First came the trees, then the forest: developmental changes during childhood in the processing of visual local-global patterns according to the meaningfulness of the stimuli

This study investigated how global and local perceptual processes evolve during childhood according to the meaningfulness of the stimuli. Children had to decide whether visually presented pairs of items were identical or not. Items consisted of global forms made up of local forms. Both global and local forms could represent either objects or nonobjects. In dissimilar pairs, items differed at one level (target level), while the other level included similar forms on both sides (irrelevant level). The results indicate an evolution from local preference at 4 years of age to adult-like global preference at 9 years of age. Moreover, as previously reported in adults, regardless of age, identification impaired performance when the irrelevant level was made of objects and the target level was made of nonobjects (interference). However, in younger children, this interference existed even when objects were present at all levels, suggesting that the strategy used to perform the comparison task also varied according to age.     

Alexithymia and the automatic processing of affective information: Evidence from the affective priming paradigm

In Study 1, we examined the moderating impact of alexithymia (i.e., a difficulty identifying and describing feelings to other people and an externally oriented cognitive style) on the automatic processing of affective information. The affective priming paradigm was used, and lower priming effects for high alexithymia scorers were observed when congruent (incongruent) pairs involving nonverbal primes (angry face) and verbal target were presented. The results held after controlling for participants' negative affectivity. The same effects were replicated in Studies 2 and 3, with trait anxiety and depression entered as additional covariates. In Study 3, no moderating impact of alexithymia was found for verbal-facial pairs suggesting that the results cannot be merely explained in terms of transcoding limitations for high alexithymia scorers. Overall, the present results suggest that alexithymia could be related to a difficulty in processing and automatically using high arousal emotional information to respond to concomittant behavioural demands.     

I Will Put My Law in Their Minds: Social Control and Cheating Behavior Among Catholics and Protestants

Catholics and Protestants differ in terms of social autonomy versus heteronomy. We propose that the regulation of behavior in accordance with social norms depends on the social control exercised by an authority for Catholics more than it does for Protestants. Two experiments measured cheating behavior (the transgression of a social norm) as a function of the religious group (Protestant vs. Catholic) and social control (with vs. without). Catholics were found to be more responsive to social control, that is, to cheat less when social control was salient, whereas Protestants' behavior did not depend on this dimension. In Study 2, intrinsic‐extrinsic religiousness was found to mediate this difference. Results are discussed in the context of the effects of public policies based on social control.     

Is the picture bizarreness effect a generation effect?

Bizarre stimuli usually facilitate recall compared to common stimuli. This investigation explored the so-called bizarreness effect in free recall by using 80 simple line drawings of common objects (common vs bizarre). 64 subjects participated with 16 subjects in each group. Half of the subjects received learning instructions and the other half rated the bizarreness of each drawing. Moreover, drawings were presented either alone or with the name of the object under mixed-list encoding conditions. After the free recall task, subjects had to make metamemory judgments about how many items of each format they had seen and recalled. The key result was that a superiority of bizarre pictures over common ones was found in all conditions although performance was better when the pictures were presented alone than with their corresponding label. Subsequent metamemory judgments, however, showed that subjects underestimated the number of bizarre items actually recalled.     

How Word Familiarity Facilitates Visual Search for Verbal Material

Two experiments assessed the impact of word familiarity on visual search for phrases. Participants' eye movements were recorded while they memorized target phrases and then searched for them within more or less similar phrases. The phrases were written with either familiar or unfamiliar, neuroscience‐specific vocabulary. Most participants did not search for the target by reading lines in a systematic way but scanned the first words of phrases to identify those beginning with the same words as the target. Visual search for unfamiliar target phrases was associated with an increase in the number of non‐target phrases that were scanned. The only search phase during which fixation durations depended on word familiarity was the final recognition of the target phrase. Hence, the data support a model of search within menu‐like displays in which searchers primarily rely on fast, visual match mechanisms and engage in reading‐like processing only during the critical decision‐making phase. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

When Winning is Everything: The Relationship between Competitive Worldviews and Job Applicant Faking

Job applicant faking, that is, consciously misrepresenting information during the selection process, is ubiquitous and is a threat to the usefulness of various selection tools. Understanding antecedents of faking is thus of utmost importance. Recent theories of faking highlight the central role of various forms of competition for understanding why faking occurs. Drawing on these theories, we suggest that the more applicants adhere to competitive worldviews (CWs), that is, the more they believe that the social world is a competitive, Darwinian‐type of struggle over scarce resources, the more likely they are to fake in employment interviews. We tested our hypothesis in three independent studies that were conducted in five different countries. Results show that CWs are strongly associated with faking, independently of job applicants’ cultural and economic context. More specifically, applicants’ CWs explain faking intentions and self‐reported past faking above and beyond the Dark Triad of personality (Study 1), competitiveness and the six facets of conscientiousness (Study 2). Also, when faking is measured using a response randomisation technique to control for social desirability, faking is more prevalent among applicants with strong vs. less strong CWs (Study 3). Taken together, this research demonstrates that competition is indeed strongly associated with undesirable applicant behaviors.     

Is human decision making under ambiguity guided by loss frequency regardless of the costs? A developmental study using the Soochow Gambling Task

Converging developmental decision-making studies have demonstrated that until late adolescence, individuals prefer options for which the risk of a loss is low regardless of the final outcome. Recent works have shown a similar inability to consider both loss frequency and final outcome among adults. The current study aimed to identify developmental changes in feedback-monitoring ability to consider both loss frequency and final outcome in decision making under ambiguity. Children, adolescents, and adults performed an adapted version of the Soochow Gambling Task. Our results showed that children and adolescents presented an exclusive preference for options associated with infrequent punishment. In contrast, only adults seemed to consider both loss frequency and the final outcome by favoring the advantageous options when the frequency of losses was low. These findings suggest that the ability to integrate both loss frequency and final outcome develops with age. Moreover, the analysis of strategic adjustments following gains and losses reveals that adults switch less often after losses compared with children and adolescents. This finding suggests that psychological tolerance to loss may facilitate learning the characteristics of each option and improve the ability to choose advantageously.