“When passion breeds justice”: procedural fairness effects as a function of authority's passion

The present research examined how procedural fairness predicts negative emotions and withdrawal behavior as a function of authority's display of passion. A first study revealed that reinforcing the concept of passion made the concept of justice and fairness more accessible to participants, as such suggesting that authority passion should make people focus more on procedural fairness information. Corroborating this line of reasoning, a scenario experiment and a laboratory experiment thereafter yielded consistent evidence that the effects of procedural fairness (i.e., voice vs. no voice) were stronger on negative emotions and willingness to withdraw when the authority was passionate relative to not being passionate. In addition, the results of both studies also revealed that negative emotions mediated the effect of procedural fairness on withdrawal, but only so when the authority was passionate (i.e., mediated moderation). It is concluded that more research is needed focusing on the interactions between different authority styles/characteristics and procedural fairness effects. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Appropriateness of decisions as a moderator of the psychology of voice

This paper focuses on the psychology of the voice effect (the effect that people show more positive reactions when they are allowed an opportunity to voice their opinion in the decision‐making process than when they are denied such an opportunity). It is argued that it is important to ask about what decisions people are allowed voice. More specifically, results of two experiments suggest that when participation in decision making is appropriate (i.e. voice is allowed about decisions that are relatively important to participants) the voice effect is found: People's procedural judgements and other reactions are more positive following voice as opposed to no‐voice procedures. However, when participation in decision making is inappropriate (i.e. voice is allowed about decisions that are unimportant to participants) no effect or even a reversal of the voice effect is found. These people do not react differently or even react more negatively following voice as opposed to no‐voice procedures. It is concluded that these results further our insights into the psychology of procedural justice in general and voice in particular. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Neural correlates of Dutch Verb Second in speech production

Dutch speakers with agrammatic Broca's aphasia are known to have problems with the production of finite verbs in main clauses. This performance pattern has been accounted for in terms of the specific syntactic complexity of the Dutch main clause structure, which requires an extra syntactic operation (Verb Second), relative to the basic Subject-Object-Verb order surfacing in Dutch subordinate clauses. We report an fMRI study into the question whether this syntactic complexity is reflected in increased brain activation correlated with the production of Dutch main clause word order, in speakers without language impairment. Nineteen healthy subjects performed a covert sentence completion task, during which main and subordinate clauses were alternately elicited in a block design. Results show a left middle to superior frontal cluster of activation correlated to production of Verb-Second over Verb-Final clauses, with no activation in the opposite contrast. This activation pattern is counter to what might be expected from the frequency distribution of main and subordinate clauses. We conclude that the Verb-Second deviation from the basic Dutch SOV word order costs extra neural resources and that this also underlies the agrammatic problems with the production of finite verbs in Dutch main clauses.     

How does bilingualism improve executive control? A comparison of active and reactive inhibition mechanisms

It has been claimed that bilingualism enhances inhibitory control, but the available evidence is equivocal. The authors evaluated several possible versions of the inhibition hypothesis by comparing monolinguals and bilinguals with regard to stop signal performance, inhibition of return, and the attentional blink. These three phenomena, it can be argued, tap into different aspects of inhibition. Monolinguals and bilinguals did not differ in stop signal reaction time and thus were comparable in terms of active-inhibitory efficiency. However, bilinguals showed no facilitation from spatial cues, showed a strong inhibition of return effect, and exhibited a more pronounced attentional blink. These results suggest that bilinguals do not differ from monolinguals in terms of active inhibition but have acquired a better ability to maintain action goals and to use them to bias goal-related information. Under some circumstances, this ability may indirectly lead to more pronounced reactive inhibition of irrelevant information.     

Identification of everyday objects on the basis of silhouette and outline versions

Line drawings of everyday objects were modified into silhouettes by filling-in the complete area enclosed by boundary contours, and outline versions were created by extracting the contours from the silhouettes. A large number of participants was asked to try to identify these silhouette and outline versions in experiment 1. Identifiability ranged from 0% to 100% correct responses with a large range in-between. Several kinds of errors and several reasons for difficulties with identification emerged in our data set. In experiment 2, we compared the original identification rates to those of inverted silhouettes (white figures on a black background), and in experiment 3 we compared the original identification rates of objects with filled-in holes or background parts to those of versions without filling-in. These stimuli and identification norms are useful for additional research on priming and context effects of object identification, neuropsychological deficits of object identification, and all kinds of studies with silhouettes where the role of top down knowledge could be of interest.     

Conscious and unconscious proportion effects in masked priming

The global neuronal workspace theory [Dehaene, S., & Naccache, L. (2001). Towards a cognitive neuroscience of consciousness: basic evidence and a workspace framework. Cognition, 79, 1–37.] proposes that it is impossible for an unconscious stimulus to be used strategically to enhance task performance (bottom–up effect), while a fully consciously perceived stimulus can be used to improve task performance (top–down effect). Two experiments were designed to investigate these hypotheses. In a first experiment we investigated whether a manipulation of the proportion of Arabic/number word targets had a top–down effect. Since the subjects were fully aware of the target, we expected that this manipulation could be used to enhance task performance. In a second experiment we determined whether a manipulation of the proportion of Arabic/number word primes had a bottom–up effect. Since the subjects were unaware of the prime, we hypothesized that they would be unable to use the manipulation to enhance task performance and therefore the manipulation would have no effect. Both hypotheses were largely confirmed.