Meaning is in the beholder’s eye: Morpho-semantic effects in masked priming

A substantial body of literature indicates that, at least at some level of processing, complex words are broken down into their morphemes solely on the basis of their orthographic form (e.g., Rastle, Davis, & New, Psychonomic Bulletin and Review 11:1090–1098, 2004). Recent evidence has shown that this process might not be obligatory, as indicated by the fact that morpho-orthographic effects were not found in a cross-case same–different task—that is, when lexical access was not necessarily required (Duñabeitia, Kinoshita, Carreiras, & Norris, Language and Cognitive Processes 26:509–529, 2011). In this study, we employed a task that required understanding a series of words and, thus, implied lexical access. Masked primes were shown very briefly right before the appearance of the target word; prime–target pairs entertained a morpho-semantic (dealer–DEAL), a morpho-orthographic (corner–CORN), or a purely orthographic (brothel–BROTH) relationship. Eye fixation times clearly indicated facilitation for transparent pairs, but not for opaque pairs (or for orthographic pairs, which were used as a baseline). Conversely, the usual morpho-orthographic pattern was found in a control experiment, employing a lexical decision task. These results indicate that the access to a morpho-orthographic level of representation is not always necessary for lexical identification, which challenges models of visual word identification that cannot account for task-induced effects.     

Emotion Comprehension: The Impact of Nonverbal Intelligence

A substantial body of research has established that emotion understanding develops throughout early childhood and has identified three hierarchical developmental phases: external, mental, and reflexive. The authors analyzed nonverbal intelligence and its effect on children's improvement of emotion understanding and hypothesized that cognitive level is a consistent predictor of emotion comprehension. In all, 366 children (182 girls, 184 boys) between the ages of 3 and 10 years were tested using the Test of Emotion Comprehension and the Coloured Progressive Matrices. The data obtained by using the path analysis model revealed that nonverbal intelligence was statistically associated with the ability to recognize emotions in the 3 developmental phases. The use of this model showed the significant effect that cognitive aspect plays on the reflexive phase. The authors aim to contribute to the debate about the influence of cognitive factors on emotion understanding.     

A Genetically Informed Study of the Covariation Between Childhood Anxiety Dimensions and Social Competence

We investigated the nature of latent shared etiological elements in 398 Italian twin pairs aged 8–17, explaining covariation between high levels of anxiety symptoms and low social competence. We found significant negative correlations between Child Behaviour Checklist/6–18 Social Competence Scale and three (Panic Anxiety, Separation Anxiety, Social Anxiety) out of five Screen for Child Anxiety Related Disorders anxiety subscales. Results from causal analysis seem to exclude the hypothesis that co-occurrence between Anxiety Symptoms and Social Competence could be due to a direct phenotypic effect of one trait upon the other. Multivariate analysis suggested that both genetic and shared environmental components contribute to the phenotypic correlation between Social Competence and Anxiety Subscales, whereas unique environmental factors have a negligible influence. This means that both common genetic and shared environmental causal factors contribute simultaneously to increase risk of having low Social Competence and high Anxiety scores. In particular, covariation with Social Competence seems to be influenced by both genetic and shared environmental causal components in Separation Anxiety and Social Anxiety, whereas environmental factors have an irrelevant influence for covariation with Panic/Somatic Anxiety Subscale. Our results support the adoption of a broader view of the relationships between psychopathology and diminished social competences in childhood for both clinicians and educators.     

Decision speed and choice regret: When haste feels like waste

We test a metacognitive account of why larger choice sets often lead to greater regret, proposing that people apply the lay theory that “a quick choice is a bad choice” when evaluating how well they have chosen. Because people often operate under time pressure, larger sets are likely to entail a more cursory selection process than smaller sets, generating a feeling of having rushed the evaluation of the alternatives and heightened regret. Four studies show that choice-set size does not influence participants' regret when they believe that they had enough time to choose, that the subjective feeling of being rushed accounts for greater regret when choosing from larger sets, and that changing people's lay theories about choosing quickly eliminates regret.     

