Early adolescents show sustained susceptibility to cognitive interference by emotional distractors

A child's ability to continuously pay attention to a cognitive task is often challenged by distracting events. Distraction is especially detrimental in a learning or classroom environment in which attended information is typically associated with establishing skills and knowledge. Here we report a study examining the effect of emotional distractors on performance in a subsequent visual lexical decision task in 11- to 13-year-old students (n=30). Lexical decisions about neutral verbs and verb-like pseudowords (i.e., targets) were analysed as a function of the preceding distractor type (pleasant, neutral, or unpleasant photos) and the picture–target stimulus-onset asynchrony (SOA; 200 or 600 ms). Across distractor categories, emotionally arousing pictures prolonged decisions about word targets when compared to neutral pictures, irrespective of the SOA. The present results demonstrate that similar to adults, early adolescent students exhibit sustained susceptibility to cognitive interference by irrelevant emotional events.     

The differential contribution of facial expressions,prosody, and speech content to empathy

Background: Facial expressions, prosody, and speech content constitute channels by which information is exchanged. Little is known about the simultaneous and differential contribution of these channels to empathy when they provide emotionality or neutrality. Especially neutralised speech content has gained little attention with regards to influencing the perception of other emotional cues. Methods: Participants were presented with video clips of actors telling short-stories. One condition conveyed emotionality in all channels while the other conditions either provided neutral speech content, facial expression, or prosody, respectively. Participants judged the emotion and intensity presented, as well as their own emotional state and intensity. Skin conductance served as a physiological measure of emotional reactivity. Results: Neutralising channels significantly reduced empathic responses. Electrodermal recordings confirmed these findings. The differential effect of the communication channels on empathy prerequisites was that target emotion recognition of the other decreased mostly when the face was neutral, whereas decreased emotional responses attributed to the target emotion were especially present in neutral speech. Conclusion: Multichannel integration supports conscious and autonomous measures of empathy and emotional reactivity. Emotional facial expressions influence emotion recognition, whereas speech content is important for responding with an adequate own emotional state, possibly reflecting contextual emotion-appraisal.     

The Role of Instructional Engineering in Reducing the Uncertainties of Ambitious Teaching

Ambitious teaching is a form of teaching that requires a high level of teacher responsiveness to what students do as they actively engage with the subject matter. Thus, a teacher enacting ambitious teaching is often confronted with uncertainties about how to advance students’ learning while also building on students’ contributions. In this article we propose a framework that aims to deepen understanding about the role of instructional engineering in helping reduce the uncertainties of ambitious teaching, particularly with regard to the design and implementation of task sequences that target academically important but difficult-to-achieve learning goals. To illustrate the framework, we consider how instructional engineering helped reduce the uncertainties in enacting ambitious teaching to advance university and secondary students’ understanding of what counts as “proof” in mathematics.     

Do First Graders Make Efficient Use of External Number Representations? The Case of the Twenty-Frame

External number representations are commonly used throughout the first years of instruction. The twenty-frame is a grid that contains two rows of 10 dots each, and within each row, dots are organized in two groups of five. The assumption is that children can make use of these structures for enumerating the dots, rather than relying on one-by-one counting. We compared first-grade children's performance on two types of computerized enumeration tasks, in which between one and 20 dots were presented in random arrangements or on a twenty-frame. The number of dots was a strong predictor of response times and accuracy rates in the enumeration task with random arrangements but not in the twenty-frame task. Performance on the twenty-frame task was correlated with performance on a number and arithmetic test, even when other cognitive variables were statistically controlled. We discuss these findings in the light of theories on utilizing external representations to support numerical learning.     

