Dissimilar effects of task‐relevant and interpersonal threat on independent–interdependent self‐construal in individuals with high self‐esteem

Previous research has indicated that individuals with high trait self‐esteem (HSEs) become more independent and less interdependent after experiencing a task‐relevant threat. However, these studies have not investigated other sources of ego threats, such as interpersonal threats. Therefore, the moderating effects of the degree of trait self‐esteem on task‐relevant and interpersonal ego threats were investigated in relation to independent, or interdependent self‐construal. It was predicted that in HSEs, the level of task‐relevant stress would be positively–negatively related to their independence–interdependence, whereas the level of interpersonal stress would be negatively–positively related to their independence–interdependence. In individuals with low trait self‐esteem (LSEs), the two types of stresses and independent–interdependent self‐construal may not have a significant relationship. We conducted a questionnaire survey with undergraduates. Correlational analysis of the results indicated that in HSEs, greater task‐relevant stress was related to heightened independence, whereas greater interpersonal stress had the opposite effect, indicating lower independence and heightened interdependence. However, these stresses were not related to the self‐construal of LSEs. These findings suggest that task‐relevant and interpersonal threat could have differential effects on independent and interdependent self‐construal for HSEs, but not in LSEs.     

A non-auditory measure of interference predicts distraction by competing speech in older adults

ABSTRACT

In this study, older adults monitored for pre-assigned target sounds in a target talker's speech in a quiet (no noise) condition and in a condition with competing-talker noise. The question was to which extent the impact of the competing-talker noise on performance could be predicted from individual hearing loss and from a cognitive measure of inhibitory abilities, i.e., a measure of Stroop interference. The results showed that the non-auditory measure of Stroop interference predicted the impact of distraction on performance, over and above the effect of hearing loss. This suggests that individual differences in inhibitory abilities among older adults relate to susceptibility to distracting speech.     

Hemispheric lateralization in aging: Interest of the verbal-manual concurrency paradigm

ABSTRACT

Introduction: The aim of this study was to evaluate whether the classic asymmetry seen in hemispheric functioning is modified in older adults by using a verbal-manual concurrency task. Method: Thirty-five right-handed participants divided into two groups according to age (15 older participants, mean age: 68 ± 8 years, without cognitive decline and 20 younger participants, mean age: 23 ± 2 years) had to perform a 30-second uni-manual tapping task, in both a single task (tapping alone) and dual task (tapping and performing a letter fluency task together) condition. Results: In younger participants, the letter fluency task disrupted the right hand more than the left hand whereas, in older participants, the letter fluency task disrupted both hands equally. Conclusion: These results should be considered preliminary data using a behavioral dual task condition, which might be useful for studying lateralized hemispheric functioning and the processes of divided attention during aging.     

Location- and object-based inhibition of return are affected by different kinds of working memory

Castel, Pratt, and Craik (2003) have shown that inhibition of return (IOR, the delayed response to a recently cued item) is disrupted by a secondary task that involves spatial working memory (WM), and they suggest that IOR is mediated by spatial WM. However, they did not specify what kind of IOR was involved. We used a dual-task paradigm to examine whether the two kinds of IOR (location- and object-based IOR) are affected by two kinds of secondary task that involve spatial and nonspatial WM, respectively. The results show that location-based IOR was disrupted by a spatial secondary task while the object-based IOR was disrupted by a nonspatial secondary task. The present study further elaborates the conclusion of Castel et al. (2003) by differentiating the effect of the two kinds of WM (spatial vs. nonspatial) on the two kinds of IOR (location based vs. object based).     

Is advance reconfiguration in voluntary task switching affected by the design employed?

In task switching, when the amount of preparation time is increased, a reduction in switch cost or RISC effect is observed. This RISC effect is frequently attributed to advance reconfiguration processes. In the explicit task-cueing procedure, RISC effects are observed when varying the preparation time within participants but not when varying the preparation time across participants—a finding suggesting that RISC effects in the explicit task-cueing procedure are restricted to specific designs. The present study investigated RISC effects in voluntary task switching and compared RISC effects in a within-subjects design with RISC effects in a between-subjects design. Our results indicate that RISC effects are present in both designs. We conclude that advance reconfiguration in voluntary task switching is robust.     

Are phonological influences on lexical (mis)selection the result of a monitoring bias?

