Culture and alexithymia: mean levels,correlates, and the role of parental socialization of emotions

Two studies examined the relationship between culture and alexithymia. In Study 1, mean levels and correlates of alexithymia were examined in 3 cultures: European American (EA), Asian American (AA), and Malaysian college students. Both Asian groups had higher alexithymia levels than the EA group. Somatization was more strongly associated with alexithymia in the Asian groups than in the EA group. Mood and life satisfaction were associated with alexithymia in similar ways across groups. In Study 2, the relations among culture, gender, retrospective reports of parental socialization of emotions, and alexithymia were examined among EA and AA college students. Cultural and gender differences were found in alexithymia and emotion socialization levels. Most important, parental emotion socialization mediated the relations among culture, gender, and alexithymia.     

Factors predicting success in picture naming in Alzheimer's disease and primary progressive aphasia

The aim of the present study was to determine the predictive value of all important variables in the picture naming performance of 8 patients with probable Alzheimer's disease (AD) and 8 patients with primary progressive aphasia (PPA). The experimental investigation controlled for (i) visual complexity, (ii) name agreement on dominant response, (iii) age of acquisition, (iv) frequency, (v) word length, (vi) concept familiarity, and (vii) category membership. The results of the multiple regression analyses showed that age of acquisition and name agreement were significant for 10/16 subjects. Visual complexity, frequency, familiarity, and category were also significant for four patients respectively. Word length had no effect. These results are at variance with those of series of patients with AD (Gaillard et al., 1998) and with PPA (Lambon Ralph et al., 1998) where concept familiarity was found to be one of the most predictive factors of naming success.     

Language evolution in children with cochlear implants

The capacity to incorporate significant words into the existing vocabulary and to use these words to form sentences with more mature syntactic structures emerges over a considerable time course in young deaf children who have undergone a cochlear implantation. The purpose of this follow-up study is to document the nature and time span of language production--in morphosyntactic and lexical skills--when a child's first experience with language sounds is provided artificially through electrical stimulation. To examine the development of these two aspects of linguistic processing, five deaf French children, all enrolled in similar postimplantation educational settings, were individually assessed at 6-month intervals over a period of 18 months. Computerized analyses were derived from their spontaneous speech in a 20-min standardized play session. Results for mean length of utterance and vocabulary revealed gradually improving performance for most children, in spite of the generally low starting point. Both measures of production nevertheless remained well below the norms established for normally hearing children. Although the achievement of higher production scores, which underlies more effective interpersonal exchanges, is evident after only 1 year of device use, it is clear that improvement does not always occur at the same pace, as shown by two of the children. This emphasizes the importance of longitudinal studies in documenting intersubject variability and intrasubject stability throughout the experience with an implant.     

The influence of handedness on profile and line drawing directionality in children,young, and older normal adults

One hundred twenty-two normal subjects--children, young and older adults (77 right-handers and 45 left-handers)--performed two drawing tasks in order to study their directionality trends. The first task consisted of drawing the profile of a face and in the second task subjects had to link two points in order to draw a line. The analysis of the drawing directionality revealed a significant effect of the age when right-handers drew profiles whereas this effect reached significance in left-handed subjects only when drawing lines. Left- and right-handers' performances across the two tasks were found to significantly differ. Results are discussed in terms of hemispheric and environmental factors.     

The effect of long-term working memory through personalization applied to free recall: Uncurbing the primacy-effect enthusiasm

In this study, a personalization method (Guida, Tardieu, & Nicolas, European Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 21: 862–896 2009) was applied to a free-recall task. Fifteen pairs of words, composed of an object and a location, were presented to 93 participants, who had to mentally associate each pair and subsequently recall the objects. A 30-s delay was introduced on half of the trials, the presentation rate was manipulated (5 or 10 s per item), and verbal and visuospatial working memory tests were administered to test for their effects on the serial curve. Two groups were constituted: a personalized group, for whom the locations were well-known places on their university campus, and a nonpersonalized group, for whom the locations did not refer to known places. Since personalization putatively operationalizes long-term working memory (Ericsson & Kintsch, Psychological Review, 102: 211–245 1995)—namely, the capacity to store information reliably and rapidly in long-term memory—and if we take a dual-store approach to memory, the personalization advantage would be expected to be greater for pre-recency than for recency items. Overall, the results were compatible with long-term working memory theory. They contribute to validating the personalization method as a methodology to characterize the contribution of long-term memory storage to performance in working memory tasks.     