Social Value Orientation and information search in social dilemmas: An eye-tracking analysis

Previous work has demonstrated that Social Value Orientation (SVO) is related to cooperative behavior in social dilemmas. However, little is known concerning the underlying processes. In two eye-tracking studies investigating decisions in money allocation tasks (Experiment 1) and Public Good Dilemmas (Experiment 2), we show that differences in SVO are accompanied by consistent differences in information search. Decision time, number of fixations, the proportion of inspected information, the degree of attention towards the others’ payoffs, and the number of transitions from and towards others’ payoffs gradually increase with absolute SVO deviation from a pure selfish orientation. Overall these effects seem to be similar for individuals caring positively (i.e., cooperative) or negatively (i.e., competitive) about others. The fact that changes are gradual instead of abrupt indicates that differences in SVO seem to be related to gradual changes in weights given to outcomes for self and others.     

Reciprocal trust mediates deep transfer of learning between games of strategic interaction

We studied transfer of learning across two games of strategic interaction. We found that the interpersonal relation between two players during and across two games influence development of reciprocal trust and transfer of learning from one game to another. We show that two types of similarities between the games affect transfer: (1) deep similarities facilitate transfer of an optimal solution across games; (2) surface similarities can either facilitate or hinder transfer depending on whether they lead players toward an optimal or sub-optimal solution in the target game. Learning an optimal solution in a context of interdependence between players is associated with development of reciprocal trust, which in turn mediates transfer of learning across games. The results can be used to inform the design of training exercises to develop strategic interaction skills.     

Grasp posture planning during multi-segment object manipulation tasks — Interaction between cognitive and biomechanical factors

The present study examined adaptations in the planning of initial grasp postures during a multi-segment object manipulation task. Participants performed a grasping and placing task that consisted of one, two, or three movement segments. The position of the targets was manipulated such that the degree of object rotation between the home and temporally proximal positions, and between the temporally proximal and distal target positions, varied. Participants selected initial grasp postures based on the specific requirements of the temporally proximal and temporally distal action segments, and adjustments in initial grasp posture depended on the temporal order of target location. In addition, during the initial stages of the experimental session initial grasp postures were influenced to a larger extent by the demands of the temporally proximal segment. However, over time, participants overcame these cognitive limitations and adjusted their initial grasp postures more strongly to the requirements of the temporally distal segment. Taken together, these results indicate that grasp posture planning is influenced by cognitive and biomechanical factors, and that participants learn to anticipate the task demands of temporally distal task demands, which we hypothesize, reduce the burden on the central nervous system.     

The Neural Correlates of Updating Information in Verbal Working Memory

The aim of the present study was to re-examine cerebral areas subserving the updating function of the central executive with a running span task requiring subjects to watch strings of consonants of unknown length and then to recall serially a specific number of recent items. In order to dissociate more precisely the updating process from the storage function, a four-item instead of a six-item memory load was used, contrary to our previous study (Salmon et al., 1996). In addition, a serial recall procedure was preferred to a recognition procedure in order to suppress the use of visuospatial strategies. The most significant increase of rCBF occurred in the left frontopolar cortex (Brodmann's area 10), spreading to the left middle frontal (Brodmann's area 46). Results suggest that frontopolar activation underlies an updating process in working memory.     

General or specific? The memory–experience gap for individuals diagnosed with a major depressive disorder or a social phobia diagnosis,and individuals without such diagnoses

ABSTRACT

Psychological treatment and assessment necessarily rely on patients’ recall. Yet several empirical studies have documented a gap between memory and real-life experience (i.e., memory–experience gap; MeG). We investigated and compared the MeG of sadness, social anxiety, happiness, and physical activity for participants diagnosed with a major depressive disorder (MDD), a social phobia (SP), and participants without such diagnoses (CG). The study included 118 participants diagnosed with a MDD, 47 with a SP, and 119 CG. Using event-sampling methods (ESM), participants were asked via smartphone to report their experiences throughout a week and then to recall those again retrospectively at the end of the study week. Results indicate significant differences in the MeG with respect to the experience that was salient to them (e.g., MDD group – sadness; SP group – social anxiety; CG group – happiness). Furthermore, all groups showed a MeG for physical activity and, the results indicate significant group differences in the magnitude of the MeGs.

This study demonstrated the presence of a MeG in individuals in a MDD, SP, and CG group and in positive and negative affective experiences. Differential patterns across the samples contribute to a better understanding of this gap and its implications.