Selection and consolidation of objects and actions

Response selection bottleneck models attribute performance costs under dual-task conditions to the human inability to select more than one response at a time. Consistent with this claim Pashler (1991) found that carrying out a speeded manual choice reaction time (RT) task does not impair the unspeeded report of a cued visual target from a masked display. In contrast, Jolicoeur and DellAcqua (1999, Experiment 2) observed pronounced interference between a speeded manual choice RT task and the unspeeded report of a small number of visually presented letters, a finding they attributed to resource sharing between response selection and stimulus consolidation. We demonstrate that comparable costs are obtained with the same task combination used by Pashler (1991) if only task order is reversed—a manipulation that is likely to increase the necessity of consolidating the target stimulus into working memory. We also found that these costs are not diminished if the location of the target to be reported is cued in advance (reducing demands on spatial focusing) and that they do not vary with the number of target features to be reported. These findings support a consolidation account of costs in dual-task performance.     

Application of video glasses for sustained affective picture presentations: A comparison with video projector presentations

Video glasses have previously been reported to be an effective instrument for emotion induction or for reducing pain perception. In the present study, we assessed the application of video glasses within the affective picture viewing paradigm. Possible advantages of this new method were tested by a comparison with a commonly used video projector. Twenty-four participants viewed sustained picture series of pleasant, neutral, and unpleasant valence with video glasses and with a projector on different days. Affective report, heart rate (HR), and skin conductance level were measured. The results showed that the video glasses presentation mode is not generally superior to the projector mode. Instead, typical responses to prolonged presentations of emotional pictures were obtained across both modalities with valence-modulated pleasure ratings and with an arousal modulation for arousal ratings, skin conductance level, and HR. These results suggest that video glasses are as useful for presenting prolonged affective picture series as are projectors. Specific contexts in which the application of video glasses is preferential are discussed.     

National glorification and attachment differentially predict support for intergroup conflict resolution: Scrutinizing cross-country generalizability

Research on national identity distinguishes between national glorification and attachment. We tested whether glorification and attachment differentially predicted support for military and diplomatic conflict resolution strategies (CRS) in response to international conflicts. Using data collected in seven countries (Australia, United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Israel, China; total N = 1784), we investigated whether glorification and attachment can be equivalently measured (using tests of measurement invariance) and whether their relationships with CRS were generalizable across countries. The results revealed metric, but not scalar, measurement invariance of the two-factor structure of national identification across six countries, excluding China. Among these six countries, glorification predicted more support for military CRS, whereas attachment predicted more support for diplomatic CRS. Our study is novel in scrutinizing the cross-cultural generalizability of the bi-dimensional model of national identification. Implications for studying national identification and intergroup conflict cross-culturally are discussed.     

Psy-BaDo

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

The cognitive representation of action: Automatic integration of perceived action effects

Actions have been assumed to be cognitively represented by codes of relevant action features. Six experiments investigated whether irrelevant action features — conditioned response-contingent auditory events — are also coded and integrated into action codes. Subjects responded to visual stimuli by pressing a left- versus right-hand button or by touching a single key once versus twice. Responses produced certain action effects: tones on the left versus the right or tones of low versus high pitch. After subjects had some practice, an inducing stimulus was presented together with the reaction stimulus; this inducing stimulus shared features with the action effect of the correct or incorrect response. If action effects were integrated into action codes, inducing stimuli should activate or prime the associated response. Indeed, substantial effects of correspondence or compatibility between inducing stimuli and irrelevant action effects were found in a variety of tasks. Results are interpreted as evidence for an automatic integration of information about action effects and taken as support of an action-concept model of action-effect integration and stimulus-response compatibility.     

S-R compatibility effects due to context-dependent spatial stimulus coding

Responses are faster with spatial S-R correspondence than with noncorrespondence (spatial compatibility effect), even if stimulus location is irrelevant (Simon effect). In two experiments, we sought to determine whether stimuli located above and below a fixation point are coded as left and right (and thus affect the selection of left and right responses) if the visual context suggests such a coding. So, stimuli appeared on the left or right eye of a face’s image that was tilted by 90° to one side or the other (Experiment 1) or varied between upright and 45° or 90° tilting (Experiment 2). Whether stimulus location was relevant (Experiment 1) or not (Experiment 2), responses were faster with correspondence of (face-based) stimulus location and (egocentrically defined) response location, even if stimulus and response locations varied on physically orthogonal dimensions. This suggests that object-based spatial stimulus codes are formed automatically and thus influence the speed of response selection.     

A model for science kinematics

A comprehensive model for describing various forms of developments in science is defined in precise, set-theoretic terms, and in the spirit of the structuralist approach in the philosophy of science. The model emends previous accounts in centering on single systems in a homogenous way, eliminating notions which essentially refer to sets of systems. This is achieved by eliminating the distinction between theoretical and non-theoretical terms as a primitive, and by introducing the notion of intended links. The force of the model is demonstrated by formally incorporating many of the important, precise meta-theoretic concepts occurring in the literature.This paper was written under DFG project Ba 678/3-2.     

The relationship between stimulus processing and response selection in the Simon task: Evidence for a temporal overlap

Summary As is indicated by the Simon effect, choice reactions can be carried out faster when the response corresponds spatially to the stimulus, even if the stimulus location is irrelevant to the task. In Experiments 1–4 the relationships between the Simon effect and stimulus eccentricity, signal quality, and signal-background contrast are investigated. The Simon effect was found to interact with all of these factors, at least when manipulated blockwise. These results are at odds with previous results and are difficult to interpret from an additive-factor-method view. An alternative interpretation is suggested that attributes the results to the temporal relationship between the processing of the relevant stimulus information and stimulus location. The assumption is that a decrease in the Simon effect is caused by every experimental manipulation that markedly increases the temporal distance between the coding of the relevant stimulus information and that of the irrelevant stimulus location. This assumption was tested in Experiment 5 in a more direct way. The stimuli were built up on a screen over time, so that the temporal distance between the presence of location and identity information could be controlled experimentally. The results provide further support for a temporal-delay interpretation of interactions between irrelevant stimulus-response correspondence and factors that affect early stages of information processing.     

The effect of fMRI (noise) on cognitive control

Stressful situations, the aversiveness of events, or increases in task difficulty (e.g., conflict) have repeatedly been shown to be capable of triggering attentional control adjustments. In the present study we tested whether the particularity of an fMRI testing environment (i.e., EPI noise) might result in such increases of the cognitive control exerted. We found that participants were more effective in controlling episodic retrieval of previous stimulus-response bindings (Experiment 1), in switching to a new task (Experiment 2), and shielding a current goal from distracting response tendencies (Experiment 3) if they were exposed to challenging task situations, such as 70 dB echo planar imaging noise sampled from an fMRI scanner. These findings have considerable theoretical implications in questioning the widespread assumption that people are equally devoted to easy and more challenging tasks, and methodological implications in raising the possibility that experiments carried out in fMRI scanners or under otherwise challenging conditions systematically overestimate contributions from cognitive control processes.