Retrieval-induced forgetting, delay, and sleep

Retrieval-induced forgetting (RIF) refers to the finding that retrieval of a subset of previously studied material can cause forgetting of related unpractised material. Prior work on the role of delay between practice and test for RIF reported mixed results. Whereas some studies found RIF to be a relatively transient phenomenon, others found RIF to persist over time. We examined whether the persistence of RIF can depend on whether wakefulness or sleep follows retrieval practice. We employed a variant of the retrieval-practice paradigm with short (20 minutes) and long (12 hours) delay conditions. In all conditions participants studied a perceptually categorised list followed by retrieval practice on some of the items from some of the categories. Participants studied and practised the material in the morning or the evening. RIF was present in the short-delay conditions, and it was present in the long-delay condition if the delay included nocturnal sleep; if the long delay was filled with diurnal wakefulness, RIF was absent. Results show that whether delay eliminates RIF or not can depend on whether sleep or wake follows retrieval practice. Connections of the results to recent findings about the role of delay and sleep for RIF are discussed.     

Introducing the Geneva Multimodal expression corpus for experimental research on emotion perception

Research on the perception of emotional expressions in faces and voices is exploding in psychology, the neurosciences, and affective computing. This article provides an overview of some of the major emotion expression (EE) corpora currently available for empirical research and introduces a new, dynamic, multimodal corpus of emotion expressions, the Geneva Multimodal Emotion Portrayals Core Set (GEMEP-CS). The design features of the corpus are outlined and justified, and detailed validation data for the core set selection are presented and discussed. Finally, an associated database with microcoded facial, vocal, and body action elements, as well as observer ratings, is introduced. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).     

Collective interviewing of suspects

When people are interviewed about possible wrongdoing that has been committed in groups, they typically are interviewed separately. Yet, in several settings it would be more intuitive and convenient to interview suspects together. Importantly, such collective interviews could yield verbal cues to deception. This is the first deception experiment to investigate collective interviewing. Twenty-one pairs of truth tellers and 22 pairs of liars were interviewed pair-wise about having had lunch together in a restaurant. Given that truth tellers adopt a “tell it all” strategy in the interviews while, in contrast, liars prefer to keep their stories simple, we predicted that pairs of truth tellers would (i) interrupt and (ii) correct each other more, and would (iii) add more information to each other's answers than pairs of liars. The results supported these hypotheses. Theory-driven interventions to elicit more cues to deception through simultaneous interviewing are discussed.     

Online lifestyle consumption community dynamics: A practice‐based analysis

The purposes of this study were to identify and categorize the discursive practices through which consumers negotiate a lifestyle‐related identity in online lifestyle consumption communities. The empirical case is a very active community of consumers who adhere to the low‐carb/high‐fat diet. The paper contributes to communal consumption literature by showing how a lifestyle identity and the community evolve together. Focusing on an online community with lifestyle focus differentiates this study from previous research because nutritional choices influence the consumers' everyday life in a comprehensive manner. By employing a netnographic analysis on discussion board messages, 11 discursive practices are identified. These practices are categorized according to confirming/challenging and self‐directed/community‐directed dimensions. The paper provides a typology of online community dynamics, emphasizing the importance of challenging practices for community development. It also has important implications for companies who wish to understand food lifestyles and develop online platforms for their customers. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Weird World of Cross-Cultural False-Belief Research: A True- and False-Belief Study Among Samoan Children Based on Commands

Previous cross-cultural research using false-belief tasks has explored whether children's theory of mind develops synchronously across cultures. Success on false-belief tasks is usually interpreted as an important indicator of children's mental state understanding, but inconsistent findings have led to questions regarding the interpretation of children's success and failure. Based on the assumptions of perceptual access reasoning (Hedger & Fabricius, 2011 Hedger, J. A., & Fabricius, W. V. (2011). True belief belies false belief: Recent findings of competence in infants and limitations in 5-year-olds, and implications for theory of mind development. Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 2, 429–447.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) and reflecting on inconsistencies in cross-cultural false-belief research, we argue for the advantages of the additional use of true-belief tasks, which can help to differentiate between different levels of children's reasoning. Consequently, a false-belief task and a true-belief task were derived from typical Samoan adult–child interactions. The performance of 40 Samoan children aged 5 to 7 years old was compared to the performance of 40 age-matched German children. While German children passed both tasks, Samoan children failed the false-belief task and did not reply above chance level in the true-belief task. According to our knowledge, this is the first study using both a false-belief task and true-belief task in a cross-cultural setting. Our results reveal additional patterns of reasoning that are neither in line with perceptual access reasoning nor with a representational understanding of false beliefs. The study is discussed in terms of a more general problem of experimental research in non-Western settings.     

