Introducción a la Psicología Diferencial Cognoscitiva

Resumen

En este artículo se propone un cuerpo de conocimientos que hipotetizamos debería reunir la Psicología Diferencial Cognoscitiva. Esta propuesta tiene en consideración la relación entre los diversos enfoques de la Psicología Diferencial, tanto clásicos como más actuales, y la Psicología General, de acuerdo a tres metaniveles de teorización. Básicamente, la tesis mantenida en este artículo es que la psicología debería tender a elaborar modelos ajustados a las diferencias individuales en las actividades cognoscitivas tradicionalmente estudiadas por la psicología cognitiva, sea general o diferencial, y no tanto a buscar modelos canónicos referidos a dichas actividades.     

Diferentes procedimientos de externalización de la representación espacial. Un estudio evolutivo con niños ciegos

Resumen

Este artículo analiza los problemas teóricos y metodológicos que plantea el estudio del conocimiento del entorno en las personas ciegas, desde una perspectiva evolutiva. En la primera parte se revisan los aspectos teóricos más importantes implicados en el estudio del desarrollo del conocimiento espacial, haciendo especial énfasis en los problemas derivados de la falta de visión. La segunda parte presenta los resultados de un estudio piloto en el que se investiga el desarrollo del conocimiento espacial en niños invidentes de ocho a catorce años. Se pone especial énfasis en la comparación entre diferentes técnicas de externalización susceptibles de ser utilizadas en invidentes.     

The Effect of Authority on the Persuasiveness of Mathematical Arguments

Three experiments are reported that investigate the extent to which an authority figure influences the level of persuasion undergraduate students and research-active mathematicians invest in mathematical arguments. We demonstrate that, in some situations, both students and researchers rate arguments as being more persuasive when they are associated with an expert mathematician than when the author is anonymous. We develop a model that accounts for these data by suggesting that, for both students and researchers, an authority figure only plays a role when there is already some uncertainty about the argument's mathematical status. Implications for pedagogy, and for future research, are discussed.     

Seeing green: Mere exposure to money triggers a business decision frame and unethical outcomes

Can mere exposure to money corrupt? In four studies, we examined the likelihood of unethical outcomes when the construct of money was activated through the use of priming techniques. The results of Study 1 demonstrated that individuals primed with money were more likely to demonstrate unethical intentions than those in the control group. In Study 2, we showed that participants primed with money were more likely to adopt a business decision frame. In Studies 3 and 4, we found that money cues triggered a business decision frame, which led to a greater likelihood of unethical intentions and behavior. Together, the results of these studies demonstrate that mere exposure to money can trigger unethical intentions and behavior and that decision frame mediates this effect.     

Resurgence of temporal patterns of responding

The resurgence of temporal patterns of key pecking by pigeons was investigated in two experiments. In Experiment 1, positively accelerated and linear patterns of responding were established on one key under a discrete-trial multiple fixed-interval variable-interval schedule. Subsequently, only responses on a second key produced reinforcers according to a variable-interval schedule. When reinforcement on the second key was discontinued, positively accelerated and linear response patterns resurged on the first key, in the presence of the stimuli previously correlated with the fixed- and variable-interval schedules, respectively. In Experiment 2, resurgence was assessed after temporal patterns were directly reinforced. Initially, responding was reinforced if it approximated an algorithm-defined temporal pattern during trials. Subsequently, reinforcement depended on pausing during trials and, when it was discontinued, resurgence of previously reinforced patterns occurred for each pigeon and for 2 of 3 pigeons during a replication. The results of both experiments demonstrate the resurgence of temporally organized responding and replicate and extend previous findings on resurgence of discrete responses and spatial response sequences.     

Neuropsychological impairment in Parkinson's disease without dementia

Cognitive dysfunction in Parkinson's Disease (PD) has been consistently reported, but little is known about cognitive impairment in PD patients without dementia, and its association with clinical characteristics, neuropsychiatric disturbance and functional activities. Therefore, we evaluated 52 non-demented PD patients, 22 of them with mild cognitive impairment (PD-MCI) who were matched with 52 healthy controls. Our results confirm the existence of dysfunction in information processing speed, executive function, verbal memory and visuo-perceptual processing in PD. On the other hand, PD-MCI was associated with advanced age at the onset of PD, more neuropsychiatric symptoms, caregiver stress and functional problems. The study supports the hypothesis that specific neuropsychological impairments may act as modulators of functional impairment in PD, for instance slowness of information processing.     

Knowledge and question asking

The ability and the motivation for question asking are, or should be, some of the most important aims of education. Unfortunately, students neither ask many questions, nor good ones. The present paper is about the capacity of secondary school pupils for asking questions and how this activity depends on prior knowledge. To examine this, we use texts containing different levels of information about a specific topic: biodiversity. We found a positive relationship between the amount of information provided and the number of questions asked about the texts, supporting the idea that more knowledgeable people ask more questions. Some students were warned that there would be an exam after the reading, and this led to a diminishing number of questions asked, and yet this still did not significantly improve their exam scores. In such a case, it seems that reading was more concerned with immediacy, hindering critical thinking and the dialog between their previous ideas and the new information. Thus, question asking seems to be influenced not only by the amount of knowledge, but also by the reader's attitude towards the information.     

School Anxiety Inventory: validation in a sample of Spanish secondary education students

The aim of this study was to analyze the psychometric evidence of scores on the School Anxiety Inventory (SAI). The SAI was administered to a sample of 520 secondary education students, aged from 12 to 18 years. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses supported the correlated four-factor structure related to school situations (Anxiety about Academic Failure and Punishment, Anxiety about Aggression, Anxiety about Social Evaluation, and Anxiety about Academic Evaluation) and the three-factor structure related to the response systems of anxiety (Cognitive Anxiety, Psychophysiological Anxiety, and Behavioral Anxiety). Internal consistency and test-retest reliability were appropriate. The results also revealed positive and statistically significant correlations between the SAI and the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI).     

Semi-intuitionistic Logic

The purpose of this paper is to define a new logic ${\mathcal {SI}}$ called semi-intuitionistic logic such that the semi-Heyting algebras introduced in [4] by Sankappanavar are the semantics for ${\mathcal {SI}}$ . Besides, the intuitionistic logic will be an axiomatic extension of ${\mathcal {SI}}$ .     

Multisensory integration affects visuo-spatial working memory

In the present study, we investigate how spatial attention, driven by unisensory and multisensory cues, can bias the access of information into visuo-spatial working memory (VSWM). In a series of four experiments, we compared the effectiveness of spatially-nonpredictive visual, auditory, or audiovisual cues in capturing participants' spatial attention towards a location where to-be-remembered visual stimuli were or were not presented (cued/uncued trials, respectively). The results suggest that the effect of peripheral visual cues in biasing the access of information into VSWM depend on the size of the attentional focus, while auditory cues did not have direct effects in biasing VSWM. Finally, spatially congruent multisensory cues showed an enlarged attentional effect in VSWM as compared to unimodal visual cues, as a likely consequence of multisensory integration. This latter result sheds new light on the interplay between spatial attention and VSWM, pointing to the special role exerted by multisensory (audiovisual) cues.