Psychology Has to Deal with Efferences Too

The authors argue that F. Mechsner's (2004) perceptual-cognitive approach is an important contribution to the current discussion of motor control. Mechsner presents convincing evidence against direct motor control. Nevertheless, the mechanisms by which perceptual-cognitive representations determine efferent commands must still be clarified.     

Dual-Task Training Reduces Impact of Cognitive Task on Postural Sway

Given the flexible organization of locomotion evidenced in the many ways the limbs can be coordinated, the authors explored the potentially correspondingly flexible organization of nonvisual (kinesthetic) distance perception. As kinesthetic distance perception is known to be affected by how the limbs are coordinated, the authors probed the potential perceptual contribution of the arms during locomotion by manipulating arm–leg coordination patterns in blind-walked distance-matching tasks. Whereas manipulation of arm–leg coordination for walking with free-swinging arms had no observable perceptual consequences, comparable manipulation for walking with hiking poles did affect distance matching. These results suggest that under conditions in which the arms act to propel the body (e.g., crawling or stair-climbing) a person's nonvisual sense of movement is conveyed in the coordinated actions of all four limbs.     

The Effect of Sensory Deprivation and Ego Strength on a Measure of Autistic Thinking

In an experiment designed to test aspects of the psychoanalytic theory of ego functioning, 18 male and 18 female subjects were assigned in equal numbers to a 3%-hr period of either sensory deprivation (SD), social isolation (SI) or social participation (SP). Their level of autistic thinking was assessed by a word-association measure administered immediately before and immediately after the treatment condition to which each subject had been assigned. Results showed that subjects assigned to SD showed an increase in autistic thinking scores from pretreatment to posttreatment, whereas subjects assigned to the two control conditions (SI and SP) showed a decrease. Although Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) ego strength (Es) scores correlated negatively with the initial level of autistic thinking in all subjects, the experimental and control conditions had their greatest impact on subjects who scored low in Es. Results were interpreted as supporting the hypothesis that consensual functioning (particularly for subjects who scored low on Es) depends on continuing contact with reality.     

The Foundation of Counseling in the Republic of Ecuador

Counseling is at an early stage of development in the Republic of Ecuador. A turbulent history, poverty, and unemployment have affected the growth of mental health services and counselor preparation programs. Yet, this country experiences problems of addictions, domestic violence, depression, suicide, gender inequity, and drug trafficking. The future of counseling will be influenced by economic conditions and leadership provided from within and outside the Republic of Ecuador.     

Risques psychosociaux au travail : le rôle modérateur des stratégies de coping

It is now a fact that health and well being at work are enhanced by organizational characteristics (Dupret, Bocéréan, Teherani, & Feltrin, 2012) and individual characteristics such as coping strategies used in a stressful situation (Truchot & Fisher, 2002). The purpose of this research is to study the interaction between organizational characteristics and coping strategies in the emergence of psychosocial risks factors. This study was conducted with 427 employees, as part of a psychosocial risk assessment. The analysis (Sobel tests and LISREL modelization) show the moderating influence between coping strategies and the organizational variables on occupational health and life quality.     

Human risky choice in a repeated-gambles procedure: an up-linkage replication of Lakshminarayanan, Chen and Santos (2011)

Lakshminarayanan et al. (J Exp Soc Psychol 47: 689–693, 2011) showed that when choice is between variable (risky) and fixed (safe) food amounts with the same expected values, capuchins prefer the safe alternative if choice is framed as a gain, but the risky alternative if it is framed as a loss. These results seem similar to those seen in human prospect-theory tests in choice between variable and fixed gains or losses. Based on this similarity, they interpreted their results as identifying a between-species commonality in cognitive function. In this report, we repeat their experiment with humans as subjects (an up-linkage replication). Whether choices were rewarded with candy or nickels, choice approximated indifference whether framed as gains or losses. Our data mirror those of others who found that when humans make risky choices within a repeated-trials procedure without verbal instruction about outcome likelihoods, preference biases seen in one-shot, language-guided, prospect-theory tests such as Tversky and Kahneman’s (Science 211:453–458, 1981) reflection effect may not appear. The disparity between our findings and those of Lakshminarayanan et al. suggests their study does not evidence a cognitive process shared by humans and capuchins.     

An old problem: how can we distinguish between conscious and unconscious knowledge acquired in an implicit learning task?

A long lasting debate in the field of implicit learning is whether participants can learn without acquiring conscious knowledge. One crucial problem is that no clear criterion exists allowing to identify participants who possess explicit knowledge. Here, we propose a method to diagnose during a serial reaction time task those participants who acquire conscious knowledge. We first validated this method by using Stroop-like material during training. Then we assessed participants’ knowledge with the Inclusion/Exclusion task (Experiment 1) and the wagering task (Experiment 2). Both experiments confirmed that for participants diagnosed as having acquired conscious knowledge about the underlying sequence the Stroop congruency effect disappeared, whereas for participants not diagnosed as possessing conscious knowledge it only slightly decreased. In addition, both experiments revealed that only participants diagnosed as conscious were able to strategically use their acquired knowledge. Thus, our method allows to reliably distinguish between participants with and without conscious knowledge.