Sensory ERP effects in auditory distraction: did we miss the main event?

Event-related potentials (ERPs) offer unique insights into processes related to involuntary attention changes triggered by rare, unpredictably occurring sensory events, that is, distraction. Contrasting ERPs elicited by distracters and frequent standard stimuli in oddball paradigms allowed the formulation of a three-stage model describing distraction-related processing: first, the distracting event is highlighted by a sensory filter. Second, attention is oriented towards the event, and finally, the task-optimal attention set is restored, or task priorities are changed. Although this model summarizes how distracting stimulus information is processed, not much is known about the cost of taking this exceptional route of processing. The present study demonstrates the impact of distraction on sensory processing. Participants performed a Go/NoGo tone-duration discrimination task, with infrequent pitch distracters. In the two parts of the experiment the duration-response mapping was reversed. Contrasts of distracter and standard ERPs revealed higher P3a- and reorienting negativity amplitudes for short than for long tones, independently from response type. To understand the cause of these asymmetries, short vs. long ERP contrasts were calculated. The ERP pattern showed that short standards elicited an attention-dependent offset response, which was abolished for short distracters. That is, the apparent P3a- and RON enhancements were caused by the removal of a task-related attentional sensory enhancement. This shows that the disruption of task-optimal attention set precedes the elicitation of the P3a, which suggests that P3a does not reflect a process driving the initial distraction-related attention change.     

Minimal functional brain differences between older adults with and without mild cognitive impairment during the stroop

This investigation compared the neural correlates of inhibition in normal older adults (OAs) and OAs with mild cognitive impairment (MCI). It was hypothesized the MCI group would require a greater amount of resources for inhibition, and therefore display greater functional activation in specific regions of interest (ROIs). Twenty-six OAs without and 17 with MCI completed the Stroop task during functional neuroimaging, and completed additional out-of-scanner neuropsychological measures. During inhibition, there were minimal functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) differences found between groups in a priori specified ROIs and with post-hoc multiple regression analyses. However, these minimal differences did not survive corrected thresholds. Robust differences were found with several tasks of a neuropsychological screening battery. The results of this study suggest only very minimal group differences in fMRI activation during inhibition which may not reliably identify MCI, and this condition may be best detected by traditional neuropsychological techniques.     

The Portuguese Version of the Psychological Adjustment to Separation Test-Part A (PAST-A): A Study with Recently and Non-recently Divorced Adults

Past research has demonstrated that divorced adults show more health problems and psychological distress than married adults. Considering the high prevalence rates of divorce among Western countries, new and robust measures should be developed to measure psychological distress after this specific transition in adulthood. The aim of this study was to adapt and validate a Portuguese version of the Psychological Adjustment to Separation Test-Part A (PAST-A; Sweeper and Halford in J Family Psychol 20(4):632–640, 2006). PAST-A is a self-report measure that assesses two key dimensions of separation adjustment problems: lonely-negativity and former partner attachment. Psychometric properties of the Portuguese version of PAST-A were assessed in terms of factor structure, internal consistency, and convergent and divergent validity, in an online convenience sample with divorced adults (N = 460). The PAST-A two-factor structure was confirmed by exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, with each factor demonstrating very satisfactory internal consistency and good convergence. In terms of discriminant validity, the Portuguese PAST-A reveals a distinct factor from psychological growth after divorce. The results provided support for the use of the Portuguese PAST-A with divorced adults and also suggested that the explicative factors of the psychological adjustment to divorce may be cross-cultural stable. The non-existence of validated divorce-related well-being measures and its implications for divorce research are also discussed.     

