Action effects in saccade control

According to the ideomotor principle, action preparation involves the activation of associations between actions and their effects. However, there is only sparse research on the role of action effects in saccade control. Here, participants responded to lateralized auditory stimuli with spatially compatible saccades toward peripheral targets (e.g., a rhombus in the left hemifield and a square in the right hemifield). Prior to the imperative auditory stimulus (e.g., a left tone), an irrelevant central visual stimulus was presented that was congruent (e.g., a rhombus), incongruent (e.g., a square), or unrelated (e.g., a circle) to the peripheral saccade target (i.e., the visual effect of the saccade). Saccade targets were present throughout a trial (Experiment 1) or appeared after saccade initiation (Experiment 2). Results showed shorter response times and fewer errors in congruent (vs. incongruent) conditions, suggesting that associations between oculomotor actions and their visual effects play an important role in saccade control.     

Emotional competence and quality of life of children with asthma: The mediating effect of coping strategies

This study explored the mediating effect of coping strategies on the relationship between emotional competence (EC) and quality of life (QOL) among children with asthma. Participants were 87 children (M age?=?11.72, SD?=?2.58) with controlled and partially controlled asthma, undergoing everyday treatment. They filled in questionnaires assessing EC, coping strategies and QOL. Results showed that the association between some ECs and the QOL of children with asthma was fully mediated by two maladaptive cognitive coping strategies. Among children with asthma, a greater ability to differentiate their emotions, a reduced attention to bodily signals of emotions and a reduced analysis of their current emotional state were related to decreased engagement in two coping strategies (‘Ignoring Asthma’ and ‘Worrying about Asthma’), which in turn increased their QOL. These findings show that EC has an indirect effect on QOL through very specific coping strategies. They also emphasise the importance of screening EC in children with asthma and the importance of developing and using multidisciplinary interventions for them.     

‘WITH PSYCHOSIS IN MIND’ – the reverberations of the psychotic encounter

Psychoanalytic theory offers a varied conceptual system for considering psychosis by providing a coherent representation of the anxieties and processes at work in adult patients. But at the practical clinical level, it is not enough simply to ‘think about psychosis’ and have a theoretical system in place. The therapist must also ‘have psychosis in mind’, that is, get to grips with its forms of logic, gain familiarity with its workings, and learn to understand and accept the effects it has on the therapeutic relationship and on their own expectations. Clinicians engaged in this type of work must be able to tolerate getting back in touch with processes deemed archaic at the core of their own psychological functioning, which will impact their ability to listen and think. These chaotic processes demand a change of approach since they cause a ‘desymbolisation’ that perturbs the internal mental structure of the therapist. This ‘desymbolisation’ is therefore the locus of the therapeutic work, which must attempt to render it comprehensible and represent it. A case study illustrates these processes.     

Working In a Regulated Occupation in Canada: An Immigrant–Native Born Comparison

The number of immigrants working in regulated and unregulated occupations in Canada is unknown. A major contribution of this study is that we use the 2006 Census of Canada to classify occupations, across provinces, into regulated and unregulated categories and then to examine the covariates of membership in a regulated occupation. In aggregate, immigrants are slightly less likely to work in a regulated occupation. Immigrants educated in Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean prove to be much less likely to secure access to a regulated occupation than either the native born or other immigrants.     

Early processing of emotional faces in children with autism: An event-related potential study

Social deficits are one of the most striking manifestations of autism spectrum disorders (ASDs). Among these social deficits, the recognition and understanding of emotional facial expressions has been widely reported to be affected in ASDs. We investigated emotional face processing in children with and without autism using event-related potentials (ERPs). High-functioning children with autism (n = 15, mean age = 10.5 ± 3.3 years) completed an implicit emotional task while visual ERPs were recorded. Two groups of typically developing children (chronological age-matched and verbal equivalent age-matched [both ns = 15, mean age = 7.7 ± 3.8 years]) also participated in this study. The early ERP responses to faces (P1 and N170) were delayed, and the P1 was smaller in children with autism than in typically developing children of the same chronological age, revealing that the first stages of emotional face processing are affected in autism. However, when matched by verbal equivalent age, only P1 amplitude remained affected in autism. Our results suggest that the emotional and facial processing difficulties in autism could start from atypicalities in visual perceptual processes involving rapid feedback to primary visual areas and subsequent holistic processing.     

