When linking is stronger than thinking: Associative transfer of valence disrupts the emergence of cognitive balance after attitude change

The present research investigated the role of cognitive balance vs. associative transfer of valence in attitude change. Participants first formed positive or negative attitudes toward several source individuals. Subsequently, participants were shown source–target pairs along with information about the source–target relationship (‘likes’/‘dislikes’). Afterwards, participants’ attitudes toward the sources were changed by means of information that was opposite to the initially induced attitude. In a control condition, initial source attitudes remained unqualified. Results in the control condition showed that initially formed attitudes and available relationship information produced target evaluations that were consistent with the notion of cognitive balance. However, when attitudes toward the sources changed, target evaluations directly matched attitudes toward individually associated sources, irrespective of the relation between source and target. These results suggest that associative transfer of valence can disrupt the emergence of cognitive balance after attitude change.     

Interracial contexts debilitate same-race face recognition

Social cognitive research has documented the integral role of social categories (e.g., race) in face processing. Activating a social category can lead perception and memory of faces to be biased in a category-consistent direction. The current research extends this past work, to test the hypothesis that making a social category salient can reduce subsequent face recognition. In two experiments, the current research finds that the typically superior same-race recognition is debilitated by making the same-race category salient. We find that when White-Americans self-categorize as ‘White,’ subsequent perceptual and memorial biases reduce the typically strong same-race recognition.     

Heuristic and analytic processes in mental models for conditionals: An integrative developmental theory

This article presents a developmental dual-process theory of the understanding of conditionals that integrates Evans’ heuristic–analytic theory within the revised mental model theory of conditional proposed by Barrouillet, Gauffroy, and Lecas (2008). According to this theory, the interpretation of a conditional sentence is driven by unconscious and implicit heuristic processes that provide individuals with an initial representation that captures its meaning by representing the cases that make it true. This initial model can be enriched with additional models (a process named fleshing out within the mental model theory) through the intervention of conscious and demanding analytic processes. Being optional, these processes construct representations of cases that are only compatible with the conditional, leaving its truth-value indeterminate when they occur. Because heuristic processes are relatively immune to developmental changes, while analytic processes strongly develop with age, the initial model remains stable through development whereas the number of additional models that can be constructed increases steadily. Thus, the dual-process mental model theory predicts in which cases conditionals will be deemed true, indeterminate, or false and how these cases evolve with age. These predictions were verified in children, adolescents and adults who were asked to evaluate the truth value and the probability of several types of conditionals. The results reveal a variety of developmental trajectories in the way different conditionals are interpreted, which can all be accounted for by our revised mental model theory.     

Mental number line disruption in a right-neglect patient after a left-hemisphere stroke

A right-neglect patient with focal left-hemisphere damage to the posterior superior parietal lobe was assessed for numerical knowledge and tested on the bisection of numerical intervals and visual lines. The semantic and verbal knowledge of numbers was preserved, whereas the performance in numerical tasks that strongly emphasize the visuo-spatial layout of numbers (e.g. number bisection) was impaired. The behavioral pattern of error in the two bisection tasks mirrored the one previously described in left-neglect patients. In other words, our patient misplaced the subjective midpoint (numerical or visual) to the left as function of the interval size. These data, paired with the patient's lesion site are strictly consistent with the tripartite organization of number-related processes in the parietal lobes as proposed by Dehaene and colleagues. According to these authors, the posterior superior parietal lobe on both hemispheres underpins the attentional orientation on the putative mental number line, the horizontal segment of the intraparietal sulcus is bilaterally related to the semantic of the numerical domain, whereas the left angular gyrus subserves the verbal knowledge of numbers. In summary, our results suggest that the processes involved in the navigation along the mental number line, which are related to the parietal mechanisms for spatial attention, and the processes involved in the semantic and verbal knowledge of numbers, are dissociable.     

Cognitive models of choice: comparing decision field theory to the proportional difference model

People often face preferential decisions under risk. To further our understanding of the cognitive processes underlying these preferential choices, two prominent cognitive models, decision field theory (DFT; Busemeyer & Townsend, 1993 ) and the proportional difference model (PD; González-Vallejo, 2002 ), were rigorously tested against each other. In two consecutive experiments, the participants repeatedly had to choose between monetary gambles. The first experiment provided the reference to estimate the models' free parameters. From these estimations, new gamble pairs were generated for the second experiment such that the two models made maximally divergent predictions. In the first experiment, both models explained the data equally well. However, in the second generalization experiment, the participants' choices were much closer to the predictions of DFT. The results indicate that the stochastic process assumed by DFT, in which evidence in favor of or against each option accumulates over time, described people's choice behavior better than the trade-offs between proportional differences assumed by PD.     

