PSYCHOLOGY RESEARCH PROGRESS

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF
COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY
(2 VOLUME SET)

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 PSYCHOLOGY RESEARCH PROGRESS

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF
COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY
(2 VOLUME SET)

CARLA E. WILHELM
EDITOR

Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

New York
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Encyclopedia of cognitive psychology / editor, Carla E. Wilhelm.

p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN: 978-1-62618-074-1 (eBook) 1. Cognitive psychology--Encyclopedias. I.
Wilhelm, Carla E.
BF201.E53 2011
153.03--dc22
2011013680

Published by Nova Science Publishers, Inc.  New York

 CONTENTS
Volume I
Preface vii
Chapter 1 A Semantics of the Fundamental Structural Elements of Language,
Based on Cognitive Functions: Operational Semantics 1
Giulio Benedetti
Chapter 2 A New Perspective on Human Consciousness 63
Giorgio Marchetti
Chapter 3 Illusory Perceptions and Memories: What Is the Tie That Binds? 117
Timothy N. Odegard, James M. Lampinen and Emily A. Farris
Chapter 4 A New Methodology to Assess Individual Differences
in Spatial Memory: The Computer-Generated Version
of the Reorientation Paradigm 159
Luciana Picuccia, Andrea Bosco,, Alessandro O. Caffò,
Guido D’Angelo, Emanuela Soleti, Giulio E. Lancioni
and Manuela N. di Masi
Chapter 5 Pretrial Publicity Affects Juror Decision Making and Memory 197
Christine L. Ruva
Chapter 6 TP-Theory as New Perspective on Cognitive Psychology 227
Koji Tanida and Ernst Pöppel
Chapter 7 Learning Strategies and Approaches of University Students:
The Challenge of the 21st Century 245
Nora Irene Abate
Chapter 8 Cognitive Rehabilitation in Middle-Aged Alzheimer Patients 273
Elisabetta Farina and Fabiana Villanelli
Chapter 9 The Cognitive Effects of Anxiety on Sexual Arousal 295
Philippe Kempeneers, Romain Pallincourt and Sylvie Blairy
Chapter 10 Limits to General Expertise: A Study of in- and out-of-Field
Graph Interpretation 311
Wolff-Michael Roth
vi Contents

Volume II
Chapter 11 Conceptual Combination: Models, Theories, and Controversies 349
Bing Ran and P. Robert Duimering
Chapter 12 A Test of the Cognitive Theory of Obsessions: Study of Internal
Structure and Validity of the Obsessive Beliefs Questionnaire
in Italian Individuals 375
Stella Dorz, Caterina Novara, Massimiliano Pastore, Ezio Sanavio,
Luigi Rocco Chiri and Claudio Sica
Chapter 13 Haptic Abilities in Infancy and Their Relation to Vision: A Review 405
Arlette Streri
Chapter 14 Emotional Modulation of Selective Attention:
Experimental Evidence in Specific Phobia 433
Marlen Figueroa, Sonia Rodríguez-Ruiz, José L. Mata,
Walter Machado-Pinheiro and Jaime Vila
Chapter 15 The Moderating Effect of Switching Costs in Consumers’
Relationship Dissolution: A Cross-Cultural Analysis 465
Carmen Antón Martín and Carmen Camarero Izquierdo
Chapter 16 Tripartite Concepts of Mind and Brain, with Special Emphasis
on the Neuroevolutionary Postulates of Christfried Jakob and
Paul MacLean 489
Lazaros C. Triarhou
Chapter 17 Category-Specific Semantics in Alzheimer’s Dementia
and Normal Aging? 515
Keith R. Laws, Tim M Gale, F. Javier Moreno-Martínez,
Rebecca L. Adlington, Karen Irvine and Sunil Sthanakiya
Chapter 18 Preverbal Category Formation: The Role of Real-World Experience 537
Birgit Träuble, Lysett Babocsai and Sabina Pauen
Chapter 19 Peripheral Responses Elicited By Motor Imagery: A Window
on Central and Peripheral Nervous System Relationships
through Motor Commands Inhibition 551
C. Collet and A. Guillot
Chapter 20 Rationality: The Desire for an Absolute without a Cause 567
Todd McElroy, Jacob Conrad and Dominic Mascari
Chapter 21 The Cognitive Effects of Anxiety on Sexual Arousal 579
Philippe Kempeneers, Romain Pallincourt and Sylvie Blairy
Index 595
 PREFACE

Chapter 1 - In this chapter, the author provides a brief introduction to a completely new
theory in Semantics, Operational Semantics (OS), which concerns the meanings of the basic
linguistic elements that are indispensable for any linguistic expression, that is, mainly the
“grammatical” words (conjunctions, prepositions, articles, most pronouns and corresponding
adjectives, fundamental verbs like “to be”, “to have” etc, the main adverbs) and, in the large
number of languages that have a more or less rich morphology, almost all morphemes. OS
differs significantly from other existing theories. In fact, in linguistics several of these basic
elements are often considered to have a complex meaning and, in some cases, to be
polysemous (such as some prepositions/cases and some verbs). Nevertheless, the words that
designate them are among the first that children learn, and unique. OS is a systematic theory
about the meaning of these linguistic elements, which it considers, in agreement with such
facts, as having a simple and (substantially) unique meaning.
The fundamental presupposition of OS is that the meanings of such linguistic elements
are essentially sequences of elemental mental operations, amongst which the ones of attention
play a key role. The author proposes a list of these elemental mental operations and shows
how it is possible, by basing ourselves on these, to account for the meanings of the aforesaid
linguistic elements. A new theory, which lies between linguistics and cognitive psychology,
derives from this. This theory also allows us to define fundamental concepts of linguistics
(such as “noun”, “subject”, “object” etc) in a simple and clear way and propose new solutions
for some other problems in linguistics and psycholinguistics.
In the last part of the chapter, the author also mentions a possible short-term practical
application of OS, i.e. a device to improve the quality of machine translation, and highlights
the limits of OS.
Chapter 2 - The aim of this paper is to provide an answer to a fundamental question
concerning human consciousness: how can we explain the phenomenal quality of our
conscious experiences? It is argued that the first-person perspective is the most suitable one
to deal with conscious experience. Accordingly, a model is developed on the idea that the
person emerges as an entity from the organism’s continuous application of its own energy to
itself. The model is composed of two main parts: the perceptual system and the schema of
self. The perceptual system makes it possible for an organism to be conscious, whereas the
schema of self provides the rules that make an organism perceive, move, act, behave, and live
in general. The stream of consciousness arises from the uninterrupted interaction of these two
systems. The core part of the model is represented by attention. Attention, which is the
viii Carla E. Wilhelm

activity the organism can perform thanks to the nervous energy supplied by the organ of
attention, gives the organism the possibility of performing actions capable of directly varying
the organism’s state of nervous energy. It is this variation that constitutes the phenomenal
aspect of consciousness. When acting, the organism can directly experience and feel its
actions and the results of its actions, thus making possible the delimitation and emergence of
the person.
Chapter 3 - Research suggests that both perceptual and memory representations involve
discrete features that are bound together to form coherent wholes. The process which
combines features into unified wholes is known as feature binding and is seen as an integral
part of conscious experience. Errors occur in both perceptual and memory based feature
binding. In perception, errors in feature binding produce illusory conjunctions. For instance,
participants presented with a red triangle and a blue square will sometimes mistakenly
perceive a blue triangle next to a red square. Illusory conjunctions demonstrate the
importance of attentional resources in the binding of features in perception. Feature binding
errors also occur in memory. Such errors are known as memory conjunction errors. For
example, participants presented with words such as blackmail and jailbird will sometimes
mistakenly remember the word blackbird. Such findings provide evidence for the
reconstructive nature of human memory. Considerable research has established the existence
and subjectively compelling nature of these sorts of errors. Moreover, relatively well
established theoretical literatures exist in an attempt to account for both illusory conjunctions
and memory conjunction errors. However, to date, no systematic attempt has been made to
draw parallels and connections between these two literatures. The purpose of the present
chapter is to demonstrate similarities and differences between these two types of errors and to
provide a unified comprehensive account of both types of errors. In the process the authors
hope to elucidate how feature binding can be used to better understand both perception and
memory.
Chapter 4 - Gender and age are assumed to affect spatial performance. However,
systematic attention to gender differences across life-span remains sparse. This paper
provides an overview on behavioural changes in human reorientation as effect of gender and
age. A total of 340 healthy participants, balanced by gender, were divided into three groups
(166 children, 72 young adults, 102 aged adults) and engaged in a virtual version of the
Reorientation Paradigm. The task consisted of a learning phase, in which participants
acquired spatial information about the position of a target, and of a testing phase, in which
participants searched for the hidden target. Performances of the three groups have been
compared in: (a) an environment with layout information only, (b) an environment with both
layout and featural information, and (c) an environment with featural information only.
Accuracy in testing phase (i.e. number of correct searches) and navigation style (i.e. measured
as time spent and path lengths, in both learning and testing phase) were evaluated. Results
showed an age related effect in all the measures provided. On average, children and aged
adults spent more time and cover longer distance with respect to young adults, in both
learning and testing phase. In addition, the ability to evaluate spatial information is not
completely achieved in children and tends to decrease in aged adults. The interaction between
gender and age showed that gender related differences are absent in childhood, but became
considerable in adulthood and remain stable in old age. These results are in line with an
explanation of gender-related differences in spatial cognition founded on the interaction
between biological and environmental/cultural factors.
 Preface ix

Chapter 5 - Pretrial publicity (PTP) has been found to have a biasing effect on jury
decision making. This chapter explores how research and theory in cognitive psychology has
been used to examine the mechanisms responsible for PTP’s biasing effects on jury decisions.
This research can assist the courts in finding effective remedies for PTP bias. The chapter
explores how exposure to PTP is similar to exposure to misinformation in the reversed
suggestibility paradigm and that memory for the trial can be affected by misinformation
(PTP) presented before the trial (Lindsay & Johnson, 1989; Rantzen & Markham, 1992). The
chapter will also review research and theory examining whether memory errors (e.g., source
misattributions) and biases of individual jurors are likely to be corrected by jury members
during deliberations. A review of relevant literature is followed by the presentation of two
research studies. The first study explores whether deliberation reduces the biasing effects of
PTP by comparing group (jury) and individual (juror) decisions using the nominal group
method. This study also explores whether jurors who are exposed to PTP are likely to
misattribute information presented only in the PTP to the trial. The second study explores the
effects of both negative (anti-defendant) and positive (pro-defendant) PTP on juror decision
making. Both studies suggests that even if jurors are instructed not to use information
contained in the PTP to make decisions about guilt, they may be unable or unwilling to do so
because of source memory errors and their perceptions of the defendant and trial attorneys.
This research also suggests that jury deliberations can increase (polarize) juror bias and
therefore, cannot be counted on to remedy the effect of PTP on jury decision making.
Chapter 6 - Recently, the fact that there is anticipation before cognition in the brain
processing is elucidated by brain science, although human behavior has been explained as
cognition-judgment-operation loop. The TP-theory (Temporal Predictive behavior model
proposed by Tanida and Pöppel in 2006) is a model which applies anticipation-operation-
comparison loop as new information processing with temporal frame to human behavior
including automobile driving. Why is driving referred? Driving an automobile is an example
of a goal-directed activity with high complexity in which different behavioral elements have
to be integrated and brought into a sequential order. On the basis of the reafference principle
and experimental results on temporal perception and cognitive control, the authors propose a
hierarchical model of driving behavior which can also be adapted to other goal-directed
activities. Driving is conceived of as being controlled by anticipatory neuronal programs; if
these programs are disrupted by unpredictable stimuli which require an instantaneous
reaction, behavioral control returns after completion of the reactive mode to the anticipatory
mode of driving. In the model different levels of anticipation windows are distinguished
which, however, are interconnected, in a bi-directional way: A. Strategic level with a
representation of the driving activity from the beginning to reaching the final goal; B.
Segmented tactical level with the sequence of necessary milestones to reach the goal, which
are characterized by adaptive scenarios; C. Maneuver – in general operational level, where
actions like passing another car or keeping a lane are controlled; this level represents learned
activities which have become automatized; D. Short term integration level of two to three
seconds, which allows immediate anticipations; this temporal window represents the
subjective present; E. Synchronization level for sensory motor control and complexity
reduction within neuronal assemblies which allows the creation of mental content and
consciously available categories. A flow diagram schematically describes different driving
situations stressing the anticipatory mode of control. As mentioned before, this model is able
x Carla E. Wilhelm

to apply to riding a motorcycle or a bicycle, cooking, gardening, DIY etc.. This chapter gives
the general explanation about the TP-theory.
Chapter 7 - This work is based on an investigation on the used strategies of learning, by
the students who attend the last year of the race of Psychology of the National University of
Tucuman, Argentine Republic. In the different educative levels numerous problems in the
learning processes have been observed. The mental approach provides the suitable theoretical
model to include/understand and to analyze the learning strategies. The work hypothesis was
that the general average of the qualifications obtained by the students of fifth year of the race
of Psychology is related to the use of learning strategies: acquisition, codification, recovery
and support. The examples are based with the application of a scale of learning strategies,
(ACRA) of Roman and Gallego (1994), in a random sample of students who attended fifth
year in the race of Psychology. The conclusions allow to affirm that some students preferably
used the strategies of acquisition and codification, with a way to learn limited the
requirements of the task, that allowed them to approve the subject. However, the other used
all the strategies, preferably those of recovery and support. That is to say, that besides
learning knows like doing it. The results allowed to verify the hypothesis and to establish the
positive and significant relation, between the averages of the qualifications and the strategies
of learning. The importance of these findings will allow, to reframe the processes of
education-learning with a view to the formation of a critical, reflective and strategic student.
Key words: Learning Strategies of learning-Education
Chapter 9 - Anxiety and sexual arousal have often been considered as incompatible.
Since the end of the 20th Century, however, researches have impaired theories centred on the
inhibitory effect of the stress and on peripheral explanations; they rather focus attention on
the complexity of the relations between the two states and on cognitive mechanisms.
Now sexual arousal tends to be regarded as a complex response that requires the
convergent interpretation of internal and external stimuli. Anxiety may have different effects
on this process, sometimes neutral, sometimes facilitating and sometimes inhibitory.
On the one hand, anxiety can trigger a vegetative emotional reaction that may be
associated to a concomitant erotic stimulation. Thus, anxiety facilitates the sexual response:
this can be called a priming effect. This effect is regularly observed in labs, mainly among
women. It likely also works in certain compulsive sexual behaviours or, more commonly, in
those numerous persons that report being sexually aroused when stressed.
On the other hand, anxiety can cause a massive irruption of non erotic cues in working
memory. Therefore, cognitive function available for treating erotic stimuli is diminished and
sexual response is impaired. This is an effect of cognitive interference. A trait called
erotophobia could be regarded as a vulnerability factor to cognitive interference. Erotophobic
subjects are characterized by a trend to focus upon danger-related information when they are
in a sexual situation and by a higher risk of sexual dysfunction
Chapter 10 - Graphs are pervasive features in professional science journals, which makes
graphing one of (if not the) most important practice (and therefore skill) of professional
science. Scientists generally are expected to be experts in graphing. Contrary to this
expectation, recent investigations showed that scientists asked to interpret graphs from
introductory-level textbooks in their own field did not at all exhibit expert-like behavior. The
present study was designed to understand better the nature of graphing practices among
professional scientists. I investigated the similarities and differences in scientists’
interpretation of structurally identical in-field and out-of-field graphs. Seventeen physicists
 Preface xi

interpreted 3 graphs that were derived from entry-level university textbooks in ecology—for
cross validation purposes, these were the same graphs used in an earlier expert-expert study—
and 3 structurally identical graphs from the field of physics. My analyses reveal that the
graphing expertise of physicists is limited even within their field. Their graph interpretations
are highly idiosyncratic and contingent both within and across content domains. Common to
the interpretive practices on in-field and out-of field graph was that scientists interpreted them
according to the purposes of (a) graphing in science in general and (b) those of the graph
interpretation interview session specifically. In using varying resources and in experiencing
breakdowns, they exhibited considerable differences between in-field and out-of-field graph
interpretations. Working on in-field graphs, they drew on general knowledge and prior
experiences from their professional life, whereas in the context of out-of-field graph
interpretations, scientists provided verbal equivalents for the visible, surface features of the
line graphs and drew on mundane everyday life experiences to explicate them.
Chapter 11 - This paper provides a comprehensive and critical review of the major
theories and models of conceptual combination, by highlighting agreements and controversies
in the literature, and identifying future directions for research. The review summarizes the
basic arguments of ten major models and then presents an analytical framework to compare
and contrast these models along four dimensions: (1) the causal role of schemata in the
model; (2) the role of cognitive harmony or consistency in the model; (3) the pragmatic
orientation in the model; and (4) the explanatory scope of the model. The review identifies
areas of agreement and disagreement among the various models and theories and calls for a
synthesis theory to address various theoretical weaknesses and empirical gaps in the current
explanations.
Chapter 12 - Background: A widely-held belief is that obsessions arise from the
misinterpretation of normal intrusive thoughts (e.g., misinterpreting unwanted harm-related
thoughts as a sign that one is going to act on them). This leads the person to perform
compulsions such as repeated checking. Misinterpretations are said to arise from various
types of beliefs (e.g., the belief that thoughts inevitably give rise to actions). In support of this
theory, some studies have shown that such beliefs are correlated with obsessive-compulsive
disorder (OCD). The Obsessive Beliefs Questionnaire (OBQ) is an 87-item self-report
instrument developed by an international group (Obsessive Compulsive Cognitions Working
Group - OCCWG) to assess cognitions thought to be relevant to the etiology and maintenance
of obsessions and compulsions. The OBQ contains six scales measuring as many
dysfunctional beliefs: Inflated responsibility, Overimportance of thoughts. Excessive concern
about the importance of controlling one’s thoughts, Overestimation of threat, Intolerance of
uncertainty, and Perfectionism. To date, the OBQ has been mainly studied in clinical and
non-clinical individuals drawn from English-speaking populations. Results showed that the
questionnaire generally has a good internal consistency (Cronbach alpha coefficients equal or
above .80) and an adequate test-retest reliability. However, three OBQ domains (Tolerance of
uncertainty, Overestimation of threat and Perfectionism) appeared to be OCD-relevant but not
OCD-specific, since they did not discriminate individuals with OCD from anxiety controls. In
addition, correlations with measures of OCD symptoms, mood and worry, showed that the
OBQ was as highly correlated with the non-OCD symptom measures (anxiety, depression and
worry) as it was with OCD ones. Lastly, an exploratory factor analysis revealed that a three-
factor solution best explained the internal structure of the questionnaire. In summary, such
xii Carla E. Wilhelm

results raise doubts about the cognitive theory of obsessions and compulsions even though
more studies are needed before the theory can be reformulated.
Aims and method: The present paper reports on the Italian validation of the OBQ: the
extent to which the psychometric properties of the OBQ (and, in particular, its internal
structure) are equivalent to the original one may reveal interesting clues about the structure of
beliefs and their relationships with OCD symptoms. The OBQ was administered to 752
Italian undergraduate students along with the Padua Inventory (a measure of OCD
symptoms), the Beck Anxiety Inventory and the Beck Depression Inventory.
Results: exploratory factor analyses did not replicate the original six-factor structure of
the OBQ, nor the three-factor structure obtained by analyizing the original American sample.
A confirmatory factor analysis revelead that the Italian version of the OBQ was best
described by five factors and 46 items. In particular, the Italian version was characterized by
the absence of the intolerance of uncertainty and overestimation of threat scales, and by the
subdivision of the responsibility scale into the scales responsibility for harm and
responsibility for omission. Internal consistency and temporal stability of the five scales of
Italian version of the OBQ was satisfactorily; intercorrelations among the five scales were
moderately high. Results from convergent and discriminant validity revealed that
Perfectionism, Responsibility for harm and Control thoughts resulted good predictors of OCD
symptoms, whereas Responsibility of omission and Importance of thoughts did not predict
OCD symptoms at all in a regression analysis model.
Findings were discussed in terms of relevance and specificity of cognitive constructs to
OCD symptoms.
Chapter 13 - The old debate concerning the primitive unity (nativist conception) or the
separation (empiricist conception) of senses at birth has been revived in recent years, as
difficulties in the methodology of studying perception in babies were overcome. How can
babies know by touch? To answer to this question, three aspects of human infants’ haptic
abilities are presented in this review. How the young babies: 1. Perceive information and form
a perceptual representation of objects derived from the hands alone; 2. Transfer this
information to vision in an intermodal process; 3. Obtain haptic knowledge in limited
exploration conditions as they do in the visual modality? Using a habituation/dishabituation
procedure, experiments have revealed that infants, from birth, are able to discriminate object
shapes in the manual as well as in the visual mode. These abilities are a prerequisite for
understanding the relations between the haptic and the visual sensory modalities in cross-
modal transfer tasks. Using an intersensory successive preference procedure, several
experiments provided evidence for cross-modal recognition from touch to vision from birth.
The links however are limited, partial and not reciprocal. Nevertheless, adaptations of
paradigms for studying visual cognition reveal that the haptic system shares some amodal
mechanisms with the visual modality. Despite various discrepancies between both modalities,
conceiving the world is possible with the hands as well as the eyes soon after birth.
Chapter 14 - Empirical research has demonstrated that emotional information is rapidly
and extensively processed and that assessment of that information takes place automatically,
outside of conscious awareness (Edelstein & Guillath, 2008). This processing bias
presumably occurs in conditions that require the healthy or anxious individual to scan the
enviroment for information (Mathews & MacLeod, 1994). So, the attention is captured by, or
shifted towards, emotionally relevant stimuli. Multiple factors can explain how emotion
drives attention. This chapter throws light on some of these factors.
 Preface xiii

Chapter 15 - The current work analyzes the impact of deficiencies in firms’ policies on
the customers’ intent to break the relationship and the moderating role of switching costs. The
work is developed in the context of car insurance services. Concretely, in this context, we
differentiate two legal situations that can influence the dissolution process: the countries
where consumers comply with the legal obligation to take out car insurance and the countries
where consumers feel that the legislation is more permissive and fail to comply with the legal
obligation. A comparison of consumers from these two contexts (Spanish and Venezuelan
consumers) allows us to derive some conclusions.
Chapter 16 - The ‘triune brain’, conceived by Paul D. MacLean (1913–2007) in the late
1960s, has witnessed more attention and controversy than any other evolutionary model of
brain and behavior in modern neuroscience. Decades earlier, in his book Elements of
Neurobiology published in 1923 in La Plata, Argentina, neurobiologist Christfried
(Christofredo) Jakob (1866–1956) had formulated a ‘tripsychic’ brain system, based on his
deep understanding of biological and neural phylogeny. In a historical context, 1923 was also
the year of publication of Sigmund Freud’s The Ego and the Id, whereby the founder of
psychoanalysis solidified his tripartite model of the mental apparatus. Tripartite systems of
the human mind have been surmised since Plato and Aristotle; they continue to our era, an
example being Robert J. Sternberg’s triarchic theory of human intelligence. In view of the
fact that both Jakob and MacLean invested a considerable part of their long and distinguished
careers studying comparative, and particularly reptilian neurobiology, the present article
revisits their neuroevolutionary models, underlining the convergence of their anatomical-
functional propositions, in spite of a time distance of almost half a century.
Chapter 17 - Category-specific deficits represent the archetypal illustration of domain-
specific cognitive processes. These deficits describe individuals who, following certain types
of neurological damage show dissociations in their ability to recognise and name exemplars
from within specific domains e.g. living or nonliving things. Cases described over the past 25
years have formed a pivotal foundation for the development of models describing the
structure and organisation of lexical-semantic memory. In this chapter, we review the
evidence on whether category deficits in AD are consistent with the loss of isolated
categorical information, an artefact of confounding psycholinguistic variables (e.g. age of
acquisition, word frequency, and familiarity) or an exaggeration of some pre-existing normal
cognitive difference. Finally, we present emerging evidence that female AD patients show
worse semantic memory impairment than male patients. In this context, we discuss a possible
role for the apolipoprotein E (APOE) 4 allele, which is associated with a greater probability
for developing AD in women and impacts more on the cognitive performance of healthy
women than men.
Chapter 18 - Studies on categorization using the object-examination task (OET) show
that infants carry out a global-to-basic level shift in their second half of their first year of life.
What underlies performance in the OET still remains unclear, however. Following one view,
infants in an OET activate previously acquired knowledge about real-world exemplars. This
suggests that categorization performance in the OET should vary with the amount of
experience infants have with real-world exemplars displayed by the experimental material.
The present studies test this hypothesis, by comparing the categorization performance of
infants who do not have regular contact to cats or dogs (Experiment 1) with the performance
of infants who live with a cat or a dog at home (Experiment 2). Analyses based on data from
N = 80 9- and 11-month-old infants reveal that 11-months-olds who have experience with
xiv Carla E. Wilhelm

cats or dogs make a clear categorical distinction whereas infants without such experiences do
not show any categorization response. This set of findings suggests that experience with real-
world animals influences performance of infants participating in an OET providing a basic-
level contrast within the animate domain.
Chapter 19 - The aim of this paper was to examine the way in which motor commands
addressed to the somatic and autonomic effectors are inhibited during Motor Imagery (MI).
Three experiments are described, each referring to specific motor requirements. The first
requested the participants to lift a weighted dumbbell with their preferential hand (flexion of
the forearm), while seating in a chair. In the second task, the participants were asked to
perform 3 consecutive vertical jumps on a force plate, while the third was a coincidence
anticipation task requiring intercepting a table-tennis ball thrown by a robot, with the inner
side of the hand. All were performed under actual vs. mental practice. In the first experiment,
a subliminal muscular activity was recorded during MI, which was specific to the type of
muscle contraction. In the second experiment, MI was shown to reduce postural sway
amplitude in the standing position on both the anterior-posterior and the lateral axes
compared to the control condition (standing motionless on the force plate). In the third
experiment, the autonomic responses recorded during MI showed the same pattern that those
recorded during actual movement. While performing MI, the 3 motor commands were thus
shown to be affected differentially with reference to somatic and autonomic inhibition.
Experiment 1 provided evidence that direct voluntary commands are not fully inhibited
during MI. Although this process remained not solved, it is supposed at organising peripheral
effectors during the preparation phase, as for the actual execution of the movement. The
incomplete inhibition of motor commands was confirmed by the second experiment as
postural adjustments were not inhibited. Accordingly, MI may thus have a more limited effect
on automatic sensori-motor processes usually associated to voluntary motor commands. This
was confirmed in the third experiment in which autonomic nervous system regulations were
preserved during MI. These findings should be used in MI program (in sport training or
clinical rehabilitation), as incomplete inhibition may give feedback information to the central
nervous systems. Further research should nevertheless investigate the processes of somatic
motor commands inhibition.
Chapter 20 - Friedrich Nietzsche depicts us as creatures bound by an irrational
determinism. This ascription to irrational forces is commonplace and many, if not most,
people adhere to this belief. Such a belief is not surprising in light of how the unconscious
was, for many years, thought of as a mythical, dark place where sadistic urges and sexual
perversions resided. These terrifying forces, however, were reportedly kept at bay by a
surrealistic chasm that lies just between conscious realization and the dark abode of
unbounded hedonistic acceptance. Not a pretty picture considering that the unconscious
constitutes a large part of what it means to be human. Taking such a position, as some do,
seems troubling to those trying to further a scientific understanding of human psychology.
Practically speaking, if we are bound by such a circumstantial existence then why strive for
more? In other words; why should we place such effort in making better decisions when the
choices that we make will inevitably be tainted by irrational concomitance with unconscious
forces? In this chapter we take a very different view, following a broad perspective that
portrays predecisional thought as one of cooperation between two forces working toward a
common outcome. Rather than ascribing our fate to the inescapable void of irrational
fallibility, we make the case that decision choice can be better understood by approaching it
 Preface xv

as a complementary superordinate process and perhaps, at times, a contradictory process.

Nevertheless, the essence of the decision process is always an interactive product of
conscious and unconscious influences. We believe that furthering the understanding of this
dualistic pairing will allow us to achieve a better understanding of decision processing and
allow for more optimal decision making.
Chapter 21 - Anxiety and sexual arousal have often been considered as incompatible.
Since the end of the 20th Century, however, researches have impaired theories centred on the
inhibitory effect of the stress and on peripheral explanations; they rather focus attention on
the complexity of the relations between the two states and on cognitive mechanisms.
Now sexual arousal tends to be regarded as a complex response that requires the
convergent interpretation of internal and external stimuli. Anxiety may have different effects
on this process, sometimes neutral, sometimes facilitating and sometimes inhibitory.
On the one hand, anxiety can trigger a vegetative emotional reaction that may be
associated to a concomitant erotic stimulation. Thus, anxiety facilitates the sexual response:
this can be called a priming effect. This effect is regularly observed in labs, mainly among
women. It likely also works in certain compulsive sexual behaviours or, more commonly, in
those numerous persons that report being sexually aroused when stressed.
On the other hand, anxiety can cause a massive irruption of non erotic cues in working
memory. Therefore, cognitive function available for treating erotic stimuli is diminished and
sexual response is impaired. This is an effect of cognitive interference. A trait called
erotophobia could be regarded as a vulnerability factor to cognitive interference. Erotophobic
subjects are characterized by a trend to focus upon danger-related information when they are
in a sexual situation and by a higher risk of sexual dysfunction.
Versions of chapters 1 through 9 were also published in Cognitive Psychology
Perspectives, edited by G. Salvati and V. Rabuano, published by Nova Science Publishers,
Inc. They were submitted for appropriate modifications in an effort to encourage wider
dissemination of research.
Versions of chapters 10 through 21 were also published in Cognitive Psychology
Research Developments, edited by Stella P. Weingarten and Helena O. Penat, published by
Nova Science Publishers, Inc. They were submitted for appropriate modifications in an effort
to encourage wider dissemination of research.
In: Encyclopedia of Cognitive Psychology (2 Volume Set) ISBN: 978-1-61324-546-0
Editor: Carla E. Wilhelm, pp. 1-62 © 2012 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 1

A SEMANTICS OF THE FUNDAMENTAL STRUCTURAL

ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE, BASED ON COGNITIVE
FUNCTIONS: OPERATIONAL SEMANTICS

Giulio Benedetti
Pisa, Italy

ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author provides a brief introduction to a completely new theory in
Semantics, Operational Semantics (OS), which concerns the meanings of the basic
linguistic elements that are indispensable for any linguistic expression, that is, mainly the
“grammatical” words (conjunctions, prepositions, articles, most pronouns and
corresponding adjectives, fundamental verbs like “to be”, “to have” etc, the main
adverbs) and, in the large number of languages that have a more or less rich morphology,
almost all morphemes. OS differs significantly from other existing theories. In fact, in
linguistics several of these basic elements are often considered to have a complex
meaning and, in some cases, to be polysemous (such as some prepositions/cases and some
verbs). Nevertheless, the words that designate them are among the first that children
learn, and unique. OS is a systematic theory about the meaning of these linguistic
elements, which it considers, in agreement with such facts, as having a simple and
(substantially) unique meaning.
The fundamental presupposition of OS is that the meanings of such linguistic
elements are essentially sequences of elemental mental operations, amongst which the
ones of attention play a key role. The author proposes a list of these elemental mental
operations and shows how it is possible, by basing ourselves on these, to account for the
meanings of the aforesaid linguistic elements. A new theory, which lies between
linguistics and cognitive psychology, derives from this. This theory also allows us to
define fundamental concepts of linguistics (such as “noun”, “subject”, “object” etc) in a
simple and clear way and propose new solutions for some other problems in linguistics
and psycholinguistics.
In the last part of the chapter, the author also mentions a possible short-term practical
application of OS, i.e. a device to improve the quality of machine translation, and
highlights the limits of OS.
2 Giulio Benedetti

Keywords: mind, mental operations, consciousness, attention, thought, language, Italian

Operational School, operational semantics, linguistics, psycholinguistics,
neurolinguistics, semantics, grammar, philosophy, cognitive psychology, neurobiology

1. INTRODUCTION
Among the various aspects of what we call “human consciousness” (Baars 1988; Bieri
1992; Chalmers 1996; Churchland, Sejnowski 1992; Damasio 1994; Dennett 1991; Edelman
1989, 1992; Searle 1984, 1994; Stich 1996; Zeman 2001), language has been studied from
various points of view and its study has produced a great deal of results. Nevertheless, its
most important (from a certain point of view) aspect, that is, semantics (since language is the
expression of meanings), has proved to be the most problematic [Chomsky 1987, Bloomfield
1933, Lehmann 1992]. In this paper, I shall consider language right from the point of view of
semantics, introducing a radically new theory in this field. I call this theory Operational
Semantics (OS). Here, I shall provide a brief exposition of it.
This chapter has been conceived to be read by as wide a public as possible. Therefore, a
specialised foundation has been avoided.

2. THE ORIGINS OF OPERATIONAL SEMANTICS

OS partly coincides with Silvio Ceccato’s (1914-1997) thought, partly is an innovative
development of this, partly is very different. Ceccato’s thought started developing in the
1950s and reached its full maturity in the 60s and 70s [Ceccato 1964, 1966, 1968, 1969, 1970,
1972, 1974; Ceccato, Zonta 1980]. Ceccato used various names for the theories that made up
his thought. The name Operational Methodology (OM) is the one that has prevailed in his
School, the Scuola Operativa Italiana (SOI) [Italian Operational School].
Even though Ceccato was well-known in Italian philosophical circles since the 40s and
even though he directed important projects involving the application of his theories (one of
the very few European projects of machine translation and the only one in Italy in the first
phase of research in this field [funded by USA Air Force, 1959-66; described in Ceccato
1969]; the project of the so-called “mechanical reporter”, a machine that had to be able to
observe and to describe a scene made up of seven objects arranged in various ways on a stage
[Italy National Research Council, 1958-66; described by Ceccato 1969]), his thought has had
very little diffusion. This can be due to various reasons. It is impossible to examine them in
detail here, but we can mention the main ones: a) Ceccato, even if he started from the field of
philosophy, contrasted sharply with it, introducing his thought as something radically
opposite to the whole philosophic tradition1; b) he had anti-academic attitudes and did not
want to form a real school; c) he maintained an excessively radical (in my opinion)
constructivism and a relativism that weaken values; d) sometimes he used a difficult
language. Nevertheless, I believe that the work of Ceccato and his School [Glasersfeld E. von

1
This substantial diversity from the whole philosophical tradition is however essentially real: Ceccato’s thought
presents vague analogies only with part of Kant’s philosophy and with the operationalism of H. Dingler and
that of P. Bridgman.
 A Semantics of the Fundamental Structural Elements of Language… 3

1989, 1998; Parini 1996; Vaccarino 1988, 1997, 2000; Amietta, Magnani 1998], even if it
needs an in-depth critical revision, includes many original and very valuable ideas and
intuitions, which deserve to be taken into consideration again and developed. This is precisely
where I have focused my work ever since the second half of the 90s [Benedetti 1999, 2004,
2005a,b]. In the early 90s, another researcher from the SOI, Giorgio Marchetti began a very
remarkable critical revision and development of Ceccato’s thought [Marchetti 1993, 1997,
2001, 2003, 2005a, 2006, 2009]. Since 2003, there has been a tight collaboration between
Marchetti and myself.
In the following treatment, there is the problem of distinguishing Ceccato’s original
theories from those of the author. A complete and precise distinction here is not possible due
to lack of space: for such a distinction, I can do nothing else but refer the reader to the
bibliography [Ceccato 1964, 1966, 1968, 1969, 1970, 1972, 1974, 1996; Ceccato, Zonta
1980; Ceccato, Oliva 1988]. Nevertheless, in the main text or in the notes, I shall indicate
which are Ceccato’s main original theses and which are the author’s. When this is not
provided, the thought exposed generally derives from Ceccato’s, but with possible
differences. The foundation of the exposition is the author’s own and differs entirely from
Ceccato’s.

