Effects of Monitoring and Social Reprimands on Instruction-Following in Undergraduate Students

The effects of the magnitude of nonverbal consequences, monitoring, and social consequences on instruction-following were evaluated. Twenty-four undergraduates were exposed to a matching-to-sample procedure. The undergraduates underwent four experimental phases that differed regarding the presence or absence of the observer and the correspondence or non-correspondence of the instructions with the nonverbal contingency. In Experiments 1 and 2, the magnitudes of the nonverbal consequences were manipulated, and in Experiment 3, the effects of verbal reprimands on instruction-following were evaluated. The results revealed that alterations in the magnitudes of nonverbal consequences did not influenced the performances of the participants and that monitoring increased the probability that the participants would follow the instructions but not to an extent sufficient to maintain performance when the consequences did not correspond to the nonverbal contingency. The inclusion of verbal reprimands was necessary to achieve this effect. These results support the proposition that social control is important for maintaining instruction-following.

     

Psicosociología de la alimentación: Su incidencia en la obesidad común. Hacia una perspectiva multifactorial (y II)

Resumen

En este artículo, continuación de otro publicado con anterioridad, se revisan las aportaciones de la psicosociologia en el estudio etiológico de la obesidad común. Al carácter estático y estructural de lo biológico es preciso añadir la dinamicidad de la perspectiva psicosocial. Al final, dentro de un encuadre biológico-psicológico-social, se intenta una explicación etiológica multifactorial de la obesidad.     

Standard and Short RoM Isokinetic Testing: Comparative Analysis in Identifying Submaximal Shoulder External Rotator Effort

An isokinetic-related parameter termed the difference between eccentric-concentric strength ratios at two distinct test velocities (DEC) based on 60° (standard) range of motion (RoM) has been proven to be highly efficient detecting feigned muscular efforts. This study aimed to verify whether a DEC derived from a much shorter test RoM (20°) was equally useful than a long RoM–derived one. Eighteen healthy men (32.4 ± 6.4 years old) took part in a study focusing on shoulder external rotation isokinetic strength. Participants performed a genuine shoulder external rotator maximal effort (eight pairs of concentric and eccentric contractions at high and low velocities at short and long RoM) and then instructed to feign maximal effort. Contraction velocities were adjusted accordingly by applying a 1:4 gradient and peak moments registered. Both condition DEC was then calculated by subtracting the eccentric and concentric strength ratios at low velocities from those at high velocities. DEC scores in the feigned effort were significantly higher than maximal effort ones in both conditions in men. It enabled the setting of specific cutoff levels for separating the efforts. Both approaches revealed a coincident sensitivity (78%) whereas short RoM showed an even higher specificity: 88% versus 78%. Thus, the short RoM protocol provides clinically acceptable detection power.     

The influence of natural contour and face size on the spatial frequency tuning for identifying upright and inverted faces

Psychological Research - It has previously been proposed that holistic face processing is based on low spatial frequencies (SFs) whereas featural processing relies on higher SFs, a hypothesis still...     

Influence of music on Wingate Anaerobic Test performance

While several studies have investigated the effects of music on cardiovascular endurance performance and perceived exertion during exercise of moderate intensity, few studies have investigated such effects on supramaximal exercise bouts. The purpose of the present study was to assess whether music affects performance on the Wingate Anaerobic Test. Each of the 12 men and 3 women were required to report to the laboratory on two occasions, once for tests in the music condition and once for tests in the nonmusic condition. Conditions were randomly ordered. All music selections were set at the same tempo. On each test day subjects performed a series of three Wingate Anaerobic Tests with 30-sec. rests in between. On Test 3 subjects were asked to continue pedaling until fatigued. Mean Power Output, Maximum Power Output, Minimum Power Output, and Fatigue Index were compared between conditions for each test using a repeated-measures analysis of variance. Time to fatigue on Trial 3 compared by analysis of variance gave no significant differences between conditions for any measures.     

IQ heritability estimation: analyzing genetically-informative data with structural equation models

When analyzing genetic data, Structural Equations Modeling (SEM) provides a straightforward methodology to decompose phenotypic variance using a model-based approach. Furthermore, several models can be easily implemented, tested, and compared using SEM, allowing the researcher to obtain valuable information about the sources of variability. This methodology is briefly described and applied to re-analyze a Spanish set of IQ data using the biometric ACE model. In summary, we report heritability estimates that are consistent with those of previous studies and support substantial genetic contribution to phenotypic IQ; around 40% of the variance can be attributable to it. With regard to the environmental contribution, shared environment accounts for 50% of the variance, and non-shared environment accounts for the remaining 10%. These results are discussed in the text.     

