Processing Italian Relative Clauses: Working Memory Span and Word Order Effects on RTs

In this study, the authors aim to clarify whether the subject–object asymmetry in relative clause comprehension is due to the use of parsing strategies (Active Filler Theory) or to a greater memory load generated by object sentences. Two experiments investigate how individual differences in working memory span may influence the reading times of relative sentences in Italian, a language characterized by a flexible structure. The results of Experiment 1 indicate that object extraction is more complex than subject extraction when sentences have a canonical structure. Furthermore, low-span participants have particular difficulties with object relative sentence comprehension. The results of Experiment 2 show that subject-relative clauses with uncanonical structures are more complex to understand than object-relative clauses, and low-span participants have more difficulties than high-span participants in elaborating both subject and object relative clauses. These data seem to be coherent with the Active Filler Theory.     

Running with emotion: When affective content hampers working memory performance

This study tested the hypothesis that affective content may undermine rather than facilitate working memory (WM) performance. To this end, participants performed a running WM task with positive, negative and neutral words. In typical running memory tasks, participants are presented with lists of unpredictable length and are asked to recall the last three or four items. We found that accuracy with affective words decreased as lists lengthened, whereas list length did not influence recall of neutral words. We interpreted this pattern of results in terms of a limited resource model of WM in which valence represents additional information that needs to be manipulated, especially in the context of difficult trials.     

Role of Interactivity in Learning from Engineering Animations

This study examines the pedagogic value of incorporating sophisticated interactivity features into lessons on hand‐held devices. Engineering students (Experiment 1) and non‐engineering college students (Experiment 2) spent 5 min studying an animation showing a six‐step maintenance procedure for a mechanical device called a Power Take‐Off presented on an iPad. In both experiments, students who received high interactivity (i.e., rotation through dragging movements and zoom through pinching movements) reported higher interest but did not show better learning as compared to the low interactivity group (i.e., pause and continue buttons on the touch screen) or no interactivity group. Across two experiments, the interactivity hypothesis was supported in terms of increased interest but not supported in terms of improved learning. Thus, there was not support for the idea that increasing situational interest through high levels of interactivity primes deeper learning processes that produce better learning outcomes. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Not All Alike: The Distinctive Impact of Voluntary and Involuntary Effort on Stress and Fatigue

Nowadays, little evidence exists on how variations in effort affect worker health, such as stress and fatigue, two important and undesirable outcomes for workers. Then, this paper analyses the impact of different dimensions of effort on stress and fatigue. To do so we use past literature to links the different effort dimensions on employee health. Concretely, the frameworks used in the paper are the one developed by Karasek and Theorell (1990), according to which the different combinations of work demands, competences in decision making and social support determine the stress employees suffer; and the effort-reward imbalance model (ERI Model) of Siegrist (Psychology 1:27–41, 1996). This provides a more sensitive model of stress, as it uses a combination of extrinsic effort and intrinsic effort as predictors of stress. Building on these theoretical models of job stress we argue that one main source of employee stress and fatigue is employee effort. Using a representative Spanish data set, our study reveals that different dimensions of effort have different consequences for workers. Whereas involuntary effort increases both stress and fatigue, voluntary effort entails a decrease in both.     

Uncovering unknown unknowns: Towards a Baconian approach to management decision-making

Bayesian decision theory and inference have left a deep and indelible mark on the literature on management decision-making. There is however an important issue that the machinery of classical Bayesianism is ill equipped to deal with, that of “unknown unknowns” or, in the cases in which they are actualised, what are sometimes called “Black Swans”. This issue is closely related to the problems of constructing an appropriate state space under conditions of deficient foresight about what the future might hold, and our aim is to develop a theory and some of the practicalities of state space elaboration that addresses these problems. Building on ideas originally put forward by Bacon (1620), we show how our approach can be used to build and explore the state space, how it may reduce the extent to which organisations are blindsided by Black Swans, and how it ameliorates various well-known cognitive biases.     

