The Role of Emotions in a Model of Behavioral Intentions of Visitors to the Gaudí Historic House Museums in Barcelona,Spain

ABSTRACT

This study examined an integrated model of behavioral intentions toward historic house museums, through the simultaneous relationships among visitors' perceptions of the historic house museum, crowding, interactions with employees, emotions about their visit, intention to revisit the museum and recommend it to others, and the moderator effect of price fairness. Seven hundred thirty-six visitors were surveyed after visiting La Pedrera and Casa Batlló, the historic house museums of the architect Antoni Gaudí in Barcelona. The results from a structural equation model indicate that visitors' perception of the historic house museum (i.e., their appreciation of the houses' architecture, aesthetic quality, artistic work, and accessibility), visitors' positive interactions with employees, and low levels of crowding are antecedents of positive emotions, and visitors' positive emotions about their visit are a predictor of intentions to revisit and recommend the museum to others. In addition, price fairness was tested as a moderator effect using multigroup analysis. This analysis consists of comparing two subsamples of visitors, which were selected according to whether they believe the admission price is fair or unfair. The effect between perceptions of the historic house museum and positive emotions, and the effect of positive emotions on behavioral intentions is greater for visitors who found the price fair than for those who found the price unfair. The results lead to recommendations for cultural heritage managers.     

Differential allocation of study time: Incomplete compensation for the difficulty of the materials

The results of many experiments have shown that although people distribute their study time depending on the perceived difficulty of the materials, they do not succeed in compensating for this difficulty (e.g., Mazzoni & Cornoldi, 1993). The purpose of this paper was to explore possible ways to induce compensation. The objective difficulty of the items was varied by manipulating their concreteness. In Experiment 1, we explored whether compensation could be increased through practice. In Experiment 2, predictive memory judgements were obtained to determine to what extent participants were sensitive to the characteristics of the material that made it difficult. Finally, in Experiment 3, participants were given instructions designed to achieve complete compensation. Results showed that although participants' judgements of learning and their allocation of time were sensitive to the objective difficulty of the materials, this knowledge was not spontaneously used to compensate. Thus, even with practice participants recalled more easy items than difficult ones. Only instructions that induced greater awareness of the nature of the material were able to produce complete compensation.     

Age differences in working memory updating: The role of interference,focus switching and substituting information

Working memory updating (WMU) tasks require different elements in working memory (WM) to be maintained simultaneously, accessing one of these elements, and substituting its content. This study examined possible developmental changes from childhood to adulthood both in focus switching and substituting information in WM. In addition, possible age-related changes in interference due to representational overlap between the different elements simultaneously held in these tasks were examined. Children (8- and 11-year-olds), adolescents (14-year-olds) and younger adults (mean age = 22 years) were administered a numerical updating memory task, in which updating and focus switching were manipulated. As expected, response times decreased and recall performance increased with age. More importantly, the time needed for focus switching was longer in children than in adolescents and younger adults. On the other hand, substitution of information and interference due to representational overlap were not affected by age. These results suggest that age-related changes in focus switching might mediate developmental changes in WMU performance.     

Preliminary Efficacy of an Intervention to Reduce Psychosocial Stress and Improve Coping in Low-Income Families

This article reports pre-post intervention results from a randomized controlled trial evaluating the initial efficacy of a couples-based intervention aimed at teaching skills for coping with stress and improving relationship skills in a sample of 173 ethnically diverse low-income co-resident mothers and fathers who were raising at least one child together. Couples were randomly assigned to one of three interventions or to an assessment-only control condition. The Fatherhood, Relationship, and Marriage Education (FRAME) intervention is a 14-h psychoeducation intervention developed specifically to strengthen the ability of low-income mothers and fathers to reduce conflict, cope with stress, and co-parent effectively. Three versions of FRAME were assessed: a men-only group, a women-only group, and a couple's group. The pre-post intervention analyses revealed reductions in financial stress, disengagement coping, and involuntary disengagement responses, as well as improvements in problem solving. These pre-post changes on stress and coping variables were both statistically significant and reliable as assessed by the Reliable Change Index (Jacobson and Truax 1991). Results were particularly strong for the couples' and women's groups. In addition, positive pre-post changes on stress and coping variables were associated with pre-post reductions on symptoms of depression for participants assigned to an intervention. The results demonstrate that participants in FRAME acquire some of the key skills taught in the intervention, and skills acquisition appears to translate into symptom reduction. In addition, this study highlights the value of an intervention aiming to improve the capacity of parents with economic hardship to cope effectively with stress.     

