Instituto de Investigaciones Psicológicas

Traditional approaches to human information processing tend to deal with perception and action planning in isolation, so that an adequate account of the perception-action interface is still missing. On the perceptual side, the dominant cognitive view largely underestimates, and thus fails to account for, the impact of action-related processes on both the processing of perceptual information and on perceptual learning. On the action side, most approaches conceive of action planning as a mere continuation of stimulus processing, thus failing to account for the goal-directedness of even the simplest reaction in an experimental task. We propose a new framework for a more adequate theoretical treatment of perception and action planning, in which perceptual contents and action plans are coded in a common representational medium by feature codes with distal reference. Perceived events (perceptions) and to-be-produced events (actions) are equally represented by integrated, task-tuned networks of feature codes--cognitive structures we call event codes. We give an overview of evidence from a wide variety of empirical domains, such as spatial stimulus-response compatibility, sensorimotor synchronization, and ideomotor action, showing that our main assumptions are well supported by the data.

Is the mind, by design, predisposed against performing Bayesian inference? Previous research on base rate neglect suggests that the mind lacks the appropriate cognitive algorithms. However, any claim against the existence of an algorithm, Bayesian or otherwise, is impossible to evaluate unless one specifies the information format in which it is designed to operate. The authors show that Bayesian algorithms are computationally simpler in frequency formats than in the probability formats used in previous research. Frequency formats correspond to the sequential way information is acquired in natural sampling, from animal foraging to neural networks. By analyzing several thousand solutions to Bayesian problems, the authors found that when information was presented in frequency formats, statistically naive participants derived up to 50 % of all inferences by Bayesian algorithms. Non-Bayesian algorithms included simple versions of Fisherian and Neyman-Pearsonian inference. Is the mind, by design, predisposed against performing Bayesian inference? The classical probabilists of the Enlightenment, including Condorcet, Poisson, and Laplace, equated probability theory with the common sense of educated people, who were known then as “hommes éclairés.” Laplace (1814/1951) declared that “the theory of probability is at bottom nothing more than good sense reduced to a calculus which evaluates that which good minds know by a sort of instinct,

The intention-to-behavior process is analyzed with respect to implementation intentions. These intentions link an intended goal-directed behavior to an anticipated situational context. The reported experimental evidence suggests that implementation intentions create a heightened accessibility of the mental representation of the specified situational cues and induce direct (automatic) control of the intended behavior through these cues. The formation of implementation intentions promotes goal achievement through both of these processes because they eliminate classic problems associated with the control of goal-directed action. Similarities and differences to other theoretical approaches on intentions, planning, and action control are discussed.

Working activities are always productive in more than one respect. Concrete or imaginary objects are converted into a product as a result of working activities and in perfonning the activities people are altered. The outcome may be positive, i .e . the task has been completed successful ly and people have developed their ski l l s or have found satisfac­ tion through working activities. However, the outcome of work may also fai l to meet the standards specified in the work assignment or a person 's state may take a turn for the worse in performing the task. Positive outcomes are not l ikely to be associated with the term load, although meeting task demands is always taxing and requires effort, for demands are made on the abil ities and on the wil l ingness to dedicate these abil ities to the task. Thus, exposure to task demands does not necessari ly have to be con­ ceived of as a predominantly negative process, although it usually is. The term workload tends to be associated with decrements in performance or wi l l ingness to perform, or with the risk of impair­ment of the wel l-being and health of the task operator. We wi l l adhere to this convention.

Development and validation of a measure of individual differences in social comparison orientation (the Iowa-Netherlands Comparison Orientation Measure [INCOM]) are described. Assuming that the tendency toward social comparison is universal, the scale was constructed so as to be appropriate to and comparable in 2 cultures: American and Dutch. It was then administered to several thousand people in each country. Analyses of these data are presented indicating that the scale has good psychometric properties. In addition, a laboratory study and several field studies are described that demonstrated the INCOM's ability to predict comparison behavior effectively. Possible uses of the scale in basic and applied settings are discussed.

