Development of category formation for faces differing by age in 9‐ to 12‐month‐olds: An effect of experience with infant faces

We examined category formation for faces differing in age in 9‐ and 12‐month‐olds, and the influence of exposure to infant faces on such ability. Infants were familiarized with adult or infant faces, and then tested with a novel exemplar from the familiarized category paired with a novel exemplar from a novel category (Experiment 1). Both age groups formed discrete categories of adult and infant faces, but exposure to infant faces in everyday life did not modulate performance. The same task was conducted with child versus infant faces (Experiment 2). Whereas 9‐month‐olds preferred infant faces after familiarization with child faces, but not child faces after familiarization with infant faces, 12‐month‐olds formed discrete categories of child and infant faces. Moreover, more exposure to infant faces correlated with higher novel category preference scores when infants were familiarized with infant faces in 12‐month‐olds, but not 9‐month‐olds. The 9‐month‐old asymmetry did not reflect spontaneous preference for infant over child faces (Experiment 3). These findings indicate that 9‐ and 12‐month‐olds can form age‐based categories of faces. The ability of 12‐month‐olds to form separate child and infant categories suggests that they have a more exclusive representation of face age, one that may be influenced by prior experience with infant faces.     

Baselining affects the production of deceptive narratives

Recent research shows that the quality of a baseline (i.e., the analysis of one's behavior in normal conditions) decreases when the second narrative is expected and deceitful. However, a first step would be to investigate whether the writing of a first narrative might influence the second, independently of its expectancy. In this study, we hypothesized that second narratives would be less detailed, especially if these narratives are deceptive. Participants (N = 71) were asked to narrate two consecutive truthful and deceptive narratives. The second narrative was unexpected, and the order of the narratives was counterbalanced. Results suggest a detrimental effect of deceptiveness and order on the frequency of details. Moreover, an interaction was observed, suggesting when narratives are written after a first one, the frequency of details decreases, all the more if they were deceptive. The results of this experiment are discussed from both a theoretical and an applied perspective.     

Temporal compression in episodic memory for real-life events

Remembering an event typically takes less time than experiencing it, suggesting that episodic memory represents past experience in a temporally compressed way. Little is known, however, about how the continuous flow of real-life events is summarised in memory. Here we investigated the nature and determinants of temporal compression by directly comparing memory contents with the objective timing of events as measured by a wearable camera. We found that episodic memories consist of a succession of moments of prior experience that represent events with varying compression rates, such that the density of retrieved information is modulated by goal processing and perceptual changes. Furthermore, the results showed that temporal compression rates remain relatively stable over one week and increase after a one-month delay, particularly for goal-related events. These data shed new light on temporal compression in episodic memory and suggest that compression rates are adaptively modulated to maintain current goal-relevant information.     

Substantive assumptions in interaction: a logical perspective

In this paper we study substantive assumptions in social interaction. By substantive assumptions we mean contingent assumptions about what the players know and believe about each other’s choices and information. We first explain why substantive assumptions are fundamental for the analysis of games and, more generally, social interaction. Then we show that they can be compared formally, and that there exist contexts where no substantive assumptions are being made. Finally we show that the questions raised in this paper are related to a number of issues concerning “large” structures in epistemic game theory.     

Leader Profiles and Their Effectiveness on Employees’ Outcomes

An underlying premise of the transformational–transactional leadership theory is that different forms of leadership can reside simultaneously within the same individual. This fundamental hypothesis has received scarce attention in the empirical literature. The objectives of this study are thus to examine whether leader profiles combining these leadership forms do exist and to evaluate how these profiles are associated with specific employee attitudes and behaviors. Results obtained from two different samples using cluster analyses revealed six different leader profiles (i.e., superleaders, transactors, moderate leaders, distant-visionary, distant-rewarding, and distant-punitive leaders). Our results showed that these types of leaders differ in terms of employees’ perceptions of trust, justice, and commitment, as well as supervisor-rated in-role and contextual performance. Results and implications for research and practice are discussed.     

The effect of long-term working memory through personalization applied to free recall: Uncurbing the primacy-effect enthusiasm

In this study, a personalization method (Guida, Tardieu, & Nicolas, European Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 21: 862–896 2009) was applied to a free-recall task. Fifteen pairs of words, composed of an object and a location, were presented to 93 participants, who had to mentally associate each pair and subsequently recall the objects. A 30-s delay was introduced on half of the trials, the presentation rate was manipulated (5 or 10 s per item), and verbal and visuospatial working memory tests were administered to test for their effects on the serial curve. Two groups were constituted: a personalized group, for whom the locations were well-known places on their university campus, and a nonpersonalized group, for whom the locations did not refer to known places. Since personalization putatively operationalizes long-term working memory (Ericsson & Kintsch, Psychological Review, 102: 211–245 1995)—namely, the capacity to store information reliably and rapidly in long-term memory—and if we take a dual-store approach to memory, the personalization advantage would be expected to be greater for pre-recency than for recency items. Overall, the results were compatible with long-term working memory theory. They contribute to validating the personalization method as a methodology to characterize the contribution of long-term memory storage to performance in working memory tasks.     

A cognitive and an affective dimension of alexithymia in six languages and seven populations

The Dutch Bermond–Vorst Alexithymia Questionnaire (BVAQ) is translated into various languages. The aim of this research was to establish the factor structure of subscales on seven cultural groups. The BVAQ consists of five subscales of eight items each: Emotionalising, Fantasising, Analysing, Identifying, and Verbalising emotions. The BVAQ was administered to a group of Dutch students (n=375), a group of English students (n=175), a group of Australian students, university employees and visitors (n=216), a group of French speaking Belgian students (n=175), a group of Italian people (n=791; a mix of various clinical groups), a group of Polish people (n=427; also a mix of various clinical groups) and a group of Russian people (n=141; general population). The hypothesised two-factor structure of an affective alexithymia dimension (Emotionalising, Fantasising) and a cognitive alexithymia dimension (Insight and Verbalising), with “Analysing emotions” loading on both factors, was clearly supported by confirmatory factor analyses (CFA). Both orthogonal and oblique principal components analyses (PCA), without restriction concerning the number of factors, provided the same two-factor solution in all groups explaining between 55% and 64% of the variance. Oblique rotation further demonstrated that the correlations between these two factors were low in all populations. The combined CFA and PCA results, therefore, indicated that a model with two independent factors has to be preferred over the model assuming two correlated factors.