Signal clustering modulates auditory cortical activity in humans

Auditory streaming and its relevance to attentional processing was examined using event-related brain potentials (ERPs) in situations facilitating perception of one or two streams of sounds. Subjects listened to sequences of brief tones of three different frequencies presented in random order. In evenly spaced (ES) conditions, the three frequencies were equidistant on the musical scale. In clustered, easy (CE) conditions, the attended frequency was distinct, while the middle and extreme distractor tones were clustered together. In clustered, hard (CH) conditions, the attended frequency was clustered with one of the distractors. The subjects pressed a button in response to occasional target tones of longer duration at a prespecified frequency. The subjects were faster and more accurate in CE conditions than they were in ES conditions, and ERP attention effects were enhanced in amplitude in CE conditions. Conversely, the subjects were slower and less accurate in CH conditions and ERP attention effects were delayed in latency and decreased in amplitude. Clustering effects suggest that the processing of stimuli belonging to the attended stream was promoted and the processing of those falling outside the stream was inhibited. The timing and scalp distribution of clustering-related changes in ERPs suggest that clustering modulates early sensory processing in auditory cortex.     

Feature processing during high-rate auditory selective attention

Auditory event-related brain potentials (ERPs) and reaction times were, analyzed in a selective attention task in which subjects attended to tone pips presented at high rates-Xinterstimulua intervals [ISIs] of 40-200 msec). Subjects responded to infrequent target tones of a specified frequency (250 or 4000 Hz) and location (left or right ear) that were louder than otherwise identical tones presented randomly to the left and right ears. Negative difference (Nd) waves were isolated by subtracting ERPs to tones with no target features from ERPs to the same tones when they shared target location, frequency, or both frequency and location cues. Nd waves began 60-70 msec after tone onset and lasted until 252–350 msec after tone onset, even for tones with single attended cues. The duration of Nd waves exceeded the ISIs between successive tones, implying that several stimuli underwent concurrent analysis. Nd waves associated with frequency processing had scalp distributions different from those associated with location processing, implying that the features were analyzed in distinct cortical areas. Nd waves specific to auditory feature conjunction were isolated. These began at latencies of 110–120 msec, some 30-40 msec after the Nds to single features. The relative timing of the different Nd waves suggests that auditory feaure conjunction begins after a brief parallel analysis of individual features but before feature analysis is complete.     

Effect of social-class belonging on the cognitive dissonance resulting from threat severity

Results of two experiments using a ‘forbidden toy’ paradigm partially confirm those of a former study which showed an interaction between social-class level of the children and threat severity on the final rankings of the toy. Lower-class children derogated the forbidden toy more than middle-class children in the harsh threat condition. Opposed results were observed in the mild threat condition. Interpretation of such results seems difficult in terms of cognitive dissonance theory.     

Significance,structure, and gender differences in life domains of college students

The purpose of this study was to assess the significance and structure of life domains of college students and to explore the patterns of gender differences on different indices of significance. Four hundred fifty-seven college students rated 21 life domains in terms of degree of importance, frequency of involvement, and level of impact. They also responded to a measure of global life satisfaction. Gender differences on significance indices were investigated by means of three types of analyses. First, gender mean ratings on 21 life domains were compared via one-way multivariate analyses of variance. Second, the underlying dimensions of the 21 domains for each gender were compared via exploratory factor analyses. Third, the correlation patterns between perceived positive impact of each life domain and life satisfaction were calculated separately for men and women. Within-group comparisons revealed that men and women shared the same nine most significant domains: education, friends, biological needs, leisure, family, health, couple, esthetics, and physical activities. However, several gender differences were consistently found in the three types of analyses. The results indicated that although traditionally feminine domains are rated as more significant to women than men, traditional masculine domains were rated as equally significant by men and women. Domains considered sex role neutral (e.g., personal planning) were rated as more significant by women than men. In general, women appear to experience greater cognitive, affective, and behavioral aspects of significance in a wider spectrum of activities and as well perceive their general life satisfaction as deriving from a broader range of sources. Results also highlight the importance of assessing the degree of significance of life domains as an initial step in the development of multidimensional self-related constructs.Preparation of this paper was made possible through grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Fonds pour la Formation des Chercheurs et l'Aide à la Recherche (FCAR-Québec) and the Université du Québec à Montréal. We would like to thank Richard Koestner and Richard Bourhis for their valuable comments on an earlier version of this paper.     

Instructional effects in the use of the mnemonic keyword method for learning German nouns and their grammatical gender

The use of the mnemonic keyword method involves (a) the formation of an orthographic link between the form of a foreign word and that of a physically similar word in one's mother tongue (i.e. the keyword), and (b) the formation of a semantic link between the referent of the foreign word and that of the keyword. In a variation of this study method, English-speaking learners were asked to study the grammatical gender of German nouns by substituting the concepts of a woman, a man, and an inanimate object for the feminine, masculine, and neuter genders, respectively. This more concrete representation of gender was then to be incorporated to an interactive image along with the referent of the keyword and that of the German noun. The three experiments reported in this paper yielded four main results: (a) instructing learners to recode the gender tag and to include its representation into an interactive mental image along with the referent of the German noun facilitated the recall of genders: (b) the facilitating effect of imagery instructions on the recall of genders was obtained only if the English translation was recalled; (c) the probability of correctly reporting the gender given that the English translation was not recalled was higher than the baseline for guessing if the learners were instructed to encode the gender before the translation, otherwise it was consistently near the baseline: and (d) in contrast with prior studies with French-speaking subjects, the modified keyword method did not always enhance the recall of the familiar translation equivalents. The discussion bears mainly on the factors that might account for the difficulty of detecting a consistent keyword advantage in the recall of the familiar translation.     

