Understanding Our Understanding of Strategic Scenarios: What Role Do Chunks Play?

There is a crucial debate concerning the nature of chess chunks: One current possibility states that chunks are built by encoding particular combinations of pieces-on-squares (POSs), and that chunks are formed mostly by "close" pieces (in a "Euclidean" sense). A complementary hypothesis is that chunks are encoded by abstract, semantic information. This article extends recent experiments and shows that chess players are able to perceive strong similarity between very different positions if the pieces retain the same abstract roles in both of them. This casts doubt on the idea that POS information is the key information encoded in chess chunks, and this article proposes, instead, that the key encoding involves the abstract roles that pieces (and sets of pieces) play-a theoretical standpoint in line with the research program in semantics that places analogy at the core of cognition.     

Oceans of stimuli: an individual-based model to assess the role of olfactory cues and local enhancement in seabirds’ foraging behaviour

Animal Cognition - Oceans are extremely dynamic environments, which poses challenges for top-predators such as seabirds to find food resources. Yet, seabirds evolved sensorial abilities (olfactory...     

The influence of an emotional processing strategy on visual threat detection by police trainees and officers

Threat detection is an important skill for police officers, but few studies have examined the impact of processing strategies on this ability. The first aim of our study was to compare the visual detection of threatening and neutral targets in 38 police trainees and 53 police officers. The other aims were to examine the effect of emotional or semantic strategies on this process and the effect of psychopathological symptoms. In a visual search task, participants had to detect a threatening or neutral target among neutral distractors. Participants answered a question used to induce a more emotional or semantic processing strategy. Results revealed that threatening targets were detected faster than neutral ones. This effect was enhanced with an emotional processing strategy but unaffected by symptoms. Processing strategy also had led to faster reaction time overall. This study shows that inducing processing strategies can influence threat detection in police trainees and officers.     

Restauration d’un contexte de libre choix et insertion professionnelle des allocataires du RMI

This study deals with the vocational rehabilitation of minimum wage integration beneficiaries (RMI) and their commitment with an assistance service of vocational rehabilitation. We postulate that these public is perceived like not very autonomous by the welfare workers and that their freedom of action is some reduced. So we studied the impact of a context of freedom on the course of these public. Two results appeared. Firstly, a high context of freedom increases the commitment of people towards the welfare workers. Secondly, we observed that context of freedom did not have impact on the vocational rehabilitation of the individuals recently registered in RMI device. Nevertheless, in a freedom context, people registered since longer had the same probability to success that people recently registered in RMI device.     

Analyse interlocutoire d’une plainte exprimée par une équipe mobile de soins palliatifs

This article points out the merits of conducting an interlocutory analysis of a group meeting held between two administrations of a questionnaire. Here, the Company Climate Questionnaire was filled out individually by the members of the group before and after the meeting. Changed attitudes toward the supervisory staff were observed after the discussion. All participants were members of a mobile palliative care team at a university hospital. The verbal interaction analysis allowed us to identify the collaborative facet of the complaint that surfaced, and to determine what inter - subjective processes arising during the group discussion triggered the expressed changes of opinion.     

Multitasking in the military: Cognitive consequences and potential solutions

Multitasking—the performance of several tasks at the same time—is becoming increasingly prevalent in workplaces. Multitasking is known to disrupt performance, particularly in complex and dynamic situations, which is exactly what most military occupations entail. Because military errors can be consequential, the detrimental impact of multitasking on cognitive functioning in such contexts should be taken seriously. This review pertains to high‐consequence military occupations that require strong multitasking skills. More specifically, it highlights cognitive challenges arising from different forms of multitasking and discusses their underlying cognitive processes. Because such challenges are not expected to diminish, this review proposes context‐relevant solutions to decrease occupational workload, either by reducing the cognitive load ensuing from the to‐be‐performed tasks or by improving soldiers' multitasking abilities. To ensure effective implementation of these solutions, we stress the need to design context‐adapted tools and procedures, and to guide human resource managers in developing particular strategies.     

Measuring working memory capacity in children using adaptive tasks: Example validation of an adaptive complex span

Working memory tasks designed for children usually present trials in order of ascending difficulty, with testing discontinued when the child fails a particular level. Unfortunately, this procedure comes with a number of issues, such as decreased engagement from high-ability children, vulnerability of the scores to temporary mind-wandering, and large between-subjects variations in number of trials, testing time, and proactive interference. To circumvent these problems, the goal of the present study was to demonstrate the feasibility of assessing working memory using an adaptive testing procedure. The principle of adaptive testing is to dynamically adjust the level of difficulty as the task progresses to match the participant's ability. We used this method to develop an adaptive complex span task (the ACCES) comprising verbal and visuo-spatial subtests. The task presents a fixed number of trials to all participants, allows for partial credit scoring, and can be used with children regardless of ability level. The ACCES demonstrated satisfying psychometric properties in a sample of 268 children aged 8–13 years, confirming the feasibility of using adaptive tasks to measure working memory capacity in children. A free-to-use implementation of the ACCES is provided.     

Can pupillometry index auditory attentional capture in contexts of active visual processing?

The rare presentation of a sound that deviates from the auditory background tends to capture attention, which is known to impede cognitive functioning. Such disruption is usually measured using performance on a concurrent visual task. Growing evidence recently showed that the pupillary dilation response (PDR) could index the attentional response triggered by a deviant sound. Given that the pupil diameter is sensitive to several vision-related factors, it is unclear whether the PDR could serve to study attentional capture in such contexts. Hence, the present study aimed at verifying whether the PDR can be used as a proxy for auditory attentional capture while a visual serial recall task (Experiment 1) or a reading comprehension task (Experiment 2) – respectively producing changes in luminance and gaze position – is being performed. Results showed that presenting a deviant sound within steady-state standard sounds elicited larger PDRs than a standard sound. Moreover, the magnitude of these PDRs was positively related to the amount of performance disruption produced by deviant sounds in Experiment 1. Performance remained unaffected by the deviants in Experiment 2, thereby implying that the PDR may be a more sensitive attention-capture index than behavioural measures. These results suggest that the PDR can be used to assess attentional capture by a deviant sound in contexts where the pupil diameter can be modulated by the visual environment.     

Association between attachment insecurity and couple adjustment: Moderation by couple memory networks

This study investigated whether couple‐related memories and their organization in memory networks could act as cognitive resources to protect against the negative impact of insecure attachment on couple adjustment. In two studies (n1 = 153, n2 = 567), participants in a romantic relationship described a significant couple‐related memory and provided networked memories associated with their couple‐related memory, to assess its organization in the memory system, and rated each memory for its level of need satisfaction. Findings across the two studies revealed significant moderations of need satisfaction in couple‐related memory networks, such that a higher level of satisfaction need within couple‐related memory networks was associated with a reduced negative association of attachment anxiety and avoidance with couple adjustment. When examined separately, it was shown that need‐satisfying networked memories, but not main couple‐related memories, moderated the negative association of insecure attachment with couple adjustment.