The effects of different types of instructions on complex motor skill learning were examined. The instructions were related either to the participant's own body movements (internal focus) or to the effects of those movements on the apparatus (external focus). The hypothesis tested was that external-focus instructions would be more beneficial for learning than internal-focus instructions. In Experiment 1, the participants (N = 33) performed slalom-type movements on a ski-simulator. The instructions referred to the way in which force should be exerted on the platform that the participant was standing on. The instructions given 1 group of participants referred to the performers' feet (internal focus), whereas the instructions given another group referred to the wheels of the platform, which were located directly under the feet (external focus). The control group was given no focus instructions. All participants practiced the task on 2 consecutive days and performed a retention test on Day 3. Compared with the effects of internal-focus instructions and no instructions, the external-focus instructions enhanced learning. Internal-focus instruction was not more effective than no instructions. In Experiment 2, an attempt was made to replicate the differential effects of external-versus internal-focus instructions with a different task (balancing on a stabilometer). Consistent with Experiment 1, instructing learners (N = 16) to focus on 2 markers on the platform of the stabilometer (external focus) led to more effective learning than instructing them to focus on their feet (internal focus), as measured by a retention test after 2 days of practice. Practical and theoretical implications of those results are discussed.

The present study examines cross-cultural perceptions of causal attributions pertinent to success and failure in achievement-related contexts. Two groups of participants(taxi drivers and civil servants) from five nations (Belgium, West Germany, India, South Korea, and England) rated 22 causal ascriptions (including ability, effort, task difficulty, and luck) on four causal properties (locus, stability, controllability, and globality). There was high agreement among the two social class groups as well as among four of the nations regarding the ratings of specific causes on the causal dimensions. However, Indian respondents rated all causes as more external, variable, and uncontrollable than did participants from the other cultures. With the exception of the Indian data, the results suggest that a priori classifications of causal attributions have cross-cultural validity and that causal dimensions suggested by attribution theorists capture basic aspects of the meanings of causes that are shared in different cultures.

Burnout is a metaphor that is commonly used to describe a state or process of mental exhaustion, similar to the smothering of a fire or the extinguishing of a candle. The dictionary defines “to burn out” as “to fail, wear out, or become exhausted by making excessive demands on energy, strength, or resources”. As such, the experience of burnout is likely to be universal and of all times. Probably the earliest written example in which “to burn out” is related to exhaustion comes from Shakespeare, who wrote in 1599 in The Passionate Pilgrim: “She burnt with loue, as straw with fire flameth. She burnt out loue, as soon as straw out burneth” (cited in Enzmann & Kleiber, 1989, p. 18). More recently, but long before the “discovery” of burnout in professional settings, individuals who suffer from it have been portrayed in great detail. For instance, Graham Greene’s 1960 novel A Burnt-Out Case tells the sad story of the world famous architect Querry, a gloomy, spiritually tormented, cynical and disillusioned character. The most illustrious example of burnout avant-la-lettre is the case-study of a psychiatric nurse, Miss Jones, published by Schwartz & Will (1953).

Theoretical considerations regarding the significance of early peer interaction for later development suggest that socially withdrawn children may represent an ‘at risk’ population. An analysis of behavioral, cognitive, and motivational correlates of intra-individual differences in social involvement suggests that social involvement should be treated as a multidimensional concept. I conceive social involvement as the result of two opposing motivational tendencies, social approach and social avoidance, which I assume to be largely independent of each other. Application of this approach to interindividual differences results in at least three subgroups of socially withdrawn children (unsociable, shy, and avoidant ones). Results of the Munich Longitudinal Study on the Genesis of Individual Competencies show that socially withdrawn children indeed represent a heterogeneous group. Among preschool and kindergarten children, unsociable, shy, and avoidant children, as well as children characterized by a high rate of constructive solitary activity, appear to differ considerably in various social-cognitive characteristics.

Abstract This book reviews a productive period of research aimed at connecting brain and mind through the use of scalp-recorded brain potentials to chart the temporal course of information processing in the human brain. The book serves as both as a summary of where we have been and as a pointer of the way ahead. Event-related potential (ERP) methodology has long been used in neuroscience to measure electrical activity in the brain. It has become clear, however, that it can be a powerful tool in studying and illuminating central psychological issues relating to attention, information, processing, dynamics, memory, and language. Linking this technology to newer imaging techniques such as positron emission tomography (PET) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), it becomes possible to build up a spatial and temporal picture of the brain during the performance of high-level skills. This book provides strong evidence that cognitive psychology can benefit from the use of brain electrical activity.