3. THE FUNDAMENTAL THESES OF OPERATIONAL SEMANTICS

The best way to introduce OS is starting from a concrete example. That is, to take a
sample of language at random and think over the meaning of the words that form it. It is
important to note that, from the point of view that I am about to express, we may choose any
sample of language, in any language, and the result will be always the same. As a sample of
language, let’s take the beginning of one of the most famous books in the world: Pinocchio.

Once upon a time there was…

─ A king!─ my small readers will say at once.
No, children, you are wrong. Once upon a time there was a piece of wood.
It was not a luxury wood, but a simple stack piece, one of those pieces we use to put in
stoves and fireplaces in winter to light fire and to heat rooms.
[translation from Italian is the author’s own]

Every discrete element of language, that is, every word, designates at least one meaning
(in many languages however, many single words designate more than one meaning together,
like, for instance: the basic meaning of a noun plus the plural; a verb and its tense, mood and
person; etc). Therefore, each word designates one or more “atoms” of thought. Let’s ask
ourselves what these “atoms” are, what their nature is. As far as their nature is concerned, it
seems that the meanings of words can be divided into at least two main classes.
1) In the passage we have chosen, the words “children”, “wood”, “stack”, “stoves”,
“fireplaces”, “winter”, “[to] light”, “fire”, “[to] heat”, “rooms” seem to designate something
physical (apart from the endings that indicate the plural). It is easy to realise that there are so
many of these words that they probably make up most of the lexicon of any language.
Therefore, there is a big class of words that make an evident and specific reference to
something physical.
4 Giulio Benedetti

2) In the passage chosen, there are then the following words: the verbs “to be” and
“to have”, the article “a”, the prepositions “upon”, “at”, “of”, “in”, “to”, the demonstrative
adjective “those”, the negations “no” and “not”, the conjunctions “and” and “but”, the
numerals “once” and “one”, the adverb “there” and the morpheme “-s” (or “-ren”, in
“children”), which indicates the plural. These words (or morphemes: morphemes instead of
words are used in other languages) seem to be clearly different from those in class 1. In fact,
unlike the words in class 1, these words do not seem to refer (or refer only) to something
physical. Although they are certainly often used to describe the physical word, they do not
seem by any means to necessarily and specifically refer to something physical. If, for
example, instead of saying “this stone”, “two trees”, “all the grass” (phrases where the words
in italics refer to physical things), we say “this problem”, “two considerations”, “all his
thought” (phrases where there is no reference to something physical), the meaning of the
words “this”, “two” and “all” does not seem different at all.
In a language, items of this kind are all the “grammatical” words or morphemes, that is:

prepositions2 (with, of, to, at, from, by, in, for, on, between, among etc);
conjunctions (and, or, if, because, but etc);
interrogative-indefinite-relative pronouns and adjectives (who, what, which,
whoever, whatever, whichever etc);
demonstrative adjectives and pronouns (this, that, other, the same etc);
main adverbs of place, time, manner etc (here, there, where, when, how, why
etc);
pronouns and adjectives of quantity (all, whole, many, some, few etc);
negation (not, no, in- or un- as a prefix);
numerals (one/first/once; two/second/twice; three/third etc);
“grammatical” verbs like “to be”, “to have”, “can”, “must” etc;
most morphemes in the large number of languages that have a more or less rich
morphology (the ones which indicate cases, in languages that have cases; the
number of nouns and, in many languages, of adjectives; tenses, moods, forms,
aspects of the verb etc).

Besides the “grammatical” words, the vocabulary of a language contains other words
that, like the former, do not seem to refer (or refer only) to something physical. The passage
contains two of these words: “small” and “piece”. Other examples of words of this kind can
be: “big”, “part”, “beginning”, “end”, “to get”, “to make”, “to look for”, “to find” etc.
It is easy to realise that the number of items in class 2 is quite limited (definitely much
less than in class 1), but, as a class, they are used in an extremely frequent way (in the
passage, the ratio between the words of class 1 and the words/morphemes of class 2 is about
1:4). If we choose samples of language at random, we can see that the words/morphemes of
class 2 are, in a large majority of the cases, the main component of sentences and that they are
absolutely indispensable in order to speak, that is, to construct any speech. Therefore, it is
logical to consider them fundamental. All the words of a language are certainly useful

2
The correct term is “appositions”, because various languages, unlike English, have postpositions rather than
prepositions. In this article, where great efforts have been made to avoid using a technical language, we shall use
the term “prepositions” even when the term “appositions” should be used.
 A Semantics of the Fundamental Structural Elements of Language… 5

(otherwise, they would not exist) and many words in class 1 can also be considered
fundamental from a certain point of view. A word such as “water” is surely, from a certain
point of view, fundamental. However it is possible to write a whole book without using the
word “water”. Instead, one can easily realise that it is impossible to form even the simplest
sentence without using some of the words/morphemes in class 2. Therefore, we can say that
the words/morphemes in class 2 are the fundamental structural component of language, and
then of linguistic thought (I use the expression “linguistic thought” because some authors
stress the existence of kinds of thought that differ from the kind of thought that language is
the expression of, the “internal” equivalent of language [see, for example, Weiskrantz 1988]).
I maintain that until we understand the nature of the meaning of these words/morphemes, we
shall not be able to understand the deep nature and structure of language and linguistic
thought.
Well, what do these words or morphemes indicate? Let us consider a list of basic words
(Table 1).

Table 1.

woman, man, animal, bird, dog, eye, nose, drink, eat, fly (verb), walk, sun, moon, water,
stone, sky, fire, red, green, night, day, warm, cold, I, you, in, with, of, have, get, make,
this, that, here, there, who, what, where, when, how, not, all, many, some, few, other, big,
small, long, short, wide, narrow, thick, thin, near, far, right, left

Some people who are not familiar with linguistics could initally think that the meaning of
words, that is, semantics in general, is not a problem. In fact, one can initially think that
words are nothing else but signs that have been created to indicate objects. The very many
words of a language that belong to class 1 (in Table 1, the first 23 words) can make us think
so. This theory is undoubtedly correct to some extent. However, if we stop and think, we
realise that things are not so simple. Words in the list such as “bird” and “animal” clearly
show that in some cases we designate categories, not objects. Yet, if we think carefully, even
more specific words such as “dog” designate categories. In fact, the word “dog” is unique, but
there are many kinds of dogs. Even if we consider more uniform biological species than dogs,
often not all the specimens of a species look exactly the same. Nevertheless we designate
them with the same word. We can say that this applies to the majority of natural objects, and
artificial ones as well. Cases where a word designates a single object or a class of identical
objects are the exception, not the rule. Therefore, perception (and the designation that
follows) is almost always a categorisation, not a sort of “photography” and memorisation of
it. We can then say that what we designate is often not a single object, but a “category” or
“concept” or “prototype”. However the problem does not end here. If we consider the words
in Table 1 that seem to belong to class 2 (from “in” to the end), things get complicated. The
meaning of some of these words, namely “big”, “small”, “long”, “short”, “wide”, “narrow”,
“thick”, “thin”, “near”, “far” (in their literal meaning), “right” and “left”, may seem less
problematic, because of their reference to space or time (even if this reference is not always
present). But the meaning of the other words in the list, such as “to have”, “to get”, “to
make”, “with”, “genitive”, “not”, is clearly problematic. First of all, not only do these words
6 Giulio Benedetti

not indicate physical objects, but neither do they indicate relationships amongst physical
objects. In fact, we can say both “bottle of wine” and “stream of consciousness”, both “he has
a moustache” and “to have an idea”, without changing the meaning of the preposition “of” in
the first couple of examples, and of the verb “to have” in the second. In order to understand
the difficulties that linguistics has encountered in defining such words, we can simply
examine their definitions in dictionaries. Some of these definitions are clearly tautologies. For
example, “not” is defined as “negation”, “all” is defined as “totality”. The definitions that
send us from one word to another and then back again (for example, the verb “to look for” is
defined by means of the verb “to find” and vice versa) are also tautological. Some of these
words are said to have different meanings according to the context, and a synonym is
provided for each meaning (for example, the synonyms that are provided for “to have” are “to
possess, to own”, “to keep”, “to get, to obtain”, etc; the synonyms for “to get” are “to obtain”,
“to purchase”, “to catch”, “to receive”, “to understand”, “to become”, “to arrive” etc; the
synonyms for “to make” are “to create”, “to construct”, “to produce”, “to constitute” etc), but
it is definitely much more convincing to think that the meanings of these more “specialised”
verbs are included in the much more general meanings of the verbs “to have”, “to get” and
“to make”. Dictionaries have long lists of relationships for words such as “with” and “of”,
which are said to represent the many meanings of these prepositions (for the preposition
“with”: company or union, means or instrument, manner, cause etc; for the preposition “of”:
possession, association, belonging to a group, composition, containing, participation in an
action as an agent or as a patient, origin, cause, purpose, quantity, quality, denomination,
plenty or lack, topic, in respect to, fault, accusation and similar things, age etc). One could
easily object by saying that it seems highly unlikely for words, which occur so frequently (the
preposition “of” is the second most used word in English [Graffi & Scalise 2002 p 159]) and
are so indispensable, to have so many meanings. These prepositions are more likely to have
only one, more general meaning (which is why it is so difficult to determine), and the many
relationships grammar speaks about are included in this more general meaning.
Another big problem in linguistics is defining fundamental grammar concepts such as
“subject” and “object”. In linguistics, there are no satisfactory definitions of these concepts
(i.e. definitions that always work) [Graffi & Scalise 2002]. Yet even primary school children
learn what subject and object are without any difficulty through examples. Therefore, it is
logical to think that something fundamental is escaping us here.
In linguistic research, a serious, wide and in-depth approach to Semantics such as the one
by Wierzbicka [Wierzbicka 1972, 1989a,b, 1992; Goddard 2001, 2002; Goddard and
Wierzbicka 1994, 2002] clearly shows how big a problem the semantics of the fundamental
linguistic elements is and why. The approach (called Natural Semantic Metalanguage, NSM)
is based on a reductive paraphrase (that is, breaking concepts/words down into combinations
of simpler concepts/words).
This approach shows that most words in a language can be defined, yet there is a core of
fundamental, “atomic” meanings (which Wierzbicka calls “semantic primitives”), which
allow us to define any other meaning, but are absolutely irreducible, that is, undefinable by
means of other words, as Wierzbicka explicitly states. The “semantic primitives” are believed
to be present in all human languages. This assumption was tested extensively against a wide
and extremely diversified range of languages. Table 2 shows the present list of the 60 or so
“semantic primitives”. The words that seem to belong to class 2 are underlined. As we can
see, they are the majority of the list.
 A Semantics of the Fundamental Structural Elements of Language… 7

Table 2. List of the semantic primitives

(2002; http://www.une.edu.au/lcl/nsm/nsm.php - model)

substantives: existence and possession:

I, you, someone, people, there is/exist, have
something/thing, body life and death:
determiners: live, die
this, the same, other time:
quantifiers: when/time, now, before, after, a long
one, two, some, all, many/much time, a short time, for some time,
evaluators: moment
good, bad space:
descriptors: where/place, here, above, below; far,
big, small near; side, inside; touching
intensifier: “logical” concepts:
very not, maybe, can, because, if
mental predicates: augmentor:
think, know, want, feel, see, hear very, more
speech: taxonomy, partonomy:
say, word, true kind of, part of
actions, events, movement, contact: similarity:
do, happen, move, touch like

Therefore, Wierzbicka’s approach shows that in any language, and therefore in language,
the core of the most fundamental meanings cannot be defined by using the words of the
language itself (Arnauld, Descartes, Pascal and Leibniz had already maintained this
theoretically [Goddard 1998]). As a result, the solution to the problem of the meaning of the
words/morphemes that make up this fundamental component of language has to be searched
for outside language itself, that is, in something other than language. These words/morphemes
should be defined in terms of something more elementary.
Operational Semantics is a completely new solution to the problem of the meaning of the
basic words/morphemes belonging to class 2. The fundamental thesis of OS is that these
words/morphemes designate sequences of mental operations (the name “Operational
Semantics” derives from this), amongst which the ones of attention play a key role. Therefore,
we may say that these words and morphemes are “tools to pilot attention” [Marchetti 2003,
2006] and other cognitive functions of the listener. The reason why the meanings of such
linguistic elements cannot be defined by means of other words is precisely because they can
only be defined in terms of such operations.
Ceccato called these sequences of mental operations “mental categories” (because they
have some analogies with the categories of Kant’s philosophy). OS has adopted this name as
well. We must point out that the meaning OS gives to the term “category” is completely
different from the meaning that cognitive psychology and linguistics give to the same term.
Typically, cognitive psychology and linguistics use the term “category” to highlight the fact
that, since many objects of the physical world share common features, but are not identical,
we create classes (that is, categories) by means of a mental process of abstraction [Barsalou,
8 Giulio Benedetti

1999; Lakoff, 1987; Rosch, 1973, 1978]. On the contrary, OS calls “mental categories” the
meanings of the words of class 2.
Ceccato called the mental operations that make up the mental categories elemental mental
operations. Once again, we must point out that the use OS makes of the expression
“elemental mental operations” differs completely from the use that cognitive sciences make
of the same expression: while for OS the expression denotes only the elemental operations
that make up mental categories, for cognitive sciences it has a wider meaning, denoting
various kinds of operations that may be considered “elemental”, such as, for example, basic
operations of perception. In this paper we shall therefore use, as much as possible, the more
specific expression “elemental operations that make up mental categories”, or its acronym
EOMC.
Therefore, defining the meaning of a word that designates a mental category means,
according to OS, identifying the structure of that mental category, that is, the sequence of
elemental mental operations that make it up. We call this task “analysis of a mental category”.

4. THE ELEMENTAL OR BASIC MENTAL OPERATIONS

Ceccato hypothesized that attention can only be in two states (attention waiting for
something to focus on and attention focusing on something) and that the structure of mental
categories is made up of the various possible combinations of a progressively increasing
number (2, 3, 4 etc) of these two states. Since this hypothesis gave poor and controversial
results in the analysis of mental categories, I believe it is completely wrong [Benedetti 2004].
Nevertheless, Ceccato also gave some other sketched descriptions of the structure of several
mental categories. I used these descriptions as a starting point to identify the elemental mental
operations that make up the mental categories. I proposed [Benedetti 2005b, 2006] a more
complex set of EOMC, and consequently present new analyses of the fundamental mental
categories. Most of the operations that are considered EOMC have been repeatedly described
in cognitive psychology (as regards attention, see for example James, 1890; Jonides, 1983; La
Berge, 1983, 1995; Pashler, 1998; Posner, 1980, 1994; Posner, Cohen, 1984; as to
representation, see Braga-Illa, 1997, 2006; Denis, 1989; as to memory, see Baddeley, 2000;
Baddeley and Hitch, 1974; Cowan 2001, 2005; Miller, 1956; Oberauer, 2002; Oberauer et al.
2000; in general, see Benjafield 1997, Reed 1992). The new idea we are proposing is that by
means of these operations we can account for the meaning of the words in class 2, hence for
the nature and structure of linguistic thought (this idea is Ceccato’s own).
The list of the EOMC I propose at present is the following:
1) Operation of attentional focalization (AF) – This operation has the fundamental
property of producing the “selection”, or “highlighting”, of its object with respect to
all the rest [James 1890]. Inside AF we can distinguish at least three sub-operations.
a) AF can widely vary in extension (AFext): it may concern an object, or a part
of it, or several objects.
b) The focus of attention can move (AFmov) from one object to another, or
from a part of the field to which it is applied to another.
c) Moreover, AF can last for variable, though limited, amounts of time (AFdur
[dur = duration]).
 A Semantics of the Fundamental Structural Elements of Language… 9

d) The extension, movement and duration of attentional focalization can be

estimated in quantitative terms (AFext-estim, AFmov-estim and AFdur-estim,
respectively).
e) AF can vary in intensity (AFint-var), that is, we can pay more attention to
one object instead of another.
2) Presence keeping (PK) – Let’s consider Picture 1. In this picture, let’s look at the
bottle and say “bottle”; then, let’s look at the glass and say “glass”. Let’s try to say,
“there are a bottle and a glass”. Obviously, the physical situation has not changed,
but it is our mind that has done something different. In the first case, when we passed
to the glass, the bottle was mentally left. In the second case, instead, we keep the
bottle present while our attention passes to the glass. I call this fundamental operation
“presence keeping”.

Picture 1.

The operation of presence keeping is surely strictly related to the well-known

concept, developed by cognitive psychology, of “working (or active) memory”,
whether in the classic Baddeley-Hitch’s model or in more recent models, such as
Cowan’s or Oberauer’s models [Baddeley, Hitch 1974; Baddeley 2000; Cowan 2001,
2005; Oberauer, Süß, Schulze, Wilhelm, Wittmann 2000; Oberauer 2002]. The
operation of presence keeping requires the interaction of a short-term memory having
a limited capacity and attention (the interaction of a short-term memory and attention
is especially highlighted in Cowan’s and Oberauer’s models).
3) Operation of attentional discarding (AD) – Considering Picture 1 once again, let’s
try to say “glass or bottle”. In this case, we can easily sense that both objects are
focused on by attention and kept present, but when our attention focuses on the
bottle, we must exclude, discard the glass (this operation is different from simply
stopping to focus our attention on an object in order to pass on to focus it on another
one, because in our case we bear in mind the fact that we considered the object we
are now discarding). I call this operation the operation of “attentional discarding”.
4) Operation of representation (R) – The operation of representation is the act of
thinking about something that is not present at the moment. This is what we do when,
for example, hearing a word, we pass to its meaning, which was previously
memorised. Sometimes the formation of a mental image of the object follows the
understanding of the meaning. In some cases, this operation is not simply a retrieval
of something memorised, but has a clearly creative character, such as when we
imagine or think up something that does not exist.
10 Giulio Benedetti

5) Operation of comparison (C) – Our mind performs comparisons very frequently.

Every time we use typically relative words, which concern properties of an object
(like “high/low”, “big/little”, “long/short”, “strong/weak”, “heavy/light” etc) or
express a judgement (like “good/bad”, “normal/abnormal”, “legal/not legal” etc),
we make comparisons. Obviously, when we perform this operation, we focus our
attention on the objects compared and we bear them in mind. Even though
comparison implies operations of attentional focalization and presence keeping, I
believe that it has to be considered a separate function. This is why I call it “extra-
attentional” operation.
6) Operations of memory (MO) – Memory surely plays a key role in our mental life: by
means of it, we fix and recall both brief and long-term memories continuously.
Apart from all of this, I think that memory operations are part of the structure of
some mental categories [Benedetti, 2005b, 2006]. Therefore, I list memory
operations amongst the basic mental operations that make up mental categories.
Also these memory operations are distinct from the ones of attention.

5. EXAMPLES OF ANALYSIS OF FUNDAMENTAL

MENTAL CATEGORIES
Naturally, the mental categories that we must concentrate on are the “primitive” ones,
that is, those that cannot be defined by means of other words. Wierzbicka’s method seems to
identify them precisely. Her work also shows that the “semantic primitives”, which have been
identified using this method, are probably universal. Therefore, we shall use this list as a
primary source. Even if Wierzbicka’s work seems to be extremely serious and rigorous, I
suggest using another list to provide confirmation to the reader. I have intentionally chosen a
list that was created in a completely independent way, in a field other than semantics and for a
completely different purpose: the Swadesh list. The Swadesh list contains about 200 words
that are considered fundamental, and is used in so-called “glottochronology” to determine the
degree of “kindred” of languages and the approximate date of their separation. From our point
of view, the criticisms that have been made about glottochronology do not matter: what
matters is that the Swadesh list is a set of words that are fundamental and present in all (or
almost all) languages. This is probably true. Table 3 shows the words of the Swadesh list that
at first sight seem to be mental categories3.

3
The complete list is: I, you (singular), he, we, you (plural), they, this, that, here, there, who, what, where, when,
how, not, all, many, some, few, other, one, two, three, four, five, big, long, wide, thick, heavy, small, short,
narrow, thin, woman, man (adult male), man (human being), child, wife, husband, mother, father, animal, fish,
bird, dog, louse, snake, worm, tree, forest, stick, fruit, seed, leaf, root, bark, flower, grass, rope, skin, meat,
blood, bone, fat (n.), egg, horn, tail, feather, hair, head, ear, eye, nose, mouth, tooth, tongue, fingernail, foot,
leg, knee, hand, wing, belly, guts, neck, back, breast, heart, liver, drink, eat, bite, suck, spit, vomit, blow,
breathe, laugh, see, hear, know, think, smell, fear, sleep, live, die, kill, fight, hunt, hit, cut, split, stab, scratch,
dig, swim, fly (v.), walk, come, lie, sit, stand, turn, fall, give, hold, squeeze, rub, wash, wipe, pull, push, throw,
tie, sew, count, say, sing, play, float, flow, freeze, swell, sun, moon, star, water, rain, river, lake, sea, salt,
stone, sand, dust, earth, cloud, fog, sky, wind, snow, ice, smoke, fire, ashes, burn, road, mountain, red, green,
yellow, white, black, night, day, year, warm, cold, full, new, old, good, bad, rotten, dirty, straight, round,
sharp, dull, smooth, wet, dry, correct, near, far, right, left, at, in, with, and, if, because, name.
 A Semantics of the Fundamental Structural Elements of Language… 11

Table 3.

this, that, here, there, who, what, where, when, how, not, all, many, some, few, other,
count, one, two, three, four, five, big, small, long, short, wide, narrow, thick, thin, give,
hold, correct, near, far, right, left, straight, round, new, old, at, in, with, and, if, because

As we can see, most of these are the same as the ones included in the “semantic
primitives” of NSM (or are very similar: for example, “in” is very similar to “inside”, “how”
is similar to “like” (some languages use the same word), “who/what” is not so different from
“someone/something/thing”). Therefore, a list that has been created independently and for a
completely different purpose substantially confirms Wierzbicka’s list. The fact that very few
words are not common to the two lists does not matter to us here. In fact, we are not
interested in identifying only the meanings of the “primitives”. We are interested in having a
list of these meanings that is presumably complete, in order to see if our method of analysis
works for them. But we can also consider some more meanings, if they seem very important
(which is what we shall actually do: for example, the verb “to have to”, which is easily
paraphrasable with “cannot not”, is not included in Wierzbicka’s list, but, since it seems as
important as “can”, we shall consider it).
This section deals only with a part of the mental categories that are considered
fundamental, in order to use them as examples of analyses. The others will be considered
further on, either because it is more appropriate to introduce certain concepts, which are
needed to understand the analyses, in later sections, or for other reasons.
Only the results of the analyses are introduced here. The methodologies that have been
used and the way in which they have been developed cannot be discussed in this short
introductory chapter.
Noteworthy here is the fact that OS considers the problem of the meaning of the
linguistic elements belonging to class 2 from as general and “deep” a point of view as
possible. Wierzbicka’s approach clearly shows that there are some meanings that cannot be
defined by means of other words and are probably present in all languages, i.e. they are
universal. Such “semantic primitives” are obviously expressed by linguistic elements (words
or morphemes). In each single language, these linguistic elements can present some
particularities, above all of use (for example, in the same situation a certain language can use
one word/morpheme, while another languages may use another), but also of meaning (for
example, in one language a linguistic element can have an additional meaning that it does not
have in another language, there can be various words that express the same fundamental
meaning with different shades of meaning, etc). OS does not deal with these linguistic
particularities, but only the aforesaid presumably universal semantic primitives. OS tries to
account for the latter, without using, as a program, the concept of polysemy (which, as we
stated, clashes with the uniqueness of the corresponding linguistic elements) and using the
hypothesis that the “semantic primitives” must be something simple (since the corresponding
words are amongst the first that little children understand and use).
After these preliminary remarks, we can provide some examples of the analyses.
The preposition with means that we focus our attention (AF) on something, A, then,
keeping it present (PK), our attention also extends (AFext) to something else, B, because B is
in such a relationship with A that our attention tends to include A and B in a single
12 Giulio Benedetti

focalization4. For example, we say “bottle with cork” if the cork is in the neck of the bottle
(Picture 2a), while we do not use this expression if the cork is far from the bottle (Picture 2b).

a b

Picture 2.

Generally, the two things that the preposition links cannot be inverted because one of
them is (or is considered) the main one (“bottle with cork”, not “cork with bottle”).
Nevertheless, when the two things are equally important, they can be inverted (“I saw John
with Bob/Bob with John”), and which will be the first depends on which we are more
interested in.
A noteworthy fact is that this analysis clearly explains that in many languages this
preposition is used to express both the relationship of company or union between two things
and the relationship of means or instrument between an activity and an object. Whether we
say, for example, “cup with handle” or “to write with a pen”, what appears to our attention are
two things that are in such a relationship that our attention, when focused on A, tends to
include B in the same focalization as well. In fact, the handle is joined to the cup and
therefore as long as we look at the cup we also see the handle; and as long as we watch the
action of writing we see the pen (Picture 3).

cup with handle to write with a pen

Picture 3.

The analysis also clearly explains that the preposition “with” can be used when
relationships such as object-its part (“book with a red cover”), opposition (“to fight with”),
manner (“with ease”), simultaneousness (“swallows migrate with the cold season”), cause
(“to shiver with fear”), concern (“no concern with”) are involved, and in comparisons (“to
compare with”). In all these cases the attention, while focusing on something, is also extended
to something else (from the act of fighting to the enemy, from an activity to the way it is
performed, from an event to another one that happens at the same time, etc).

4
This analysis is my (substantial, from a certain point of view) modification of the original Ceccato’s analysis
(which is: “two things are focused together by attention and then they are divided by it”).
 A Semantics of the Fundamental Structural Elements of Language… 13

Therefore, the preposition does not designate the aforesaid relationships, that is, they are
not its meanings (which would be too many). The preposition designates a much more
general relationship, i.e. A is in such a relationship with B that attention, when focused on A,
is also led to “embrace” B. This very general relationship can include various more specific
relationships (manner, simultaneousness, cause, etc), which depend on the two related things,
but the meaning of the preposition is only the first relationship, not the second ones.
Therefore, there is only one meaning for the preposition, in agreement with the fact that there
is only one corresponding word.
As we shall see, this is also true, at least in principle, for the other prepositions or cases
that linguistics generally considers as polysemous. This clearly shows how much OS differs
from previous theories in semantics.
I have introduced the analysis of the preposition “with” first, because it illustrates a
fundamental general concept of OS very well (this is indeed valid for several other
words/morphemes, as we shall see). This concept is that the meaning of these
words/morphemes can be found only at the top level of abstractness, that is, at the level of the
operations of attention and other basic cognitive functions, not at more particular levels such
as the spatial, temporal, causal, instrumental etc relationships.
The category of negation (“not”, “no”, “in-” or “un-” as a prefix) indicates the discarding
(AD) of the representation (R) of a meaning (the analysis is my own). If, for example, we say,
“John’s car is not red”, we mean that the representation of the meaning “red”, concerning
John’s car (a representation that was prompted by something previous, such as for example
the question: “Does John have a red car?”) is discarded.
The categories who, what and which indicate the fundamental operation of attention of
selecting an unspecified item Ax from a group of two or more items (A1, A2, A3,…), which are
considered equal (C), and kept present (PK). The only difference between “who” and “what”
is the kind of item: human beings in the case of the pronoun “who”, anything that is not a
human being in the case of the pronoun “what” (“which” is the derived adjective). If, for
example, there are some books (Picture 4), and we ask someone “Which book do you want?”,
we will realize that we are keeping in mind the group of books, while our attention is waiting
to focus on one of them.
Focusing our attention on an element of a group, while discarding the others, is obviously
an operation of fundamental importance. In fact, linguistic research has shown that the two
pronouns “who” and “what” are among the first in the list of the most stable words in the
linguistic evolution of the languages of the world [Dolgopolsky, in Lehmann, 1992, p 217 It.
ed.].
The category “how many” (for the singular form, “how much”, see further on) is
produced by means of the operation of counting, that is, by means of a series of operations of
focalization of attention (AF), one after the other, on each item of a group of items considered
equal (C), bearing in mind (PK) the preceding items each time we add a new one. Each
subsequent repetition is called by a different name (these are the single numbers: “one”,
“two”, “three” etc). The word number indicates indistinctly one of these repetitions without
specifying which one, while the word how many indicates that attention must be focused on
the final result of counting. The category of plural indicates that we have simply carried out
subsequent attentional focalizations on things considered equal, but without associating a
14 Giulio Benedetti

conventional name of a progressive series (that is, a number) to each of them5. For example,
if, when looking at a scene with an apple, a pear, a plum and a peach (Picture 5), we say
“there are four fruits”, this happens because, first, we have considered the apple, the pear, the
plum and the peach as items that are equal (that is, “fruits”); second, we have focused our
attention on one of them associating a conventional name (“one”) to it; third, while bearing
this in mind, we have focused our attention on a new item associating another conventional
name (“two”) to it; and so on. If instead we say “there are some fruits”, we have carried out
the same operations, but without the association of a progressive series of conventional
names.
Besides the definition of “number” (that is, the fundamental entity of Mathematics), I
would like to mention the definition of a fundamental entity of Geometry, that is, “point”.
Ever since the origin of Geometry, point has been considered one of the so-called “primitive
concepts” (Euclid), that is, the fundamental concepts that we acknowledge without a
definition. According to OS, the point designates an attentional focalization on a spatial
“map” (see further on), focalization which is so restricted that attention cannot move inside it
anymore6. If we wish to illustrate this operation with a scheme, we may use a picture like
Picture 6, where we suppose that, as often happens, there is a restriction in the extension of
the attentional focalization, as happens when we pass from any object (in the picture, it is
symbolised by the circle) to a single point of it.

Picture 4.

Picture 5.

5
The analysis of the category of “plural” is my own. The other analyses of this group are developments or
modifications or explanations of analyses sketched by Ceccato.
6
This analysis is completely my own, that of Ceccato being completely different. The fact that Ceccato did not
sense that the movements of attention are fundamental attentional operations makes his analyses of the mental
categories that have something to do with space some of the least convincing of his work, in my opinion (it is not
by chance that they also are very few).
 A Semantics of the Fundamental Structural Elements of Language… 15

Picture 6.

Now, let’s consider the meanings “other/else” and “the same”. There are a lot of objects
of which many specimens exist, which are thus designated with the same word. For example,
the word “dog” indicates each specimen of the class of “dogs”. If, in a speech, after having
found one of these words we find it once again, we remember that the word has been already
used, so we have to know whether the latter word refers to the aforementioned specimen (let’s
call it A1 of class A) or not. The mental category the same indicates that we have to focus our
attention again on A1 retrieved from memory, while the category other/else indicates that we
have to discard A1 retrieved from memory and represent a new specimen of class A, let’s call
it A2 (therefore, these categories are examples of categories with memory operations in their
structure). These analyses agree perfectly with linguistic data. The word that expresses the
meaning “other/else” is rather stable during linguistic evolution, while there is not such a
stable word that expresses the meaning “the same” (this is the reason why Swadesh list,
which is a list of universally widespread fundamental words, includes the word “other/else”
only, while Wierzbicka’s list, which is a list of fundamental meanings, includes both
meanings). In the Indo-European linguistic family, for example, the root ALI, “other/else”,
can be clearly reconstructed starting from its derivatives that are largely widespread across
the languages of the family, while a root that means “the same” cannot. The stability of the
word that means “other” and the absence of a stable word for the meaning “the same” is due
to the fact that the former is necessary, while the latter is useful, but not strictly necessary. In
fact, if we have to discard A1 retrieved from memory and represent A2, we need a specific
word, but if we just have to focus our attention again on A1 retrieved from memory, we can
simply repeat the word leaving the thing understood, or use a demonstrative
adjective/pronoun or the definite article (if the language has the latter).
The meanings of the two verbs “to have” and “to get” are so general that dictionaries
usually try to capture them by defining each entry with a long list of verbs, as we have seen.
However, these lists are nothing else but collections of more “specialised” verbs, whose
meanings are included in the more general meanings of “to have” and “to get”. The meanings
of “to have” and “to get” are so general because both these verbs designate the same
relationship as the one designated by the preposition “with”7 (two distinct things, A and B, are
in such a relationship that our attention, when focusing on A, tends to include B in the same

7
This basic idea, and the difference between “to have” and “to get” described below, are Ceccato’s own; as regards
the analysis of the proposition “with”, see note 4.
16 Giulio Benedetti

focalization as well). The difference with the preposition “with” is that, in the case of these
two verbs, as in all verbs, we see the situation from the temporal point of view, which entails
that we focus our attention in a continue way or repeatedly on the same situation (see further
on). In the case of the verb to have, the result is something static. For example, “that man has
a moustache” means that when we focus our attention on his face we also see a moustache
and this remains constant throughout time. On the contrary, in the case of the verb to get, the
result is something dynamic. For example, “to get the pen” means that our hand comes in
such a relationship with the pen that, if we look at the hand, we also see the pen (the pen is in
the hand), while before there was not such a relationship8.
I use Picture 7 to show the analyses of the conjunctions “and” and “or” (these analyses
are substantially Ceccato’s own). In the case of the conjunction and (“an apple and a pear”),
we focus our attention (AF) on something (say A; the apple, in our example) and we keep it
present (PK) while focusing our attention (AF) on something else, B (the pear). In this way B
is “tied” to A, but remains separated from it because attentional focalization stops during the
passage from A to B, that is, we perform two distinct operations of attentional focalization. In
the case of the conjunction or (“an apple or a pear”), firstly we focus our attention (AF) on an
object A (the apple, in our example) and then we discard (AD) it in order to focus our
attention (AF) on another one, B (the pear). Therefore, A is excluded when B is taken into
consideration: an alternative between the two objects is thus created.

Picture 7.

