Cross-Cultural Validation of the Rorschach Developmental Index

The Developmental Index (DI) has recently been introduced as a composite Rorschach measure of psychological development and maturation, which can be used both with the Comprehensive System (Exner, 2003), and with the recently developed Rorschach Performance Assessment System (Meyer, Viglione, Mihura, Erard, & Erdberg, 2011). As the DI is new, and its validity has not yet been investigated with independent non-U.S. samples, we tested the correlation between DI and age using 3 relatively large samples, 2 of which were from outside the United States (total N = 902). Other Rorschach variables presumably associated with maturation, such as complexity and productivity, were also investigated. As expected, the DI significantly correlated with age, with small variations across the 3 samples. Importantly, the correlation between DI and age remained statistically significant also after controlling for productivity (i.e., the number of responses) and complexity.     

Memory in pregnancy and post‐partum: Item specific and relational encoding processes in recall and recognition

It has been recently proposed that pregnant women would perform memory tasks by focusing more on item‐specific processes and less on relational processing, compared to post‐partum women (Mickes, Wixted, Shapiro & Scarff, 2009 ). The present cross‐sectional study tested this hypothesis by directly manipulating the type of encoding employed in the study phase. Pregnant, post‐partum and control women either rated the pleasantness of word meaning (which induced item‐specific elaboration) or named the semantic category to which they belonged (which induced relational elaboration). Memory for the encoded words was later tested in free recall (which emphasizes relational processing) and in recognition (which emphasizes item‐specific processing). In line with Mickes et al.'s ( 2009 ) conclusions, pregnant women in the item‐specific condition performed worse than post‐partum women in the relational condition in free recall, but not in recognition. However, compared to the other two groups, pregnant women also exhibited lower recognition accuracy in the item‐specific condition. Overall, these results confirm that pregnant women rely on relational encoding less than post‐partum women, but additionally suggest that the former group might use item‐specific processes less efficiently than post‐partum and control women.     

The handedness of imagined bodies in action and the role of perspective taking

Past research at the nexus of motor control and perception investigated the role of perspective taking in many behavioral and neuroimaging studies. Some investigators addressed the issue of one's own vs. others' action imagination, but the possible effects of a front or a back view in imagining others' actions have so far been neglected. We report two 'single trial' experiments in which a total of 640 participants were asked to imagine a person performing a manual action - either in a front or in a back view - and then to indicate the hand used by the imagined person during movement execution. In such a task, we assume the existence of two distinct biases: a perceptual-mnemonic bias due to subjects' visual experience of others' actions, encouraging them to imagine right-handed movements, and a motor bias due to subjects' experience of self-made actions, encouraging them to imagine movements performed with the same hand as their dominant hand. We hypothesized that a greater involvement of motor representations in the back view compared to the front view could result in an increased correspondence between one's own manual preference and the hand used by the imagined agent in the former condition. The results of both experiments were consistent with this hypothesis, suggesting that while imagining others' actions we employ motor simulations in different degrees according to the perspective adopted.     

Therapy efficacy in chronic aphasia

There is good evidence that aphasia therapy is effective if sufficiently prolonged or intensive and that chronic aphasic individuals can also benefit from therapy, but data on chronic aphasia are scanty. The aim of this retrospective study was to investigate whether chronic aphasia benefits from a very intensive therapeutic regimen. We revised the files (January 2000 to December 2008) of the chronic subjects whom we suggested have periodic sessions in our Unit (generally once a week) and 2-3 hours daily of homework with the help of a family member, supervised and controlled by the speech-therapist. Treatment would go on as long as amelioration is evident. Results for 23 chronic aphasic subjects are reported. All subjects had undergone previous therapy and 10 had been dismissed because no further recovery was expected. Recovery was significant in oral and written nouns and actions naming, oral and written sentence production and Token Test scores. Only 4 subjects did not improve. Severity of the disorder did not predict success or failure. We conclude that recovery was due to the intense work done. Further, we believe such a regimen could be successful in a number of patients for whom a less intensive regimen would not be effective.     

