Object color affects identification and repetition priming

We investigated the influence of color on the identification of both non-studied and studied objects. Participants studied black and white and color photos of common objects and memory was assessed with an identification test. Consistent with our meta-analysis of prior research, we found that objects were easier to identify from color than from black and white photos. We also found substantial priming in all conditions, and study-to-test changes in an object's color reduced the magnitude of priming. Color-specific priming effects were large for color-complex objects, but minimal for color-simple objects. The pattern and magnitude of priming effects was not influenced either by the extent to which an object always appears in the same color (i.e., whether a color is symptomatic of an object) or by the object's origin (natural versus fabricated). We discuss the implications of our findings for theoretical accounts of object perception and repetition priming.     

Relationship between fine/gross motor skills and language and math development in Colombian Caribbean children: A study in Barranquilla

Literature suggests that motor skills are associated with other areas of development or domains, such as language and math, especially at early ages. These results are mainly based on studies developed in medium-to-high sociocultural contexts. Thus, this study was conducted in a medium-to-low-income area. The aim was to know the 4–5 years old children's motor development (both fine and gross motor skills), and its relation to language and mathematical development. A total of 219 Colombian Caribbean children (105 boys and 114 girls) aged 4 and 5 years participated in this study. Results revealed higher motor skills among girls, although differences by gender were not notable. Positive and significant correlations were found between motor skills and language and mathematical skills, although most of the correlations were weak or moderate. Also, it was observed that fine motor skills were less related to language or mathematical development in comparison with gross motor skills, especially among boys. These results suggest that among Colombian Caribbean children gross motor skills could have a higher influence on the development and acquisition of some language and mathematical skills in comparison with fine motor skills.     

Priming effects on the N400 in the affective priming paradigm with facial expressions of emotion

We studied the effect of facial expression primes on the evaluation of target words through a variant of the affective priming paradigm. In order to make the affective valence of the faces irrelevant to the task, the participants were assigned a double prime–target task in which they were unpredictably asked either to identify the gender of the face or to evaluate whether the word was pleasant or unpleasant. Behavioral and electrophysiological (event-related potential, or ERP) indices of affective priming were analyzed. Temporal and spatial versions of principal components analyses were used to detect and quantify those ERP components associated with affective priming. Although no significant behavioral priming was observed, electrophysiological indices showed a reverse priming effect, in the sense that the amplitude of the N400 was higher in response to congruent than to incongruent negative words. Moreover, a late positive potential (LPP), peaking around 700 ms, was sensitive to affective valence but not to prime–target congruency. This pattern of results is consistent with previous accounts of ERP effects in the affective priming paradigm that have linked the LPP with evaluative priming and the N400 with semantic priming. Our proposed explanation of the N400 priming effects obtained in the present study is based on two assumptions: a double check of affective stimuli in terms of valence and specific emotion content, and the differential specificities of facial expressions of positive and negative emotions.     

Response inhibition and attentional control in anxiety

Traditionally, anxiety has been associated with a selective attentional bias for threat and a decreased capacity in attentional control. In two different experiments, we investigated whether individuals with different levels of self-reported state anxiety (Experiment 1) and induced anxiety (Experiment 2) had impaired response inhibition processes (attentional control deficit) as characterized by a different response style in the presence of negative stimuli under low and high perceptual load conditions. A go/no-go paradigm with emotional distractors (angry, happy, and neutral faces) was used to provide measures of perceptual sensitivity, inhibition, and response style. Our findings showed that perceptual sensitivity, as assessed by the d' parameter of signal detection theory, was reduced in all participants for angry faces under low perceptual load, where enough perceptual resources were available to be attracted by distractors. Importantly, despite similar perceptual sensitivity, the beta parameter indicated that high state anxiety individuals in both experiments were less flexible at adjusting to task demands in the presence of angry face distractors by adopting a stricter criterion. Implications of findings are discussed within current models of attentional control in anxiety.     

