Predisposing, Enabling and Reinforcing Factors Associated with Smoking Relapse among Hospital Workers

Objectives: A better identification of the determinants of smoking relapse among hospital workers would be helpful in development of more effective interventions to decrease the frequency of relapses in this group. The aim of this study was to determine the predisposing enabling, and reinforcing factors associated with smoking relapse among workers at a university hospital. Methods: This was a case-control study based on a self-administered and structured questionnaire. Cases were all those workers who had relapsed after at least 6 months without smoking, and controls were ex-smokers without relapse for more than 6 months. We obtained the following information: sociode- mographic and tobacc…

Corrigendum: ExGUtils: A Python Package for Statistical Analysis With the ex-Gaussian Probability Density

Do serifs provide an advantage in the recognition of written words?

A neglected issue in the literature on visual-word recognition is the careful examination of parameters such as font, size, or interletter/interword spacing on reading times. Here we analysed whether serifs (i.e., the small features at the end of strokes) play a role in lexical access. Traditionally, serif fonts have been considered easier to read than sans serif fonts, but prior empirical evidence is scarce and inconclusive. Here we conducted a lexical decision experiment (i.e., a word/nonword discrimination task) in which we compared words from the same family (Lucida) either with a serif font or with a sans serif font—in both a block list and a mixed list. Results showed a small, but sig…

On the role of the upper part of words in lexical access: evidence with masked priming.

More than 100 years ago, Huey (1908) indicated that the upper part of words was more relevant for perception than the lower part. Here we examined whether mutilated words, in their upper/lower portions (e.g., , , , ), can automatically access their word units in the mental lexicon. To that end, we conducted four masked repetition priming experiments with the lexical decision task. Results showed that mutilated primes produced a sizeable masked repetition priming effect. Furthermore, the magnitude of the masked repetition priming effect was greater when the upper part of the primes was preserved than when the lower portion was preserved –this was the case not only when the mutilated words we…

Corrigendum to “Is the go/no-go lexical decision task preferable to the yes/no task with developing readers?” [J. Exp. Child Psychol. 110 (2011) 125–132]

Serious Games for Elderly Continuous Monitoring

Information technology (IT) and serious games allow older population to remain independent for longer. Hence, when designing technology for this population, developmental changes, such as attention and/or perception, should be considered. For instance, a crucial developmental change has been related to cognitive speed in terms of reaction time (RT). However, this variable presents a skewed distribution that difficult data analysis. An alternative strategy is to characterize the data to an ex-Gaussian function. Furthermore, this procedure provides different parameters that have been related to underlying cognitive processes in the literature. Another issue to be considered is the optimal dat…

Editorial: The Incredible Challenge of Digitizing the Human Brain

The world we live in is drastically different from previous decades in terms of digitalization expansion. Logically, one might expect that these changes modify the way we behave, our habits, the way we do tasks, communicate and access information (Moret-Tatay et al., 2018; Wang et al., 2021). And, therefore, the functioning of the brain and even its anatomy. If so, it seems imperative to examine how it affects our cognition. Furthermore, based on the assumption that the brain is plastic and adaptable, some alterations and changes are expected to optimize resources or even compensations by improving other skills (Oliveira et al., 2018; Bubbico et al., 2020; Della Gatta et al., 2021).

Corrigendum: ExGUtils: A Python Package for Statistical Analysis With the ex-Gaussian Probability Density

The study of reaction times and their underlying cognitive processes is an important field in Psychology. Reaction times are usually modeled through the ex-Gaussian distribution, because it provides a good fit to multiple empirical data. The complexity of this distribution makes the use of computational tools an essential element in the field. Therefore, there is a strong need for efficient and versatile computational tools for the research in this area. In this manuscript we discuss some mathematical details of the ex-Gaussian distribution and apply the ExGUtils package, a set of functions and numerical tools, programmed for python, developed for numerical analysis of data involving the ex…

The effects of interletter spacing in visual-word recognition.

Despite the importance of determining the effects of interletter spacing on visual-word recognition, this issue has often been neglected in the literature. The goal of the present study is to shed some light on this topic. The rationale is that a thin increase in interletter spacing, as in casino, may reduce lateral interference among internal letters without destroying a word's integrity and/or allow a more precise encoding of a word's letter positions. Here we examined whether identification times for word stimuli in a lexical decision task were faster when the target word had a slightly wider than default interletter spacing value relative to the default settings (e.g., casino vs. casino…

The effects of age and emotional valence on recognition memory: An ex-Gaussian components analysis

[EN] The aim of this work was to study the effects of valence and age on visual image recognition memory. The International Affective Picture System (IAPS) battery was used, and response time data were analyzed using analysis of variance, as well as an ex-Gaussian fit method. Older participants were slower and more variable in their reaction times. Response times were longer for negative valence pictures, however this was statistically significant only for young participants. This suggests that negative emotional valence has a strong effect on recognition memory in young but not in old participants. The tau parameter, often related to attention in the literature, was smaller for young than …