A very important group of mental categories is the one designated by the words and
morphemes frequently (some of them exclusively) related with space or time (for example:
“place”, “where”, “here”, “there”, “high”, “short”, “wide”, “narrow”, “left”, “right”, “now”,
“before”, “after”, “during”, “when” etc). In order to analyse the meaning of these linguistic
elements we have to introduce some concepts.
In my opinion, the attentional operations and the other EOMC can be applied not only to
objects, but also to what I call “maps”. I call “map” an ordered mental representation of an
ordered set of elements or of an ordered continuum (since here I use the word “map” in a new
meaning, I shall always put it between quotation marks). Examples of “maps” are the
representation of the series of numbers, of the words of a speech, of the items of a list, etc.
Nevertheless, the main “maps” are the spatial “map” and the temporal “map”, that is, our
mental representations of space and time.
Let’s consider the temporal “map” first. As everyone can easily sense, when we have
focused our attention on an object, we can continue keeping it on that object. If the situation

8
The restricted space of an article do not allow us to show other examples in order to verify these two analyses and
the other analyses that I have proposed. Nevertheless, the reader can easily verify them himself or herself by
 A Semantics of the Fundamental Structural Elements of Language… 17

is static, we can keep our attention on the same object for rather brief periods, a few seconds.
Think, for example, about when we look at a red traffic light waiting for the green one: after a
very few seconds of gazing at the red disk, our sight is inevitably pushed, even against our
will, to look away from it at least for a moment. In the case of dynamic situations (for
example, when our eyes track a moving object), we can keep our attention focused on the
same object for longer periods. Nevertheless, we have to note that even in situations of this
kind rarely do we keep our attention exactly on the same object. That is, attention is
extremely “mobile”, that is, it tends to move continuously in the attentional field (the reason
for this is easily understandable: only with a continuous exploration of the attentional field it
is possible to perceive all the stimuli that could be important for the subject). Anyway, even if
we can keep our attention focused on the same object for limited periods only, it is possible,
once we have left the object, to focus it on again. This is what we do for example in the
aforesaid case of waiting for the traffic light to become green, when the waiting is rather long:
we keep our attention on the red disk for some seconds, then we divert it for a moment, then
we gaze again at the red disk, etc, till it goes out and the green disk appears. This kind of
operating can cover even long or very long periods. In fact, we can focus our attention again
on the same object even after many years (for example, when we knew a man when he was a
boy and we meet him again when he is an adult). Whatever the distance of time between the
two (or more) attentional focalizations, all that is necessary is that their results are
remembered and that there is some way of ascertaining without any doubt that the object of
the attentional focalizations that follow the first one is always the same as that of the first
focalization, even if the object has not been continuously followed. Furthermore, we usually
integrate what we perceived during the phases of the attentional focalization, representing,
that is, imagining, what happened during the phases when our attention was elsewhere
directed, so as to build a continuum where the object has a stable existence (for example,
when we are waiting in front of a traffic light, we assume that the red disk still exists also
when we divert our attention away from it; as in the case of the man met after many years, we
assume that he gradually changed from a boy into an adult ; etc). As we can see, this way of
operating is a rather complex one, where there can be several operations of attentional
focalization, operations of memory and of representation. Because of this, I call it temporal
“operational scheme” (TOS).
When we perform this fundamental operational modality, we use a verb. This fact may
be not immediately evident. This depends on the fact that we already know the meanings of
the various verbs and this may make us think that these meanings can be understood in an
instantaneous way, without necessarily following the situation during time. But imagine you
want to teach the meaning of a verb, for example “to burn”, to a very little child who does not
know it: to do this, there is no other way but to make the child keep his or her attention on
something that is burning, for example some wood, and see it changing into something else
(the ashes) during time, while producing heat and fire. The fact that the use of a verb implies
a non-instantaneous application of attention is clearly demonstrated when, in order to choose
the verb that describes a given situation correctly, a prolonged observation is necessary. For
example, when watching a ship on the horizon, it would be impossible to say “that ship on the
horizon is still” or “that ship on the horizon is moving” if the observation were instantaneous.

finding other examples.

18 Giulio Benedetti

The result of TOS is a temporal representation or “map” relevant to a process (or state).
By capturing the relationships among the various phases of many processes (or states) and by
using some cyclic processes (the alternation of day and night, the lunar phases, the seasons
etc) as a privileged reference, we build a temporal “super-map” where all other temporal
“maps” are integrated, that is, the general representation of time (the complexity of such a
process is evident and accounts for the fact that children come to possess a representation of
this kind late).
As we all know, the verb is commonly considered to be the fundamental component of
sentences. This is because the verb designates that the temporal dimension, which is a truly
fundamental dimension, has been considered. In fact, using substantives alone (for example,
“dog”, “tree”, “stone”) has little sense. It is instead fundamental to say what happens to things
of this kind over time, that is, how they are evolving, either in a static or dynamic way9.
A spatial “map” is what allows us to consider an object or an environment from the
spatial point of view, that is, in its extension. We can become aware of the activation of a
representation of this kind if we make the two following simple experiments:

1) considering any physical object (for example, this page) in two different ways:
a) first, we simply recognise it (in this case, only its distinctive features, that is, its
whiteness, its rectangular shape, etc will be evident);
b) then, we consider some positions on it (for example, the centre, the upper half,
etc);
2) considering a part of the environment (for example, the room where we are) in two
different ways:
a) first, once again we simply recognise it (also in this case, only its distinctive
features will be evident);
b) then, we consider it as a “place” (in the latter case, the room will become a part
of a wider spatial representation that includes it, for example the one of the
house).

As regards the neurophysiological basis of the “maps”, maybe ordered sets of neurons are
involved (structures of this kind, where single cells fire according to the position of the
animal in the environment have been shown; generally speaking, wide areas of the cerebral
cortex, which are distinct from the ones involved in the recognition of the objects, seem
specialised in the visual spatial representation of the environment and in the localization of an
object inside it [Kandel, Schwartz, Jessel, 2000]).
Just like the temporal “maps”, the very many spatial “maps” that we build and memorise
during our life are integrated in a “super-map”, which is our general representation of space.
However we build our spatial and temporal representations, we clearly have the ability to
do this. When a “map” is activated, attention can focus on it, selecting a more or less large
part of it, moving around it, etc. In other words, we can perform the attentional operations
(and the other operations) that are the elemental mental operations (EOMC) on the “map”. If
the same operations that are at the basis of the mental categories “who/what/which” are

9
For an in-depth discussion of the psychological sensation of time, starting from the presuppositions of OS, see
Marchetti 2009. The basic thesis of this article is that such a sensation is a subjective construction based on the
 A Semantics of the Fundamental Structural Elements of Language… 19

performed on a spatial “map”, that is, if we first focus our attention on a “map”, and we keep
the “map” in mind while we focus the attention on a part (say A) of it, we obtain the mental
category place, or where as an interrogative or relative adverb (for an analysis of the
categories “interrogative” and “relative”, see further on). If we perform the same operations
on a temporal “map”, we obtain the mental category moment/time (“time” in the sense of
“portion of time”), or when as an interrogative or relative adverb).
Once the concept of “map” and performance of EOMC on it has been introduced,
identifying the structures of the other mental categories related with space and time is very
simple. We shall mention them for the sake of completeness only.
Spatial “maps” are uniform, that is, there is no privileged position or direction. Therefore,
setting reference points and directions on them is very useful. The vertical direction (the
direction of the force of gravity and the upright position) and the horizontal direction are
often chosen as a reference of course. Using attention to select one of the two parts of a
spatial “map” that has been divided either vertically or horizontally obviously makes up the
two pairs of categories right/left and high/low (up/down as adverbs).
The quantitative estimate of attentional movement (AFmov-estim) is obviously the basis
of the categories near and far. The choice of the speaker’s position on the “map” (and, in
some languages, of the listener too) as a reference for this estimate is naturally the basis of the
demonstrative adjectives/pronouns (this, that, and others in other languages) and various
adverbs of place (here, there etc).
Typically relative terms such as high/low (as adjectives), large/narrow, long/short and
thick/thin are obviously based on an operation of comparison (C), which concerns the
extension of the one-dimensional attentional movement from one extremity10 of an object to
the other extremity, along a reference direction that is chosen according to the object’s
position in space or to the relationships among its three dimensions11. If the two-dimensional
(or three-dimensional) relative extension of attentional focalization (AFext-estim) is
considered, we have the categories big/small (in the literal and fundamental sense of this pair
of words of course, and not in the figurative sense, which also exists for some of the other
pairs). Linear attentional movement can be of two fundamental kinds, with or without
variation in direction (categories round and straight, respectively).
Unlike spatial “maps”, the temporal “map” has only one direction. On this “map” there is
a privileged position, the one in which the linguistic communication takes place (the
present/now, as a substantive and adverb, respectively), which divides the “map” into two

effort made by the organ of attention in focusing, in a continuous and incremental way, on a given object or
event.
10
Naturally, the category extremity designates the selection of the point or part of an object that attention, moving
in a linear way, meets before meeting something other than the object itself. If we choose one of the two possible
directions of this movement as a reference, we have the category end. Obviously, in the category beginning the
attention starts before the object and meets it after.
11
In the case of the “high/low” pair, the reference direction is obviously the vertical one. We can also take the
longest direction as a reference (“long/short” pair). The “wide/narrow” pair designates the extension of the
dimension that comes second after length as to extension. Generally, we take the longest dimension as a
reference: a) when the object has a dimension that is particularly longer than the others and this dimension is not,
always or preferentially, vertically oriented (for example, a pencil); b) the object does not have a fixed position in
space (for example, a pill box). If the object has a fixed position in space and generally we stand in front of it (for
example, a bookcase) the horizontal dimension is generally referred to as “width”, even if it is the longest
dimension. When the third dimension is particularly shorter than the other two the two terms “thick/thin” are
used.
20 Giulio Benedetti

parts that are clearly identified by its unique direction, the past and the future (obviously,
these three possibilities are also expressed by the tenses of the verb). The three possible
positions of a given attentional focalization on the temporal “map” (that is, a moment) with
respect to another are the three categories before, after and during. Naturally, the same
operations that were said to make up the meanings of the “near/far” and “long/short” pairs are
possible. Therefore, many languages designate them by means of the same words, both when
they are applied to space and time.
Several of the words that we have just considered are also used not in relationship to
space and time (“a long list”, “the subject must be put before the verb”, “this is the problem”
etc). Of course, this is because, as stated, any ordered set of elements or ordered continuum
(the series of numbers, the words of a speech, the items of a list etc) can be mirrored in a
“map”, whereon the operations that are the meanings of these words can be performed.

6. THE CORRELATIONAL THEORY OF THOUGHT

Now that we have introduced some analyses of mental categories, we can explain how,
according to OS, mental categories allow us to produce linguistic thought. Let’s consider the
following words: “apple”, “pear”, “red”, “and”, “or”, “with”. Let’s try to represent each of the
meanings of these words in an isolated way. This is easy for the first three words, while for
the other three we have a clear sense of “incompleteness”. We sense very well that the last
three words require something that precedes them and something else that follows them. In
other words, their function is to “tie” two other elements to each other. According to OS,
linguistic thought is made up of two fundamental kinds of elements:

1) correlators
2) correlata

Correlators are the elements that have the specific function of tying the other elements of
thought. They are the mental categories designated by prepositions, conjunctions and some of
the so-called cases (genitive, dative, etc), in languages that have cases (in languages that have
no cases their meaning is expressed by means of prepositions). Correlata are the elements
that are “tied” by a correlator. According to OS, even though the meanings of isolated words
(such as “apple”) are a kind of thought, there is actual linguistic thought only when we “tie”
or “correlate” more than one meaning to each other, that is, when we say, for example, “apple
and pear”, “red apple”, etc. The two correlata that are tied by a correlator are called “first
correlatum” and “second correlatum”, respectively, according to the temporal order in which
attention focuses on them. We call the whole structure thus formed correlation or
correlational triad and we represent it graphically in the following way:

correlator
first correlatum second correlatum

In the case of the example “pear and apple”, we shall have this correlation:
 A Semantics of the Fundamental Structural Elements of Language… 21

and
pear apple
Besides prepositions, conjunctions and some cases (in languages that have cases), there is
another correlator, which is extremely important. Its structure is the same as for the
conjunction “and” (attention focuses on A and A is borne in mind while attention focuses on
B), but in this case A and B do not remain separate, but they “combine” together because the
attentional focalization does not stop in the passage from A to B because A and B are in some
way complementary. For example, A is an object that can exist on its own and B a possible
feature of it (correlation substantive-adjective); or B is what may happen to A in time
(correlation subject-verb); or A is an activity and B something the activity can be performed
on (correlation verb-object); etc. We call this correlator presence keeping and we represent it
graphically by means of a horizontal bar:

Since this correlator is, as we can easily understand, the most used of correlators, it is
convenient not to express it with a word and to indicate its presence either by simply putting
the two words that it correlates one after the other (when this is possible) or using marks of
the words (English has very few marks of this kind, but many languages have several of
them: for instance, in the Italian sentence “bottiglia di vino nuova”, which means “new bottle
of wine”, the two “a” that are underlined are marks of the feminine genus, which indicate that
the adjective nuova, “new”, has to be related to bottiglia, “bottle”, not to vino, “wine”).
Because of this, this correlator has also been called implicit correlator. Nevertheless, it is
really implicit only when no linguistic element (whether word order or word marks) expresses
it, that is, only when we can understand which words it links only by the general sense of the
sentence. For example, in the two expressions “empty whisky bottle” and “Scotch whisky
bottle” only the sense of the expression tells us which noun the two adjectives “empty” and
“Scotch” refer to.
According to OS, correlation is the basic unit of thought. Thought is, in fact, a “network”
formed by correlations (correlational network) in which a correlation acts as a correlatum of
another correlation. Therefore, the sentence “John reads books and magazines”, for instance,
has the following structure of thought:
22 Giulio Benedetti

(the dotted line that starts from the line that separates the two lower boxes of a correlation
and that ends with the symbol “•” placed in one of the two lower boxes of another correlation
indicates that the first correlation is one of the correlata of the second correlation). The
graphical representation that we have used somehow resembles a network, so we use the
expression “correlational network”. In order to use less space, we shall nevertheless use a
graphical representation where the correlational triads are put on the same line, in this way:

However, irrespective of the graphic representation, it must be very clear that the
structure of thought is not a simple linear structure where the elements are added one after
the other. The elements (that is, the meanings) that make up thought are surely loaded one
after the other in working memory, and the previous elements are kept present while the next
ones are added. However, what is formed is a precise non-linear structure, which can be
different even when the words are spoken in the same order. For example, the two aforesaid
sentences (“empty whisky bottle” and “Scotch whisky bottle”) are, from a certain point of
view, identical (that is, they are made up of a first word, which, albeit different, is in both
cases an adjective, plus two identical words in the same order), but the two corresponding
correlational networks are different:

(in the two triads where the correlator is the genitive the order of the two correlata is inverted
in comparison with speech order because English can use the inversion of the two correlata to
express the meaning of the genitive; this would not have happened if the genitive had been
expressed with the preposition “of”: see the analysis of the genitive further on).
Another example, which perhaps better explains the concept of network structure, is the
sentence “John reads books and learns” vs the aforesaid sentence “John reads books and
magazines”. Although the words are the same (except for the last one) and in the same order,
the two structures of thought are very different, as we can see:
 A Semantics of the Fundamental Structural Elements of Language… 23

While thought has a network structure, language necessarily has a linear structure,
because we must pronounce sounds one after the other, otherwise they would overlap and
become unrecognisable. This is a problem, because a linear structure tends to be simpler and
contain less information than a non-linear structure and, in the phase of language
comprehension, we must pass from the former to the latter in an unequivocal way. There are
three ways to solve this problem.

1. The first is to use, besides word order, marks for the words, i.e. slight modifications
that add information about how words are related to each other in the structure of
thought. This is done by languages that have a rich morphology, with many
concordances (between noun and adjective in number, gender and case; between verb
and subject as to person and, possibly, the gender of the person too; etc). We have
seen an example of two Italian expressions (“bottiglia di vino nuova” vs “bottiglia di
vino nuovo”), where the meanings are the same and in the same order, but the gender
mark of the last word unequivocally indicates which of the two possible correlational
networks is involved. This way of expressing the structure of thought makes a
language more difficult to speak and learn, but has the advantage of making the
reconstruction of the structure of thought, starting from speech, more sure and with
less ambiguities.
2. The second is to use word order only. This sometimes requires a word to be repeated
and/or more words to be used. For example, the French sentence “J’ai parlé avec
Jean et Marie, l’anglais de laquelle est très bon” cannot be literally translated into
English (“I talked with John and Mary, whose English is very good”) because it
would be ambiguous, since the English relative pronoun “whose” is the same for the
singular and the plural and can refer to Mary or both persons. Therefore, the English
must read, “I talked with John and Mary. Mary’s English is very good”. This way of
expressing the structure of thought tends to be less effective than the former in
making it explicit in detail.
3. The third is the knowledge of the listener. We have seen the example of the two
expressions “empty whisky bottle” and “Scotch whisky bottle”, where a general
knowledge is sufficient. Sometimes a specialised knowledge is needed, such as in the
expression “slow neutrons and electrons” (the correlational networks are different if
the adjective refers to both particles or to neutrons only), or the necessary
information is provided in the context, such as in the sentence “The boy hit the man
with an umbrella”, if preceded by some reference to a man who has an umbrella.
24 Giulio Benedetti

The theory of the structure of thought that has just been introduced is called correlational
theory of thought. Below is the correlational network of thought that corresponds to a more
complex sentence than those above:

He often lends books and magazines to French boys

which, from a certain point of view, can be considered a typical sentence (there is a subject, a
verb, an adverb, a direct object, an indirect object, a conjunction and a preposition).

Also this example shows, even more clearly, that the structure of thought is more
complex than the simple sequence of the words that express it.
Obviously, the correlational theory of thought is also a linguistic theory, but deeply
different from all other linguistic theories because: a) it is above all a theory about the nature
and structure of thought; b) it makes a clear-cut distinction between correlators and correlata;
c) it considers linguistic thought a non-linear “network”, based on units necessarily composed
of three elements, that is, one element that ties and two elements that are tied (even if
sometimes the former is not expressed).
In my description of mental categories and thought, their procedural and architectural
character is implicit. When mental categories are formed, a working memory is necessary to
keep the result of the previous mental operation present while the following operation is
carried out. Furthermore, a procedural memory is also necessary to carry out these sequences
of operations starting from the linguistic input. When the correlational network of thought is
formed, i.e. when mental categories of relationship (correlators) link correlata to each other, a
working memory and, when we understand language, a procedural memory, are still
necessary. Theoretically, the process of production of the correlational network can go on
without limits. Practically, its limit is exactly the capacity of working memory. This
corresponds to the well-known fact that sentences have a limited length (even if they can be
very long) and are separated by full stops in writing and by pauses in speech. A full stop and
the corresponding pause exactly indicate that working memory has stopped being loaded.
What has been present in it up to that moment has to be in some way stored in a short-term
memory. An item or a part of a correlational network or even a whole correlational network is
often taken from short-term memory and loaded again in working memory in order to begin a
new correlational network. This function, which we may call recall function, is very
important, because it allows us to build even very complex thoughts. It is mainly carried out
by pronouns. In the following two examples, the pronoun and the preceding part of the
correlational network that it recalls are underlined:

a) “This morning I saw Bob. But he didn’t see me.”;

b) “This morning I saw the German boy I knew at the seaside last summer. He told
me…”.
 A Semantics of the Fundamental Structural Elements of Language… 25

Given the level of complexity that the correlations of thought can reach, the aforesaid
process requires a huge capacity of working memory. The task of procedural memory may
also be very difficult. All of this could be one of the main reasons for the huge differences
between human thought/language and animal thought/communication. In order to deal with
this subject, I use a very simple example. Let’s imagine that we have two objects, like the
ones in Picture 8.

Picture 8.

It is very likely that a lot of animals can perceive an apple or a leaf. Amongst the motor
activities that the animal can perform, there is the activity of producing sounds when a certain
object appears in its visual field (or other perceptual field). These sounds can be recognised
by some other animals of the same species making them direct their attention so that they too
can perceive the object. All of this is surely a form of communication. Yet research in
linguistics and psycholinguistics has repeatedly stressed that this form of communication is
different from human language in some fundamental features, one of which is that in animal
communication the number of objects that can be indicated is very limited and fixed and the
relationship between a certain sound and a certain object is fixed too [Yule 1996].
According to OS, a fundamental difference between human mind and animal mind could
be the fact that the former has:

1) an attentional activity that is much more sophisticated than the latter;

2) an activity that is probably absent or almost absent (at least spontaneously) in
animals: the production of mental categories and correlational network.

The very sophisticated human attentional activity allows humans to fragment their
experience in a far richer way than animals. In the aforesaid example, humans can isolate the
perceptions “apple” and “leaf” (that is, two specific shapes, which are different from the
shapes of any other object) from two other perceptions, the colour “red” and the colour
“green”. Humans can do the same in innumerable other situations: they can isolate the action
of “flying” from the object “bird”, the meaning of the adjective “hard” from the object
“stone”, etc. As a result of this process of fragmentation, many single different meanings are
created.
Then, at the level of thought, correlators allow humans to perform a recombination of
these many single different meanings, thus generating sequences (that is, sentences) that can
be made up of many of them. In this way humans, by means of a number of words that is
limited (even if rather big: the words that designate the aforesaid many meanings that have
been created, i.e. the lexicon of a language), can produce an unlimited number of utterances,
26 Giulio Benedetti

that is, they can describe any experience. For instance, with the words in our very simple
example, they can describe, besides a red apple and a green leaf, a green apple and a red leaf
too. The aforesaid two processes, the one of fragmentation and the one of recombination, are,
according to OS, the essence of human language.
All of this implies a huge advantage from an evolutionistic point of view. In this way,
human beings have acquired the ability to tell each other any experience they have. Therefore,
a huge accumulation of notions becomes possible for every human being, with the only limit
of the long-term memory capacity.

7. THE GRAMMATICAL TERMS ACCORDING TO OPERATIONAL

SEMANTICS
The correlational theory of thought allows us to give an easy definition of some
grammatical terms that have always been considered fundamental, but have always been very
difficult to define.
One such concept is “subject”. While everyone is able to identify the subject of a
sentence, all the definitions that have been suggested up to now in some cases fail to identify
it. For example, the semantic definition (“subject is who/what performs the action or is in the
state expressed by the predicate”) fails in identifying the subject in the passive sentences (for
example, “Tom was arrested by the police”); the morphosyntactic definition (“subject is what
triggers agreement morphology on the verb”) does not work in languages where this
morphological agreement is (partially or totally) missing (however, as regards this definition
we might also object that this agreement, when it exists, presupposes that the speaker knows
which is the subject); the definition of subject as “what is being talked about” (or “topic”)
fails in sentences such as “The little girl, someone hit her”, where the topic is not so much
“someone” (that is, the subject) as “the little girl”.
On the contrary, thanks to the correlational theory of thought, OS offers a definition of
“subject” and “object” that works always. According to OS, subject is what is focused on by
attention, and kept present, before the verb; object is what is focused on by attention after the
verb, which is kept present. We can easily see this different temporal setting in a couple of
expressions such as, for example, “the wheel rotates” and “rotating the wheel”: in the former
expression, what we see before is the wheel, while in the latter it is the act of rotating. In other
words, “subject” is the first correlatum of a correlation whose correlator is presence keeping
and whose second correlatum is a verb; “object” is the second correlatum of a correlation
whose correlator is presence keeping once again, and the first correlatum is a verb. Therefore,
in our examples, we have the following structures:

In the case of a sentence made up of a subject, a verb and an object, such as, for example,
“John loves Mary”, the structure is the following:
 A Semantics of the Fundamental Structural Elements of Language… 27

These definitions work perfectly in the aforesaid examples where traditional definitions
fail. Moreover, they agree perfectly with two facts: a) languages where the order of subject,
verb and object is either SVO or SOV or VSO (that is, where the subject precedes the object,
like in the correlational network of thought) are almost the totality of languages of the world,
while the ones that have one of the other three possible orders (where the subject follows the
object, contrary to what happens, in our opinion, at the level of thought) are extremely few; b)
the languages that put the subject in the first position (SVO e SOV) are the very great
majority [Dryer 2005; Graffi, Scalise 2002, p 68].
Another grammar concept that has been always considered necessary and fundamental is
the “noun”. Yet, the definition of this concept has always been a big problem as well. School
grammar books generally provide a semantic definition by stating that nouns are the words
that indicate “persons, animals, vegetables, unanimated objects”. Some books also add
“qualities, quantities, ideas”, or “places, events” and so on. The “verb” category (which is the
main category in contrast with the “noun”; nevertheless, the infinite forms of the verb, i.e. the
infinitive, the participle and the gerund, are commonly called “nominal forms”) is also
generally defined in a semantic way: verbs are said to designate “processes or states”.
Contemporary linguistics is perfectly aware that these semantic definitions are unsatisfactory:
for example, a word such as “birth” designates a process, but it is a noun, not a verb; words
such as “to be born” and “outside” are a verb and an adverb respectively, but they designate
an “event” and a “place” respectively, which are among the things that nouns are supposed to
designate. In general, we can say that many languages have a great many pairs of words
which, like “to be born” and “birth”, have the same meaning, where one is a verb and the
other a noun (unlike English, where there are fewer such morphologically different pairs and
often the same word has both functions).
Contemporary linguistics has therefore tried to go beyond these semantic definitions. In
general, it has tried to give functional definitions and/or definitions based on the relationships
among the parts of speech. In order to give an idea of these kinds of definitions, the noun, for
example, is said to be what occurs with articles and attributive adjectives (that is, the
adjectives that are part of a noun phrase headed by the noun they modify, such as “happy” in
“happy years”) and is the head of a nominal phrase. Nevertheless, these definitions are
partially not applicable in some languages (for example, Russian and Latin do not have
articles), are partially tautological (“nominal phrase”) and easily end up being circular (the
noun is defined in terms of its relationships with the article and/or adjective, and the latter two
can be defined, either directly or indirectly, in terms of their relationship with the noun).
Apart from this, even if a definition of this kind works (i.e. it identifies words that are sensed
as nouns), the two following objections are still valid: a) we can say that the definition works
exactly because we already sense very well which words in a sentence are nouns, even if we
do not know how we do this (the theory that we record these reciprocal relationships and/or
functions unconsciously is not very convincing, because it involves an unconscious
elaboration that is rather complex and incompatible with a circular identification of the
28 Giulio Benedetti

various parts of speech); b) the fact that nouns occur with certain other parts of speech
however does not explain what nouns are, i.e. what their nature is.
The real problem is not giving a definition of “noun” that works, i.e. that always
identifies which words in a sentence are nouns. The real problem is understanding why we
sense very well that in speech there are words that all belong to the same class, which is
called the class of “nouns”. If we understand this, the definition of “noun” comes
automatically.
OS provides a simple and natural solution to this problem. We have to note that:

1) conjunctions, prepositions and the verb in the personal form are never nouns;
2) the verb in the infinitive forms is a noun instead (for example, “reading books”);
3) the adjective has always been considered a noun (the present-day
substantive/adjective distinction was absent in the Greek and Latin grammar but was
introduced during the Middle Ages and the expressions “substantive nouns” and
“adjective nouns” have been used for a long time since then [Robins 1997 p 106-7 It
ed]; in linguistics, adjectives are commonly considered “nominal forms” as are
substantives).

According to OS, the grammar category of noun is based on the fundamental distinction
between correlators and correlata (section 6), i.e. between elements of linguistic thought that
have the function of linking and elements that are linked by the former. Nouns are the mere
correlata, i.e. the words that designate something which has no relating function, unlike the
words or morphemes that designate a correlator or also (see below) a correlator. Nouns are
therefore the meanings which, in the graphic representation of the correlation triad that we
use, are exclusively placed in one of the two lower boxes, unlike the meanings that are placed
or are also placed in the upper box. Therefore, according to OS the grammatical category of
“noun” can be defined only by using the position the word has in the correlational network
(i.e. its function) as a criterion of classification, not by basing ourselves on a semantic
criterion. For example, the words “John”, “piece”, “glass”, “doors” and “windows”, which
are mere correlata in the following correlations:

are nouns. The adjective also indicates a mere correlatum, as we can see in this example:

―
red book

Instead, the verb in the personal form is never a “noun”, because it does not simply
indicate a correlatum (thus it is not a “mere correlatum”), but it designates a good four things:

a correlatum;
a particular correlator, the presence keeping (therefore, it indicates both a correlatum
and a correlator);
 A Semantics of the Fundamental Structural Elements of Language… 29

the position of the correlatum, which is the one of a second correlatum;

that the first correlatum is what grammar calls a “person” (that is, the agent or the
“addressee” of the linguistic interaction, or another person/thing [Graffi & Scalise
2002 p 193]), and the kind of this person (first, second, third, singular, plural, etc).

That is, for example, the personal form of the verb “to laugh” laugh-s indicates that the
verb has to be related to a third person singular. Therefore, “laughs” is not a mere correlatum,
but designates a whole correlation, i.e. the following:

―
a third person singular laugh

Instead, the verb in the infinitive mood is a mere correlatum, as in the following
examples:

Therefore, in this case the verb is a noun. Thus, the noun/verb distinction does not have a
semantic basis, but depends on the function of the meaning in the correlational network: the
same meaning and, depending on the language, the same word, can be either a verb or a noun,
as in the following examples:

Do not be misled by the fact that the position of the word “run” is the same in both
correlations: its function in the two correlations is different (this is not shown by the graphics
we are using—this would have been too complicated). In the first correlation, the word “run”
is a first person personal verb. English does not indicate this in any way, and we can only
deduce this from the fact that the correlation of the personal pronoun “I” with the word “run”
as a noun would have no sense. Since “run” here is a personal verb, it indicates a correlatum,
its position of a second correlatum, the correlator “presence keeping” and that the first
correlatum is a grammatical person, as we have said. In the second correlation, the word
“run” cannot be, based on the general sense of the expression, a personal verb, therefore it
indicates a correlatum only, not all of the above. That is to say, it is a noun. Other languages
do not rely on the general sense of the expression, but indicate if a certain meaning is either a
noun or a verb in the personal form in a morphological way. For example, French would say
je cours (“I run”) and longue course (“long run”). The “-s” ending of cours indicates a good
five things: 1) that the meaning of the theme cour- (which is the theme of course too) is not
isolated, but is linked to something by means of the presence keeping; 2) its position is that of
a second correlatum; 3) the first correlatum is a first person; 4) thus, since cour- is a personal
verb, its mood is the indicative and 5) its tense is the present.
30 Giulio Benedetti

Other fundamental grammatical terms are “substantive” and “adjective”. According to

OS, the adjective designates something that does not exist independently, but is necessarily
tied to something else, from which it can be isolated by means of the selective ability of
attention (this generally also applies to the verb, which nearly always refers necessarily to an
agent (for a definition of the meaning “agent”, see further on), but, as we have seen, the verb
requires a prolonged attentional focalization, which makes it a category apart). On the
contrary, the substantive designates something that exists (or is considered) independently.
For example, the meanings of words such as “tall”, “green”, “hard” do not exist as
independent things (unlike the meanings of words such as “man”, “leaf”, “stone”), but are
necessarily tied to something, which owns them as features, and are only obtained by means
of a mental operation of separation.
The substantive-adjective correlation is:

―
green leaf

The definition that we have just given to the grammatical category of “substantive” and
the one that we gave to “verb” (previous section, p 17) easily explains the fact that having
both these categories is a linguistic universal (one of the few ones [Yule 1996 p 277 It ed,
Graffi & Scalise 2002 p 117])12.

8. ANALYSES OF THE OTHER FUNDAMENTAL MENTAL CATEGORIES

Correlators

The first meaning of a correlator that will be examined here in linguistics is commonly
called “genitive”, from the name of the case that expresses it in the classic Indo-European
languages. This meaning is expressed in English by means of the preposition “of”, the
possessive case, and word order. Although this meaning is not included in the two lists that
were chosen to identify the fundamental mental categories, in linguistics it is generally
considered fundamental (in English, the preposition that designates this meaning, “of”, is the
most frequently used preposition and the second most-used word).
Just like every correlator, the genitive ties two correlata, the one that is present first at the
level of thought (first correlatum) and the one that is present after (second correlatum). The
principle that the order at the level of thought is mirrored in the word order of speech is valid
for the correlators that we have considered until now and, in many languages, generally for all
correlators. That is, the word that expresses the first correlatum precedes the one that
expresses the second correlatum. This is not always the case however. There are many
languages where, since they often express the correlators by means of a case mark, an
inversion of the aforesaid order is allowed. For example, the English expression “the walls of
the town” can be translated into Latin both by using the order of thought (moenia urbis) or by
inverting it (urbis moenia). Furthermore, some languages can express the meaning of the

12
The correlational theory of thought, with its implications, as it has been exposed in the two last sections, is
essentially Ceccato’s own. Only some modifications and additions are my own.
 A Semantics of the Fundamental Structural Elements of Language… 31

genitive exactly by inverting the order (for example, in English, “safety belt”), or in some
cases apply the inversion anyway (for example, still in English, the so-called “possessive
case” involves the inversion [“John’s car”]). Therefore, in the case of genitive, which is the
first and which is the second correlatum could be unclear. This calls for an explanation. The
first correlatum (which we shall call A, as before) of the genitive is the one that in English
precedes the preposition “of”, the second correlatum (B) is the one that follows it.
Having explained this, the meaning of the correlator can now be analyzed. The genitive
indicates the attentional focalization of something, A, while keeping in mind that A has been
previously focused on together with something else, B (this analysis is my own).
If we wish to make a comparison with the correlator “with”, we can say that, while
“with” designates a sort of “addiction”, in the sense that the attention, after focusing on A,
includes B too, the genitive designates a sort of “subtraction”, in the sense that, of the whole
A+B that is kept present, we take A into consideration. For example, if, looking at a man with
a black hat on his head, we say “there is a man with a hat” and then add “the man’s hat is
black”, in both cases the attention has focused on the man and the hat together, but when
using the genitive the attention focuses then only on the hat (in order to talk about it and say
that it is black).
The genitive is used in many cases, that is, the relationships between the things that it
correlates are many. The classifications used in linguistics are more or less similar to the
following:

various kinds of possession (for example: “John’s eyes”, “John’s car”, “the diameter
of the sphere”) and association (“the sound of the trumpet”, “the paintings of
Raphael”, “1929 recession”), relationship indicated by the noun being modified
(“John’s wife”);
belonging to a group (“three of us”);
composition (“marble statue”, “group of men”), containing (“a glass of water”);
participation in an action, as an agent (“John’s arrival”) or as a patient (“the
discovery of America”);
origin (“men of Rome”);
cause (“to die of tuberculosis”);
purpose (“safety belt”);
quantity (“a height of 100 m”);
quality (“man of honour”);
denomination (“the city of Rome”);
plenty or lack (“full/devoid of malice”);
topic (“grammar book”), in respect to (“slow of speech”);
fault, accusation and similar things (“guilty of murder”);
age (“a child of four years”).

