Social feedback interferes with implicit rule learning: Evidence from event-related brain potentials

The human brain can learn contingencies built into stimulus sequences unconsciously. The quality of such implicit learning has been connected to stimulus social relevance, but results so far are inconsistent. We engaged participants in an implicit-intentional learning task in which they learned to discriminate between legal and illegal card triads on the sole basis of feedback provided within a staircase procedure. Half of the participants received feedback from pictures of faces with a happy or sad expression (social group) and the other half based on traffic light icons (symbolic group). We hypothesised that feedback from faces would have a greater impact on learning than that from traffic lights. Although performance during learning did not differ between groups, the feedback error-related negativity (fERN) was delayed by ~20 ms for social relative to symbolic feedback, and the P3b modulation elicited by infrequent legal card triads within a stream of illegal ones during the test phase was significantly larger in the symbolic than the social feedback group. Furthermore, the P3b mean amplitude recorded at test negatively correlated with the latency of the fERN recorded during learning. These results counterintuitively suggest that, relative to symbolic feedback, socially salient feedback interferes with implicit learning.     

François Noël’s Contribution to the Western Understanding of Chinese Thought: <Emphasis Type="Italic">Taiji sive natura</Emphasis> in the <Emphasis Type="Italic">Philosophia sinica</Emphasis> (1711)

Jesuits in China adopted key Confucian terms to express Christian notions; for example, Tian 天 or Shangdi 上帝 was considered an equivalent for God, and guishen 鬼神 for angels. A Terms controversy started among the Jesuits and other missionaries and developed into the famous Rites Controversy. However, all the missionaries agreed in rejecting the Neo-Confucian concept of Taiji 太極, which was believed to be materialistic, pantheistic, or atheistic. The Flemish Jesuit François Noël (1651–1729), after a careful study of Neo-Confucian texts, interpreted Taiji with the Western concept of nature, and even claimed that it held theistic meaning. We shall analyze and evaluate here this early Western attempt in giving a positive meaning to Taiji.     

Vowel bias in Danish word‐learning: processing biases are language‐specific

The present study explored whether the phonological bias favoring consonants found in French‐learning infants and children when learning new words (Havy & Nazzi, 2009; Nazzi, 2005) is language‐general, as proposed by Nespor, Peña and Mehler (2003), or varies across languages, perhaps as a function of the phonological or lexical properties of the language in acquisition. To do so, we used the interactive word‐learning task set up by Havy and Nazzi (2009), teaching Danish‐learning 20‐month‐olds pairs of phonetically similar words that contrasted either on one of their consonants or one of their vowels, by either one or two phonological features. Danish was chosen because it has more vowels than consonants, and is characterized by extensive consonant lenition. Both phenomena could disfavor a consonant bias. Evidence of word‐learning was found only for vocalic information, irrespective of whether one or two phonological features were changed. The implication of these findings is that the phonological biases found in early lexical processing are not language‐general but develop during language acquisition, depending on the phonological or lexical properties of the native language.     

The bilingual brain turns a blind eye to negative statements in the second language

Neurobilingualism research has failed to reveal significant language differences in the processing of affective content. However, the evidence to date derives mostly from studies in which affective stimuli are presented out of context, which is unnatural and fails to capture the complexity of everyday sentence-based communication. Here we investigated semantic integration of affectively salient stimuli in sentential context in the first- and second-language (L2) of late fluent Polish–English bilinguals living in the UK. The 19 participants indicated whether Polish and English sentences ending with a semantically and affectively congruent or incongruent adjective of controlled affective valence made sense while undergoing behavioral and electrophysiological recordings. We focused on the N400, a wave of event-related potentials known to index semantic integration. We expected N400 amplitude to index increased processing demands in L2 English comprehension and potential language–valence interactions to reveal differences in affective processing between languages. Contrary to our initial expectation, we found increased N400 for sentences in L1 Polish, possibly driven by greater affective salience of sentences in the native language. Critically, language interacted with affective valence, such that N400 amplitudes were reduced for English sentences ending in a negative fashion as compared to all other conditions. We interpreted this as a sign that bilinguals suppress L2 content embedded in naturalistic L2 sentences when it has negative valence, thus extending the findings of previous research on single words in clinical and linguistic research.     

