Priming of semantic classifications by novel subliminal prime words

Four experiments demonstrate category congruency priming by subliminal prime words that were never seen as targets in a valence-classification task (Experiments 1, 2, and 4) and a gender-classification task (Experiment 3). In Experiment 1, overlap in terms of word fragments of one or more letters between primes and targets of different valences was larger than between primes and targets of the same valence. In Experiments 2 and 3, the sets of prime words and target words were completely disjoint in terms of used letters. In Experiment 4, pictures served as targets. The observed subliminal priming effects for novel primes cannot be driven by partial analysis of primes at the word-fragment level; they suggest instead that primes were processed semantically as whole words contingent upon prime duration.     

Morningness-eveningness and health-related quality of life among adolescents

Accumulating evidence suggests that evening-type adolescents are exposed to a number of determinants that might have a negative impact on their health condition. Given that few studies have investigated the association between chronotype and quality of life measures in large samples of adolescents, the aim of this study was to assess the relationship between morningness-eveningness and health-related quality of life among 1600 adolescents (aged 12-16 years). Adolescents completed the Ve?u et Santé Per?ue de L'adolescent (VSP-A) and the Morningness-Eveningness Scale for Children (MESC). Girls and older adolescents reported worse health indicators and were more evening oriented. Evening-type adolescents obtained lower scores on vitality, physical and psychological well-being, body image, relations with parents, relations with teachers, school work and global health scale.     

Dissociable stages of problem solving (I): temporal characteristics revealed by eye-movement analyses

Understanding the functional neuroanatomy of planning and problem solving may substantially benefit from better insight into the chronology of the cognitive processes involved. Based on the assumption that regularities in cognitive processing are reflected in overtly observable eye-movement patterns, here we recorded eye movements while participants worked on Tower of London (TOL) problems that comprised an experimental manipulation of different task demands. Single-trial saccade-locked analyses revealed that higher demands on forming an internal problem representation were associated with an increased number of gaze alternations between start state and goal state, but did not show any effect on the durations of these inspections of the states. In contrast, higher demands on actual planning in terms of mental manipulations of working memory contents coincided with a prolonged duration of the very last inspection of the start state (i.e., immediately preceding movement execution) but did not show any effect on the number of gaze alterations. Differential task demands on internalization and planning processes during problem solving hence selectively affect different eye-movement parameters. Moreover, these findings complement previous neuroimaging data on dissociable contributions of left and right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in problem solving with novel evidence for a corresponding dissociation in the eye-movement patterns reflecting the associated cognitive processes.     

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.     

A problem for contrastivist accounts of knowledge

This paper raises a problem for contrastivist accounts of knowledge. It is argued that contrastivism fails to succeed in providing a modest solution to the sceptical paradox—i.e. one according to which we have knowledge of a wide range of ordinary empirical propositions whilst failing to know the various anti-sceptical hypotheses entailed by them—whilst, at the same time, retaining a contrastivist version of the closure principle for knowledge.     

Feeling before knowing why: The role of the orbitofrontal cortex in intuitive judgments—an MEG study

In theory, intuitive decisions are made immediately, without conscious, reasoned thought. They are experienced as decisions based on hunches that cannot be explicitly described but, nevertheless, guide subsequent action. Investigating the underlying neural mechanisms, previous research has found the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) to be crucial to intuitive processes, but its specific role has remained unclear. On the basis of a two-stage conceptualization of intuition suggested by Bowers, Regehr, Balthazard, and Parker Cognitive Psychology, 22, 72-110 (1990), we attempt to clarify the OFC’s role in intuitive processing. We propose that it functions as an early integrator of incomplete stimulus input guiding subsequent processing by means of a coarse representation of the gist of the information. On the subjective level, this representation would be perceived as a (gut) feeling biasing the decision. Our aim in the present study was to test this neural model and rule out alternative explanations of OFC activation in intuitive judgments. We used magnetoencephalography (MEG) to record participants' electromagnetic brain responses during a visual coherence judgment task. As in earlier studies, the OFC was found to be activated when participants perceived coherence. Using MEG, it could be shown that this increase in activation began earlier in the OFC than in temporal object recognition areas. Moreover, the present study demonstrated that OFC activation was independent of physical stimulus characteristics, task requirements, and participants’ explicit recognition of the stimuli presented. These results speak to the OFC’s fundamental role in the early steps of intuitive judgments and suggest the proposed neural model as a promising starting point for future investigations.