Search results for "Cognitive psychology"

Messages beyond the phone: Processing variable message signs while attending hands-free phone calls.

2021

We examined the effects of different types of cognitive distraction coming from a hands-free phone conversation on the processing of information provided by variable message signs (VMS), on driving performance indicators, and on a physiological index of mental effort (heart rate). Participants drove a route in a driving simulator and had to respond to VMS messages under three conditions: no-distraction, visuospatial distraction (attending phone calls with questions inducing visuospatial processing), and conceptual distraction (attending phone calls with questions requiring semantic memory). Results showed more errors responding to VMS messages in the visuospatial distraction condition. In a…

Connotative meaning of travel modes and activity-travel behavior

2018

Abstract This paper aims to present results of a study regarding how the meaning of travel modes influences on the performance of activities and trips. Connotative meaning of travel modes was measured using semantic differential scales, which collect the suggestive significance of the terms used to name current travel modes. More than 400 people provided that information together with values and other types of attitudes, characteristics of their usual companions, socio-demographics, and 2-days activity-travel diary that includes a weekend day and a weekday. Descriptive analysis, which include frequency distributions, Factor Analysis, and correlations, have been developed to find potential r…

The Metaphorical New Synthesis: Toward an Eco-Evolutionary Theory of Metaphors

2016

ABSTRACTMetaphors are a genuinely human construction. They are used to improve communication and they are a very powerful tool that might have an influence in human evolution. In this article I argue that metaphors, transformed in powerful memes, adapt to a new communicative niche and contribute to transform it. In order to prove this hypothesis, I study 319 cartoons published in the wake of the Germanwings air crash, where I inventory 144 metaphors. The study shows the conceptual metaphor evolution for a period of 2 weeks, and how the metaphors changed as a result of the variations in the communicative niche, becoming much more efficient communicatively.

Studying the visual and material dimensions of education and learning

2018

Children's Learning of Unfamiliar Phonological Sequences

1971

4 groups of 15 4-, 6-, 8-, and 10-yr.-old children learned nonsense phonological sequences that varied in grammaticality by violating 0, 1, or 2 phonological rules of Ss' native language. The youngest age group made fewer errors in learning the most nongrammatical phonological sequences than in learning grammatical ones. With the 10- and 8-yr.-olds an opposite trend was found. The differences were not statistically significant. Implications for second language learning were discussed.

Other-Repetition as a Resource for Participation in the Activity of Playing a Video Game

2009

This article offers an empirically based contribution to the growing body of studies using Conversation Analysis (CA) as a tool for analyzing second/foreign language learning in and through interaction. Building on a sociointeractional view of learning as grounded in the structures of participation in social activities, we apply CA methods to examine the affordances offered by interaction during the activity of playing a video game for additional language learning. We focus on one type of interactional practice, lexical and prosodic repetition, as a recurring resource through which players attend to the game and collaboratively build their understanding and experience of game events. We arg…

Spracherwerb und Kinderliteratur

2011

This paper argues for a close relationship of research into language acquisition and research into children’s literature. Because children’s literature is a specific input for many children, and because children’s literature basically is literature accommodated to the child’s needs and cognitive abilities, an interdisciplinary field of research emerges. The paper sketches several aspects of this field and points to already existing results as well as to future research.

Can theism be defeated? CSR and the debunking of supernatural agent abductions

2016

De Cruz and De Smedt (2015) have clearly demonstrated the extent to which – and the way in which – evolved cognitive defaults play a role in the emergence of theistic ideas about God and in the for...

Orientation-invariance of individual differences in three face processing tasks

2019

Numerous studies have reported impairments in perception and recognition, and, particularly, in part-integration of faces following picture-plane inversion. Whether these findings support the notion that inversion changes face processing qualitatively remains a topic of debate. To examine whether associations and dissociations of the human face processing ability depend on stimulus orientation, we measured face recognition with the Cambridge Face Memory Test (CFMT), along with experimental tests of face perception and selective attention to faces and non-face objects in a sample of 314 participants. Results showed strong inversion effects for all face-related tasks, and modest ones for non-…

Visual mismatch negativity (vMMN): A review and meta-analysis of studies in psychiatric and neurological disorders

2016

The visual mismatch negativity (vMMN) response is an event-related potential (ERP) component, which is automatically elicited by events that violate predictions based on prior events. VMMN experiments use visual stimulus repetition to induce predictions, and vMMN is obtained by subtracting the response to rare unpredicted stimuli from those to frequent stimuli. One increasingly popular interpretation of the mismatch response postulates that vMMN, similar to its auditory counterpart (aMMN), represents a prediction error response generated by cortical mechanisms forming probabilistic representations of sensory signals. Here we discuss the physiological and theoretical basis of vMMN and review…