 95], T‐shirt [n = 118], and apple [n = 102]) showed that tangible contamination cues decreased product evaluation and purchase intentions more than intangible contamination cues did. Moreover, contamination, disgust, and mental imagery mediated the effects of contamination cues on product evaluation and purchase intention. The findings provide theoretical and practical insights to help researchers and retailers understand the effect of tangible contamination cues on consumer responses.