Improving Psychological Measurement: Does It Make a Difference? A Comment on Nesselroade and Molenaar (2016)

Nesselroade and Molenaar advocate the use of an idiographic filter approach. This is a fixed-effects approach, which may limit the number of individuals that can be simultaneously modeled, and it is not clear how to model the presence of subpopulations. Most important, Nesselroade and Molenaar's proposal appears to be best suited for modeling long time series on a few variables for a few individuals. Long time series are not common in psychological applications. Can it be applied to the usual longitudinal data we face? These are characterized by short time series (four to five points in time), hundreds of individuals, and dozens of variables. If so, what do we gain? Applied settings most often involve between-individual decisions. I conjecture that their approach will not outperform common, simpler, methods. However, when intraindividual decisions are involved, their approach may have an edge.     

Effects of chronic cocaine administration on spatial learning and hippocampal spine density in two genetically different strains of rats

Lewis and Fischer-344 rats have been proposed as an addiction model because of their differences in addiction behaviour. It has been suggested that drug addiction is related to learning and memory processes and depends on individual genetic background. We have evaluated learning performance using the eight-arm radial maze (RAM) in Lewis and Fischer-344 adult rats undergoing a chronic treatment with cocaine. In order to study whether morphological alterations were involved in the possible changes in learning after chronic cocaine treatment, we counted the spine density in hippocampal CA1 neurons from animals after the RAM protocol. Our results showed that Fischer-344 rats significantly took more time to carry out test acquisition and made a greater number of errors than Lewis animals. Nevertheless, cocaine treatment did not induce changes in learning and memory processes in both strains of rats. These facts indicate that there are genetic differences in spatial learning and memory that are not modified by the chronic treatment with cocaine. Moreover, hippocampal spine density is cocaine-modulated in both strains of rats. In conclusion, cocaine induces similar changes in hippocampal neurons morphology that are not related to genetic differences in spatial learning in the RAM protocol used here.     

Cognitive and neural determinants of response strategy in the dual-solution plus-maze task

Response strategy in the dual-solution plus maze is regarded as a form of stimulus-response learning. In this study, by using an outcome devaluation procedure, we show that it can be based on both action-outcome and stimulus-response habit learning, depending on the amount of training that the animals receive. Furthermore, we show that deactivation of the dorso-medial and the dorso-lateral striatum with Botulinum neurotoxin A, mimicked or abolished, respectively, the effects of practice on the sensitivity of the response strategy to outcome devaluation. These findings have relevant implications for the understanding of the learning mechanisms underlying different overt behaviors in this widely used maze task.     

Development of a new fear of hypoglycemia scale: FH-15

Hypoglycemia is the most common adverse event associated with insulin treatment in diabetes. The consequences of hypoglycemia can be quite aversive and potentially life threatening. The physical sequelae provide ample reason for patients to fear hypoglycemia and avoid episodes. For these reasons, our purpose in this study was to develop a new measure that explores specific fear of hypoglycemia (FH) in adult patients with type 1 diabetes and to examine its psychometric properties. The instrument developed to assess FH was initially made up of 20 items, of which 18 were negative and 2 were positive, assessed on a 5-point Likert scale (1-5). This scale was completed by 229 patients with type 1 diabetes. Additionally, a structured interview and a closed question called subjective fear of hypoglycemia were included as diagnostic criteria. A factor analysis employing the principal-components method and promax rotation was carried out, resulting in a new scale composed of 15 items. Three factors (fear, avoidance, and interference) were obtained and explained 58.27% of the variance. The scale showed good internal consistency (Cronbach's α = .891) and test-retest reliability (r = .908, p < .001), as well as adequate concurrent and predictive validity. The cutoff score that provided the highest overall sensitivity and specificity was set at 28 points. The Fear of Hypoglycemia 15-item scale (FH-15) demonstrated good reliability and validity. This study suggests that the new instrument may serve as a valuable measure of specific FH for use in research and clinical practice.