Los violadores y los que abusan de niños comparten un bajo nivel de actualización ejecutiva pero no de razonamiento fluido

Research findings suggest that sex offenders show worse performance than the general population in neuropsychological tests. Nevertheless, moderators such as age of the victim, use of antisocial control groups, and characteristics of administered measures have been highlighted. Here, 100 participants completed a battery of cognitive measures tapping fluid reasoning, verbal ability, and three basic executive processes (inhibition, switching, and updating). They were matched by educational level and classified in four groups: controls, non-sex offenders, rapists, and child abusers. The analyses revealed that rapists showed lower fluid reasoning scores than controls and child abusers. Furthermore, rapists and child abusers showed lower executive updating performance than controls and non-sex offenders. Importantly, child abusers did show fluid reasoning scores on a par with controls (controlling for updating differences), but their executive updating performance was equivalent to the one revealed by rapists (controlling for fluid intelligence differences). Implications of these findings for the design of efficient intervention programs are discussedLos datos de investigación empírica sugieren que los delincuentes sexuales presentan un peor desempeño que la población general en las pruebas neuropsicológicas. Aun así, se ha resaltado la influencia de variables moderadoras como la edad de la víctima, el uso de grupos control que incluyan individuos antisociales y las características de las medidas utilizadas. En este estudio cien participantes completaron una batería de pruebas cognitivas que evalúan razonamiento fluido, capacidad verbal y tres funciones ejecutivas básicas (inhibición, cambio y actualización). Los participantes estaban igualados en su nivel educativo y divididos en cuatro grupos: controles, delincuentes no sexuales, agresores sexuales con víctimas adultas y abusadores de menores. Los análisis revelaron que los agresores sexuales con víctimas adultas presentaban puntuaciones menores que los controles y los abusadores de menores en razonamiento fluido. Más aún, los agresores con víctimas adultas y los abusadores tenían peor desempeño que los controles y los delincuentes no sexuales en actualización ejecutiva. Es destacable que los abusadores de menores mostraran puntuaciones en razonamiento fluido equiparables a las de los controles (controlando estadísticamente las diferencias en actualización), pero su desempeño en actualización ejecutiva fue equivalente al mostrado por los agresores con víctimas adultas (controlando estadísticamente las diferencias en inteligencia fluida). Finalmente se discuten las implicaciones de estos resultados para el diseño de programas de intervención efectivo

All we need is brain (and technology)

Here, I suggest we must invest our scientific resources in brain research. Scientists interested in human (and non-human) intelligence should frame their key questions regarding where to look and where to go around technical advances related to the fascinating, general purpose, highly dynamic device we call the ‘brain’

La perversión del relativismo postmoderno: respuesta a Luis Fernández Ríos

[Resumen] En 2007 el Profesor Luis Fernández Ríos publicó un artículo sobre la, en su opinión, perversión de la psicología de la inteligencia. Esta respuesta denuncia el carácter destructivo para la Psicología de su discurso postmoderno y apuesta, decididamente, por la capacidad de la ciencia para comprender objetivamente el comportamiento, incluyendo la naturaleza de la inteligencia humana.[Abstract] In 2007 Professor Luis Fernández Ríos published an article regarding, in his opinion, the perverted nature of the psychology of human intelligence. This response acknowledges the destructive character of his postmodern arguments for Psychology. Quite to the contrary, here we subscribe the ability of modern science for increasing our understanding of behaviour, including the nature of human intelligenc

Las representaciones mentales: ¿el lenguaje del pensamiento, los lenguajes del pensamiento o "los lenguajes de los pensamientos"

Parece admitido en Psicologia Cognitiva, al menos implicitamente, que las funciones mentales tienen un sustrato representacional. Ahora bien, ¿cómo se representa el conocimiento? La Psicologia Cognitiva ha propuesto dos alternativas básicas, no necesariamente contrapuestas pero frecuentemente enfrentadas: la proposición y la imagen mental. Por otro lado, la postura conexionista, que recientemente se encuentra en auge, propone la concepción de representación distribuida. En este articulo se discuten estas alternativas representacionales, planteándose una hipótesis sobre cómo los humanos nos representamos el conocimiento desde el punto de vista de las diferencias individualesIn Cognitive Psychology it is commonly assumed at least implicitely, that mental functions have a representational substract. The question arises, then, how is knowledge represented? Cognitive Psycholgy had proposed two basic alternatives: propositions and mental images. On the other hand, connectionism, that recently seems to be in rise, proposes the conception of distributed representation. In this paper, we discuss this alternatives and we present a hypothesis on how humans represents knowledge from the individual differences point of vie