Attentional factors in conceptual congruency

Conceptual congruency effects are biases induced by an irrelevant conceptual dimension of a task (e.g., location in vertical space) on the processing of another, relevant dimension (e.g., judging words' emotional evaluation). Such effects are a central empirical pillar for recent views about how the mind/brain represents concepts. In the present paper, we show how attentional cueing (both exogenous and endogenous) to each conceptual dimension succeeds in modifying both the manifestation and the symmetry of the effect. The theoretical implications of this finding are discussed.     

Effect of cognitive bias modification-memory on depressive symptoms and autobiographical memory bias: two independent studies in high-ruminating and dysphoric samples

Memory bias is a risk factor for depression. In two independent studies, the efficacy of one CBM-Memory session on negative memory bias and depressive symptoms was tested in vulnerable samples. We compared positive to neutral (control) CBM-Memory trainings in highly-ruminating individuals (N?=?101) and individuals with elevated depressive symptoms (N?=?100). In both studies, participants studied positive, neutral, and negative Swahili words paired with their translations. In five study–test blocks, they were then prompted to retrieve either only the positive or neutral translations. Immediately following the training and one week later, we tested cued recall of all translations and autobiographical memory bias; and also measured mood, depressive symptoms, and rumination. Retrieval practice resulted in training-congruent recall both immediately after and one week after the training. Overall, there was no differential decrease in symptoms or difference in autobiographical memory bias between the training conditions. In the dysphoric but not in the high-ruminating sample, the positive training resulted in positive autobiographical bias only in dysphoric individuals with positive pre-existing bias.

We conclude that one session of positive retrieval-based CBM-Memory may not be enough to yield symptom change and affect autobiographical memory bias in vulnerable individuals.     

Action experience in infancy predicts visual-motor functional connectivity during action anticipation

Despite substantial evidence indicating a close link between action production and perception in early child development, less is known about how action experience shapes the processes of perceiving and anticipating others’ actions. Here, we developed a novel approach to capture functional connectivity specific to certain brain areas to investigate how action experience changes the networks involved in action perception and anticipation. Nine- and-12-month-old infants observed familiar (grasping) and novel (tool-use) actions while their brain activity was measured using EEG. Infants’ motor competence of both actions was assessed. A link between action experience and connectivity patterns was found, particularly during the anticipation period. During action anticipation, greater motor competence in grasping predicted greater functional connectivity between visual (occipital alpha) and motor (central alpha) regions relative to global levels of whole-brain EEG connectivity. Furthermore, visual and motor regions tended to be more coordinated in response to familiar versus novel actions and for older than younger participants. Critically, these effects were not found in the control networks (frontal-central; frontal-occipital; parietal-central; parietal-occipital), suggesting a unique role of visual-motor networks on the link between motor skills and action encoding.

Highlights

• Infants’ motor development predicted functional connectivity patterns during action anticipation.
• Faster graspers, and older infants, showed a stronger ratio of visual-motor neural coherence.
• Overall whole-brain connectivity was modulated by age and familiarity with the actions.
• Measuring inter-site relative to whole-brain connectivity can capture specific brain-behavior links.
• Measures of phase-based connectivity over time are sensitive to anticipatory action.

     

Children's social wariness toward a different-race stranger relates to individual differences in temperament

When children first meet a stranger, there is great variation in how much they will approach and engage with the stranger. While individual differences in this type of behavior—called social wariness—are well-documented in temperament research, surprisingly little attention has been paid to the social groups (such as race) of the stranger and how these characteristics might influence children's social wariness. In contrast, research on children's social bias and interracial friendships rarely examines individual differences in temperament and how temperament might influence cross-group interactions. The current study bridges the gap across these different fields of research by examining whether the racial group of an unfamiliar peer or adult moderates the association between temperament and the social wariness that children display. Utilizing a longitudinal dataset that collected multiple measurements of children's temperament and behaviors (including parent-reported shyness and social wariness toward unfamiliar adults and peers) across early childhood, we found that 2- to 7-year-old children with high parent-reported shyness showed greater social wariness toward a different-race stranger compared to a same-race stranger, whereas children with low parent-reported shyness did not. These results point to the importance of considering racial group membership in temperament research and the potential role that temperament might play in children's cross-race interactions.

Research Highlights

• Previous research on temperament has not considered how the race of strangers could influence children's social wariness.
• We find evidence that 2- to 7-year-old children with high parent-reported shyness show greater social wariness toward a different-race stranger compared to a same-race stranger.
• These results point to the importance of considering racial group membership in temperament research.
• Our findings also suggest temperament may play a role in children's cross-race interactions.