The effect of simultaneously presented words and auditory tones on visuomotor performance

The experiment reported here used a variation of the spatial cueing task to examine the effects of unimodal and bimodal attention-orienting primes on target identification latencies and eye gaze movements. The primes were a nonspatial auditory tone and words known to drive attention consistent with the dominant writing and reading direction, as well as introducing a semantic, temporal bias (past–future) on the horizontal dimension. As expected, past-related (visual) word primes gave rise to shorter response latencies on the left hemifield and future-related words on the right. This congruency effect was differentiated by an asymmetric performance on the right space following future words and driven by the left-to-right trajectory of scanning habits that facilitated search times and eye gaze movements to lateralized targets. Auditory tone prime alone acted as an alarm signal, boosting visual search and reducing response latencies. Bimodal priming, i.e., temporal visual words paired with the auditory tone, impaired performance by delaying visual attention and response times relative to the unimodal visual word condition. We conclude that bimodal primes were no more effective in capturing participants’ spatial attention than the unimodal auditory and visual primes. Their contribution to the literature on multisensory integration is discussed.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Does the linguistic expectancy bias extend to a second language?

The linguistic expectancy bias (LEB) reflects the tendency to describe expectancy-consistent behavior more abstractly than expectancy-inconsistent. The current studies replicate the LEB in Portuguese and examine it in a second language (English). Earlier studies found differences in processing a first language (L1) and a second language (L2) shaping affective and cognitive processes. We did not expect these differences to shape the LEB because controlled lexical decisions (e.g., use of verbs and adjectives) are unlikely, even when using L2. Participants wrote stereotypically male or female behavioral descriptions for male and female targets. A new group of participants read those descriptions and was asked about their causes. Expectancy-consistent behavior was described more abstractly and shaped more dispositional inferences in L1 and L2. Aside from replicating the LEB in a different language, these studies indicate that structural features of language preserve a linguistic bias with implications for social perception even when using a second language.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Comparing fear and anxiety chemosignals: Do they modulate facial muscle activity and facilitate identifying facial expressions?

Fear and anxiety are the most frequently studied emotional states in chemosignal research. Despite differences between these two emotional states, findings from research using fear and anxiety body odors (BOs) are often treated as part of a similar phenomenon. In this article, we examine possible similarities and differences between participants exposed to fear and anxiety BOs on 2 dependent variables commonly used in chemosignals’ research: (1) the activation of facial muscles in displays of fear expressions (i.e. the medial frontalis and the corrugator supercilii); and (2) the time required to discriminate between negative emotional expressions (fear, anger, and disgust) and neutral ones. Our results show that fear (vs. rest) and anxiety (vs. exercise) BOs activate the medial frontalis, suggesting that both have a similar impact on receivers’ facial muscles. However, we could not replicate previous findings regarding the influence of fear BOs in discriminating negative emotional faces from neutral ones. Two additional replication attempts failed to replicate the earlier results, indicating that the results reported in the literature with this specific paradigm should be interpreted cautiously. Suggestions for future research examining possible differences between fear and anxiety BOs are advanced.Fundação Para a Ciência e Tecnologia - FCTinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Situating person memory: the role of the visual context on memory for behavioral information

Person memory has been mainly investigated as an individual process. In contrast, we argue that person memory results from the interplay between the individual and the context. Thus, the way people acquire and retrieve social information is constrained by the context in which these processes take place. This argument was explored in three experiments. In an impression formation paradigm, we manipulated the meaningfulness of contextual information (objects) for a stereotypical target. Results showed that meaningful contextual information presented during the encoding of behavioral information improved memory.for the behavioral information but also for the contextual information (Experiment 1-2); that this memory advantage only occurs when the encoding goal requires some degree of cognitive organization (Experiment 2); and finally, that meaningful contextual information also enhances memory when presented at retrieval (Experiment 3). These results are consistent with a situated cognition perspective according to which the context where cognitive activities take place can be used to facilitate cognitive activity. We discuss the implications of these results for the standard person memory view and identify new routes for future research.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Testing T Invariance in the Interaction of Slow Neutrons with Aligned Nuclei

The study of five-fold (P even, T odd) correlation in the interaction of slow polarized neutrons with aligned nuclei is a possible way of testing the time reversal invariance due to the expected enhancement of T violating effects in compound resonances. Possible nuclear targets are discussed which can be aligned both dynamically as well as by the "brute force" method at low temperature. A statistical estimation is performed of the five-fold correlation for low lying p wave compound resonances of the $^{121}$Sb, $^{123}$Sb and $^{127}$I nuclei. It is shown that a significant improvement can be achieved for the bound on the intensity of the fundamental parity conserving time violating (PCTV) interaction.Comment: 22 pages, 5 figures, published versio

Retrieval Contexts and the Concreteness Effect: Dissociations in Memory of Concrete and Abstract Words

