Investigating the role of response in spatial context learning

Recent research has shown that simple motor actions, such as pointing or grasping, can modulate the way we perceive and attend to our visual environment. Here we examine the role of action in spatial context learning. Previous studies using keyboard responses have revealed that people are faster locating a target on repeated visual search displays (“contextual cueing”). However, this learning appears to depend on the task and response requirements. In Experiment 1, participants searched for a T-target among L-distractors and responded either by pressing a key or by touching the screen. Comparable contextual cueing was found in both response modes. Moreover, learning transferred between keyboard and touch screen responses. Experiment 2 showed that learning occurred even for repeated displays that required no response, and this learning was as strong as learning for displays that required a response. Learning on no-response trials cannot be accounted for by oculomotor responses, as learning was observed when eye movements were discouraged (Experiment 3). We suggest that spatial context learning is abstracted from motor actions.     

Is it relevant? Influence of trial manipulations of prospective memory context on task interference

The effects of blocked versus mixed presentation were tested on visual feature binding, assuming that blocked presentation enhances focused attention, whilst mixed presentation recruits extra attentional resources for intratrial as well as intertrial processing. The contextual interference effect suggests that although performance due to mixed presentation is either similar or worse than blocked presentation when tested immediately, it is better when tested after an interval. We explored whether this robust empirical effect, common in psychomotor performance, would be evident in visual feature binding. Stimuli were conjunctions of shape, colour, and location. Study–test intervals from 0 to 2,500 ms were used with a swap detection task. In Experiments 1A and 1B, participants ignored locations to detect shape–colour bindings. In Experiments 2A and 2B, they ignored shapes to detect colour–location binding. In Experiments 3A and 3B, they ignored colours to detect shape–location bindings. Whilst Experiments 1A, 2A, and 3A used blocked presentation, Experiments 1B, 2B, and 3B used mixed presentation of study–test intervals. The results of these experiments and a replication experiment using a within-subjects design showed that the contextual interference effect appeared when spatial attention was engaged, but not when attention was object based.     

On the advantages of word frequency and contextual diversity measures extracted from subtitles: The case of Portuguese

We examined the potential advantage of the lexical databases using subtitles and present SUBTLEX-PT, a new lexical database for 132,710 Portuguese words obtained from a 78 million corpus based on film and television series subtitles, offering word frequency and contextual diversity measures. Additionally we validated SUBTLEX-PT with a lexical decision study involving 1920 Portuguese words (and 1920 nonwords) with different lengths in letters (M?=?6.89, SD?=?2.10) and syllables (M?=?2.99, SD?=?0.94). Multiple regression analyses on latency and accuracy data were conducted to compare the proportion of variance explained by the Portuguese subtitle word frequency measures with that accounted by the recent written-word frequency database (Procura-PALavras; P-PAL; Soares, Iriarte, et al., 2014 Soares, A. P., Iriarte, A., Almeida, J. J., Simões, A., Costa, A., França, P.,?… Comesaña, M. (2014). Procura-PALavras (P-PAL): Uma nova medida de frequência lexical do Português Europeu contemporâneo [Procura-PALavras (P-PAL): A new measure of word frequency for contemporary European Portuguese]. Psicologia: Reflexão e Crítica, 27, 110–123.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). As its international counterparts, SUBTLEX-PT explains approximately 15% more of the variance in the lexical decision performance of young adults than the P-PAL database. Moreover, in line with recent studies, contextual diversity accounted for approximately 2% more of the variance in participants' reading performance than the raw frequency counts obtained from subtitles. SUBTLEX-PT is freely available for research purposes (at http://p-pal.di.uminho.pt/about/databases).     

Differences in psychosocial factors and fat consumption between stages of change for fat reduction

Abstract

Differences in fat consumption and psychosocial factors between subjects in different trans-theoretical stages of change for fat reduction were studied. Data on fat consumption, self-rated fat intake, attitudes, social support and self-efficacy were collected among a sample of 507 adults. Analysis of variance with Scheffe's multiple-comparison test was used to study differences in these factors between stages of change. Attitudes and social support were most positive among subjects in preparation and action. Self-efficacy expectations were lowest among subjects in contemplation and preparation. Fat consumption was highest among precontemplators hut no substantial differences between other stages were found. It is concluded that subjects in different stages of change differ in psychosocial factors that are regarded as important determinants of behavioral change. Based on these differences it is recommended to develop stage-tailored nutrition education. A majority of subjects in maintenance consumed more fat than is recommended. Therefore, it is suggested that the usually applied staging algorithms might need adjustment for a valid application in nutrition research.     

Predicting stage transitions for smoking cessation applying the attitude-social influence-efficacy model

Abstract

Cross-sectional studies integrating motivational stages with expectancy value models have suggested that contemplating smokers perceive more advantages of quitting and social support than precontemplators. Moreover, smokers preparing to quit were found to differ from precontemplators and contemplators by having higher self-efficacy expectations.

Using the ASE model, the present study confirmed the findings of these cross-sectional studies. The longitudinal design of this study, however, facilitated prediction of transitions that smokers made during a 10-month follow-up. Smokers who progressed from precontemplation perceived more advantages of quitting than those who remained in precontemplation. Smokers regressed from contemplation perceived fewer advantages of quitting than those who did not regress. Finally, smokers who progressed from preparation had higher self-efficacy expectations than those who did not progress.

