Search results for "learning."
showing 10 items of 6527 documents
Unconscious response priming during continuous flash suppression.
2017
Continuous flash suppression (CFS) has become a popular tool for studying unconscious processing, but the level at which unconscious processing of visual stimuli occurs under CFS is not clear. Response priming is a robust and well-understood phenomenon, in which the prime stimulus facilitates overt responses to targets if the prime and target are associated with the same response. We used CFS to study unconscious response priming of shape: arrows with left or right orientation served as primes and targets. The prime was presented near the limen of consciousness and each trial was followed by subjective rating of visibility and a forced-choice response concerning the orientation of the prime…
‘Ain't nothin' like the real thing’. Motivation and study processes on a work-based project course in information systems design
2007
Background. Advocates of the project method claim that project-based learning inspires student learning. However, it has been claimed that project-based learning environments demand quite a bit of self-regulation on the part of the learner. Aims. Consequently, it was tested whether students scoring low in self-regulation of learning experienced ‘friction’, an incompatibility between student self-regulation and the demands posed by the learning environment. This would be manifest in cognitive processing and motivation. Samples. The target group consisted of 58 mainly third-year Finnish university students taking a mandatory project course in information systems design. During the project cou…
Is the go/no-go lexical decision task an alternative to the yes/no lexical decision task?
2002
In the go/no-go lexical decision task (LDT), participants are instructed to respond as quickly as they can when a word is presented and not to respond if a nonword is presented. By minimizing part of the response selection process in the experimental task, the impact of response decision time on the obtained lexical decision time is probably reduced relative to the standard yes/no LDT (Gordon, 1983). Experiments 1 and 2 show that the go/no-go LDT is sensitive to the effects of word frequency and associative priming--the magnitude of these effects is similar with the two tasks. More important, the go/no-go LDT has a number of advantages with respect to the "standard" yes/no LDT: It offers fa…
Standardization and validation of a parallel form of the verbal and non-verbal recognition memory test in an Italian population sample.
2017
In the neuropsychological assessment of several neurological conditions, recognition memory evaluation is requested. Recognition seems to be more appropriate than recall to study verbal and nonverbal memory, because interferences of psychological and emotional disorders are less relevant in the recognition than they are in recall memory paradigms. In many neurological disorders, longitudinal repeated assessments are needed to monitor the effectiveness of rehabilitation programs or pharmacological treatments on the recovery of memory. In order to contain the practice effect in repeated neuropsychological evaluations, it is necessary the use of parallel forms of the tests. Having two parallel…
Prenatal exposure to organochlorine compounds and neuropsychological development up to two years of life
2012
Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB), hexachlorobenzene (HCB), and dichlorodiphenyl dichloroethylene (pp′DDE) are persistent, bioaccumulative, and toxic environmental pollutants with potential neurotoxic effects. Despite a growing body of studies investigating the health effects associated with these compounds, their specific effects on early neuropsychological development remain unclear. We investigated such neuropsychological effects in a population-based birth cohort based in three regions in Spain (Sabadell, Gipuzkoa, and Valencia) derived from the INMA [Environment and Childhood] Project. The main analyses in this report were based on 1391 mother–child pairs with complete information on mat…
Chronic alcohol intake abolishes the relationship between dopamine synthesis capacity and learning signals in ventral striatum
2014
Drugs of abuse elicit dopamine release in the ventral striatum, possibly biasing dopamine-driven reinforcement learning towards drug-related reward at the expense of non-drug-related reward. Indeed, in alcohol-dependent patients, reactivity in dopaminergic target areas is shifted from non-drug-related stimuli towards drug-related stimuli. Such 'hijacked' dopamine signals may impair flexible learning from non-drug-related rewards, and thus promote craving for the drug of abuse. Here, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging to measure ventral striatal activation by reward prediction errors (RPEs) during a probabilistic reversal learning task in recently detoxified alcohol-dependent pati…
Arrival-time judgments on multiple-lane streets: the failure to ignore irrelevant traffic
2014
How do road users decide whether or not they have enough time to cross a multiple-lane street with multiple approaching vehicles? Temporal judgments have been investigated for single cars approaching an intersection; however, close to nothing is known about how street crossing decisions are being made when several vehicles are simultaneously approaching in two adjacent lanes. This task is relatively common in urban environments. We report two simulator experiments in which drivers had to judge whether it would be safe to initiate street crossing in such cases. Matching traffic gaps (i.e., the temporal separation between two consecutive vehicles) were presented either with cars approaching o…
Rifle-balancing in precision shooting:behavioral aspects and psychophysiological implication
2007
This study investigated sharpshooters' strategies to control their rifle stability during the aiming period. Six elite and six pre-elite shooters completed a simulated realistic shooting task (laser rifle), and their performance was evaluated from behavioral and psychophysiological perspectives. The analysis of the rifle's barrel movement, indexing the shooter's behavioral performance, supported the view that rifle-balancing is an essential determinant of superior shooting performance. The psychophysiological data, i.e. the brain slow potentials, suggested that the shooters applied different rifle-hold strategies; the elite shooters concentrated primarily on achieving a stable rifle positio…
Attitude and knowledge of pain management among Italian nurses in hospital settings
2015
Pain is multidimensional, and, as such, the chief reason patients seek urgent healthcare services. If inadequately assessed and untreated, pain may negatively impact on the quality of life of the patient. Treating pain is an important step in regaining control over quality of life. The objective of the present study is to examine the level of knowledge and types of approach among Italian nurses who deal with pain assessment and management. The Ferrell and McCaffery's Knowledge and Attitudes Survey Regarding Pain (KASRP) was distributed to 286 nurses employed in one of the biggest specialized hospitals in Rome, Italy. The interviewed staff work at three different settings, according to the h…
Health anxiety – An indicator of higher interoceptive sensitivity?
2013
Abstract Background and objectives According to cognitive-behavioral models, health anxiety arises from the misattribution of normal bodily sensations as signs of a severe illness. Consequently, higher levels of interoceptive accuracy might be critically involved in the development of health anxiety. Methods To test this central assumption of cognitive behavioral models of health anxiety, we assessed interoceptive accuracy in a sample of college students ( N = 100). Two interoceptive tasks (detection of one's own heartbeat using the Schandry paradigm and detection of nonspecific skin conductance fluctuations, NSCFs) were used. Results We found no indication for a positive association betwe…