In this paper, we present a new questionnaire for the assessment of self-control as an individual trait. We describe the process of construction of this assessment tool. We also report the results of relevant validation studies. The questionnaire has two independent versions, one based on self-reports and another one based on other-reports. The first version consists of five subscales, called Initiative and Persistence, Proactive Control, Switching and Flexibility, Inhibition and Adjournment, and Goal Maintenance. Seven samples of participants took part in (...) the validation study. The second version has not been split into subscales. Both versions obtained satisfactory indices of internal consistency, assessed with Cronbach’s alpha. The NAS-50 and NAS-40 scores were highly correlated with other measures of self-control, including Tangney, Baumeister, and Boone’s self-control scale. They also proved to be entirely independent of general intelligence. In conclusion, both versions can be regarded reliable and valid enough, and therefore suitable for the assessment of trait self-control for research purposes. (shrink)

Short-term memory search, as investigated within the Sternberg paradigm, is usually described as exhaustive rather than self-terminated, although the debate concerning these issues is still hot. We report three experiments employing a modified Sternberg paradigm and show that whether STM search is exhaustive or self-terminated depends on task conditions. Specifically, STM search self-terminates as soon as a positive match is found, whereas exhaustive search occurs when the STM content does not contain a searched item. Additionally, we show that task conditions (...) influence whether familiarity- or recollection-based strategies dominate STM search performance. Namely, when speeding up the tempo of stimuli presentation increases the task demands, people use familiarity-based retrieval more often, which results in faster but less accurate recognition judgments. We conclude that STM search processes flexibly adapt to current task conditions and finally propose two-phase model of STM search. (shrink)

Starting from the assumption that working memory capacity is an important predictor of general fluid intelligence, we asked which aspects of working memory account for this relationship. Two theoretical stances are discussed. The first one posits that the important explanatory factor is storage capacity, roughly defined as the number of chunks possible to hold in the focus of attention. The second one claims that intelligence is explained by the efficiency of executive control, for instance, by prepotent response inhibition. We investigated (...) 96 children at the age between 10 and 13. They completed a version of the n-back task that allows assessment of both storage capacity and inhibitory control. They also completed Raven’s Progressive Matrices as the fluid intelligence test and the Test for Creative Thinking - Drawing Production, for control purposes. We found that Raven’s scores correlated negatively with the number of unnecessary responses to irrelevant stimuli but they did not correlate with the number of signal detections. We conclude that children’s fluid intelligence depends on inhibitory control, with no relationship with storage capacity. (shrink)

Cognitive dimensions of creativity: What makes the difference between creative and non-creative university students? This paper analyses the contribution of specific cognitive functions on creative performance. The main question was which cognitive variables differentiate extreme levels of creative performance and therefore can characterize highly creative college students. A sample of Portuguese university students of Fine Arts and Literature took part in this study. A battery of verbal and figural cognitive tasks, as well as two kinds of creative tasks have been (...) considered. Results showed that there were mostly the same cognitive dimensions, which differentiate extreme levels of creative performance in both text and poster productions. These results are discussed considering the relevance of the cognitive approach to explain creativity. Some practical ideas, possible to put into the educational context, are also discussed. (shrink)

We predicted that short-term training of executive control would improve both cognitive control itself and general fluid intelligence. We randomly assigned 120 high school students to the experimental and control groups. The former underwent a 14-day training of four executive functions: interference resolution, response inhibition, task switching, and goal monitoring. The latter did not train anything. The training significantly improved cognitive control and IQ. The control group also improved their IQ scores but gained less than the experimental one. However, the (...) amount of IQ scores enhancement did not correlate with the majority of indices of the training effectiveness, thus justifying the supposition that such enhancement resulted from the general effect of participation in the training rather than from the improvement of executive functions underlying Gf. (shrink)

In visual information processing, two kinds of vision are distinguished: vision-for-perception related to the conscious identifi cation of objects, and vision-for-action that deals with visual control of movements. Neuroscience suggests that these two functions are performed by two separate brain neural systems - the ventral and dorsal pathways. Two experiments using behavioural measures were conducted with the objective of exploring any potential interaction between these two functions of vision. The aim was to combine in one task methods allowing for the (...) simultaneous capture of both perceptual global processing and affordance extraction and to check whether they infi uence each other. This aim was achieved by employing the paradigms of Navon and Tucker and Ellis. A compound fi gure was created made up of objects with handles that might or might not have orientation congruent between levels. The results revealed that while the affordance effect occurred every time, the Navon effect appeared only when subjects focused their attention on object elements responsible for inconsistence within compound fi gure. Most importantly, even when these two effects occurred at once, they had no effect on each other. Results from the study failed to confi rm the hypothesis about interaction and gives support to the view that vision-for-perception and vision-for-action tend to act as separate systems. (shrink)

This paper presents a validation study of a new questionnaire of self-control as an individual trait. The questionnaire has two parallel versions, one based on self-reports and another one based on informant reports. Each version consists of three subscales, called Inhibition, Switching, and Goal Monitoring. Eight samples of participants took part in the validation study. Both versions obtained satisfactory indices of internal consistency, assessed with Cronbach’s alpha and split-half coefficients. Selfcontrol assessed with this scale proved to be entirely independent of (...) general intelligence. However, AS-36 and AS-36-3 scores tended to correlate with other self-report measures of trait self control, such as Tangney, Baumeister, and Boone’s self-control scale. We conclude that AS-36 is a valid and reliable tool, suitable for assessment of self-control in both research and diagnostic settings. (shrink)

Idiopathic Parkinson’s disease impairs working memory, but the exact nature of this deficit in terms of the underlying cognitive mechanisms is not well understood. In this study patients with mild clinical symptoms of PD were compared with matched healthy control subjects on a computerized battery of tests designed to assess spatial working memory and verbal working memory. In the spatial working memory task, subjects were required to recall a sequence of four locations. The verbal working memory task was methodologically identical (...) except for the modality of the stimuli used, requiring subjects to orally recall a sequence of six digits. In either case, half of the sequences were structured in a way that allowed ‘chunking’, while others were unstructured. This manipulation was designed to dissociate the strategic component of task performance from the memory-load component. Mild medicated patients with PD were impaired only on the structured versions of the verbal working memory tasks. The analogous deficit in the spatial working memory was less pronounced. These findings are in agreement with the hypothesis that working memory deficits in PD reflect mainly the executive component of the tasks and that the deficits may be at least partly modality-independent. (shrink)