Psicólogos del testimonio: ¿un peritaje de lujo?

Resumen

Dentro de las investigaciones sobre psicología del testimonio destaca, por el volumen de trabajos, el área de la identificación de personas. En este artículo se pretende dar una visión global de los diferentes procedimientos de identificarón, aportando datos para juzgar su utilidad cuando son empleados por testigos para reconocer o recordar a una persona. Se sugiere que los errores de los testigos pueden ser interpretados al entender el funcionamiento de la memoria más como reconstrucción que como reproducción de sucesos, sugiriéndose como más conveniente para la interpretarán de los datos actuales la teoría de conocimiento social de Nisbett y Ross (1980). Se aporta, también, una extensa bibliografía sobre este tema.     

Characteristics of Athletes’ Approach to the Question of Physical Health and Health Behaviors: Do Athletes Lead Healthy Lifestyles?

Athletes are people for whom physical health is a key value. Health promoting behaviors are an integral part of athletes’ success. The aim of this article is to identify health criteria and health-related behaviors among athletes and their determinants in terms of temperament and personality features. The concept of healthy lifestyle as understood by athletes and their most important health criteria were defined. Neuroticism and extraversion correlated with and were significant predictors of health behaviors; there were no significant relationships between health-promoting behaviors and temperament. Four groups of athletes, each characterized by a different approach to health, were identified. These groups were described with respect to various personality and temperamental determinants. Knowledge about the above-mentioned aspects of athletes’ performance can assist sport psychologists in providing athletes with more personalized support.     

Conscious and unconscious face recognition is improved by high-frequency rTMS on pre-motor cortex

Simulation process and mirroring mechanism appear to be necessary to the recognition of emotional facial expressions. Prefrontal areas were found to support this simulation mechanism. The present research analyzed the role of premotor area in processing emotional faces with different valence (positive vs. negative faces), considering both conscious and unconscious pathways. High-frequency rTMS (10 Hz) stimulation was applied to prefrontal area to induce an activation response when overt (conscious) and covert (unconscious) processing was implicated. Twenty-two subjects were asked to detect emotion/no emotion (anger, fear, happiness, neutral). Error rates (ERs) and response times (RTs) were considered in response to the experimental conditions. ERs and RTs decreased in case of premotor brain activation, specifically in response to fear, for both conscious and unconscious condition. The present results highlight the role of the premotor system for facial expression processing, supporting the existence of two analogous mechanisms for conscious and unconscious condition.     

Gender, personality, and involuntary autobiographical memory

We utilised the recently developed continuous word association task (CWAT) to investigate whether attributes of involuntary autobiographical memory, including gender and cue valence effects, were similar to those found for voluntary autobiographical memory, as well as investigating the role of individual differences in memory production. A total of 80 undergraduate volunteers reported involuntary memories that came to mind during the word association task and completed measures of trait dissociation and psychosis-proneness. Involuntary memories showed similar cue valence effects to those typically found with voluntary memories but the usual gender effect was only apparent once participants learned the task involved autobiographical memory. The total number of involuntary autobiographical memories produced in response to negative cue words was related to greater trait dissociation and psychosis-proneness. The implications for differences between voluntary and involuntary autobiographical memory are discussed.     

Factors influencing the intention to watch online video advertising

This study examines the factors influencing consumer intention to watch online video ads, by applying the theory of reasoned action. The attitude toward watching online video ads, the subjective norm, and prior frequency of watching online video ads positively influence the intention to watch online video ads. Further, beliefs held about entertainment and information outcomes from watching online video ads and subjective norm influence attitude toward watching these ads.     

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.     

Attenuated response to methamphetamine sensitization and deficits in motor learning and memory after selective deletion of β-catenin in dopamine neurons

In the present study, we analyzed mice with a targeted deletion of β-catenin in DA neurons (DA-βcat KO mice) to address the functional significance of this molecule in the shaping of synaptic responses associated with motor learning and following exposure to drugs of abuse. Relative to controls, DA-βcat KO mice showed significant deficits in their ability to form long-term memories and displayed reduced expression of methamphetamine-induced behavioral sensitization after subsequent challenge doses with this drug, suggesting that motor learning and drug-induced learning plasticity are altered in these mice. Morphological analyses showed no changes in the number or distribution of tyrosine hydroxylase-labeled neurons in the ventral midbrain. While electrochemical measurements in the striatum determined no changes in acute DA release and uptake, a small but significant decrease in DA release was detected in mutant animals after prolonged repetitive stimulation, suggesting a possible deficit in the DA neurotransmitter vesicle reserve pool. However, electron microscopy analyses did not reveal significant differences in the content of synaptic vesicles per terminal, and striatal DA levels were unchanged in DA-βcat KO animals. In contrast, striatal mRNA levels for several markers known to regulate synaptic plasticity and DA neurotransmission were altered in DA-βcat KO mice. This study demonstrates that ablation of β-catenin in DA neurons leads to alterations of motor and reward-associated memories and to adaptations of the DA neurotransmitter system and suggests that β-catenin signaling in DA neurons is required to facilitate the synaptic remodeling underlying the consolidation of long-term memories.     

Sink positive: Linguistic experience with th substitutions influences nonnative word recognition

We used eyetracking, perceptual discrimination, and production tasks to examine the influences of perceptual similarity and linguistic experience on word recognition in nonnative (L2) speech. Eye movements to printed words were tracked while German and Dutch learners of English heard words containing one of three pronunciation variants (/t/, /s/, or /f/) of the interdental fricative /θ/. Irrespective of whether the speaker was Dutch or German, looking preferences for target words with /θ/ matched the preferences for producing /s/ variants in German speakers and /t/ variants in Dutch speakers (as determined via the production task), while a control group of English participants showed no such preferences. The perceptually most similar and most confusable /f/ variant (as determined via the discrimination task) was never preferred as a match for /θ/. These results suggest that linguistic experience with L2 pronunciations facilitates recognition of variants in an L2, with effects of frequency outweighing effects of perceptual similarity.     

Temporal factors in pattern vision

A sequence of uncorrelated randomly patterned visual stimuli (“visual noise”) is normally seen as a field of particles in “Brownian motion.” When each frame of the sequence is followed by a blank flash superimposed on the same region of the visual field, the apparent structure of the noise field is strikingly altered, its form varying with the time interval between frame and flash. At a critical interval, many dots seem to cohere, to form maggot-like objects.

Some of the factors determining this critical interval have been studied. They include the brightness, repetition frequency and exposure duration of the noise field, and the distance of its retinal image from the fovea.

The critical interval for “perceptual blanking” is quite different from that for the “maggot effect,” but the two show a suggestively similar dependence upon the duty cycle of the noise display.

It is of some neurological interest that the phenomenon is not appreciably visible with dichoptic mixing of noise and blank stimuli.