Effects of the Educational Use of Music on 3- to 12-Year-Old Children’s Emotional Development: A Systematic Review

Interest in the study of emotions in education has grown in recent years. Some of our modern challenges, such as constantly adapting to new scenarios or the need for team work have justified the introduction of emotional competence into educational systems, while diverse studies confirm the relationship between music and emotional intelligence, so that the former could be used as a tool to develop the latter. The aim of this work was to examine the evidence for positive effects of music on the emotions of 3- to 12-year-old children, to which end a systematic review was carried out. Two reviewers independently evaluated 424 studies that were identified in MEDLINE, Psycinfo, and CINAHL databa…

Assessment of Occupational Health and Job Satisfaction in Workers with Intellectual Disability: A Job Demands–Resources Perspective

In the contexts where people with intellectual disability work, there are factors that determine their job satisfaction. The objective of this study was to test the adequacy of the central assumptions of the Job Demands–Resources (JD-R) theory in workers with intellectual disability employed in different work alternatives. Data from 362 workers in sheltered workshops and 192 workers in supported employment were utilized. The model was contrasted using a structural equation model and a multi-group analysis. The results supported the suitability of the model and confirmed that job demands and job resources evoke two relatively independent processes such as health impairment and motivational p…

The Moderation Effects of Comparative Thinking Between Gratitude and Negative Affect During the COVID-19 Outbreak

The aim of this research was to examine the moderation effects of comparative thinking (CT) across the relationship between gratitude and affect during the COVID-19 outbreak. To this purpose, multiple regression as well as moderation analyses were carried out. Age and sex were also addressed as variables of interest as described in previous literature. A sample of 306 north Americans was recruited by crowdsourcing platform ProA to obtain a representative sample based on age and gender. The participants filled in a questionnaire based on comparative thinking in relation to the emotional experience experienced before and during the COVID-19 outbreak, positive and negative affect schedule for …

Parent-Implemented Hanen Program It Takes Two to Talk®: An Exploratory Study in Spain

Parent-implemented interventions are a highly common approach for enhancing communication and linguistic abilities of late talkers, involving a population that shows a small expressive vocabulary in the absence of other deficits that could explain it. This study aimed to compare the outcomes of a parent-implemented language intervention, It Takes Two to Talk®—The Hanen Program® for Parents (ITTT), to a clinician-directed therapy. Participants were 17 families and their late-talking children: 10 families took part in ITTT and 7 in the clinician-directed modality. The outcomes in the social communication domain were more favorable for the ITTT group, but there were no significant differences …

Testing Motivacional theories in Music Education: the role of Effort and Gratitude

Acquiring musical skills requires sustained effort over long periods of time. This work aims to explore the variables involved in sustaining motivation in music students, including perceptions about one’s own skills, satisfaction with achievements, effort, the importance of music in one’s life, and perception of the sacrifice made. Two models were developed in which the variable of gratitude was included to integrate positive psychology into the motivational area of music education. The first predicts effort, while the second predicts gratitude. The models were tested using a sample of 84 music students. Both models were fitted using Bayesian analysis techniques to examine the relationship …

Differences Between Young and Old University Students on a Lexical Decision Task: Evidence Through an Ex-Gaussian Approach

This work compared two common variants of a lexical decision task (LDT) through two different analysis procedures: first, the classical ANOVA method, and second, by fitting the data to an ex-Gaussian distribution function. Two groups of participants (old and young university students) had to perform, blocks of go/no-go and yes/no tasks. Reaction times and error rates were much lower in the go/no-go task than in the yes/no task. Changes in the ex-Gaussian parameter related to attention were found with word frequency but not with the type of LDT tasks. These findings suggest that word frequency shows an attentional cost that is independent of age.

Facilitation versus inhibition in the masked priming same-different matching task.

In the past years, growing attention has been devoted to the masked priming same–different task introduced by Norris and Kinoshita (2008, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General). However, a number of researchers have raised concerns on the nature of the cognitive processes underlying this task—in particular the suspicion that masked priming effects in this task are mostly inhibitory in nature and may be affected by probe–prime contingency. To examine the pattern of facilitative/inhibitory priming effects in this task, we conducted two experiments with an incremental priming paradigm using four stimulus–onset asynchronies (13, 27, 40, and 53 ms). Experiment 1 was conducted under a pred…

Psychometric Properties of the Indebtedness Scale (IS-R) in Spanish University Students

