Head-centred meridian effect on auditory spatial attention orienting

Six experiments examined the issue of whether one single system or separate systems underlie visual and auditory orienting of spatial attention. When auditory targets were used, reaction times were slower on trials in which cued and target locations were at opposite sides of the vertical head-centred meridian than on trials in which cued and target locations were at opposite sides of the vertical visual meridian or were not separated by any meridian. The head-centred meridian effect for auditory stimuli was apparent when targets were cued by either visual (Experiments 2, 3, and 6) or auditory cues (Experiment 5). Also, the head-centred meridian effect was found when targets were delivered either through headphones (Experiments 2, 3, and 5) or external loudspeakers (Experiment 6). Conversely, participants showed a visual meridian effect when they were required to respond to visual targets (Experiment 4). These results strongly suggest that auditory and visual spatial attention systems are indeed separate, as far as endogenous orienting is concerned.     

Les caracteres perceptifs des objets et la theorie mathematique des groupes

Objects present some perceptive qualities that might be called “objectual” and others that might be called “relational”. Sometimes the same sensorial process generates both, and the psychological process which works the discrimination between these two kinds of perceptive qualities, allows us to single out of reality elements that are constant, notwithstanding the variation of physical conditions, and which we called the “objectual qualities” of objects.     

Parents’ View of Child Care Quality: Values, Evaluations, and Satisfaction

Parents’ view of the quality of early childhood education and care services has mostly been addressed from the perspective of customer satisfaction. This study investigated parents’ view within a more comprehensive framework in which parents’ values of child care, their evaluations of their child’s experience at the service and overall satisfaction with the service were considered. In particular, the study explored how values and evaluations are related and how they affect overall satisfaction. A questionnaire including a total of 96 items was filled in by 2,936 parents of children attending infant-toddler day-care centres in Rome, Italy. Parents were asked to express their values regarding child care quality and evaluate specific aspects of their experience. Parents’ perspectives of both their child’s and their own experience of childcare services were addressed separately. Two principal component analyses were performed in order to identify latent dimensions underlying parents’ values about child care quality and their evaluations of the service attended by their child. The relationships between the different dimensions of value, evaluation, and overall satisfaction with their child’s and their own experience were explained through two path models, in which values predict evaluations and these, in turn, predict overall satisfaction. Results showed that parents have a multi-faceted view of child care quality and confirm the relevance of taking into account their point of view in an analysis of the quality of early childhood education services.