Nonsymbolic numerical magnitude comparison: reliability and validity of different task variants and outcome measures, and their relationship to arithmetic achievement in adults

The numerical ratio effect (NRE) and the Weber fraction (w) are common metrics of the precision of the approximate numbers sense (ANS), a cognitive mechanism suggested to play a role in the development of numerical and arithmetic skills. The task most commonly used to measure the precision of the ANS is the numerical comparison task. Multiple variants of this task have been employed yet it is currently unclear how these affect metrics of ANS acuity, and how these relate to arithmetic achievement. The present study investigates the reliability, validity and relationship to standardized measures of arithmetic fluency of the NRE and w elicited by three variants of the nonsymbolic number comparison task. Results reveal that the strengths of the NRE and w differ between task variants. Moreover, the reliability and validity of the reaction time NRE and the w were generally significant across task variants, although reliability was stronger for w. None of the task variants revealed a correlation between ANS metrics and arithmetic fluency in adults. These results reveal important consistencies across nonsymbolic number comparison tasks, indicating a shared cognitive foundation. However, the relationship between ANS acuity and arithmetic performance remains unclear.     

Recognizing prosody across modalities, face areas and speakers: examining perceivers' sensitivity to variable realizations of visual prosody

Prosody can be expressed not only by modification to the timing, stress and intonation of auditory speech but also by modifying visual speech. Studies have shown that the production of visual cues to prosody is highly variable (both within and across speakers), however behavioural studies have shown that perceivers can effectively use such visual cues. The latter result suggests that people are sensitive to the type of prosody expressed despite cue variability. The current study investigated the extent to which perceivers can match visual cues to prosody from different speakers and from different face regions. Participants were presented two pairs of sentences (consisting of the same segmental content) and were required to decide which pair had the same prosody. Experiment 1 tested visual and auditory cues from the same speaker and Experiment 2 from different speakers. Experiment 3 used visual cues from the upper and the lower face of the same talker and Experiment 4 from different speakers. The results showed that perceivers could accurately match prosody even when signals were produced by different speakers. Furthermore, perceivers were able to match the prosodic cues both within and across modalities regardless of the face area presented. This ability to match prosody from very different visual cues suggests that perceivers cope with variation in the production of visual prosody by flexibly mapping specific tokens to abstract prosodic types.     

Predicted errors in children's early sentence comprehension

Children use syntax to interpret sentences and learn verbs; this is syntactic bootstrapping. The structure-mapping account of early syntactic bootstrapping proposes that a partial representation of sentence structure, the set of nouns occurring with the verb, guides initial interpretation and provides an abstract format for new learning. This account predicts early successes, but also telltale errors: Toddlers should be unable to tell transitive sentences from other sentences containing two nouns. In testing this prediction, we capitalized on evidence that 21-month-olds use what they have learned about noun order in English sentences to understand new transitive verbs. In two experiments, 21-month-olds applied this noun-order knowledge to two-noun intransitive sentences, mistakenly assigning different interpretations to "The boy and the girl are gorping!" and "The girl and the boy are gorping!". This suggests that toddlers exploit partial representations of sentence structure to guide sentence interpretation; these sparse representations are useful, but error-prone.     

Can survival processing enhance story memory? Testing the generalizability of the adaptive memory framework

Research from the adaptive memory framework shows that thinking about words in terms of their survival value in an incidental learning task enhances their free recall relative to other semantic encoding strategies and intentional learning (Nairne, Pandeirada, & Thompson, 2008). We found similar results. When participants used incidental survival encoding for a list of words (e.g., "Will this object enhance my survival if I were stranded in the grasslands of a foreign land?"), they produced better free recall on a surprise test than did participants who intentionally tried to remember those words (Experiment 1). We also found this survival processing advantage when the words were presented within the context of a survival or neutral story (Experiment 2). However, this advantage did not extent to memory for a story's factual content, regardless of whether the participants were tested by cued recall (Experiment 3) or free recall (Experiments 4-5). Listening to a story for understanding under intentional or incidental learning conditions was just as good as survival processing for remembering story content. The functionalist approach to thinking about memory as an evolutionary adaptation designed to solve reproductive fitness problems provides a different theoretical framework for research, but it is not yet clear if survival processing has general applicability or is effective only for processing discrete stimuli in terms of fitness-relevant scenarios from our past.     