Error detection and error memory in spatial navigation as reflected by electrodermal activity

The study investigated spatial navigation by means of electrodermal activity (EDA). Two groups of healthy subjects (group 1, age <38; group 2, age ≥38) were recorded during navigation through two 3-D virtual mazes differing in difficulty, that is, Maze Simple (MazeS) and Maze Complex (MazeC). Our results show (1) an effect of difficulty, that is, larger skin conductance responses (SCRs) and slower velocity profiles while navigating through MazeC as compared to MazeS. (2) An effect of age, that is, larger SCRs and faster velocity profiles in younger subjects (group 1) compared to older subjects (group 2). (3) An effect of maze region, that is, SCRs increased when subjects entered dead ends with group 1 (young group) decreasing in velocity, whereas group 2 (old group) increased in velocity. (4) And an error memory effect, that is, subjects who remembered an error at a given decision point (crossroads preceding dead ends in MazeC) from previous trials, and then if they did not repeat that error, elicited decreased SCRs as compared to subjects who did not remember and subsequently repeated an error. The latter aspect is the most impactful as it shows that EDA is able to reflect error detection and memory during spatial navigation. Our data designate EDA as suitable monitoring tool for identification and differentiation of the affective correlates underlying spatial navigation, which has recently attracted researchers’ attention due to its increased use in 3-D virtual environments.     

Physical activity and psychological benefits: A position statement from the international society of sport psychology

This study explores nonverbal behaviors in the form of gestures and touch during elite handball matches. Based on a coding scheme, 616 postshot periods following a goal, stemming from 18 matches, were analyzed. Results revealed that, on average, 2.77 nonverbal behaviors were displayed after scoring. Play-off matches resulted in a higher average of nonverbal behaviors than league matches. The more a team was leading by, the higher the overall number of nonverbal behaviors; meanwhile, the overall amount of nonverbal behaviors declined over the course of a match. The results pinpoint to the situation specificity of nonverbal behaviors during ongoing matches.     

Health-Related Quality of Life is Associated with Positive Affect in Patients with Coronary Heart Disease Entering Cardiac Rehabilitation

Health-related quality of life (QoL) is an important and widely used outcome measure in cardiac populations. We examined the relationship between positive affect and health-related quality of life, controlling for traditional cardiovascular risk factors, clinical variables and negative affect. We further investigated the role of gender in this relationship given the well-known gender differences in cardiovascular health. We enrolled 746 patients with coronary heart disease (CHD) before they entered outpatient cardiac rehabilitation. All patients completed the Global Mood Scale and the SF-36 Health Survey. Positive affect was independently associated with mental (p < .001) and physical QoL (p < .001) after controlling for control variables. Gender moderated the relationship between positive affect and physical QoL (p = .009) but not mental QoL (p = .60). Positive affect was positively associated with physical QoL in men (p < .001) but not in women (p = .44). The health-related QoL of patients with CHD is associated with a person’s level of positive affect.     

Gaze control and recollective experience in face recognition

In two experiments, we examined the relation between gaze control and recollective experience in the context of face recognition. In Experiment 1, participants studied a series of faces, while their eye movements were eliminated either during study or test, or both. Subsequently, they made remember/know judgements for each recognized test face. The preclusion of eye movements impaired explicit recollection without affecting familiarity-based recognition. In Experiment 2, participants examined unfamiliar faces under two study conditions (similarity vs. difference judgements), while their eye movements were registered. Similarity vs. difference judgements produced the opposite effects on remember/know responses, with no systematic effects on eye movements. However, face recollection was related to eye movements, so that remember responses were associated with more frequent refixations than know responses. These findings suggest that saccadic eye movements mediate the nature of recollective experience, and that explicit recollection reflects a greater consistency between study and test fixations than familiarity-based face recognition.     

Is multiple object tracking carried out automatically by an early vision mechanism independent of higher‐order cognition? An individual difference approach

Existing theories of multiple object tracking (MOT) offer different predictions concerning the role of higher level cognitive processes, individual differences, effortful attention and parallel processing in MOT. Pylyshyn's model (1989) argues for an automatic parallel processing mechanism separate from other cognition, whereas alternative models (e.g., Kahneman & Treisman, 1984 or spotlight models) are based on higher level cognition such as spatial short‐term memory and/or effortful attention switching. These predictions were examined in Experiment 1 where identical objects and in Experiment 2 where visually and semantically distinct objects were tracked. Both experiments demonstrated a substantial individual variation in the estimated tracking capacity. Tasks measuring visuospatial short‐term memory and attention switching proved to be significant predictors of MOT. In addition, tracking performance deteriorated as a function of tracking time and set size. Our results are in contrast to Pylyshyn's model. A mechanism with both parallel and serial processing and temporary spatial memory is outlined to accommodate the observed pattern of results.