Relating Eye-Tracking Measures With Changes In Knowledge on Search Tasks

We conducted an eye-tracking study where 30 participants performed searches on the web. We measured their topical knowledge before and after each task. Their eye-fixations were labelled as "reading" or "scanning". The series of reading fixations in a line, called "reading-sequences" were characterized by their length in pixels, fixation duration, and the number of fixations making up the sequence. We hypothesize that differences in knowledge-change of participants are reflected in their eye-tracking measures related to reading. Our results show that the participants with higher change in knowledge differ significantly in terms of their total reading-sequence-length, reading-sequence-duration, and number of reading fixations, when compared to participants with lower knowledge-change.Comment: ACM Symposium on Eye Tracking Research and Applications (ETRA), June 14-17, 2018, Warsaw, Polan

NuIl sex differences in General Intelligence: Evidence from the WAIS-III.

Sin resume

En busca de una explicación del Efecto Secuencial de Compatibilidad

Se estudia la modulación del Efecto de Compatibilidad (EC) según la compatibilidad del ensayo previo (Efecto Secuencial de Compatibilidad, ESC) en tres tipos de tareas atencionales, flancos verbal, flancos numérico y Stroop espacial, modeladas a partir de Gratton et al., (1992). Las tareas de flancos y Stroop espacial presentan diferente complejidad cognitiva. Se analiza en estas tareas si la modulación del EC está matizada por la repetición de estímulos exactamente iguales consecutivos (puras réplicas) o es independiente de ésta. Se registran datos de tres muestras independientes (Ntotal = 1.159) para averiguar si los resultados logran reproducirse. Se observa EC para las tres tareas atencionales, pero sólo hay ESC en la tarea de Stroop espacial. El efecto se mantiene después de eliminar del análisis los ensayos que son puras réplicas, un resultado inconsistente con las propuestas de Mayr et al. (2003) y Hommel (1998) pero congruente con la Teoría del Conflicto (Botvinick et al., 2001). Además, se analiza la importancia de la complejidad cognitiva en relación a la perspectiva de Botvinick et al. (2004). Desde este punto de vista una mayor complejidad se debería reflejar en una mayor presencia de conflicto cognitivo, y, por tanto, un mayor ESC.The modulation of the Compatibility Effect (CE) according to the compatibility of the previous trial (Sequential Compatibility Effect, SCE) in three types of attentional tasks is explored. The flankers and spatial Stroop tasks have different degrees of cognitive complexity. In all three tasks it is analyzed whether the SCE varies when the stimuli in consecutive trials are exactly the same (pure replicas) or not. The data, collected from three independent samples (total N = 1.159), show the CE in the three tasks. However, SCE only shows up in the spatial Stroop task. The effect is smaller albeit still significant when the pure replica trials are removed, a result inconsistent with those of Mayr et al. (2003) and Hommel (1998) but consistent with the Conflict Theory (Botvinick et al., 2001). Furthermore, we also discuss the importance of cognitive complexity in relation to the perspective of Botvinick et al. (2004). From this point of view more complexity should be reflected in a greater presence of cognitive conflict, and therefore a higher SCE

Lesion mapping the four-factor structure of emotional intelligence

Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 9 (2015): 649 This Document is Protected by copyright and was first published by Frontiers. All rights reserved. it is reproduced with permissionEmotional intelligence (EI) refers to an individual’s ability to process and respond to emotions, including recognizing the expression of emotions in others, using emotions to enhance thought and decision making, and regulating emotions to drive effective behaviors. Despite their importance for goal-directed social behavior, little is known about the neural mechanisms underlying specific facets of EI. Here, we report findings from a study investigating the neural bases of these specific components for EI in a sample of 130 combat veterans with penetrating traumatic brain injury. We examined the neural mechanisms underlying experiential (perceiving and using emotional information) and strategic (understanding and managing emotions) facets of EI. Factor scores were submitted to voxel-based lesion symptom mapping to elucidate their neural substrates. The results indicate that two facets of EI (perceiving and managing emotions) engage common and distinctive neural systems, with shared dependence on the social knowledge network, and selective engagement of the orbitofrontal and parietal cortex for strategic aspects of emotional information processing. The observed pattern of findings suggests that sub-facets of experiential and strategic EI can be characterized as separable but related processes that depend upon a core network of brain structures within frontal, temporal and parietal cortexThis work was supported by funding from the US National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke intramural research program and a project grant from the US Army Medical Research and Materiel Command administered by the Henry M. Jackson Foundation (Vietnam Head Injury Study Phase III: a 30-year post-injury follow-up study, grant number DAMD17-01-1-0675). R. Colom was supported by grant PSI2010-20364 from Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación [Ministry of Science and Innovation, Spain] and CEMU-2012-004 [Universidad Autonoma de Madrid