Types of responses in 4-5-year-old children in conservation, classification, and theory of mind tasks

This study analyzes the type of responses that children between 4 and 5 years of age give to different tasks: conservation, classification and tasks of the theory of mind (ToM). Types of responses were observed with the Observation of Cognitive and Meta-cognitive Skills Inventory, which identifies: attention, receptive and expressive language, planning processes, and meta-cognitive processes. Significant differences were found according to the variable age in: (a) the use of attentional strategies in performance of ToM tasks, (b) the use of receptive and expressive language in the performance of all tasks, (c) the use of planning processes in the performance of conservation tasks; and (d) the use of meta-cognitive processes to solve ToM tasks.     

Assessment of the global intelligence and selective cognitive capacities in preterm 8-year-old children

The aim of this study was to assess various cognitive abilities such as attention, IQ, reasoning, and memory related to academic achievement in 8- and 9-year-old preterm children. A total of 141 children were assessed. The preterm group (=37 weeks) comprised 63 children and was compared to 78 full-term children. Attention was evaluated using the d2 Selective Attention test, and the IQ by the L-M form of the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale, establishing a profile of abilities: perception, memory, comprehension, reasoning, and verbal fluency. Significant differences in IQ were found between the preterm and full-term children. Of the cognitive abilities assessed, the only significant differences were found in verbal fluency, with preterm boys showing lower verbal fluency scores than full-term children. In conclusion, all preterm groups have attention ability similar to that of full-term children. However, preterm children obtain lower scores in intelligence measures. In addition, preterm boys have verbal fluency difficulties. Taking into account the increase in preterm births, suitable intervention programs must be planned to attend the difficulties found.     

Analysing the Influence of Autonomous and Controlling Social Factors Within the Theory of Planned Behaviour

The aim of this study was to analyse the effects of autonomous (i.e., autonomy support from parents and peers) and controlling (i.e., social physique anxiety) social factors on future intention to exercise, integrating the distal (i.e., basic psychological needs satisfaction and self‐determined motivation) and proximal (i.e., attitudes, perceived behavioural control and subjective norms) determinants of intention defined in self‐determination theory (SDT) and the theory of planned behaviour (TPB). Self‐report questionnaires were distributed to 390 secondary school pupils (male = 218, female = 172, M_age = 15.10, standard deviation = 1.94). The results of path analysis, controlling for past behaviour of physical activity, showed that social factors predicted future intention to exercise through the influence of the distal and proximal determinants. The main contribution of the study was to provide evidence that the proximal determinants of the TPB captured the direct influence of social factors, independent of the mediating effects of psychological needs satisfaction and self‐determined motivation towards exercise. Results supported the integration of the two theories, clarifying the processes of influence of autonomous and controlling social factors within the variables of SDT and the TPB.     

Psychoanalysis in Spain: A Brief Account of the Transformative Pathways Between the Psychoanalysts and Their Institutions

Psychoanalysis in Spain has a plural history. Rooted in the Freudian and Kleinian traditions, it has developed in different directions and incorporated trends from contemporary psychoanalysis. The impact of socio-political factors forced several migratory movements that came back to Spain under the form of criticism to classical psychoanalysis, following ideas that were emerging from Latin America (e.g., Pichon Rivière) and North America (Cultural and Interpersonal Psychoanalysis, Self Psychology, and Intersubjective System theories) that enriched psychoanalytic thinking, and promoted new psychoanalytic institutions. Finally, Steve Mitchell’s relational perspective plays a crucial role among present developments.     

Affordances Guide Choice Behavior between Equal Schedules of Reinforcement in Rats

Abstract

Operant choice theories pose that behavior distribution between options is ruled by the consequences related with these options. Evidence suggests that rats’ performance is attuned to the affordances that the operant setting provides, such as lever height. Our aim was to explore in rats whether lever press distribution was influenced by the affordances furnished by two levers. Lever pressing was reinforced in two concurrent equal variable-ratio schedules of reinforcement, and in successive conditions lever height was varied asymmetrically—that is, one lever was higher than the other. Results showed a quadratic relation between response rates and lever height, a linear trend between preference and lever height, and higher between- and within-bout response rates on the lower lever in four out of the six pairs of lever heights assessed. These findings suggest that intermediate lever heights favored lever pressing with faster bout initiation and faster within-bout responding, and support the idea that preorganized properties of behavior (i.e., the organism’s abilities) interact with the environment before the operant contingency takes place.     