Antecedentes y aparición de la Psicología del Procesamiento de Información: un estudio histórico

Resumen

El presente artículo recopila los grandes hitos asociados al surgimiento de la Psicología del Procesamiento de Información (principales autores, obras, instituciones, eventos científicos, etc.) en Gran Bretaña y Estados Unidos, países en donde este enfoque tiene su origen. Esto se hace a través de una perspectiva de análisis histórico que, remontándonos a los años veinte—y tras pasar revista a los acontecimientos más relevantes para la Historia de la Psicología acaecidos durante los años treinta, cuarenta y cincuenta—, nos conduce a 1958, fecha clave para el nacimiento y difusión de lo que hoy conocemos como Psicología del Procesamiento de Información.     

Aging and performance on an everyday-based visual search task

Research on aging and visual search often requires older people to search computer screens for target letters or numbers. The aim of this experiment was to investigate age-related differences using an everyday-based visual search task in a large participant sample (n=261) aged 20-88 years. Our results show that: (1) old-old adults have more difficulty with triple conjunction searches with one highly distinctive feature compared to young-old and younger adults; (2) age-related declines in conjunction searches emerge in middle age then progress throughout older age; (3) age-related declines are evident in feature searches on target absent trials, as older people seem to exhaustively and serially search the whole display to determine a target's absence. Together, these findings suggest that declines emerge in middle age then progress throughout older age in feature integration, guided search, perceptual grouping and/or spreading suppression processes. Discussed are implications for enhancing everyday functioning throughout adulthood.     

The Relationship Between Transformational Leadership and Emotional Intelligence from a Gendered Approach

The Psychological Record - Studies on both transformational leadership and emotional intelligence have analyzed the relationship between emotions and leadership. Yet the relationships among these...     

Is there a genuine advantage to the upper part of words during lexical access? Evidence from the Stroop task

A number of recent visual-word recognition and reading experiments have concluded that the upper part of words is more important for lexical access than is the lower part, which conforms with Huey’s (1908) observation. Here, we examined whether this phenomenon may simply be due to the fact that words in Indo-European languages tend to have a higher number of confusable letters in the lower than in the upper part. We manipulated the letter ambiguity of the upper and lower parts of words in two experiments in which we asked participants to report the presentation color of the upper and lower parts of color words and noncolor words, and in a baseline condition, of strings of &s (Stroop task). In Experiment 1, the lower part of noncolor words was more ambiguous than the upper part (upward-unbalanced words), whereas in Experiment 2, the ambiguities of the two parts of the noncolor words were similar (balanced words). For the upward-unbalanced noncolor words, the magnitude of lexical interference (relative to the baseline condition) was greater for the upper than for the lower part. Critically, the differences vanished when this factor was controlled (i.e., balanced words; Exp. 2). Thus, the apparent bias in favor of the upper part of words can be parsimoniously described as an idiosyncratic feature of the words’ component letters.     

Indicadores aislados versus patrón general expresivo en la detección de la mentira

Resumen

Frente a planteamientos teóricos clásicos, en relación con el fenómeno de la detección de la mentira, que postulan que la existencia de indicadores no verbales aislados facilitan el reconocimiento de mensajes falsos, este trabajo plantea la existencia de un patrón general de configuración que varía cualitativamente para mensajes verdaderos y falsos. Las condiciones experimentales ideadas para este trabajo (presentación de mensajes falsos, precedidos o no de mensajes verdaderos) permitieron a los sujetos experimentales contrastar las diferencias entre estos patrones, facilitando el reconocimiento de mensajes fraudulentos, siendo las mujeres las que mejor aprovecharon las condiciones facilitadoras.     

De las tormentosas relaciones entre forma y contenido en el pensamiento: crónica de un romance anunciado

Resumen

El presente artículo estudia las complejas y cambiantes relaciones entre forma y contenido en la psicología del pensamiento. Tradicionalmente se han distinguido dos estadios en el razonamiento y la solución de problemas: una fase de representación, centrada básicamente en el contenido del problema, y una segunda fase de proceso o razonamiento propiamente dicho, en la que primarían los aspectos lógico-formales. El artículo analiza la evolución desde los estudios sintácticos del pensamiento—centrados en las reglas formales que lo rigen—a los estudios semánticos, preocupados sobre todo por el contenido de las representaciones, para acabar proponiendo una integración de ambos aspectos dentro de una visión pragmática del pensamiento.