Beyond fixed sets: boundary conditions for obtaining SNARC-like effects with continuous semantic magnitudes.

Previous research has demonstrated the presence of an effect (i.e., the spatial-numerical association of response codes or SNARC) in both numerical parity and magnitude judgment tasks in which smaller numerical magnitudes are manually responded to faster on the left side and larger numerical magnitudes on the right side.

Individual differences in absolute identification as a function of autistic trait levels.

The present study aimed to examine the links between a self-report measure known to be discriminative of autism (the AQ-10) and performance on the classic unidimensional absolute identification judgment task with 10 line lengths. The interest in this task is due to the fact that discriminating absolutely between such items is quite perceptually challenging and also that it is not very amenable to generalization. Importantly, there are two currently available views of perceptual learning in autism that suggest that those higher on the autism spectrum might have an advantage on this task.

Development of a novel, theoretically motivated scale to assess cognitive learning styles related to the autism spectrum.

Background: Although theoretical efforts have been made to address the cognitive learning styles of individuals on the autism spectrum, no instrument to measure such learning styles is currently available. The current study aimed to develop such a scale based on the learning style theory of Qian and Lipkin (Front Hum Neurosci 5:77, 2011).

Methods: Response data from total of 768 undergraduate students was used for this study.

Separate processing mechanisms for spatial-numerical compatibility and numerical-size congruity.

Across two experiments, the numerical magnitude and the physical size of single digits presented in either two (Experiment 1) or four (Experiment 2) different font sizes were judged using either horizontally and vertically (Experiment 1) or just horizontally (Experiment 2) aligned manual responses. Such a design allowed for the simultaneous examination of the size congruity effect (SiCE), the spatial-numerical association of response codes (SNARC) effect, and the more novel spatial-size association of response codes (SSARC) effect. In Experiment 1, SiCEs and SNARC effects were found that operated independently of one another but no SSARC effect occurred.

Testing the Latent Structure of the Autism Spectrum Quotient in a Sub-clinical Sample of University Students Using Factor Mixture Modelling.

In the present study, factor mixture models (FMMs) were used to examine the latent structure underlying the Autism-Spectrum Quotient (AQ) among a sample of 633 undergraduate students. FMM represents a combination of latent-class, person-centered approaches and common-factor, variable-centered approaches to modeling population heterogeneity. Findings suggest the presence of either two or six latent classes with distinct profiles across the set of 50 AQ items.

Moderating effect of trait emotional intelligence on the relationship between parental nurturance and prosocial behaviour.

Introduction: Research on the moderating role of trait emotional intelligence (EI) has typically examined this construct in light of other risk factors and their detrimental effects on adolescents' outcomes. This study aims to expand this line of research by focusing on the enhancing effect of trait EI and its moderating effects on the relationship between parental nurturance and adolescents' prosocial behaviour. According to such view, higher trait EI was expected to enhance the positive effect of parental nurturance on adolescents' prosocial behaviour.

Intermediate coding versus direct mapping accounts for the SNARC effect: Santens and Gevers (2008) revisited.

Intermediate coding accounts have been used to provide an explanation for the spatial-numerical association of response codes (SNARC) effect and can be contrasted with the classic direct spatial mapping account of such an association (i.e., from the mental number line directly to the responses).

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

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 ( = 40) and a color-word matching task ( = 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.

Testing Mediation in Structural Equation Modeling: The Effectiveness of the Test of Joint Significance.

A large number of approaches have been proposed for estimating and testing the significance of indirect effects in mediation models. In this study, four sets of Monte Carlo simulations involving full latent variable structural equation models were run in order to contrast the effectiveness of the currently popular bias-corrected bootstrapping approach with the simple test of joint significance approach. The results from these simulations demonstrate that the test of joint significance had more power than bias-corrected bootstrapping and also yielded more reasonable Type I errors.

Bad-good constraints on a polarity correspondence account for the spatial-numerical association of response codes (SNARC) and markedness association of response codes (MARC) effects.

Performance in numerical classification tasks involving either parity or magnitude judgements is quicker when small numbers are mapped onto a left-sided response and large numbers onto a right-sided response than for the opposite mapping (i.e., the spatial-numerical association of response codes or SNARC effect).

Short-term memory for the comparative instructions in symbolic comparison.