Personalidad,diferencias individuales y decisión con riesgo

Resumen

Esta investigación trata de comprobar si existen diferencias individuales en las estrategias usadas en las tareas de decisión con riesgo que puedan ser explicadas en términos de rasgos polares de personalidad (neuroticismo y extroversión). Al mismo tiempo se trata de encontrar evidencia de las causas (no explicadas) que podrían justificar la clasificación de estrategias propuesta desde la teoría de la integración de la información. Este artículo consta de dos partes bien diferenciadas, en la primera se lleva a cabo un experimento donde los datos no apoyan que los rasgos de personalidad usados expliquen las diferencias individuales; se encontró apoyo para tres de las estrategias descritas en integración de la información. En la segunda parte, con el propósito de analizar las diferencias individuales en el tiempo, se muestra que la estructura lógica del sujeto, como procesador/decisor, es relativamente invariante en el tiempo. Finalmente se discute si la naturaleza de la tarea experimental obliga a los sujetos a desarrollar estrategias ad hoc con poco claro valor de generalización.     

Respiratory feedback in the generation of emotion

This article reports two studies investigating the relationship between emotional feelings and respiration. In the first study, participants were asked to produce an emotion of either joy, anger, fear or sadness and to describe the breathing pattern that fit best with the generated emotion. Results revealed that breathing patterns reported during voluntary production of emotion were (a) comparable to those objectively recorded in psychophysiological experiments on emotion arousal, (b) consistently similar across individuals, and (c) clearly differentiated among joy, anger, fear, and sadness. A second study used breathing instructions based on Study 1's results to investigate the impact of the manipulation of respiration on emotional feeling state. A cover story was used so that participants could not guess the actual purpose of the study. This manipulation produced significant emotional feeling states that were differentiated according to the type of breathing pattern. The implications of these findings for emotion theories based on peripheral feedback and for emotion regulation are discussed.     

Methods for comparing scanpaths and saliency maps: strengths and weaknesses

In this article, we are interested in the computational modeling of visual attention. We report methods commonly used to assess the performance of these kinds of models. We survey the strengths and weaknesses of common assessment methods based on diachronic eye-tracking data. We then illustrate the use of some methods to benchmark computational models of visual attention.     

Different Strokes for Different Folks: The Impact of Sex Dissimilarity in the Empowerment–Performance Relationship

Organizations often utilize empowerment as a way to bolster performance. It is largely assumed, however, that its impact in this capacity is equivalent across organizational members. We tested this notion within a sample of 420 employees belonging to 75 teams in a Chinese organization and found that team empowerment related positively to supervisor‐rated in‐role and self‐rated extra‐role performance through its effect on individual psychological empowerment. More important, employee–coworker demographic dissimilarity moderated both stages of this indirect relationship. Specifically, when employee–coworker sex dissimilarity was higher, the following relationships were attenuated: (a) team empowerment–individual empowerment, (b) individual empowerment–in‐role performance, and (c) individual empowerment–extra–role performance. Collectively, the results illustrate that the impact of empowerment is contingent upon demographic dissimilarity.     

The Balance-Scale Dilemma: Either the Subject or the Experimenter Muddles Through

We examined two critiques of rule-assessment methodology: (a) the method does not take into consideration other rules that subjects use to solve problems, and (b) its multiple-choice format misrepresents subjects' cognitive level. In Study 1, high school students completed a paper-and-pencil, multiple-choice balance scale questionnaire. Their performance was assessed with Siegler's original rules and a revised set of rules that included an addition and a qualitative proportionality rule. Results showed that Siegler's Rule 3 was not homogeneous and that distinguishing specific patterns of answers among Rule 3 subjects increased the diagnostic value of the rule-assessment methodology. In Study 2, we compared rule-assessment methodology to the Piagetian clinical model. High school students solved balance-scale problems within each method. Results indicated an overall match between Piagetian levels and Siegler's rules, with the exception of Rule 3, suggesting again the pertinence of specifying alternative rules.