The motor theory of social cognition: a critique

Recent advances in the cognitive neuroscience of action have considerably enlarged our understanding of human motor cognition. In particular, the activity of the mirror system, first discovered in the brain of non-human primates, provides an observer with the understanding of a perceived action by means of the motor simulation of the agent's observed movements. This discovery has raised the prospects of a motor theory of social cognition. In humans, social cognition includes the ability to mindread, and many motor theorists of social cognition try to bridge the gap between motor cognition and mindreading by endorsing a simulation account of mindreading. Here, we question the motor theory of social cognition and give reasons for our skepticism.     

Chronometric evidence for memory retrieval in causal conditional reasoning: The case of the association strength effect

According to many models of conditional reasoning, correct responses to the uncertain forms affirmation of consequent (AC) and denial of antecedent (DA) rely on the retrieval of an alternative antecedent from semantic memory. The main prediction issuing from this hypothesis of online retrieval is that the associative strength of the relevant information in long-term memory affects the latency of its retrieval and then of the correct response of uncertainty to AC and DA. This prediction was tested in 64 adults who performed a syllogism evaluation task with familiar causal conditional premises. As predicted, correct responses of uncertainty to AC and DA were not only more frequent but also faster when the antecedent term was weakly rather than strongly associated with the consequent. In line with the semantic framework, we also observed that this strength effect in response times was reversed for incorrect responses of certainty to AC.     

Does Occupational Stereotyping Still Exist?

We surveyed 113 college students regarding their views of certain occupational stereotypes. Our results indicated that in this population gender was related to the subjects' views of occupations as either male, female, or neutral, and that the father's primary occupation significantly affected the subjects' views of only one occupation—clinical sociologist. The mother's occupation seemed to have no effect.     

Dissociating the effects of automatic activation and explicit expectancy on reaction times in a simple associative learning task

After repeated associations between two events, E1 and E2, responses to E2 can be facilitated either because participants consciously expect E2 to occur after E1 or because E1 automatically activates the response to E2, or because of both. In this article, the authors report on 4 experiments designed to pit the influence of these 2 factors against each other. The authors found that the fastest responses to a target in a reaction time paradigm occurred when automatic activation was highest and conscious expectancy lowest. These results, when considered together with previous findings indicating that, under most conditions, the relation between expectancy and reaction times is in the opposite direction, are indicative of a reversed association-an interaction pattern that J. C. Dunn and K. Kirsner (1988) demonstrated to be the only one that unambiguously points to the involvement of independent processes.     

Spatial relational memory in 9-month-old macaque monkeys

This experiment assesses spatial and nonspatial relational memory in freely moving 9-mo-old and adult (11-13-yr-old) macaque monkeys (Macaca mulatta). We tested the use of proximal landmarks, two different objects placed at the center of an open-field arena, as conditional cues allowing monkeys to predict the location of food rewards hidden in one of two sets of three distinct locations. Monkeys were tested in two different conditions: (1) when local visual cues marked the two sets of potentially baited locations, so that monkeys could use both local and spatial information to discriminate these locations from never-baited locations; and (2) when no local visual cues marked the two sets of potentially baited locations, so that monkeys had to rely on a spatial relational representation of the environment to discriminate these locations. No 9-mo-old or adult monkey associated the presence of the proximal landmarks, at the center of the arena, with the presence of food in one set of three distinct locations. All monkeys, however, discriminated the potentially baited locations in the presence of local visual cues, thus providing evidence of visual discrimination learning. More importantly, all 9-mo-old monkeys tested discriminated the potentially baited locations in absence of the local visual cues, thus exhibiting evidence of spatial relational learning. These findings indicate that spatial memory processes characterized by a relational representation of the environment are present as early as 9 mo of age in macaque monkeys.     

Implicit learning and statistical learning: one phenomenon, two approaches

The domain-general learning mechanisms elicited in incidental learning situations are of potential interest in many research fields, including language acquisition, object knowledge formation and motor learning. They have been the focus of studies on implicit learning for nearly 40 years. Stemming from a different research tradition, studies on statistical learning carried out in the past 10 years after the seminal studies by Saffran and collaborators, appear to be closely related, and the similarity between the two approaches is strengthened further by their recent evolution. However, implicit learning and statistical learning research favor different interpretations, focusing on the formation of chunks and statistical computations, respectively. We examine these differing approaches and suggest that this divergence opens up a major theoretical challenge for future studies.     

Specifying emotional information: Regulation of emotional intensity via executive processes

The degree of specificity at which emotional information is activated might determine evoked emotional intensity. However, the nature of this effect remains unclear. Four studies tested (a) whether people hold the na?ve theory that activating specific details of emotional information arouses acute feelings; (b) whether an emotionally distressed population (social phobics) also holds that theory; and (c) whether voluntarily focusing on specific aspects of a distressing situation reduces its emotional impact. Results indicate that control as well as emotionally distressed people hold a na?ve theory that specifying emotion increases its intensity. However, Studies 3 and 4 showed that voluntarily elaborating specific aspects of a distressing situation reduces distress. Results are discussed in terms of voluntary versus automatic processing of emotional information.     

Implicit learning of a repeated segment in continuous tracking: a reappraisal

Several prior studies (e.g., Shea, Wulf, Whitacre, & Park, 2001; Wulf & Schmidt, 1997) have apparently demonstrated implicit learning of a repeated segment in continuous-tracking tasks. In two conceptual replications of these studies, we failed to reproduce the original findings. However, these findings were reproduced in a third experiment, in which we used the same repeated segment as that used in the Wulf et al. studies. Analyses of the velocity and the acceleration of the target suggests that this repeated segment could be easier to track than the random segments serving as control, accounting for the results of Wulf and collaborators. Overall these experiments suggest that learning a repeated segment in continuous-tracking tasks may be much more difficult than learning from a repeated sequence in conventional serial reaction time tasks. A possible explanation for this difference is outlined.