Emotional intelligence and social interaction

Two studies found positive relationships between the ability to manage emotions and the quality of social interactions, supporting the predictive and incremental validity of an ability measure of emotional intelligence, the Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT). In a sample of 118 American college students (Study 1), higher scores on the managing emotions subscale of the MSCEIT were positively related to the quality of interactions with friends, evaluated separately by participants and two friends. In a diary study of social interaction with 103 German college students (Study 2), managing emotions scores were positively related to the perceived quality of interactions with opposite sex individuals. Scores on this subscale were also positively related to perceived success in impression management in social interactions with individuals of the opposite sex. In both studies, the main findings remained statistically significant after controlling for Big Five personality traits.     

"Capacity" reconsidered: interindividual differences in language comprehension and individual alpha frequency

The influence of interindividual differences in cognitive mechanisms on language comprehension remains controversial not only due to conflicting experimental findings, but also in view of the difficulty associated with determining which measure should be used in participant classification. Here, we address the latter problem by proposing that an electrophysiological measure, individual alpha frequency (IAF), may be a suitable means of classifying interindividual differences in sentence processing. Interindividual differences in IAF have been shown to correlate with performance on memory tasks and speed of information processing. In two experiments using event-related brain potentials (ERPs), IAF-based participant groups differed systematically with regard to the processing of ambiguous sentences such that the low-IAF group showed a sustained positivity in the ambiguous region, while the high-IAF group did not. These interindividual differences were independent of whether the ambiguity was syntactic (Experiment 1) or sentence-level semantic (Experiment 2). Moreover, they were reliable only when participants were classified according to IAF, but not in classifications based on reading span, speed of processing (reaction time), or accuracy of processing (error rate).     

Distributed attentional deficits in chronic methamphetamine abusers: evidence from the Attentional Network Task (ANT)

Objective

The goal of the present study was to examine distributed attentional functions in long-term but currently abstinent methamphetamine (MA) abusers using a task that measures attentional alertness, orienting, and conflict resolution.

Methods

Thirty currently abstinent MA abusers (1 month-5 years) and 22 healthy non-substance using adults were administered a multimodal version of the Attentional Network Task (ANT-I). In this task subjects identified the direction of a centrally presented arrow using a key press. Analyses examined the interaction between alerting tones, location cueing and congruency between the target arrows and flanking distractor stimuli.

Results

All participants were faster when an auditory tone preceded the trial onset (p < 0.001), on trials in which a valid cue preceded the location of the target arrow (p < 0.001), and on congruent trials (i.e., when all display arrows faced in the same direction) (p < 0.001). Of primary interest was the finding that MA abusers were more influenced by the conflict between the peripheral arrows and the central target arrow (p = 0.009). There were also correlations between length of drug sobriety and executive function as well as between drug-induced psychiatric symptoms and alertness.

Conclusions

These results suggest that chronic MA abusers display cognitive deficits that may reflect a specific vulnerability to distraction on a task of executive function. These findings are consistent with other studies that have reported deficits in anterior attentional systems and top-down cognitive control.     

A Qualitative Study on Children’s Digital Media Use and Parents’ Self-interest

Journal of Child and Family Studies - This qualitative study provides insight into the role of parents’ self-interest in digital media use of children in different age groups. We conducted 31...     

Reading about explanations enhances perceptions of inevitability and foreseeability: a cross-cultural study with Wikipedia articles

In hindsight, people often perceive events to be more inevitable and foreseeable than in foresight. According to Causal Model Theory (Nestler et al. in J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn 34: 1043–1054, 2008), causal explanations are crucial for such hindsight distortions to occur. The present study provides further empirical support for this notion but extends previous findings in several ways. First, ecologically valid materials were used. Second, the effect of causal information on hindsight distortions was investigated in the realm of previously known events. Third, cross-cultural differences in reasoning (analytic vs. holistic) were taken into account. Specifically, German and Vietnamese participants in our study were presented with Wikipedia articles about the nuclear power plant in Fukushima Daiichi, Japan. They read either the version that existed before the nuclear disaster unfolded (Version 1) or the article that existed 8 weeks after the catastrophe commenced (Version 2). Only the latter contained elaborations on causal antecedents and therefore provided an explanation for the disaster. Reading that version led participants to perceive the nuclear disaster to be more likely inevitable and foreseeable when compared to reading Version 1. Cultural background did not exert a significant effect on these perceptions. Hence, hindsight distortions were obtained for ecologically valid materials even if the event was already known. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.     

Dissociating the two faces of selective memory retrieval

Research in the past four decades has repeatedly shown that selective retrieval of some (non-target) memories can impair subsequent retrieval of other (target) information, a finding known as retrieval-induced forgetting. More recently, however, there is evidence that selective retrieval can both impair and enhance recall of related memories (K-H. T. Bäuml & Samenieh, 2010). To identify possible experimental dissociations between the detrimental and the beneficial effects of memory retrieval, we examined retrieval dynamics in listwise directed forgetting, varying the delay between preceding non-target and subsequent target recall. When target recall immediately followed non-target recall, we replicated the prior work and found detrimental effects of memory retrieval on to-be-remembered items but beneficial effects on to-be-forgotten items. In contrast, when a delay was introduced between non-target and target recall, the detrimental effects were present but the beneficial effects were absent. The results demonstrate a first experimental dissociation between the two effects of memory retrieval. They are consistent with a recent two-factor account of the two faces of selective memory retrieval.     

Electric source localization adds evidence for task-specific CNVs

This study was an attempt to replicate recent magnetoencephalographic (MEG) findings on human task-specific CNV sources (Basile et al., Electroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology 90, 1994, 157-165) by means of a spatio-temporal electric source localization method (Scherg and von Cramon, Electroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology 62, 1985, 32-44; Scherg and von Cramon, Electroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology 65, 1986, 344-360; Scherg and Berg, Brain Electric Source Analysis Handbook, Version 2). The previous MEG results showed CNV sources in the prefrontal cortex of the two hemispheres for two tasks used, namely visual pattern recognition and visual spatial recognition tasks. In the right hemisphere, the sources were more anterior and inferior for the spatial recognition task than for the pattern recognition task. In the present study we obtained CNVs in five subjects during two tasks identical to the MEG study. The elicited electric potentials were modeled with four spatio-temporal dipoles for each task, three of which accounted for the visual evoked response and one that accounted for the CNV. For all subjects the dipole explaining the CNV was always localized in the frontal region of the head, however, the dipole obtained during the visual spatial recognition task was more anterior than the one obtained during the pattern recognition task. Thus, task-specific CNV sources were again observed, although the stable model consisted of only one dipole located close to the midline instead of one dipole in each hemisphere. This was a major difference in the CNV sources between the previous MEG and the present electric source analysis results. We discuss the possible basis for the difference between the two methods used to study slow brain activity that is believed to originate from extended cortical patches.