All these cases confirm our analysis that the first correlatum is focused on while keeping
present that it has been focused on together with the second correlatum. The fact that the
genitive simply indicates, in an extremely general way, that its correlata have been focused on
together by the attention, clearly explains the fact that the relationships that there can be
32 Giulio Benedetti

between the two correlata of the genitive are many, and that it can be used in very many
cases.
Therefore, the relationships between A and B are the ones where there is no interruption
in the attentional focalization, such as those designated by the preposition “with” (“cup with
handle” → “the handle of the cup”) and the verb “have” (“that man has a moustache” → “the
man’s moustache”). The implicit correlator also designates a relationship of this kind.
Therefore, the genitive can be used when one of the following relationships occurs:
substantive-adjective (“white wall” → “the whiteness of the wall”), subject-verb (“John runs”
→ “John’s running” [so-called “subjective genitive”]) and verb-object (“choosing the cards”
→ “the choice of the cards” [so-called “objective genitive”]13), verb-adverb (“moving slowly”
→ “the slowness of the moving”)14. If there is an interruption in the attentional focalization
(that is, in practice, there are two attentional focalizations), as in the case of the conjunctions
“and” and “or”, and the link is only given by the presence keeping (PK), then the genitive
cannot be used, because there is no relationship between the two things, and it is we who link
them (for example, after having said “on the table there is a bottle and a cork” we cannot say
“the cork of the bottle”, while we can do this if the first sentence was “on the table there is a
bottle with a cork”).
The fact that the genitive (“A of B”, such as “bottle of wine”) indicates that attention
focuses first on A together with B, then only on A, can probably also explain why some
languages (such as English) can express this meaning by means of the word order B-A (“wine
bottle”).
It is important to note that, in practice, the use of this mental category often has the result
(and the purpose) of identifying something, belonging to a certain class, by means of
something else that has been focused on by attention together with the former. For example,
expressions such as “the panes of the window”, “John’s car” etc identify a certain item
belonging to a certain class (perhaps this is the reason why the ancient Greek grammarians
coined the term “genitive”, i.e. “that concerns the genus [or class]”, for this case). An
example where this is clearer can be “the fireplace of the hall” vs “the hall of the fireplace”:
the former expression implies that there are at least two fireplaces and the hall is used to
identify one of them, the latter that there are at least two halls and the fireplace is used to
identify one of them. This explains why the two correlata of this correlator can be inverted in
rare cases only, i.e. when B can be used to identify A and vice versa (“glass bottle” and “glass
of a bottle”, “the bottle of the wine” and “the wine of the bottle” etc), but not when this does
not happen (“the buttons of the jacket”, but not “the jacket of the buttons” etc). In the cases of
the second kind, if we want to speak of the first term, we just put it as the first correlatum and
designate its relationship with the second (“the jacket with the buttons”).
Correlations can also be made on the “maps”, which means designating the position of
something with respect to something else. The operations that these correlators designate are

13
Note that in the objective genitive it is the first correlatum of the starting relationship, that is, the verb
(“choosing”, in our example), that becomes first correlatum in the correlation that has the genitive case as
correlator, not the second correlatum, as happens in the other cases. These is due to the fact that, if the patient
becomes the first correlatum (that is, subject) of the verb of which it was before the object, we have the passive
form of the verb (see further on): in our example, starting from the expression “choosing the cards” we have not
“the cards of the choice”, but “the chosen cards”.
14
Note that in this passages the first correlatum of the genitive case becomes always a substantive, even if before
was not (“white wall” → “ the whiteness of the wall”). Naturally, this is due to the fact that it is considered in
isolation (see the definition of “substantive”, p 30).
 A Semantics of the Fundamental Structural Elements of Language… 33

obvious: we shall mention them for the sake of completeness only. At least two things
(objects or activities) are involved, A and B.
The structure is the general one of correlators, that is, A is focused on by attention (AF)
and kept present (PK) while the attention focuses on B.
When there are two correlata, A and B, the part of the “map” that corresponds to A can be
a part of the part of “map” that corresponds to B (preposition in) or not (preposition out of).
If we relate a thing (A) not with another thing, but with two or more other things (B, C,
etc), there is also the possibility designated by the preposition between/among (the
attentional focalization of A takes place in the area(s) encountered when passing directly from
B to C etc (the distinction between two things/more than two things, which English makes, is
not present in other languages).
When correlating something (A) to something else (B) on a “map”, if we take, as a
reference, the vertical or the horizontal direction (both passing through B), we obviously have
the categories that correspond to “right/left” and “up/down”, but that designate correlators (on
the right/left of and on (or over15)/under, respectively).
The operations corresponding to the categories “in”, “out of”, and “between/among” can
also be performed on the temporal “map” or other “maps” (for example: “in the past”, “a
pause in the speech”, “in this series of numbers”, etc; “between 9 and 10 o’clock”, “between
the subject and the verb”, “between 2 and 4”, etc). The structure of the category “out of” also
allows it to be used on the temporal “map”, but, since this “map” is asymmetric, what
happens “out of “ a given time is made up of two phases that are clearly distinct, the one that
precedes and the one that follows that time. Therefore, the word “out”, when referred to time,
can only be used in rare cases where the time before and the time after are equivalent, such as
in the expression “out of time”.
In a “map”, following some activity by attention (first correlatum, A) can also involve the
shifting of the attentional focus with respect to something else (second correlatum, B). The
two possible directions of this movement, which we may call “moving away” and
“approaching” and/or symbolise by the symbols A→ and A←, are naturally indicated by the
prepositions at/to16 and from.
The analyses of the correlators that we have just considered are, as we said, obvious. The
meaning of another preposition (found in various languages), which is in some ways similar
to the preposition “at/to”, i.e. the preposition “for”, is less obvious. Some observations should
also be made about the three prepositions “at/to”, “for”, and “from” together. The preposition
for, like “at/to”, designates attentional movement towards and/or entering into attentional
contact with something, but differs from “at/to” because with “for” the contact is extended,
prolonged or repeated, while with “at/to” the contact is restricted or single (to sense this
difference, compare the two expressions “to look at something” and “to look for something”).
The aforesaid movements (A→ and A←) can take place on a spatial “map” (“going to
Rome”, “coming from Rome”, “passing through [“for”, literally, in other languages] Rome”)
or a temporal “map” (“from 9 to 10 o’clock”, “he lived there for three years”) or a “map” of
another kind (“he got down from the first to the last position of the hit parade, passing through
[other languages use for instead of “through” in such cases] the intermediate ones”).

15
This distinction, which concerns the contact, can be found in English, but not in other languages.
16
This distinction can be found in English, but not in other languages and will therefore not be considered.
34 Giulio Benedetti

Maybe the aforesaid shifting of the attention is not so strictly related to a “map”. Cases of
this kind are the following.
a) Preposition “at/to” — In many languages, this preposition is used after verbs
such as “to give”, “to say”, “to bring” etc for the so-called “indirect object” (here English uses
or can also use word order: “John gave a book to Mary” or “John gave Mary a book”).
Adjectives such as “harmful”, “useful”, “near”, “similar” etc are also followed by “at/to” in
many languages. This is due to the fact that in all these cases there is a shifting of the
attention, as happens on the “map”. Other languages, such as Latin, use a case mark in both
these cases, the dative case. In the passage from a language that has the dative case to a
derived language that does not (from Latin to French or Italian, for example) this case is
almost always replaced by the preposition “at”. This demonstrates that the preposition “at/to”
and the dative case are substantially the same.
b) Preposition “from” — Verbs such as “to originate”, “to separate” etc also imply
a shifting of the attention, as happens on the “map”.
The structures that we have suggested for the prepositions “at/to”, “from” and “for”
explain their use very well. Let’s consider them one by one.
1) In addition to the above, the structure of “at/to” lends itself to indicate the
following relationships:
purpose (for example: “she has gone out to smoke”): while we keep the
action of “going out” present, the attention enters into contact with the action of “smoking”,
which is, in this case, the purpose;
manner (“to be at one’s best”) and (in some languages, unlike English)
means (for example, the French expression “jouer à la balle”, which is translated by the
English expression “to play with a ball”, literally means “to play at ball”): while we keep the
actions of “being” or “playing” present, the attention enters into contact with “one’s best” or
the “ball”, which, in these cases, are the manner and the means, respectively;
sometimes, the relationship of cause (“he was shocked at the news”): see
further on;
other relationships that are quoted by grammar books and dictionaries, such
as advantage/disadvantage (“cheque to bearer”), measure/price (“running at 100 km/h”),
comparison (“similar to”) etc, for which the same consideration applies.
2) We have hypothesised that the operations designated by “for” are similar to
those designated by “at/to”, but differ because there is an extended, prolonged or repeated
attentional contact with the second correlatum. This clearly explains four facts.
The first is that both prepositions are used in some cases (“harmful to/for
health”, “he was sorry at/for her departure”; in several languages this phenomenon is more
widespread than in English).
The second is that in some cases where a certain language uses “at/to”,
another language uses “for” and vice versa (for example, the Latin expression ad laudem
insignis is translated by the English expression “famous for his merits”). Similarly, in some
cases where a language uses the dative case, a derived language that does not have this case
uses “for” instead of, as happens more commonly, “at/to”. For example, Latin has the so-
called “dative of advantage or disadvantage” (for example: non solum nobis divites esse
volumus, “we do not want to be rich for ourselves only”) and the so-called “dative of
reference” (venientibus ab Italia, “for those who come from Italy”). In a language that derives
 A Semantics of the Fundamental Structural Elements of Language… 35

from Latin such as French the preposition pour (“for”) translates these two kinds of dative
case.
The third is that we use “for” and cannot use “at/to” when the relationships
are a prolonged contact in time (“he lived there for three years”) or in space (“passing through
[“for”, literally, in other languages] Rome”).
The fourth is that both prepositions can indicate relationships of cause and
purpose, but one of them does this better. In fact, we can find both prepositions to indicate
cause (“he was sorry at/for her departure” and many other possible examples in other
languages; “he was shocked at the news”, “I cannot see the road for the fog”), but the
extended, prolonged or repeated contact that the preposition “for” is thought to express, can
better express the “strength” of the causal relationship, which furthermore is often prolonged
in time (“he got pale for fear”). In agreement with this, “for” seems to be used much more
frequently than “at” when a relationship of cause is involved. Nevertheless, in cases where
there is a causal relationship, but what happens exactly is a “single” contact (“he was shocked
at the news”), we find “at”. We can also find both prepositions in the case of the relationship
of purpose (“used to make/for making”; in several languages this phenomenon is more
widespread than in English), but “for” expresses better than “at” the lasting attention on
something when we pursue it as a purpose. In agreement with this, in this case “for” seems to
be more used than “at/to”.
3) The structure of the preposition “from” lends itself to indicate detachment from
something in space or time or another kind of “map” and origin as well as the following
relationships:
means, when the second correlatum is the origin of the first (for example,
“he recognised her from the footsteps”);
agent: the analysis of this meaning (see further on) perfectly explains the fact
that, whereas some languages have a specific preposition or case mark, others, such as Italian,
use the preposition “from” to indicate the agent in the passive construction of the sentence
(for example, “amato da tutti”, “loved by everybody”, literally “loved from everybody”).
After analyzing the main prepositions (or corresponding cases; since a preposition and a
case are only two different ways of expressing the same correlator, in this paragraph we shall
only use the term “preposition”, for the sake of simplicity), we can more clearly understand
the concept that we mentioned at the beginning of § 5, when the preposition “with” was
considered. The meaning of prepositions that are strictly related to the “map” concept (both
spatial and temporal, or “maps” of a different kind), such as “over/under”, “in/out of” etc,
seems, as we stated, obvious (and substantially unique). For the others (such as “with”, “of”,
“for”) it is a completely different matter. The problem of their meaning has always proved to
be particularly difficult. Linguistics has generally supported the thesis of a complex
polysemy. There are basically two theses: 1) these prepositions have many meanings; 2) these
prepositions have no meaning of their own, and take a meaning from the context.
Both theses (explicitly the first, but also the second) maintain that these prepositions are
polysemous. Actually, the relationships between the things that each preposition correlates
are very different. In attempting to identify their meaning, dictionaries and grammar books
have long lists of relationships for each preposition (for example, for the preposition “of”,
they list the relationships: “possession”, “composition”, “containing”, “agent or patient of an
action”, “origin”, “cause”, “purpose”, “quality”, “quantity”, “denomination” and so on, as we
36 Giulio Benedetti

have seen). Whether it is explicitly stated or not, these would substantially be the meanings of
the preposition. In my opinion, it is highly unlikely that a preposition has so many meanings.
In fact, this thesis disagrees significantly with the fact that words normally have only one
meaning plus, possibly, a very few other meanings, namely the figurative, extended etc ones,
which derive from the first meaning for easily understandable reasons (for instance, the term
“nose” means a part of the face, but also snout, muzzle, shrewdness, the opening of a tube etc,
a spy). Furthermore, the thesis that these are the meanings of the preposition disagrees with
the fact that in several cases the same relationship can be expressed by different prepositions
(for example, in both the expressions “to be in bed with a fever” and “to be shocked at the
news” the relationship is cause).
As mentioned, OS instead suggests the thesis that these prepositions do not designate
such relationships, i.e. these relationships are not the meanings of the prepositions. These
prepositions designate much more general relationships, which allow/induce sequences of
mental operations, amongst which the ones of attention play a key role. We have proposed the
analyses of such sequences. These very general relationships include the aforesaid more
specific relationships (which depend on the two related things), but the meaning of these
prepositions is only given by the first relationships, not the second. Therefore, the meaning of
these prepositions is only one, in principle.
The aforesaid more specific relationships are designated by the whole that is made up of
the preposition and the things that it correlates. This designation is often partially implicit, in
the sense that, starting from the precise (and unique, in principle) meaning of the preposition
and those of the two things that the preposition correlates, our general knowledge tells us
what relationship is involved (cause, time, manner etc). This thesis is proven by the fact that,
if we consider isolated correlations, so as to limit the importance of the “general knowledge”
factor as much as possible, we can find cases of ambiguity, such as “Smith’s book”
(possession or relationship work/author?), “love of God” (an objective or subjective genitive,
that is, does God love or is God loved?), “invisible for the crowd” (cause or limitation?), etc.
As we can see, OS therefore differs greatly from previous theories in linguistics about the
meaning of these prepositions.
The correlator because in the two lists of fundamental words chosen above, expresses an
extremely important notion, the so-called efficient cause (cause, as a substantive; as a
correlator, many languages also use, as we have seen, the more general meaning expressed by
the preposition “for”). Naturally, we are not interested in the philosophical or scientific
problems that are related to this notion (the dualism case/necessity, the existence of a “first
cause” etc), but simply in the mental operations that are designated. In my opinion, these are:

1) in the temporal operational scheme (TOS), attention focuses (AF) on two things (that
is, two events), A and, subsequently (or, at the best, simultaneously), B;
2) this experience is kept present (PK) while we perform
3) an operation of representation (R) of the absence of B in the hypothesis of an absence
of A, a representation that is induced by the memory (MO) of experiences that are
equal (or similar) to the present one, i.e. experiences where the absence of events that
are equal (or similar) to A is followed by the absence of events that are equal (or
similar) to B (such experiences are eventually summarised in a general law).
 A Semantics of the Fundamental Structural Elements of Language… 37

The operation in point 3 is necessarily a representation, that is, something intrinsically

uncertain. In fact, there can be two or more events that are equal (or similar) to each other,
but, since a given event is by definition associated with a specific moment, it cannot repeat
itself any more, precisely because of the passing of time. In other words, we can observe one
or more events that are equal (or similar) to a given event, but we can never observe the same
event more than once. Because of this, it is impossible to perceive/establish the existence of
causal relationships with certainty (as stated by Hume). In order to determine a causal
relationship with certainty, we should be able to go back in time and remove the supposed
cause of a certain effect. This is impossible of course. We can only infer the existence of a
causal relationship on the basis of equal or similar experiences. This lies behind the well-
known unavoidable uncertainty of causal relationships in history (where no events are the
same because each event is strongly associated with different people) and the certainty
beyond any reasonable doubt of causal relationships amongst repeatable phenomena that are
ascertained with the experimental method. Therefore, causal relationships are not inexistent,
that is, illusory (Hume), but, strictly speaking, not ascertainable (even if for those where the
phenomenon is repeatable the doubt is not reasonable).
In the case of the so-called final cause (purpose as a substantive, so (that), so as, in
order that, in order to, as a correlator; English and many other languages also use the more
general meaning expressed by the prepositions “for” and “to”, as a correlator, as we have
seen), the meaning, i.e. the operational scheme, is the same as the efficient cause (in fact, the
term “cause” is used in both cases). However, in the final cause the cause is given by will,
whose object is “purpose” (for the meaning of “will”, see further on). In fact, we can always
change a final clause (for example, “I study to learn”) into a causal clause introducing will as
a cause (“I study because I want to learn”). Since in the final cause the cause is the will, the
final cause presupposes, as an agent, a being that has will or at least a finalistic behaviour (for
example, “the plant has grown in this direction to find light”). In fact, unanimated objects are
excluded.
Let’s consider the conjunction “if”. Grammar books distinguish the so-called conditional
“if” (e.g. in sentences such as “if you study, you will learn”) from the so-called dubitative-
interrogative “if”, which is used in dubitative and indirect interrogative sentences (e.g. “I do
not know if I shall go”, “tell me if you will go”). Nevertheless, linguistic data, as a whole,
show that there must be a strong affinity between the two kinds of “if”. In fact, in the various
languages the conditional “if” and the dubitative-interrogative “if” can be expressed: 1)
always by the same word (as in French: si); 2) by different words, but also by the same word
(as in English, which uses if and whether/if, respectively); 3) by different words, but with the
possible presence of indications that suggest an affinity (for example, Latin does not use the
word that expresses the conditional “if” [si] to express the dubitative-interrogative meaning,
which is expressed by the enclitic particles -ne or num in the simple indirect interrogative
sentence, and utrum...an [“whether…or”] in the double indirect interrogative sentence;
nevertheless, in the latter we can also find sive…sive).
Let’s take two very simple examples of the two kinds of “if”, where the governed clause
is the same.

You will see, if you will go (conditional “if”)

Tell me if you will go (dubitative “if”)
38 Giulio Benedetti

In both cases the conjunction “if” designates an alternative in the operation of

representation, i.e. on the one hand, we represent the meaning of a clause (A) and, on the
other, keeping this meaning present, we discard it (the latter operation is, as we have seen, the
negation).
In the case of the conditional “if” only the meaning A (that is, the eventuality “you will
go”, in our example) is correlated (as a second correlatum) to another clause (“you will see”).
In the case of the dubitative-interrogative “if” the whole alternative A/not-A is correlated (still
as a second correlatum) to another clause (“tell me”). The languages that use the same word
in both cases rely on the fact that the meaning of the main clause is sufficient to settle the
ambiguity: if an alternative is implied, then the dubitative-interrogative “if” is involved.

Interrogative-Relative-Indefinite Pronouns and Adjectives

We have stated that the categories “who”, “what” and “which” (and “where”, “when”
and, as we shall see, “how” as well) designate that attention selects an unspecified item (Ax)
belonging to a group of items that are considered equal to each other (A1, A2, A3,…).
Therefore, they substantially designate an unsolved alternative. The result is that, even if put
into a correlation, they give a “sense of suspension”, which is not present in other
correlations. Compare the two expressions “yellow flower” and “which flower”. These two
correlations are equal.

The expression “yellow flower” means that a definite thing (a “flower”) has a feature
(what the adjective “yellow” means), which is also definite. Therefore, in this sense, the
expression is accomplished. The expression “which flower” instead indicates that, given the
class of flowers, we have to select one. Therefore, it is not definite, and, above all, actually
remains an isolated substantive, that is, a substantive that is not correlated with an adjective
or a verb (i.e., from this point of view, saying “which flower” is no different from simply
saying “flower”). Hence this sort of “sense of suspension”. Note that this sense of suspension
remains even if the adjective “which” is correlated with something unique (therefore, well
identified) such as a proper noun (for example, “John who…”. In this case, the adjective has
the effect of “making plural” even the proper noun, because the expression “John who…”
means “John, in a particular moment or attitude etc of the various possible moments or
attitudes etc (for example, “John who laughs”).
This particular meaning clearly explains how we can use these categories.
1) Since these categories substantially designate an alternative, it is possible to
correlate two (or more) things to it, by repeating the word that designates the category: this is
the use of who/what/which as indefinite pronouns/adjectives (for example, the Italian
sentence chi parlava, chi taceva [“some spoke, some were silent”], which literally means
“who spoke, who was silent”). This use is not present in all languages, because it is the same
as using the more specific (and more appropriate) term “some” (for this term, see further on):
 A Semantics of the Fundamental Structural Elements of Language… 39

some languages, such as English, use the latter term only, other languages, such as Italian,
have the alternative.
2) It is also possible to correlate something to the category and try to eliminate the
alternative, that is, try to identify Ax: this is the use of who/what/which as interrogative
pronouns/adjectives (for example, “who knocks?”; for the meaning of the interrogative
form, see further on).
3) Finally, it is possible to insert the category, after having correlated it with
something, in another correlation: this is the use of who/what/which as relative
pronouns/adjectives (for example: “those who heard laughed”). In this case, the person who
the pronoun “who” refers to remains unspecified, but, whoever he or she is, he or she
becomes the correlatum of something else definite, so that the aforesaid “sense of suspension”
stops. It is important to note that when “who/what/which” are used as relative
pronouns/adjectives, they designate not one but two elements of the correlational network,
that is, both a correlatum (as in cases 1 and 2) and a correlator, the presence keeping (we have
seen that the verb in the personal form also acts in this way). Therefore, the correlational
networks that correspond to the two sentences:
4)
Who heard laughed
I saw who laughed

and the relative clause

John who laughs

are the following (the double role of the relative pronoun has been highlighted by means of a
bold font):

These statements about the uses of “who/what/which” also apply to “where” and “when”
(and “how”, which, as we shall see, is based on the same operations).
40 Giulio Benedetti

The distinction that grammar makes amongst indefinite, interrogative and relative
pronouns/adjectives (cases 1, 2, and 3, respectively) is therefore more a use than a meaning
distinction. The meaning of the pronoun/adjective is still the same. This agrees perfectly with
the fact that in many languages it is designated by the same word or theme or root.

How and Adverbs of Manner

The meaning that is expressed, as a substantive (that is, when we designate it in an

isolated manner), by the term manner (or way) and, in the adverbs, in several languages, by a
suffix (-ly, in English), is very similar to the meaning of the grammatical category of
“adjective” (which has already been examined), and has the same relationship with the verb
that the adjective has with the substantive. We have said that the adjective indicates
something that does not exist independently, but is necessarily tied to something else, from
which it can be isolated only mentally, using the selective ability of attention (while the
substantive designates something that exists, or is considered, independently, i.e. in an
isolated manner). In the same way, “manner” is something that attention finds tied to a
meaning of a verb and which is separated by it mentally, using the selective ability of
attention. For example, the meanings of words such as “slowly”, “strongly” etc are not
already isolated, but are necessarily tied to something (which is often a verb) that owns them
as features, and are obtained by means of a mental operation of separation. The close analogy
between what grammar calls the “adverb of manner” and the adjective is confirmed by the
fact that in many languages, such as English, the large majority of words that designate
adverbs of manner are made up of the same word that designates the corresponding adjective
plus a suffix (“sweet-ly”, “easi-ly” etc), and the fact that in some languages (for example,
Turkish) the same word can usually be both an adjective and an adverb.
Since the nature of adverbs of manner is essentially that of being features, or qualities, of
something else, they can refer (although the term “adverb” clearly derives from “verb”) not
only to a verb, but also to an adjective (“a really beautiful flower”) and another adverb too
(“he is really poorly paid”). Therefore, because of its etymology, the term “adverb” is rather
inappropriate. From the semantic point of view, it would be better to say that there is a class
of words that designate “qualities” (or “features”, or similar terms), which can be:

1) qualities of substantives (“beautiful flower”): adjectives;

2) qualities of verbs (“he is poorly paid”): (appropriately called) adverbs, which
are generally morphologically distinct from 1, but sometimes identical;
3) qualities of adjectives (“a really beautiful flower”): hence, “qualities of
qualities”, that is, qualities of the qualities in point 1; in order to designate these,
the same forms as in point 2 (so-called “adverbs”) are used (in English and in
other languages);
4) qualities of (appropriately called) adverbs (“he is really poorly paid”): “qualities
of qualities” as well, that is, qualities of the qualities in point 2; in order to
designate these, the same forms as in point 2 (so-called “adverbs”) are used (in
English and in other languages).
 A Semantics of the Fundamental Structural Elements of Language… 41

As stated, the word how designates the same basic operations that are designated by
“who/what/which”, “where” and “when” (the attention selects an unspecified item (Ax)
belonging to a group of items that are considered equal to each other [A1, A2, A3,…]). In the
case of “how” these items are “manners”. Therefore, this term has the same fundamental uses
that we have seen in the paragraph above for “who/what/which” (“where” and “when” have
the same uses too), that is, the interrogative use (for example, “How did you do?”) and the
relative use (for example, “I don’t know how he did”).

Quantity-related Words

The two lists of fundamental words include some words that seem clearly related to
“quantity”. We have seen that “quantity” originates from a particular operational modality,
which we could call “summative”. This consists of keeping in mind each item of a group of
items that are considered equal for as long as the attention focuses on a new item (naturally,
we can only keep a limited number of items in mind, but it is possible to count up to an
indefinite number simply by remembering the name of the number of the last item that we
have named: the following name originates from the former on the basis of a rule, which is
partially recursive). Besides the word “number”, some words that designate single numbers
and the verb “to count”, which have been already examined, the words that seem related to
quantity in the “semantic primitives” of NSM and the Swadesh list are: “much/many”, “few”,
“some”, “part” and “all”.
Let’s consider the categories “many”, “few” and “some” (the latter two as plurals) first.
The first of the two categories (“many”) can be used in a relative sense, and the second
(“few”) is always, or almost always, used in this sense. That is, the same number of items can
be considered “few” or “many”. For example, 10,000 persons who take part in a
demonstration are “few” if 100,000 were expected, or “many” if 1,000 were expected. Even
four or five items can be considered “many” in some situations: for example, if someone has
four or five pens in his or her pocket, they are “many”. Therefore, the categories many and
few, in a relative sense, obviously designate a quantity that is more or less (operation of
comparison), respectively, than a reference quantity.
The word some seems to mean both an “unspecified quantity” and an “unspecified, but
small quantity”. The latter varies between a lower limit that is not clearly specified, but seems
always, or almost always, to exclude the first four-five numbers (these quantities are
generally indicated by their precise number: for example, “there were two/three/four/five
persons”), and an even hazier upper limit, which does not seem to go far beyond the first
dozen. Beyond this limit the quantities that are not precisely defined, are indicated by words
or expressions such as “dozen”, “about twenty”, etc, or the word many, in an absolute sense,
which generally seems to exclude the first dozens. In my opinion, we can use the following
observations to explain these terms. It has recently been suggested that our brain, as well as
the brain of several animals, has some innate mechanisms that allow us to count, even if
approximately, in a, so to speak, “automatic” way, that is, without performing the relatively
complex operation (in fact, children learn it more or less at the age of three) of counting in a
precise way, i.e. associating a precise word of a rigorously determined series to each equal
item that is found. In fact, various research findings have shown that several animals are able
to distinguish quantities approximately. For example, from two little batches of apples,
42 Giulio Benedetti

macaques choose the one that has more apples. This ability improves the more the difference
between the two numbers and the more the numbers become smaller. In animals, this
becomes imprecise when there are more than three objects, and no animal is able to
distinguish ten objects from eleven. At the neurophysiological level, it has been shown that
the brain of monkeys contains neurons that are active when there are one, two, three, four,
five objects, and these activation phenomena become less precise as the number increases. It
has been suggested that these neurons also exist in human beings, and we continue to use
them, regardless of the fact that we acquire, by means of knowledge, the ability to count in a
precise manner. This is supported, along with some neuro-anatomical and neuro-imaging
data, by research performed on a human population (the Munduruku tribe in Amazonia)
whose language has very few words to express numbers. In fact, the Munduruku do not have
names for the large numbers and only have five names for the small numbers (1, 2, and three
names that are used for quantities from 3 to 5, from 3 to 8, and from 5 to 12, respectively), as
well as the words for “some” and “many”. These natives have no knowledge of mathematics
and cannot even count over the number two in a precise manner. Yet they are not different
from educated western adults in the ability to estimate quantities approximately, such as
telling which is the greater of two groups of items at first sight [Dehaene 2005]. The aforesaid
hypothetical mechanism that allows us to count automatically explains, in my opinion, the
aforesaid terms. As long as the mechanism is precise (five-six items), the quantities are
indicated by the precise number (we should also note that the number “two” has a particular
position with respect to all other numbers, because in order to realize that there are two
objects which are considered equal only one operation of comparison is necessary. In fact,
even in the Munduruku restricted vocabulary of numbers, the word that corresponds to “two”
indicates a precise quantity). Beyond the limit of five-six items the mechanism starts to
become imprecise, so the word “some” is used; between one and three-five dozen the
mechanism becomes even more imprecise, but still allows a distinction in the order of
magnitude of dozens. Even further on the mechanism becomes highly imprecise, so the word
“many” is used (the fact that the mechanism becomes progressively more imprecise explains
why the upper limits of the categories “some” and “many” are hazier than the lower limits).
Let’s examine the categories “all” and “part”. With a group of items, it is possible to keep
this group present and focus our attention on it again, while performing an operation of
attentional selection or not. In the first case we have the category part, in the second case the
category all (as a plural). Therefore, when we use these categories the group of items is
considered twice. This becomes evident if we build a sentence on purpose where the group of
items is not sufficiently specified, such as the sentence “change all the words in bold type into
italics”. In this case, we understand the meaning of the sentence perfectly (we have to keep
into consideration the words in bold type that we find, without discarding any of them), but
before performing this operation, we have to know on which set of “words in bold type” to
perform it (which would be clear in a sentence such as “change all the words in bold type of
this paragraph into italics”). In neither time when we consider the group of items is it
necessary to count them or to know their number beforehand (for example, in the sentence “I
respect all human beings”, knowing their number is not necessary; counting is only used, in
some cases, to be sure that the group considered at time t2 is the same as the one considered at
time t1). It is only necessary: 1) to consider the group in quantitative terms (that is, to apply
the aforesaid operational modality, that of keeping the preceding items present as we add each
new item); 2) that the group be specified, in order to know on which items to perform the
 A Semantics of the Fundamental Structural Elements of Language… 43

aforesaid operation of new attentional focalization, with selection or not (in our example, the
speaker considers once again, without any selection, the group of the “human beings”, which
is previously given, and makes it the object of the expression “I respect”).
In English, the singular of “many” is “much”, and the words “few” and “all” can be both
a plural and a singular. That is, we may refer these quantity-related meanings to a single
object. In this case, the operation that is typical of the quantitative modality (keeping the
preceding items present as long as we add each new item) is still involved, but, instead of
separate items, we consider parts that are considered conventional units (litres, kilos etc), or
the extension of the attentional focalization. That is, in the latter case the operations are
substantially the same as those of the categories “big” and “small”. This is in perfect
agreement with the following two facts:

1) in several languages, such as English, we can find the same word in relationship to
quantity (“a little water”) and the spatial extension (“a little room”);
2) in many languages, the words corresponding to “much “ and “few”, besides being
used in relationship with quantity, are (or can be) also used in relationship with the
spatial extension (for example, the English sentence “I have gone a long way “ is
translated by the French sentence “j’ai fait beaucoup de chemin”, which literally
means “I have made much way”) or the temporal extension (for example, the English
sentence “I waited a long time” is translated by the Italian sentence “ho aspettato
molto tempo”, which literally means “I waited much time”).

