Performance on the Swedish Scholastic Aptitude Test: Effects of Self-Assessment and Gender

Scholarly knowledge is traditionally believed to exist if a person answers correctly when tested. A test-taker that makes a lucky guess is thereby implicitly assumed to know as much as a person who both answers correctly and is sure of it. By incorporating sureness assessments, an additional dimension of knowledge can be obtained. In this study, 317 females and 233 males participated (predominantly White European; with mean age = 18.7 years). One group answered questions using a conventional multiple-choice answer sheet. Another group answered the same questions, but they were also instructed to assess their sureness. Significant differences were observed on the quantitative subtest; those who made self-assessments outscored those who did not, and especially individuals who rated themselves low on traits traditionally regarded as masculine (measured with Bem Sex Role Inventory) benefited from this process. Incorporating self-assessments provides extra information that makes it possible to differentiate between those who know the subject matter and those who are guessing, as well as a way to reduce the effect of the gender typing of the task on performance.     

How emotional auditory stimuli modulate time perception

Emotional and neutral sounds rated for valence and arousal were used to investigate the influence of emotions on timing in reproduction and verbal estimation tasks with durations from 2 s to 6 s. Results revealed an effect of emotion on temporal judgment, with emotional stimuli judged to be longer than neutral ones for a similar arousal level. Within scalar expectancy theory (J. Gibbon, R. Church, & W. Meck, 1984), this suggests that emotion-induced activation generates an increase in pacemaker rate, leading to a longer perceived duration. A further exploration of self-assessed emotional dimensions showed an effect of valence and arousal. Negative sounds were judged to be longer than positive ones, indicating that negative stimuli generate a greater increase of activation. High-arousing stimuli were perceived to be shorter than low-arousing ones. Consistent with attentional models of timing, this seems to reflect a decrease of attention devoted to time, leading to a shorter perceived duration. These effects, robust across the 2 tasks, are limited to short intervals and overall suggest that both activation and attentional processes modulate the timing of emotional events.     

Emotional Conception: How Embodied Emotion Concepts Guide Perception and Facial Action

ABSTRACT— This study assessed embodied simulation via electromyography (EMG) as participants first encoded emotionally ambiguous faces with emotion concepts (i.e., "angry,""happy") and later passively viewed the faces without the concepts. Memory for the faces was also measured. At initial encoding, participants displayed more smiling-related EMG activity in response to faces paired with "happy" than in response to faces paired with "angry." Later, in the absence of concepts, participants remembered happiness-encoded faces as happier than anger-encoded faces. Further, during passive reexposure to the ambiguous faces, participants' EMG indicated spontaneous emotion-specific mimicry, which in turn predicted memory bias. No specific EMG activity was observed when participants encoded or viewed faces with non-emotion-related valenced concepts, or when participants encoded or viewed Chinese ideographs. From an embodiment perspective, emotion simulation is a measure of what is currently perceived. Thus, these findings provide evidence of genuine concept-driven changes in emotion perception. More generally, the findings highlight embodiment's role in the representation and processing of emotional information.     

Adult brains don't fully overcome biases that lead to incorrect performance during cognitive development: an fMRI study in young adults completing a Piaget‐like task

A current issue in developmental science is that greater continuity in cognition between children and adults may exist than is usually appreciated in Piaget‐like (stages or ‘staircase’) models. This phenomenon has been demonstrated at the behavioural level, but never at the brain level. Here we show with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), for the first time, that adult brains do not fully overcome the biases of childhood. More specifically, the aim of this fMRI study was to evaluate whether the perceptual bias that leads to incorrect performance during cognitive development in a Piaget‐like task is still a bias in the adult brain and hence requires an executive network to overcome it. Here, we compared two numerical‐judgment tasks, one being a Piaget‐like task with number–length interference (called ‘INT’) and the other being a control task with number–length covariation (‘COV’). We also used a colour‐detection task to control for stimuli numerosity, spatial distribution, and frequency. Our behavioural results confirmed that INT remains a difficult task for young adults. Indeed, response times were significantly higher in INT than in COV. Moreover, we observed that only in INT did response times increase linearly as a function of the number of items. The fMRI results indicate that the brain network common to INT and COV shows a large rightward functional asymmetry, emphasizing the visuospatial nature of these two tasks. When INT was compared with COV, activations were found within a right frontal network, including the pre‐supplementary motor area, the anterior cingulate cortex, and the middle frontal gyrus, which probably reflect detection of the number/length conflict and inhibition of the ‘length‐equals‐number’ response strategy. Finally, activations related to visuospatial and quantitative processing, enhanced or specifically recruited in the Piaget‐like task, were found in bilateral posterior areas.     

Discontinuités culturelles et linguistiques: Portraits d’immigrants francophones en milieu minoritaire

Using ethnographic methods, this article explores the experiences and the challenges that immigrants face in the areas of language and culture. Seven narratives on social integration, school experiences, and more generally life experiences as immigrants, were used to explore the phenomenon of cultural and linguistic discontinuities in a francophone minority context in Manitoba. A thematic analysis reveals specific linguistic and sociocultural challenges that need to be addressed in community organizations. This article offers suggestions for more equitable and inclusive practices.     

The role of maternal emotion regulation in controlling parenting during toddlerhood: an observational study

Motivation and Emotion - This study investigated the protective role of maternal adaptive emotion regulation in applying controlling parenting practices while assisting their toddler in completing...     

The Factor Structure of Cognitive Functioning in Cognitively Healthy Participants: a Meta-Analysis and Meta-Analysis of Individual Participant Data

Neuropsychology Review - Many neuropsychologists are of the opinion that the multitude of cognitive tests may be grouped into a much smaller number of cognitive domains. However, there is little...