Incongruent object/context relationships in visual scenes: Where are they processed in the brain?

Rapid object visual categorization in briefly flashed natural scenes is influenced by the surrounding context. The neural correlates underlying reduced categorization performance in response to incongruent object/context associations remain unclear and were investigated in the present study using fMRI. Participants were instructed to categorize objects in briefly presented scenes (exposure duration = 100 ms). Half of the scenes consisted of objects pasted in an expected (congruent) context, whereas for the other half, objects were embedded in incongruent contexts. Object categorization was more accurate and faster in congruent relative to incongruent scenes. Moreover, we found that the two types of scenes elicited different patterns of cerebral activation. In particular, the processing of incongruent scenes induced increased activations in the parahippocampal cortex, as well as in the right frontal cortex. This higher activity may indicate additional neural processing of the novel (non experienced) contextual associations that were inherent to the incongruent scenes. Moreover, our results suggest that the locus of object categorization impairment due to contextual incongruence is in the right anterior parahippocampal cortex. Indeed in this region activity was correlated with the reaction time increase observed with incongruent scenes. Representations for associations between objects and their usual context of appearance might be encoded in the right anterior parahippocampal cortex.     

What can the same–different task tell us about the development of magnitude representations?

We examined the development of magnitude representations in children (Exp 1: kindergartners, first-, second- and sixth graders, Exp 2: kindergartners, first-, second- and third graders) using a numerical same-different task with symbolic (i.e. digits) and non-symbolic (i.e. arrays of dots) stimuli. We investigated whether judgments in a same-different task with digits are based upon the numerical value or upon the physical similarity of the digits. In addition, we investigated whether the numerical distance effect decreases with increasing age. Finally, we examined whether the performance in this task is related to general mathematics achievement. Our results reveal that a same-different task with digits is not an appropriate task to study magnitude representations, because already late kindergarteners base their responses on the physical similarity instead of the numerical value of the digits. When decisions cannot be made on the basis of physical similarity, a similar numerical distance effect is present over all age groups. This suggests that the magnitude representation is stable from late kindergarten onwards. The size of the numerical distance effect was not related to mathematical achievement. However, children with a poorer mathematics achievement score seemed to have more difficulties to link a symbol with its corresponding magnitude.     

Alexithymia is associated with an augmenter profile, but not only: Evidence for anticipation to arousing music

Grynberg, D., Davydov, D. M., Vermeulen, N. & Luminet, O. (2012). Alexithymia is associated with an augmenter profile, but not only: Evidence for anticipation to arousing music. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology 53, 375-381. It has been suggested that high alexithymia scorers have an 'augmenter' profile which amplifies their physiological and subjective responses to highly arousing stimuli. The aim of this study was to test this theory using several physiological measures. Participants listened to musical excerpts either in a 'weak-to-strong' or a 'strong-to-weak' order of arousing levels of stimuli. The results show that alexithymia was associated with an augmenter profile for subjective reports for the most arousing stimulus and with stronger skin conductance level responses in the 'strong-to-weak' order. These results partially support the augmenter profile and reveal that alexithymia may be associated with higher anticipation for the most arousing excerpt.     

Haptic identification of raised-line drawings: high visuospatial imagers outperform low visuospatial imagers

It has been assumed (Lederman et al. 1990, Perception & Psychophysics) that a visual imagery process is involved in the haptic identification of raised-line drawings of common objects. The finding of significant correlations between visual imagery ability and performance on picture-naming tasks was taken as experimental evidence in support of this assumption. However, visual imagery measures came from self-report procedures, which can be unreliable. The present study therefore used an objective measure of visuospatial imagery abilities in sighted participants and compared three groups of high, medium and low visuospatial imagers on their accuracy and response times in identifying raised-line drawings by touch. Results revealed between-group differences on accuracy, with high visuospatial imagers outperforming low visuospatial imagers, but not on response times. These findings lend support to the view that visuospatial imagery plays a role in the identification of raised-line drawings by sighted adults.     

The role of general and number-specific order processing in adults’ arithmetic performance

Digit order processing is highly related to individual differences in arithmetic performance. To examine whether serial scanning or associative mechanisms underlie order processing, order tasks (i.e. deciding whether three digits were presented in an order or not) were administered in two experiments. In the first experiment, digits were presented in different directions namely ascending, descending and non-ordered. For each direction, close and far distance sequences were presented. Results revealed reversed distance effects for ordered sequences, but ascending sequences elicited faster performance and stronger reversed distance effects than descending sequences, suggesting that associative mechanisms underlie order processing. In the second experiment, it was examined to which extent the relation between order processing and arithmetic is number-specific by presenting order tasks with digits, letters and months. In all order tasks similar distance effects were observed and similar relations with arithmetic were found, suggesting that both general associative mechanisms and number-specific mechanisms contribute to arithmetic.     