The only difference is probably that, when we consider space, ad hoc nervous structures
are activated, as we stated. Nevertheless, when we consider something from the quantitative
point of view, the operational modality is still the same, the one that we called “summative”,
that is, keeping something present when we add something else of the same kind, whether
separate objects which are distinct by themselves or portions of matter or parts of an ordered
mental representation (that is, a “map”) related to a physical or non-physical continuum.
In many languages, the words corresponding to “much” and “few” are (or can be) also
used with intensity (for example, the English sentence “it is very hot” is translated by the
Italian sentence “é molto caldo”, which literally means “it is much hot”). Other languages use
more specific terms for intensity, such the English word very (see “intensifier” in
Wierzbicka’s list).
A range of intensities can surely be mirrored in a “map”. Nevertheless, it is more
probable that a “map” is activated when we estimate an intensity by means of units of
measurement (for example, when we are speaking of temperature in terms of degrees). In
daily subjective estimates of intensities (for example, “it is very hot”) it is simpler to suppose
that these words are directly related to the degree of the subjective sensation. The same also
applies when the words “much”, “all” etc refer to non-physical things (“with much pleasure”,
“with all my love” etc). Here too, there is an alternation between “much/few” and terms that
are more often used in relationship with space, such as “big/small” (“with great/much
pleasure”; this phenomenon varies across languages).
Naturally, the terms more and less indicate the two possible results that differ from
equality, of the operation of comparison (C) that concerns quantitative estimates.
44 Giulio Benedetti

Verb-related Objects

We have stated that things that require a prolonged attentional focalization to be known
are the meanings of the verbs (or words whose theme or root is of a verbal kind, such as
“recognition”, “invasion”, “birth” etc). When we recognise what a verb designates, our
attention can almost always also isolate some objects, which we recognise instantaneously
instead, from the process or state (for the sake of simplicity, from now on we shall only use
the word “process”) that is the meaning of the verb. The few cases where this does not happen
are essentially the verbs that designate meteorological phenomena, such as “it rains”, “it
snows” etc. In this case there is practically no instantaneously recognisable object that is
separated from the process: all we see is the process only (for example, with the verb “to rain”
there is practically no separate object (“water”), because when it rains water appears in a
particular form, which is typical of “raining”, and this form cannot be separated from the
process of “raining” itself). In all other cases instead, one or some instantaneously
recognisable objects can be separated from the process designated by the verb (for example,
in the case of the meaning of the verb “to fly”, there is always an object that can be separated
from it and that can be recognised instantaneously, such as a bird). These objects have, with
respect to the process and each other, very precise relationships that are their role. In other
words, there is a temporal-causal intrinsic order in the process and the objects involved in it.
Since in most cases all objects precede, as to existence, the process, and the situation is
captured very quickly, the presence of such a temporal-causal order can escape at first sight.
If we think carefully, we shall realize that, when the dynamics of the process are considered,
such a temporal-causal order is always present and the attention must follow it. Let’s consider
it in detail.
1) There is always an object that originates and carries out the process, that is, that
precedes and determines the progress of each phase of the process. In other words, such an
object that, if removed (mentally, that is, by means of an operation of representation [R], or
physically too), the process would not exist (that is, the operational scheme is the same as that
of causality, which we have already examined). Since such an object precedes each phase of
the process, it is necessarily focused on first by the attention that follows the process, and
kept present. The object with such features is the agent. Some languages have a particular
mark to indicate the agent (for example, Japanese has the affix |ga|). Many other languages do
not have a particular mark, but indicate this meaning by means of the construction of the
sentence and the active or passive form of the verb. When the verb is in the active form, the
agent is used as subject, therefore something that, as we have seen, is focused on by attention
before the verb, thus in the same position that the agent has in the process (note that the
active form of the verb is, in many languages, simply the verb without any mark or with more
simple endings than the passive form, showing that this is the natural order of things). When
the verb is in the passive form, the agent is indicated by a case mark or a preposition (“by” in
English, but some other languages, as we have seen, use the preposition that corresponds to
“from”, which indicates one of the two possible attentional movements with respect to
something, moving away: this preposition is therefore very suitable to indicate the origin of
an action). In this construction, the patient, i.e. what comes after in the natural temporal-
causal order of the process (see point 4 below) is used as subject, that is, focused on before by
attention (because we are paying more attention to it, see point 4 below). The fact that the
passive form of the verb is, in many languages, the marked one or the one that has more
 A Semantics of the Fundamental Structural Elements of Language… 45

complex endings than the active form is a demonstration that this is not the natural order of
the process. When the meaning “agent” is used as a substantive, many languages use suffixes,
such as in English “-er”. Note that my analyses of “agent” and “subject” are clearly different
from each other, in agreement with the clear-cut difference that has always been sensed
between these two categories. In fact, we have proposed that the “subject” is what is focused
on by attention and kept present before a verb, while the “agent” is what precedes the verb
from the temporal-causal point of view in the natural order of the process.
2) There may also be a second object, which is almost always unanimated, between
the agent and the process. This means that, in the dynamics, it follows the operating of the
agent and, as the latter, precedes the process from the temporal-causal point of view. This
second object is designated by the term means, when we indicate it in an isolated way, i.e. as
a substantive. At the level of the correlational network it is indicated by the instrumental
case or equivalent prepositions (in English, by) or prepositional phrases such as the English
by means of. In many languages, instead of this correlator we can also find, as we have seen,
prepositions that have a more general operational scheme than the instrumental one, but
which can include the latter (in English, “with” [“to write with a pen”] or, less commonly,
“through” [“he was hired through an agency”]). Naturally, it is this intermediate position of
the object between agent and process that explains the English term “means” and the other
analogous terms of many other languages.
3) The third element of the dynamics is the process itself. At this point, maybe there
are no other objects in the dynamics of the process, and so the attention does not pass to
something else. It is probably this not passing or passing of the attention to something else
that unconsciously determined the grammatical terminology transitive/intransitive verb, not
the fact that there is “an action that passes from subject to object”, as is usually said. This
definition works in the many cases where the object exists before and is modified by the
process designated by the verb (“to dig the ground”), but does not work in examples such as
“to dig a hole” or “feeling pain”. Therefore, if we consider that what passes is the attention,
the terminology “transitive/intransitive verbs” seems correct.
4) On the contrary, in following the dynamics of the process, the attention may pass
to a third object, which follows the process from the temporal (in the dynamics, not as to
existence, as we said) and effectual point of view (that is, this object receives an effect from,
or is in effect of, the process). The effects can be many: existence (“building a house”), end of
existence (“destroying a house”), modification (“folding a sheet”), movement (“moving the
furniture”), etc. This object is what linguistics generally calls the patient. Like the agent,
some languages have a particular mark to indicate the patient (for example, Japanese has the
affix |o|), but many others do not have it. As mentioned in point 1, the latter indicate this
meaning by means of a construction of the sentence where the patient is the object
(indicated by the related mark or position) and the verb has the active form. There are some
cases where the attention focuses on the patient more intensely (variation in intensity of the
attentional focalization, AFint-var, which was mentioned when the EOMC were examined)
than the agent, sometimes to the point that the latter can even not be expressed (“John has
been wounded”). In many languages, this is expressed, as mentioned, by means of a
construction of the sentence where the patient is the subject, the verb has the passive
form and the agent (if expressed) is indicated by a preposition or a case mark. In some
languages, such as Italian, the preposition used is the equivalent of the English preposition
“from”. As mentioned, this preposition indicates one of the two possible directions of the
46 Giulio Benedetti

attentional shift with respect to something, the moving away (A→). Therefore, this
preposition is very suitable to designate the agent of a verb in the passive form, because, as
we have seen, in the temporal-causal dynamics of the process the direction is agent →
process.
5) Following the dynamics of the process may also imply shifting the focus of
attention to a fourth object. This is the indirect object, which is expressed, depending on the
language, by the dative case or the preposition “at/to”, which indicate, as we have seen, this
shifting (English also uses word order, as we have seen).
As mentioned, it may be difficult realizing the temporal-causal dynamics that has just
been described, because we perform these operations almost instantaneously, unconsciously,
without any effort and many times a day. In order to realize them better, let’s take a situation
where all the aforesaid objects are present, such as the one described by the sentence

Mary Gave the Book to Paula by Her Own Hands

and try to slow down the action to capture what the intrinsic temporal-causal order of the
process is. Although this may all seem simultaneous at first sight, and all the objects exist
before the verb, a more careful reflection will show that, whatever the order of the sentence
that a given language uses, “Mary” is always before the process in its progression and the
attention focuses on her as such, then comes “her own hands” (which also precedes the
process in its progression), then comes the process of “giving”, which precedes the “book” in
the dynamics (this is very evident when the verb creates the patient, such as in the expression
“to dig a hole”) and finally implies a shifting of the attention to “Paula”. This agrees perfectly
with the fact that a construction with the agent as the subject, that is, in the first place in the
descriptive thought (i.e. the active construction) is the standard construction.

Some Fundamental Verbs

We have stated that the object in point 4 of the preceding paragraph can be the effect of,
or receive an effect from, the process. In both cases there is a causal relationship, that is, the
representation of the absence of something, A (the cause), is followed by the representation of
the absence of something else, B (the effect), as we saw. Yet, while in the second case the
process has an effect on something that already exists (the existence of the object precedes
the process), in the first case the process determines the existence of the object (that is, the
existence of the object follows the process). The latter relationship can be in a pure form, i.e.
without any other specification about the process or the object. This is the meaning of the
verb to make (Wierzbicka’s list includes the English verb “to do”, which differs from “to
make” more as to use than as meaning; in fact, other languages have only one verb). This
analysis can be verified by examining the examples provided by dictionaries, which show that
the existence of the object of the verb “to make” is always determined by the process that is
designated by the verb itself (for example, “to make: a son, a noise, a law, a cake, a face,
money, troubles, friends, someone laugh, something better, sure, clear etc). Furthermore, if
we try to think of the meaning of the verb “to make” in an isolated manner, we should sense
that the meaning of this verb lies exclusively in this coming into being of the object as a
consequence of the process. The close relationship of the verb “to make” with a typical form
 A Semantics of the Fundamental Structural Elements of Language… 47

of causation, i.e. the causation of existence, is supported by: a) the more or less evident
etymological relationship that exists in many languages between the term “effect” and the
verb “to make” (in English the relationship is with the verb “to do”, which derives from the
Indo-European root DHĒ, from which we also have the Latin verb facĕre, from which
“effect” derives in turn); b) the fact that dictionaries explicitly call the use of this verb
“causative” when, as often happens, it has another verb as its object (which can be any verb),
such as in the expression “to make laugh” (the meaning of the verb is obviously the same
here, but the thing that the process of “making” determines the existence of is another
process, instead of a substantival meaning, such as in the expression “to make a cake”).
Therefore, the meaning of the verb “to make” is the most general of all the verbs for which
the aforesaid scheme “process → existence of the object” is valid. This clearly explains the
following two facts: a) this verb is or can be used in innumerable cases; b) it is used in
questions where we want the listener to answer as freely as possible (“What are you doing?”
[for the difference between “make” and “do” in English, see above]).
The verb “to hold” is included in the Swadesh list, where “to have” is missing. Actually,
the meanings of the two verbs are similar. The verb to hold and, even more so, the verb to
keep (this distinction is present in English, but other languages have a single verb) indicate
the same relationship as “ to have”, but also the agent-process relationship that we saw in the
previous paragraph, in point 1. That is, the persistence of such a relationship between two
objects that our attention tends to focus on both objects together (i.e. the meaning of “to
have”) is caused by an agent. One should sense this difference between “to have” and “to
hold/keep” very well by comparing the two pairs of expressions “she has/holds a baby in her
arms” and “he has/keeps the engine on”: both in the first and the second pairs of expressions
the (static) relationship is the same (there is a closeness between a baby and a woman’s arms,
and a running engine and someone, respectively), but when “to have” is used, the fact that the
baby remains in the woman’s arms and the engine remains on, does not depend on the activity
of the subject, whereas in the other two cases it does.
Let’s examine the verb “to be”. In English, this verb is generally said to have two (only
two) meanings.

1) An example of the first meaning is “the book is on the table”. In this meaning, in
English (as in many other languages) the verb is often used together with a particle
having a locative meaning (“on the table there is a book”). Since this meaning seems
similar to that of the verb “to exist”, it is often referred to as the “existential
meaning”.
2) The second meaning is commonly called “copula”, which is used very frequently and
for which there are infinite examples (“the book is nice”, “the sky is blue” etc).

In many languages there is the same situation as in English. Other languages have two
distinct verbs to express meanings 1 and 2, or express the copula in a different way.
In addition to being used alone, the verb “to be” is also used in many languages as an
auxiliary verb (for the passive conjugation and some tenses of the active conjugation), which
makes it the most used verb.
Let’s attempt to identify the aforesaid meanings in terms of EOMC. We have stated that
all verbs indicate a temporal operational scheme (TOS), that is, the attention follows the
evolution of something over time. The verb to be, in the existential meaning, designates the
48 Giulio Benedetti

simplest thing a verb can designate (in fact, grammarians have always sensed that “to be” is
the most elemental of the verbs), i.e. something is, or can be, focused on by attention and this
persists over time. That is, if we simply realise that, for a certain time (which will be indicated
by the tense of the verb “to be”), something is, or can be, focused on by our attention, we say
exactly that such a thing “is”, or “there is”, or “exists”. For example, “the book is on the
table” means that, at the present time, “the book” is (or we know it can be) focused on by
attention “on the table”.
Instead of focusing our attention on only one thing, A, and seeing that A persists over
time, we can also focus the attention on something, A, and a feature of it, B, and have the
same result. This is the copulative meaning of the verb to be (for example, “the book is
red”). The fact that B is a feature of A implies that B is an adjectival meaning (as in the
example that has just been made), or a substantival meaning that is yet used as an adjective,
such as in the expression “John is an engineer”: what matters is that A and B are not separate,
but fused in the same attention focalization. Therefore, since there is little difference between
the existential meaning and the copulative meaning of the verb “to be”, it is natural that many
languages use the same verb in both cases. It is also natural that, as mentioned, many
languages use “to be” as an auxiliary verb, in order to express the passive form of all other
verbs. The verb “to be”, in this copulative function together with a verbal form that has an
adjectival and passive meaning, such as a past participle (for example, “the thief is arrested
by the police”) lends itself perfectly to this purpose. This allows a noticeable morphological
simplification in comparison with languages such as Latin and ancient Greek that have a large
series of endings (those to express the person, tense, mood etc) specifically for the passive
form.
The operational structure provided here for the meaning of the verb “to be” in its
copulative meaning is partly similar to the structure of the verb “to have”. We have stated
that:

“to be” in its copulative meaning designates focusing on something and a feature of it
and seeing all of this persisting over time;
“to have” designates (as does the preposition “with”) the fact that two distinct
objects, A and B, are in such a relationship that our attention, when focusing on A,
tends to include B in the same focalization as well.

In both cases there is a relationship between two items that persists over time. Therefore,
the only difference between the two verbs is that:

a) the nominal predicate of the verb “to be” in the copulative function is given by:
an adjectival meaning, which, as stated, is a feature of something else (for
example, “the sky is blue”), or
a substantival meaning that has the same value, because it coincides (that is, it is
the result of the same attentional focalization) with the subject (for example,
“John is an engineer”);
b) the object of the verb “to have” is a meaning of a substantival kind (something that
is, or is considered to be, independent) that does not coincide with the subject, i.e. is
 A Semantics of the Fundamental Structural Elements of Language… 49

not the result of the same attentional focalization (for example, “John has blonde
hair”).

This analogy and this difference between “to have” and “to be” in its copulative meaning
clearly explain the fact that if we substitute an adjectival meaning with the corresponding
substantival meaning, it is generally possible to pass from an expression with “to be” to
another expression with “to have” (or the preposition “with”) that has the same meaning, and
vice versa (for example, “man who is rich/who has much money/with much money”).
My analysis for the existential meaning of the verb “to be” explains the fact that in some
languages the meaning of the verb “to have” is, or can be, expressed by means of the
construction of the sentence object of ‘to have’ as subject + verb ‘to be’ + subject of ‘to have’
in the dative (for example, in Latin: mihi est spes = “I have a hope”, literally “to me is hope”).
In fact, the meaning of “to have” (two distinct objects, A and B, are in such a relationship that
our attention, when focusing on A, tends to include B in the same focalization as well), can be
also expressed by saying that B has to be referred to A. This fact implies a shifting of the
focus of the attention, which is typical of the dative, as we have seen.
This similarity between the verbs “to have” and “to be”, and the fact that, as suggested,
the preposition “with” and the verbs “to have”, “to get” and “to hold/keep” are based on the
same operational scheme, offers a very good explanation of the phenomena of mutual
substitution amongst these terms, which are found across languages. In cases where a
language uses the preposition “with”, another language may use the present participle of the
verb “to have”; instead of the verb “to have” we may find the verb “to be” together with the
preposition “with”, or the aforesaid construction object of ‘to have’ as subject + verb ‘to be’
+ subject of ‘to have’ in the dative case; or, instead of the present of the verb “to have” some
past tense of the verb “to get”; etc. Our intuition tells us, for example, that in the following
pairs of expressions (the second expression in each pair is a literal translation of the
expression found in other languages [in italics], or what can be found in English itself):

man with a stick/man having a stick

to have a temperature/to be with a temperature
I have a book/a book is to me
I have/I have got

the two expressions of each pair are equivalent, but the hypothesis that the operational
schemes which make up the meanings of these terms have the similarities that have just been
described is a far more satisfactory explanation.

Modal Verbs

The main so-called “modal verbs” are “to want”, “can/may” and “have to”. For the time
being, only the last two will be examined. Unlike “to want”, which can also govern a
substantive (“I want an ice-cream”), “can/may” and “have to” always govern another verb.
Therefore, it can be said that these two verbs add some meaning to the meaning of the verb
they govern. The first observation to make in order to identify their meaning is that, when one
50 Giulio Benedetti

of these two modal verbs is used, the process or state (the word “process” will be used from
now on) that is designated by the governed verb cannot have taken place at the time indicated
by the tense of the modal verb. Saying “I can/have to work” makes no sense if we have
already worked (at the most, we may say this if the action is still taking place, i.e. is not
finished). In fact, the time when the process that is designated by the governed verb happens
is generally in the future with respect to the tense of the modal verb. Sometimes, the tense can
be the same or in the past tense (for example, in the sentence “dinosaurs may/must have
become extinct because of the impact of a meteorite”), but in these cases the process, even if
it refers to the past, it is not considered to have happened, because we do not know if it
happened. If we knew it happened, these verbs could not be used. All this is because
“can/may” and “have to” concern the carrying out/reality of what the governed verbs
designate (I use the expression “carrying out/reality” because in some cases the former is
involved, in others the latter: for example, “today I must/can work” and “there must/may be a
solution”, respectively). More specifically, they designate an operation of representation,
which is based on something real, regarding the carrying out/reality of what the governed
verb designates. That is, first we represent (R) the meaning of the verb that is governed,
which is not, at the moment, real/a known reality, then we represent its carrying out/reality,
basing ourselves on another element (there is no need to say how important this is in
practice). In this carrying out/reality, the following two cases are possible.
1) There is no alternative, i.e. the aforesaid operation of representation produces a
single result: verb have to (for example, “I have to go out” means that something induces the
representation of carrying out the action of “going out” only). The element which the
representation is based on can be a material circumstance, a moral rule etc and the intensity of
its power to condition can vary. Therefore, several languages use different verbs for the
various cases (for example, the English verbs “must”, “have to”, “shall”, “should”, “ought
to”).
2) There is an alternative, i.e. the aforesaid operation of representation produces a
double result: verb can/may (for example, “I can/may go out” means that something induces
the representation of performing or not performing the action of “going out”). The element
which the representation is based on can be a material circumstance, can depend on the
subject or somebody/something other than the subject, or can be an unknown factor
(eventuality). Therefore, several languages use different verbs in these different cases (for
example, English uses “can” in the first two cases and prefers “may” in the latter two), while
other languages, such as Latin, generally use only one verb and rely on the context to
understand what determines the fact that we “can/may”. The case of eventuality is also
expressed by means of the adverb maybe (see Wierzbicka’s list) or phrases such as “it is
possible that”.
Instead of saying that the two verbs “can/may” and “have to” designate the presence or
the absence of an alternative, respectively, it is perhaps more exact to say that “have to”
indicates that there is no alternative to the carrying out/reality (that is, the carrying out/reality
is sensed as the first pole of an alternative that lacks the second pole), while “can/may”
indicates that there is the alternative of the carrying out/reality (that is, we have the alternative
of performing/not performing the action).
My analysis clearly explains why the negation of the verb “can” that refers to the
negation of the governed verb (that is, “cannot not”) is equivalent to “must”: if the alternative
of the negation is excluded, we obtain the absence of an alternative.
 A Semantics of the Fundamental Structural Elements of Language… 51

Based on the above, the meaning of these two verbs typically has two components:

1) the basis of the representation of the carrying out/reality of the meaning of the
governed verb, which will become the reason or cause of the fact that we “can/have
to”;
2) the representation itself of the carrying out/reality.

The presence of these two components, and the fact that the second is based on the first,
clearly make “have to” and “can/may” different from the simple representation of the future.
In fact, when we use these verbs, we are, or we place ourselves mentally, in the time that they
designate, where there is the element that conditions the process that the governed verb
designates, an element that is a fundamental integral part of the meaning of these two verbs.
Nevertheless, basing ourselves on this element, we perform an operation of representation of
a carrying out/reality, which often refers to the future. Moreover, in the case of the verb “have
to”, the result of this operation is only one, therefore equal to the operation that makes up the
future tense (which corresponds to the fact, which everybody senses very well, that, if “we
must do”, the result is often that “we shall do”). This explains why in some languages the
formation of the future tense of verbs has a relationship with the verb “have to”, which is
evident (such as in the first person of the English future tense) or etymological (such as in
most Romance languages, where the morphology of the future tense derives from the Latin
verb habeo, “to have”, in the sense of “having to”: for example, the Italian future tense farò,
“I shall make” derives from the Latin expression facere habeo, “I have to make”).
We shall also mention the verb to want here because it is commonly considered a modal
verb, i.e. a verb that modifies other verbs. Nevertheless, the analogy with “can/may” and
“have to” stops here, in my opinion. I have already pointed out that “to want” is clearly
different from the two former verbs, because it accepts (and often has) not a verb, but a
substantive as its object.
At the level of meaning also, there does not appear to be any analogy with the operations
that the two other modal verbs are thought to designate. On the contrary, in my opinion there
is no way to account for this meaning with the operations within cognitive functions
(attention, memory etc) that I have used to account for the meanings that we have considered
up to now. In my opinion, “to want” designates a specific function, will, which is a function
apart, and completely different from the aforesaid functions. In fact, will has been repeatedly
considered as such, more or less explicitly, in philosophy, psychology, cognitive psychology
and psychiatry.
In my opinion, will should be considered a psychic function rather than a mental one,
even if it seems intrinsically related to one of the operations considered, that is, the
representation (of its object), because it seems that we cannot want something, at least
consciously, without representing that something. All I can say about will is that it seems a
“stimulus”, inside the psyche itself, to the carrying out or achievement of a representation (R).
A feature of this function is that it varies in intensity, so that languages generally have
different terms to express different degrees of its intensity (for example, “to want” and “to
wish”, in English). The imperative mood of the verb is closely related to this function. This
mood expresses the will of the speaker that a subject, other than the speaker himself, carries
out a representation (R) of a verbal phrase that the speaker tells the listener.
52 Giulio Benedetti

The Interrogative Sentence

Let’s examine the meaning expressed by the term question (as a substantive) and the
interrogative form of the sentence (a particular construction or tone or verbal mood or
particle or more than one of the former, depending on the language). There are three kinds of
questions.

1) Those introduced by the pronouns/adjectives “who”, “what”, “which”, “where”,

“when”, “how”. As we have seen, all these terms designate an unsolved alternative.
2) Those not introduced by the aforesaid pronouns or adjectives, but where an
alternative is indicated explicitly (for example, “Are you leaving or staying?”).
3) Those where an alternative is not indicated explicitly, but is clearly present (for
example, “Are you leaving?”).

Therefore, we can say that an alternative is always present in a question. It is an

alternative in the representation. That is, the operation of representation produces an
alternative as its result. The alternative can be given by:

a) two terms that are both indicated explicitly (case 2), or

b) two terms of which only one is explicitly indicated, while the other, which is
implicit, is the negation of the first (case 3), or
c) a term whose meaning is exactly an unsolved alternative, that is, selecting one item
of a group of items that are equal to each other (this is the basic meaning of the terms
in point 1, as we have seen).

The question is the mental operation of the search for the solution of the aforesaid
alternative, that is, searching which term of the alternative to accept while discarding the
other/s. We keep the alternative in the representation (R) present (PK) while, by means of
attention, we look for something in reality that allows us to choose one of the terms of the
alternative. This is generally done by resorting to the knowledge of other people, because, if
the solution is present inside our knowledge, it is often immediately available and therefore
the search for it is so quick that even we are not aware of it. Nevertheless, we sense very well
that sometimes we ask questions to ourselves too, when the aforesaid solution is not
immediately available (for example, “I ask myself how he did”).

9. RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN OS AND OTHER APPROACHES TO

THE STUDY OF COGNITIVE ACTIVITY

As we can understand very well from what has been said up to now, OS lies somewhere
between cognitive psychology and linguistics. Actual or possible relationships between OS
and psycholinguistics (and the related neurolinguistics) can surely be found (even if OS has
an independent origin, as we said). We cannot deal in depth with this subject in this chapter,
which aims to provide a general introduction. Here, we can only mention very briefly the
main actual or possible relationships.
 A Semantics of the Fundamental Structural Elements of Language… 53

1) A central question in psycholinguistics is how human beings manage to create

syntactic sentences, that is, whether syntax is an evolutionary product of increased human
intelligence over time and social factors that encouraged the development of spoken
language, or language exists because humans possess an innate ability, an access to what has
been called a “universal grammar” (the first view is well represented by the mentalistic
theories of J. Piaget, the empiricism of R. Carnap etc; the second point of view can be said to
have begun with N. Chomsky [Chomsky 1959]). With regard to this, OS’s position is an
intermediate one. In fact, in my opinion, it is only the ability of carrying out the EOMC that is
innate. On the contrary, the ability of making up mental categories by means of these
operations, and of building the structure of thought by means of the mental categories, is
acquired and culturally transferred, from generation to generation. The fact that in the various
languages most of the mental categories are common (so that translation is always
substantially possible) derives from the fact that humans live in physical environments that
have a lot of similarities and have more or less the same necessities in communication.
Sometimes these necessities can nevertheless be satisfied in different ways, with the result
that in the various languages there can be some differences both amongst the various mental
categories and the structures of thought that are used. For example, in English there is no
word with the same meaning as the Italian demonstrative adjective/pronoun “codesto”, which
designates a distance from the one who speaks and a closeness to the one who listens (in
English, we can only indicate either a distance from, or a closeness to, the one who speaks).
All of this is in agreement with both the fact that the so-called “linguistic universals”
[Lehmann 1992; Comrie 1989] are really very few and with the well-known fact that the so-
called “feral children” lack language. We can clarify the position of OS about the innate
component of thought/language and the cultural one by means of a simple comparison
between language and the way of eating. There are some peoples who use knife, fork and
spoon in order to eat, some who use sticks, and others who use (or used) their hands. These
customs are acquired and culturally transferred, and differ from each other (in the same way
as the syntax and some mental categories of the various languages can differ from each
other). Nevertheless the gesture of using your hand to put food into your mouth is common to
all humans (in the same way as most of the syntax and mental categories are common to the
various languages), because the fact that humans have arms, hands and a mouth, which are in
a certain reciprocal position, is genetically determined (in the same way as the ability of
carrying out the EOMC is genetically determined) and the fact that we have to put food into
our mouth is a common necessity (in the same way as what humans have to communicate is
largely common).
2) Psycholinguistics also deals with the comparison between human language and
animal communication (for OS’s position with regard to this, see above, p 25) and with
research into the possibility of a partial learning of human language by animals. S.O.I.’s
theoretical approach has also been applied to the latter problem. In fact, within the Lana
Project (USA, 70’s), research into the possibility of linguistic communication between man
and animal (the animal was a female chimpanzee, named Lana), a S.O.I. member, E. von
Glasersfeld, created an artificial language based on Ceccato’s theories. This language (which
comprised some mental categories) allowed the chimpanzee to show her having acquired such
mental abilities to produce sentences, which were grammatically correct and had a sense,
even if they were very simple [Glasersfeld 1989].
54 Giulio Benedetti

3) As regards the application of psycholinguistic methods to OS, the eye tracking

method, used in psycholinguistics to study the cognitive processes related to spoken language
[Tanenhaus, Spivey-Knowlton, Eberhard, Sedivy 1995], was also used by Ceccato as early as
the 60’s. We may hypothesize that the methods of experimental cognitive psychology and
cognitive neuroscience could also be used to verify the hypotheses about the mental
categories formulated in this chapter. For instance, it can be hypothesized that during the
production of the mental categories considered in this chapter, brain areas involved in
selective attention, divided attention or memory (shown by means of techniques such as
fMRI, PET, EEG etc) are differently involved somehow according to the analyses proposed
here.
Recently, An. and Al. Fingelkurts have put forward the hypothesis that there can be a
correspondence between the theory of brain-mind functioning they propose, called
Operational Architectonics (OA; Fingelkurts & Fingelkurts, 2001, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006),
and OS. OA, which was developed starting from Kaplan’s work [Kaplan et al., 1995; Kaplan,
1998, 1999], is an innovative neurobiological theory founded on the joint analysis of
cognitive and electromagnetic data (EEG and MEG) and based, similarly to OS, on the
central notion of “operation”. According to OA, every conscious phenomenon is brought to
existence by the joint operations of functional transient (synchronised) assemblies of neurons,
called Operational Modules (OM). Experiments have been suggested to verify the putative
correspondence between the theoretical frameworks of OA and OS [Benedetti, Marchetti,
Fingelkurts, and Fingelkurts 2009].
As a conclusion, we may say that OS is a general theory concerning linguistic thought
and language, and here it is introduced as such. The methods used by psycholinguistics could
also be applied to OS. Relationships can be found and comparisons can be made between OS
and psycholinguistics (and other approaches). However, the complexity of the subject cannot
be adequately dealt with in such a propedeutical chapter as this.

10. THE LIMITS OF OPERATIONAL SEMANTICS

Even if the theories I have introduced are, at least as outlined in general, correct, we
should nevertheless note that OS allows us to understand the nature and structure of the
processes of thought and language only partially and only up to a certain level of “depth”. In
fact, even if it is possible to identify the meaning of the mental categories, it is instead
impossible to go beyond this level. In fact, OS defines, or describes, the meanings of the
aforesaid linguistic elements in terms of operations of attention, memory etc, but it cannot tell
us how these functions are carried out and what supports them.
Moreover, OS allows us only to “see” what we may call, to use a metaphor, the “bare
skeleton” of thought and language, that is, the mental operations we perform on, and that are
elicited by, our subjective phenomenal experience. That is, to make an example, if we
consider the expression “the colours of flowers”, OS can only account for the meaning of the
word “of” and the morpheme “-s”, but not the words “colour” and “flower”. We have said
that the words with an evident and important reference to something physical are one of the
two fundamental components of human language. In my opinion, we should rather say that
this component is given by words that designate our subjective phenomenal experiences (the
 A Semantics of the Fundamental Structural Elements of Language… 55

so-called “qualia”, or components of “phenomenal consciousness”), which the physical world

somehow elicits inside us, and which we “project” outside our mind, identifying them exactly
with the physical world. Apart from the inferences of science, our subjective phenomenal
experience is the only thing that puts us into relationship with the physical world. Therefore,
our subjective phenomenal experience is so usual for us that we are led to identify it with the
physical world. That is, we are led to believe that “there, outside us” there are light, colours,
sounds, etc. In my opinion, it is absolutely not so. “There, outside us” are electromagnetic
waves, mechanical vibrations, etc, which invariably make us feel the sensations of light,
colour, sound, etc, but which are not these sensations. The sensations exist only inside us (for
a similar view, see Revonsuo, 2006). This is not evident because, as we have said, our
phenomenal experience is the only, therefore usual, direct intermediary with the physical
world; and because, for each of most of the various kinds of sensations, there is only one
external stimulus that can produce it (that is, only electromagnetic radiation gives us the
sensation of light and colour, mechanical vibrations give us the sensation of sound, etc). But
for some kind of sensations it is not so. For instance, there is no specific external stimulus for
the sensation of pain. In other words, “there, outside us”, there is no “pain”: there are only
various physical events that, by means of the physical mechanism of cell lesion with the
emission of potassium ions, etc, make us feel the sensation of “pain” (in a completely
unknown way), but that are absolutely not “pain” (nor is cell lesion “pain”). It is the same for
any other sensation. The only difference is that for most kinds of sensations there is, almost
always, stimulus specificity (the few exceptions are the well-known phenomena such as the
strong compression of the eyeball, which elicits a sensation of light, etc).
Thus, a fundamental part of our thought, which is designated by language (that is, a
fundamental part of the general problem of Semantics, i.e., “what does language designate?”)
is exactly our subjective phenomenal experience. OS cannot tell us anything about this (for a
different opinion, starting from the presuppositions of OS, see Marchetti 2006).

11. POSSIBLE PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS OF OS:

IMPLEMENTATION OF A MACHINE TRANSLATION PROGRAM
OF A NEW KIND

The correlational theory of thought has allowed the conception of a device for the
implementation of a machine translation17 program, which should allow us to achieve a
noticeably better translation quality than that of the programs available today, especially
when the source language is a language with very little morphology and a lot of ambiguities,
such as English, and the target language is a language with rich or very rich morphology
(such as French, Spanish, Italian, German, Russian, etc). This device is described in detail in
Benedetti 2005d18. What the program should allow us to achieve is not a good translation, but
what the programs available today do not guarantee, that is, an output text which is generally
understandable and without big distortions, so that the user who does not understand a certain

17
The references for the history and the state-of-the-art of machine translation are: Hutchins 1986, 1992, 1999,
2001a,b, 2002, 2003.
18
This device was conceived by Ceccato and his collaborators in this project (Ceccato 1969; Glasersfeld, Pisani
1970). Only minor modifications and the description, which is rather different from the original one, are my own.
56 Giulio Benedetti

language can understand a text written in that language. The characteristics, which make this
program different from all others, are the following.

1) The device is based on the correlational theory of thought, which is, as we saw, a
radically new and deeply different linguistic theory from the other linguistic theories.
2) Basing itself on this theory, the program simulates, even if does not reproduce, a part
of what the human beings actually do by using their intelligence when they translate,
that is, rebuilding the structure of thought that corresponds to speech and choosing
the meaning of a word (when a word may have more than one meaning) according to
the sense of the sentence. In this way, the main problem that machine translation has
always had, that is, the fact that the programs do not understand what they have to
translate, is tackled and, in a wide part, solved at its root (even if thanks to an
artifice).
3) The device is the only one that is completely and exclusively based on a single
linguistic theory.
4) The device is the only one that is conceived by the persons who proposed the
linguistic theory which the device itself is based on.
5) The number of ways in which the words making up a sentence can combine
according to the correlational theory of thought is a finite number and not particularly
high (it can be mathematically calculated starting from the number of words in the
sentence and the number of the explicit correlators present in it). The program
generates all the possible combinations (in order to examine them later), therefore the
right combination is also surely produced.

The program does not seem particularly difficult to implement from the theoretical point
of view and does not require any special hardware or software technology. Therefore, this
program could be implemented even now. The only problem that the implementation of this
program presents is the fact that the human work needed to construct the extremely complex
“notional spheres” the program is provided with (these notional spheres allows us to simulate
the translation of the human being as described in 2) increases exponentially as the number of
dictionary entries increases. Therefore, this is not a theoretical but a practical problem.
Nevertheless, a first level experimentation in order to verify the validity of the program is, on
the contrary, rather simple. We can start by providing the program with a very small
dictionary, a dictionary of a few dozen words. Even with so few words we can build a large
number of sentences and can check that the program does not make the kind of errors that are
commonly found with current programs.

CONCLUSION
In this chapter, the author has stressed the fact that words and morphemes seem divisible,
as far as the nature of their meaning is concerned, in at least two main classes: 1) elements
that seem to make an evident and specific reference to something physical; 2) elements that
do not seem to refer (or refer only) to something physical. Class 2 consists mainly of the
words that we may call “grammatical” (prepositions, conjunctions, interrogative-indefinite-
 A Semantics of the Fundamental Structural Elements of Language… 57

relative pronouns or adjectives, demonstrative adjectives and pronouns, main adverbs of

place, time, manner etc, pronouns/adjectives of quantity, numerals, negation, fundamental
verbs like “to be”, “to have”, etc) and of most morphemes of the large number of languages
that have a more or less rich morphology. The elements of class 2, even if they are much less
numerous than those of the first class, are almost always, as a class, the main component of
any speech and seem absolutely indispensable in order to speak. Therefore, it seems possible
to affirm that until we have understood the nature of the meaning of these words and
morphemes we shall not understand the nature of a fundamental component of thought and
language. In this chapter the author has tackled the problem of the semantics of these
linguistic elements, introducing a radically new theory (Operational Semantics) about the
nature of their meaning and of thought-language in general. This theory is based on the
fundamental assumption that the meanings of these linguistic elements are sequences of
operations within cognitive functions, amongst which attention plays a key role. The author
has shown that, basing ourselves on this assumption, it is possible to account for these
meanings.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am grateful to Giorgio Marchetti, for his assistance in preparing this chapter; I am also
grateful to Alexander A. and Andrew A. Fingelkurts, collaborating with them helped me
outlining this paper. The English has been kindly revised by Mrs Wendy Piemonte.

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Chapter 2

A NEW PERSPECTIVE ON HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS

Giorgio Marchetti*
University of Urbino, Italy

ABSTRACT
The aim of this paper is to provide an answer to a fundamental question concerning
human consciousness: how can we explain the phenomenal quality of our conscious
experiences? It is argued that the first-person perspective is the most suitable one to deal
with conscious experience. Accordingly, a model is developed on the idea that the person
emerges as an entity from the organism’s continuous application of its own energy to
itself. The model is composed of two main parts: the perceptual system and the schema of
self. The perceptual system makes it possible for an organism to be conscious, whereas
the schema of self provides the rules that make an organism perceive, move, act, behave,
and live in general. The stream of consciousness arises from the uninterrupted interaction
of these two systems. The core part of the model is represented by attention. Attention,
which is the activity the organism can perform thanks to the nervous energy supplied by
the organ of attention, gives the organism the possibility of performing actions capable of
directly varying the organism’s state of nervous energy. It is this variation that constitutes
the phenomenal aspect of consciousness. When acting, the organism can directly
experience and feel its actions and the results of its actions, thus making possible the
delimitation and emergence of the person.

