Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Mindful
Valrie Pennequin, Olivier Sorel, Isabelle Nanty & Roger Fontaine
Thinking & Reasoning, August 2010, Pages 198-220
Abstract:
The central question underlying this study was whether metacognition training could enhance the two metacognition components - knowledge and skills - and the mathematical problem-solving capacities of normal children in grade 3. We also investigated whether metacognitive training had a differential effect according to the children's mathematics level. A total of 48 participants took part in this study, divided into an experimental and a control group, each subdivided into a lower and a normal achievers group. The training programme took an interactive approach in accordance with Schraw's (1998) recommendation and was carried out over five training sessions. Results indicated that children in the training group had significantly higher post-test metacognitive knowledge, metacognitive skills, and mathematical problem-solving scores. In addition, metacognitive training was particularly beneficial to the low achievers. Thus metacognitive training enabled the low achievers to make progress and solve the same number of problems on the post-test as the normal achievers solved on the pre-test.
----------------------
Roy Baumeister & E.J. Masicampo
Psychological Review, July 2010, Pages 945-971
Abstract:
Five empirically based critiques have undermined the standard assumption that conscious thought is primarily for input (obtaining information from the natural environment) or output (the direct control of action). Instead, we propose that conscious thought is for internal processing, to facilitate downstream interaction with the social and cultural environment. Human consciousness enables the construction of meaningful, sequential thought, as in sentences and narratives, logical reasoning, counting and quantification, causal understanding, narratives, and the simulation of events (including nonpresent ones). Conscious thought sequences resemble short films that the brain makes for itself, thereby enabling different parts of brain and mind to share information. The production of conscious thoughts is closely linked to the production of speech because the human mind evolved to facilitate social communication and information sharing, as culture became humankind's biological strategy. The influence of conscious thought on behavior can be vitally helpful but is mostly indirect. Conscious simulation processes are useful for understanding the perspectives of social interaction partners, for exploring options in complex decisions, for replaying past events (both literally and counterfactually) so as to learn, and for facilitating participation in culture in other ways.
----------------------
Fighting self-control failure: Overcoming ego depletion by increasing self-awareness
Hugo Alberts, Carolien Martijn & Nanne de Vries
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
According to the limited strength model (Muraven, Tice, & Baumeister, 1998), exerting self-control causes ego depletion: a depletion of cognitive resources resulting in poorer performance on later self-control tasks. Previous studies have demonstrated a positive effect of self-awareness on self-control performance. The present study examined whether the occurrence of ego depletion can be circumvented by increasing self-awareness. Initially depleted participants who received a neutral prime exhibited the classic ego depletion pattern: their performance on a subsequent physical self-control task decreased significantly. In contrast, no decrease in performance was observed for depleted participants who were exposed to a self-awareness prime. The latter group performed equally well compared to low depleted participants.
----------------------
Understanding of Evolution May Be Improved by Thinking about People
Daniel Nettle
Evolutionary Psychology, May 2010, Pages 205-228
Abstract:
The theory of evolution is poorly understood in the population at large, even by those with some science education. The recurrent misunderstandings can be partly attributed to failure to distinguish between processes which individual organisms undergo and those which populations undergo. They may be so pervasive because we usually explain evolutionary ideas with examples from non-human animals, and our everyday cognition about animals does not track individuals as distinct from the species to which they belong. By contrast, everyday cognition about other people tracks unique individuals as well as general properties of humans. In Study 1, I present experimental evidence that categorization by species occurs more strongly for non-human animals than for other people in 50 British university students. In Study 2, I show, in the same population, that framing evolutionary scenarios in terms of people produces fewer conceptual errors than when logically identical scenarios are framed terms of non-human animals. I conclude that public understanding of evolution might be improved if we began instruction by considering the organisms which are most familiar to us.
----------------------
Good and Bad in the Hands of Politicians: Spontaneous Gestures during Positive and Negative Speech
Daniel Casasanto & Kyle Jasmin
PLoS ONE, July 2010, e11805
Background: According to the body-specificity hypothesis, people with different bodily characteristics should form correspondingly different mental representations, even in highly abstract conceptual domains. In a previous test of this proposal, right- and left-handers were found to associate positive ideas like intelligence, attractiveness, and honesty with their dominant side and negative ideas with their non-dominant side. The goal of the present study was to determine whether ‘body-specific' associations of space and valence can be observed beyond the laboratory in spontaneous behavior, and whether these implicit associations have visible consequences.