The role of key features in predator recognition by untrained birds

The most important role in the recognition and categorization of predators (as well as other animals) is usually attributed to so-called key features. Under laboratory conditions, we tested the role of yellow eyes (specific for the genus Accipiter in European raptors) and hooked beak (common for all European birds of prey) in the recognition of the sparrowhawk (Accipiter nisus) by untrained great tits (Parus major) caught in the wild. Using wooden dummies, we interchanged either one of these potential key features or the body of the sparrowhawk (predator) and domestic pigeon (harmless bird). The tested tits showed three types of behaviour in the presence of the dummies: fear, interest without fear, and lack of interest. Eye interchange lowered fear of the sparrowhawk, but did not cause fear of the pigeon. Beak interchange did not lower fear of the sparrowhawk. Eye interchange caused increased interest in both species. Thus, a specific sparrowhawk feature is necessary for correct sparrowhawk dummy recognition but a general raptor feature is not. On the other hand, a specific sparrowhawk feature on a pigeon dummy is not enough to prompt sparrowhawk recognition. Thus, key features play an important, but not exclusive, role in predator recognition. An increased interest in some of the modified dummies implies that the tits have a general concept of a sparrowhawk. The individual variability in behaviour of tits is discussed.     

Do Attitudes Towards the Integration of Immigrants Change Over Time? A Comparative Study of Natives,Second-Generation Immigrants and Foreign-Born Residents in Luxembourg

The aim of this paper is to investigate attitudes toward the integration of immigrants in Luxembourg—the country with the highest proportion of immigrants in Europe. First, the paper examines how attitudes toward integration (consisting of two dimensions: attitudes toward assimilation and attitudes toward multiculturalism) vary among different groups of the country’s residents, i.e. natives and residents with a migratory background. Second, it examines how these attitudes have evolved over a period of nearly ten years. The Luxembourgish European Value Study data from 1999 and 2008 are used. The results of the analyses reveal that attitudes towards the integration of immigrants differ significantly among the resident groups analysed. Native residents are more supportive of the assimilation model compared to foreign-born residents and second-generation immigrants with two foreign-born parents, whereas the latter groups score higher on the multiculturalism scale than the other groups. With respect to trends in attitudes towards integration, the assimilation model gained popularity between 1999 and 2008 among all groups, whereas only a small decrease in popularity was found with respect to preferences for multicultural integration.     

Effects of negative content on the processing of gender information: An event-related potential study

Previous research on emotion in language has mainly concerned the impact of emotional information on several aspects of lexico-semantic analyses of single words. However, affective influences on morphosyntactic processing are less understood. In the present study, we focused on the impact of negative valence in the processing of gender agreement relations. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded while participants read three-word phrases and performed a syntactic judgment task. Negative and neutral adjectives could agree or disagree in gender with the preceding noun. At an electrophysiological level, the amplitude of a left anterior negativity (LAN) to gender agreement mismatches decreased in negative words, relative to neutral words. The behavioral data suggested that LAN amplitudes might be indexing the processing costs associated with the detection of gender agreement errors, since the detection of gender mismatches resulted in faster and more accurate responses than did the detection of correct gender agreement relations. According to this view, it seems that negative content facilitated the processes implicated in the early detection of gender agreement mismatches. However, gender agreement violations in negative words triggered processes involved in the reanalysis and repair of the syntactic structure, as reflected in larger P600 amplitudes to incorrect than to correct phrases, irrespective of their emotional valence.     

Dissociable yet tied inhibitory processes: The structure of inhibitory control

Cognitive and neural models have proposed the existence of a single inhibitory process that regulates behavior and depends on the right frontal operculum (rFO). The aim of this study was to make a contribution to the ongoing debate as to whether inhibition is a single process or is composed of multiple, independent processes. Here, within a single paradigm, we assessed the links between two inhibitory phenomena—namely, resistance to involuntary visual capture by abrupt onsets and resolving of spatial stimulus–response conflict. We did so by conducting three experiments, two involving healthy volunteers (Exps. 1 and 3), and one with the help of a well-documented patient, R.J., with selectively weakened inhibition following a lesion of the rFO. The results suggest that resistance to capture and stimulus–response conflict are independent, because (a) additive effects were found (Exps. 1 and 3), (b) capture did not correlate with compatibility effects (Exp. 1), (c) dual tasking affected the two phenomena differently (Exp. 3), and (d) a dissociation was found between the two in patient R.J. (Exp. 2). However, the results also show that these two phenomena may share some processing components, given that (a) both were affected in patient R.J., but to different degrees (Exp. 2), and (b) increasing the difficulty of dual tasking produced an increasingly negative correlation between capture and compatibility (Exp. 3), which suggests that when resources are withdrawn from the control of the former, they are used to control the latter.     

