Choking under the pressure of a positive stereotype: gender identification and self-consciousness moderate men's math test performance

Choking under pressure occurs when an individual underperforms due to situational pressure. The present study examined whether being the target of a positive social stereotype regarding math ability causes choking among men. Gender identification and self-consciousness were hypothesized to moderate the effect of math-gender stereotypes on men's math test performance. Men high in self-consciousness but low in gender identification significantly underperformed when exposed to gender-relevant test instructions. No significant effects were found under a gender-irrelevant condition. These findings are discussed in the contexts of research on stereotype threat, stereotype lift, and choking under pressure.     

Syntactic processing in bilinguals: an fNIRS study

The study of the neural basis of syntactic processing has greatly benefited from neuroimaging techniques. Research on syntactic processing in bilinguals has used a variety of techniques, including mainly functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and event-related potentials (ERP). This paper reports on a functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) study on syntactic processing in highly proficient young adult speakers of Portuguese (mother tongue) (L1) and French (second language) (L2). They made a syntactic judgment of visually presented sentences, which either did or did not contain noun-verb agreement violations. The results showed that syntactic processing in both languages resulted in significant activation in anterior frontal regions of the left hemisphere and in the temporal superior posterior areas of the right hemisphere, with a more prominent activation for L2 in some areas. These findings corroborate previously reported neuroimaging evidence, showing the suitability of fNIRS for the study of syntactic processing in the bilingual brain.     

Contribution of NIRS to the study of prefrontal cortex for verbal fluency in aging

Healthy aging is characterized by a number of changes on brain structure and function. Several neuroimaging studies have shown an age-related reduction in hemispheric asymmetry on various cognitive tasks, a phenomenon captured by Cabeza (2002) in the Hemispheric Asymmetry Reduction in Older Adults (HAROLD) model. Although this phenomenon is supported by a range of neuroimaging data on memory and inhibitory processes, there is little evidence concerning changes in hemispheric asymmetry for language processing, and particularly word retrieval, which is assessed with verbal fluency task (VFT). This study aimed to investigate the age-related changes in cerebral oxygenation in the prefrontal cortex for both letter and category VFT, varying the complexity of the criteria (i.e., degree of productivity) and using near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS). Sixteen younger and 16 older adults participated in this study. For both VF conditions, participants were instructed to pronounce as many nouns as possible as a function of high-productivity (e.g., “animals” or “L”) or low-productivity (e.g., “flowers” or “V”) criteria. Behavioral data (i.e., accuracy responses) showed comparable performance in younger and older adults for both VF conditions. However, NIRS data showed more reduced activation (i.e., significantly reduced increase in [O₂Hb] and reduced decrease in [HHb]) in older than younger adults for both VFT. In addition, a bilateral effect was found for both groups, suggesting that VFT requires both executive and language functions. The results are discussed in the context of the current theories of aging.     

A brief review on the use of functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) for language imaging studies in human newborns and adults

Upon stimulation, real time maps of cortical hemodynamic responses can be obtained by non-invasive functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) which measures changes in oxygenated and deoxygenated hemoglobin after positioning multiple sources and detectors over the human scalp. The current commercially available transportable fNIRS systems have a time resolution of 1-10 Hz, a depth sensitivity of about 1.5 cm, and a spatial resolution of about 1 cm. The goal of this brief review is to report infants, children and adults fNIRS language studies. Since 1998, 60 studies have been published on cortical activation in the brain’s classic language areas in children/adults as well as newborns using fNIRS instrumentations of different complexity. In addition, the basic principles of fNIRS including features, strengths, advantages, and limitations are summarized in terms that can be understood even by non specialists. Future prospects of fNIRS in the field of language processing imaging are highlighted.     

CLASSICAL CONDITIONING OF DECREASES IN HUMAN SYSTOLIC BLOOD PRESSURE1

Decrease in human systolic blood pressure of 4.35 mm Hg (range: 0 to 12 mm Hg) were classically conditioned in normal and hypertensive subjects using a delayed conditioning paradigm in which a 30-sec auditory stimulus (the conditioned stimulus) was followed immediately by tilting the subject 15° head-down to elicit small decreases in blood pressure. Conditioning occurred within five trials. A control group demonstrated that sensitization of the reflex by repeated tilting could not account for the blood-pressure decreases associated with the conditioned stimulus in experimental subjects.     