Attachment patterns and emotion regulation strategies in the second year

With the aim of studying the relationship between methods of emotion regulation and quality of attachment we examined 39 infants with different patterns of attachment, of whom 20 were classified as secure (B), 12 as avoidant (A) and 7 as resistant (C), assessing the regulatory strategies adopted by them during the Strange Situation at 13 months. Secure infants used strategies of positive social engagement more than insecure avoidant infants, while resistant infants displayed greater negative social engagement and less object orientation than the other two groups. Avoidant infants adopted positive and negative hetero-regulatory strategies less than the other groups, also differing from resistant infants in their greater use of object regulatory strategies. There were no significant differences as regards self-comforting regulation. Thus, the findings showed how the most significant differences to emerge between the groups concerned hetero-regulatory strategies, developed by the infant in interaction with attachment figures, and regulatory strategies oriented towards objects. Further analysis showed how the use by part of each attachment group of the emotion regulation strategies varies, differentiating the episodes of the SSP according to their level of stress.     

Sound naming in neurodegenerative disease

Modern cognitive neuroscientific theories and empirical evidence suggest that brain structures involved in movement may be related to action-related semantic knowledge. To test this hypothesis, we examined the naming of environmental sounds in patients with corticobasal degeneration (CBD) and progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), two neurodegenerative diseases associated with cognitive and motor deficits. Subjects were presented with 56 environmental sounds: 28 sounds were of objects that required manipulation when producing the sound, and 28 sounds were of objects that required no manipulation. Subjects were asked to provide the name of the object that produced the sound and also complete a sound-picture matching condition. Subjects included 33 individuals from four groups: CBD/PSP, Alzheimer disease, frontotemporal dementia, and normal controls. We hypothesized that CBD/PSP patients would exhibit impaired naming performance compared with controls, but the impairment would be most apparent when naming sounds associated with actions. We also explored neural correlates of naming environmental sounds using voxel-based morphometry (VBM) of brain MRI. As expected, CBD/PSP patients scored lower on environmental sounds naming (p < 0.007) compared with the controls. In particular, the CBD/PSP patients scored the lowest when naming sounds of manipulable objects (p < 0.05), but did not show deficits in naming sounds of non-manipulable objects. VBM analysis across all groups showed that performance in naming sounds of manipulable objects correlated with atrophy in the left pre-motor region, extending from area six to the middle and superior frontal gyrus. These results indicate an association between impairment in the retrieval of action-related names and the motor system, and suggest that difficulty in naming manipulable sounds may be related to atrophy in the pre-motor cortex. Our results support the hypothesis that retrieval of action-related semantic knowledge involves motor regions in the brain.     

The role of mental rotation and age in spatial perspective‐taking tasks: when age does not impair perspective‐taking performance

The relationship between self‐evaluation of sense of direction, mental rotation, and performance in map learning and pointing tasks has been investigated in a life‐span perspective. Study 1 compared younger and older people in the Mental Rotation Test (MRT) and on the Sense of Direction and Spatial Representation (SDSR) Scale. Older people achieved higher scores on the SDSR Scale, but a lower performance in MRT compared with younger participants. In Study 2, groups of younger and older adults, one of each, were matched in the MRT, and pointing tasks in aligned and counter‐aligned perspectives were administered. Our results showed that, when so matched, older participants performed better than the younger counterparts in perspective‐taking tasks, but their performance was worse in map learning. Aligned pointing was performed better than the counter‐aligned task in both age groups, showing an alignment effect. Furthermore the performance in the counter‐aligned pointing was significantly correlated with MRT scores. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The use of virtual environments for survey spatial ability evaluation in topographical disorientation

Due to their interactivity and to the sense of presence they afford, virtual environments constitute an interesting opportunity to study spatial cognition. In accordance with this perspective, we aimed to introduce a spatial test in virtual simulation in order to investigate the survey spatial ability in patients with topographical disorientation. To do this, we used the "planning in advance task" in a virtual environment that constitutes an effective procedure to experimentally evaluate survey maps. With this procedure we present the single case of a woman, with a right medial temporal lobe lesion, who shows a selective impairment in the acquisition of new spatial relationships. The patient's performance in "planning in advance task" was compared with that of a control group made up of 40 female subjects matched for age and education. Results show how the patient revealed a significantly lower spatial performance when compared to the control group, demonstrating an inability to solve survey-type spatial tasks in complex virtual environments.