Global self-esteem and method effects: Competing factor structures,longitudinal invariance,and response styles in adolescents

The Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSES) is a widely used measure for assessing self-esteem, but its factor structure is debated. Our goals were to compare 10 alternative models for the RSES and to quantify and predict the method effects. This sample involves two waves (N =2,513 9th-grade and 2,370 10th-grade students) from five waves of a school-based longitudinal study. The RSES was administered in each wave. The global self-esteem factor with two latent method factors yielded the best fit to the data. The global factor explained a large amount of the common variance (61% and 46%); however, a relatively large proportion of the common variance was attributed to the negative method factor (34 % and 41%), and a small proportion of the common variance was explained by the positive method factor (5% and 13%). We conceptualized the method effect as a response style and found that being a girl and having a higher number of depressive symptoms were associated with both low self-esteem and negative response style, as measured by the negative method factor. Our study supported the one global self-esteem construct and quantified the method effects in adolescents.     

ESCOLEX: A grade-level lexical database from European Portuguese elementary to middle school textbooks

In this article, we introduce ESCOLEX, the first European Portuguese children’s lexical database with grade-level-adjusted word frequency statistics. Computed from a 3.2-million-word corpus, ESCOLEX provides 48,381 word forms extracted from 171 elementary and middle school textbooks for 6- to 11-year-old children attending the first six grades in the Portuguese educational system. Like other children’s grade-level databases (e.g., Carroll, Davies, & Richman, 1971; Corral, Ferrero, & Goikoetxea, Behavior Research Methods, 41, 1009–1017, 2009; Lété, Sprenger-Charolles, & Colé, Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers, 36, 156–166, 2004; Zeno, Ivens, Millard, Duvvuri, 1995), ESCOLEX provides four frequency indices for each grade: overall word frequency (F), index of dispersion across the selected textbooks (D), estimated frequency per million words (U), and standard frequency index (SFI). It also provides a new measure, contextual diversity (CD). In addition, the number of letters in the word and its part(s) of speech, number of syllables, syllable structure, and adult frequencies taken from P-PAL (a European Portuguese corpus-based lexical database; Soares, Comesaña, Iriarte, Almeida, Simões, Costa, …, Machado, 2010; Soares, Iriarte, Almeida, Simões, Costa, França, …, Comesaña, in press) are provided. ESCOLEX will be a useful tool both for researchers interested in language processing and development and for professionals in need of verbal materials adjusted to children’s developmental stages. ESCOLEX can be downloaded along with this article or from http://p-pal.di.uminho.pt/about/databases.     

The embodied nature of medical concepts: image schemas and language for pain

Cognitive linguistics assumes that knowledge is both embodied and situated as far as it is acquired through our bodily interaction with the world in a specific environment (e.g. Barsalou in Lang Cogn Process 18:513–562, 2003; Connell et al. in PLoS One 7:3, 2012). Therefore, embodiment provides an explanation to the mental representation and linguistic expression of concepts. Among the first, we find multimodal conceptual structures, like image schemas, which are schematic representations of embodied experiences resulting from our conceptualization of the surrounding environment (Tercedor Sánchez et al. in J Spec Transl 18:187–205, 2012). Furthermore, the way we interact with the environment and its objects is dynamic and configures how we refer to concepts both by means of images and lexicalizations. In this article, we investigate how image schemas underlie verbal and visual representations. They both evoke concepts based on exteroception, interoception and proprioception which can be lexicalized through language. More specifically, we study (1) a multimodal corpus of medical texts to examine how image schemas lexicalize in the language of medicine to represent specialized concepts and (2) medical pictures to explore the depiction of image-schematic concepts, in order to account for the verbal and visual representation of embodied concepts. We explore the concept pain, a sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage, using corpus analysis tools (Sketch Engine) to extract information about the lexicalization of underlying image schemas in definitions and defining contexts. Then, we use the image schemas behind medical concepts to consistently select images which depict our experience of pain and the way we understand it. Finally, such lexicalizations and visualizations will help us assess how we refer to pain both verbally and visually.