A new method of administering the Grooved Pegboard Test: performance as a function of handedness and sex

The purpose of the present study was twofold: first to examine the influences of sex and handedness on manual performance on the Grooved Pegboard Test; and secondly to provide normative data for two versions (Place and Remove tasks) of the Grooved Pegboard Test, as previous work (Bryden & Roy, 1999) had suggested that the Remove task of the Grooved pegboard may provide a purer measure of motor speed of the two hands than the standard administration of the Grooved Pegboard Test. One hundred and fifty-three (47 males and 106 females) participants completed the Grooved Pegboard Test. Individuals performed the standard version of the Grooved Pegboard Test (Place task) and a novel version of the test (Remove task). In the standard version, participants were timed on their speed for placing the pegs, while in the novel version they were timed on their speed for removing the pegs. Results confirmed previously noted hand and sex differences in the Place task of the Grooved Pegboard Test, as well as the lack of effect of handedness on performance (Bornstein, 1995; Ruff & Parker, 1993). Significant performance differences between the hands were also noted for the Remove task. Findings also indicated that the Remove task was sensitive to sex and handedness effects.     

Time ordering in frontal lobe patients: a stochastic model approach

Frontal lobe patients reproduced a sequence of capital letters or abstract shapes. Immediate and delayed reproduction trials allowed the analysis of short- and long-term memory for time order by means of suitable Markov chain stochastic models. Patients were as proficient as healthy subjects on the immediate reproduction trial, thus showing spared encoding and short-term memory. They failed, instead, on the delayed trials with capital letters, but not with random shapes, suggesting that their long-term memory impairment did not depend on primary deficits for ordering, but on inability to benefit from the organisational strategies that improve the retention and retrieval in normal subjects.     

Do rats in a two-action test encode movement egocentrically or allocentrically?

Two-action tests of imitation compare groups that observe topographically different responses to a common manipulandum. The general aim of the two experiments reported here was to find a demonstrator-consistent responding effect in a procedure that could be elaborated to investigate aspects of what was learned about the demonstrated lever response. Experiment 1 was a pilot study with rats of a variant of the two-action method of investigating social learning about observed responses. Groups of observer rats (Rattus norvegicus) saw a demonstrator push a lever up or down for a food reward. When these observers were subsequently given access to the lever and rewarded for responses in both directions, their directional preferences were compared with two 'screen control' groups that were unable to see their demonstrators' behaviour. Demonstrator-consistent responding was found to be restricted to observers that were able to see demonstrator performance, suggesting that scent cues alone were insufficient to cue a preference for the demonstrators' response direction and thereby that the rats learned by observation about body movements (imitation) or lever movement (emulation). Experiment 2 assessed responding on two levers, one that had been manipulated by the demonstrator, and a second, transposed lever positioned some distance away. Demonstrator-consistent responding was abolished when actions were observed and performed in different parts of the apparatus, suggesting that observed movement was encoded allocentrically with respect to the apparatus rather than egocentrically with respect to the actor's body. With particular reference to the influence of scent cues, the results are discussed in relation to the strengths and weaknesses of this and other varieties of the two-action procedure as tests of imitation in animals and human infants. Electronic Publication     

创造力测量手段——同感评估技术（CAT）简介

同感评估技术（consensusassessmenttechnique）,又称主观评价法,是Amabile于1982年提出的评价创造力的一种方法。文章简要回顾了同感评估技术出现之前,基于发散思维测验的创造力评价法及其局限性。人们在寻求新的创造力评价方法的过程中,提出了同感评估技术。文章重点介绍了同感评估技术的理论基础,即它的同感定义和概念定义,然后说明了同感评估技术的具体使用方法、发展,以及在各领域的应用情况。最后,通过与创造性思维测验的比较,对同感评估技术作了评价,指出了CAT的优势和存在的问题     

元记忆监控对外语语音信息加工的影响

这项研究在元记忆监控环境下考查真实教学情景中学习者对外语语音信息加工的实际效果。结果表明：在外文单词听觉再认与外文单词听觉再现测验中,无论是及时测验还是延时测验,实验组的成绩都明显高于控制组,元记忆训练对外语语音信息的加工是有影响的。     

Rank‐permutation tests for behavior analysis,and a test for trend allowing unequal data numbers for each subject

We advocate for rank‐permutation tests as the best choice for null‐hypothesis significance testing of behavioral data, because these tests require neither distributional assumptions about the populations from which our data were drawn nor the measurement assumption that our data are measured on an interval scale. We provide an algorithm that enables exact‐probability versions of such tests without recourse to either large‐sample approximation or resampling approaches. We particularly consider a rank‐permutation test for monotonic trend, and provide an extension of this test that allows unequal number of data points, or observations, for each subject. We provide an extended table of critical values of the test statistic for this test, and both a spreadsheet implementation and an Oracle® Java Web Start application to generate other critical values at https://sites.google.com/a/eastbayspecialists.co.nz/rank-permutation/ .     

