Symmetry brings an impression of familiarity but does not improve recognition memory

Studies have shown that symmetric stimuli are recognized better than asymmetric stimuli but evidence suggests that this advantage may result from a familiarity bias induced by symmetry. We used a classic episodic memory paradigm to test this bias and see if it truly accounts for the symmetry advantage. Subjects first encoded symmetric and asymmetric figures. During a subsequent recognition phase, they discriminated the encoded (old) figures from new intermixed figures. The recognition rate of old figures was higher with symmetric figures than asymmetric figures. However, the tendency to falsely recognize new figures was also higher when they were symmetric, meaning that the higher recognition rate for symmetric figures was artificially inflated by a response bias. Three other experiments further tested this finding and examined the influence of some variables (rotation in virtual 3D space, stimulus meaningfulness, and redundancy of information) on the bias. A fifth experiment with photo stimuli confirmed that the response bias also applies to objects that we regularly encounter in everyday life. In conclusion, our results show that symmetry does not enhance mnemonic processes but instead induces a response bias leading individuals to judge such stimuli as having been seen.     

What comes first? How selective attentional processes regulate the activation of a motor routine in a manual search task

An intriguing error has been observed in toddlers presented with a 3-location search task involving invisible displacements of an object, namely, the C-not-B task. In 3 experiments, the authors investigated the dynamics of the attentional focus process that is suspected to be involved in this task. In Experiment 1, 2.5-year-old children were tested on a new adaptation of the C-not-B task in which the opening of the experimenter's hand between cloths provided visual information about the correct localization of the toy. Children still emitted a strong response bias toward the last hiding place. In Experiment 2, 2.5-year-old children were tested on a new version of the task that was designed to investigate the role of the central location in the task. This 2nd experiment demonstrated that changing the hand's movement from A to C to B did not enable children to succeed in the task. In Experiment 3, 2.5-year-old children were tested in a situation that is analogous to the C-not-B with open hands task except for the fact that the experimenter dropped the toy under the 1st cloth in the path. Toddlers succeeded when the toy was hidden at Location A but not when it was hidden at Location B. Data indicate that attentional focus on the experimenter's hand motion is contingent on whether that stimulus is critical to performing the task. We argue that these findings provide a potential mechanism through which motor routines can be regulated in accordance with strategic intentions.     

Hand preference for pointing gestures and bimanual manipulation around the vocabulary spurt period

This study investigated the development of hand preference for bimanual manipulative activities and pointing gestures in toddlers observed longitudinally over a 5-month period, in relation to language acquisition. The lexical spurt was found to be accompanied by an increase in the right-sided bias for pointing but not for manipulation. Moreover, results revealed a significant correlation between hand preference for imperative pointing gestures and manipulative activities in children who did not experience the lexical spurt during the observational period. By contrast, measures of handedness for declarative pointing were never correlated with those of handedness for manipulation. This study illustrates the complex relationship between handedness and language development and emphasizes the need to take the different functions of pointing gestures into account.     

Narrative means to manage responsibility in life narratives across adolescence

Adolescence is a passage from dependence to adult responsibility. Alongside identity development, social-cognitive development, and the ability to construct a life story, adolescents become increasingly aware of both their potential responsibility in an expanded sphere of life and of complex, contextual influences on their lives. This was partially tested in a cross-sectional study, both in terms of linguistic means and content expressed in life narratives. Indicators were defined for narrative agency, grading of responsibility, serendipity, and turning points, and tested for age differences in relative frequencies in 102 life narratives from age groups of 8, 12, 16, and 20 years, balanced for gender. Narrative grading of responsibility, serendipity, and turning points increased throughout adolescence. The relative frequency of narrative agency, in contrast, remained constant across age groups. Results are interpreted in the context of adolescent development of narrative identity.     

Event-based and emergent timing: dichotomy or continuum? A reply to Repp and Steinman (2010)

B. H. Repp and S. R. Steiman (2010) suggested that event-based and emergent timing, usually conceived as mutually exclusive modes of timing, could in fact coexist in a single activity. According to this point of view, rhythmic activities could exploit mixtures of control modes, in which the relative importance of event-based and emergent components could depend on task characteristics. This point of view, in the opinion of the authors of the present article, corresponds to a fundamental misunderstanding of the theoretical basis of the event-based and emergent distinction, and is not supported by any experimental evidence. However, they present some new results that could support new lines of reasoning for the future developments of research in this domain.     