Methodology and Principal Findings: We analyzed speech and gesture (3012 spoken clauses, 1747 gestures) from the final debates of the 2004 and 2008 US presidential elections, which involved two right-handers (Kerry, Bush) and two left-handers (Obama, McCain). Blind, independent coding of speech and gesture allowed objective hypothesis testing. Right- and left-handed candidates showed contrasting associations between gesture and speech. In both of the left-handed candidates, left-hand gestures were associated more strongly with positive-valence clauses and right-hand gestures with negative-valence clauses; the opposite pattern was found in both right-handed candidates.
Conclusions: Speakers associate positive messages more strongly with dominant hand gestures and negative messages with non-dominant hand gestures, revealing a hidden link between action and emotion. This pattern cannot be explained by conventions in language or culture, which associate ‘good' with ‘right' but not with ‘left'; rather, results support and extend the body-specificity hypothesis. Furthermore, results suggest that the hand speakers use to gesture may have unexpected (and probably unintended) communicative value, providing the listener with a subtle index of how the speaker feels about the content of the co-occurring speech.
----------------------
Julie Spencer-Rodgers, Melissa Williams & Kaiping Peng
Personality and Social Psychology Review, August 2010, Pages 296-312
Abstract:
Since the publication of Peng and Nisbett's seminal paper on dialectical thinking, a substantial amount of empirical research has replicated and expanded on the core finding that people differ in the degree to which they view the world as inherently contradictory and in constant flux. Dialectical thinkers (who are more often members of East Asian than Western cultures) show greater expectation of change in tasks related to explanation and prediction and greater tolerance of contradiction in tasks involving the reconciliation of contradictory information. The authors show how these effects are manifested in the domains of the self, emotional experience, psychological well-being, attitudes and evaluations, social categorization and perception, and judgment and decision making. They note important topics in need of further investigation and offer predictions concerning possible cultural differences in unexplored domains as a function of the presence or absence of naïve dialecticism.
----------------------
Individual differences in reasoning style as a moderator of the identifiable victim effect
James Friedrich & Acacia McGuire
Social Influence, July 2010, Pages 182-201
Abstract:
The identifiable victim effect refers to people's greater helpfulness towards personalized, single victims compared to aggregated, statistical victims. A field study tested recent claims that analytical processing might undermine support for identified victims by suppressing emotional responses (Small, Loewenstein, & Slovic, 2007). Individual differences in analytic ("rational") processing style moderated the effects of different request types on donations to a Zambian relief fund. Less-analytic processors donated more to a single identified victim than to requests describing statistical victims or a combination of both; more-analytic processors showed no differences. Self-reported emotional responses, however, did not support an affect-mediated account of these effects. Use of proportional reasoning strategies is discussed as a possible alternative account of current and past findings.
----------------------
Memorising Milton's Paradise Lost: A study of a septuagenarian exceptional memoriser
John Seamon, Paawan Punjabi & Emily Busch
Memory, July 2010, Pages 498-503
Abstract:
At age 58, JB began memorising Milton's epic poem Paradise Lost. Nine years and thousands of study hours later, he completed this process in 2001 and recalled from memory all 12 books of this 10,565-line poem over a 3-day period. Now 74, JB continues to recite this work. We tested his memory accuracy by cueing his recall with two lines from the beginning or middle of each book and asking JB to recall the next 10 lines. JB is an exceptional memoriser of Milton, both in our laboratory tests in which he did not know the specific tests or procedures in advance, and in our analysis of a videotaped, prepared performance. Consistent with deliberate practice theory, JB achieved this remarkable ability by deeply analysing the poem's structure and meaning over lengthy repetitions. Our findings suggest that exceptional memorisers such as JB are made, not born, and that cognitive expertise can be demonstrated even in later adulthood.