In sum, the present study provided longitudinal support for the ø-pattern, which suggests tailoring of health educational messages to subjects in the various stages of change.     

Beyond the heritability of life satisfaction – The roles of personality and twin-specific influences

In a behavior genetic design, we investigated individual differences in life satisfaction and its relation to personality with respect to both internal and external influences. We questioned the absence of shared environment and examined the specific contribution of additive and non-additive genetic influences. We also tested for twin-specific environmental influences in a total sample of 1308 dyads including identical and fraternal twins, siblings, mother–child and grandparent–child pairs. The results showed substantial shared environmental influences on life satisfaction that varied between twins and non-twins, supporting twin-specific environmental influences. Additive and non-additive genetic influences on life satisfaction were completely shared with personality. The remaining variance could be explained by unique non-shared environmental influences for life satisfaction independent of personality.     

Teacher-child relationships as dynamic systems

The purpose of the present study was to examine factors associated with the quality of the teacher-child relationship from first through fifth grade using data from phases I, II and III of the National Institutes of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development, a prospective study of 1364 children from birth through sixth grade. On average, children evidenced moderately high quality relationships with teachers in fifth grade. However, there was extensive variation in fifth grade relationship quality across children. Children who received more support and stimulation at home and whose parents had higher quality interactions with the school had higher quality relationships. Additionally, children in classrooms with more positive environments and better management had higher quality relationships. Lastly, females, European-American children, children with lower levels of behavior problems and children who had higher quality relationships with their teachers in kindergarten also had higher quality relationships with teachers. On average, children evidenced decreases in the quality of their relationships with teachers from first through fifth grade. Interestingly, children whose parents had more contact with their schools, who were in schools where teachers received higher salaries and in classrooms that had more positive emotional climates and that were better managed evidenced slower rates of decline in relationship quality. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.     

Job crafting and extra-role behavior: The role of work engagement and flourishing

This study investigates whether crafting of job demands and resources relates positively to extra-role behavior (i.e. contextual performance and creativity) through work engagement and flourishing. We collected data from 294 employees and their supervisors regarding employees' contextual performance and creativity. Results show that seeking resources had a positive indirect relationship with contextual performance through work engagement, and with creativity through work engagement and flourishing. Reducing demands had negative indirect relationships with both contextual performance and creativity through work engagement. We conclude that particularly seeking resources has important implications for extra-role behavior and discuss the practical implications of these findings.     

Logic programming as classical inference

We propose a denotational semantics for logic programming based on a classical notion of logical consequence which is apt to capture the main proposed semantics of logic programs. In other words, we show that any of those semantics can be viewed as a relation of the form $T{\models }^{\star }X$ where T is a theory which naturally represents the logic program under consideration together with a set of formulas playing the role of “hypotheses”, in a way which is dictated by that semantics, ${\models }^{\star }$ is a notion of logical consequence which is classical because negation, disjunction and existential quantification receive their classical meaning, and X represents what can be inferred from the logic program, or an intended interpretation of that logic program (such as an answer-set, its well-founded model, etc.). The logical setting we propose extends the language of classical modal logic as it deals with modal operators indexed by ordinals. We make use of two kinds of basic modal formulas: ${\square }_{\alpha }\phi$ which intuitively means that the logical program can generate φ by stage α of the generation process, and ${◇}_{\alpha }{\square }_{\beta }\phi$ with $\alpha >\beta$, which intuitively means that φ can be used as a hypothesis from stage β of the generation process onwards, possibly expecting to confirm φ by stage α (so expecting ${\square }_{\alpha }\phi$ to be generated). This allows us to capture Rondogiannis and Wadge's version of the well-founded semantics [27] where a member of the well-founded model is a closed atom which receives an ordinal truth value of ${\mathtt{true}}_{\alpha }$ or ${\mathtt{false}}_{\alpha }$ for some ordinal α: in our framework, this corresponds to having $T{\models }^{\star }{\square }_{\alpha }\phi$ or $T{\models }^{\star }{\square }_{\alpha }\neg \phi$, respectively, with T being the natural representation of the logic program under consideration and the right set of “hypotheses” as dictated by the well-founded semantics. The framework we present goes much beyond the proposed traditional semantics for logic programming, as it can for instance let us investigate under which conditions a set of hypotheses can be minimal, with each hypothesis being activated as late as possible and confirmed as soon as possible, setting the theoretical foundation to sophisticated ways of making local use of hypotheses in knowledge-based systems, while still being theoretically grounded in a classical notion of logical consequence.     

Value-driven attentional capture is modulated by spatial context

When stimuli are associated with reward outcome, their visual features acquire high attentional priority such that stimuli possessing those features involuntarily capture attention. Whether a particular feature is predictive of reward, however, will vary with a number of contextual factors. One such factor is spatial location: for example, red berries are likely to be found in low-lying bushes, whereas yellow bananas are likely to be found on treetops. In the present study, I explore whether the attentional priority afforded to reward-associated features is modulated by such location-based contingencies. The results demonstrate that when a stimulus feature is associated with a reward outcome in one spatial location but not another, attentional capture by that feature is selective to when it appears in the rewarded location. This finding provides insight into how reward learning effectively modulates attention in an environment with complex stimulus–reward contingencies, thereby supporting efficient foraging.