Étude piagétienne de quelques notions spatio-temporelles dans un milieu africain1

Plusieurs problèmes portant sur la notion de temps ont été posés à une population rurale de la Côte-d'Ivoire. Les situations expérimentales comportaient divers déplacements de personnes ou d'objets. Au sujet de ces déplacements, on posait des questions de durée, de vitesse et d'espace parcouru. Des solutions correctes nécessitaient une mise en relation coordonnée de ces trois paramètres. La méthode d'interrogatoire critique utilisée conduit à une analyse détaillée des arguments explicitant les réponses des sujets. Les résultats montrent que des hommes sans scolarisation et des adolescents scolarisés parviennent à une bonne compréhension des problèmes posés, tandis que des femmes et des adolescents sans scolarisation n'accèdent pas à la réussite. Les faits obtenus soulèvent le problème de la comparaison de deux milieux culturels (Genève-Côte-d'Ivoire) scolarisés et non scolarisés, quant à une influence sur le système conceptuel. Uno discussion finale s'efforce de montrer en quoi le recours à la théorie de Piaget pour l'interprétation des données observées peut apporter des éclaircissements sur le problème.     

Amplitude modulation of sexy phrases is salient for song attractiveness in female canaries (Serinus canaria)

Song discrimination and recognition in songbird species have usually been studied by measuring responses to song playbacks. In female canaries, Serinus canaria, copulation solicitation displays (CSDs) are used as an index of female preferences, which are related to song recognition. Despite the fact that many studies underline the role of song syntax in this species, we observed that short segments of songs (a few seconds long) are enough for females to discriminate between conspecific and heterospecific songs, whereas such a short duration is not sufficient to identify the syntax rules. This suggests that other cues are salient for song recognition. In this experiment, we investigated the influence of amplitude modulation (AM) on the responses (CSDs) of female canaries to song playbacks. We used two groups of females: (1) raised in acoustic isolation and (2) raised in normal conditions. When adult, we tested their preferences for sexy phrases with different AMs. We broadcast three types of stimuli: (1) songs with natural canary AM, (2) songs with AM removed, or (3) song with wren Troglodytes troglodytes AM. Results indicate that female canaries prefer and have predispositions for a song type with the natural canary AM. Thus, this acoustic parameter is a salient cue for song attractiveness.     

Perspective Effects on Recall in a Testimony Paradigm

The two present studies examined the influence of perspective instructions given during encoding and retrieval on the recall of a visual event. Participants viewed slides or a film depicting a day in the life of a man. Before viewing the to-be-remembered event, they were instructed to adopt the perspective of an alcoholic vs. an unemployed man vs. no perspective (Experiment 1), or of an unemployed man vs. no perspective (Experiment 2). Participants in the first study were interviewed twice, with the second recall being preceded by either a change perspective instruction or without any specific instruction. In the second study, participants were interviewed using either a cognitive interview (CI) or a CI without the change perspective instruction. Results showed that adopting a perspective during encoding impaired recall performance and failed to demonstrate a significant benefit of the change perspective instruction. The theoretical and practical implications of these results are discussed.     

Back to the Real: Efficacy and Perception of a Modified Cognitive Interview in the Field

Since the Cognitive Interview (CI) was developed, many experiments have been published, but only two have investigated its efficacy in real criminal cases. Here, a Modified CI (MCI) is tested with real interviews in an inquisitor justice system. Several moderators and the interviewers' attitudes towards the CI/MCI are also examined. Eighty‐one witnesses were interviewed by 27 French military police officers, with a Standard Police Interview, a Structured Interview (SI), or an MCI. The MCI produced the most forensically relevant information, especially for victims. Trainees judged the SI and the MCI useful, usable, and acceptable, and felt efficient in using them, beliefs that increased after 1 year of practice. The self‐efficacy was linked with the declared use of the techniques. In all, this study confirmed the efficacy of the CI/MCI as a tool to be used in the field, with some cautions to be underlined, notably because of the small sample size considered. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The role of crossmodal competition and dimensional overlap in crossmodal attention switching

Crossmodal selective attention was investigated in a cued task switching paradigm using bimodal visual and auditory stimulation. A cue indicated the imperative modality. Three levels of spatial S–R associations were established following perceptual (location), structural (numerical), and conceptual (verbal) set-level compatibility. In Experiment 1, participants switched attention between the auditory and visual modality either with a spatial-location or spatial-numerical stimulus set. In the spatial-location set, participants performed a localization judgment on left vs. right presented stimuli, whereas the spatial-numerical set required a magnitude judgment about a visually or auditorily presented number word. Single-modality blocks with unimodal stimuli were included as a control condition. In Experiment 2, the spatial-numerical stimulus set was replaced by a spatial-verbal stimulus set using direction words (e.g., “left”). RT data showed modality switch costs, which were asymmetric across modalities in the spatial-numerical and spatial-verbal stimulus set (i.e., larger for auditory than for visual stimuli), and congruency effects, which were asymmetric primarily in the spatial-location stimulus set (i.e., larger for auditory than for visual stimuli). This pattern of effects suggests task-dependent visual dominance.