The importance of trait indebtedness in the context of the study of gratitude has been growing in recent years, since both constructs form complex dynamics in response to the reception of a gift. In this work, the disposition to feel indebtedness is studied, through analysis of convergence and divergence, exploratory, and confirmatory analysis in the Spanish population, with the most used measurement instrument, i.e. The Revised Indebtedness Scale, IS-R. This scale depicted a four factor solution interrelated with a high consistency of content, which allows their labeling and describing. To do this, two samples of university students were selected; one of the sample sizes had 229 participan…

Age slowing down in detection and visual discrimination under varying presentation times

[EN] The reaction time has been described as a measure of perception, decision making, and other cognitive processes. The aim of this work is to examine agerelated changes in executive functions in terms of demand load under varying presentation times. Two tasks were employed where a signal detection and a discrimination task were performed by young and older university students. Furthermore, a characterization of the response time distribution by an exGaussian fit was carried out. The results indicated that the older participants were slower than the younger ones in signal detection and discrimination. Moreover, the differences between both processes for the older participants were higher,…

Locus of control, personality and depression symptoms in cancer: Testing a moderated mediation model.

OBJECTIVE To investigate the mediator role of locus of control on the relationship between the Big Five personality traits and the manifestation of depression symptoms in cancer outpatients. METHOD Participants consisted of 220 cancer outpatients (138 women and 82 men), evaluated individually at the hospital waiting room. The measures applied were as follows: The NEO-Five Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI), Multidimensional Health Locus of Control (MHLC) Scale and Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS). RESULTS The factor structure of NEO-FFI was reexamined. A moderated mediation model was found for the powerful others external locus of control (LOC), depression symptoms and extraversion and …

The role of age and emotional valence in word recognition: an ex-gaussian analysis

[Otro] Cie¿om práce je posúdi¿ vplyv veku a emo¿nej valencie na znovupoznávanie slov v rámci ex-Gaussových distribu¿ných komponentov. Dvom vekovým skupinám sme administrovali test znovupoznávania slov, v ktorom sme manipulovali emo¿nou valenciou. U mladších respondentov sa prejavili štatisticky signifikantné rozdiely pri negatívnych slovách v experimentálnej podmienke a v podmienke s distrakciou. U starších respondentov sme v odpove¿ových ¿asoch nezistili jasnú tendenciu. Vzh¿adom na ex-Gaussovský parameter ¿, ktorý sa v literatúre ¿asto spája s nárokmi na pozornos¿, vekovo podmienené rozdiely v emo¿nej valencii nemali žiaden vplyv na negatívne slová. Ak sa zameriame na emo¿nú valenciu v ob…

Can Word Puzzles be Tailored to Improve Different Dimensions of Verbal Fluency? A Report of an Intervention Study

Verbal fluency is commonly used as a proxy measure of executive functioning, as it involves cognitive flexibility, working memory, and inhibitory control. Previous research has demonstrated that crosswords can be a useful means of improving verbal fluency, results consistent with the cognitive reserve hypothesis; the form of verbal fluency affected has, however, differed across studies. The present study sought to assess the extent to which it was possible to target phonemic (PVF) and semantic verbal fluency (SVF) separately through word puzzles designed to focus on semantic/thematic and structural clues respectively. Fifty-three university students were randomly assigned to one of three gr…

The small-world of 'Le Petit Prince': Revisiting the word frequency distribution

[EN] Many complex systems are naturally described through graph theory, and different kinds of systems described as networks present certain important characteristics in common. One of these features is the so-called scale-free distribution for its node s connectivity, which means that the degree distribution for the network s nodes follows a power law. Scale-free networks are usually referred to as small-world because the average distance between their nodes do not scale linearly with the size of the network, but logarithmically. Here we present a mathematical analysis on linguistics: the word frequency effect for different translations of the Le Petit Prince in different languages. Compar…

The Effect of Corrective Feedback on Performance in Basic Cognitive Tasks: An Analysis of RT Components

[EN] The current work examines the effect of trial-by-trial feedback about correct and error responding on performance in two basic cognitive tasks: a classic Stroop task (n = 40) and a color-word matching task (n = 30). Standard measures of both RT and accuracy were examined in addition to measures obtained from fitting the ex-Gaussian distributional model to the correct RTs. For both tasks, RTs were faster in blocks of trials with feedback than in blocks without feedback, but this difference was not significant. On the other hand, with respect to the distributional analyses, providing feedback served to significantly reduce the size of the tails of the RT distributions. Such results sugge…

Fluência verbal fonêmica e semntica: dados normativos de idosos Brasileiros

This study aims to investigate the influence of sociodemographic characteristics on the performance of older people on two tasks of verbal fluency and provide normative data for a Brazilian population of healthy elderly individuals with different educational levels. The initial sample included 521 individuals aged from 60 years, participating in the Program Family Health Strategy. Participants who had scores suggestive of cognitive decline on the Mini-Mental State Examination, depressive symptoms in Geriatric Depression Scale and self-reported neurological or psychiatric disorders were excluded. The final sample consisted of 218 participants in phonemic verbal fluency task (letters F, A and…