The reliability of and the relation between non-symbolic numerical distance effects in comparison, same-different judgments and priming

The development of number processing is generally studied by examining the performance on basic number tasks (comparison task, same-different judgment, and priming task). Using these tasks, so-called numerical distance effects are obtained. All these effects are generally explained by assuming a magnitude representation related to a mental number line: magnitudes are represented from left to right with partially overlapping representations for nearby numbers. In this study, we compared the performance of adults on these different tasks using non-symbolic stimuli. First, we investigated whether the effects obtained in these behavioral tasks are reliable. Second, we examined the relation between the three different effects. The results showed that the observed effects in the case of the comparison task and the same-different task proved to be reliable. The numerical distance effect obtained in the priming task, however, was not reliable. In addition, a correlation was found between the distance effects in the comparison task and the same-different task. The priming distance effect did not correlate with the other two effects. These results suggest important differences between distance effects obtained under automatic and intentional task instructions regarding the use of them as indices of mathematical ability.     

Emotional plasticity: conditions and effects of improving emotional competence in adulthood

This study aimed to investigate (a) whether it is possible to increase emotional competence (EC) in adulthood; (b) whether this improvement results in better mental, physical, and social adjustment; (c) whether this improvement can be maintained 1 year later; and (d) whether these benefits are accompanied by a reduction in stress-hormone secretion (i.e., cortisol). One hundred and thirty-two participants were randomly assigned to an EC-enhancing intervention (in group format) or to a control group. Participants in the intervention group underwent a specifically designed 15-hr intervention targeting the 5 core emotional competencies, complemented with a 4-week e-mail follow-up. Results reveal that the level of emotional competencies increased significantly in the intervention group in contrast with the control group. This increase resulted in lower cortisol secretion, enhanced subjective and physical well-being, as well as improved quality of social and marital relationships in the intervention group. No significant change occurred in the control group. Peer reports on EC and quality of relationships confirmed these results. These data suggest that emotional competencies can be improved, with effective benefits on personal and interpersonal functioning lasting for at least 1 year. The theoretical implications of these results as well as their practical implications for the construction and the development of effective emotional competencies interventions are discussed.     

Effects of inter-character spacing on saccade programming in beginning readers and dyslexics

The present study investigated the impact of inter-character spacing on saccade programming in beginning readers and dyslexic children. In two experiments, eye movements were recorded while dyslexic children, reading-age, and chronological-age controls, performed an oculomotor lateralized bisection task on words and strings of hashes presented either with default inter-character spacing or with extra spacing between the characters. The results of Experiment 1 showed that (1) only proficient readers had already developed highly automatized procedures for programming both left- and rightward saccades, depending on the discreteness of the stimuli and (2) children of all groups were disrupted (i.e., had trouble to land close to the beginning of the stimuli) by extra spacing between the characters of the stimuli, and particularly for stimuli presented in the left visual field. Experiment 2 was designed to disentangle the role of inter-character spacing and spatial width. Stimuli were made the same physical length in the default and extra-spacing conditions by having more characters in the default spacing condition. Our results showed that inter-letter spacing still influenced saccade programming when controlling for spatial width, thus confirming the detrimental effect of extra spacing for saccade programming. We conclude that the beneficial effect of increased inter-letter spacing on reading can be better explained in terms of decreased visual crowding than improved saccade targeting.     

Mr. Grimace or Ms. Smile: does categorization affect perceptual processing in autism?

This study compared the influence of categorization on perceptual processing in adults with autistic spectrum disorders (ASD) and normal control participants. Participants were asked to categorize hybrid faces (composed of two overlapped faces of different spatial bandwidths) by gender and emotion. Control participants exhibited a bias for low-pass information during gender categorization and a bias for high-pass information during emotion categorization. By contrast, adults with ASD showed the same low-pass bias in both tasks. This absence of a shift in processing style in the ASD group is discussed in terms of diminished top-down modulation in autism.     

Implications of mental image processing in the deficits of verbal information coding during normal aging]

Our study specifies the contributions of image generation and image maintenance processes occurring at the time of imaginal coding of verbal information in memory during normal aging. The memory capacities of 19 young adults (average age of 24 years) and 19 older adults (average age of 75 years) were assessed using recall tasks according to the imagery value of the stimuli to learn. The mental visual imagery capacities are assessed using tasks of image generation and temporary storage of mental imagery. The variance analysis indicates a more important decrease with age of the concretness effect. The major contribution of our study rests on the fact that the decline with age of dual coding of verbal information in memory would result primarily from the decline of image maintenance capacities and from a slowdown in image generation.