ABSTRACTWe investigated the time course of selective attention to face regions during judgment of dis/approval by low and high social anxiety undergraduates (with clinical levels on que...

Contemporary semantic theories can be classified along two dimensions: (i) the way and time-course in which contextual factors influence sentence truth-conditions; and (ii) whether and to what extent comprehension involves sensory, motor and emotional processes. In order to explore this theoretical space, our ERP study investigates the time-course of the interaction between the lexically specified telic component of a noun (the function of the object to which the noun refers to, e.g., a funnel is generally used (...) to pour liquids into containers) and an ad-hoc affordance contextually induced by the situation described in the discourse. We found that, if preceded by a neutral discourse context, a verb incongruent with the noun’s telic component as in “She uses the funnel to hang her coat” elicited an enhanced N400 compared to a congruent verb as in “She uses the funnel to pour water into a container”. However, if the situation introduced in the preceding discourse induced a new function for the object as an ad-hoc affordance (e.g., the funnel is glued to the wall and the agent wants to hang the coat), we observed a crossing-over regarding the direction of the N400 effect: comparing the ad-hoc affordance-inducing context with the neutral context, the N400 for the incongruent verb was significantly reduced, whereas the N400 for the congruent verb was significantly enhanced. We explain these results as a consequence of the incorporation of the contextually triggered ad-hoc affordance into the meaning of the noun. Combining these results with an analysis of semantic similarity values between test sentences and contexts, we argue that one possibility is that the incorporation of an ad-hoc affordance may be explained on the basis of the mental simulation of concurrent motor information. (shrink)

The present experiment investigated the development of implicit and explicit knowledge during concept learning. According to Cleeremans and Jiménez , the content of a representation can be conscious only when the representation is of a sufficiently good quality; on this theory, increasing explicit and decreasing implicit knowledge might be expected with training. The view that implicit knowledge arises from compilation of explicit knowledge makes the opposite prediction. The present research tested these possibilities using subjective measures based on confidence ratings. One (...) group of participants was presented with blocks of category exemplars that activated prior knowledge, whereas another group was presented with blocks of categories that did not elicit any useful prior knowledge. The results showed that, irrespective of the knowledge group participants were allocated to, explicit knowledge increased over the course of learning, whereas implicit knowledge either stayed the same or decreased, consistent with Cleeremans and Jiménez’s prediction. (shrink)

The complexity and mysteriousness of mental processes during sleep rule out thinking only in term of generators. How could we know exactly what mental sleep experience (MSE) is produced and when? To refer to REM versus NREM as separate time windows for MSE seems insufficient. We propose that in each cycle NREM and REM interact to allow mentation to reach a certain degree of complexity and consolidation in memory. Each successive cycle within a sleep episode should contribute to these (...) processes with a different weight according to the time of night and distance from sleep onset. This view would avoid assuming too great a separation between REM and NREM functions and attributing psychological functions only to a single state. [Nielsen]. (shrink)

Time-motion studies revolutionized the design and efficiency of repetitive work last century. Would time-idea studies revolutionize the rules of intellectual/creative work this century? Collaborating with seven professional dancers, we set out to discover if there were any significant temporal patterns to be found in a timeline coded to show when dancers come up with ideas and when they modify or reject them. On each of 3 days, the dancers were given a choreographic problem to help them generate a (...) novel, high quality contemporary dance phrase. They were videoed as they worked on this task for sessions of 15, 30, and 45 min. At the end of each 15 min interval during each session, we had them perform the phrase they were creating. They recorded and then coded the video of themselves dancing during these sessions by using a coding language we developed with them to identify when ideas are introduced, modified, and rejected. We found that most ideas are created early and that though these early ideas are aggressively pruned early on, many still make it into the final product. The two competing accounts of creativity in design research make predictions for the temporal structure of creativity. Our results support neither account, rather showing a more blended version of the two. The iterative design view, arguably the dominant view, is that good ideas are the product of generating many ideas, choosing one fairly early, committing to it, and iteratively improving it. The “fail fast fail often” view is that good ideas are the product of rapidly generating and discarding ideas and holding back from early commitment to any one in particular. The result of holding back commitment, typically, is not that an idea is taken up later and then incrementally improved at the last minute, as much as that later designs are not completely novel, instead incorporating the best parts of the entire sequence of ideas. In our study, we found no evidence that one account or the other was more predictive for the domain of contemporary dance. The behavior of the dancers that we studied revealed elements of both, calling into question how predictive these theories are. (shrink)

The dynamics of resource allocation to pictures of spiders and other animals in spider-fearful participants was investigated. The task of the participants was to respond rapidly and accurately to various probe stimuli superimposed on pictures of different animals. These were arguably fear relevant (spiders, snakes, and wolves) and fear irrelevant (beetles, turtles, and rabbits). The probes were shown with different stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs) from picture onset to address the dynamics of resource allocation. A larger allocation of resources to spider (...) pictures than to pictures of all other animals, with no difference between the latter regarding resource allocation was found. For the task that demanded more resources the fear-related physiological responses decreased, suggesting that controlled processing modulates fear responses. (shrink)