Limitaciones de procesamiento y selectividad atencional

RESUMEN

José María Ruiz Vargas y Juan Botella introducen este dossier revisando los modelos de atención de los últimos veinte años. Estos autores plantean críticamente las respuestas principales a los dos grandes temas de la psicología de la atención: el de la limitación del sistema de procesamiento -repasando los modelos de limitación estructural y de recursos y abordando la distinción entre procesamiento automático y controlado- y el del lugar y momento de la selección estimular a que esa limitación obliga, comentando las evidencias a favor de una selección temprana, tardía o múltiple. Los autores concluyen su trabajo con algunas precisiones en torno al concepto de atención y sin decantarse definitivamente por ninguna teoría.     

Efectos de los cambios cognitivos y del esfuerzo de procesamiento sobre los juicios de duración prospectivos y retrospectivos

Resumen

El objetivo de esta investigación ha sido someter a prueba en un mismo diseño las variables representativas de cada uno de los tres principales modelos contemporáneos que tratan de explicar la experiencia humana sobre la duración. Además, se ha efectuado una comparación entre los paradigmas experimentales prospectivo y retrospectivo igualados en el tiempo que transcurre hasta la realización del juicio, así como una medición directa mediante un índice independiente del esfuerzo cognitivo involucrado en la realización de las tareas experimentales. El experimento realizado ha sido aplicado a 192 estudiantes de Psicología de la Universidad de Salamanca. Los resultados muestran que cuando se atiende de forma intencional al tiempo, los cambios ocurridos en el contexto cognitivo son utilizados como los indicios primordiales para la configuración de los juicios de tiempo más precisos. Sin embargo, cuando la atención al tiempo es tan sólo incidental, el esfuerzo cognitivo es el factor que mejor explica la estimación temporal mediante una relación inversa con el tamaño de la reproducción efectuada.     

Procesos cognitivos: una introducción a la psicología informacional

RESUMEN

En el presente artículo se defiende la idea de que los mecanismos que organizan la conducta tienen una importancia tan grande como la energía misma en la determinación de aquélla, que estos mecanismos son por tanto seriales como de control y que los estadios de procesamiento de información deben corresponder en su naturaleza a estos mecanismos. Se centra la exposición en el tema de la información desde dos contextos diferentes, que se intentan relacionar: primero, el contexto de la comunicación humana; segundo, el contexto de la cibernética y la teoría de sistemas, sustentado en la proposición de algunos autores de la teoría de sistemas constituye una parte de la cibernética y no al revés.     

Emotion and narrative fiction: Interactive influences before,during, and after reading

Emotions are central to the experience of literary narrative fiction. Affect and mood can influence what book people choose, based partly on whether their goal is to change or maintain their current emotional state. Once having chosen a book, the narrative itself acts to evoke and transform emotions, both directly through the events and characters depicted and through the cueing of emotionally valenced memories. Once evoked by the story, these emotions can in turn influence a person's experience of the narrative. Lastly, emotions experienced during reading may have consequences after closing the covers of a book. This article reviews the current state of empirical research for each of these stages, providing a snapshot of what is known about the interaction between emotions and literary narrative fiction. With this, we can begin to sketch the outlines of what remains to be discovered.     

Performance in Autobiographical Memory of Older Adults with Depression Symptoms

The aim of this study was to compare the performance in the Autobiographical Memory Test in older adults with high scores on depression symptoms (HDS) compared with a matched group with low scores on depression symptoms (LDS) according to the clinical cut‐off of the Centre for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale. Participants were asked to generate specific autobiographical memories in response to a series of positive and negative cue words. Latencies of responses for each item were also scored. LDS participants showed a higher proportion of specific memories than HDS participants. Latencies of responses to positive and negative cues were greater for HDS than LDS. Specific autobiographical memory was positively associated with Life Satisfaction. Cognitive emotional changes in the function of memory with age are suggested as a possible explanation for the findings. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Are emotional intelligent workers also more empathic?

This paper analyzes whether emotional intelligence and self‐monitoring are related to empathy among a sample of workers in both the public and private employment sectors. Two hundred and forty‐two employees (42.5% men and 57.5% women) with a mean age of 35.21 years (SD = 10.07, range 18–61) completed a questionnaire that measured the variables of interest. The results showed that emotion regulation, a dimension of emotional intelligence, accounts for most of the variance of empathy, followed by the ability to understand emotions and the management of others' emotions. Furthermore, gender did not yield any moderator effect on the relations among emotional intelligence, self‐monitoring and empathy. We conclude that the intrapersonal aspects of emotional intelligence, in particular, emotion regulation, help explain the empathy of workers. The implications of these findings are discussed herein.     

