Observation of Depictive Versus Tracing Gestures Selectively Aids Verbal Versus Visual–Spatial Learning in Primary School Children

Previous research has established that gesture observation aids learning in children. The current study examined whether observation of gestures (i.e. depictive and tracing gestures) differentially affected verbal and visual–spatial retention when learning a route and its street names. Specifically, we explored whether children (n = 97) with lower visual and verbal working‐memory capacity benefited more from observing gestures as compared with children who score higher on these traits. To this end, 11‐ to 13‐year‐old children were presented with an instructional video of a route containing no gestures, depictive gestures, tracing gestures or both depictive and tracing gestures. Results indicated that the type of observed gesture affected performance: Observing tracing gestures or both tracing and depictive gestures increased performance on route retention, while observing depictive gestures or both depictive and tracing gestures increased performance on street name retention. These effects were not differentially affected by working‐memory capacity. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Beyond left and right: Automaticity and flexibility of number-space associations

Close links exist between the processing of numbers and the processing of space: relatively small numbers are preferentially associated with a left-sided response while relatively large numbers are associated with a right-sided response (the SNARC effect). Previous work demonstrated that the SNARC effect is triggered in an automatic manner and is highly flexible. Besides the left-right dimension, numbers associate with other spatial response mappings such as close/far responses, where small numbers are associated with a close response and large numbers with a far response. In two experiments we investigate the nature of this association. Associations between magnitude and close/far responses were observed using a magnitude-irrelevant task (Experiment 1: automaticity) and using a variable referent task (Experiment 2: flexibility). While drawing a strong parallel between both response mappings, the present results are also informative with regard to the question about what type of processing mechanism underlies both the SNARC effect and the association between numerical magnitude and close/far response locations.     

What to diffuse in a gender‐specific store? The effect of male and female perfumes on customer value and behaviour

Sensory marketing can be an efficient way to involve consumers in the store environment. Diffusing a pleasant ambient scent that matches with the store setting is often used to create pleasant shopping experiences. The aim of this study is to extend scent marketing research: (i) by examining the effect of pleasant ambient scent on the different dimensions of customer value; and (ii) by exploring whether product‐scent incongruity can have a positive effect on consumer evaluations. A field experiment with 182 participants showed that a pleasant gender‐incongruent ambient perfume positively influences different dimensions of customer value as compared to the absence of a perfume. Moreover, a gender‐incongruent perfume also leads to a more positive evaluation of the play, product excellence, and social dimension of customer value as compared to a gender‐congruent perfume. A pleasant gender‐congruent ambient perfume, on the other hand, only has a positive effect on the aesthetic dimension of customer value as compared to the absence of a perfume. The observed ambient scent effects do not differ between men and women. These results are in contrast with existing literature. However, an explanation for this undocumented effect can be found in the mate attraction theory. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Does contingency awareness mediate the influence of emotional learning on the cueing of visual attention?

Previous research has indicated that conditioning depends on contingency awareness (CA). However, we argue that these studies have examined this issue under methodological conditions that might be insensitive to associative learning without CA. In the present study we examined the effect of an experimental manipulation of CA on attentive processing of classically conditioned stimuli, which is sensitive to associative learning with and without CA. We found that aversive conditioning with additional contingency instructions modulated visual attention, in the sense that the conditioned cues captured and held attention more strongly than the non-conditioned cues. Surprisingly, conditioning under conditions of restricted CA yielded a response pattern that was different from that under full CA. These findings suggest that conditioning with full and restricted CA can lead to qualitatively different effects on attention.     

Multidimensional Adaptive Testing with Optimal Design Criteria for Item Selection

Several criteria from the optimal design literature are examined for use with item selection in multidimensional adaptive testing. In particular, it is examined what criteria are appropriate for adaptive testing in which all abilities are intentional, some should be considered as a nuisance, or the interest is in the testing of a composite of the abilities. Both the theoretical analyses and the studies of simulated data in this paper suggest that the criteria of A-optimality and D-optimality lead to the most accurate estimates when all abilities are intentional, with the former slightly outperforming the latter. The criterion of E-optimality showed occasional erratic behavior for this case of adaptive testing, and its use is not recommended. If some of the abilities are nuisances, application of the criterion of A _s -optimality (or D _s -optimality), which focuses on the subset of intentional abilities is recommended. For the measurement of a linear combination of abilities, the criterion of c-optimality yielded the best results. The preferences of each of these criteria for items with specific patterns of parameter values was also assessed. It was found that the criteria differed mainly in their preferences of items with different patterns of values for their discrimination parameters. The first author is now at the Department of Methodology and Statistics, Statistics, Faculty of Social Sciences, Utrecht University, Heidelberglaan 1, 3854 Utrecht, The Netherlands. The second author is now at Research Department, CTB/McGraw-Hill, Monterey, CA, USA.     

Developmental trends in everyday conditional reasoning: the retrieval and inhibition interplay

Two experiments examined developmental patterns in children’s conditional reasoning with everyday causal conditionals. In Experiment 1, a group of pre-, early, young, and late adolescents generated counterexamples for a set of conditionals to validate developmental claims about the counterexample retrieval capacity. In Experiment 2, participants in the same age range were presented with a conditional reasoning task with similar conditionals. Experiment 1 established that counterexample retrieval increased from preadolescence to late adolescence. Experiment 2 showed that acceptance rates of the invalid affirmation of the consequent inference gradually decreased in the same age range. Acceptance rates of the valid modus ponens inference showed a U-shaped pattern. After an initial drop from preadolescence to early adolescence, modus ponens acceptance ratings increased again after the onset of adolescence. Findings support the claim that the development of everyday conditional reasoning can be characterized as an interplay between the development of a counterexample retrieval and inhibition process.     

Offline and online automatic number comparison

This paper focuses on automatic number processing as instantiated in the size congruity effect. It was recently argued that long-term "associations between individual digits and the attributes 'small' and 'large' create the size congruity effect" (Choplin and Logan 2003, abstract, p. 17). Moreover, these authors proposed the additional assumption that the relevant connections are acquired over a lifetime of experience with numbers. We show that at least one of these assumptions is not true: either the size congruity effect derives from an (online) comparison effect between two numbers at the time of stimulus presentation (violating the first assumption) or the relevant connections flexibly change (offline) between trials during the course of one experimental session (violating the second assumption).