Dissociation of Bimanual Responses With the Simon Effect: On the Nonunitization of Bimanual Responses

The authors examined whether responses of the 2 hands were completely unitized when participants (N = 36) produced bimanual responses to lateralized targets in a Simon-type paradigm. Their primary aim was to investigate whether lateralized stimuli differentially influence the response dynamics of the 2 hands. Simon effects were obtained in reaction time and force; components of the bimanual response by the hand on the same side as the lateralized stimulus were more forceful than were those of the other hand. Also, Simon effects were larger when the lateralized target appeared alone than when it was accompanied by a distractor on the other side of the display. Finally, responses of the 2 hands were correlated most strongly when stimulus displays were symmetrical. The authors conclude that bimanual responses are strongly coupled, but not perfectly so.     

Effects of adaptive cruise control and highly automated driving on workload and situation awareness: A review of the empirical evidence

Adaptive cruise control (ACC), a driver assistance system that controls longitudinal motion, has been introduced in consumer cars in 1995. A next milestone is highly automated driving (HAD), a system that automates both longitudinal and lateral motion. We investigated the effects of ACC and HAD on drivers’ workload and situation awareness through a meta-analysis and narrative review of simulator and on-road studies. Based on a total of 32 studies, the unweighted mean self-reported workload was 43.5% for manual driving, 38.6% for ACC driving, and 22.7% for HAD (0% = minimum, 100 = maximum on the NASA Task Load Index or Rating Scale Mental Effort). Based on 12 studies, the number of tasks completed on an in-vehicle display relative to manual driving (100%) was 112% for ACC and 261% for HAD. Drivers of a highly automated car, and to a lesser extent ACC drivers, are likely to pick up tasks that are unrelated to driving. Both ACC and HAD can result in improved situation awareness compared to manual driving if drivers are motivated or instructed to detect objects in the environment. However, if drivers are engaged in non-driving tasks, situation awareness deteriorates for ACC and HAD compared to manual driving. The results of this review are consistent with the hypothesis that, from a Human Factors perspective, HAD is markedly different from ACC driving, because the driver of a highly automated car has the possibility, for better or worse, to divert attention to secondary tasks, whereas an ACC driver still has to attend to the roadway.     

The interruptive effect of pain on attention

Pain is known to disrupt attentional performance in both healthy adults and patients with chronic pain. Exactly which aspects of attentional function are affected are, however, still to be determined. The primary aim of this investigation was to systematically examine the effects of experimentally induced pain on a range of attentional performance tasks. Following a review of tests of attentional disruption, seven best candidate tasks were selected and examined across seven experiments. The tasks were: continuous performance, flanker, endogenous precueing, n-back, inhibition, attentional switching, and divided attention. Healthy adult participants performed each of these tasks under three different conditions: a painful heat sensation, a warm heat sensation, and a nonheat control. Pain differentially affected attentional performance across these tasks; pain-related attentional impairment was found on the n-back, attentional switching, and divided attention tasks, but not on the other tasks. This finding suggests that the aspects of attention most affected by pain are those essential for the completion of complex tasks that require the processing of multiple cues and control over attentional deployment. These results are discussed in the context of an emerging view of pain as a demand for executive control and the development of measures that could be used to examine attentional disruption in the context of pain.     

Spreading the words: A spacing effect in vocabulary learning

The spacing effect refers to the frequently observed finding that distributing learning across time leads to better retention than massing it into one single study session. In the present study, we examined whether the spacing effect generalises to primary school vocabulary learning. To this aim, children from Grade 3 were taught the meaning of 15 new words using a massed procedure and 15 other new words using a spaced procedure. The 15 words in the massed condition were divided into three sets of five words, and each set was taught three times in one of three learning sessions. In the spaced condition, learning was distributed across the three sessions: All 15 words were practised once in each of the three learning sessions. At the retention tests after 1 week and after 5 weeks we observed that the meaning of spaced words was remembered better than the meaning of massed words.     

Intellectual Profiles and Violent Behavior in Juvenile Delinquents

Hemispheric laterality, measured by the Wechsler Verbal IQ-Performance IQ differential score, in a large group of delinquents (N = 101) was not associated with violent-nonviolent behavior. Delinquents were, however, likely to be relatively more impaired on verbal than on nonverbal intellectual capacities.     

