Hand function,not proximity,biases visuotactile integration later in object processing: An ERP study

Behavioral studies document a functional hand proximity effect: objects near the palm, but not the back of the hand, affect visual processing. Although visuotactile bimodal neurons integrate visual and haptic inputs, their receptive fields in monkey cortex encompass the whole hand, not just the palm. Using ERPs, we investigated whether hand function influenced the topology of integrated space around the hand. In a visual detection paradigm, target and non-target stimuli appeared equidistantly in front or in back of the hand. Equivalent N1 amplitudes were found for both conditions. P3 target versus non-target amplitude differences were greater for palm conditions. Hand proximity biased processing of visual targets equidistant from the hand early in processing. However, hand function biases emerged later when targets were selected for potential action. Thus, early hand proximity effects on object processing depend on sensory-reliant neural responses, whereas later multisensory integration depend more on the hand’s functional expertise.     

Learning and transfer of calorie information

This study compared generating information about food to viewing and verbally producing that information for learning and transfer. Specifically, during training, a list of food items was shown, and some participants generated either real calories (Experiment 1) or fabricated prices (Experiment 2) associated with those foods with feedback provided (seeding), some viewed and read aloud values provided (viewing), and others read aloud the names of the items with no values provided (control). All participants were tested immediately and 1 week later on both old and new foods. In both experiments, the seeding and viewing conditions showed more learning than the control condition, and only the experimental conditions showed transfer of learning from old to new foods, with advantages found for seeding over viewing only in some cases. The results are discussed in terms of the seeding, testing, generation, and production effects, as well as their applications to health and policy.     

红色及图形表征对健康行为的助推作用

本研究旨在通过3个实验从信息凸显的角度探讨红色图形对健康行为的助推作用。实验一和实验二分别采用星号图和直条图，通过操纵图形颜色或装有实验材料的信封颜色，以探讨数量信息表征方式（图形 vs. 数字）及颜色（红色 vs. 蓝色、黑色或白色）对健康风险回避行为的影响。实验三将针对宫颈癌疫苗接种这一健康行为，采用更加形象的人物杆形图进一步考察在不同决策框架下（损失/收益）红色图形能否有效助推个体的健康行为意愿。结果发现，在损失及收益情景下，红色图形均能稳定助推个体的健康行为，但当用信封颜色操纵颜色背景时，红色的影响力会降低。结果支持：红色图形可有效助推个体的健康行为。     

Homesickness in social context: An ecological momentary assessment study among 1st-year university students

Homesickness is common among university students and associated with mental health problems. Most previous studies assessed homesickness as a summary of the past weeks. However, there may be significant fluctuations across situations. At the current residence, homesickness may especially be triggered during (phone) interactions with attachment figures. Dutch and international 1st-year students (n = 92) completed the Utrecht Homesickness Scale and subsequently used a smartphone application to record social interactions for 14 days (ecological momentary assessment [EMA]). For each interaction they reported the social context (e.g. location, contact type) and their affective state, including homesickness. Homesickness in the past weeks and momentary homesickness were both higher in international students than in Dutch students. Feeling homesick was highest at participants' current residency, when interacting with parents, or when using video-chat. When participants felt more homesick, they reported less pleasant and more unpleasant affect. In conclusion, EMA provided insight in cross-situational variations in homesickness.     

Conceptual priming with pictures and environmental sounds

A series of experiments was conducted to examine conceptual priming within and across modalities with pictures and environmental sounds. In Experiment 1, we developed a new multimodal stimulus set consisting of two picture and sound exemplars that represented 80 object items. In Experiments 2, we investigated whether categorization of the stimulus items would be facilitated by picture and environmental sound primes that were derived from different exemplars of the target items; and in Experiments 3 and 4, we tested the additional influence on priming when trials were consolidated within a target modality and the inter stimulus interval was lengthened. The results demonstrated that target categorization was facilitated by the advanced presentation of conceptually related exemplars, but there were differences in effectiveness when pictures and sounds appeared as primes.     

Looking behaviour and preference for artworks: The role of emotional valence and location

The position of an item influences its evaluation, with research consistently finding that items occupying central locations are preferred and have a higher subjective value. The current study investigated whether this centre-stage effect (CSE) is a result of bottom-up gaze allocation to the central item, and whether it is affected by item valence. Participants (n = 50) were presented with three images of artistic paintings in a row and asked to choose the image they preferred. Eye movements were recorded for a subset of participants (n = 22). On each trial the three artworks were either similar but different, or were identical and with positive valence, or were identical and with negative valence. The results showed a centre-stage effect, with artworks in the centre of the row preferred, but only when they were identical and of positive valence. Significantly greater gaze allocation to the central and left artwork was not mirrored by equivalent increases in preference choices. Regression analyses showed that when the artworks were positive and identical the participants' last fixation predicted preference for the central art-work, whereas the fixation duration predicted preference if the images were different. Overall the result showed that item valence, rather than level of gaze allocation, influences the CSE, which is incompatible with the bottom-up gaze explanation. We propose that the centre stage heuristic, which specifies that the best items are in the middle, is able to explain these findings and the centre-stage effect.     

