Breaking face processing tasks apart to improve their predictive value in the real world: A comment on Ramon,Bobak, and White (2019)

In this commentary, I will expand on three aspects suggested by Ramon et al. (2019, British Journal of Psychology, 110, 461) to improve the predictive value of laboratory‐based tasks in real‐world applications. There are potential benefits that may arise from three interrelated considerations, particularly in terms of predicting agents’ susceptibility to errors in operational settings. The first is a proposal to conduct a detailed examination of performance on face processing tests rather than only analysing overall accuracy scores. The second involves considering non‐face‐related cognitive and meta‐cognitive sub‐processes involved in face processing tasks. The third highlights the contribution of superior recognisers in creating challenging tests that simulate difficult real‐world situations.     

Les techniques biomédicales en matière d’assistance médicale à la procréation conçues dans l’objectif de pallier l’infertilité médicale peuvent-elles évoluer de manière à être utilisées pour remédier à l’infertilité sociale ?

Medically assisted procreation includes techniques that may allow infertile couples to procreate. However, the application of 2011 bioethics law reveals lots of paradox and high-risk behaviors which arouse the question of the relevance and advisable aspect of its opening to all women.     

The role of fear and expectancies in capture of covert attention by spiders

Fear-related stimuli are often prioritized during visual selection but it remains unclear whether capture by salient objects is more likely to occur when individuals fear those objects. In this study, participants with high and low fear of spiders searched for a circle while on some trials a completely irrelevant fear-related (spider) or neutral distractor (butterfly/leaf) was presented simultaneously in the display. Our results show that when you fear spiders and you are not sure whether a spider is going to be present, then any salient distractor (i.e., a butterfly) grabs your attention, suggesting that mere expectation of a spider triggered compulsory monitoring of all irrelevant stimuli. However, neutral stimuli did not grab attention when high spider fearful people knew that a spider could not be present during a block of trials, treating the neutral stimuli just as the low spider fearful people do. Our results show that people that fear spiders inspect potential spider-containing locations in a compulsory fashion even though directing attention to this location is completely irrelevant for the task. Reduction of capture can only be accomplished when people that fear spiders do not expect a spider to be present.     

Reading action word affects the visual perception of biological motion

In the present study, we investigate whether reading an action-word can influence subsequent visual perception of biological motion. The participant's task was to perceptually judge whether a human action identifiable in the biological motion of a point-light display embedded in a high density mask was present or not in the visual sequence, which lasted for 633 ms on average. Prior to the judgement task, participants were exposed to an abstract verb or an action verb for 500 ms, which was related to the human action according to a congruent or incongruent semantic relation. Data analysis showed that correct judgements were not affected by action verbs, whereas a facilitation effect on response time (49 ms on average) was observed when a congruent action verb primed the judgement of biological movements. In relation with the existing literature, this finding suggests that the perception, the planning and the linguistic coding of motor action are subtended by common motor representations.     

Public events and flashbulb memories in Parkinson's disease

Public events and Flashbulb memories were investigated in 12 non-demented patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) and 12 controls. Knowledge of public events and flashbulbs memories were assessed using a Famous Events Test (EVE 30). Contributions of semantic, episodic, as well as executive functioning and anterograde memory were examined. Results primarily showed that the performances of patients with PD were lower than these of controls in 4 tasks: free recall, specific questions, dating events and date recognition. They also had difficulties in finding the temporal order of 8 events. In contrast, the PD group benefited from events recognition themselves to the same extent as the controls. Secondly, the recall of flashbulb memories (FBM) was lower in the PD group than in the controls. Finally, correlations appeared in PD between the detailed recall of the events with the "recall" abilities of the MATTIS scale, possibly reflect an impairment in rebuilding memories. A positive correlation is also observed with the initiation score of the MATTIS (executive component), suggesting that the difficulties of rebuilding can be related to a dysfunction in accessing information because of a certain degree of frontal amnesia.     

Personality and team performance: a meta‐analysis

Using a meta‐analytical procedure, the relationship between team composition in terms of the Big‐Five personality traits (trait elevation and variability) and team performance were researched. The number of teams upon which analyses were performed ranged from 106 to 527. For the total sample, significant effects were found for elevation in agreeableness (ρ = 0.24) and conscientiousness (ρ = 0.20), and for variability in agreeableness (ρ = ?0.12) and conscientiousness (ρ = ?0.24). Moderation by type of team was tested for professional teams versus student teams. Moderation results for agreeableness and conscientiousness were in line with the total sample results. However, student and professional teams differed in effects for emotional stability and openness to experience. Based on these results, suggestions for future team composition research are presented. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Spatial navigation: Cognitive variables involved in route retracing among an elderly population

The cognitive processes involved in route retracing are not well known. This study aims to highlight them in an elderly population in which contradictory results have been obtained, certain studies showing specific difficulties for route retracing, others not. Thirty-nine elderly subjects performed a route-learning task (forward-backward) in a garden, then completed spatial knowledge tasks and standardised cognitive tests. Results show four factors that were predictive of route retracing performance: route repetition, the pointing task, and two standardised cognitive tests, one assessing spatial working memory, and another global cognitive efficiency. According to these results, route retracing involves route and survey knowledge (i.e., egocentric and allocentric strategy), and the integration of forward-backward perspectives is underpinned by the spatial working memory. Moreover, the subjects did not make more errors in route retracing than in the route repetition task, suggesting that a real environment could compensate for a failing allocentric strategy.