Visual-perceptual abilities in healthy controls, depressed patients, and schizophrenia patients

Previous studies have suggested a right hemineglect in schizophrenia, however few assessed possible visual-perceptual implication in this lateralized anomaly. A manual line bisection without (i.e., lines presented on their own) or with a local cueing paradigm (i.e., a number placed at one or both ends of the line) and the Motor-free Visual Perceptual Test-Vertical format (MVPT-V) were used to assess the visual-perceptual abilities of healthy controls, schizophrenia and depressed patients. Whereas healthy controls and depressed patients showed a non-significant leftward bias in manual line bisection, schizophrenia patients bisected significantly to the left of the true centre of the line. Interestingly, the pattern of performances in response to the local cueing paradigm was similar in depressed and schizophrenia patients such that both groups demonstrated a significant change in their bisection performance only in response to a cue placed at the right extremity of the line (control performance was modified by cues at either end of the line). Finally, in the MVPT-V, schizophrenia patients were impaired relative to the other two groups, especially in the spatial working memory and visual closure categories. These results suggest that: 1/a deficit towards the right hemifield, consistent with a mild form of right hemineglect, can be observed in schizophrenia; 2/lateralized anomalies could also be observed in depression using an appropriate tool such as manual line bisection; 3/performances in the MVPT-V suggested that a simple visual-perceptual deficit could not explain the lateralized anomaly observed in the manual line bisection, as it is the case in the hemineglect syndrome.     

Chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) anticipation of food return: coping with waiting time in an exchange task

Despite controversial expectations that animals achieve reciprocal altruism, it is unclear if nonhuman species possess the necessary cognitive abilities. For reciprocal altruism, individuals must anticipate the loss of a commodity and accept a delay before some return. The authors investigated the abilities of 5 chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) to cope with increasing waiting duration in exchange tasks. Subjects had to keep a small cookie before returning it to a human partner to obtain a larger piece. For a piece 2, 4, or 8 times the size of the small piece, 3 of the 5 subjects waited for up to 4 min. For a piece 40 times larger, 4 of the 5 subjects waited up to 8 min. At long time lag, renouncement to wait occurred earlier than predicted by subjects' general waiting capacity, suggesting that the decision to wait was based on a trade-off between reward quantity and expected costs of the waiting duration. Chimpanzees could anticipate a delayed reward at a time scale of several minutes. If this reflects a cognitive limit in chimpanzees' anticipation capacity, reciprocal altruism by keeping track of costs and benefits over extended periods may be unlikely in chimpanzees.     

Analyse des abandons prématurés lors d’un accompagnement a la validation des acquis de l’expérience (V.A.E.): une recherche empirique

If the VAE’s counseling (validation of knowledge and experience) know a certain success, a lot of candidates have the tendency to termine prematurely the procedure without one can know the precise reasons of it. The present research is based on a sample of 162 subjects that entered to different stages into VAE’s counseling. The comparison between people having quit and those having pursued their VAE carries on self-efficacy, professional and personal social support, self-determination and difficulties met during counseling. A discriminant analysis led between the pursuers and those that don’t pursue as well as the propositions of the participants permit to identify the key variables and to do some recommendations to improve the VAE’counseling.     

The psychological costs of painless but recurring experiences of racial discrimination

When studying discrimination, it is important to examine both perceived frequency and stress associated with these experiences, as well as the interplay between these two dimensions. Using data from Latino/a participants (N = 168), we found an interaction effect of the reported frequency and reported stressfulness of discrimination on psychological distress (depression and anxiety), such that frequency predicted greater psychological distress for low-stress events, but high-stress events were associated with greater distress regardless of frequency. In addition, using the constructs of "stated" and "derived" stressfulness, we found that the frequency of experiences of discrimination that were rated as less stressful were, in fact, correlated with greater psychological distress. Discrimination events not experienced as stressful nonetheless may have negative implications for the target, especially if they occur frequently.