Processing valence and intensity of infant expressions: the roles of expertise and gender

Several studies have provided evidence of a women's better accuracy in interpreting emotional states. Despite this difference is generally ascribed to the primary role of female gender in the affective relation with the offspring, to date, little information is available regarding gender differences in the ability to interpret infant facial expressions. In the present study, we examined the roles of gender and expertise in interpreting infant expression in 34 men and women who differed in their experience with infants. Women showed a significantly higher level of decoding accuracy compared to men. Expertise positively affected facial expressions decoding among women only. Our results suggest that in judging emotional facial expressions of infants, there is an interaction of biological (i.e., gender) and cultural factors that is independent of a woman's socioeconomic status.     

Patterns of adaptation in obsessive-compulsive disorder: multivariate indicators of greater variability and linear change compared to controls

Patterns of adaptation to conflict in persons with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder were assessed with the Serial Color-Word Test. Obsessive-Compulsive patients (n=50) were compared with an age- and sex-matched group of nonclinical volunteers. Measures of linear and nonlinear change in reading times during each of the five consecutive trials of the test were compared between groups by means of a multivariate model with doubly repeated measures. The multivariate analysis yielded a significant between-groups result (Wilks Lambda = .76, p < .001), mainly supported by higher values of nonlinear change in the Obsessive-Compulsive group. Thus, the discriminative ability of the Serial Color-Word Test was confirmed when individual differences were removed from the error term.     

Effects of A Dual-Task Intervention in Postural Control and Cognitive Performance in Adolescents

Abstract

The aim was to assess dual- versus single-task training for motor performance and cognitive performance in adolescents. Two experiments were performed. In the first, 30 adolescents were randomized to three groups to determine the effect of dual-task difficulty on postural control: α-scaling and root mean square (RMS). In the second, 20 adolescents were randomized to two groups to determine the effect of dual-task practice to improve working memory. RMS in the post-test was lower than the pre-test in both dual-task groups, while α-scaling was lower in post-test than pre-test only in the high-difficulty dual-task group. A practice effect was observed on the percentage of correct answers only in the dual-task group (p?=?0.035). Thus, dual-task training could enhance motor and cognitive performance more than single-task training.     

A question of intention in motor imagery

We examined the question—is the intention of completing a simulated motor action the same as the intention used in processing overt actions? Participants used motor imagery to estimate distance reachability in two conditions: Imagery-Only (IO) and Imagery-Execution (IE). With IO (red target) only a verbal estimate using imagery was given. With IE (green target) participants knew that they would actually reach after giving a verbal estimate and be judged on accuracy. After measuring actual maximum reach, used for the comparison, imagery targets were randomly presented across peripersonal- (within reach) and extrapersonal (beyond reach) space. Results indicated no difference in overall accuracy by condition, however, there was a significant distinction by space; participants were more accurate in peripersonal space. Although more research is needed, these findings support an increasing body of evidence suggesting that the neurocognitive processes (in this case, intention) driving motor imagery and overt actions are similar.     

Six Factors Fostering Protest: Predicting Participation in Locally Unwanted Land Uses Movements

In two studies we analyzed the predictors of participation in an Italian Lulu mobilization, rooted in the Susa Valley, a North-Western Italian valley where a high speed railway (HSR) should be sited. Based on the data of qualitative Study 1, performed interviewing 12 anti-HSR militants and 12 non anti-HSR militants, we hypothesized that Klandermans' (1997) model on participation (centered on group identification, sense of injustice, and collective efficacy) is suitable to predict the Lulu mobilization we studied, and that three contextual variables (community involvement, the perception of the existence of a vast majority in the community favoring the mobilization, and place attachment) may be added to Klandermans' to predict such a mobilization. We formally tested such hypotheses in quantitative Study 2 (representative sample of the people living in the Susa Valley, N =  250). Results supported the role of Klandermans' (1997) variables and confirmed the influence exerted by our contextual variables, thus suggesting that an integration of the two models would be fruitful in the analysis of Lulu mobilizations. Limits and future developments of this research are discussed.     

Qualitative differences in the representation of abstract versus concrete words: Evidence from the visual-world paradigm

In the present visual-world experiment, participants were presented with visual displays that included a target item that was a semantic associate of an abstract or a concrete word. This manipulation allowed us to test a basic prediction derived from the qualitatively different representational framework that supports the view of different organizational principles for concrete and abstract words in semantic memory. Our results confirm the assumption of a primary organizational principle based on association for abstract words, different from the semantic similarity principle proposed for concrete words, and provide the first piece of evidence in support of this view obtained from healthy participants. The results shed light on the representational structure of abstract and concrete concepts.     

Do “mudsplashes” induce tactile change blindness?

The phenomenon of change blindness (the surprising inability of people to correctly perceive changes between consecutively presented displays), primarily reported in vision, has recently been shown to occur for positional changes presented in tactile displays as well. Here, we studied people’s ability to detect changes in the number of tactile stimuli in successively presented displays composed of one to three stimuli distributed over the body surface. In Experiment 1, a tactile mask consisting of the simultaneous activation of all seven possible tactile stimulators was sometimes presented between the two to-be-discriminated tactile displays. In Experiment 2, a “mudsplash” paradigm was used, with a brief irrelevant tactile distractor presented at the moment of change of the tactile display. Change blindness was demonstrated in both experiments, thus showing that the failure to detect tactile change is not necessarily related to (1) the physical disruption between consecutive events, (2) the effect of masking covering the location of the change, or (3) the erasure or resetting of the information contained within an internal representation of the tactile display. These results are interpreted in terms of a limitation in the number of spatial locations/events that can be consciously accessed at any one time. This limitation appears to constrain change-detection performance, no matter the sensory modality in which the stimuli are presented.     

Multisensory numerosity judgments for visual and tactile stimuli

To date, numerosity judgments have been studied only under conditions of unimodal stimulus presentation. It is therefore unclear whether the same limitations on correctly reporting the number of unimodal visual or tactile stimuli presented in a display might be expected under conditions in which participants have to count stimuli presented simultaneously in two or more different sensory modalities. In Experiment 1, we investigated numerosity judgments using both unimodal and bimodal displays consisting of one to six vibrotactile stimuli (presented over the body surface) and one to six visual stimuli (seen on the body via mirror reflection). Participants had to count the number of stimuli regardless of their modality of presentation. Bimodal numerosity judgments were significantly less accurate than predicted on the basis of an independent modality-specific resources account, thus showing that numerosity judgments might rely on a unitary amodal system instead. The results of a second experiment demonstrated that divided attention costs could not account for the poor performance in the bimodal conditions of Experiment 1. We discuss these results in relation to current theories of cross-modal integration and to the cognitive resources and/or common higher order spatial representations possibly accessed by both visual and tactile stimuli.