Over the past decades, the field of health psychology has witnessed a tremendous growth, and social psychologists have contributed substantially to the theoretical foundation of this field. Their research has focused on a wide variety of health-relevant topics such as how individuals decide to respond to threats to their health and well-being, how and why they change their behavior to avoid such threats, and especially, how they adjust to or cope with the risk of threatening disease and with the diseases themselves. As diverse as this literature may be, however, there does appear to be a common theme throughout much of it--the observation that comparison of oneself and one's health status and coping efforts with others is an integral part of the coping process. Consequently, social comparison theory is increasingly becoming recognized as a fruitful framework for illuminating health related issues. A still expanding literature is exploring the role of social comparisons with respect to coping with a wide range of health problems, including cancer, physical decline among the aged, rheumatoid arthritis, AIDS, stress at work and occupational burnout, and eating disorders. Social comparison theory has augmented knowledge about the ways in which people cope with stressful events, and thus has contributed significantly to it. At a more basic level, research in this applied context has made significant contributions to the development of social comparison theory itself. The present volume presents an overview of the various ways in which social comparison theory has been applied to issues related to health, coping, and well-being, and also points out how these applications have contributed to our insight into the way humans employ social comparison information. Given the attention paid to theoretical and applied issues, this volume will appeal to a wide audience, including social and health psychologists, as well as therapists, physicians, clinicians, medical sociologists, nurses, and those involved in the growing field of nursing research.

Social comparison theory has linked improved performance to both the tendency to compare with others who are performing well and the tendency to view the self as better than others. However, little research has investigated the effects of either variable outside of a controlled laboratory environment, Moreover, there is reason to believe that the 2 tendencies would be in opposition to one another, because people who compare upward might subsequently view themselves as relatively less competent. The results of a longitudinal study of 876 students in their Ist year of secondary education indicated that both variables independently predicted improved academic performance and that these 2 tendencies did not conflict.

Building upon the social emotion model (Smith, 1999), we examined the combined impact of categorization context and social identification on emotional reactions and behavioural tendencies of people confronted with the victims of harmful behaviour. Depending on conditions, participants were led to categorize the victims and themselves in the same common group or in two distinct subgroups of the larger common group. We also measured participants' level of identification with the group that was made contextually salient. As predicted, emotional reactions of anger and their associated offensive action tendencies were more prevalent when participants were induced to see the victims and themselves as part of the same group and when they were highly identified with this common group. In line with appraisal theories of emotion, we also found that the emotional reaction fully mediated the impact of categorization context and identification on action tendencies. We discuss the data with respect to their implications for the role of emotion in improving intergroup relations.

OBJECTIVES: We investigated the involvement of the basal ganglia in inhibiting ongoing responses in patients with Parkinson's disease (PD). METHODS: Thirty two patients with PD and 31 orthopaedic controls performed the stop signal task, which allows an estimation of the time it takes to inhibit an ongoing reaction (stop signal reaction time, SSRT). RESULTS: Patients with PD showed significantly longer SSRTs than the controls. This effect seemed to be independent of global cognitive impairment and severity of PD. Furthermore, in the PD patients, there was no significant relation between general slowing and inhibitory efficiency. CONCLUSIONS: Our results provide evidence for involvement of the basal ganglia in the inhibition of ongoing responses.

Freezing is a common defensive response in animals threatened by predators. It is characterized by reduced body motion and decreased heart rate (bradycardia). However, despite the relevance of animal defense models in human stress research, studies have not shown whether social threat cues elicit similar freeze-like responses in humans. We investigated body sway and heart rate in 50 female participants while they were standing on a stabilometric force platform and viewing cues that were socially threatening, socially neutral, and socially affiliative (angry, neutral, and happy faces, respectively). Posturographic analyses showed that angry faces (compared with neutral faces and happy faces) induced significant reductions in body sway. In addition, the reduced body sway for angry faces was accompanied by bradycardia and correlated significantly with subjective anxiety. Together, these findings indicate that spontaneous body responses to social threat cues involve freeze-like behavior in humans that mimics animal freeze responses. These findings open avenues for studying human freeze responses in relation to various sociobiological markers and social-affective disorders.

