How the bimodal format of presentation affects working memory: an overview

The best format in which information that has to be recalled is presented has been investigated in several studies, which focused on the impact of bimodal stimulation on working memory performance. An enhancement of participant’s performance in terms of correct recall has been repeatedly found, when bimodal formats of presentation (i.e., audiovisual) were compared to unimodal formats (i.e, either visual or auditory), in providing implications for multimedial learning. Several theoretical frameworks have been suggested in order to account for the bimodal advantage, ranging from those emphasizing early stages of processing (such as automatic alerting effects or multisensory integration processes) to those centred on late stages of processing (as postulated by the dual coding theory). The aim of this paper is to review previous contributions to this topic, providing a comprehensive theoretical framework, which is updated by the latest empirical studies.     

Radial maze analog for pigeons: Evidence for flexible coding strategies may result from faulty assumptions

Previous research with the radial maze has found evidence that rats can remember both places that they have already been (retrospective coding) and places they have yet to visit (prospective coding; Cook, R. G., Brown, M. F., & Riley, D. A. (1985). Flexible memory processing by rats: Use of prospective and retrospective information in the radial maze. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behaviour Processes, 11, 453-469). Such dual coding also has been found in pigeons using a radial maze analog in which insertion of a delay at different points during a trial affects performance differentially depending on where in the trial it is inserted. When a delay is interpolated either early or late in a trial, there is minimal disruption of performance compared with when it is interpolated in the middle of the trial. However, the analysis required with this procedure requires the assumption that if errors made on control trials are subtracted from errors made in delay trials, the remaining errors can be directly attributed to the delay. But errors may also be attributed to the changing criterion for making a response as the trial proceeds. Furthermore, the animal’s tendency to choose alternatives in a systematic order may also affect its need to remember the sequence of choices made (and yet to be made) on each trial. In the present research, we avoided having to make this assumption by giving the pigeons a two-alternative choice at the time of testing and by randomly determining for the pigeon the order of predelay choices on each trial. This change in procedure resulted in comparable performance as a function of where in the trial the test occurred on both control and delay trials. The effect of the delay was to produce a general decrement in performance independent of where it occurred in the trial.     

Selective attention in early Dementia of Alzheimer Type

This study explored possible deficits in selective attention brought about by Dementia of Alzheimer Type (DAT). In three experiments, we tested patients with early DAT, healthy elderly, and young adults under low memory demands to assess perceptual filtering, conflict resolution, and set switching abilities. We found no evidence of impaired perceptual filtering nor evidence of impaired conflict resolution in early DAT. In contrast, early DAT patients did exhibit a global cost in set switching consistent with an inability to maintain the goals of the task (mental set). We discuss these findings in relation to the DAT literature on executive attention, dual-tasking, and working memory.     

Implicit emotional biases in decision making: the case of the Iowa Gambling Task

Many authors have endorsed the hypothesis that previous emotional experiences may exert a covert influence on behavior, but some findings and replications of the original studies challenged this view. We investigated this topic by carrying out an experiment with the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT), where a dissociation procedure was adopted to successfully isolate possible implicit components. After a typical interaction with the IGT, participants performed a "blind" card selection phase without receiving any feedback. Half of them were instructed to continue choosing as they did before, the other half was told that good card decks turned bad, and vice versa, so that explicit knowledge was necessary to overcome the previously learned deck-outcome associations. The results confirmed the existence of early acquired implicit biases, confirming that previously experienced emotional events may covertly affect subsequent behavior.     

Intersensory redundancy accelerates preverbal numerical competence

Intersensory redundancy can facilitate animal and human behavior in areas as diverse as rhythm discrimination, signal detection, orienting responses, maternal call learning, and associative learning. In the realm of numerical development, infants show similar sensitivity to numerical differences in both the visual and auditory modalities. Using a habituation-dishabituation paradigm, we ask here, whether providing redundant, multisensory numerical information allows six-month-old infants to make more precise numerical discriminations. Results indicate that perceptually redundant information improved preverbal numerical precision to a level of discrimination previously thought attainable only after additional months of development. Multimodal stimuli may thus boost abstract cognitive abilities such as numerical competence.     

From psychosocial equilibrium to catastrophic breakdown: Cyprus 1955–1974

The recent history of Cyprus presents an example of a society in which a centuries-long peaceful coexistence of diverse populations gave way to violence and murderous hate, with devastating end results. This paper tries to understand and describe the process by which Cypriot society slid from a position of psychosocial equilibrium and integration towards one of disintegration, fragmentation and catastrophic breakdown. This paper draws from work by social anthropologists, sociologists, historians and others, and from my own personal experience. To these I applied insights afforded by psychoanalysis to identify and explore the psychic processes and states of mind that characterized a psychosocial disintegrative process. I came to see external political events and internal psychological processes as inseparably intertwined and dynamically interdependent, each emanating from and catalysing the other. The factual details of the process described are of course unique in their local specificity, but the psychic phenomena that characterized it are not: at both the individual and group levels they are replicated in other societies undergoing similar processes of self-destruction.     

Social power and emotional experience: Actor and partner effects within dyadic interactions

A dyadic methodological and statistical approach to social power is used to test the notion that an individual’s power and a partner’s power have distinct effects on the individual’s emotional experience. Two studies examined actor and partner effects of social power on emotion within dyadic interactions. Across interpersonal contexts and measures of social power, the individual’s own social power, theorized to activate behavioral approach, was associated with positive emotion (an actor effect). In contrast, being subject to a partner’s elevated social power, theorized to activate behavioral inhibition, was associated with increased negative emotion (a partner effect). The discussion focuses on how dyadic methodological and statistical approaches point to new lines of inquiry in the study of social power.     

Economic Disadvantage in Complex Family Systems: Expansion of Family Stress Models

Economic disadvantage is associated with multiple risks to early socioemotional development. This article reviews research regarding family stress frameworks to model the pathways from economic disadvantage to negative child outcomes via family processes. Future research in this area should expand definitions of family and household to incorporate diversity and instability. This expansion would be particularly relevant for research among low-income ethnic minority families and families with young children. This line of research would highlight specific pathways to target to prevent the onset of early parental and child dysfunction.