Smart Phone, Smart Science: How the Use of Smartphones Can Revolutionize Research in Cognitive Science

WOS:000295936900019; International audience; Investigating human cognitive faculties such as language, attention, and memory most often relies on testing small and homogeneous groups of volunteers coming to research facilities where they are asked to participate in behavioral experiments. We show that this limitation and sampling bias can be overcome by using smartphone technology to collect data in cognitive science experiments from thousands of subjects from all over the world. This mass coordinated use of smartphones creates a novel and powerful scientific "instrument" that yields the data necessary to test universal theories of cognition. This increase in power represents a potential re…

Gender, Coping, and Mental Health: a Bayesian Network Model Analysis

We examined the relationships among gender, coping, and mental health in terms of probabilities. We selected a sample of university students (N = 131) aged between 18 and 32 years, and used the GHQ-28 and COPE instruments for analysis. The Bayesian network model that we constructed showed higher probabilities of symptoms of mental health problems for emotion-focused coping than for problem-focused coping. No differences were found regarding gender. This suggests that the use of problem-focused coping is more recommendable for both male and female university students, and it may also provide some benefits in terms of treatment of symptoms of mental health problems. However, to further verify…

Propiedades psicométricas y estructura factorial del BRCS en una muestra de personas mayores españolas

Successful resilience is a variable often related to an optimal ag-ing process. However, literature is rather limited when dealing with assess-ment instruments for the elderly in the Spanish language. The objective of this work is to validate the Brief Resilient Coping Scale (Sinclair & Wallston, 2004), a four item likert scale, in the Spanish elderly. For this propose, the scale was administrated to a sample of 991 elderly Spanish participants, and the data set analysed in terms of exploratory and confirm-atory factor analysis, internal consistency and criterion validity. The scale demonstrated good psychometric properties. Furthermore, the homogenei-ty indices were higher than the recentl…

The effects of inter-letter spacing in visual-word recognition: Evidence with young normal readers and developmental dyslexics

Abstract Recent research has demonstrated that slight increases of inter-letter spacing have a positive impact on skilled readers' recognition of visually presented words. In the present study, we examined whether this effect generalises to young normal readers and readers with developmental dyslexia, and whether increased inter-letter spacing affects the reading times and comprehension of a short text. To that end, we conducted a series of lexical decision and continuous reading experiments in which words were presented with the default settings or with a small increase in inter-letter spacing. Increased spacing produced shorter word identification times not only with adult skilled readers…

The Role of Feedback on Learning: Evidence through Ex-Gaussian Components

Abstract In the performance of any task if a subject does not understand the instructions given they will hardly be able to fulfil the requested goals. The aim of this work was to evaluate the role of feedback through a stroop task for University students. Two experiments were conducted where participants had to perform, into a counterbalanced design, stroop blocks with and without feedback. The classical ANOVA and a fit of the reaction times (RT) into an ex-Gaussian distribution function were carried out. RTs were much lower in feedback blocks than controls. The differences did not reach the statistical significance, however, the parameters often related in the literature to attention in a…

The role of age and emotional valence in word recognition: an ex-gaussian analysis

[Otro] Cie¿om práce je posúdi¿ vplyv veku a emo¿nej valencie na znovupoznávanie slov v rámci ex-Gaussových distribu¿ných komponentov. Dvom vekovým skupinám sme administrovali test znovupoznávania slov, v ktorom sme manipulovali emo¿nou valenciou. U mladších respondentov sa prejavili štatisticky signifikantné rozdiely pri negatívnych slovách v experimentálnej podmienke a v podmienke s distrakciou. U starších respondentov sme v odpove¿ových ¿asoch nezistili jasnú tendenciu. Vzh¿adom na ex-Gaussovský parameter ¿, ktorý sa v literatúre ¿asto spája s nárokmi na pozornos¿, vekovo podmienené rozdiely v emo¿nej valencii nemali žiaden vplyv na negatívne slová. Ak sa zameriame na emo¿nú valenciu v ob…

Suppression of mirror generalization for reversible letters: Evidence from masked priming

Abstract Readers of the Roman script must “unlearn” some forms of mirror generalization when processing printed stimuli (i.e., herb and herd are different words). Here we examine whether the suppression of mirror generalization is a process that affects all letters or whether it mostly affects reversible letters (i.e., b / d ). Three masked priming lexical decision experiments were conducted to examine how the cognitive system processes mirror images of reversible vs. non-reversible letters embedded in Spanish words. Repetition priming effects relative to the mirror-letter condition were substantially greater when the critical letter was reversible (e.g., idea - IDEA vs. ibea - IDEA ) than …