来源记忆中背景的情绪效价与唤醒对提取过程的影响

以往研究表明情绪背景对来源记忆存在影响,但背景的情绪效价和唤醒如何影响熟悉性及回想尚存争议。本研究以ERPs技术作为测量手段,采用来源记忆多键范式,操纵背景的情绪效价及唤醒强度,以探讨编码阶段背景情绪影响来源记忆提取的认知神经机制。学习阶段,呈现中性汉字及情绪图片（正性高唤醒、正性低唤醒、负性高唤醒、负性低唤醒）;测验阶段,仅呈现汉字,被试进行五键判断。行为结果发现：来源正确的比率比来源错误的比率更高,反应时更短;同时提取正性背景的辨别力更强,反应时更短;提取高唤醒背景反应时更短。脑电结果发现了分别代表熟悉性及回想的FN400及LPC新旧效应,且在500～700 ms,提取正性背景及高唤醒背景诱发显著更正的ERPs,但效价与唤醒没有交互作用。总体来说,来源记忆中背景效价及唤醒度对回想过程存在独立影响,体现为正性背景及高唤醒背景对来源提取的促进作用。     

Consistency between verbal and non-verbal affective cues: a clue to speaker credibility

Listeners are exposed to inconsistencies in communication; for example, when speakers’ words (i.e. verbal) are discrepant with their demonstrated emotions (i.e. non-verbal). Such inconsistencies introduce ambiguity, which may render a speaker to be a less credible source of information. Two experiments examined whether children make credibility discriminations based on the consistency of speakers’ affect cues. In Experiment 1, school-age children (7- to 8-year-olds) preferred to solicit information from consistent speakers (e.g. those who provided a negative statement with negative affect), over novel speakers, to a greater extent than they preferred to solicit information from inconsistent speakers (e.g. those who provided a negative statement with positive affect) over novel speakers. Preschoolers (4- to 5-year-olds) did not demonstrate this preference. Experiment 2 showed that school-age children's ratings of speakers were influenced by speakers’ affect consistency when the attribute being judged was related to information acquisition (speakers’ believability, “weird” speech), but not general characteristics (speakers’ friendliness, likeability). Together, findings suggest that school-age children are sensitive to, and use, the congruency of affect cues to determine whether individuals are credible sources of information.     

Personality predicts words in favorite songs

Psychologists have long theorized that people actively create, select, or modify experiences and situations to fulfill their individual psychological needs. However, little is known about how people may use forms of art and entertainment such as music to enhance their experiences and shape their environments for need satisfaction. In this research, we measured participants’ personality and the linguistic styles of their favorite songs, and observed significant associations between personality traits and linguistic cues in lyrics. These associations were stronger for participants who generally liked a song because of its lyrics rather than melody. Our study is the first to show how one’s personality is related to linguistic cues in someone else’s writings. It points to the possibility that people may like certain songs because the linguistic cues in the lyrics are congruent with their personality and hence can satisfy personal needs. This expands research on person-situation interaction and literature on personality and language use, and has important practical implications.     

Improving visual spatial working memory in younger and older adults: effects of cross-modal cues

Spatially informative auditory and vibrotactile (cross-modal) cues can facilitate attention but little is known about how similar cues influence visual spatial working memory (WM) across the adult lifespan. We investigated the effects of cues (spatially informative or alerting pre-cues vs. no cues), cue modality (auditory vs. vibrotactile vs. visual), memory array size (four vs. six items), and maintenance delay (900 vs. 1800 ms) on visual spatial location WM recognition accuracy in younger adults (YA) and older adults (OA). We observed a significant interaction between spatially informative pre-cue type, array size, and delay. OA and YA benefitted equally from spatially informative pre-cues, suggesting that attentional orienting prior to WM encoding, regardless of cue modality, is preserved with age. Contrary to predictions, alerting pre-cues generally impaired performance in both age groups, suggesting that maintaining a vigilant state of arousal by facilitating the alerting attention system does not help visual spatial location WM.     