Keywords: Consciousness, Attention, Nervous Energy, Organ of Attention, Perception,

Schema of Self

INTRODUCTION
In this paper I will try to tackle the main problem of human consciousness: how can we
explain the phenomenal quality of conscious experience? Many researchers have tried to
solve this problem by adopting a third-person perspective. I argue that this perspective is not

*
Corresponding author: Email: [email protected], [email protected]
64 Giorgio Marchetti

the most appropriate when analyzing the phenomenal aspect of consciousness, and that a first-
person perspective must be adopted instead. To support my argument, I will compare the two
perspectives, and present the main drawbacks of the third-person perspective. I will then
present my model of consciousness which is developed on a first-person perspective.
The model is composed of two main systems, the perceptual system and the schema of
self. The perceptual system is principally based on the organ of attention, sense-organs,
somatosensory organs, and a working memory: it enables the organism to be conscious and
provides the products that will be processed by the schema of self and contribute to update
and modify it. The schema of self, largely based on innate schemas of action and a long-term
memory, provides the rules which make our organism perceive, move, act in general and
interact with other organisms. From the uninterrupted interaction of the schema of self and
the perceptual system the stream of consciousness arises.
The schema of self - once it has learnt and embodied the notion that the organism, by
means of conscious perceiving, is able to affect the course of its own actions - provides the
organism with a new degree of freedom that gives it the possibility of directly controlling
itself. This constitutes the fundamental passage from consciousness to self-consciousness.
Attention is the core part of the perceptual system: it is not only responsible for the
selective aspect of consciousness, but also for its phenomenal quality. The organ of attention
is the source of the organism’s nervous energy; nervous energy is a kind of physical energy
and it gives the organism the possibility of operating attentionally; the attentional activity
performed by the organism induces a variation in the state of the nervous energy of the
organism. It is this variation that constitutes the phenomenal aspect of consciousness. The
person emerges as an entity from the organism’s continuous application of its own energy to
itself: when acting, the organism can directly experience and feel its actions and the results of
its actions, thus making possible the delimitation and emergence of the person.
A final section is dedicated to the discussion of the empirical and logical plausibility of
the three main assumptions on attention implied by my model of consciousness: attention is
necessary for consciousness; attentional activity can be performed because we are provided
with the organ of attention that produces nervous energy; attentional activity directly affects
the organ of attention, causing a modification of the state of the nervous energy itself, which
constitutes the phenomenal aspect of consciousness.

1. THE MAIN PROBLEM OF CONSCIOUSNESS: QUALIA

Many models of consciousness have been proposed in the last decades. Even though most
have tackled some important aspects of consciousness, very often offering viable solutions,
practically none have successfully addressed what can be considered the main problem of
consciousness: its phenomenal and qualitative aspect, or what philosophers call “qualia”, that
is, the fact that every time we consciously experience something - whether a colour, a sound,
pain, pleasure, or something else -, we have a direct experience of it, we “feel” it.
The inadequacy of current theories of consciousness and of available scientific tools to
cope with the subjective and qualitative aspect of consciousness has been shown by many
authors (see for example Chalmers 1996, Di Francesco 2000, Searle 1992, Zeman 2001).
Theoretical positions on consciousness range from those which do not even admit the
 A New Perspective on Human Consciousness 65

legitimacy of the concepts of consciousness and qualia - the so called eliminativist ones
(Churchland 1983, Dennett 1991, Rey 1983, Wilkes 1988); to those which, even though they
admit the importance of qualia, nevertheless fail to account for them – the reductionist ones
(Baars 1988, Crick 1994, Edelman 1989, Edelman and Tononi 2000); to the dualist ones,
which, despite taking consciousness seriously, are not able to explain its causal properties and
its interactions with the physical world (Block 1995, Chalmers 1996, McGinn 1991).
In my opinion, the fact that no model of consciousness has so far successfully addressed
the problem of the phenomenal aspect of consciousness is due to the lack of a proper
theoretical perspective that could exhaustively and coherently account for it: which I have
called the “first-person perspective” (Marchetti 2001). Most of the current and dominating
models of consciousness originate mainly from the long-established “third-person
perspective” usually adopted in empirical sciences; only few attempts have been made at
elaborating a theory based on a first-person perspective, among which Damasio (1999),
Evans’ (1970) proposal of the “self-approach”, Marchetti’s (2001) theory of consciousness,
and Varela’s (1996, 1999) and Varela and Shear’s (1999) proposal to reconcile the first- and
the third-person approach to consciousness. The importance of the first-person perspective is
also acknowledged by Vogeley and Fink (2003), even though mainly in relation to a specific,
albeit fundamental, manifestation of consciousness, that is, self-consciousness.
Let us analyze the main differences between the third-person perspective and my
proposal of a first-person perspective, and let us consider some examples of theories of
consciousness based on a third-person perspective, so as to see the typical drawbacks it
entails.

2. TWO DIFFERENT APPROACHES TO CONSCIOUSNESS:

THIRD-PERSON PERSPECTIVES AND FIRST-PERSON PERSPECTIVES
2.1. A Comparison between the Two Approaches

The main differences between the third-person perspective and my proposal of a first-
person perspective can be so summarized (see also Table 1):

(a) Third-person perspectives approach a person’s conscious state by describing and

analyzing it from the point of view of an external observer. A first-person perspective
approaches a person’s conscious state by describing and analyzing it from the point
of view of the person who is experiencing that conscious state. Here it is important to
highlight that by “describing and analyzing a person’s conscious state from a first-
person perspective” I do not mean capturing its phenomenal and qualitative aspect:
actually, there is no possibility of transmitting from a person to another person the
“what it’s like” qualitative character of a great part of conscious states (unless, most
probably, one takes a cable made of neurons from one person’s brain area and
connects it directly to the same area of another person, as suggested by
Ramachandran and Hirstein 1997), in the sense that we can never know what another
person really experiences when seeing “red”, and whether his/her experience of “red”
is the same as ours (I say for “a great part” because there is an important exception:
66 Giorgio Marchetti

the meanings of words. In fact, when someone says that “he has seen red” we know
perfectly well what he means by saying this, because we have the same linguistic and
semantic conscious experience as he has, even though we cannot know what he
really feels in seeing red, and if he feels the same thing as we feel). Rather, by
“describing and analyzing a person’s conscious state from a first-person perspective”
I mean understanding how phenomenal experiences are generated by a person who
creates them.
(b) Third-person perspectives analyze the person’s conscious state in relation either to
some of its characteristics that can be observed by the external observer (for
example: being “unique” albeit “unitary”; reflecting the binding of diverse
modalities; being “serially ordered”) or to some other observable event (the person’s
brain neural states, the person’s external behavioral reactions, etc.). A first-person
perspective describes and analyzes the person’s conscious state in relation to the
emergence, formation and development of the person. Here, “emerges” means “being
able to exist as a person”, that is, as an entity distinct and differentiated from other
entities, beings, and objects. The process of differentiation from other entities implies
that the person has the capacity to determine his/her own limits and boundaries, and
concurrently the limits and boundaries of other entities: simply put, to determine the
relation existing between him-herself and other entities.
(c) In third-person perspectives, the person’s conscious state, being described and
analyzed from the point of view of the external observer, acquires the characteristics
(whether they are its being “unique”, “serially ordered”, “largely widespread and
broadcast”, or else) assigned to it by the external observer (rather than by the person
him-herself). This implies that it assumes and inherits all the functions, meanings,
and values that the external observer – more or less unconsciously, unintentionally or
unadvertedly – introduces and brings along with him when describing and analyzing
it. In a first-person perspective, the characteristics of the person’s conscious state
derive from the person’s activity, and, conversely, the person characterizes according
to, and emerges from, his/her continuously producing conscious states;
(d) In third-person perspectives, the role of the person in constituting and characterizing
his/her conscious states (and conversely, the role of conscious states in constituting
and characterizing the person in turn) are completely overlooked by the external
observer. Actually, the characteristics introduced by the external observer (for
example, the “uniqueness” of the conscious state, or its being “serially ordered”, etc.)
are the result of a person’s (that is, the external observer’s) activity. But, being
surreptitiously introduced, they cannot be, and are not, analyzed as such (that is, as
the result of the person’s activity). Consequently, they magically appear as inherent,
a-priori characteristics, as primary data of a ready-made world, whereas on the
contrary they are (a-posteriori) duplications of products of the person’s activity. This
gives rise – among other things - to problems of circularity and endless regression:
what is a result of the person’s activity is taken to be a basic constituent of that very
activity. In a first-person perspective, the role of the person in constituting and
characterizing his/her conscious states is fully taken into account. Nothing is
surreptitiously introduced, and everything is analyzed and explained as a product of
the person’s activity. Conscious states are not constituted by a-priori characteristics.
 A New Perspective on Human Consciousness 67

Table 1. The main differences between third-person and first-person perspectives

Third-person perspective First-person

perspective
What point of The external observer Some kinds of external The person who is
view it implies observation: experiencing the
conscious state
Behaviorism
Information-processing
approach
How it In relation to Some kinds of observable In relation to the
analyzes the characteristics of the characteristics: emergence,
person’s conscious state or of formation and
conscious state some other events Phenomenal development of
observable by an characteristics of the the person
external observer conscious state
Neurophysiological
characteristics of the
brain
How it The person’s Some examples of The characteristics
characterizes conscious state characteristics assigned by of the person’s
the person’s acquires the the external observer: conscious state
conscious state characteristics derive from the
assigned to it by the The uniqueness and person’s activity
external observer unitary appearance of
conscious states
(Edelman and Tononi
2000);
Conscious states are
largely widespread and
broadcast (Baars 1988)
Reentry (Edelman 1989)
Coherent oscillations
(Singer 1993)
Quantum processes in
neuron microtubules
(Penrose 1994)
Sensorimotor
contingencies (O’Regan
& Noë 2001)
What role it Completely Main drawbacks entailed by Fully taken into
assigns to the overlooked third-person perspectives: account
person in
constituting Circularity, Endless
his/her regression
conscious Representationalism
states
68 Giorgio Marchetti

2.2. A Critical Review of Some Models of Consciousness Based on the

Third-Person Perspective

As we have seen, third-person perspectives describe and analyze the person’s conscious
state in relation to some of the characteristics of the conscious state itself that can be observed
by the external observer. This is the case, for example, of Baars’ (1988, 1997a) Global
Workspace model, and Edelman and Tononi’s (2000) Dynamic Core hypothesis (see also
Edelman 2003).
Baar’s Global Workspace model is mainly based on the “theater” metaphor of
consciousness, that is, the idea that consciousness is the “publicity” organ of the brain.
Fundamentally, the “theater” metaphor tries to account for a specific characteristic of
conscious experience: that is, its capacity to combine the various and different kinds of
information processed by our brain (sensory signals, memories, etc.) into one single kind of
“message” that, being widely broadcast, dominates, and prevails over all the others.
Consciousness would be a facility for accessing, disseminating, and exchanging information
in the brain, and for exercising global coordination and control. Indeed, only a fraction of the
brain would seem to directly support conscious experience: Baars’ (1988) proposal includes
the reticular formation of the brain stem and midbrain, the outer shell of the thalamus and the
set of neurons projecting upward from the thalamus to the cerebral cortex. Together they
provide the stage for the unconscious audience in the rest of the brain. Baars’ model is
certainly highly valuable in explaining a number of cognitive processes: the subject’s access
to information, the influence of unconscious processors, voluntary control, the development
of a self-concept, etc. But, as Chalmers (1996) observes, the question of why these processes
should give rise to phenomenal experience is simply not addressed. The best that Baars’
theory can do is to state that the information processed within the Global Workspace is
experienced because it is globally accessible. But the question of why global accessibility
should give rise to conscious experience remains unanswered. Not having directly and
positively addressed the problem of the phenomenal aspect of consciousness, but rather
having addressed derivative characteristics of conscious states (such as being “largely
widespread and broadcast”), Baars’ model can explain the latter, but not the former.
Edelman and Tononi’s (2000; see also Edelman 2003) Dynamic Core hypothesis tries to
account for the contrast between the diversity and changeability of conscious states and the
unitary appearance to the conscious individual of each conscious state, that is, for the fact that
any particular conscious scene is experienced at once as “integrated”, “all of a piece” and as
“differentiated”, in the sense of being “unique”. The dynamic core hypothesis proposes that
the occurrence of any particular conscious state correlates with a “highly informative
discrimination” in a multidimensional space of signals: in neural terms, this would mean that
the neural mechanisms underlying consciousness consist of a functional cluster in the
thalamocortical system, within which reentrant neuronal interactions yield a succession of
differentiated yet unitary metastable states. The dynamic core hypothesis also proposes a
quantitative way of measuring “neural complexity” (that is, the extent to which the dynamics
of a neural system are both integrated and differentiated), high values of which are suggested
to accompany consciousness. Edelman and Tononi, despite providing a neural explanation of
qualia (in their view, qualia correspond to the higher-order discriminations entailed by the
activity of the neural system), admit that a third-person description of qualia cannot presume
to replicate the experience that they imply, and that only an individual can experience the
 A New Perspective on Human Consciousness 69

qualitative properties of qualia: which is tantamount to acknowledging the impossibility for a

third-person analysis to fully and properly account for any subjective phenomenal state.
Moreover, having based their model of consciousness on some of the characteristics of
conscious states (the “uniqueness” of each conscious state, combined with its unitary
appearance), they are led to explain the phenomenal aspect of consciousness precisely in
terms of those characteristics: consequently, they can only state that the specific property of
each quale is determined by the distinctions among the entire set of experienced qualia. This
is a typical structural description of phenomena, according to which a given phenomenon is
defined on the basis of the relations it has with phenomena of the same kind or level. Such a
structural description unavoidably engenders a circular explanation of qualia, which it is
impossible to get out of, and which cannot provide any positive account of why a certain
differentiated yet unitary metastable neural state should turn into a certain phenomenal
experience, and why the phenomenal experience should possess precisely the qualitative
characteristics it has.
Third-person perspectives describe and analyze the person’s conscious state in relation
not only to some of the characteristics of the conscious state itself, but also to some other kind
of observable characteristic, such as the neurophysiological characteristics of the brain. This
is precisely what Edelman does, by putting forward his model of consciousness based on the
idea of “reentry” (1989, 1992; see also Reeke and Edelman 1995). Reentry is a form of
ongoing, reciprocal exchange of signals between neuronal repertoires along parallel
anatomical connections. Reentry assures that responses are correlated across different
neuronal repertoires at any one time and across similar sensory signalling patterns occurring
at different times; it provides: a) pathways that allow current sensory signals to evoke
memorial responses in appropriate repertoires; b) a means by which these responses can
interact with current responses; c) and, through these interactions, the basis for categorization,
learning, and consciousness. According to Edelman, both primary consciousness - which
includes an awareness of the world, mental images, but lacks a concept of self and is
restricted to the present time - and higher-order consciousness - which includes self-
awareness, a sense of time, and language – would arise as a result of re-entrant connectivity
and signalling between different neuronal groups of different areas of the brain.
Proposals such as those made by Edelman (1989), which correlate consciousness with
some neurophysiological property, present at least two drawbacks. Firstly, they induce us to
believe that they are based only on a purely neurophysiological description or analysis, and
that no other analytical level is involved. Obviously, this is wrong. If we consider Edelman’s
proposal, for example, we can see that his idea that consciousness arises as a result of re-
entrant connectivity and signalling between different neuronal groups of different areas of the
brain is inspired by one of the main features of consciousness, which is the possibility it gives
us of continuously accessing, monitoring and controlling our own conscious functioning and
products: this shows that a neurophysiological description of consciousness is never pure or
sufficient, and that it must always be preceded or accompanied by some kind of consideration
deriving from observations that are performed at some other and different level (for example,
the one characteristic of folk psychology: on this point, see Pylyshyn, 1984; see also
Humphrey 2006).
Secondly, as observed by O’Regan & Noë (2001), the problem with proposals such as
Edelman’s is that they do little to elucidate the mystery of consciousness. The presence of
some neurophysiological characteristics, such as Edelman’s re-entrant signalling between
70 Giorgio Marchetti

cortical maps, Singer’s (1993) coherent oscillations, or Penrose’s (1994) quantum processes
in neuron microtubules, does not in itself explain the phenomenal quality of conscious
experiences. Even if one particular mechanism – for example, coherent oscillations - were
proven to correlate perfectly with some behavioral measure of consciousness, the solution of
the problem of consciousness would simply be postponed: indeed, why and how should
coherent oscillations generate consciousness? After all, oscillations are observed in many
other branches of science, where they do not generate consciousness.
As we have seen, one of the main problems with third-person approaches is the
circularity brought about by the external observer who, while analyzing the mechanism of
consciousness from his point of view (rather than from the person’s), unavoidably tends to
assign to the person’s consciousness some ready-made, unanalyzed characteristics (which he
himself formed and developed by means of his consciousness), considering them as its basic
constituent (rather than its products). One typical example of this problem is the opinion that
somewhere in our brain we have an internal representation of the outside world, and that
when the representation is activated, we have the kind of vivid and rich conscious experience
we all share. This opinion mistakes the result of a process (the vivid, qualitative experience of
something) for the basic component of the process itself, thus bringing about circularity,
along with all the drawbacks it usually entails. If the phenomenal experience of something
derives from the representation we have in our brain of that something, what is the difference
between the former and the latter? What are the laws connecting the two? What is the need
for us to consciously experience something if we already possess its representation? If the
representation has already the qualities it is supposed to account for, where do they come
from, given the fact that “experiencing” them cannot account for them? The hypothesis of the
existence of internal representation generates more questions and problems than it is supposed
to solve. O’Regan & Noë (2001) also show, as far as vision is concerned, the ineffectiveness
of the representationalist view: indeed, in order to assure the visual stability and congruity of
what is seen, it makes whoever adopts it postulate additional and uneconomical mechanisms
that have to compensate for phenomena such as the blind spot, retinal non-homogeneities, the
smear that is created by eye saccades. Moreover, as observed by Morris (2004), the
representationalist view begs the question of how a brain-state becomes a representation, that
is, becomes something different and more than firings of neurons. Appealing to activation
levels in a neural network is not enough if we cannot say how they come to be
representations: how are we to locate the difference by virtue of which they represent all and
only those things that they are supposed to represent? We beg the question if we answer by
referring to what counts as different for us: indeed, they represent something for us, but are
they representations for the brain? What is it that makes the representations represent what
they are supposed to represent, and not, instead, the level of glutamate in the brain?
O’Regan & Noë’s (2001) proposal to overcome the problems raised by the
representationalist view consists in considering conscious perception as something we do, as
a mode of exploring the environment in ways mediated by the knowledge of what they call
“sensorimotor contingencies”. In their view, the qualitative experience we have when we see
an object would consist in the knowledge of the relevant sensorimotor contingencies, that is,
in knowing that if we make a certain eye movement, the object will change in the particular
way typical of what happens when we move our eyes. The differences in the qualitative
character of perceptual experiences would correspond to differences in the character of the
relevant sensorimotor contingencies.
 A New Perspective on Human Consciousness 71

In my opinion, O’Regan & Noë’s (2001) account of conscious experience suffers from
the kind of circularity I have described above. If seeing involves testing and mastering the
changes that occur through eye, body and attention movements, then the question would now
become: How are these “changes” perceived? Who perceives the “changes”? Who is doing
the testing? Is there some agent or homunculus perceiving them? Who possesses the
knowledge of the sensorimotor contingencies? O’Regan & Noë seem to overlook the fact that
their account of conscious experience presupposes, but does not explain, the existence of a
person who detects and tests the changes, who knows what will happen when his/her eye will
move in a certain direction, and so on: indeed, in order to detect a certain change, there must
be someone who detects it, and for whom the change has certain implications, a certain
meaning or value. Moreover, as Manzotti and Sandini (2001) observe, O’Regan & Noë’s
proposal raises the question of why sensorimotor contingencies should explain subjective
experience, given the fact that it seems perfectly conceivable that sensorimotor contingencies
can exist without any visual qualities or phenomenal experience at all.

3. A NEW MODEL OF CONSCIOUSNESS BASED

ON THE FIRST-PERSON PERSPECTIVE

All the examples we have seen in the preceding section show that the third-person
perspective is not suitable to tackle the phenomenal aspect of consciousness, because of the
incompatibilities between its “objective” methods of investigation and the specific
characteristics of the subjective sphere. In order to properly account for it, a different kind of
perspective must be adopted: the first-person perspective. The first-person perspective
overcomes the drawbacks of the third-person perspective by fully taking into account the role
of the person in constituting and characterizing his/her conscious states, and avoiding to
surreptitiously introduce external, ready-made characteristics into its analyses and
descriptions of the person’s conscious state.
In the following paragraphs, I will present my model of human consciousness which was
developed using a first-person perspective. Essentially, this model is based on the continuous
interaction of two systems:

1. the perceptual system and

2. the schema of self.

The perceptual system, principally based on the organ of attention, sense-organs,

somatosensory organs, and a working memory (in which the products of the attentional
activity previously performed - such as memories, concepts, meanings of words, thoughts -
can be processed), enables the organism to be conscious and provides the products that will
be processed by the schema of self and contribute to update and modify it. These products
derive from the operations performed by the perceptual system either on the organism or on
the environment.
Conversely, the schema of self, largely based on innate schemas of action and a long-
term memory, provides the rules which make our organism perceive, move, act in general and
interact with other organisms. As a consequence, it provides not only the instructions for the
72 Giorgio Marchetti

perceptual system but also the raw material it has to work out: in fact, the actions performed
by the organism can be perceived by the perceptual system (even the very action of
perceiving) and become available under the form of conscious perceptions for the schema of
self. The latter in turn works on the basis of these perceptions to issue a new instruction for
the perpetual system and for the organism.
The uninterrupted interaction of the two systems generates the stream of consciousness
(James 1890); each interaction between the two systems generates a specific and unique
perception. The uniqueness of each “pulse of consciousness” (James 1890) is determined by
the particular instructions that the schema of self gives each time to the perceptual system.
These instructions in turn vary each time because of the modification of the schema of self by
the conscious perceptions. The consistency and coherence of the stream is ensured by the
presence of the schema of self, which tends to run the perceptual system and the organism in
general according to a hierarchy of principles, goals and rules at the top of which there is one
fundamental principle: the principle of survival, which can operationally be translated into the
following imperative “operate in order to continue to operate”.
The perceptual system acts as a monitor that continuously checks what is going on inside
and outside the organism, and informs the schema of self. Without this kind of information,
the schema of self would be kept in the dark about what has happened or is happening within
itself and in the environment.
As we will see, what counts more is that the perceptual system provides the schema of
self with the necessary information for the definition and development of a self, that is, for its
differentiation from the environment.
The fact that the perceptual system monitors the organism implies that the operations and
activities of the organism are consciously perceived only after they have been performed. We
become aware of what we do only after we have done it (see for example, Libet 2004: but on
the limits of Libet’s theory about voluntary acts, see Marchetti 2005). Evidence of this is
given by our daily experience: sometimes, we become aware of what we wanted to say only
after having said it.
The fact that the schema of self is updated and fed by the perceptual system implies that
conscious products play a causal role in human behavior. They not only contribute to modify
the schema of self, but supply the organism with the capacity to act autonomously and
voluntarily. As Cimatti (2000) points out, the only condition necessary for this to happen is
that the organism has a language, and that it uses it not only to communicate its own
intentions or the events happening in the environments to other organisms, as animals do, but
also to communicate with itself, directing its own attention to itself and to its attentional
system (and, consequently, to someone else’s attentional system).
In such a way, the organism is able to control its own attention and actions, and act
intentionally. This is what happens when someone says to oneself that it is time to stand up,
and then one stands up. This is also what happens when someone tells someone else to
control him/herself, and the latter acts accordingly. By repeating these kinds of operations, the
schema of self assimilates the notions of autonomy and self-regulation, thus giving the
organism the ability to control and plan its own activities.
Now let us see in details how the perceptual system and the schema of self work.
 A New Perspective on Human Consciousness 73

3.1. The Perceptual System

As we have seen in the preceding section, the most suitable perspective to analyze a
sentient person is the first-person perspective, because it is centered on the process by means
of which a person emerges as such and comes into existence. Such a person can be said to
exist and be so when he/she can delimit and control him-herself, his/her operations,
movements and intentions, according to the impact his/her actions have on him-herself. This
implies that he/she is able to perform a kind of activity that gives him/her the possibility of
directly knowing him-herself and defining his/her limits. The direct experiences he/she has of
him-herself contribute to form and constitute him/her. For instance, the activity he/she
performs when trying to reach something unsuccessfully has a direct effect on him-herself, in
the sense of modulating his/her own pool of nervous energy by either blocking the nervous
energy flow, re-directing its course, or further stimulating it in the same direction (what I
mean here by “nervous energy” will become clearer in the following paragraphs: a detailed
description is given in sections 4.2 and 4.3). This effect, which constitutes the “feeling” the
person has, immediately gives the person the dimension of his/her effort, and the boundaries
of his/her body. We could say that the form the person assumes is the outcome of the activity
that produces his/her experiences: the person is the result of this activity. It is this activity that
gives the person the possibility of existing as such, because only by performing it can the
person take a form and differentiate him/herself from other beings and objects. Therefore,
describing what a person feels and experiences is describing this activity and its course.
How can this activity make a person have experiences and feelings? I think that an
explanation can be found if we conceive:

(a) The person as the outcome of a special kind of activity (let us call it “attentional
activity”) performed by an organism thanks to a special kind of energy (let us call it
“nervous energy”) that is supplied by one of its organs (let us call it the “organ of
attention”). By means of this energy, the organism can pilot itself by controlling and
running some of its organs (the motor organs, the sense-organs, the organ of attention
itself, the somatosensory organs, working memory, and the schema of self). This
energy is physical and most probably not of a simple kind, but a combination of
different kinds: chemical, electrical, etc.). The “organ of attention” is the physical
substrate or the nervous structure that is responsible for the production of nervous
energy.
(b) The attentional activity the person performs as what makes his/her state of nervous
energy change. This can happen indirectly, through the action of the person on the
world, and the subsequent re-action of the world on the person, or directly, through
the action of the person on him-herself;
(c) The conscious experience the person has as the change of the state of nervous energy
resulting from performing the attentional activity.

As one can see, this proposal implies three strong assumptions on attention, namely:
attention is necessary for consciousness; attentional activity can be performed because we are
provided with the organ of attention that produces nervous energy; attentional activity directly
affects the organ of attention, causing a modification of the state of nervous energy itself,
which constitutes the phenomenal aspect of consciousness. Since the analysis of the empirical
74 Giorgio Marchetti

and logical plausibility of these assumptions deserves a specific and detailed discussion, I will
dedicate the last section of this work to it, preferring to first present my model of
consciousness.
It should be noted that some other authors also highlight the fact that conscious
experiences are the product of the person’s activity, even though they do not identify this
activity with attention. For example, Humphrey (2006, p. 14) claims that sensations are
something that the person creates: “Something that does not exist before he looks at the
screen, and will vanish when he closes his eyes. Some thing indeed, a new fact of his own
making”. Humphrey, however, adopting a typically third-person perspective, and more
precisely a behaviorist one, can only conceive sensation as a response to the sensory stimulus
(2006, p. 54), and “feeling sensation” as the self-monitoring by the person of his/her own
response (2006, p. 90). Consequently, he cannot explain the qualitative aspect of qualia, nor
can he avoid falling into the circularity implied by the third-person approach: in fact, how can
one explain the “self-monitoring” by the person of his/her own response? Is this self-
monitoring still a kind of response? But if it is still a kind of response, there must be someone
else who monitors this further response, and so on, in an endless regression.
In my opinion, we can satisfactorily account for the way the person’s activity gives origin
to consciousness only if we identify this activity with attention, and if we suppose that we can
perform attentional activity thanks to the nervous energy supplied by the organ of attention.
In this view, attention has a central and active role. Every time we direct our attention
towards an object, we spend our nervous energy on it. At this point, a change in the state of
nervous energy may occur, thus making us perceive or feel the object. Clear evidence of this
can be found in very common situations. When having certain “negative” sensations, our
activity tends to be slowed down or blocked: sensations of sorrow, pain, tiredness, depression,
and so on, precisely consist in a reduction or block of our energy flow, as if an obstacle was
put in the way of our operating (as a consequence of either a full consumption of our nervous
energy or a block of the input flow of energy). Conversely, “positive” sensations, such as
happiness, wellness, freshness, and so on, consist in a beneficial restoration, facilitation or
stimulation of our energy flow.
Even sensations that are not as strong give us evidence of the change that our state of
nervous energy undergoes because of the working of attention. When we intend to perceive
the surface of an object by touching it, we focus our attention on our fingertips: if a limitation
is imposed on us, and we cannot further expand our movements and nervous energy in that
direction or dimension, then we have a sensation of “hard”. On the contrary, a sensation of
“soft” arises when we can further expand our nervous energy, as if we had not yet reached a
limit.
Therefore, a person’s feelings and conscious experiences are the direct result of his/her
applying and using his/her attention (whether on the sense-organs, the somatosensory organs,
working memory, or attention itself). What he/she does changes his/her state of nervous
energy, thus immediately affecting it, and his/her following actions and behavior: that is, the
attentional activity performed by the person involves a temporary variation or disequilibrium
in the state of his/her nervous energy. This variation or disequilibrium constitutes the
phenomenal aspect of consciousness. The amount of nervous energy necessary for the
organism to reestablish the equilibrium represents the quantitative aspect of the sensation.
The person as such emerges from his/her continuously performing the attentional activity,
that is, from his/her continuously using and applying his/her nervous energy. Every time the
 A New Perspective on Human Consciousness 75

person uses his/her nervous energy, the action performed affects his/her source of nervous
energy (either blocking the nervous energy flow, or stimulating it, or in some other way), thus
resulting in a possible change of the state of nervous energy. These changes of the state of
nervous energy constitute the temporary boundaries and limits of the person’s activity: as
such, they give form to and characterize the person’s activity, while also giving form to and
characterizing the person him-herself. Therefore, the form the person takes is a result of the
way the person applies his/her nervous energy, that is, of the amount of nervous energy used
and of the specific dimension (whether physical - visual, tactile, muscular, etc. -,
psychological, social, or else) to which the person applies it.
In my model of consciousness, attention no longer plays the purely passive and
subsidiary role - with respect to consciousness - that is usually assigned to it by a typically
third-person perspective: the information-processing approach. The information-processing
approach describes attention as something passive. The metaphors used to describe it,
whether a filter (Broadbent 1958), a zoom lens (Eriksen & St. James 1986), a spotlight that
moves (Tsal 1983), a gate (Reeves and Sperling 1986), or a selective, amplifying channel (La
Berge 1995), all imply that it is seen as a privileged route for events to enter our mind or
consciousness, that is, as a kind of mechanism which, letting information come in and be
processed by some other device, plays a marginal, passive role. In such a way, the core
problem of consciousness - how can we explain the fact that we have subjective, direct
experiences of objects? - is devolved to another organ, for example an operating system
(Johnson-Laird 1983, 1988), a central processor (Umiltà 1988) or a supervisory system
(Shallice 1988). In so doing, however, the information-processing approach does not provide
an answer to the problem of consciousness, but simply pushes it back into a deeper hiding
place: if we accept the idea of a final device towards which information flows, we should be
willing to consider the final device as a conscious agent itself, or a homunculus, thus entering
a vicious circle.
The information-processing conception of mind presents the same problems that all third-
person perspectives present when studying consciousness. It can certainly explain how
information is processed, the changes it undergoes, the time needed to process it, and so on.
However, it does not and cannot explain what a person feels as he/she processes information,
that is, how his/her conscious states start forming, develop, and change as a consequence of
what he/she does. This is because information is made up of ready-made symbols
representing the external world, whose meaning derives not so much from the importance
they have for the person’s formation and development, but from the importance they have for
the researcher’s investigations. The information-processing approach, in fact, is based on the
assumption that the mind processes representations that already have their own meaning,
independently from the history of the person, and does not investigate how they acquire a
meaning for the person, and how the person builds meaning (Edelman 1989, Freeman 1999
and Searle 1980, 1984, 1992 raise a similar critique to the conception of the mind as a
computer and of mental processes as computational).
The information-processing level of analysis examines how some parts of a person’s
organism - sense organs, attention, memory, central processor, and so on - transform
information, but does not examine how a sentient person transforms him-herself as he/she
processes information. This is also plainly visible from the way the information-processing
approach usually represents the process flow, which can be so schematized:
76 Giorgio Marchetti

input > processing unit > output

where: the input is usually a stimulus coming from outside the organism; the processing unit
represents some kind of module or unit capable of elaborating and transforming the input; the
output is the product of the elaboration performed by the processing unit. This way of
representing the process flow leaves some fundamental problems completely unresolved,
such as how a certain thing came to be an input for the organism; where the output goes and
how it is in turn transformed; why the transformation occurs; how something – for example, a
bunch of cells - can turn into an independent entity; etc. Moreover, it says nothing about: the
active role that an organism usually plays in its environment; the importance of the
exploratory activity of the organism in delimiting and constituting itself and delimiting its
own boundaries; how and why something becomes an “input” for the organism; etc.
In my perspective, on the contrary, attention is the fundamental element of conscious
processing, a processing which is characterized by two main phases.
Firstly, the continuous application of attention to the other organs (sense organs, the
proprioceptive system, the interoceptive, system, the musculoskeletal system, and working
memory) or to attention itself. This “continuous” working of attention can best be conceived
as cyclical, a repetition of successive acts of focalizations each of which has a certain minimal
and maximal duration. The hypothesis of the cyclical dynamics of attention, which has been
put forward and tested by several researchers (see for example, Large and Jones, 1999, or
Ward 2003 who states that attention seems closely associated with alpha and gamma
rhythms), can also be inferred from the observation that no one can possibly attend
continuously to an object that does not change (James, 1890), or from the tight correlation
between the perception of apparent simultaneity and the alpha phase at which stimuli are
presented (Varela et al. 1981). The cyclical nature of the working of attention also accounts
for the temporal limit of perception known as “phenomenal present” (Vicario 2005), that is,
the interval of physical time which, despite being composed of non-contemporaneous parts, is
perceived as a unitary and unique act of consciousness, and in which separate events are not
differentiated and discriminated, and undergo some process of restructuring and grouping,
according to non-temporal principles of organization, such as the Gestalt ones (on the
temporal limits of conscious experiences, see also Cabanac 1992, 2002).
Secondly, the modulation of the state of the organ of attention resulting from the
application of attention to the other organs or to attention itself. Accordingly, the process flow
should be represented as starting not so much from an input coming from outside the
organism, as from the actions generated and performed by the organism itself.
As we have seen, in my model of consciousness the quantitative aspect of the conscious
sensation can be defined as the amount of nervous energy necessary for the organism to
reestablish the equilibrium in the state of its nervous energy. The qualitative aspect of
consciousness, that is, the fact that sensations originating from different perceptual modalities
differ qualitatively from each other (a sensation of “hard” is qualitatively different from a
sensation of “red”), can be accounted for by the hypothesis that the organ of attention is
composed of different parts, each of which is dedicated to processing only a specific kind of
information. According to this hypothesis, conscious experiences of different qualities are
processed by different, dedicated parts of the organ of attention: when paying attention to a
specific perceptual or mental modality, a specific area of the organ of attention is stimulated,
and a specific sensation arises. The specificity of each area represents the qualitative aspect of
 A New Perspective on Human Consciousness 77

sensation. Indeed, it would not be possible to explain the qualitative aspect of conscious
experiences if we considered the organ of attention as an undifferentiated unit, not divided
into sub-specialized units: signals coming, for instance, from different sense-organs would
produce qualitatively undifferentiated variations in the state of the nervous energy. The
organism would be able to feel only quantitative differences. To explain qualitatively
different variations we have then to resort to the concept of an organ of attention subdivided
into or composed of different parts.
Such a concept of a segmented organ of attention seems to be well supported by
empirical evidence (Pashler 1998). As far as the perceptual processing stage is concerned,
there is evidence:

supporting the hypothesis of the existence of modality-specific perceptual attentional

systems (that is, separate perceptual attention systems associated with different
sensory modalities), instead of a unified polymodal attention system. In fact, people
appear capable of selecting visual stimuli in one part of space and auditory stimuli in
another part, even if there is a decrement of performance in comparison with
selecting visual and auditory stimuli coming from the same side (Driver and Spence
1994); moreover, capacity limits in recognition appear to be more severe when
processing multiple stimuli presented through a single modality compared with
multiple modalities (Treisman and Davies 1973);
from divided-attention studies, that, when the total load of stimulus processing does
not exceed a certain threshold, subjects are able to process information arriving on
more than one channel at a time. In fact, when targets differ from non targets along a
simple featural dimension, many elements can be processed in parallel without
evident capacity limits (Shiffrin and Gardner 1972); moreover, parallel, unlimited-
capacity search is possible when targets are defined by membership in a well-learned
symbolic category;