The motor side of emotions: investigating the relationship between hemispheres, motor reactions and emotional stimuli

The aim of the present study was to analyze if the left hemisphere preferentially controls flexion responses toward positive stimuli, while the right hemisphere is specialized toward extensor responses to negative pictures. To this end, right-handed subjects had to pull or push a joystick subsequent to seeing a positive or a negative stimulus in their left or right hemifield. Flexion responses were faster for positive stimuli, while negative stimuli were associated with faster extensions responses. Overall, performance was fastest when emotional stimuli were presented to the left visual hemifield. This right hemisphere superiority was especially clear for negative stimuli, while reaction times toward positive pictures showed no hemispheric difference. We did not find any interaction between hemifield and response type. Neither was there a triple interaction between valence, hemifield and response type. We suppose that response dichotomies in humans are not as tightly linked to a hemisphere- and valence-bound reaction type as previously assumed.     

Gaze behaviour during space perception and spatial decision making

A series of four experiments investigating gaze behavior and decision making in the context of wayfinding is reported. Participants were presented with screenshots of choice points taken in large virtual environments. Each screenshot depicted alternative path options. In Experiment 1, participants had to decide between them to find an object hidden in the environment. In Experiment 2, participants were first informed about which path option to take as if following a guided route. Subsequently, they were presented with the same images in random order and had to indicate which path option they chose during initial exposure. In Experiment 1, we demonstrate (1) that participants have a tendency to choose the path option that featured the longer line of sight, and (2) a robust gaze bias towards the eventually chosen path option. In Experiment 2, systematic differences in gaze behavior towards the alternative path options between encoding and decoding were observed. Based on data from Experiments 1 and 2 and two control experiments ensuring that fixation patterns were specific to the spatial tasks, we develop a tentative model of gaze behavior during wayfinding decision making suggesting that particular attention was paid to image areas depicting changes in the local geometry of the environments such as corners, openings, and occlusions. Together, the results suggest that gaze during a wayfinding tasks is directed toward, and can be predicted by, a subset of environmental features and that gaze bias effects are a general phenomenon of visual decision making.     

The effect of cognitive behavior therapy on decision making in adolescents who self-harm: a pilot study

Research shows poor decision making in adolescents who self-harm and a positive correlation between decision-making abilities and duration since last self-harm episode. This exploratory study investigated whether decision making in self-harming adolescents could be improved through treatment with a novel cognitive behavior therapy (CBT). It also investigated whether improvement in decision making following treatment was linked to self-harm cessation. Adolescent self-harmers receiving CBT (n = 24) or no treatment (n = 9) and healthy controls (n = 22) were longitudinally compared on the Iowa gambling task (IGT). Significant IGT improvements were only observed for adolescents who self-harm following CBT. CBT may benefit adolescent self-harmers and generate decision-making improvements.     

Discerning reported suicide attempts within a youthful offender population

With suicide being the third leading cause of death among young people, early identification of risk is critical, particularly for those involved with the juvenile courts. In this study of court-involved youth (N = 433) in two Midwest counties, logistic regression analysis identified some expected and unexpected findings of important demographic, educational, mental health, child welfare, and juvenile court-related variables that were linked to reported suicide attempts. Some of the expected suicide attempt risk factors for these youth included prior psychiatric hospitalization and related mental health services, residential placement, and diagnoses of depression and alcohol dependence. However, the most unexpected finding was that a court disposition to shelter care (group home) was related to a nearly tenfold increased risk in reported suicide attempt. These findings are of importance to families, mental health professionals, and juvenile court personnel to identify those youth who are most at risk and subsequently provide appropriate interventions to prevent such outcomes.     

Did the Chinese Have a Change of Heart?

In their "The Prevalence of Mind-Body Dualism in Early China," Slingerland and Chudek use a statistical analysis of the early Chinese corpus to argue for Weak Folk Dualism (WFD). We raise three methodological objections to their analysis. First, the change over time that they find is largely driven by genre. Second, the operationalization of WFD is potentially misleading. And, third, dating the texts they use is extremely controversial. We conclude with some positive remarks.