Effects of Different Ratios of Physical and Mental Practice on Postural Control Improvement

Abstract

Mental practice (MP) is a reliable alternative or complement to physical practice (PP) for the training of postural control. We address how MP should ideally be combined with PP. Participants were assigned to four experimental groups where MP/PP ratios during training varied from 0 to 100%. Performance improved only for demanding postural adjustments, regardless of MP/PP ratio, and learning was partially consolidated after a night of sleep. Findings reinforce the relevance of MP for the training of weight shifting and further suggest that MP alone can be as efficient as PP for the learning of certain complex postural adjustments.     

Phenomenal characteristics of autobiographical memories and imagined events in sub‐clinical obsessive‐compulsive checkers

Phenomenal characteristics of autobiographical memories and imagined experiences were examined in checking‐ and non‐checking‐prone individuals. Participants were asked to retrieve a positive, a negative and a neutral memory, and to imagine a positive, a negative and a neutral experience. They were then requested to evaluate each event according to characteristics such as sensory and contextual details. The main results revealed that non‐checking‐prone participants reported more general vividness than checking‐prone individuals for real events. In addition, non‐checking‐prone individuals reported more visual details and vividness for real than imagined experiences, while no difference between real and imagined events was found for checking‐prone participants. These results suggest that checking‐prone participants report poor memories of real events, which could in turn explain their difficulties distinguishing between real and imagined events. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Does he sound cooperative? Acoustic correlates of cooperativeness

The sound of the voice has several acoustic features that influence the perception of how cooperative the speaker is. It remains unknown, however, whether these acoustic features are associated with actual cooperative behaviour. This issue is crucial to disentangle whether inferences of traits from voices are based on stereotypes, or facilitate the detection of cooperative partners. The latter is likely due to the pleiotropic effect that testosterone has on both cooperative behaviours and acoustic features. In the present study, we quantified the cooperativeness of native French-speaking men in a one-shot public good game. We also measured mean fundamental frequency, pitch variations, roughness, and breathiness from spontaneous speech recordings of the same men and collected saliva samples to measure their testosterone levels. Our results showed that men with lower-pitched voices and greater pitch variations were more cooperative. However, testosterone did not influence cooperative behaviours or acoustic features. Our finding provides the first evidence of the acoustic correlates of cooperative behaviour. When considered in combination with the literature on the detection of cooperativeness from faces, the results imply that assessment of cooperative behaviour would be improved by simultaneous consideration of visual and auditory cues.