Trait gambling cognitions predict near-miss experiences and persistence in laboratory slot machine gambling

'Near-miss' outcomes (i.e., unsuccessful outcomes close to the jackpot) have been shown to promote gambling persistence. Although there have been recent advances in understanding the neurobiological responses to gambling near-misses, the psychological mechanisms involved in these events remain unclear. The goal of this study was to explore whether trait-related gambling cognitions (e.g., beliefs that certain skills or rituals may help to win in games of chance) influence behavioural and subjective responses during laboratory gambling. Eighty-four individuals, who gambled at least monthly, performed a simplified slot machine task that delivered win, near-miss, and full-miss outcomes across 30 mandatory trials followed by a persistence phase in extinction. Participants completed the Gambling-Related Cognitions Scale (GRCS; Raylu & Oei, 2004), as well as measures of disordered gambling (South Oaks Gambling Screen [SOGS]; Lesieur & Blume, 1987) and social desirability bias (DS-36; Tournois, Mesnil, & Kop, 2000). Skill-oriented gambling cognitions (illusion of control, fostered by internal factors such as reappraisal of losses, or perceived outcome sequences), but not ritual-oriented gambling cognitions (illusion of control fostered by external factors such as luck or superstitions), predicted higher subjective ratings of desire to play after near-miss outcomes. In contrast, perceived lack of self-control predicted persistence on the slot machine task. These data indicate that the motivational impact of near-miss outcomes is related to specific gambling cognitions pertaining to skill acquisition, supporting the idea that gambling near-misses foster the illusion of control.     

How affordances associated with a distractor object affect compatibility effects: A study with the computational model TRoPICALS

Seeing an object activates both visual and action codes in the brain. Crucial evidence supporting this view is the observation of object to response compatibility effects: perception of an object can facilitate or interfere with the execution of an action (e.g., grasping) even when the viewer has no intention of interacting with the object. TRoPICALS is a computational model that proposes some general principles about the brain mechanisms underlying compatibility effects, in particular the idea that top-down bias from prefrontal cortex, and whether it conflicts or not with the actions afforded by an object, plays a key role in such phenomena. Experiments on compatibility effects using a target and a distractor object show the usual positive compatibility effect of the target, but also an interesting negative compatibility effect of the distractor: responding with a grip compatible with the distractor size produces slower reaction times than the incompatible case. Here, we present an enhanced version of TRoPICALS that reproduces and explains these new results. This explanation is based on the idea that the prefrontal cortex plays a double role in its top-down guidance of action selection producing: (a) a positive bias in favour of the action requested by the experimental task; (b) a negative bias directed to inhibiting the action evoked by the distractor. The model also provides testable predictions on the possible consequences of damage to volitional circuits such as in Parkinsonian patients.     

Dissociating the influence of familiarity and meaningfulness from word frequency in naming and lexical decision performance

Performance in two experiments was compared on a list of words of high and low frequency in which familiarity/meaningfulness (FM) was balanced and on a list of high- and low-frequency words in which FM was confounded with frequency (i.e., high frequency--high familiarity vs. low frequency--low familiarity). Both repetition and task (lexical decision and naming) were investigated. In the lexical decision task of Experiment 1, both frequency and repetition effects were larger in the list with FM confounded than in the list with FM matched. In the naming task, frequency and repetition effects and their interaction were significant, but there was no influence of FM list context. In Experiment 2, in which the repetitions occurred across blocks, as opposed to randomly intermixed within a list, similar results were found; however, there was no interaction between list and repetition. The results suggest that an evaluation of items in terms of their meaning and familiarity explains a large part of the variance, only in lexical decision. These dimensions may be cued both by subjective feelings of familiarity and the extent to which semantic information is available and by episodic traces due to recent encounters with the item.     

Perceived self-efficacy and everyday problem solving among young and older adults

This research tested the hypothesis that age differences in both self-efficacy perceptions and problem-solving performance would vary as a function of the ecological relevance of problems to young and older adults. The authors developed novel everyday problem-solving stimuli that were ecologically representative of problems commonly confronted by young adults (young-adult problems), older adults (older adult problems), or both (common problems). Performance on an abstract problem solving task lacking in ecological representativeness (the Tower of Hanoi problem) also was examined. Although young persons had higher self-efficacy beliefs and performance levels on the Tower of Hanoi task problem and the young-adult problems, this pattern reversed in the domain of older adult problems, where the self-efficacy beliefs and performance of older persons exceeded those of the young.     

An empirical comparison of rhythm in language and music

Musicologists and linguists have often suggested that the prosody of a culture's spoken language can influence the structure of its instrumental music. However, empirical data supporting this idea have been lacking. This has been partly due to the difficulty of developing and applying comparable quantitative measures to melody and rhythm in speech and music. This study uses a recently-developed measure for the study of speech rhythm to compare rhythmic patterns in English and French language and classical music. We find that English and French musical themes are significantly different in this measure of rhythm, which also differentiates the rhythm of spoken English and French. Thus, there is an empirical basis for the claim that spoken prosody leaves an imprint on the music of a culture.