ANXIETY SENSITIVITY AND TRAIT-SYMPTOM MEASURES OF ANXIETY AND DEPRESSION

The Icelandic version of the Anxiety Sensitivity Index was investigated in two studies of college students. A principal components analysis of ASI scores from both studies (N=718) yielded three components similar to what has been found previously: Psychological Concerns, Physical Concerns and Social Concerns. In the first study the relationship between the ASI and trait anxiety was investigated. It was analysed at the level of the total scales but also at the level of subscales of both instruments. Two subscales of the STAI, measuring respectively Anxiety-trait and Depression-trait, were used as well as the Psychological Concerns and Physical Concerns subscales of the ASI. In a second study the relationships between ASI and its subscales and two symptom measures of anxiety and depression were addressed. ASI was in both studies more strongly related to the anxiety than the depression scales. Also, in both studies the Physical Concerns subscale of the ASI was more strongly related to anxiety than to depression, whereas the Psychological Concerns subscale was equally related to anxiety and depression. Taken together the studies support the notion of different relationships between different aspects of anxiety sensitivity, and anxiety and depression as traits, cognitive symptoms and mood related symptoms.     

The boundary conditions of priming of visual search: From passive viewing through task-relevant working memory load

Priming of visual search has a dominating effect upon attentional shifts and is thought to play a decisive role in visual stability. Despite this importance, the nature of the memory underlying priming remains controversial. To understand more fully the necessary conditions for priming, we contrasted passive versus active viewing of visual search arrays. There was no priming from passive viewing of search arrays, while it was strong for active search of the same displays. Displays requiring no search resulted in no priming, again showing that search is needed for priming to occur. Finally, we introduced working memory load during visual search in an effort to disrupt priming. The memorized items had either the same colors as or different colors from the visual search items. Retaining items in working memory inhibited priming of the working memory task-relevant colors, while little interference was observed for unrelated colors. The picture that emerges of priming is that it requires active attentional processing of the search items in addition to the operation of visual working memory, where the task relevance of the working memory load plays a key role.     

The influence of responsibility and guilt on naive hypothesis-testing

Three experiments were used to investigate individuals' hypothesis-testing process as a function of moral perceived utilities, which in turn depend on perceived responsibility and fear of guilt. Moral perceived utilities are related to individuals' moral standards and specifically to people's attempt to face up to their own responsibilities, and to avoid feeling guilty of irresponsibility. The results showed that responsibility and fear of guilt in testing hypotheses involved a process defined as prudential mode, which entails focusing on and confirming the worst hypothesis, and then reiterating the testing process. In particular, the results showed that responsible and guilt-fearing individuals: (1) tended to search prudentially for examples confirming the worst hypothesis and to search for counter-examples falsifying the positive hypothesis; (2) focused on the worst alternative, and tended to confirm it; (3) prudentially kept up the testing process, even if faced with initial positive evidence. Our discussion of the results emphasises how people are largely pragmatic in their hypothesis testing, using efficient cognitive strategies that focus on error minimisation rather than on truth detection. In a context of responsibility and guilt, the errors are linked to people's failure to face up to their own responsibilities, and are thus moral errors.     

Feelings of error in reasoning—in search of a phenomenon

Recent research shows that in reasoning tasks, subjects usually produce an initial intuitive answer, accompanied by a metacognitive experience, which has been called feeling of rightness. This paper is aimed at exploring the complimentary experience of feeling of error (FOE), that is, the spontaneous, subtle sensation of cognitive uneasiness arising from conflict detection during thinking. We investigate FOE in two studies with the “bat-and-ball” (B&B) reasoning task, in its standard and isomorphic control versions. Study 1 is a generation study, in which participants are asked to generate their own response. Study 2 is an evaluation study, in which participants are asked to choose between two conflicting answers (normative vs. intuitive). In each study, the FOE is measured by the FOE questionnaire. Results show that the FOE is significantly present in the standard B&B task when participants give a wrong answer, that our questionnaire can measure it, and furthermore, that it is diagnostic of genuine error.     

The effects of precedence on Navon-induced processing bias in face recognition

Macrae and Lewis (2002) showed that repeated reporting of the global dimension of Navon stimuli improved performance in a subsequent face identification task, whilst reporting the features of the Navon stimuli impaired performance. Using a face composite task, which is assumed to require featural processing, Weston and Perfect (2005) showed the complementary pattern: Featural responding to Navon letters speeded performance. However, both studies used Navon stimuli with global precedence, in which the overall configuration is easier to report than the features. Here we replicate the two studies above, whilst manipulating the precedence (global or featural) of the letter stimuli in the orientation task. Both studies replicated the previously reported findings with global precedence stimuli, but showed the reverse pattern with local precedence stimuli. These data raise important questions as to what is transferred between the Navon orientation task and the face-processing tasks that follow.