As far as more central processing stages (response, selection and more generally
thinking) are concerned, there is clear evidence from PRP (Psychological Refractory Period)
studies of the existence of dissociations between the central processing stage and the
perceptual processing stage. Perceptual analysis, whether overloaded or not, occurs without
interference from ongoing central operations (Pashler 1989); there is obligatory queuing of
cognitive operations such as response selection and associative retrieval that is independent of
sensory modality; certain variables that mitigate perceptual overload do not affect central
interference: whereas detecting two attributes of a single object circumvents the perceptual
capacity limits (Duncan 1984) that are usually involved whenever two perceptual detections
occur at the same time, it does not attenuate the magnitude of central, bottleneck-based
interference (PRP effect) (Fagot and Pashler 1992).
The segmentation of the organ of attention into sub-specialized units accounts for the
non-parametric, discrete nature of the qualitative dimension of conscious experiences
(Cabanac 2002): visual sensations differ from auditory ones, which in turn differ from
memories, thoughts, etc. An interesting question related to the qualitative dimension of
conscious experiences is whether a hypothetical artificial conscious machine will have the
same kinds of conscious experiences that we have or not. In my opinion, such a machine
78 Giorgio Marchetti

could theoretically have the same kinds of conscious experiences as we have insofar as it is
provided with: (a) an artificial organ of attention, devoted to the supply of nervous energy,
segmented in sub-specialized units, and (b) sense organs and somatosensory organs working
on the same principles as those governing our sense organs and somatosensory organs.
However, if the machine was provided with artificial organs working on different principles,
its conscious experiences would differ from ours. I used the term “theoretically”, because one
should take into account what Negrotti’s (1997, 1999) work clearly shows: the very use of
artificial organs implies unavoidable and unforeseen side effects that tend to differentiate and
separate the reproduced object (the artificial conscious machine) from the original exemplar
(the human being). Moreover, the use of new materials and processes entails that some
performances of the original exemplar cannot be reproduced. On the whole, this would seem
to make artificial consciousness really and unavoidably different from human consciousness.
Further to the foregoing description of the perceptual system, I propose the block diagram
of Figure 1 as the circuit that is responsible for conscious perception. The figure shows a case
of voluntary or endogenous attention. The organism issues instructions to itself to direct its
attention toward one or more organs: sense organs, the proprioceptive system, the
interoceptive, system, the musculoskeletal system, working memory, or the organ of attention
itself. The results of the activity performed by these organs (here labeled as “output”) act
directly on the relevant area of the organ of attention, making the person have conscious
sensations. This is obviously a very schematic representation: for the sake of simplicity, I
have represented only some organs and connections; I have also omitted all those circuits –
such as the “efferent copy mechanism” (Berthoz 1997, Taylor 2007a) - that, combining
sensory information with the person’s expectation and contextual knowledge, help perception
resolve ambiguities, and speed up and correct the processing of data (see also Chella 2007,
Haikonen 2003, Leonardi 2008).
There can also be, of course, cases of captured or exogenous attention, in which some
objects, such as one’s own name (Morray, 1959), capture a person’s attention even though
he/she does not expect them or have any intention toward them. In these cases, it seems
reasonable to think that a signal coming from the somatosensory system or from some other
organ has the power to autonomously capture attention and become conscious, independently
of the person’s intention.
As Figure 1 shows, attention can be directed not only toward the other organs, but also
toward itself. Among other things, this possibility explains - as I have tried to show elsewhere
(Marchetti 2009), following in Mach’s (1890) footsteps, but partially revising his hypothesis -
the way we human beings have conscious experience of time. In my view, time-sensation is
the perception of the quantity of labor performed by that portion of our attention (let’s call it
At) that is focused in a continuous and incremental way on the conscious product of the
activity performed by means of another portion of one’s attention (let’s call it Ae). The
activity performed by At represents “temporal activity” (for instance, estimating duration); the
activity performed by Ae represents “non-temporal activity” (for instance, perceiving the
shape of an object). The amount of nervous energy - supplied by the organ of attention -
expended to support the activity of At constitutes the basis on which the conscious experience
of duration and more in general time-sensation are based (for a similar idea, see Eagleman:
“duration is a signature of the amount of energy expended by neurons”, 2008, p. 134).
 A New Perspective on Human Consciousness 79

ORGAN
OF SIGHT
OUTPUT

O
R
G
A
N ORGAN
OF
OUTPUT HEARING
O
F
ENDOGENOUS
INSTRUCTIONS A
T
T
E ORGAN
OF
N
OUTPUT TOUCH
T
I
O
N

Figure 1. Conscious perception.

3.2. The Schema of Self

The perceptual system provides the necessary raw material for the person to emerge and
form. But this is not sufficient. There must also be a device that guides and controls the
formation of the person. This device is represented by what I call the schema of self. The
schema of self runs the perceptual system and the organism in general according to a
hierarchy of principles, goals and rules at the top of which there is one fundamental principle:
the principle of survival. Operationally, the principle of survival can be expressed as follows:
“operate in order to continue to operate”. This is the vital instinct, the algorithm of life, or
more precisely the algorithm of the being (as pointed out by Peter Jakubik, personal
communication), which regulates all the other instincts of the organism and its actions. This
algorithm makes the organism continue to act and operate, and can only exceptionally be
stopped: most probably, it was initially coded in the DNA of the human species as an
instruction to maintain the organism’s energetic homeostasis (on how it is possible to
maintain the energetic homeostasis, see for example Cabanac and Russek’s model [2000]),
80 Giorgio Marchetti

and has subsequently evolved into more sophisticated cultural and social forms (which
explains exceptional and counter-intuitive human behaviors such as martyrdom, suicide,
heroic sacrifice, etc.)
The schema of self not only incorporates and coordinates all the innate or learned
schemata that are necessary to keep the organism alive, but also provides all the rules
necessary to guarantee the existence, formation and preservation of the person. To this end,
one of the main activities it ensures is defining the person’s boundaries, and consequently the
differentiation of the person from other organisms, beings, and from his/her environment. The
organism defines its boundaries by continuously monitoring its activity and consciously
perceiving its own movements, operations, gestures, and so on. The conscious perception of
its activity informs it immediately about the dimension, limits and possibilities of its body,
and adjusts the rules and components of the schema of self.
To better understand how the interaction between the schema of self and the perceptual
system works, we can try to imagine how the interaction could be realized, for example, in a
specifically dedicated electronic unit (let’s call it X), and determine how X differs from a
standard electronic unit (let’s call it Y), such as those that can be found in a computer.
Obviously, when doing this exercise, we have to consider some important things about our
model of consciousness, that is: the main component of the perceptual system is the organ of
attention; the organ of attention supplies nervous energy (in this sense, the organ of attention
can be assimilated to a kind of power supply unit: but on this issue, see the discussion on the
three main assumptions on attention in the last section of this work); nervous energy makes it
possible to perform attentional activity; attentional activity directly affects the organ of
attention, causing a variation in the state of nervous energy; it is this variation that constitutes
the phenomenal aspect of consciousness.
With these things in mind, we can now try to determine the difference between X and Y.
While in Y the energy supplied by the power supply unit (whether it is a battery or a
generator) depends on, and varies according to, the needs of the circuits it feeds and the
operations the circuits are processing (in the sense that the power supply unit supplies as
much energy as the circuits require, at least to a certain extent), in X it is the operations of the
circuit that depend on the variations of the energetic state of the power supply unit, in the
sense that the operations of the circuits are modified according to such variations.
The definition of the person’s boundaries is made possible by the sensations and feelings
the organism has. Until its action can flow undisturbed and is not hindered by anything, the
organism feels free, well, pleasure, positively stimulated, etc. Whenever something hinders or
blocks its activity, it has to make efforts to overcome the difficulty. These efforts cost it
nervous energy, time, pain, frustration, and so on. It is precisely the threshold of effort and
pain that marks the limits of the person, and differentiates him/her from its environment. The
boundaries of its body are determined by the feelings of pain or frustration it has when acting.
The person coincides with his/her action: the person is his/her action.
Any conscious perception of the organism helps to form and mould the person. The
person is the outcome of the uninterrupted conscious perceptions of the organism. The
process that leads to the emergence of the person can be divided into three main components,
and can be represented as in Figure 2.
 A New Perspective on Human Consciousness 81

SOMATO-
SENSORY
SCHEMA OF ORGAN SYSTEM,
SELF OF SENSE-
ORGANS,
ATTENTION
WORKING
MEMORY

UNCONSCIOUS CONSCIOUS
PROCESSING PROCESSING

ACTIONS
(MOVEMENTS,
SPEECH, INNER
SPEECH, THOUGHTS,
ETC.)

Figure 2. The process that leads to the emergence of the person.

The schema of self, and all the other schemata it incorporates and coordinates, embodies
all the competences and abilities - linguistic, social, physical, and so on - the organism
innately possesses or has acquired during its life up to that time. It regulates the activities of
the organism according to the hierarchy of principles and goals it incorporates, and the rules
specific to each kind of competence. Every action the organism performs is caused by the
goals of the schema of self - at the top of which there is the principle of survival - and
generated and structured by the rules expressed by each kind of competence.
The organism’s actions - whether they are represented by a single movement, a
coordinated sequence of movements, the production of a sound or a word, inner silent speech,
or else - as well as the consequences of the action, can be perceived by the organism. They
become the raw material that the perceptual system works out. Since every action
unavoidably entails sensations concerning the body and the environment, and the body related
to the environment, the organism is able, through them, to understand and define its limits and
the limits of the objects of the environment.
Once the organism has consciously perceived its action or the consequence of its action,
the information concerning its body, the objects of the environment or the relation between its
body and the objects, becomes available for the schema of self, and can be adequately used to
update it and adjust the rules of the relevant competence. This process is variously and
differently termed and described by some other authors: for instance, Damasio (1999)
describes it in terms of the formation in the brain of first- and second-order maps representing
both the organism, the object perceived, and the relationship of object and organism, while
Edelman (1989) speaks of the reentrant mechanisms allowing categorization and learning.
82 Giorgio Marchetti

Incidentally, it should be noted that it has been proposed (for example, Baars 1988) that
the language of consciousness is preeminently based on a perceptive, imaginal, spatio-
temporal lingua franca, and that this is probably due to the fact that the consciousness system
is overlaid on an earlier function that is primarily sensory. This implies that whenever we
think about, or form a conscious idea of, something, we can do this only through images,
sounds, colors, sensations. We always think by means of perceptible objects and things. What
cannot be perceived or felt through sense-organs or the somatosensory system cannot be
thought about or thought of either. In my view, this is only partially true. It is certainly true
that most of our conscious experiences have a perceptive, imaginal aspect, and also that inner
speech is made of words that have a sound and a form; however, as I have tried to show
(Marchetti 2003), it is equally undeniable that we do have conscious experiences, such as the
meanings of words and sentences, beliefs, intentions , that do not have the qualitative and
phenomenal properties belonging to images and perceptions originated by our sense-organs or
somatosensory system (on this topic, see also Ramachandran & Hirstein 1997, who
distinguish between strong, vivid qualia, such as percepts, and not fully laden qualia, such as
beliefs and internally generated images).
Once a thing or object is perceived, it becomes available for the schema of self, which
processes it. What takes place inside the schema of self is unconscious. When we hear a
certain word, or see a certain scene, it is unknown to us how these facts affect our subsequent
behavior, thoughts and attitudes, in the sense that we are not aware of what is happening
inside us. It simply happens. After having heard a sentence, some thoughts or images appear
unexpectedly, but we do not know where they have come from and why only they have
appeared, instead of something else. We can suppose that this job is done by some
mechanism, such as the collections of specialized unconscious processors described by Baars
(1988), and that the job is done following a certain sequence of steps, such as that described
by Piaget (1967), but we are conscious neither of the mechanism, nor of its job.
The fact that the schema of self is updated and fed by the perceptual system implies that
what the organism consciously perceives plays a causal role in its behavior. This is one of the
most important features of consciousness: it gives the organism the possibility of setting its
own aims and objectives, and modifying autonomously its own schema of self. The schema of
self - once it has learnt and embodied the notion that the organism, by means of conscious
perceiving, is able to affect the course of its own actions - provides the organism with a new
degree of freedom that gives it the possibility of directly controlling itself. Without this
further degree of freedom, the updating of the schema of self would take place only in
consequence of the actions that the organism performs because of its innate instincts (and the
limited set of rules that it could have learnt on the basis of these instincts). Thanks to this new
degree of freedom, the schema of self is updated by the actions that the organism voluntarily
and autonomously takes. This means that the schema of self, whose main goal is to keep the
organism operating, succeeds in equipping the organism with the capacity to self-regulate
itself, and consequently find on its own the best ways and means of assuring its survival and
of creating new strategies and aims. This constitutes the fundamental passage from
consciousness to self-consciousness. The organism’s attitude can then change from a purely
reactive to a proactive one.
From that moment on, the schema of self runs the organism in such a way that its actions
are primarily and directly governed not so much by its innate instincts as by what happens in
its consciousness, even though the latter can be occasioned by the former. Every action the
 A New Perspective on Human Consciousness 83

organism performs is a direct consequence of its previous conscious experience. The

existence of an uninterrupted and consistent sequence of single units of conscious perception,
the Jamesian stream of consciousness (James 1890), is secured precisely by the fact that the
previous units play a direct, causal role in the production of the following ones. An interesting
neurobiological hypothesis on the brain processes which would instantiate discrete conscious
experiences without fundamentally violating the demand for continuity of consciousness is
put forward by Fingelkurts and Fingelkurts (2001, 2006). Their key idea is that the temporal
synchronization of different brain operations simultaneously executed by different local
neuronal assemblies gives rise to a new level of brain abstractness: metastable brain states or
“operational modules” (OM). These short-term metastable states change rapidly during
transitive fringes or “rapid transitional periods” (RTP). The succession of discrete and
relatively stable periods (OMs) separated by abrupt changes (RTP) represents the stream of
consciousness.
One of the easiest ways an organism has to control itself and autonomously modify its
own schema of self, or at least the easiest way from a human being’s point of view, is by
using language. Language can be considered as the most effective and economic way of
exploiting the opportunities offered by self-consciousness. Some authors think that self-
consciousness could not even be attained without language. According to Cimatti (2000), for
instance, what differentiates animals from human beings is precisely the fact that the latter
use language not only to communicate their own intentions or the events happening in the
environments to other organisms, as the former do, but also to communicate with themselves,
directing their own attention to themselves and to their attentional system. By speaking to
itself, the organism can “listen” directly to itself, in the sense of listening to its body, mind,
intentions, aims, and eventually to its schema of self, without having to wait for the usual
physical manifestations - such as coordinated movements of arms, legs, body, and so on - that
the schema of self can occasion. Therefore, within certain limits, the organism need not
perform actual physical actions in order to perceive itself, its body, the environment, the
relations between itself and the environments. Inner speech functions as an artificial behavior
that gives the organism the possibility of consciously perceiving itself. In turn, these
perceptions continuously modify the schema of self.
Language is not the only way the organism has to exploit the possibilities offered by self-
consciousness. Other perceptive modalities can be used as well. Images, sounds, and smells
all represent alternative means the organism has to artificially represent itself. However, due
to its form and structure, language is no doubt the most common and exploited one. As
Vygotskij (1973) pointed out following N. Ach, the original function of words is to direct
attention toward something. They serve to isolate certain aspects of objects, and attract
attention towards them: as Logan (1995) puts it, semantics specify the computational goals
that the attention system must satisfy (on the idea that the meanings of words are based on
attentional operations, see the pioneering work of Ceccato, for example, Ceccato 1969, and
Ceccato and Zonta 1980. His work has been further developed by Benedetti 2006, 2008, and
Marchetti 2006). Through language, adults guide and influence children’s attention, thus
getting them to learn how to autonomously master their own attention. But if, as we have
seen, attention is the mechanism responsible for consciousness, then learning how to master
one’s own attention is tantamount to learning how to master one’s own consciousness.
Languages have many expressions that serve to address the person’s attention not only
towards something in general, such as “Look at it”, “Watch me carefully”, “Try to do so and
84 Giorgio Marchetti

so”, but also towards the very mechanism of the person’s attention or consciousness, such as
“Pay attention to what you are saying”, “Are you aware of what you have done?”, “Try to
remember what you have done”. By means of these expressions, the person can control him-
herself and his/her attention, and consequently modify his/her own schema of self. The person
can then assume new attitudes and view things under a different light. In turn, the
modification of the schema of self entails a new course of actions, thoughts and speeches,
which being consciously perceived can further modify the schema of self, and so on. The
uninterrupted interplay between the schema of self and what is consciously perceived
constitutes the stream of consciousness: the person’s schema of self is continuously modified
according to what the he/she consciously perceives, and, conversely, he/she consciously
perceives what his/her schema of self occasions.
The block diagram of Figure 3 represents the circuit responsible for the stream of
consciousness. The schema of self makes the organism act according to the fundamental
principle of survival “operate in order to continue to operate”. The organism can consciously
perceive the activity so occasioned, whether it is a movement, a speech, or other, through its
various organs (attention, sense-organs and somatosensory system, working memory). The
result of the conscious perception updates the schema of self, which in turn issues new
instructions to act and perceive.
For sake of simplicity, in Figure 3 I have not represented the internal connections
between the various parts of the organ of attention that allow the organism to focus its
attention not only toward the other organs, but also toward the organ of attention itself. Nor
have I represented all those connections that allow a person to have subliminal perceptions,
such as when a stimulus, which has exogenously captured a person’s attention, is
unconsciously processed and perceived (McCormick 1997, Merikle et al. 2001): most
probably these connections link directly the somatosensory system and the sense-organs to
the schema of self, and prevail when there is no sufficient time for the stimuli to be processed
to the point of awareness (Libet et al. 1991, McCormick 1997). For example, Libet et al.
(1991) showed that an unconscious function may be transformed into a conscious one simply
by increasing the duration of the appropriate brain activities to a minimum of about 500 msec.
The authors verified this condition by applying stimulus trains of variable duration (from 0 to
750 msec) to a subject’s ascending sensory pathway in the thalamus, and having the subject
face a panel containing two buttons, each of which could be lit up briefly alternatively for 1
sec. The subject had to indicate in which of the two lit periods the stimulus was delivered: he
had to make that decision even if he were not aware of any sensation produced in the test. The
subject then had to report his level of awareness of the stimulus (felt; not certain that it was
felt; felt nothing). By a statistical analysis, Libet et al. determined that the difference in
stimulus duration between the condition in which the subject responded correctly despite
having no awareness of the stimulus, and the condition in which the subject responded
correctly having awareness of the stimulus, was due to an increase in stimulus duration of
about 400 msec. This duration would represent then the “neuronal code” for the emergence of
awareness (see also Libet 2004). Likewise, McCormick (1997), using a cue-target paradigm
with informative cues and variable stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) between the cue and the
target (Experiment 3), showed that the effect he found (an exogenous cue presented below a
subjective threshold of awareness captures attention automatically and without awareness) is
attributable to the time necessary to process the cue to the point of awareness: that is, the
 A New Perspective on Human Consciousness 85

exogenous cuing effect occurs in the unaware condition because observers do not have
enough time to complete the processing of the cue before the arrival of the target;

RESULTS OF CONSCIOUS
PERCEPTION

ENDOGENOUS SOMATOSENSORY
INSTRUCTIONS ORGAN OF SYSTEM,
SCHEMA OF SELF
ATTENTION SENSE-ORGANS,
OUTPUT WORKING MEMORY

PERSON’S
ACTIONS,
THOUGHTS,
CONCEPTS, AND
INNER SPEECH;
ENVIRONMENT

Figure 3. The circuit that generates the stream of consciousness.

Thanks to self-consciousness, the person is able to exert voluntary attention, analyze its
own responses and acts, find alternative ways of solving problems, that is, autonomously and
voluntarily learn. Automatic, “reflexive” attention can involve learning only as long as innate
programs afford it, and animals certainly give evidence of this fact. However, an organism
provided only with consciousness cannot learn to learn. Only self-consciousness gives this
possibility to the organism. Self-consciousness implies that the organism is conscious of its
own operative limits, understands its own boundaries, becomes an autonomous and
responsible person, reflects on its own past, decides how and what to learn, and determines its
own future.
If consciousness gives the organism the possibility of producing certain results and
attaining certain goals that are usually genetically determined, self-consciousness gives it the
possibility of autonomously and rationally determining what goals to attain and what results
to produce. This is the fundamental difference between consciousness and self-consciousness:
while the former lets the organism produce some results, the latter lets it control the
operations necessary to produce results.
The difference between consciousness and self-consciousness could be also highlighted
in terms of means and ends. As we have seen, studying consciousness means taking a new
perspective that considers how a person emerges from an organism’s continuous use and
application of its nervous energy. This perspective implies seeing the person as an active
86 Giorgio Marchetti

agent personally and directly involved in constructing not only him-herself but also his/her
own knowledge. The organism becomes a person because it acts, and, by acting, it
differentiates itself from the environment and the other beings, thus getting to know them. An
object becomes an object and acquires a meaning for the person only as long as the person
can relate the object to him-herself in some way. Therefore, every object can be defined in
terms of the person’s activity, where “person’s activity” means the activity a person has to
perform in order to emerge as such. An object exists and has a meaning because a person
exists who gives it a meaning, and a person exists because by acting he/she has been able to
differentiate him-herself from that object. It is precisely through this activity of differentiation
that objects come into existence and acquire a meaning for the person: they become objects
and acquire a meaning because through them a person can take shape. Defining an object in
this way is viewing it instrumentally, as something that takes part in the construction and
definition of the person. In this view, an object is a means a person has of coming into
existence. Every object serves the purpose of forming the person, or is somehow associated
with this process.
Consciousness, making the person experience directly what he/she is doing and the
results of his/her activity, is the privileged way a person has of constructing him-herself,
his/her knowledge, objects, and the relation between him-herself and objects. It is through
consciousness that a person understands how an object relates to him-herself, learns how to
use it, and gets to know it. Consciousness gives the person an immediate understanding of the
object and of its meaning. The meaning of the object emerges when the person becomes
conscious of it. At that moment, the person understands what relation exists between him-
herself and the object, and gives a meaning to the object. At the same time, understanding this
implies - for the person - taking a particular shape, namely the shape that the relation makes
possible. Therefore, consciousness is the fundamental device by which objects, becoming the
means that makes the person take shape, acquire a meaning.
If consciousness gives the person the possibility of assigning a meaning to objects, self-
consciousness gives the person the possibility of assigning a meaning to him-herself. Self-
consciousness makes it possible for a person to see him-herself as an object, and consequently
to become a means to an end. By seeing him-herself as an object, a person can set an end for
him-herself, and consider him-herself as an instrument for achieving it. The person then
acquires a meaning: the meaning determined by the end he/she has set for him-herself.

4. THE EMPIRICAL AND LOGICAL PLAUSIBILITY OF THE THREE

MAIN ASSUMPTIONS IMPLIED BY THIS MODEL OF CONSCIOUSNESS
As we have seen, the central role played by attention in my model of consciousness
implies three main assumptions on attention:

(i) Attention is necessary for consciousness;

(ii) Attention is a kind of activity that can be performed because we are provided with a
form of energy, namely the nervous energy that supplies our organism (this energy is
physical and most likely not of a simple kind, but rather a combination of different
kinds: chemical, electrical, etc.); this form of energy is produced and supplied by a
 A New Perspective on Human Consciousness 87

physical organ, which I call “the organ of attention”. By the expression “organ of
attention”, I mean the physical substrate or the nervous structure that is responsible
for the production of nervous energy. We use our nervous energy to pilot our organ
of attention and some other organs (the motor organs, the sense-organs, the
somatosensory organs, working memory, and the schema of self);
(iii) Attentional activity directly affects the organ of attention, causing a modification of
the state of the nervous energy itself. It is precisely this modification that constitutes
the phenomenal aspect of consciousness.

Let’s consider these assumptions in detail.

4.1. Attention Is Necessary for Consciousness

The idea presupposed by my model that attention is so strictly linked to, and necessary
for, consciousness, is not new (James 1890, O’Regan & Noë 2001, Posner 1994). Indeed, the
idea is quite intuitive, if we consider what is thought to be one of the main characteristics of
attention: its selective power. When we attend to a certain object or part of an object, we are
able to isolate it from the other objects or parts, so that our conscious mind is completely and
exclusively possessed and “filled” by it (La Berge, 1995). This shows that there is a direct
connection between attention and consciousness: how we pay attention to the world is highly
correlated with how the world appears to us. Moreover, well-known psychological
phenomena demonstrate that attention modulates perception, directly influencing the way we
consciously experience the world. The phenomenon of prior-entry, for example, shows that
when a person attends to a stimulus, he or she perceives it as having occurred earlier in time
than it would if he or she was not attending to it (Shore et al. 2001). Experiments on duration
judgments in which subjects are asked to prospectively judge the duration of the time period
they have to perform a certain task, reveal that judged time decreases linearly with the
increased processing demands of non-durational information, and that experienced duration
increases to the extent that subjects can allocate more attentional resources to the flow of time
itself (Brown 1985, Hicks et al. 1976, 1977, Coull et al. 2004): in short, a higher amount of
attention allocated to the passage of time itself produces a lengthening of the experienced
duration. Carrasco et al.’s experiments (2004) show that attention alters phenomenal
appearance: it boosts the apparent stimulus contrast. When observers’ transient covert
attention (which is the stimulus-driven, exogenous, involuntary capture of attention by an
abrupt, salient peripheral cue) is drawn to a stimulus via a peripheral cue, observers report
that stimulus as being higher in contrast than it really is, thus indicating a change in
appearance with attention.
The idea that attention is necessary for consciousness has received further support from
the work of Mack and Rock (1998) and Rensink et al. (1997). For example, in Mack and
Rock’s (1998) experiments, the subject’s attention was engaged in a task (for example, to
report the longer arm of a cross briefly presented on the screen and centered at about 2
degrees from fixation). After some trials, an unexpected, unsearched critical stimulus (for
example, a black circle) was presented at fixation, and subjects were asked whether they had
seen anything that had not been on the screen in the earlier trials. Between 60% and 80% of
the observers failed to detect the critical stimulus. A comparison between reports of the
88 Giorgio Marchetti

critical stimulus in the inattention trials (where subjects were told to pay attention to the cross,
but were not told that a critical stimulus would appear) and those in full attention control
(where subjects were told to ignore the cross, and to report only what else they saw on the
screen when the cross was present), confirmed that attention is clearly implicated in conscious
perception. More in general, Mack and Rock’s experiments show that subjects tend to be
blind to a critical stimulus that appears either at, or close to, fixation when they are not
searching for it, when they are occupied with a task that engages their attention, and when it
is located outside the boundaries of the area on which attention is directed. These findings do
not imply that there is no implicit, unconscious perception, but only that there is no explicit,
conscious perception prior to the engagement of attention. Stimuli to which subjects are
inattentionally blind, can be implicitly, unconsciously perceived. In order to bring them into
consciousness, they must be attentionally processed.
Mack and Rock’s work and Rensink’s work, however, do not cover all the possible
varieties of forms that attention can assume: indeed, attention can, up to a certain extent, be
split between different perceptual and processing modalities (Pashler 1998); it can be either
exogenously or endogenously elicited; it can be both widely distributed for relatively long
time periods in a certain location (preparatory attention) and narrowly distributed in another
location for shorter periods (selective attention) at the same time (La Berge 1995); it varies
according to the perceptual load (Lavie 1995); it has one transient component and one
sustained component (Nakayama & Mackeben 1989); and so on. Therefore, Mack and Rock’s
work and Rensink’s work lend themselves to criticisms of being only partially valid and
applicable. For example, Mole (2008) argues that Mack and Rock’s work shows that (focal)
attention is necessary for consciousness only in some “highly-demanding” circumstances,
such as those involving very small or very unexpected changes, learning, unfamiliar
situations, etc: it would not show that attention is in general necessary for consciousness.
Here it is important to note that there are also other cases in which attention is necessary for
consciousness, such as when subjects can achieve a good level of performance in
identification and detection tasks by means of little focal or preliminary attention (Olivers and
Nieuwenhuis 2005). Mole also argues that change-blindness experiments suffer from the
defect of not giving the possibility of independently ascertaining whether attention is
necessary for consciousness in general: as they are designed, these experiments would only
reveal that attention is necessary for consciously detecting changes but not, in general, for
being conscious. According to this view, a subject who has not attended to the changing item
in the change-blindness pictures could theoretically have some kind of conscious experience,
but the experience does not have the “structured content” needed to provide the subject with
knowledge of the fact that the thing is changing. In order to avoid such criticisms, Mack and
Rock’s work and Rensink’s work must therefore be further developed. An example of how
this can be done is offered by Lavie’s research (2006a, 2006b). By manipulating perceptual
load in both Mack and Rock’s (1998) inattentional blindness paradigm and Rensink et al’s
(1997) change blindness paradigm, she found that awareness reports depend on the extent to
which an attended primary task loads attention: in situations that present a high load on
attention, people are unaware of the information to which they do not attend; on the contrary,
in situations of low load, due to a “spill-over” of attention, people are aware of other sources
of information to which they do not intend to pay attention.
That attention is necessary for consciousness does not imply that attention generates or
modulates only conscious phenomena: it can also generate and modulate unconscious ones
 A New Perspective on Human Consciousness 89

(Merikle et al. 2001, Naccache et al. 2002, Sumner et al. 2006). For example, Naccache et al.
(2002) demonstrate that it is possible to elicit unconscious priming in a number-comparison
task, but only if the subject’s temporal attention is allocated to the time window during which
the prime-target pair is presented: unconscious priming vanishes when temporal attention is
focused away from this time window. However, from the fact that attention can also generate
unconscious phenomena, it does not follow that there can be focal attention without
consciousness: a thesis which is nevertheless held by some authors (Koch and Tsuchiya 2006,
Velmans 1991). For example, Velmans (1991) affirms that, “in principle, it might be possible
to obtain evidence of focal-attentive processing in the absence of awareness of what is being
processed” (Velmans, p. 665). He does not claim that an object can be perceived consciously
without the intervention of attention. Focal-attentive processing provides the necessary
condition for conscious awareness, and there cannot be consciousness without attention:
consciousness results from focal-attentive processing as a form of output. However, attention
and consciousness are not the same thing, and can be dissociated, because there can be
attentional processing without consciousness.
Velmans’ aim is to confute the conventional assumption by psychologists that
“preconscious” processing is identical to “pre-attentive” processing and “conscious”
processing is identical to “focal-attentive” processing. This assumption implies that
“preconscious/pre-attentive” processing is involuntary, automatic, fast, and restricted to
simple, familiar stimuli, whereas “conscious/focal-attentive” processing is voluntary, subject
to intentional control, slow, and flexible. Velmans’ confutation is based on evidence that
preconscious processing is not inflexible and limited to simple, well-learned stimuli: he
supplies many examples of preconscious analysis of novel and complex phrases and
sentences, implicit learning, preconscious selection and choice, unconscious control of
complex, novel motor adjustments, and unconscious planning. Consequently, it would be
misleading to think of the preconscious-unconscious processing of stimuli as non-attended or
pre-attentive: preconsciously processed stimuli, being subject to sophisticated, elaborated
analysis, are receiving attentional resources, although they may not enter consciousness.
Moreover, there is evidence (Kahneman and Chajczyk, 1983) that “involuntary,
preconscious” analysis of stimuli is not necessarily effortless, and that it draws on, and
competes for, limited processing resources, which confirms the involvement of attentional
resources in preconscious processing (see also Lavie 1995). Therefore, rather than speaking
of non-attended or pre-attentive processing (vs. focal-attentive processing), it would be better
to speak of preliminary attention (vs. focal attention) (Velmans, 1991. p. 655).
I think that Velmans’ work does not demonstrate that focal attention and consciousness
are dissociated, as his intention seems to be, but only that “preliminary attention”, as he calls
it, and consciousness can be dissociated. The cases he takes into consideration give evidence
only of the fact that stimuli to which subjects pay limited, preliminary attention are
nevertheless preconsciously processed, and therefore that preliminary attention and
consciousness can be dissociated. They do not show that there can be focal-attentive
processing without consciousness. Whether the evidence he cites refers to dichotic listening
tasks and shadowing tasks (Treisman 1964a, 1964b; Lackner and Garret 1973, MacKay
1973), visual masking experiments (Marcel 1980, 1983), Stroop effect, implicit learning
(Nissen and Bullemer 1987, Hartman et al. 1987), or control of action, what they all show is
only that stimuli can be preconsciously processed on condition that they are given at least a
minimal level of attention (as observed by some authors - Neuman 1984, Holender 1986 and
90 Giorgio Marchetti