Social priming of dyslexia and reduction of the Stroop effect: What component of the Stroop effect is actually reduced?

Recently, Goldfarb, Aisenberg, and Henik (2011) showed that in a manual format of the Stroop task, dyslexia priming eliminates the normal magnitude of the interference-based Stroop-like findings otherwise exhibited by individuals participating in such research. Goldfarb et al. (2011) consequently concluded that the effect of word reading in a Stroop task (i.e., one automatic behavior) can be effectively controlled through an automatic instruction “do not read” (i.e., another automatic behavior). The present study further investigated these ideas by examining when and how dyslexia priming controls different processes involved in a Stroop task. To this end, the original finding was first replicated (Experiment 1) and subsequently extended to the vocal (instead of manual) response modality to examine whether previously reported eliminations of the Stroop effect persist with this response format (i.e., format producing larger Stroop effects). Since past work (e.g., Augustinova & Ferrand, 2012a; Brown, Joneleit et al., 2002; Ferrand & Augustinova, 2013) had suggested that various interventions were likely to reduce (rather than eliminate) the interference-based Stroop-like findings with vocal responses, a further aim of these experiments was to identify the component of these findings that dyslexia priming actually reduces. To this end, the effects of this intervention were examined in a more fine-grained variant of the Stroop task that distinguished between interference resulting from task-irrelevant processes involved in computing the lexical and semantic representations of the word (i.e., a written distractor to ignore) and task-relevant processes involved in the selection of a response (i.e., a color target to name) that are both involved in this task. In line with our past work (e.g., Augustinova & Ferrand, 2012a; Ferrand & Augustinova, 2013), the results of two experiments (Experiments 2 and 3) showed that in the vocal format, dyslexia priming reduces but does not eliminate the normal magnitude of the interference-based Stroop-like findings and that this reduction is solely due to the control of processes involved in the selection of a response (i.e., a color target to name) – processes that are known to be controllable in this format (Ferrand & Augustinova, 2013). Given that in this format, dyslexia priming had no effect on task-irrelevant processes involved in computing the lexical and semantic representations of a written distractor to be ignored – processes that are known to be automatic – further implications for the control of automatic processes via dyslexia priming are considered and an interpretation in terms of a unitary control mechanism for both the manual and vocal formats is proposed.     

“Piensa” twice: On the foreign language effect in decision making

In this article, we assess to what extent decision making is affected by the language in which a given problem is presented (native vs. foreign). In particular, we aim to ask whether the impact of various heuristic biases in decision making is diminished when the problems are presented in a foreign language. To this end, we report four main studies in which more than 700 participants were tested on different types of individual decision making problems. In the first study, we replicated Keysar et al.’s (2012) recent observation regarding the foreign language effect on framing effects related to loss aversion. In the second section, we assessed whether the foreign language effect is present in other types of framing problems that involve psychological accounting biases rather than gain/loss dichotomies. In the third section, we studied the foreign language effect in several key aspects of the theory of decision making under risk and uncertainty. In the fourth study, we assessed the presence of a foreign language effect in the cognitive reflection test, a test that includes logical problems that do not carry emotional connotations. The absence of such an effect in this test suggests that foreign language leads to a reduction of heuristic biases in decision making across a range of decision making situations and provide also some evidence about the boundaries of the phenomenon. We explore several potential factors that may underlie the foreign language effect in decision making.     

Number processing of Arabic and Hebrew bilinguals: Evidence supporting the distance effect

In the current study, a direct assessment of the effect of language lexical‐syntactic structure and magnitude semantic access on numerical processing was made by contrasting the performance of Arabic/Hebrew bilinguals in a digital (Hindi‐digits/Arabic‐digits) and verbal numerical comparison task (Arabic, an inverted language: Units‐Decades, Hebrew, a non‐inverted language: Decades‐Units). Our data revealed in the digital presentation format (Experiment 1) a regular distance effect in Arabic language‐Hindi digits and Hebrew language‐Arabic digits, characterized by an inverse relation between reaction times and numerical distance with no difference in the mean reaction times of participants in Arabic‐L1 and Hebrew‐L2. This indicates that both lexical digits of two‐digit numbers in L1 and L2 are similarly processed and semantically accessed. However in the verbal presentation format (Experiment 2) a similar pattern of distance effect was found, but the mean reaction times in Arabic were lower than in Hebrew in each numerical distance. This indicates that the processing of two‐digit number words in L1 and L2 is semantically accessed and determined by the syntactic structure of each language.     

The Others Will Help: The Presence of Multiple Video Game Characters Reduces Helping After the Game Is Over

The bystander effect refers to the phenomenon that individuals are less likely to help if there are potential other helpers present. For instance, past research revealed that participants were less likely to help computer-controlled characters if there were other computer-controlled characters present. Research has also shown that the bystander effect occurs if the presence of others is merely imagined. The present research examined the idea that the presence of multiple characters within a video game reduces the player's helping behavior even after the video game is over. In fact, participants who played a video game with multiple characters present were less likely to devote time to assisting in a future study than participants who had played the same video game with only a single character present.