Does IOR occur in discrimination tasks? Yes, it does, but later

When a stimulus appears in a previously cued location several hundred milliseconds after the cue, the time required to detect that stimulus is greater than when it appears in an uncued location. This increase in detection time is known as inhibition of return (IOR). It has been suggested that IOR reflects the action of a general attentional mechanism that prevents attention from returning to previously explored loci. At the same time, the robustness of IOR has been recently disputed, given several failures to obtain the effect in tasks requiring discrimination rather than detection. In a series of eight experiments, we evaluated the differences between detection and discrimination tasks with regard to IOR. We found that IOR was consistently obtained with both tasks, although the temporal parameters required to observe IOR were different in detection and discrimination tasks. In our detection task, the effect appeared after a 400-msec delay between cue and target, and was still present after 1,300 msec. In our discrimination task, the effect appeared later and disappeared sooner. The implications of these data for theoretical accounts of IOR are discussed.     

Equivalence classes formation applied to learning musical notes

Three experiments involving training and application of equivalence classes were carried out. In the first of them, with 6-6 years old children, and applying the equivalence classes logic to musical symbols and sounds learning, the necessary relations to build three equivalence classes (do, mi, sol) of five members each were acquired. In second and third experiments, five and seven equivalence classes (musical notes) of five member each were obtained. Six and a half years old children and one 17 years old Down syndrome diagnosed child took part in them, respectively. Results highlight the theoretical meaning of equivalence classes as explanation of human symbolic behavior, as the educational incomes of improving learning of basic elements in artistic skills.     

Multivariate modeling of age and retest in longitudinal studies of cognitive abilities

Longitudinal multivariate mixed models were used to examine the correlates of change between memory and processing speed and the contribution of age and retest to such change correlates. Various age- and occasion-mixed models were fitted to 2 longitudinal data sets of adult individuals (N>1,200). For both data sets, the results indicated that the correlation between the age slopes of memory and processing speed decreased when retest effects were included in the model. If retest effects existed in the data but were not modeled, the correlation between the age slopes was positively biased. The authors suggest that although the changes in memory and processing speed may be correlated over time, age alone does not capture such a covariation.     

Once upon a time…: Using fairy tales as a form of vicarious contact to prevent stigma-based bullying among schoolchildren

We conducted a vicarious contact intervention with the aim of promoting bystanders' intentions to react to stigma-based bullying among schoolchildren. Participants were Italian primary schoolchildren (N = 117 first to third graders); the outgroup was represented by foreign children. Vicarious contact was operationalized with story reading, creating fairy tales on stigma-based bullying where minority characters were bullied by majority characters. Once a week for 3 weeks, participants were read fairy tales in small groups by an experimenter and engaged in reinforcing activities. Results revealed that the intervention increased intergroup empathy (but not intergroup perspective-taking) and anti-bullying peer norms and fostered contact intentions. The intervention also had indirect effects via intergroup empathy on helping and contact intentions and on bystanders' reactions to stigma based-bullying. We discuss theoretical and practical implications, also in terms of the relevance of the present results for school policy. Please refer to the Supplementary Material section to find this article's Community and Social Impact Statement .     

Gender Differences in Leadership Styles as a Function of Leader and Subordinates' Sex and Type of Organization

The main purpose of this study is to investigate gender differences in leadership styles and in organizational outcome variables, together with the influence of organizational/contextual variables on leadership styles in female and male participants in Spain. The sample comprised 226 participants (35 leaders and 191 subordinates) belonging to 35 work teams. The general findings show that only 2 of the 10 tested leadership styles are different for female and male leaders. Specifically, subordinates rate female leaders as more autocratic and negotiating than men, and this evaluation varies according to the subordinates' sex. We also found that some differences in the rating of female and male leaders depend on whether the organization is stereotypically feminine or masculine.     

A Structural Modeling Examination of the Executive Decline Hypothesis of Cognitive Aging Through Reanalysis of Crawford et al.'s (2000) Data

This study presents a new analysis of data previously published by Crawford, Bryan, Luszcz, Obansawin, and Stewart (2000) examining the role of executive function in age-related declines in general cognitive ability and memory. Although the original authors' question is relevant to understanding the role of executive function in aging, this paper argues that the methods used can be substantially improved to more accurately answer the question. Thus, Crawford et al.'s data are here analyzed using a more parsimonious methodological approach (structural equation modeling), and the results obtained depart from the authors' results but are in line with their original hypotheses. First, for younger individuals, age was differently associated with verbal measures of cognitive ability than with performance measures. Although the relation of age to executive function was stronger than the relation of age to verbal abilities, this difference was not apparent with regard to performance abilities. Second, across samples (i.e., younger and older individuals), memory was not accounted for by cognitive ability but was related to age and executive function. Finally, also across samples, executive function was strongly linked to recall and recognition measures, accounting for the largest variance in memory. These results are discussed in relation to previous findings as well as their theoretical significance for aging research.     

Exploring the Dynamics of Dyadic Interactions via Hierarchical Segmentation

In this article we present an exploratory tool for extracting systematic patterns from multivariate data. The technique, hierarchical segmentation (HS), can be used to group multivariate time series into segments with similar discrete-state recurrence patterns and it is not restricted by the stationarity assumption. We use a simulation study to describe the steps and properties of HS. We then use empirical data on daily affect from one couple to illustrate the use of HS for describing the affective dynamics of the dyad. First, we partition the data into three periods that represent different affective states and show different dynamics between both individuals’ affect. We then examine the synchrony between both individuals’ affective states and identify different patterns of coherence across the periods. Finally, we discuss the possibilities of using results from HS to construct confirmatory dynamic models with multiple change points or regime-specific dynamics.