Contribution of parents' adult attachment and separation attitudes to parent‐adolescent conflict resolution

This study examined the contribution to parent‐adolescent conflict resolution of parental adult attachment styles and attitudes toward adolescent separation. Questionnaires were completed by 295 couples with early to late adolescent children. Structural equation models were used to test self and partner influences on conflict resolution for three attachment orientations: confidence (model A), anxiety (model B) and avoidance (model C). Model A showed self influences between parents' confidence orientation and negotiation and also via positive attitudes towards separation. Also, the fathers' use of negotiation was facilitated by the mothers' confidence orientation and vice versa, indicating partner influences as well. Model B showed self influences between parents' anxiety orientation and the use of dominance and withdrawal and also via negative attitudes towards separation. Model C showed self influences between parents' avoidance orientation and dominance and withdrawal, and a partner influence between fathers' avoidance and mothers' use of dominance. The results indicated that the parents' adult attachment system and the parenting system were related in the area of conflict resolution, and that self influences were stronger than partner influences.     

Yablo’s Paradox in Second-Order Languages: Consistency and Unsatisfiability

Stephen Yablo [23,24] introduces a new informal paradox, constituted by an infinite list of semi-formalized sentences. It has been shown that, formalized in a first-order language, Yablo’s piece of reasoning is invalid, for it is impossible to derive falsum from the sequence, due mainly to the Compactness Theorem. This result casts doubts on the paradoxical character of the list of sentences. After identifying two usual senses in which an expression or set of expressions is said to be paradoxical, since second-order languages are not compact, I study the paradoxicality of Yablo’s list within these languages. While non-paradoxical in the first sense, the second-order version of the list is a paradox in our second sense. I conclude that this suffices for regarding Yablo’s original list as paradoxical and his informal argument as valid.     

Pragmatic norms in science: making them explicit

The present work constitutes an attempt to make explicit those pragmatic norms successfully operating in empirical science. I will first comment on the initial presuppositions of the discussion, in particular, on those concerning the instrumental character of scientific practice and the nature of scientific goals. Then I will depict the moderately naturalistic frame in which, from this approach, the pragmatic norms make sense. Third, I will focus on the specificity of the pragmatic norms, making special emphasis on what I regard as a key idea underlying them, namely, the view, vigorously advocated by classical pragmatists like C. S. Peirce and G. Vailati, that the best test for objectivity is the test of action. Finally, I am going to put forward a tentative list of pragmatic norms that can be abstracted from a careful observation and analysis of scientific practice as provided by current philosophers of experimentation (A. Franklin and F. Steinle among others). The norms will be divided into four classes corresponding to four aspects of science in which they rule, that is, self-correction, prediction, explanation and both experimentation and computation. In the following account, the formulation of those pragmatic norms successfully governing science will be understood as a contribution that scientifically-oriented pragmatism can make to the normative naturalistic project in epistemology.     

A longitudinal study of psychosocial distress in breast cancer: Prevalence and risk factors

This longitudinal study was conducted among 102 women with non-metastasic breast cancer to identify the time evolution and prevalence of distress at specific times through diagnosis and treatment of disease: preliminary diagnosis, surgery, definitive diagnosis and chemotherapy. Additionally, the study aimed to examine the role of demographic, medical and psychosocial factors on distress. The results indicated that prevalence of distress was higher at initial diagnosis (25%) than the following time points (approximately 17%). The differences inter-individuals in the levels of distress were observed over the four assessments. No relation between distress and demographic and medical factors was found. However, psychosocial aspects were significant risk factors. Patterns of emotional suppression and specific coping responses like helplessness/hopelessness, anxious preoccupation, cognitive avoidance and fatalism were positively related to distress, whereas fighting spirit and perceived social support showed a protective role. Moreover, helplessness/hopelessness and anxious preoccupation jointly predicted 75% of cases and 98% non-cases of distress. Finally, a mediational model between emotional suppression and distress through helplessness/hopelessness was tested. Results support the necessity of routine distress screening all through the illness. Implications of data for psychosocial interventions with breast cancer patients are highlighted.