奖赏对海洛因成瘾者执行功能的影响机制

一些研究发现海洛因成瘾者奖赏失调表现为:对海洛因相关线索的注意偏向、渴求感增加,对金钱奖赏表现出"即时收益优先"的高风险决策模式和对长时收益的敏感性降低。另一些研究发现海洛因成瘾者的执行功能存在障碍。奖赏失调和执行功能障碍在成瘾物质使用的维持和复吸中起着重要作用。双重竞争模型认为奖赏和执行功能的交互作用决定着行为的结果,但是奖赏对海洛因成瘾者执行功能的影响机制还不清楚。因此,拟使用事件相关电位技术来考察海洛因相关线索和金钱奖赏对不同戒断期成瘾者执行功能的影响机制,短期(1~3个月)、长期(18个月以上)海洛因戒断者和健康对照组被比较。这不仅有助于构建完善的成瘾理论体系,还有助于确定临床戒断后复吸的风险因素和不同戒断期的治疗目标。     

Obstructive sleep apnoea syndrome increases source‐confusion errors: A pilot study

We explored external source monitoring (i.e., discrimination between memories of two externally derived sources) in patients with obstructive sleep apnoea syndrome (OSAS). Our specific aim was to ascertain whether, relative to controls, patients exhibit more source‐confusion errors when there are similarities between two external memory sources. We recruited 22 patients with OSAS and 22 controls matched for sex, age, and education. The experimental procedure we used came in three phases. First, participants viewed a target film. Second, they were shown a mixed set of photographs, some taken from the film (target photographs), others not (photographs taken from other films not viewed by participants; lures). Lures differed either conceptually or perceptually from the target film. Third, the following day, participants were shown a set of photographs and urged to determine whether the photographs were taken from the target film or whether they were images they had seen for the first time in Phase 2. Patients correctly attributed the same number of target photographs to the target film as controls. By contrast, they incorrectly attributed more lures to the target film than controls did, especially when the lures were semantically similar to the film (perceptual lures). Both perceptual and conceptual source‐confusion errors were significantly correlated with oxygen desaturation during sleep. Results suggest that the higher number of source‐confusion errors observed in patients with OSAS was linked to an impaired ability to recollect specific perceptual details of the study items and that hypoxia is the main contributing factor to this deficit.     

人脑眶额皮质表征奖赏信息的进展

文章围绕人脑眶额皮质在表征奖赏信息上的核心作用展开,分别从人脑眶额皮质表征奖赏信息的共同神经表征和特异性神经表征特点,奖赏加工和该脑区局部形态特征之间的关系以及眶额皮质表征奖赏信息的时间动态性等角度对最近的重要研究进展进行了一定的梳理和概括。最后,文章讨论了未来研究需要解决的由奖赏类型多样性和脑区间奖赏信息整合复杂性带来的系列问题。     

Sensitivity to number: Reply to Gebuis and Gevers

Past research showing a bias towards the larger non-symbolic number by adults and children in line bisection tasks (de Hevia & Spelke, 2009) has been challenged by Gebuis and Gevers, suggesting that area subtended by the stimulus and not number is responsible for the biases. I review evidence supporting the idea that although sensitivity to number might be relatively affected by visual cues, number is a major, salient property of our environment. The influence of non-numerical cues might be seen as the concurrent processing of dimensions that entail information of magnitude, without implying that number is constructed out of those dimensions.     

Misleading cues improve developmental assessment of working memory capacity: The color matching tasks

The theory of constructive operators was used as a framework to design two versions of a paradigm (color matching task, CMT) in which items are parametrically ordered in difficulty, and differ only contextually. Items in CMT-Balloon are facilitating, whereas items in CMT-Clown contain misleading cues. Participants of ages 7–14 years and adults (N = 149) were studied. We found significant model-predicted graded differences in performance between the facilitating and misleading tasks, across and within age groups, expressing age versus items’ demand interactions. Younger children were differentially affected by contextual cues. Even though both task versions were highly correlated with a well-established developmental measure of attentional capacity, CMT-Clown, which contained misleading cues, was a better measure of working memory capacity. These results show a need to estimate degree of misleadingness whenever performance levels in working memory or mental attention tasks are compared and interpreted. Developmental profiles of both tasks are discussed in terms of contextual differences and neoPiagetian stages of development.