On the falsifiability of matching theory.

Herrnstein's matching theory requires the parameter, k, which appears in the single-alternative form of the matching equation, to remain invariant with respect to changes in reinforcement parameters like magnitude or immediacy. Recent experiments have disconfirmed matching theory by showing that the invariant-k requirement does not hold. However, the theory can be asserted in a purely algebraic form that does not require an invariant k and that is not disconfirmed by the recent findings. In addition, both the original and the purely algebraic versions of matching theory can be asserted in forms that allow for commonly observed deviations from matching (bias, undermatching, and overmatching). The recent finding of a variable k does not disconfirm these versions of matching theory either. As a consequence, matching remains a viable theory of behavior, the strength of which lies in its general conceptualization of all behavior as choice, and in its unified mathematical treatment of single- and multialternative environments.     

A taste of words: linguistic context and perceptual simulation predict the modality of words

Previous studies have shown that object properties are processed faster when they follow properties from the same perceptual modality than properties from different modalities. These findings suggest that language activates sensorimotor processes, which, according to those studies, can only be explained by a modal account of cognition. The current paper shows how a statistical linguistic approach of word co-occurrences can also reliably predict the category of perceptual modality a word belongs to (auditory, olfactory-gustatory, visual-haptic), even though the statistical linguistic approach is less precise than the modal approach (auditory, gustatory, haptic, olfactory, visual). Moreover, the statistical linguistic approach is compared with the modal embodied approach in an experiment in which participants verify properties that share or shift modalities. Response times suggest that fast responses can best be explained by the linguistic account, whereas slower responses can best be explained by the embodied account. These results provide further evidence for the theory that conceptual processing is both linguistic and embodied, whereby less precise linguistic processes precede precise simulation processes.     

跨领域项目间联结记忆中项目提取和关系提取的分离：一项事件相关电位研究

使用ERPs技术, 探讨跨领域项目间联结记忆中项目提取和关系提取的差异。学习阶段, 系列呈现面孔-事件动词材料, 让被试识记面孔、事件动词以及两者之间的关系; 测验阶段, 要求被试对成对刺激进行“相同”、“重组”或“新”判断。结果发现：提取阶段, 刺激呈现后约200 ms, “相同”、“重组”和“新”3种条件下的ERPs开始出现分离, 存在“相同/新”、“重组/新”和“相同/重组”三类新旧效应。在200~300 ms, “相同/新”和“重组/新”两类新旧效应表现在前额和额区皮层; 在300~500 ms, 这两类新旧效应广泛地分布在从前到后各个脑区皮层; 在500~700 ms, “相同/新”新旧效应出现在额-顶区皮层, 而无“重组/新”新旧效应; 在700~1400 ms, 这两类新旧效应发生在前额和额区皮层; 在上述4个时段, “相同/重组”关系新旧效应都发生在额中-中央-顶区皮层。从这些结果可以推知：跨领域项目间联结再认中, 项目新旧效应和关系新旧效应同时出现, 但是关系提取比项目提取较晚完成; 额中-中央-顶区皮层关系新旧效应反映了对项目间关系的回忆加工; 而700 ms以后, 前额、额区皮层新旧效应可能反映了项目之间关系提取过程的执行加工功能。     

小学生同伴接纳对其人格发展的影响：友谊质量的多层级中介效应

以班级为单位选取1-6年级23个班级的小学生,通过最好朋友提名法,得到有互选朋友有效被试700人,采用同伴提名法、小学生友谊质量问卷、小学生人格发展教师评定问卷,运用多层线性模型（HLM）考察个体和班级两个水平上的同伴接纳、友谊质量对人格的影响,并在两个水平上检验友谊质量在同伴接纳对人格的影响上的多层中介效应。结果表明：（1）班级水平：班级平均友谊质量对外倾性、亲社会性、认真自控、情绪稳定性有预测作用;班级平均同伴接纳对情绪稳定性有预测作用。（2）个体水平：同伴接纳对人格5个维度均有直接影响;除情绪稳定性,友谊质量分别在同伴接纳对智能特征、外倾性、亲社会性、认真自控影响上有部分中介效应。