Research on cognitive, social and cultural processes of written communication

This article compiles the investigations carried out by a Research Group of the University of Granada, Spain. Its different projects on writing’s cognitive social and cultural processes have been supported by the Spanish Government. This line of research joined together linguistic, psychological, social and cultural contributions to the development of writing from the 1970s. Currently, this line of research develops in collaboration with other European Universities: (a) Interuniversity Centre for Research On Cognitive Processing in Natural and Artificial Systems (ECONA), “La Sapienza” University of Rome (Italy); (b) Anadolu University, (Eskisehir, Turkey); (c) Coimbra University (Portugal); (d) University of Zaragoza (Spain); (e) the Institute of Education of the University of London (United Kingdom). The aforementioned collaboration is materializing into projects like the International Master on Multilingual Writing: Cognitive, Intercultural and Technological Processes of Written Communication () and the International Congress: Writing in the twenty-first Century: Cognition, Multilinguisim and Technologies, held in Granada (). This research line is focussed on the development of strategies in writing development, basic to train twenty-first century societies’ citizens. In these societies, participation in production media, social exchange and the development of multilingual written communication skills through new computer technologies spread multicultural values. In order to fulfil the social exigencies, it is needed to have the collaboration of research groups for designing and applying international research projects. International Master. Multilingual Writing Web: , .     

长时记忆中文本目标信息的激活机制

选取138名大学生被试,采用移动窗口实时阅读技术和探测技术,探讨文本理解过程中长时记忆的目标信息激活的机制。实验1探讨在中文条件下目标焦点是否也启动长时记忆中目标信息的整合。结果表明在目标实现的条件下,目标句1可以作为目标启动句,激活进入长时记忆中的目标信息。实验2和3探讨长时记忆中目标信息的激活是自然实现的还是需要目标愈合信号启动激活,实验结果表明长时记忆中目标信息的激活需要目标愈合信号的启动。该研究结果总的表明:阅读过程长时记忆中目标信息的激活不需要与当前阅读信息发生共振,目标愈合情境是影响长时记忆目标信息通达的关键因素。     

学习不良儿童研究的社会认知取向

用认知范式研究学习不良,可以从基本心理过程障碍和社会信息加工过程障碍这“两种认知过程障碍”来理解其学业和社会性困难的深层心理机制。根据该观点以及对学习不良的理解,提出用社会认知的范式推进学习不良儿童社会性研究的思路,以超越当前研究面临的困境。具体是从比较研究的视角探讨学习不良儿童与一般儿童在社会认知过程上的差异以及社会认知中主客体各因素之间的相互作用。     

Implicit learning revealed by the method of opposition

Complex information, such as that required for motor skills, can be learned implicitly, without awareness. Much debate has centered on the appropriate methods for proving that implicit learning is not influenced by explicit awareness. A recent study by Destrebecqz and Cleeremans has provided compelling evidence for implicit sequence learning without awareness by using the ‘method of opposition’.     

Fronto-parietal mirror neuron system modeling: Visuospatial transformations support imitation learning independently of imitator perspective

Although the human mirror neuron system (MNS) is critical for action observation and imitation, most MNS investigations overlook the visuospatial transformation processes that allow individuals to interpret and imitate actions observed from differing perspectives. This problem is not trivial since accurately reaching for and grasping an object requires a visuospatial transformation mechanism capable of precisely remapping fine motor skills where the observer’s and imitator’s arms and hands may have quite different orientations and sizes. Accordingly, here we describe a novel neural model to investigate the dynamics between the fronto-parietal MNS and visuospatial processes during observation and imitation of a reaching and grasping action. Our model encompasses i) the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and inferior parietal lobule (IPL), regions that are postulated to produce neural drive and sensory predictions, respectively; ii) the middle temporal (MT) and middle superior temporal (MST) regions that are postulated to process visual motion of a particular action; and iii) the superior parietal lobule (SPL) and intra-parietal sulcus (IPS) that are hypothesized to encode the visuospatial transformations enabling action observation/imitation based on different visuospatial viewpoints. The results reveal that when a demonstrator executes an action, an imitator can reproduce it with similar kinematics, independently of differences in anthropometry, distance, and viewpoint. As with prior empirical findings, similar model synaptic activity was observed during both action observation and execution along with the existence of both view-independent and view-dependent neural populations in the frontal MNS. Importantly, this work generates testable behavioral and neurophysiological predictions. Namely, the model predicts that i) during observation/imitation the response time increases linearly as the rotation angle of the observed action increases but remain similar when performing both clockwise and counterclockwise rotation and ii) IPL embeds essentially view-independent neurons while SPL/IPS includes both view-independent and view-dependent neurons. Overall, this work suggests that MT/MST visuomotion processes combined with the SPL/IPS allow the MNS to observe and imitate actions independently of demonstrator-imitator spatial relationships.