Inattentional blindness for negative relationships in human causal learning

The present study focuses on the effect of selective attention on causal learning. Three effects of the level of attention to predictive symptoms in positive and negative contingency learning tasks are reported. First, participants accurately detected a positive relationship between an incidental cue and a contingent outcome, although judgements were slightly lower than those for the attended cue. Second, participants were unable to detect negative relationships between incidental cues and outcomes, which suggests a major role of selective attention in this type of learning. Third, participants retrieved the frequency of each trial type more accurately in the attended conditions than in the incidental conditions. These findings show how attention guides and constrains human causal learning and reveal an inattentional blindness effect for negative contingency learning.     

Testing for the presence of 1/f noise in continuation tapping data.

A number of recent papers have suggested that the series of time intervals produced in continuation tapping may have fractal properties. This proposition, nevertheless, was only based on the visual appraisal of graphical results, and was not statistically supported. In the present study, we applied the ARMA/ARFIMA modeling procedures proposed by Wagenmakers, Farrell, and Ratcliff (2005) to test for the presence of long-range dependencies in continuation tapping data. Our results demonstrate the presence of long-range dependencies in most series and offer strong support for the hypothesis that fluctuations in tapping series are fractal in nature.     

Passion for Driving and Aggressive Driving Behavior: A Look at Their Relationship

The purpose of the present research was to investigate the relationship between passion for driving and aggressive driving behavior in 3 studies. Study 1 examined the association between passion and aggressive driving behavior in a sample of undergraduate students. Results showed that an obsessive passion for driving was associated with aggressive driving behavior, while harmonious passion was not. Study 2 replicated these results with an ecologically valid sample of community‐dwelling drivers. Finally, Study 3 replicated the results obtained in Studies 1 and 2 in a laboratory setting using a driving simulator under controlled frustrating driving situations with judges' assessment of aggressive driving behavior. Study 3 also showed that the emotion of anger mediated the obsessive‐passion/aggressive‐driving‐behavior relationship.     

What some effects might not be: The time to verify membership in 'well-defined' categories

Armstrong, Gleitman, and Gleitman (1983) reported shorter categorization times for members of well-defined categories judged more typical. They concluded that these effects could not originate in a graded, similarity-based category representation and consequently that the typicality effects obtained with natural categories might not be indicative of such a structure either. In this article, we re-examine this conclusion, focusing first on the performance obtained with well-defined categories of different sizes. Only the larger categories used showed variations in typicality ratings and produced typicality effects on categorization times. However,multiple regression analyses showed the effects on categorization times to be better explained by a measure of associative strength, called category dominance. The range of various predictor variables was equated in a follow-up experiment involving large, natural, and well-defined categories. Results obtained with well-defined categories showed pronounced dominance effects when typicality was controlled, but no reliable typicality effect when category dominance and instance familiarity were controlled. Results were opposite for natural categories. By showing that well-defined categories fail to produce unbiased typicality effects, our results bring added support to the hypothesis that the effects obtained with natural categories originate in a graded, similarity-based category structure.     

Judgement frequency, belief revision, and serial processing of causal information

The main aim of this research was to study the cognitive architecture underlying causal/covariation learning by investigating the frequency of judgement effect. Previous research has shown that decreasing the number of trials between opportunities to make a judgement in a covariation learning task led to a higher score after an a or d type of trial (positive cases) than after b and c trials (negative cases). Experiment 1 replicated this effect using a trial-by-trial procedure and examined the conditions under which it occurs. Experiment 2 demonstrated a similar frequency of judgement effect when the information was presented in the form of contingency tables. Associative or statistical single-mechanism accounts of causal and covariation learning do not provide a satisfactory explanation for these findings. An alternative belief revision model is presented.     

Mechanisms of visuospatial orienting in deafness

The aim of this work was to explore the nature of elementary operations (engage, move, disengage, and filtering) of spatial attention in deaf experts in sign language. Good communication skills require deaf people to rapidly change attention to at least two separate spatial locations, the facial expression and the hand signs of the speaker. Overtraining imposed by sign language demands might have modified certain characteristics of the spatial attention operations. To test that, a spatial orienting task was used in two experiments. Experiment 1 showed that deaf subjects reoriented their attention to the target location faster than hearing subjects in invalid trials. Experiment 2 indicated that inhibition of return decays faster in deaf than in hearing people. These results suggest that deaf subjects can disengage their attention faster than hearing subjects, fostering search of relevant information in more spatial locations.     

A methodological note on nonlinear time series analysis: is the open- and closed-loop model of Collins and De Luca (1993) a statistical artifact?

The authors reexamined, theoretically and empirically, the method proposed by J. J. Collins and C. D. De Luca (1993) for the analysis of center-of-pressure trajectories. The main argument in this article is that Collins and De Luca's approach is not adapted to the analysis of bounded time series and leads to statistical artifacts such as underestimation of the diffusion process for long-term intervals. The open- and closed-loop model developed by Collins and De Luca is a direct consequence of those statistical problems. Applying more classical methods, such as rescaled range analysis or detrended fluctuation analysis, the authors show that center-of-pressure trajectories can be modeled as continuous, antipersistent fractional Brownian motion. More specifically, those trajectories behave like 1/f noise, a ubiquitous feature in adaptive biological systems.     

Validation of a shortened assessment of physical self in adults

The purpose was to adapt a brief tool, the Physical Self Inventory-Version b, for the assessment of physical self in adults. The inventory is a refined version of the previously validated version, which was derived from the Physical Self Inventory (25 items). This French validation of the Physical Self-Perception Profile of Fox and Corbin includes a global self-esteem scale. As in the earlier version the current one has 6 single items to assess dimensions of global self-esteem, physical selfworth, sport competence, physical condition, attractive body, and physical strength. Rating is performed on a visual analog scale. Items in the new inventory were stated in the first person and in more general terms to be acceptable to a wider range of subjects. An item of measurement error was added. Analysis of responses of 185 men and 148 women to the new version supported the hierarchical structure. Significant correlations between the scores and constructs like masculinity, neuroticism, and depression indicated external validity. The new inventory showed acceptable psychometric properties for use in idiographic studies.     

The level and nature of autistic intelligence

Autistics are presumed to be characterized by cognitive impairment, and their cognitive strengths (e.g., in Block Design performance) are frequently interpreted as low-level by-products of high-level deficits, not as direct manifestations of intelligence. Recent attempts to identify the neuroanatomical and neurofunctional signature of autism have been positioned on this universal, but untested, assumption. We therefore assessed a broad sample of 38 autistic children on the preeminent test of fluid intelligence, Raven's Progressive Matrices. Their scores were, on average, 30 percentile points, and in some cases more than 70 percentile points, higher than their scores on the Wechsler scales of intelligence. Typically developing control children showed no such discrepancy, and a similar contrast was observed when a sample of autistic adults was compared with a sample of nonautistic adults. We conclude that intelligence has been underestimated in autistics.