María José Contreras

Dynamic spatial performance: sex and educational differences

Abstract A set of two dynamic tests were developed for measuring spatial orientation and spatial visualization (SODT and SVDT). These dynamic spatial tests were designed for computer administration. A printed battery including reasoning and spatial tests was also administered to a sample of 602 university graduates, 300 females (mean age=27.17) and 302 males (mean age=28.41). The participants were applicants for an air traffic control training program. Therefore, they were highly motivated to do their best. The present study is based on three main questions: (1) do the new dynamic spatial tests measure the same ability irrespective of sex?; (2) are performance differences between the sexes negligible for spatial tasks that closely resemble ‘real’ spatial orientation activities?; and (3) is type of education related to dynamic spatial performance? (to our knowledge, a question not directly addressed in the previous literature). The findings suggest that: (1) the factor structure is the same for both sexes; (2) males have an overall higher dynamic spatial performance than females; and (3) neither males’ nor females’ type of education makes any difference to their dynamic spatial performance. When males and females have the same type of education, dynamic spatial performance is still higher in males.

Sex differences in dynamic spatial ability: The unsolved question of performance factors

Males and females differ in several cognitive abilities, although the largest gap can be found in spatial ability. Some published studies make the claim thatperformance factors, which can be either subject- or task-related variables, explain these differences. However, previous studies in which performance factors were measured have focused on static spatial tests. Little is known about the role of performance factors in dynamic spatial tasks. In the present study, we analyzed a sample of 2,624 university graduates to test the role of three performance factors (response latency, response frequency, and invested time) derived from the Spatial Orientation Dynamic Test-Revised (SODT-R; Santacreu, 1999). The results showed that males and females appear to cope with the dynamic task in different ways. However, males outperformed females even when the effects of the performance factors were partialed out; that is, the assessed performance factors did not explain much of the sex-related variance. Alternative ways of measuring performance factors will be needed if they are to explain sex differences in dynamic spatial ability.

Quantifying cognitive complexity: evidence from a reasoning task

There are some doubts about the nature of cognitive complexity. It has been proposed that the loadings on the first un-rotated factor can be taken as a way to quantify the cognitive complexity of a given task. However, the evidence is sparse. The present study tests 1968 participants in a computerized task that comprises linear syllogisms or three-term series problems. The correlation matrix is submitted to a factor analysis. The first un-rotated factor is taken as the vector of cognitive complexity. The vector of task difficulty was obtained after the proportion of participants that failed each syllogism. In addition to task empirical difficulty, three information processing models are taken as predictors of cognitive complexity. Then, regression analyses were carried out to predict cognitive complexity from the information processing (IP) models and task difficulty. Results show that the IP models and task difficulty predict cognitive complexity defined by the loadings on the first un-rotated factor. Therefore, it is concluded that those loadings can be taken as a way to quantify cognitive complexity.

A Betting Dice Test to Study the Interactive Style of Risk-Taking Behavior

The purpose of this research was to assess the consistency and stability of risk-behavior within the interactive style perspective through a betting dice test (Ribes & Sánchez, 1992). We used two different versions of the betting dice test (BDT), in which some parametric values were changed in order to verify the interactive style configuration. When BDT version 1 was used (Study 1) we found that, even though the response options had the same expected value, subjects presented a conservative strategy, and that the behavior remained stable after 2 hr. The second BDT version (Study 2) allowed us to verify two aspects of the risk-taking behavior: (a) Subjects’ risk behavior remains stable after 1 yr; and (b) the assumed risk varies between the two versions of the BDT. These results are discussed within the interactive style framework.

The activation of representative emotional verbal contexts interacts with vertical spatial axis

Abstract Several experimental studies have shown that there exists an association between emotion words and the vertical spatial axis. However, the specific conditions under which this conceptual–physical interaction emerges are still unknown, and no study has been devised to test whether longer linguistic units than words can lead to a mapping of emotions on vertical space. In Experiment 1, Spanish and Colombian participants performed a representative verbal emotional contexts production task (RVEC task) requiring participants to produce RVEC for the emotions of joy, sadness, surprise, anger, fear, and disgust. The results showed gender and cultural differences regarding the average number of RVEC produced. The most representative contexts of joy and sadness obtained in Experiment 1 were used in Experiment 2 in a novel spatial–emotional congruency verification task (SECV task). After reading a sentence, the participants had to judge whether a probe word, displayed in either a high or low position on the screen, was congruent or incongruent with the previous sentence. The question was whether the emotion induced by the sentence could modulate the responses to the probes as a function of their position in a vertical axis by means of a metaphorical conceptual–spatial association. Overall, the results indicate that a mapping of emotions on vertical space can occur for linguistic units larger than words, but only when the task demands an explicit affective evaluation of the target.

Effects of Presentation Format and Instructions on the Ability of People with Intellectual Disability to Identify Faces.

