Inhibition in the emotional Hayling task: can hypnotic suggestion enhance cognitive control on a prepotent negative word?

Recent studies suggest that instrumental hypnosis is a useful experimental tool to investigate emotional and language processing effects. However, the capacity of hypnotic suggestions to intervene during the response inhibition of emotional words remains elusive. This study investigated whether hypnotic suggestion can improve the inhibition of prepotent negative word responses in an emotional Hayling sentence completion task.

French Norms for a Shortened Online Adaptation of the Harvard Group Scale of Hypnotic Susceptibility, Form A.

This study presents the norms and psychometric properties for a shortened online adaptation of a French version of the Harvard Group Scale of Hypnotic Susceptibility, Form A (HGSHS:A). Assessment of involuntariness and subjective intensity was added to the traditional scoring. A total of 373 individuals completed an online hypnotizability screening test on their own computer.

Hypnotic suggestion modulates visual recognition of negative words depending on word arousal.

This study examined whether and how emotional hypnotic suggestions modulate the visual recognition of negative words. We investigated the influence of hypnotic suggestions aimed at modifying emotional reactivity on the arousal effect in negative words. High and low suggestible individuals performed a go/no-go lexical decision task in three intra-individual conditions: with a suggestion to increase emotional reactivity, with a suggestion to decrease emotional reactivity and without hypnotic suggestion.

Modulation of attentional bias by hypnotic suggestion: experimental evidence from an emotional Stroop task.

Hypnosis is considered a unique tool capable of modulating cognitive processes. The extent to which hypnotic suggestions intervenes is still under debate. This study was designed to provide a new insight into this issue, by focusing on an unintentional emotional process: attentional bias.

Does a yellow filter improve visual object categorization in normal aging?

Previous studies have shown that a yellow filter (CPF450) can increase contrast, motion sensitivity, vergence, and accommodation. We investigated whether a yellow filter can reduce age-related visual deficits. We tested two groups of 60 observers (mean age 24 vs.

Influence of visual deficits on object categorization in normal aging.

Unlabelled: BACKGROUND/STUDY CONTEXT: The authors assessed whether age-related changes in low-level vision affects higher-level processes involved in object categorization.

Methods: Thirty young and 30 older observers were asked to categorize gray levels photographs of natural and artifactual objects. The authors manipulated contrast (8% vs.

[Aging of visual object recognition: interaction between a "spatial frequency-specific" deficit and a "category-specific" deficit].

The study investigated the aging of object categorization manipulating the spatial frequency (SF) content in photographs of object and the object category. Thirty young (m=22 years old) and 24 mature adults (m=57 years old) categorized 120 items (animals/tools) presented for 200 ms each, in one of three versions: a normal version (no filter), a band-pass filtered version (medium to high SF) and a low-pass filtered version (low SF). Results showed that this categorization task relied mainly on the medium to high SF band and that the mature group had a large impairment on that band.

Alteration of attentional blink in high functioning autism: a pilot study.

Autism is characterized by deficits in attention. However, no study has investigated the dynamics of attentional processes in autistic patients yet. The attentional blink (AB) paradigm provides information about the temporal dynamics of attention in particular about the allocation and the duration of an attentional episode.

Psychophysical assessment of magno- and parvocellular function in schizophrenia.

Recently developed psychophysical techniques permit the biasing of the processing of the stimulus by early visual channels so that responses reflect characteristics of either magno- or parvocellular pathways (Pokorny & Smith, 1997). We used such techniques to test psychophysically whether the global magnocellular dysfunction reported in schizophrenia also affects early processes. Seven schizophrenic patients and 19 normal controls participated.

The effects of coffee and napping on nighttime highway driving: a randomized trial.

Background: Sleep-related accidents often involve healthy young persons who are driving at night. Coffee and napping restore alertness, but no study has compared their effects on real nighttime driving performances.

Objective: To test the effects of 125 mL of coffee (half a cup) containing 200 mg of caffeine, placebo (decaffeinated coffee containing 15 mg of caffeine), or a 30-minute nap (at 1:00 a.