Psycholinguistic norms for action photographs in French and their relationships with spoken and written latencies.

A set of 142 photographs of actions (taken from Fiez & Tranel, 1997) was standardized in French on name agreement, image agreement, conceptual familiarity, visual complexity, imageability, age of acquisition, and duration of the depicted actions. Objective word frequency measures were provided for the infinitive modal forms of the verbs and for the cumulative frequency of the verbal forms associated with the photographs. Statistics on the variables collected for action items were provided and compared with the statistics on the same variables collected for object items. The relationships between these variables were analyzed, and certain comparisons between the current database and other similar published databases of pictures of actions are reported. Spoken and written naming latencies were also collected for the photographs of actions, and multiple regression analyses revealed that name agreement, image agreement, and age of acquisition are the major determinants of action naming speed. Finally, certain analyses were performed to compare object and action naming times. The norms and the spoken and written naming latencies corresponding to the pictures are available on the Internet (http://www.psy.univ-bpclermont.fr/~pbonin/pbonin-eng.html) and should be of great use to researchers interested in the processing of actions.     

French normative data and naming times for action pictures.

The aim of the present study was to provide French normative data for 112 action line drawings. The set of action pictures consisted of 71 drawings taken from Masterson and Druks (1998) and 41 additional drawings. It was standardized on six psycholinguistic variables--that is, name agreement, image agreement, image variability, visual complexity, conceptual familiarity, and age of acquisition (AoA). Naming latencies to the action pictures were collected, and a regression analysis was performed on the naming latencies, with the standardized variables, as well as with word frequency and length, taken as predictors. A reliable influence of AoA, name agreement, and image agreement on the naming latencies was observed. The findings are consistent with previous published studies in other languages. The full set of these norms may be downloaded from www.psychonomic.org/archive/.     

Eye-movement evidence of the time-course of attentional bias for threatening pictures in test-anxious students

Protocols for measuring attentional bias to threat in test-anxiety, a special form of trait-anxiety, are rarely found in the literature. In our eye-tracking study, we introduced a new protocol, and studied the time-course of attention to test-related pictures with varying threat levels in 22 high test-anxious (HTA) and 22 low test-anxious (LTA) subjects. To determine whether attentional bias to test-related pictures is due to test-anxiety and not to state-anxiety, we also included a third group of 22 subjects with high state-anxiety but low test-anxiety (HSA). The subjects completed a free viewing task (FVT) in which high threat-neutral (HT-N) and low threat-neutral (LT-N) picture pairs were presented for 3?s. The results demonstrated that: (1) HTA subjects showed initial orienting to LT pictures, early attentional engagement with HT pictures later on and avoidance of HT pictures at the very end; (2) LTA subjects showed initial orienting to HT pictures and maintenance of attention on them later on; while (3) HSA subjects showed an initial orientation towards LT pictures and maintenance of attention on LT and HT pictures later on. These results suggest that, (high) test-anxiety is also prone to attentional bias towards test-related threat stimuli. Implications for future research are discussed.     

Are animacy effects in episodic memory independent of encoding instructions?

The adaptive view of human memory [Nairne, J. S. 2010. Adaptive memory: Evolutionary constraints on remembering. In B. H. Ross (Ed.), The psychology of learning and motivation (Vol. 53 pp. 1–32). Burlington: Academic Press; Nairne, J. S., & Pandeirada, J. N. S. 2010a. Adaptive memory: Ancestral priorities and the mnemonic value of survival processing. Cognitive Psychology, 61, 1–22, 2010b; Memory functions. In The Corsini encyclopedia of psychology and behavioral science, (Vol 3, 4th ed. pp. 977–979). Hokoben, NJ: John Wiley & Sons] assumes that animates (e.g., baby, rabbit presented as words or pictures) are better remembered than inanimates (e.g., bottle, mountain) because animates are more important for fitness than inanimates. In four studies, we investigated whether the animacy effect in episodic memory (i.e., the better remembering of animates over inanimates) is independent of encoding instructions. Using both a factorial (Studies 1 and 3) and a multiple regression approach (Study 2), three studies tested whether certain contexts drive people to attend to inanimate more than to animate things (or the reverse), and therefore lead to differential animacy effects. The findings showed that animacy effects on recall performance were observed in the grassland-survival scenario used by Nairne, Thompson, and Pandeirada (2007. Adaptive memory: Survival processing enhances retention. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition, 33, 263–273) (Studies 1–3), when words were rated for their pleasantness (Study 2), and in explicit learning (Study 3). In the non-survival scenario of moving to a foreign land (Studies 1–2), animacy effects on recall rates were not reliable in Study 1, but were significant in Study 2, whereas these effects were reliable in the non-survival scenario of planning a trip as a tour guide (Study 3). A final (control) study (Study 4) was conducted to test specifically whether animacy effects are related to the more organised nature of animates than inanimates. Overall, the findings suggest that animacy effects are robust since they do not vary across different sets of encoding instructions (e.g., encoding for survival, preparing a trip and pleasantness).