Regional differences in the listener's phonemic inventory affect semantic processing: A mismatch negativity (MMN) study

Using the mismatch negativity (MMN) response, we examined how Standard French and Southern French speakers access the meaning of words ending in /e/ or /ε/ vowels which are contrastive in Standard French but not in Southern French. In Standard French speakers, there was a significant difference in the amplitude of the brain response after the deviant-minus-standard subtraction between the frontocentral (FC) and right lateral (RL) recording sites for the final-/ε/ word but not the final-/e/ word. In contrast, the difference in the amplitude of the brain response between the FC and RL recording sites did not significantly vary as a function of the word’s final vowel in Southern French speakers. Our findings provide evidence that access to lexical meaning in spoken word recognition depends on the speaker’s native regional accent.     

The role of recollection in source memory: an examination of schizophrenia patients and their first-degree relatives

Source recognition memory deficits have repeatedly been observed in people with schizophrenia (SZ), and have also recently been observed in their first-degree relatives. These deficits have been hypothesized to result, at least in part, from impairments in the conscious recollection process. Although other processes are clearly also affected in SZ, it has been proposed that impairments in the conscious recollection process could be a parsimonious explanation for the source memory deficits observed in their relatives. Here, we tested 25 patients with SZ and 34 of their non-affected parents, as well as two groups of matched healthy controls, on a short-term associative memory task that shares the characteristics of standard source recognition tasks but minimizes the need for recollection of stored information from memory. This task was administered in order to determine if deficits can still be observed in these people when involvement of the conscious recollection process is minimized. We observed deficits on our short-term source memory task in people with SZ, but their first-degree relatives did not share this deficit. These results support the idea that multiple memory processes supporting associative/source memory are affected in SZ, whereas the source memory deficits previously observed in relatives of SZ seem specific to tasks that rely on the conscious recollection process.     

The Role of the Relationship with Parents with Respect to Work Orientation and Work Ethic

We examined the extent to which individual relationships with mother and father, social support from partner, and quality of the relationship with the partner, are related to work orientation and work ethic. Survey data were obtained from 3841 respondents from the Netherlands Kinship Panel Study (wave 2). The results showed that, overall, people with a more positive relationship with their parents had a more positive work orientation and a stronger work ethic. A positive relationship with the father had a greater influence on these work aspects than a positive relationship with the mother, particularly for men. Partner support and the quality of the partner relationship partially mediated the association between the relationship with one's parents and work orientation only for women. There were no significant relationships between partner support or the quality of the partner relationship, and work ethic. Research on the relationship with parents and work-related variables is discussed.     

Perception of weight-bearing distribution during sit-to-stand task in healthy young and elderly individuals

The first objective was to assess whether healthy individuals could accurately estimate their weight-bearing distribution in sit-to-stand transfers. The second was to evaluate the effect of age on weight-bearing perception. 16 young participants (11 women, 5 men; M age 29 yr., SD = 8.7) and 15 elderly participants (7 women, 8 men; M age 65 yr., SD = 3.8) were recruited. Verbal instructions and visual feedback referring to different percentages of weight-bearing distribution to execute were used to quantify weight-bearing perception in sit-to-stand tasks. For the feedback approach, the perception was assessed with a visual analog scale. For the verbal task, the weight-bearing distribution produced was assessed with force plates. Both young and elderly participants had good perception of weight-bearing distribution, with mean absolute errors of 6.4%. Moreover, their perceived and real weight-bearing distribution showed good agreement (ICC > or = .79).     

Why Do Women Do the Lion’s Share of Housework? A Decade of Research

The body of recent American research indicates that women continue to perform the vast majority of household labor. Understanding the conditions under which couples can achieve an egalitarian division of household labor constitutes one of the first steps in attaining gender equity in the private and public spheres. This article discusses the state of research on the division of household labor published between 2000 and 2009. After a discussion of conceptualization and methodological issues, we review empirical findings that support or challenge the micro- and macro-level perspectives (focusing on individual characteristics and national contexts, respectively) that have been proposed to explain the gendered allocation of labor. We then review studies focusing on the interplay between these two prominent perspectives.