The role of sensory modality in age-related distraction: a critical review and a renewed view

Selective attention requires the ability to focus on relevant information and to ignore irrelevant information. The ability to inhibit irrelevant information has been proposed to be the main source of age-related cognitive change (e.g., Hasher & Zacks, 1988). Although age-related distraction by irrelevant information has been extensively demonstrated in the visual modality, studies involving auditory and cross-modal paradigms have revealed a mixed pattern of results. A comparative evaluation of these paradigms according to sensory modality suggests a twofold trend: Age-related distraction is more likely (a) in unimodal than in cross-modal paradigms and (b) when irrelevant information is presented in the visual modality, rather than in the auditory modality. This distinct pattern of age-related changes in selective attention may be linked to the reliance of the visual and auditory modalities on different filtering mechanisms. Distractors presented through the auditory modality can be filtered at both central and peripheral neurocognitive levels. In contrast, distractors presented through the visual modality are primarily suppressed at more central levels of processing, which may be more vulnerable to aging. We propose the hypothesis that age-related distractibility is modality dependent, a notion that might need to be incorporated in current theories of cognitive aging. Ultimately, this might lead to a more accurate account for the mixed pattern of impaired and preserved selective attention found in advancing age.     

Modeling Noisy Data with Differential Equations Using Observed and Expected Matrices

Complex intraindividual variability observed in psychology may be well described using differential equations. It is difficult, however, to apply differential equation models in psychological contexts, as time series are frequently short, poorly sampled, and have large proportions of measurement and dynamic error. Furthermore, current methods for differential equation modeling usually consider data that are atypical of many psychological applications. Using embedded and observed data matrices, a statistical approach to differential equation modeling is presented. This approach appears robust to many characteristics common to psychological time series.     

Task usefulness affects perception of rivalrous images

In bistable perception, several interpretations of the same physical stimulus are perceived in alternation. If one interpretation appears to help the observer to be successful in an auxiliary task, will that interpretation be seen more often than the other? We addressed this question using rivalrous stimuli. One of the elicited percepts presented an advantage for a separate visual search task that was run in close temporal proximity to the rivalry task. We found that the percept that was useful for the search task became dominant over the alternate percept. Observers were not aware of the manipulation that made one percept more useful, which suggests that usefulness was learned implicitly. The learning influenced only the first percept of each rivalrous presentation, but the bias persisted even when the useful percept was no longer useful. The long-lasting aspect of the effect distinguishes it from other documented attentional effects on bistable perception. Therefore, using implicit learning, we demonstrated that task usefulness can durably change the appearance of a stimulus.     

Is “What Has Been Cared For” Necessarily Good? Further Evidence for the Negative Impact of Cosmetics Use on Impression Formation1

The effects of cosmetics on impression formation were tested with students from either psychology or business and aesthetic schools. They were presented photographs of young and older female targets wearing or not wearing facial makeup and rated them for both physical attractiveness and a number of personality traits. In contrast with Graham and Jouhar's (1981) idea of a positive cosmetic stereotype, makeup had a negative impact on impression formation, especially for the young targets. More consistent with these authors' perspective, this impact was not mediated by attribution of physical attractiveness (PA), suggesting the existence of a separate cosmetic stereotype (relative to the PA stereotype). The influence of makeup was also stronger on the psychology undergraduates than on the other participants, suggesting that the way cosmetic users are perceived also depends on perceivers' group membership.     

Preparing fingers within and between hands: Examining the maximal preparation benefit in older age

Previous research has demonstrated an age-related deficit in the preparation of finger responses. A key question is whether the age-related deficit reflects differences in speed of preparation or differences in the maximal preparation benefit that can be attained given sufficiently long preparation intervals. The present study examined this issue by asking a group of younger and older adults to perform the finger-cueing task with four, relatively long, preparation intervals that varied randomly across trials. Reaction time results demonstrated that older adults were deficient in preparing two fingers on two hands at the two shortest preparation intervals, but not at the two longest ones. This outcome suggests that, with randomised preparation intervals, older adults require more time than younger adults to achieve the maximal level of between-hands preparation.     