Strategy use is a very broad term for controlled and consciously applied procedural knowledge, in contrast with skills that are automated to a more or lesser extent Both terms, however, are used interchangeably when referring to processes that direct and support problem solving and learning. There is a gray area in between controlled strategy use and the automated performance of skills (Veenman 2011). For instance, monitoring processes may be consciously applied during reading, but often run in the background until an error or anomaly is detected. The latter is the case with more experienced readers. In this special issue, many of the strategic processes described operate in this gray area. For instance, confidence judgments or inference processes are neither fully controlled, nor fully automated. Consequently, learners may not be fully aware of ongoing processes, which may affect the verbalization of these processes in self-reports.

This study evaluated a 5-week, group-based burnout intervention program among direct-care professionals working with mentally disabled individuals. Equity theory was used as the theoretical framework. The main objective of the program was to reduce perceptions of inequity in the relationship with the organization and with the recipients of care by increasing the fit between the professional's goals and expectations and the actual work situation. One experimental group and 2 control groups participated. All 3 groups filled out 3 questionnaires: before the program started, 6 months later, and 1 year later. Individual absenteeism rates were assessed for 1 year before and after the program. Results showed that in the experimental group burnout, absence, and deprived feelings diminished compared with the control groups. The most profound effects were among participants who could draw on social resources to benefit from the intervention.

Intrasexual competition implies viewing the confrontation with same-sex individuals, especially in the context of contact with the opposite-sex, in competitive terms. After constructing the items for the preliminary scale and after conducting a pilot study, in two studies with a total of 706 participants from The Netherlands and Canada, a 12-item scale for individual differences in intrasexual competition was developed that was sex neutral, and that had a high degree of crossnational equivalence. In The Netherlands, sociosexuality, sex drive and social comparison orientation were independently related to intrasexual competition. In Canada, intrasexual competition was strongly, and independently of the Big Five, related to social comparison orientation, but only among women. There was no effect of birth order, but sibling rivalry did correlate with intrasexual competition. Among men, intrasexual competition was more strongly, and differently, related to the Big Five than among women. Among women, intrasexual competition was predicted by a lack of agreeableness, and among men by a high level of neuroticism and extraversion.

How does cultural knowledge shape the development of human minds and, conversely, what kind of species-specific social-cognitive mechanisms have evolved to support the intergenerational reproduction of cultural knowledge? We critically examine current theories proposing a human-specific drive to identify with and imitate conspecifics as the evolutionary mechanism underlying cultural learning. We summarize new data demonstrating the selective interpretive nature of imitative learning in 14-month-olds and argue that the predictive scope of existing imitative learning models is either too broad or too narrow to account for these findings. We outline our alternative theory of a human-specific adaptation for ‘pedagogy’, a communicative system of mutual design specialized for the fast and efficient transfer of new and relevant cultural knowledge from knowledgeable to ignorant conspecifics. We show the central role that innately specified ostensive-communicative triggering cues and learner-directed manner of knowledge manifestations play in constraining and guiding selective imitation of relevant cultural knowledge that is both new and cognitively opaque to the naive learner.

This study looks at two emotions that are determined by whether a person's mental state matches or mismatches the state of the world. Results show that children from 3 years understand that being ‘pleased’ is a function of the match or mismatch between desire and reality. That is between what a person wants and what a person gets. A structurally similar problem is presented by the emotion ‘surprise’. ‘Surprise’ is a function of the match or mismatch between belief and reality. That is between what a person believes or expects to be the case and what actually is the case. It is shown that ‘surprise’ is not understood until children are 5 years old at the earliest. This developmental discrepancy can partly be explained by the fact that ‘surprise’ requires an understanding of belief as a misrepresentation. This is not typically understood before children reach 4 years of age. However, children younger than 4 years can understand ‘pleased’ as the result of reaching or not reaching a desired situation. Results also show that it is not until 5 years of age that children understand ‘happiness’ when ‘happiness’ is made dependent on belief about reality and not on reality itself. The fact that children understand ‘surprise’ and belief‐based ‘happiness’ later than 4 years indicates a general lag between understanding belief and its role in determining emotion.