The aim of this work was to analyze the effect of presentation format and instructions on the ability of people with intellectual disability to identify individuals they did not know and had seen only briefly. With this objective in mind, 2 groups of subjects with mild to moderate intellectual disability were shown a photograph of a person and, after a distracting task, were asked to identify that person in 2 line-ups (target-absent and target-present) with 6 photographs each, where 2 types of instructions (neutral vs specific, between-subject design) and 2 presentation formats (simultaneous vs sequential, within-subject design) for the line-up photographs were used. Each subject completed 4 trials. The results showed that, generally speaking, people with intellectual disability were capable of distinguishing the face of a person previously seen under all these conditions. There was a significantly higher incidence of false alarms, however, when the photographs were presented sequentially and when specific instructions were not given. With specific instructions designed to lessen the social desirability effect and increase motivation for the task, false alarms on the target-absent line-up were reduced. The results were discussed with a view to their applicability in legal and law enforcement contexts.

Performance as a Function of Ability, Resources Invested, and Strategy Used

Computerized tasks allow a more fine-grained analysis of the strategy deployed in a task designed to map a specific ability than the usual assessment on the basis of only the level of performance. Manipulations expected to impair performance sometimes do not have that effect, probably because the level of performance alone can confound the assessment of the ability level if researchers ignore the strategy used. In a study with 1,872 participants, the authors applied the Spatial Orientation Dynamic Test-Revised (J. Santacreu, 1999) in single and dual task settings, identifying 3 different strategies. Strategy shifts were associated with the level of performance, as more apt individuals were more likely to shift to better strategies. Ignoring the strategies yields counterintuitive results that cannot be explained by simple, direct relations among the constructs involved.

Two Short Tests Fail to Detect Vigilance Decrements

Summary: Deterioration in performance associated with decreased ability to sustain attention may be found in long and tedious task sessions. The necessity for assessing a number of psychological dimensions in a single session often demands “short” tests capable of assessing individual differences in abilities such as vigilance and maintenance of high performance levels. In the present paper two tasks were selected as candidates for playing this role, the Abbreviated Vigilance Task (AVT) by Temple, Warm, Dember, LaGrange and Matthews (1996) and the Continuous Attention Test (CAT) by Tiplady (1992). However, when applied to a sample of 829 candidates in a job-selection process for air-traffic controllers, neither of them showed discriminative capacity. In a second study, an extended version of the CAT was applied to a similar sample of 667 subjects, but also proved incapable of properly detecting individual differences. In short, at least in a selection context such as that studied here, neither of the task...

Experimental But Not Sex Differences of a Mental Rotation Training Program on Adolescents.

Given the importance of visuospatial processing in areas related to the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) disciplines, where there is still a considerable gap in the area of sex differences, the interest in the effects of visuospatial skills training continues to grow. Therefore, we have evaluated the visuospatial improvement of adolescents after performing a computerized mental rotation training program, as well as the relationship of this visuospatial ability with other cognitive, emotional factors and those factors based on the experience with videogames. The study, which was performed on students aged 14 and 15 years old, showed a significant improvement in this visuospatial skill for a training group (n = 21) compared to a control group (n = 24). Furthermore, no significant sex differences were obtained for spatial ability or for any of the other tasks evaluated, either before or after training. Regarding the relationship between skills, a significant correlation between experience with video games and spatial ability was found, as well as between mathematical reasoning and intelligence and with spatial ability in the initial phase for the total sample. These findings are discussed from a cognitive point of view and within the current sociocultural context, where the equal use of new technologies could help reduce the visuospatial gap between sexes.

Cross-modal metaphorical mapping of spoken emotion words onto vertical space

From the field of embodied cognition, previous studies have reported evidence of metaphorical mapping of emotion concepts onto a vertical spatial axis. Most of the work on this topic has used visual words as the typical experimental stimuli. However, to our knowledge, no previous study has examined the association between affect and vertical space using a cross-modal procedure. The current research is a first step toward the study of the metaphorical mapping of emotions onto vertical space by means of an auditory to visual cross-modal paradigm. In the present study, we examined whether auditory words with an emotional valence can interact with the vertical visual space according to a ‘positive-up/negative-down’ embodied metaphor. The general method consisted in the presentation of a spoken word denoting a positive/negative emotion prior to the spatial localization of a visual target in an upper or lower position. In Experiment 1, the spoken words were passively heard by the participants and no reliable interaction between emotion concepts and bodily simulated space was found. In contrast, Experiment 2 required more active listening of the auditory stimuli. A metaphorical mapping of affect and space was evident but limited to the participants engaged in an emotion-focused task. Our results suggest that the association of affective valence and vertical space is not activated automatically during speech processing since an explicit semantic and/or emotional evaluation of the emotionally valenced stimuli was necessary to obtain an embodied effect. The results are discussed within the framework of the embodiment hypothesis.