Estimating Dynamical Systems: Derivative Estimation Hints From Sir Ronald A. Fisher

The fitting of dynamical systems to psychological data offers the promise of addressing new and innovative questions about how people change over time. One method of fitting dynamical systems is to estimate the derivatives of a time series and then examine the relationships between derivatives using a differential equation model. One common approach for estimating derivatives, Local Linear Approximation (LLA), produces estimates with correlated errors. Depending on the specific differential equation model used, such correlated errors can lead to severely biased estimates of differential equation model parameters. This article shows that the fitting of dynamical systems can be improved by estimating derivatives in a manner similar to that used to fit orthogonal polynomials. Two applications using simulated data compare the proposed method and a generalized form of LLA when used to estimate derivatives and when used to estimate differential equation model parameters. A third application estimates the frequency of oscillation in observations of the monthly deaths from bronchitis, emphysema, and asthma in the United Kingdom. These data are publicly available in the statistical program R, and functions in R for the method presented are provided.     

Effect of Causal Explanations on Work-related Judgments

Quatre études, réalisées en entreprise, portent sur la valeur des explications internes et externes relatives à des événements professionnels. Les résultats de la première étude montrent que les managers choisissent préférentiellement des explications internes lorsqu'on leur demande de donner une image favorable d'eux-mêmes (vs une image défavorable). Dans les trois études suivantes on observe que les managers jugent plus favorablement un candidat lorsque celui-ci est connu pour avoir produit des explications internes (vs externes). De plus, des différences de valeur sont observées au sein des registres explicatifs internes et externes. Les explications internes en termes d'efforts comportementaux apparaissent les plus valorisées pour rendre compte des réussites et échecs professionnels. Ces résultats sont discutés en regard de la norme sociale d'internalité et des pratiques d'évaluation.
Four studies investigated the value granted to internal versus external causal attributions of events in the workplace. The results showed that (a) managers provided more internal explanations when they were asked to present a favorable self-image, and (b) managers favored targets (job applicants) who had expressed internal rather than external explanations. The results also showed that not all internal explanations are valued equally: "efforts" are preferred over "traits" in explanations of job outcomes. The results are discussed in terms of a norm that regulates social judgments: the norm of internality.     

Specificity and Abstraction of Examples: Opposite Effects on Fixation for Creative Ideation

Fixation is one of the major obstacles that individuals face in creative idea generation contexts. Several studies have shown that individuals unintentionally tend to fixate to the examples they are shown in a creative ideation task, even when instructed to avoid them. Most of these studies used examples formulated with high level of specificity. However, no study has examined individuals’ creative performance under an instruction to diverge from given examples, when these examples are formulated with a high level of abstraction. In the present study, we show that (a) instructing participants to avoid using common examples when formulated with a high level of specificity increases fixation; whereas (b) instructing participants to avoid such examples while using a more abstract level for stating these common examples—such as a categorization of these examples—mitigates fixation and doubles the number of creative ideas generated. These findings give new insights on the key role of categorization in creative ideation contexts.     

The feeling of fluent perception: a single experience from multiple asynchronous sources

Zeki and co-workers recently proposed that perception can best be described as locally distributed, asynchronous processes that each create a kind of microconsciousness, which condense into an experienced percept. The present article is aimed at extending this theory to metacognitive feelings. We present evidence that perceptual fluency-the subjective feeling of ease during perceptual processing-is based on speed of processing at different stages of the perceptual process. Specifically, detection of briefly presented stimuli was influenced by figure-ground contrast, but not by symmetry (Experiment 1) or the font (Experiment 2) of the stimuli. Conversely, discrimination of these stimuli was influenced by whether they were symmetric (Experiment 1) and by the font they were presented in (Experiment 2), but not by figure-ground contrast. Both tasks however were related with the subjective experience of fluency (Experiments 1 and 2). We conclude that subjective fluency is the conscious phenomenal correlate of different processing stages in visual perception.