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- embodied cognition (6)
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Moving in the Anthropocene
(2018)
Animal movement is fundamental for ecosystem functioning and species survival, yet the effects of the anthropogenic footprint on animal movements have not been estimated across species. Using a unique GPS-tracking database of 803 individuals across 57 species, we found that movements of mammals in areas with a comparatively high human footprint were on average one-half to one-third the extent of their movements in areas with a low human footprint. We attribute this reduction to behavioral changes of individual animals and to the exclusion of species with long-range movements from areas with higher human impact. Global loss of vagility alters a key ecological trait of animals that affects not only population persistence but also ecosystem processes such as predator-prey interactions, nutrient cycling, and disease transmission.
Even before formal schooling, children map numbers onto space in a directional manner. The origin of this preliterate spatial–numerical association is still debated. We investigated the role of enculturation for shaping the directionality of the association between numbers and space, focusing on counting behavior in 3- to 5-year-old preliterate children. Two studies provide evidence that, after observing reading from storybooks (left-to-right or right-to-left reading) children change their counting direction in line with the direction of observed reading. Just observing visuospatial directional movements had no such effect on counting direction. Complementarily, we document that book illustrations, prevalent in children’s cultures, exhibit directionality that conforms to the direction of a culture’s written language. We propose that shared book reading activates spatiotemporal representations of order in young children, which in turn affect their spatial representation of numbers.
Mimicking non-verbal emotional expressions and empathy development in simulated consultations
(2018)
Objective: To explore the feasibility of applying an experimental design to study the relationship between non-verbal emotions and empathy development in simulated consultations.
Method: In video-recorded simulated consultations, twenty clinicians were randomly allocated to either an experimental group (instructed to mimic non-verbal emotions of a simulated patient, SP) or a control group (no such instruction). Baseline empathy scores were obtained before consultation, relational empathy was rated by SP after consultation. Multilevel logistic regression modelled the probability of mimicry occurrence, controlling for baseline empathy and clinical experience. ANCOVA compared group differences on relational empathy and consultation smoothness.
Results: Instructed mimicry lasted longer than spontaneous mimicry. Mimicry was marginally related to improved relational empathy. SP felt being treated more like a whole person during consultations with spontaneous mimicry. Clinicians who displayed spontaneous mimicry felt consultations went more smoothly.
Conclusion: The experimental approach improved our understanding of how non-verbal emotional mimicry contributed to relational empathy development during consultations. Further work should ascertain the potential of instructed mimicry to enhance empathy development.
Practice implications: Understanding how non-verbal emotional mimicry impacts on patients’ perceived clinician empathy during consultations may inform training and intervention programme development.
Spatial-numerical associations (SNAs) have been studied extensively in the past two decades, always requiring either explicit magnitude processing or explicit spatial-directional processing. This means that the typical finding of an association of small numbers with left or bottom space and of larger numbers with right or top space could be due to these requirements and not the conceptual representation of numbers. The present study compares explicit and implicit magnitude processing in an implicit spatial-directional task and identifies SNAs as artefacts of either explicit magnitude processing or explicit spatial-directional processing; they do not reveal spatial conceptual links. This finding requires revision of current accounts of the relationship between numbers and space.
Language and Arithmetic
(2018)
We examined cross-domain semantic priming effects between arithmetic and language. We paired subtractions with their linguistic equivalent, exception phrases (EPs) with positive quantifiers (e.g., "everybody except John") while pairing additions with their own linguistic equivalent, EPs with negative quantifiers (e.g., "nobody except John"; Moltmann, 1995). We hypothesized that EPs with positive quantifiers prime subtractions and inhibit additions while EPs with negative quantifiers prime additions and inhibit subtractions. Furthermore, we expected similar priming and inhibition effects from arithmetic into semantics. Our design allowed for a bidirectional analysis by using one trial's target as the prime for the next trial. Two experiments failed to show significant priming effects in either direction. Implications and possible shortcomings are explored in the general discussion.
Numerical knowledge, including number concepts and arithmetic procedures, seems to be a clear-cut case for abstract symbol manipulation. Yet, evidence from perceptual and motor behaviour reveals that natural number knowledge and simple arithmetic also remain closely associated with modal experiences. Following a review of behavioural, animal and neuroscience studies of number processing, we propose a revised understanding of psychological number concepts as grounded in physical constraints, embodied in experience and situated through task-specific intentions. The idea that number concepts occupy a range of positions on the continuum between abstract and modal conceptual knowledge also accounts for systematic heuristics and biases in mental arithmetic, thus inviting psycho-logical approaches to the study of the mathematical mind.
Moving arms
(2018)
Embodied cognition postulates a bi-directional link between the human body and its cognitive functions. Whether this holds for higher cognitive functions such as problem solving is unknown. We predicted that arm movement manipulations performed by the participants could affect the problem-solving solutions. We tested this prediction in quantitative reasoning tasks that allowed two solutions to each problem (addition or subtraction). In two studies with healthy adults (N=53 and N=50), we found an effect of problem-congruent movements on problem solutions. Consistent with embodied cognition, sensorimotor information gained via right or left arm movements affects the solution in different types of problem-solving tasks.
Even simple mental arithmetic is fraught with cognitive biases. For example, adding repeated numbers (so-called tie problems, e.g., 2 + 2) not only has a speed and accuracy advantage over adding different numbers (e.g., 1 + 3) but may also lead to under-representation of the result relative to a standard value (Charras et al., 2012, 2014). Does the tie advantage merely reflect easier encoding or retrieval compared to non-ties, or also a distorted result representation? To answer this question, 47 healthy adults performed two tasks, both of which indicated under-representation of tie results: In a result-to-position pointing task (Experiment 1) we measured the spatial mapping of numbers and found a left-bias for tie compared to non-tie problems. In a result-to-line-length production task (Experiment 2) we measured the underlying magnitude representation directly and obtained shorter lines for tie-compared to non-tie problems. These observations suggest that the processing benefit of tie problems comes at the cost of representational reduction of result meaning. This conclusion is discussed in the context of a recent model of arithmetic heuristics and biases.