European and American WAIS IV norms: Cross‐national differences in perceptual reasoning,processing speed and working memory subtest scores

International comparisons of IQ test norms show differences between nations. In the present study, nonverbal reasoning, processing speed and working memory subtest scores of the US, German, French, Finnish, and Scandinavian (combined Swedish‐Norwegian‐Danish sample) WAIS IV standardization samples were compared. The European samples had higher scores on the reasoning subtests compared to the American sample, corroborating earlier studies. The Finnish and Scandinavian samples had lower processing speed and working memory scores than the American, German, and French samples. Mechanisms that may underlie the observed national IQ profiles include: (1) test‐taking attitudes—in tests that require balancing speed and accuracy of performance Americans may prioritize fast performance while Europeans avoid mistakes; (2) differences between languages in digit articulation times; and (3) educational factors—the European advantage on reasoning subtests may be based on there being better educational systems in Europe as compared to the US.     

The evil eye effect: vertical pupils are perceived as more threatening

Popular culture has many examples of evil characters having vertically pupilled eyes. Humans have a long evolutionary history of rivalry with snakes and their visual systems were evolved to rapidly detect snakes and snake-related cues. Considering such evolutionary background, we hypothesised that humans would perceive vertical pupils, which are characteristics of ambush predators including some of the snakes, as threatening. In seven studies (aggregate N?=?1458) conducted on samples from American and Turkish samples, we found that vertical pupils are perceived as more threatening on both explicit (Study 1) and implicit level (Studies 2–7) and they are associated with physical, rather than social, threat (Study 4). Findings provided partial support regarding our hypothesis about the relevance of snake detection processes: Snake phobia, and not spider phobia, was found to be related to perceiving vertical pupils as threatening (Study 5), however an experimental manipulation of saliency of snakes rendered no significant effect (Study 6) and a comparison of fears of snakes, alligators, and cats did not support our prediction (Study 7). We discuss the potential implications and limitations of these novel findings.     

Different practice effects for males and females by psychometric and chronometric mental-rotation tests

Gender differences in the psychometric mental-rotation test are usually larger than in the chronometric version. In both tests, practice effects appear for males and females. In this study, 104 participants (54 females, 50 males, age: 21.72 years) completed both tests in counterbalanced order. In the chronometric test, only males reacted and rotated significantly faster after the practice with the psychometric test. A strong practice effect independently of gender was found in the psychometric test and a gender difference in accuracy in favour of males. Males reported more confidence and females rated the perceived pressure of the time limit of the psychometric test higher than males. Consequently, differences in confidence after the practice could partly explain the gender differences in the improvements of reaction time and rotational speed. Practice from one mental-rotation test on the performance in another seems to be dependent of participants’ gender and the type of the test.     

Définir ou détecter des pathologies ? Utilisation et interprétation des scores seuils à la lumière du débat dimensions/catégories

A number of psychometric tests are aimed at locating the performance of an individual along a continuous range that goes from normal to worrying. In a different paradigm, there are tests whose goal is to assess whether or not an individual is healthy with respect to a psychological, psychiatric or neurological pathology that is defined independently from the test itself. The former rely on a dimensional concept of psychopathologies; the latter imply a categorical concept. The former require to compare the performance of the individual to a standard sample that is representative of the general population; the latter involve a standard sample representative of the healthy population only. The former might imply the use of a cut-off score to indicate that a certain degree of rarity of the performance has been reached, while the latter must involve a cut-off score to make a decision (whether the individual belongs to the “healthy” or “pathological” category), a score that is most often set so as to control the false-positive rate in making this decision. In the former paradigm, the cut-off score defines or contributes to define the pathology. In the latter, it only helps detecting it. This article aims at making clear the difference between these two realms and highlight their practical as well as theoretical impact on psychological practice.