Decades of research on the concreteness effect, namely better memory for concrete as compared with abstract words, suggest it is a fairly robust phenomenon. Nevertheless, little attention has been given to limiting retrieval contexts. Two experiments evaluated intentional memory for concrete and abstract word lists in three retrieval contexts: free recall, explicit word-stem completion, and implicit word-stem completion. Concreteness effects were observed in free recall and in explicit word-stem completion, but not in implicit word-stem completion. These findings are consistent with both a bidirectional version of the relational-distinctiveness processing framework (Ruiz-Vargas, Cuevas, & Marschark, 1996) and a second framework combining insights from dual coding theory (Paivio, 1971, 1986) and the transfer appropriate processing framework (Roediger, Weldon, & Challis, 1989). Also, consistent with the relational-distinctiveness framework, the second experiment suggested that concreteness effects might depend on relational processing at encoding: Concreteness effects were observed in explicit memory for related word lists but not for unrelated word lists. © 2005 Psychology Press Ltd

Affective stimulus properties influence size perception and the Ebbinghaus illusion

In the New Look literature of the 1950s, it has been suggested that size judgments are dependent on the affective content of stimuli. This suggestion, however, has been ‘discredited’ due to contradictory findings and methodological problems. In the present study, we revisited this forgotten issue in two experiments. The first experiment investigated the influence of affective content on size perception by examining judgments of the size of target circles with and without affectively loaded (i.e., positive, neutral, and negative) pictures. Circles with a picture were estimated to be smaller than circles without a picture, and circles with a negative picture were estimated to be larger than circles with a positive or a neutral picture confirming the suggestion from the 1950s that size perception is influenced by affective content, an effect notably confined to negatively loaded stimuli. In a second experiment, we examined whether affective content influenced the Ebbinghaus illusion. Participants judged the size of a target circle whereby target and flanker circles differed in affective loading. The results replicated the first experiment. Additionally, the Ebbinghaus illusion was shown to be weakest for a negatively loaded target with positively loaded and blank flankers. A plausible explanation for both sets of experimental findings is that negatively loaded stimuli are more attention demanding than positively loaded or neutral stimuli

Realism, Instrumentalism, and Scientific Symbiosis: Psychological Theory as a search for truth and the discovery of solutions

Scientific realism holds that scientific theories are approximations of universal truths about reality, whereas scientific instrumentalism posits that scientific theories are intellectual structures that provide adequate predictions of what is observed and useful frameworks for answering questions and solving problems in a given domain. These philosophical perspectives have different strengths and weaknesses and have been regarded as incommensurate: Scientific realism fosters theoretical rigor, verifiability, parsimony, and debate, whereas scientific instrumentalism fosters theoretical innovation, synthesis, generativeness, and scope. The authors review the evolution of scientific realism and instrumentalism in psychology and propose that the categorical distinction between the 2 is overstated as a prescription for scientific practice. The authors propose that the iterative deployment of these 2 perspectives, just as the iterative application of inductive and deductive reasoning in science, may promote more rigorous, integrative, cumulative, and useful scientific theories

Lie experts' beliefs about non-verbal indicators of deception

ABSTRACT.. Beliefs about behavioral clues to deception were investigated in 212 people, consisting of prisoners, police detectives, patrol police officers, prison guards, customs officers, and college students. Previous studies, mainly conducted with college students as subjects, showed that people have some incorrect beliefs about behavioral clues to deception. It was hypothesized that prisoners would have the best notion about clues of deception, due to the fact that they receive the most adequate feedback about successful deception strategies. The results supported this hypothesis

Phase transition and anomalous electronic behavior in layered dichalcogenide CuS (covellite) probed by NQR

Nuclear quadrupole resonance (NQR) on copper nuclei has been applied for studies of the electronic properties of quasi-two-dimensional low-temperature superconductor CuS (covellite) in the temperature region between 1.47 and 290 K. Two NQR signals corresponding to two non-equivalent sites of copper in the structure, Cu(1) and Cu(2), has been found. The temperature dependences of copper quadrupole frequencies, line-widths and spin-lattice relaxation rates, which so far had never been investigated so precisely for this material, altogether demonstrate the structural phase transition near 55 K, which accompanies transformations of electronic spectrum not typical for simple metals. The analysis of NQR results and their comparison with literature data show that the valence of copper ions at both sites is intermediate in character between monovalent and divalent states with the dominant of the former. It has been found that there is a strong hybridization of Cu(1) and Cu(2) conduction bands at low temperatures, indicating that the charge delocalization between these ions takes place even in 2D regime. Based on our data, the occurrence of energy gap, charge fluctuations and charge-density waves, as well as the nature of phase transition in CuS are discussed. It is concluded that some physical properties of CuS are similar to those of high-temperature superconductors (HTSC) in normal state.Comment: to be publishe