In the current study, a novel paradigm was used in which participants (N = 24) first compared the sizes of pairs of animals and then were asked, on half of the trials, to make a follow-up identification judgment regarding either the form of the comparative instruction that had just been used for the preceding comparison (i.e., smaller? or larger?) or the size of the stimuli in the comparison pair.

Enhancing semantic congruity effects with category-contingent comparative judgments.

In each of two experiments the direction of a binary comparison was contingent on the category of the stimulus pair. In one experiment, participants had to compare the size of animals from memory. On congruent trials, they had to select the smaller animal if both were small and the larger if both were large and on incongruent trials they selected the larger if both were small and the smaller if both were large.

SNARC effects with numerical and non-numerical symbolic comparative judgments: instructional and cultural dependencies.

With English-language readers in an experiment requiring pairwise comparative judgments of the sizes of animals, the nature of the association between the magnitudes of the animal pairs and the left or right sides of response (i.e., the SNARC effect) was reversed depending on whether the participants had to choose either the smaller or the larger member of the pair.

Driven, distracted, or both? A performance-based ex-Gaussian analysis of individual differences in anxiety.

Since the inception of the empirical study of personality, and even before it, individual differences in anxiety and distress have been viewed as key predictors of behavioral performance. Yet such literatures have always entertained 2 perspectives, one contending that anxious individuals are "driven" and the other contending that anxious individuals are "distracted." The present 3 studies (total N=289) sought to reconcile such discrepant views according to an ex-Gaussian parsing of reaction time performance tendencies in basic cognitive tasks.

Selective attention and subjective confidence calibration.

In the present experiments, failures of selective visual attention were invoked using the B. A. Eriksen and C.

The time course of task switching: a speed--accuracy trade-off analysis.

On each trial of this study, participants either switched between or repeated two simple, two-choice tasks involving either letter or digit classifications. Speed-accuracy trade-off (SAT) curves were obtained using the response-signal method of eliciting speeded responses at various response time lags after the presentation of the stimulus for the second task. The key finding from separate analyses of the three SAT-curve parameters (intercept, rate, and asymptote) was that the location of the intercept of the SAT function (i.

Anchoring effects in the judgment of confidence: semantic or numeric priming?

Over the last decade, researchers have debated whether anchoring effects are the result of semantic or numeric priming. The present study tested both hypotheses. In four experiments involving a sensory detection task, participants first made a relative confidence judgment by deciding whether they were more or less confident than an anchor value in the correctness of their decision.

Reflections on the voluntary self-exclusion of gamblers and the law-suits against Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation.

Legalized gambling in Canada is governed by Provincial legislation. In Ontario, the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation is responsible for all aspects of gambling in the Province. There have been a number of recent lawsuits against this Crown agency of the Government of Ontario by gamblers, most of which have been settled or otherwise resolved.

Lengthening fixed preparatory foreperiod durations within a digit magnitude classification task serves mainly to shift distributions of response times upwards.

In this study, the effect of lengthening foreperiod duration (i.e. the time between the presentation of a warning signal and a subsequent target stimulus) on choice RTs is examined.

Remembered instructions with symbolic and perceptual comparisons.

Semantic congruity effects (SCEs) were obtained in each of two experiments, one with symbolic comparisons and the other with comparisons of visual extents. SCEs were reliably larger when the instructions indicating the direction of the comparison were represented by consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) nonsense syllables, which had been associated with the conventional instructions in a preliminary learning phase of the experiment. Enhanced SCEs with the CVC instructions were evident, especially when stimulus pair location and instruction direction did not match.

Effects of instruction presentation mode in comparative judgments.

In each of two experiments, the comparative instructions in a symbolic comparison task were either varied randomly from trial to trial (mixed blocks) or left constant (pure blocks) within blocks of trials. In the first experiment, every stimulus was compared with every other stimulus. The symbolic distance effect (DE) was enhanced, and the semantic congruity effect (SCE) was significantly larger, when the instructions were randomized than when they were blocked.

Decomposing the problem-size effect: a comparison of response time distributions across cultures.

Is the locus of the problem-size effect in mental arithmetic different across cultures? In a novel approach to this question, the ex-Gaussian distributional model was applied to response times for large (e.g., 8 x 9) and small (e.