----------------------
E.E. Nijman, J.G.M. Scheirs, M.J.H. Prinsen, C.D. Abbink & J.B. Blok
Research in Developmental Disabilities, forthcoming
Abstract:
Increases in the scores on IQ tests across generations have been called the Flynn effect (FE). One of the unresolved questions is whether the FE affects all subsamples of the intellectual ability distribution equally. The present study was aimed at determining the size of the FE in moderately mentally retarded individuals. A nonverbal intelligence test developed for children, the Snijders-Oomen Nonverbal Intelligence Test (SON), was administered to 32 retarded adults with a mental age of 3-6 years. Sixty-nine children with a biological age in the same range and with normal intelligence served as a comparison group. Both an older and a more recent version of the SON were presented to all participants in a counterbalanced order. The proportion of items answered correctly was taken as a measure of the dependent variable. It was found that a FE existed in both the group of children and in the group of retarded adults, but that the FE was largest in the latter group. The importance of not using obsolete test norms when diagnosing mental retardation was stressed, and possible causes of the Flynn effect were discussed.
----------------------
Improved Proper Name Recall by Electrical Stimulation of the Anterior Temporal Lobes
Lars Ross, David McCoy, David Wolk, Branch Coslett & Ingrid Olson
Neuropsychologia, forthcoming
Abstract:
People's names have an embarrassing propensity to be forgotten. This problem is exacerbated by normal aging and by some kinds of dementia. As evidence from neuroimaging and neuropsychology suggest that portions of the anterior temporal lobes play a role in proper name retrieval, we hypothesized that transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), a technique that modulates neural transmission, to the anterior temporal lobes would alter the retrieval of proper names. Fifteen young adults received left anodal, right anodal, or sham stimulation of the anterior temporal lobes while naming pictures of famous individuals and landmarks. Right anterior temporal lobe stimulation significantly improved naming for people but not landmarks. These findings are consistent with the notion that the anterior temporal lobes are critically involved in the retrieval of people's names.
----------------------
Electrical Stimulation of Broca's Area Enhances Implicit Learning of an Artificial Grammar
Meinou de Vries, Andre Barth, Sandra Maiworm, Stefan Knecht, Pienie Zwitserlood & Agnes Flöel
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, November 2010, Pages 2427-2436
Abstract:
Artificial grammar learning constitutes a well-established model for the acquisition of grammatical knowledge in a natural setting. Previous neuroimaging studies demonstrated that Broca's area (left BA 44/45) is similarly activated by natural syntactic processing and artificial grammar learning. The current study was conducted to investigate the causal relationship between Broca's area and learning of an artificial grammar by means of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS). Thirty-eight healthy subjects participated in a between-subject design, with either anodal tDCS (20 min, 1 mA) or sham stimulation, over Broca's area during the acquisition of an artificial grammar. Performance during the acquisition phase, presented as a working memory task, was comparable between groups. In the subsequent classification task, detecting syntactic violations, and specifically, those where no cues to superficial similarity were available, improved significantly after anodal tDCS, resulting in an overall better performance. A control experiment where 10 subjects received anodal tDCS over an area unrelated to artificial grammar learning further supported the specificity of these effects to Broca's area. We conclude that Broca's area is specifically involved in rule-based knowledge, and here, in an improved ability to detect syntactic violations. The results cannot be explained by better tDCS-induced working memory performance during the acquisition phase. This is the first study that demonstrates that tDCS may facilitate acquisition of grammatical knowledge, a finding of potential interest for rehabilitation of aphasia.
----------------------
Similar patterns of cortical expansion during human development and evolution
Jason Hill, Terrie Inder, Jeffrey Neil, Donna Dierker, John Harwell & David Van Essen
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 20 July 2010, Pages 13135-13140
Abstract:
The cerebral cortex of the human infant at term is complexly folded in a similar fashion to adult cortex but has only one third the total surface area. By comparing 12 healthy infants born at term with 12 healthy young adults, we demonstrate that postnatal cortical expansion is strikingly nonuniform: regions of lateral temporal, parietal, and frontal cortex expand nearly twice as much as other regions in the insular and medial occipital cortex. This differential postnatal expansion may reflect regional differences in the maturity of dendritic and synaptic architecture at birth and/or in the complexity of dendritic and synaptic architecture in adults. This expression may also be associated with differential sensitivity of cortical circuits to childhood experience and insults. By comparing human and macaque monkey cerebral cortex, we infer that the pattern of human evolutionary expansion is remarkably similar to the pattern of human postnatal expansion. To account for this correspondence, we hypothesize that it is beneficial for regions of recent evolutionary expansion to remain less mature at birth, perhaps to increase the influence of postnatal experience on the development of these regions or to focus prenatal resources on regions most important for early survival.
