Crowding refers to the phenomenon of increased difculty in identifying a peripherally presented stimulus when it is surrounded by adjacent flankers compared to when it is presented in isolation. The aim of the present study was to investigate the influence of flanker and target emotion on crowding effects. Therefore, Landolt rings with certain opening directions were conditioned with neutral or negative pictures. These conditioned stimuli were afterwards used in a visual crowding task, in which the critical spacing (75% threshold) was assessed for emotional flankers as well as for emotional targets. Larger crowding effects were observed for negatively relative to neutrally conditioned flankers, indicating more interference with negative flankers. Additionally, for participants showing a strong evaluative conditioning effect, smaller crowding effects were found for negatively relative to neutrally conditioned targets, indicating enhanced identifcation of negative target stimuli. In conclusion, crowding effects are modulated by both flanker and target emotion, suggesting that high-level stimulus features survive crowding and influence recognition performance. The study further shows that evaluative conditioning can be a useful tool to study the effect of emotion on rather early perceptual processes.

Although there have been various attempts to identify the perceptual-cognitive mechanisms underlying the superior performance of skilled players over novices in sports, few studies have examined the relationship between mental representations and cognitive performance according to the skill levels of players. The purpose of this study was to investigate the functional link between mental representations in long-term memory and cognitive information processing ability in working memory by analyzing mental representation structure and cognitive performance according to skill level. Twenty male skilled and 25 male novice tennis players participated in this study. Structural dimensional analysis of mental representation was used to evaluate the mental representation structure of a tennis serve. In addition, cognition and movement chronometry was used to assess the cognitive performance of a tennis serve in working memory. Results of the representational analysis showed that the similarity of the skilled players to the standard representation structure was higher than that of novices. Furthermore, results in cognitive performance showed that the skilled players had a higher accuracy and shorter response time compared to the novices. Finally, a signifcant correlation between the adjusted Rand index and cognition movement chronometry accuracy was observed. Taken together, the mental representation structure and cognitive performance of the skilled players were superior to those of the novices, and mental representations were positively correlated with the accuracy of the cognitive information processing. These results imply that the degree of functional connection between working memory and long-term memory may be used as a perceptual-cognitive factor to explain improvement in performance.

Some studies have shown that different coordinate systems in the coding of movement sequences develop during observational and physical practice. According to Newell's (1986) constraintsled approach, such contradictions could possibly depend on task characteristics. Accordingly, in the present study, two experiments were designed using a fve-segment sequence timing task, in which the instructions on how to perform the sequence were different. The task in the frst experiment comprised an alternating shift of fast and slow segments, whereas the second experiment involved an incremental procedure from slow to fast. In these experiments, the intermanual transfer of absolute and relative timing through observational and physical practice was examined. Transfer conditions were such that they required the same motor commands (mirror transfer) or the same visual-spatial coordinates (non-mirror transfer) as those in the practice conditions. The frst experiment showed that the transfer to the non-mirror condition for relative timing in the physical group was better than that to the mirror condition, while the transfer was similar for both conditions in the observational group, indicating a different pattern of transfer for relative timing. The relative timing transfer pattern in the second experiment was the same for both experimental groups, such that the physical and observational practice resulted in a similar transfer to both mirror and non-mirror conditions. In both experiments, observational and physical practice participants exhibited similar intramanual transfer of absolute timing under both transfer conditions. Thus, the task itself as a constraint was revealed to be an effective factor influencing the behavioral results derived from physical and observational practice.

Human observers (comprehenders) segment dynamic information into discrete events. That is, although there is continuous sensory information, comprehenders perceive boundaries between two meaningful units of information. In narrative comprehension, comprehenders use linguistic, non-linguistic , and physical cues for this event boundary perception. Yet, it is an open question – both from a theoretical and an empirical perspective – how linguistic and non-linguistic cues contribute to this process. The current study explores how linguistic cues contribute to the participants’ ability to segment continuous auditory information into discrete, hierarchically structured events. Native speakers of German and non-native speakers, who neither spoke nor understood German, segmented a German audio drama into coarse and fne events. Whereas native participants could make use of linguistic, non-linguistic, and physical cues for segmentation, non-native participants could only use non-linguistic and physical cues. We analyzed segmentation behavior in terms of the ability to identify coarse and fne event boundaries and the resulting hierarchical structure. Non-native listeners identifed almost identical coarse event boundaries as native listeners, but missed some of the fne event boundaries identifed by the native listeners. Interestingly, hierarchical event perception (as measured by hierarchical alignment and enclosure) was comparable for native and non-native participants. In summary, linguistic cues contributed particularly to the identifcation of certain fine event boundaries. The results are discussed with regard to the current theories of event cognition.

The dual-process account and the propositional account of learning hold opposite views regarding the recruitment of higher-level processes in rule learning and associative learning. Taking an individual differences perspective, the current study focused on the relationship between rule learning and associative learning and investigated to what extent executive control accounts for rule learning and associative learning. Two studies were conducted. In Study 1, a sample of 184 university students completed paired associative learning and rule learning tasks, as well as measures of working memory capacity, short-term storage, and executive control. Theory-based bifactor models were used to achieve a purifed representation of executive control. The results showed that the latent correlation between associative learning and rule learning was rather small. Executive control showed a substantial relationship with rule learning, whereas no signifcant link was found with associative learning. In Study 2, a sample of 211 university students completed a three-term contingency learning task and an executive control task. The results replicated the finding that executive control was not signifcantly related to associative learning. Taken together, these results suggest a dissociation between rule learning and associative learning in terms of their underlying processes, which supports the dual-process account of learning.

Little is known about how anger-associated brain regions integrate and modulate external input. Therefore, we investigated the neural connectivity architecture of anger processing using a dynamic causal modeling (DCM) approach. Thirteen subjects underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while viewing anger-inducing flm clips. Conventional fMRI and DCM analyses were conducted to identify a dominant connectivity model. Viewing anger-inducing flm clips led to activation in the left superior temporal gyrus, left insula, and left orbitofrontal cortex (OFC). The results of a group-level comparison of eight connectivity models based on conventional fMRI fndings showed superiority of the model including reciprocal effective connectivities between the left insula, left superior temporal gyrus, and left orbitofrontal gyrus and bottom-up connectivity from the left superior temporal gyrus to the left orbitofrontal gyrus. Positive coupling effects were identifed for connectivities between the left superior temporal gyrus and left insula and the left superior temporal gyrus and left OFC. A negative coupling effect was identifed for connectivity between the left OFC and left insula. In conclusion, we propose a model of effective connectivity associated with the anger experience based on dynamic causal modeling. The findings have implications for various psychiatric disorders related to abnormalities in anger processing.

More and more people are using social networking sites, with Facebook being one of the most popular. So far, most of the research on using Facebook has focused on emotional, social, and personality-related factors and few studies have investigated the phenomenon from a cognitive perspective. The aim of our study was, therefore, to identify relationships between cognitive control and Facebook intrusion, with regard to proactive and reactive modes of cognitive control. The study was also designed to investigate the effects of neutral and Facebook-related context. The subjects (N = 80 young adults, M age = 21.13 years; SD = 1.60) were divided into two groups based on their level of Facebook intrusion. The Facebook Intrusion Scale was used for selection. Using the AX-continuous performance task, we found that subjects with high Facebook intrusion showed more reactive control than their low Facebook intrusion peers. We also demonstrated that all subjects showed less proactive control in a Facebook-related context than in a neutral context. The results were interpreted in the light of the dual mechanism of cognitive control model.