Attendance pressure during organizational change

The present study examines the relationships between aspects of the concept attendance pressure and sickness absenteeism. The study was carried out in a large public company in Norway during a major reorganization. It was hypothesized that employees with sickness absenteeism during this period would experience a high degree of attendance pressure in the form of reactions from managers, fellow workers, and job insecurity. Two surveys were carried out with the same sample (N=401). Attendance pressure in the form of censure pressure explained significant parts of the variance in sickness absenteeism. Employees with sickness absenteeism during the reorganization were a vulnerable group with low job satisfaction, significant health problems and low personal work ethics. Implications for preventive work on organizational level are discussed.Financed by the Research Council of Norway.     

Factors influencing the use of internal summary evaluations versus external information in choice

Decision makers cope with more demanding tasks by shifting their cognitive strategies, balancing effort expenditure against the desire to produce an accurate response. In choice tasks, one method for reducing effort while simultaneously maintaining accuracy is to shift from a reliance on information obtained from the external environment to that retrieved from memory, particularly summary evaluations (i.e. relatively stable evaluative reactions to the overall attractiveness of individual alternatives) acquired from previous decision-making experience. We examined four factors that should all encourage decision makers to rely to some extent on internal summary evaluations rather than external information search: (1) increased external search costs, (2) greater time pressure, (3) increased incentives to make an accurate choice, and (4) increased levels of prior experience with the choice context. Sixty experimental subjects chose their preferred alternative from a set of women's magazines. Decision processes were inferred from verbal protocols, computer-generated search records, and decision times. Only increased external search costs led to a greater reliance on summary evaluations. Although increased time pressure, increased incentives, and increased experience with the context did lead to changes in search and evaluation processes, contrary to initial expectations decision makers did not shift to a greater reliance on summary evaluations. These results suggest that while decision makers do sometimes use summary evaluations as a substitute for external search, this is only one of several mechanisms available for effort reduction. Understanding when and where decision makers rely upon summary evaluations probably requires a broader conceptualization of knowledge structures, particularly a consideration of the knowledge that decision makers possess about different choice strategies and their effectiveness.     

Time pressure and the application of decision rules: Choices and judgments among multiattribute alternatives

The effects of time pressure on decisions and judgments were studied and related to the use of different decision rules in a multiattribute decision task. The decision alternatives were students described by their high school grades in Swedish, Psychology and Natural Science. The subjects were asked to choose the student they thought would be most able to follow a university program and graduate as a school psychologist. On the basis of earlier findings using the same kind of decision task (Svenson et al., 1990) it was hypothesised that subjects under time pressure would prefer candidates having the maximum grade across all attributes to a greater extent than subjects under no time pressure. Furthermore, it was hypothesised that subjects under time pressure would also focus more on the most important attribute and choose the alternatives being best on that attribute. The results supported these hypotheses.     

Decision making in a dynamic situation: The effect of false alarms and time pressure

An experiment was conducted to investigate the effect of a priori probability of false alarms and time pressure on decision-making behaviour in a dynamic task environment. In order to assess whether strategy selection in a dynamic task environment would be adaptive, we modelled the task mathematically, and compared actual decision strategies to the optimal ones. In addition to the selected strategy, we also studied decision-making behaviour at a lower operational level, reflecting the amount of effort subjects are willing to spend on the decision process. Subjects were required to monitor the fitness level of a simulated athlete, who was running a race, and had to provide treatments whenever the athlete's fitness level suggested a real physiological problem. When a decline of the athlete's fitness was caused by a false alarm, a spontaneous recovery would occur after some time, without any need for intervention. Time pressure was manipulated by the rate at which the athlete's fitness level declined. Overall, subjects did not select the most efficient strategy: they dominantly selected information before applying an action, even though it would have been more profitable, and less effortful, just to apply actions. At the operational level, subjects appeared to invest less effort when the probability of false alarms increased and to invest more effort when time pressure increased. However, in contrast to the outcomes of our mathematical model, subjects adjusted the amount of intervention to the a priori probability of false alarms and not to time pressure. Together, the results indicate that the selection of a decision strategy in a dynamic task is less adaptive then is generally concluded from studies with static tasks.     

Cardiovascular and neuroendocrine activity in preschool children: Comparison between day-care and home levels

Thirty boys and 30 girls at nine day-care centers were examined at the mean age of 3.5 and 5.5 with regard to systolic and diastolic blood pressure, heart rate and neuroendocrine activity (urinary catecholamines and cortisol) during a day at their day-care center and in their home, respectively. Compared to home levels, day-care was associated with increased heart rate, epinephrine and norepinephrine excretion and decreased cortisol levels. Systolic blood pressure decreased at the day-care centers at the age of 3.5 and increased at the age of 5.5. No significant sex differences were found. The possible role of mental and physical arousal and the dissociation between the sympathetic-adrenal medullary and the pituitary-adrenal cortical responses are discussed.