----------------------
Susanne Shultz & R.I.M. Dunbar
Journal of Comparative Psychology, August 2010, Pages 252-260
Abstract:
A persistent debate in behavioral research is whether brain size or architecture relates to cognitive performance. A growing body of evidence has demonstrated correlations between brain size and ecological and behavioral tasks. These studies are premised on a causal link between brain size and cognitive function, although this association has little empirical backing. We show, for a set of 46 species from 17 primate genera, that competence on a series of eight executive function cognitive tasks both correlate across tasks and with brain size and architecture across species. Our model selection approach showed that, although several measures of brain component volumes are significantly associated with performance, hippocampus size is the best predictor of overall performance. The best performing model also includes total brain size and relative neocortex size. Additionally, absolute measures are much more predictive of performance than relative measures of brain and brain component size. These results are consistent with the hippocampus' role in learning, and the executive brain (neocortex) being important for problem solving and consolidation. Our findings challenge and extend those of previous analyses by clarifying the relationship between overall brain size and specific regional volumes. They also suggest that commonly used indices of encephalization, such as residuals of brain volume regressed on body size, may confound rather than clarify matters.
----------------------
Albrecht Küfner, Mitja Back, Steffen Nestler & Boris Egloff
Journal of Research in Personality, August 2010, Pages 427-435
Abstract:
We elucidated the accuracy of personality judgments based on creative writing by means of lens model analyses. Targets (N = 79) wrote short stories with five predefined words. Observers rated the Big Five dimensions and general knowledge of the targets who wrote these stories. Three main findings were revealed: (a) the Big Five and general knowledge were consensually judged by observers; (b) judgments of openness to experience, agreeableness, and general knowledge were accurate; and (c) accuracies were achieved due to the correct usage of valid cues. Additionally, we replicated all results in a second sample of targets (N = 126). Results are discussed in comparison to other areas of personality judgment research.
----------------------
Speaker-listener neural coupling underlies successful communication
Greg Stephens, Lauren Silbert & Uri Hasson
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 10 August 2010, Pages 14425-14430
Abstract:
Verbal communication is a joint activity; however, speech production and comprehension have primarily been analyzed as independent processes within the boundaries of individual brains. Here, we applied fMRI to record brain activity from both speakers and listeners during natural verbal communication. We used the speaker's spatiotemporal brain activity to model listeners' brain activity and found that the speaker's activity is spatially and temporally coupled with the listener's activity. This coupling vanishes when participants fail to communicate. Moreover, though on average the listener's brain activity mirrors the speaker's activity with a delay, we also find areas that exhibit predictive anticipatory responses. We connected the extent of neural coupling to a quantitative measure of story comprehension and find that the greater the anticipatory speaker-listener coupling, the greater the understanding. We argue that the observed alignment of production- and comprehension-based processes serves as a mechanism by which brains convey information.
----------------------
I.C. McManus, Richard Cook & Amy Hunt
Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, May 2010, Pages 113-126
Abstract:
Interest in the experimental aesthetics of rectangles originates in the studies of Fechner (1876), which investigated Zeising's suggestion that Golden Section ratios determine the aesthetic appeal of great works of art. Although Fechner's studies are often cited to support the centrality of the Golden Section, a century of subsequent experimental work suggests it has little normative role in rectangle preferences. However, rectangles are still of interest to experimental aesthetics, and McManus (1980) used a paired comparison method to show that although population preferences are weak, there are strong, stable, statistically robust and very varied individual preferences. The present study measured rectangle preferences in 79 participants, particularly assessing their relationship to a wide range of background measures of individual differences. Once again weak population preferences but strong and varied individual rectangle preferences were found, and computer presentation of stimuli, with detailed analyses of response times, confirmed the coherent nature of aesthetic preferences for rectangles. Q-mode factor analysis found two main factors, labeled "square" and "rectangle," with participants showing different combinations of positive and negative loadings on these factors. However, the individual difference measures, including Big Five personality traits, Need for Cognition, Tolerance of Ambiguity, Schizotypy, Vocational Types, and Aesthetic Activities, showed no correlation at all with rectangle preferences. Individual differences in rectangle preferences are a robust phenomenon that clearly requires explanation, but at present their variability is entirely unexplained.