The World at 7:00: Comparing the Experience of Situations Across 20 Countries

The purpose of this research is to quantitatively compare everyday situational experience around the world. Local collaborators recruited 5,447 members of college communities in 20 countries, who provided data via a Web site in 14 languages. Using the 89 items of the Riverside Situational Q‐sort (RSQ), participants described the situation they experienced the previous evening at 7:00 p.m. Correlations among the average situational profiles of each country ranged from r = .73 to r = .95; the typical situation was described as largely pleasant. Most similar were the United States/Canada; least similar were South Korea/Denmark. Japan had the most homogenous situational experience; South Korea, the least. The 15 RSQ items varying the most across countries described relatively negative aspects of situational experience; the 15 least varying items were more positive. Further analyses correlated RSQ items with national scores on six value dimensions, the Big Five traits, economic output, and population. Individualism, Neuroticism, Openness, and Gross Domestic Product yielded more significant correlations than expected by chance. Psychological research traditionally has paid more attention to the assessment of persons than of situations, a discrepancy that extends to cross‐cultural psychology. The present study demonstrates how cultures vary in situational experience in psychologically meaningful ways.     

Modified decision processes marked by linguistic forms in a problem solving task

The aim of this paper is to formalize, from linguistic markers, the on-line modifications of decision processes in terms of detachments from the spatio-temporal situation. For that, a 10-year-old’s verbal protocol, obtained during four successive trials on the Tower of Hanoi puzzle, is analyzed in the line of current cognitive linguistics, notably Culioli’s theory of enunciative operations. A first modification is inherent to decision process themselves according to their status, defining a distribution of representations between internal vs external problem spaces. That is marked by the presence or not of aggregates and of “starting terms”. A second kind of modifications is marked by modal terms. The formalization relies on a cognitive interpretation of enunciative operations involved in these detachments and suggests a new approach of information processing. Results show a progressive identification of constraints, and the reconstruction of the spatio-temporal situation at detached levels. Several kinds of partial articulations and compositions intervene in the on-line construction of elementary classes and between declarative and procedural aggregates.     

Linguistic markers of decision processes in a problem solving task

Two distinct decision processes, involved in the construction of chunks, were characterized from the cognitive interpretation of Culioli’s enunciative operations in 80 thinking aloud verbal reports for the Tower of Hanoi puzzle. The instructions presented the tower to 20 participants, 10 years old, during four consecutive trials, with two distinct verbal labels, either as a collection or as a class, i.e. as Tower vs. Disks. Two studies analysed the repartition of linguistic markers: enunciative Locations between consecutive moves, interpreted as markers of automatic entailments and of attentional focusing; and Starting Terms, as markers of a categorizing process, reconstructing external occurrences at a higher level of control, and regulating the access to abstraction. In the first study sections were demarcated on every solution path by the achievement of subgoals, and by points of obligatory passage, and, in the second one, two distinct batches of moves were distinguished. Results allowed to characterize micro-processes involved in the interaction between internal and external spaces. A process of internalization and externalization, entailing perseverations, was observed in the case of holistic structure, at the beginning in condition Tower, and later in condition Disks where the emergence of this structure was attested. A third study analyzed individual differences in performance, showing two mechanisms of generalization, one in interactive processing, the other along the optimal strategy in the external space. These exploratory results open the way to a number of issues going far beyond the case of the Tower of Hanoi puzzle.     

Neurofisiología de la alimentación: su incidencia en la obesidad común (I)

Resumen

En este estudio revisamos y valoramos las distintas explicaciones etiológicas de la obesidad común, que de alguna manera se fundamentan en principios neurofisiológicos. Entre otras, se estudian las influencias del proceso metabólico, del tejido adiposo, de la herencia genética y, en especial, del «arco reflejo alimentario». Se evidencia la limitación que supone una perspectiva radicalmente organicísta para la comprensión de la obesidad, que en la inmensa mayoría de casos necesita del soporte psicosocial.