A monitoring bias account is often used to explain speech error patterns that seem to be the result of an interactive language production system, like phonological influences on lexical selection errors. A biased monitor is suggested to detect and covertly correct certain errors more often than others. For instance, this account predicts that errors that are phonologically similar to intended words are harder to detect than those that are phonologically dissimilar. To test this, we tried to elicit phonological errors under the same conditions as those that show other kinds of lexical selection errors. In five experiments, we presented participants with high cloze probability sentence fragments followed by a picture that was semantically related, a homophone of a semantically related word, or phonologically related to the (implicit) last word of the sentence. All experiments elicited semantic completions or homophones of semantic completions, but none elicited phonological completions. This finding is hard to reconcile with a monitoring bias account and is better explained with an interactive production system. Additionally, this finding constrains the amount of bottom-up information flow in interactive models.     

Masked priming effect reflects evidence accumulated by the prime

In the same–different match task, masked priming is observed with the same responses but not different responses. Norris and Kinoshita's (2008) Bayesian reader account of masked priming explains this pattern based on the same principle as that explaining the absence of priming for nonwords in the lexical decision task. The pattern of priming follows from the way the model makes optimal decisions in the two tasks; priming does not depend on first activating the prime and then the target. An alternative explanation is in terms of a bias towards responding “same” that exactly counters the facilitatory effect of lexical access. The present study tested these two views by varying both the degree to which the prime predicts the response and the visibility of the prime. Unmasked primes produced effects expected from the view that priming is influenced by the degree to which the prime predicts the response. In contrast, with masked primes, the size of priming for the same response was completely unaffected by predictability. These results rule out response bias as an explanation of the absence of masked priming for different responses and, in turn, indicate that masked priming is not a consequence of automatic lexical access of the prime.     

Temporal distinctiveness and repetition benefits in task switching: Disentangling stimulus-related and response-related contributions

Despite the popularity of the Wason selection task in the psychology of reasoning, doubt remains as to whether card choices actually reflect a process of reasoning. One view is that while participants reason about the cards and their hidden sides—as indicated by protocol analysis—this reasoning merely confabulates explanations for cards that were preconsciously cued. This hypothesis has apparently been supported by studies that show that participants predominantly inspect cards which they end up selecting. In this paper, we reanalyse the data of one such study, which used eye-movement tracking to record card inspection times (Ball, Lucas, Miles, & Gale, 2003). We show that while cards favoured by matching bias are inspected for roughly equal lengths of times, their selection rates are strongly affected by their logical status. These findings strongly support a two-stage account in which attention is necessary but not sufficient for card selections. Hence, reasoning does indeed affect participants' choices on this task.     

Are transposition effects specific to letters?

Recent research has consistently shown that pseudowords created by transposing two letters are perceptually similar to their corresponding base words (e.g., jugde–judge). In the framework of the overlap model (Gomez, Ratcliff, & Perea, 2008), this effect is due to a noisy process in the localization of the “objects” (e.g., letters, kana syllables). In the present study, we examine whether this effect is specific to letter strings or whether it also occurs with other “objects” (namely, digits, symbols, and pseudoletters). To that end, we conducted a series of five masked priming experiments using the same–different task. Results showed robust effects of transposition for all objects, except for pseudoletters. This is consistent with the view that locations of familiar objects (i.e., letters, numbers, and symbols) can be best understood as distributions along a dimension rather than as precise points.     

Audiovisual speech from emotionally expressive and lateralized faces

Emotional expression and how it is lateralized across the two sides of the face may influence how we detect audiovisual speech. To investigate how these components interact we conducted experiments comparing the perception of sentences expressed with happy, sad, and neutral emotions. In addition we isolated the facial asymmetries for affective and speech processing by independently testing the two sides of a talker's face. These asymmetrical differences were exaggerated using dynamic facial chimeras in which left- or right-face halves were paired with their mirror image during speech production. Results suggest that there are facial asymmetries in audiovisual speech such that the right side of the face and right-facial chimeras supported better speech perception than their left-face counterparts. Affective information was also found to be critical in that happy expressions tended to improve speech performance on both sides of the face relative to all other emotions, whereas sad emotions generally inhibited visual speech information, particularly from the left side of the face. The results suggest that approach information may facilitate visual and auditory speech detection.