The impact of egg incubation temperature on the personality of oviparous reptiles

Personality traits, defined as differences in the behavior of individual animals of the same species that are consistent over time and context, such as ‘boldness,’ have been shown to be both heritable and be influenced by external factors, such as predation pressure. Currently, we know very little about the role that early environmental factors have upon personality. Thus, we investigated the impact of incubation temperature upon the boldness on an oviparous reptile, the bearded dragon (Pogona vitticeps). Eggs, from one clutch, were incubated at two different average temperatures within the normal range. After hatching the lizards were raised under the same environmental conditions. Novel object and novel environment tests were used to assess personality. Each test was repeated in both the short term and the long term. The results revealed that incubation temperature did impact upon ‘boldness’ but only in the short term and suggests that, rather than influencing personality, incubation temperature may have an effect on the development of behavioral of oviparous reptiles at different stages across ontogeny.     

Relationship between Social Cognition and Temperament in Preschool‐aged Children

The purpose of this research was to investigate the relationship between temperament and social cognition, including theory of mind and emotion understanding, in 34 preschool‐aged children (aged 3–4 years). Theory of mind was measured with a belief–desire reasoning assessment, and emotion understanding was measured with an affective perspective‐taking task. Child temperament was provided by online parent report. Consistent with previous research, theory of mind correlated with shy and socially observant temperament. In contrast, emotion understanding was associated with attention focusing and low intensity pleasure (enjoyment of low arousal activities). Both theory of mind and emotion understanding were positively related to inhibitory control and negatively related to activity level. In sum, theory of mind and emotion understanding, while both associated with executive functioning, correlate with distinct social preference temperament dimensions. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Order information in verbal working memory shifts the subjective midpoint in both the line bisection and the landmark tasks

A largely substantiated view in the domain of working memory is that the maintenance of serial order is achieved by generating associations of each item with an independent representation of its position, so-called position markers. Recent studies reported that the ordinal position of an item in verbal working memory interacts with spatial processing. This suggests that position markers might be spatial in nature. However, these interactions were so far observed in tasks implying a clear binary categorization of space (i.e., with left and right responses or targets). Such binary categorizations leave room for alternative interpretations, such as congruency between non-spatial categorical codes for ordinal position (e.g., begin and end) and spatial categorical codes for response (e.g., left and right). Here we discard this interpretation by providing evidence that this interaction can also be observed in a task that draws upon a continuous processing of space, the line bisection task. Specifically, bisections are modulated by ordinal position in verbal working memory, with lines bisected more towards the right after retrieving items from the end compared to the beginning of the memorized sequence. This supports the idea that position markers are intrinsically spatial in nature.     

The company you keep: Fear of rejection in intergroup interaction

People use many cues to infer the likelihood of acceptance or rejection in intergroup interactions. Nearly all prior research has focused on personal cues directly given off by the potential interaction partner (e.g., eye contact and smiling). However, we argue that in the context of intergroup interactions, individuals may be especially sensitive to broader social cues, such as an interaction partner's social network. Across three experiments we explored differences in White participants' evaluations of a smiling Black man presented with a Black or White friend. When this Black man was featured with a Black friend, White participants reported greater rejection concerns and a greater inclination to reject this Black man compared to when he was featured with a White friend (Experiments 1-3) or featured alone (Experiment 2). Furthermore, when participants received a simple intervention designed to buffer against social rejection, the race of the Black man's friend no longer influenced participants' interests in befriending the Black man (Experiment 3). This research demonstrates the power of friendships in interracial interactions and provides evidence for a simple intervention to reduce the weight of rejection concerns in interracial interactions.     

On the law relating processing to storage in working memory

Working memory is usually defined in cognitive psychology as a system devoted to the simultaneous processing and maintenance of information. However, although many models of working memory have been put forward during the last decades, they often leave underspecified the dynamic interplay between processing and storage. Moreover, the account of their interaction proposed by the most popular A. D. Baddeley and G. Hitch's (1974) multiple-component model is contradicted by facts, leaving unresolved one of the main issues of cognitive functioning. In this article, the author derive from the time-based resource-sharing model of working memory a mathematical function relating the cognitive load involved by concurrent processing to the amount of information that can be simultaneously maintained active in working memory. A meta-analysis from several experiments testing the effects of processing on storage corroborates the parameters of the predicted function, suggesting that it properly reflects the law relating the 2 functions of working memory.     

Regional differences in the listener's phonemic inventory affect semantic processing: A mismatch negativity (MMN) study

Using the mismatch negativity (MMN) response, we examined how Standard French and Southern French speakers access the meaning of words ending in /e/ or /ε/ vowels which are contrastive in Standard French but not in Southern French. In Standard French speakers, there was a significant difference in the amplitude of the brain response after the deviant-minus-standard subtraction between the frontocentral (FC) and right lateral (RL) recording sites for the final-/ε/ word but not the final-/e/ word. In contrast, the difference in the amplitude of the brain response between the FC and RL recording sites did not significantly vary as a function of the word’s final vowel in Southern French speakers. Our findings provide evidence that access to lexical meaning in spoken word recognition depends on the speaker’s native regional accent.     

Poor Imitative Performance of Unlearned Gestures in Children with Probable Developmental Coordination Disorder

It has been hypothesized that deficits in imitation, linked to abnormal functioning of the mirror neuron system (MNS), may contribute to the motor impairments associated with developmental coordination disorder (DCD). The authors aimed to examine imitation of complex novel postures and sequences of gestures in children with and without probable DCD (pDCD), using the postural praxis and sequencing praxis subtests of the Sensory Integration and Praxis Tests (Ayres, 1989 Ayres, A. J. (1989). Sensory Integration and Praxis Tests: SIPT manual. Los Angeles, CA: Western Psychological Services. [Google Scholar]). Participants were 29 boys with pDCD between 6.08 and 13.33 years old, and 29 group age-matched typically developing boys between 6.08 and 13.83 years old. Responses of children with pDCD on both imitation tasks were less accurate than controls, with group differences more apparent with increasing task complexity. Furthermore, as a group, children with pDCD were slower and had a higher number of non–mirror-imitated responses. There was considerable variability within the pDCD group, with some children displaying imitation scores within the normative range. Given the importance of imitation and visual learning for motor development, the difficulties in imitation displayed by some children with pDCD have the potential to impact on movement acquisition. Interventions to target imitation may be beneficial for these children. The results show that children with pDCD had difficulty imitating complex novel postures, children with pDCD had difficulty imitating gesture sequences, children with pDCD had slower responses than controls, group differences in imitation performance increased with task complexity, and not all children with pDCD displayed imitation deficits.     

Independent effects of personality and sex on self-estimated intelligence: evidence from Austria

The effects of sex and personality traits on self-estimates of intelligence were examined in a sample of 302 Austrian adults (143 men, 159 women). Confirming previous research, men had higher self-estimates of logical and spatial abilities than did women, and these differences were partly explained in terms of women's higher Neuroticism scores. Neuroticism (negatively) and Openness (positively) accounted significantly for variances in self-estimates of spatial and logical intelligence. However, sex had stronger direct and indirect effects on self-estimates of intelligence. Sex and personality effects appear to be largely independent. Thus, being male, emotionally stable, and open to new experiences is likely to result in higher self-estimates of spatial and logical abilities.