Logan 1995 -, in these cases, as well as in others such as the flanker compatibility effect or
negative priming effect - Tipper 1985 -, subjects do pay a certain, even if marginal, level of
attention to the to-be-ignored, unwanted stimuli, even though they are instructed not to pay
attention to them, or are prevented from paying attention to them).
For example, the fact that amnesic patients and normal subjects, exposed to successive
exemplars of recurring patterns of which they were unaware, can implicitly learn those
patterns without spontaneously noting any repeated sequence (Nissen and Bullemer, 1987,
Hartman et al., 1987), does not imply that they have used their focal attention to learn those
patterns: in fact, they have been instructed to pay attention to the single items composing each
pattern, and not to the recurring pattern. Therefore, it is inappropriate to affirm that there is
focal-attentive processing of a pattern in the absence of awareness of that pattern, because
what subjects attentively process is not so much the pattern as the single items of the pattern.
Most probably instead, they have been able to learn the patterns because they have spent a
marginal amount of their attentional resources on it: so marginal an amount that they could
not consciously realize what they were doing, even though it was sufficient to make them
learn the patterns.
Therefore, Velmans’ work is certainly convincing as long as it shows that there can be a
limited level of attention (preliminary attention) without consciousness, but it does not prove
that there can be focal attention without consciousness.
Most probably, what leads Velmans to claim that consciousness can be dissociated from
attention in general, thus overlooking the fact that only preliminary attention, but not focal
attention, can be dissociated from consciousness, is the absence of a first-person perspective.
As he admits, he adopts a purely information processing perspective, identifying attention
with the capacity to process information and analyze stimuli. This perspective certainly gives
him the possibility of considering those aspects of mental processing that are usually
associated with attention - such as reaction time, accurateness in answering, etc. - but it does
not let him see the importance of attention for the emergence and construction of the person.
This is because information processing models systematize what can be observed only from a
third-person, external observer’s perspective, whereas, as we have seen, the phenomenal
aspect of attention and consciousness can be analyzed only by taking a first-person
perspective. Therefore, it may be that, by assuming the information processing perspective, he
has been able to see only one aspect of attention, and this has led him to think that it should
be the only one.
An author who, assuming a first-person perspective, does not overlook the fact that only
preliminary or low-level (but not focal) attention can be dissociated from consciousness is
Damasio (1999). In his definition, consciousness is the “umbrella term for the mental
phenomena that permit the strange confection of you as observer or knower of the things
observed, of you as owner of thoughts formed in your perspective, of you as potential agent
on the scene” (Damasio, 1999, p. 127). Throughout his work, consciousness is seen as the
main reason for the feeling we have of ourselves as the subject of our own actions, that is, for
the fact that we sense that what we are doing is done by us, and not by someone else. He
rightly underlines that the lack of consciousness causes the disappearance of the sense of self:
in fact, as we have seen, it is conscious activity that determines the emergence of the person.
According to him, some diseases, such as akinetic mutism, epileptic automatism and
advanced stages of Alzheimer’s diseases, demonstrate that there can be fleeting, low-level
attention without consciousness. Evidence of the dissociation between low-level attention and
 A New Perspective on Human Consciousness 91

consciousness is given by patients who, while exhibiting some elementary signs of attention
such as the ability to form sensory images of objects and execute accurate movements relative
to those images, do not develop any sense of self, of an individual organism wishing,
considering, wanting, of a person with a past and a future. Moreover, they do not show any
sign of emotion either. Finally, Damasio points out that only a kind of attention that is high-
level, extended in time and focused on appropriate objects is indicative of consciousness
(Damasio, 1999, p. 91).
Despite not specifying exactly what the difference is between low-level and high-level
attention, these findings seem to support nonetheless, contrary to Velmans’ opinion, the
hypothesis that focal or high-level attention cannot be dissociated from consciousness. Only
low-level attention or, as Velmans calls it, preliminary attention, can be dissociated from
consciousness.
The idea that attention is necessary for consciousness is not universally accepted (Baars
1997b, Hardcastle 1997, Koch and Tsuchiya 2006, Lamme 2003, Umiltà, 1994). The view
that there can be consciousness without attention may originate either from a third-person
approach, from a failure to notice the varieties of forms attention can assume, or from both.
For example, Umiltà (1994) interprets the fact that some objects, such as one’s own name
(Morray, 1959) or other meaningful stimuli (Mack and Rock, 1998), can capture a subject’s
attention even though the subject does not expect them or have any intention toward them, as
evidence that attention does not coincide with consciousness and that they must be considered
as independent systems. In these cases, he argues, the object is perceived consciously in a
direct manner, without the intervention of attention. His argument contrasts with what Mack
and Rock (1998) have found. They show that there can be no conscious perception without
attention, and that by decreasing the probability that attention is paid to an object, the
probability of perceiving its presence is reduced. This also applies to cases of captured or
exogenous attention: when the difficulty of capture is increased by reducing the attentional
zone or increasing the inhibition of attention, the probability that one’s own name is reliably
perceived decreases (even if it continues to be seen significantly more often than other
stimuli). Moreover, as McCormick (1997) has showed, exogenous cues presented below a
subjective threshold of awareness capture attention without awareness. These facts indicate
that, contrary to Umiltà’s opinion, attention is always involved in conscious perception. Even
objects such as one’s own name cannot be perceived without the intervention of attention:
they must capture attention to become conscious. There cannot be conscious perception
without attention.
In my opinion, Umiltà’s mistake derives from considering consciousness from a purely
third-person approach, namely the information-processing one. Like many other authors, he
considers mental activity as a particular way of processing information. In this view,
consciousness is conceived as a central processor (for a similar view, see Johnson-Laird,
1983, 1988), and attention is a privileged route for events to enter the central processor and
become conscious, even though not the only one available (Umiltà, 1988). As a consequence,
attention is assigned a passive, subsidiary role in relation to consciousness. As we have seen,
this way of considering consciousness cannot explain how it is possible for us to have
subjective experiences of things. But it also has another major fault: it cannot account for the
constructive role that a person plays in building his/her knowledge. This is due to the fact that
its main target is to analyze how a person processes information, and not how a person
constructs his/her knowledge. Knowledge construction is not so much a matter of processing
92 Giorgio Marchetti

information, the time needed to process it, ways of processing it, and so on, as of why a
person has to process it. An information-processing approach neither disputes, nor addresses
the question of the necessity to process information: it simply analyzes the process, taking the
presence both of information, and process and person for granted. On the contrary, a
knowledge-construction approach analyzes first of all the origin of information, that is, why
and how a person assigns a meaning to objects, and objects acquire a meaning for the person.
Only by addressing such questions, is it possible to understand the role played by the person
in constructing his/her knowledge.
Overlooking the varieties and complexity of forms that attention and consciousness can
assume may also lead to the wrong view that there can be consciousness without attention (on
this point, see Bartolomeo 2008, De Brigard & Prinz forthcoming, Posner 2008, and
Srinivasan 2008). As we have seen, attention can be split between different perceptual and
processing modalities (Pashler 1998); it can be either exogenously or endogenously elicited; it
varies according to the perceptual load (Lavie 1995); it has one transient component and one
sustained component (Nakayama & Mackeben 1989); and so on. Likewise, a general
awareness of our environment (ambient awareness) can be distinguished from a more detailed
focal awareness of a scene (focal awareness) (Iwasaki 1993); a form of primary
consciousness, including an awareness of the world and mental images, but not a concept of
self, can be distinguished from a form of higher-order consciousness, including self-
awareness, a sense of time, and language (Edelman 1989); forms of spatial awareness can be
distinguished from more reflective forms of consciousness based on intellectual
acknowledgment (Bartolomeo 2008); consciousness of sensory qualities differs from volition,
which in turn differs from the simple conscious state, which neurology associates with the
concept of arousal and the diurnal cycle of sleep and wake (Posner 2008).
For example, Koch and Tsuchiya (2006) quote Li et al.’s (2002) work, which shows that
subjects can rapidly detect animals or vehicles in briefly presented novel natural scenes while
simultaneously performing another attentionally demanding task, and Reddy et al.’s (2004)
work, which, comparing how subjects perform on a face-gender discrimination task carried
out in the single-task condition with the same task carried out in the dual-task condition with
a known attentional demanding task (5-letter T/L discrimination), shows that the face-gender
discrimination task can be performed equally well under the two conditions. According to
Koch and Tsuchiya, this kind of evidence shows that there can be consciousness without
focal, top-down attention. However, as observed by Taylor and Fragopanagos (2007), in these
experiments the subjects underwent up to ten hours of prior training on the stimuli, which
makes it highly plausible that the subjects learnt to develop an automatic route to respond to
the peripheral stimuli to which they were exposed. Moreover, it is also possible that the
subjects were able to use multiple foci of attention to detect the presence of both the
peripheral target as well as the main central one (McMains & Somers 2004).
Koch and Tsuchiya (2006) also quote Olivers and Nieuwenhuis’ (2005) study on the
Attentional Blink as evidence that there can be consciousness in the near absence of focal
attention. The Attentional Blink occurs when subjects view rapid serial visual presentations of
a series of stimuli presented in the same location, usually at rates of approximately 100 msec
per item. Subjects have to detect two target stimuli, T1 and T2; T1 appears first and is
followed by T2, which may appear immediately after T1 or at some other point in the
sequence after T1, with distractors presented among T1 and T2 (that is, the temporal lag
between T1 and T2 can be varied). The blink effect refers to a decrement in detection of T2:
 A New Perspective on Human Consciousness 93

the basic finding is that the decrement is often greatest when T2 occurs not immediately after
T1 (position n+1), but rather somewhere around positions n+2 through n+5 (that is, when
there is one or more distractors between T1 and T2). The performance improves with higher
lag and reaches asymptote around n+6 or n+7.
Olivers and Nieuwenhuis’ (2005) study, which was motivated by the observation that
participants in previous experiments reported rather counterintuitively improved T2
performance when being somewhat unfocused on the task, shows that the Attentional Blink is
significantly ameliorated when observers are concurrently engaged in distracting mental
activity, such as free-associating on a task-irrelevant theme or listening to music. The
experiment suggests that under conditions of rapid visual presentation, target detection may
benefit from a diffusion of attention.
Koch and Tsuchiya (2006) have interpreted Olivers and Nieuwenhuis’ (2005) findings as
indicating that top-down attention is not necessary for consciousness. However, as Srinivasan
(2008) shows, Olivers and Nieuwenhuis’ findings can be interpreted in an alternative and
more economical way as implying that some other form of attention is necessary for
consciousness when stimuli are expected to occur under the specific conditions implied by the
Attentional Blink paradigm. Indeed, top-down attention is not a unitary phenomenon; instead
it can imply at least two different attentional strategies: focused attention and diffuse attention
(Demeyere and Humphreys 2007). As Srinivasan suggests, these two different attentional
strategy can be conceived as two ends of a continuum in which the focus varies. Under
certain conditions, such as when subjects know that they need to consider a large number of
items in order to report the second target stimulus in an experiment on attentional blink,
diffused attention may turn out to be a better strategy than focused attention.
Lamme (2003) also proposes that there can be consciousness without attention. In his
view, the attentive selection process operates at a later stage than consciousness: attention
does not determine whether stimuli reach a conscious state, but determines whether a
conscious report about stimuli is possible. In other words, we are conscious of many inputs,
but without attention this conscious experience cannot be reported: when we view a visual
scene, we experience a richness of content that goes beyond what we can report. His model -
which presupposes the existence of a short-lived, vulnerable and not easily reportable form of
visual experience, which contrasts with a more stable, reportable form of awareness –
parallels: (1) Block’s (1996) proposal of the existence of two distinct kinds of awareness:
phenomenal and access awareness; and (2) the distinction made in the domain of sensory
memory between “iconic memory and “working memory”. In support of his view, he quotes
Becker et al.’s (2000) and Landman et al.’s (2003) change detection experiments. It is known
from Change Blindness’ experiments that subjects’ ability to detect a change in a visually
presented array of items is greatly reduced if a blank interstimulus interval (ISI) is inserted
between the original array (stimulus 1) and a subsequent array displaying the same items as
stimulus 1 except for one item that has changed (stimulus 2). It is also known that the change
detection improves if the to be changed item is cued during the display of stimulus 1. The
new and surprising phenomenon found by Becker et al. (2000) and Landman et al. (2003) is
that change detection also improves when the location of the change is cued during the blank
ISI. This may lead to believe that all of the items of stimulus 1 are conscious, and remain in
consciousness even after the stimulus is removed, until it is overwritten by stimulus 2.
In my opinion, Lamme approaches consciousness and attention from a typical
information-processing point of view, even though the model he proposes differs from most
94 Giorgio Marchetti

of the models that are inspired by such a point of view. Indeed, for him attention is a selection
process that determines not so much whether stimuli reach consciousness, as whether stimuli
can go from phenomenal awareness to access awareness. He arrives at this model on the basis
of the considerations that: (a) there are different levels of processing that stimuli can reach.
More specifically, there are sensory inputs that: (1) reach a conscious state via the process of
attentive selection; (2) do not reach a conscious state when not attended; (3) do not reach
consciousness, not even when attended; (b) these different levels of processing can be more
parsimoniously explained by a model that is based on an early distinction between conscious
and unconscious stimuli than by a model that is based on an early distinction between
attended and unattended stimuli. Indeed, while the early distinction between attended and
unattended stimuli would lead to postulating at least three different processes (one for stimuli
that are conscious because attended, one for stimuli that are unconscious because unattended
and one for stimuli that are purely unconscious), the early distinction between conscious and
unconscious stimuli would lead to postulating only two processes (one for stimuli that are
conscious and one for stimuli that are unconscious).
There is no doubt that Lamme’s information-processing point of view partly explains
what hinders him from assigning attention an active role in relation to consciousness. But his
model also seems to overlook the fact that both attention and consciousness can assume a
variety of forms. For example, when he observes that there are “non-attentional selection
mechanisms” that can produce unconscious processing of stimuli, Lamme does not seem to
consider the fact that some sort of “preliminary attention” (Velmans 1991) can also exists,
and that stimuli that are preliminary attended, despite being processed, might not be
consciously experienced. By overlooking this fact he mistakes unconscious processing for
preliminary-attended processing. Moreover, as showed by Bahrami et al. (2008), attention can
also act on stimuli that have not reached awareness: stimulus competition for the allocation of
attentional capacity occurs regardless of whether or not the observer is conscious of the
stimulus representations. Therefore, it certainly seems to be more plausible and economical to
propose a model based on the notion that attention is necessary for consciousness than a
model based on the idea that attention is not necessary for consciousness: while the latter
implies two processes (one for stimuli that are conscious and one for stimuli that are
unconscious), the former needs only one process (stimuli are attended: various levels and
types of attention are possible).
As regards the finding that change detection improves when the location of the change is
cued during the blank ISI (Becker et al. 2000), in my opinion it does not show that there can
be consciousness without attention; rather, it only confirms that: (a) there is an early
component of attention - namely, the exogenous one (Nakayama & Mackeben 1989) - that
can capture a specific item in iconic memory if sufficient time is afforded (change detection
and identification tend to worsen at longer ISIs between the offset of stimulus 1 and the onset
of the cue); (b) once attention has captured the item, the item is (or can be) transferred to a
short-term-memory buffer, where it may be compared with a later-occurring item, thus
leading to change detection (change detection and identification tend to improve at longer
ISIs between the onset of the cue and the onset of stimulus 2).
Finally, it should be noted that Lamme’s idea that when we view a visual scene we
experience a richness of content that goes beyond what we can report is questionable at least.
Experiments performed with the change-blindness paradigm show that viewers are over-
confident about their capacities and suffer from an “illusion of seeing”: when viewing a
 A New Perspective on Human Consciousness 95

scene, viewers who claim to perceive the entire visual scene, actually fail to notice important
changes of the elements of the scene. As argued by O’Regan & Noë (2001), the “illusion of
seeing” might arise because viewers know that they can, at will, orient attention to any
location and obtain information from it (for a similar view, see also Dehaene et al. 2006).
One more argument in Koch and Tsuchiya’s (2006) view indicating that top-down
attention is not necessary for consciousness is the fact that we can be aware of the gist of a
scene even when we are not paying attention to it. In my view, the fact that top-down
attention is absent or nearly absent does not entail that there is no attention at all: some form
of limited attention may be involved, such as for example what Velmans (1991) defines
“preliminary attention”, which allows us to capture the gist of a scene. This is also De Brigard
& Prinz’s (forthcoming) view, who observe that there is no reason to think that attention is
absent, but rather that it is more plausible to think that attention is only diminished. Indeed,
the view that attention is necessary for consciousness predicts very well such findings: when
attention is nearly absent, we are aware of far less than when it is fully deployed. This is why
the gist is perceived and no more. Alternatively, it is also be possible to conceive the
phenomenon of gist as evidence of the existence of a specific form of consciousness: what
Bartolomeo (2008) calls “primary consciousness”. Primary consciousness refers to the basic
condition of being aware of something: as such, it must be distinguished from a higher-order,
reflective form of consciousness, which can involve linguistic abilities and allows subjects to
perceive and describe their own actions and thoughts. Not always what enters primary
consciousness also enters the higher-order form of reflective consciousness: overlooking this
fact may sometimes lead to the wrong observation that the absence of a verbal report means
the absence of consciousness tout court. Bartolomeo (2008, p. 17) illustrates the difference
between the two forms of consciousness by quoting an example given by Merleau-Ponty “of
someone who enters a room and feels an impression of disorder, only to later discover that
this impression came from a crooked picture on the wall. Before discovering that, this
person’s consciousness was ʽliving things that it could not spell outʽ. This would by no
means imply that the first impression on entering the room was unconscious. Rather, the
crooked picture generated a form of consciousness whose source was not immediately
amenable to verbal description”. Indeed, as showed by Bartolomeo et al. (2007), subjects can
use endogenous strategies of attentional orienting - which are traditionally maintained to be
voluntary and require conscious awareness - without being able to subsequently describe
them.
The fact that attention is necessary for consciousness does not imply that they are the
same thing. As we have seen, consciousness also needs some other components (sense-
organs, somatosensory organs, and a working memory); likewise, the stream of consciousness
can only be generated if the schema of self is also added. Moreover, consciousness results
from the activity performed by attention, that is, from the application of attention to the other
organs or to attention itself, and the consequent modulation of the state of the organ of
attention. This difference is partly captured by Baars’ (1997b) description of attention as
something more active than consciousness, and of consciousness as the result of this activity
(I say “partly” because, in his theory, Baars only acknowledges the selective function of
attention, without recognizing its role in generating the phenomenal, qualitative aspect of
consciousness). Indeed, one can wonder whether there can be human consciousness at all, as
we know it, without the schema of self (and its fundamental set of rules that runs the
perceptual system), the sense-organs, the somatosensory organs, and working memory, and
96 Giorgio Marchetti

the connections linking one component to the others and to the organ of attention. This is not
the case of course: the organ of attention alone is not sufficient, and the other components are
also necessary.
In synthesis, attention represents a key to conscious perception and experience: any
model that aims to explain how consciousness works must necessarily include attention as its
most important component. Indeed, many models of consciousness take it into consideration,
assigning different levels of importance to it (just to mention a few: Baars 1988, Chella 2007,
Crick 1994, Edelman 1989). There are also those like Taylor (2002, 2007a, 2007b), who
explicitly and extensively uses attention to develop his model of consciousness. Taylor puts
forward the CODAM (Corollary Discharge of Attention Movement) neural network control
model of consciousness. The CODAM model consists of input processing modules (oriented
bar analyzers, etc.), an object representations module (the object map), a goals module, an
inverse model controller (creating a feedback attention signal to the object map and input
modules, so as to move the focus of attention, as biased by the goals module), a working
memory buffer site (to hold attention-amplified activity for report and awareness), a corollary
discharge buffer (as a copy of the attention movement signal - that is, the signal that causes
the focus of attention to be changed – to give an early prediction of the expected report signal
from lower cortices on the buffer working memory), and a monitor module (to create an error
signal so as to correct for possible attention errors). The main feature of the model is a speed-
up and error-correcting mechanism based on an efference copy or corollary discharge of the
attention movement control signal (the signal that causes the focus of attention to change).
The corollary discharge provides a precursor signal that not only helps speed up and correct
the processing of data, but is also at the basis of the experience of ownership of the about-to-
be experienced content of consciousness.
However, despite taking attention into consideration, almost none of these models offers,
or intend to offer, an explanation of how attention generates the phenomenal, qualitative
aspect of consciousness (to my knowledge, the only partial exception is represented by
Haikonen 2003, whose work we will consider later on). This is mainly due to the fact that
they are developed using a third-person or purely information-processing approach, which
implies all the problems we have seen in the initial paragraphs.

4.2. Attentional Activity Can Be Performed Thanks to Nervous Energy,

Which Is Supplied by the Organ of Attention

I derived the idea that attentional activity can be performed because of nervous energy
from Ceccato’s (1985, p.24; see also Ceccato and Oliva 1988) work, who stated that the
human being is provided with a form of energy that can be defined as “nervous” if considered
in physiological terms, and as “mental” if considered in attentional ones. Certainly, the
concept of “nervous energy” can prove to be quite abstract and problematic for those who,
adopting a physical point of view, consider energy as the product of force and distance.
However, I think the concept becomes less problematic when we consider the main ideas it
wants to convey, namely that: (a) we are provided with “something” that allows us to do
perform a certain kind of activity or work, generally known as “mental activity”, that is, to
think, remember, decide, make plans, feel emotions, perceive, be aware of, perform
unconscious processes, etc.; (b) this “something” is limited, in the sense that we can only do a
 A New Perspective on Human Consciousness 97

certain amount of work per unit of time; (c) this “something” dissipates and runs out as we
perform mental activity (but can be, at least partly, restored thanks to nourishment, rest and
sleep). Considered under this point of view, the concept of “nervous energy” becomes less
abstract and can be assimilated to more familiar notions such as “a fuel that is consumed” or a
“battery”, even though, as Szalma and Hancock (2002) observe, a major problem with using
non-biological metaphors (such as economic or thermodynamic/hydraulic models) to
represent biological processes or systems is that the former can fail to capture the complexity
and the unique dynamic characteristics of the latter. Indeed, non-biological metaphors may
fail to account for some important characteristics of nervous energy, such as the fact that it is
a pool that is flexible, in the sense that it fluctuates with arousal, so that in some situations
increasing task load may increase arousal, leading to a release of a larger supply of resources.
In this sense, as Szalma and Hancock (2002) suggest, a regulatory model based on
physiology, such as Cabanac and Russek’s (2000), may prove to be a better metaphor to
describe the role of nervous energy in human cognition and performance (even though, as
Szalma and Hancock correctly point out, a physiologically-based theory of nervous energy
must also be tempered by the problems inherent in reducing psychological processes to
physiological activity).
Moreover, it should be noted that the concept of energy and the ideas it conveys are not at
all foreign to researchers dealing with brain studies, even though they are not directly used to
investigate the mechanisms responsible for the production of qualia. For example, Shulman et
al. (2009) observe that high energy consumption is a necessary property of the conscious
state. More precisely, empirical evidence from PET and fMRI studies led them to hypothesize
that: 1) “the conscious state in the resting-awake human is supported by a high and relatively
uniform state of baseline brain energy consumption and (by inference) neuronal activity”
(Shulman et al. 2009, p. 66); 2) when the energy is sufficiently reduced, there is loss of
consciousness: for example, loss of consciousness during anaesthesia occurs when regional
energy levels are uniformly reduced by 40-50% from the resting-awake values; 3) responses
to sensory and cognitive inputs are relatively small perturbations of the conscious state, that
is, neuronal responses to sensory and cognitive stimuli are much smaller than the neuronal
activity maintaining the baseline state.
The concept of energy dissipation and consumption is also taken into consideration for its
importance in understanding the function, design and evolution of sense organs and brains
(Laughlin 2001, Laughlin & Sejnowski 2003). Indeed, energy consumption can be conceived
as a constraint that impinges on all aspects of neural function: as such, it can help understand
why nervous systems evolved the way they did. For example, it is known that nervous
systems consume metabolic energy at relatively high rates per gram, and that energy supply
limits traffic in the brain. As Laughlin & Sejnowski (2003) observe, it is precisely by taking
such kinds of metabolic and energy constraints into account that it is possible to explain why
evolution favoured the appearance of cortical networks characterized by miniaturized
components, in which information is represented with energy-efficient codes and superfluous
signals are eliminated.
The ideas implied by the concept of “nervous energy” (nervous energy is a pool that
allows us to do a certain kind of work, is limited, runs out, is replenished, is flexible) have
been variously highlighted and analyzed in relation to attention by many authors. Various
terms – such as “psychic energy”, “limited capacity processor”, “resource”, “effort”,
“commodity” and “pool of limited capacity” - have also been used to (either partially or fully)
98 Giorgio Marchetti

express the same ideas as those implied by the concept of nervous energy (Peter Jakubik, in a
personal communication, also suggests using “operational capability”; however, by adopting
“nervous energy”, I intend using a less generic term that identifies one specific kind of
energy, and differentiates it from the other kinds of energies: precisely, it identifies the kind
of energy that is produced by the organ of attention and used to pilot and run the motor
organs, the sense-organs, the somatosensory organs, working memory, and the schema of
self).
For example, in his study on the phenomenon of “flow”, Csikszentmihalyi (1992) refers
to attention as a psychic energy that allows us to perform mental activity and that is dissipated
in doing this activity: “Because attention determines what will or not will not appear in
consciousness, and because it is also required to make any other mental events - such as
remembering, thinking, feeling, and making decisions - happen there, it is useful to think of it
as psychic energy. Attention is like energy in that without it no work can be done, and in
doing work it is dissipated. We create ourselves by how we invest this energy”
(Csikszentmihalyi 1992, p. 33).
Mach (1890), in his work on time-sensation, speaks of attention in terms of a limited pool
that runs out during the day, leading to sleep: “Since, so long as we are conscious, time-
sensation is always present, it is probable that it is connected with the organic consumption
necessarily associated with consciousness, - that we feel the work of attention as time. (…)
When our attention is completely exhausted, we sleep” (Mach 1890, pp. 111-112).
Kahneman (1973) on the footsteps of David Rapaport, put forward the idea of attention
as a limited general purpose resource which can be flexibly allocated from moment to
moment according to the person’s needs, goals and motivations. Attention can be focused on
one particular activity, or can be divided among a number of activities. When one needs to do
two attentionally demanding tasks at once, one can share one’s processing capacities between
the tasks according to priority. Moreover, the amount of attentional capacity can vary
according to motivation and arousal: if one puts more effort into a task, one can do better.
However, since attentional resources are limited, there is a limit to the possibility of sharing
attention - when one task demands more resources, there will be less capacity left over for the
other tasks - as well as of increasing mental processing capacity by increasing mental effort
and arousal.
Although initial research seemed to confirm the existence of the general-purpose resource
hypothesized by Kahneman, subsequent experiments (McLeod 1977, 1978, Duncan 1984,
Fagot and Pashler, 1992, Pashler, 1989) have shown that there are a variety of resources that
are task specific rather than a single, multi-purpose central pool of processing resources. In
McLeod’s experiment (1977), for instance, two groups of subjects performed a continuous
visual input/manual output task simultaneously with a two-choice tone identification task.
While one group responded vocally to the tones, the other group responded with the hand not
involved in the continuous tracking task. It was found that the continuous task was performed
significantly worse when the two-choice responses were manual, that is, response production
was affected by the production of manual responses but not by the production of vocal
responses. McLeod concluded that this difference was due to the fact that while the two
manual responses were produced by a single limited capacity process, the manual and vocal
responses were produced by independent processes. Psychological refractory period (PRP)
studies (Pashler, 1998) have also given clear evidence of the existence of independent
resources: they show that there is dissociation between the perceptual processing stage and
 A New Perspective on Human Consciousness 99

the central processing stage (roughly speaking, the activity of thinking is, to a certain extent,
independent of the activity of perceiving).
Wickens (1984) defined resources as an intervening variable to account for variability in
the efficiency with which individuals can divide attention among tasks.
Similarly to the concept of “nervous energy”, the notion of “organ” can also prove to be
problematic. In physiology, for example, an “organ” usually denotes something that is
anatomically delimited, while in the case of attention it could turn out that many structures are
involved at various levels. Therefore, it could be better to use some other term, such as for
example “nervous structures”. At present, however, I think the term organ is the preferable
one because it requires and conveys the complementary idea of function, which is
fundamental at this initial stage of research on the brain structures underpinning
consciousness.
Even though the notions of “organ of attention” and of attention as an activity made
possible thanks to a form of energy can prove to be problematic for the reasons stated above
(and also for some other reasons: see, Navon 1984, Szalma and Hancock 2002), many
scientists have nonetheless started investigating the physical substrate of attention and the
nervous structures constituting the organ of attention. For example, Mesulam (1990) proposes
a network model of attention in which several distinct cortical regions interact. La Berge’s
(1995) neural model of visual attention involves the thalamus, the oculomotor regions of the
superior colliculus, and the posterior parietal cortex. Posner and his colleagues (Posner 1990,
1995; Posner and Petersen 1990) propose a model of attention consisting of three
interconnected networks: a posterior attention network involving the parietal cortex, the
pulvinar, and the superior colliculus; an anterior attention network involving the anterior
cingulated cortex and supplementary motor areas in the frontal cortex; and a vigilance
network involving the locus coeruleus noradrenergic input to the cortex. Each area performs a
specific attentional operation: the parietal cortex disengages attention from the locus of the
present target; the superior colliculus acts to move the spotlight of attention to the intended
target; the pulvinar is involved in the engagement of attention at the intended target; the
anterior network, which is involved in the detection of events and the preparation of
appropriate responses, exercises executive control over voluntary behavior and thought
processes; the vigilance network is crucial for maintaining a state of alertness.
To my knowledge, the individuation of the organ of attention based on the assumptions I
have put forward here (that is, as the main organ responsible for the production of conscious
experience, which derives from the modulation of the state of nervous energy through the use
of nervous energy itself) has not yet been undertaken. It is true that researchers have already
started investigating whether attention and consciousness share common neural structures
(see for example, Rees and Lavie 2001, Naghavi and Nyberg 2005, Bartolomeo 2008; for a
recent review, see Cavanna and Nani, 2008). According to Cavanna and Nani (2008), for
example, the frontoparietal network and recurrency (Lamme 2003) could represent the
essential neural ingredient of the overlap between consciousness and attention; Bartolomeo
(2008) suggests that frontoparietal networks underlie both spatial attention and primary
consciousness.
However, this research is still inspired by a limited and partial idea of attention as a
purely selective filter, which has the capacity to voluntarily or involuntarily give priority to
some parts of the information available at a given moment.
100 Giorgio Marchetti

Therefore I cannot provide any empirical evidence for its existence, but only argue for it.
Certainly, the empirical individuation of such an organ is not a simple task, above all because
of the kinds of basic roles attention plays in mental life. For Haikonen (2003), for example,
attention is “a biological neural system’s basic way of favoring the strongest signals, a
process that is present already in the simplest central nervous system” (Haikonen 2003, p.
70). For him, therefore, there would be no need for any special “attention box”, since the
attention mechanism is distributed within the whole neural system. In my opinion, a
successful individuation of such an organ presupposes a clear and comprehensive description
of its functions. Only by having previously described such functions and developed a
theoretical model of the organ, can scientists identify the physical structures responsible for
the production of those functions: using Cavanna and Nani’s (2008) words, “we will not be
able to find anything if we do not know exactly what we are looking for”. My proposal is that
the organ of attention performs not only those operations that we all know attention allows us
to do, such as focusing or zooming on an object, maintaining a state of alertness, selecting
items, filtering unwanted information, and so on, but also the fundamental function of
generating conscious experience in its various qualitative and quantitative aspects.

4.3. Attentional Activity Affects the Organ of Attention, Causing a

Modification of the State of the Nervous Energy Itself,
WHICH Constitutes the Phenomenal
Aspect of Consciousness

I partly derived the idea that feelings and conscious experiences are the result of a change
in the state of nervous energy (induced by the use of nervous energy itself) from Valéry’s
(1973) observation that sensation is a variation of the state of energy of a closed system:
“Sensation does not consist so much in an introduction of something from the outside, as in
an intervention, that is, an inner transformation (of energy) made possible by an external
modification, a variation in a state of a closed system (…) sensation is due to some kind of
disequilibrium (…) sensation is what occurs between two states of equilibrium” (I have
translated this from the Italian version, 1988, pp. 411-412).
This idea seems quite plausible if we assume a first-person perspective. In this
perspective, a person emerges from, and thanks to, his/her continuously performing a certain
kind of activity (attentional activity). The process of emergence of the person can take place
only if the person’s activity allows the person to differentiate him-herself from the other
entities, beings, and objects. This implies that the person has the ability to determine his/her
own limits and boundaries, and concurrently the limits and boundaries of the other entities.
The person’s limits and boundaries are principally represented by the constraints imposed on
the person by the specific structure of his/her body (for example, we cannot perform all the
movements we want: our body allows us only certain degrees of freedom) and by the
relations resulting from the interaction between his/her body and the other entities. Such
constraints manifest themselves during the person’s activity and movements, and are the
basic elements of perception: perception is based precisely on these constraints, and percepts
are formed and constituted by these constraints (for a similar view, see Morris 2004. When
discussing Carello and Turvey’s [2000] experiments, for example, he states: “What we are
 A New Perspective on Human Consciousness 101

perceiving when we perceive felt length is a constraint, a limit on movement” p. 65). Here it
must be stressed that these constraints are the result of the person’s activity, that is, of his/her
continuously using and applying his/her attention: they originate from, and are produced by
the person’s use of his/her attention, and they consist precisely of the interruption, hindrance,
slowing down, facilitation, stimulation, acceleration, and so on, of the attentional activity.
Every time the person finds an obstacle or cannot extend his/her limbs beyond a certain extent
or cannot make a movement, his/her attentional activity, and along with it, all his/her being, is
slowed down or even temporarily stopped, so much so that the person must either apply
his/her nervous energy in a new way or redirect it to something else, if he/she wants to
unblock the situation. It is by means of this use and application of attention that the person
can perceive constraints as such (that is, as constraints on his/her own activity). Indeed, the
person has no other means of directly “feeling” and experiencing them: the person can only
rely on his/her own (attentional) activity. And whoever wants to analyze how a person
perceives things also has to rely on the person’s own activity, unless they think that it is better
to rely on an internal homunculus, thus falling into endless circularity.
To better understand the mechanism by means of which the attentional activity performed
by the organism induces a variation in the state of the nervous energy of the organism, we can
resort to the comparison between this mechanism and a standard power supply, such as a
battery. Indeed, as we have seen in the previous section, the concept of nervous energy can be
assimilated to more familiar notions such as a “battery” or “a fuel that is consumed”.
However, there are some important differences in addition to the one we already considered
(nervous energy is flexible, in the sense that it fluctuates with arousal): (a) while the working
of the battery has only one effect on the battery itself, that is, dissipating its own charge, the
working of attention modulates the state of nervous energy, in the sense that it can for
example stimulate a larger production of nervous energy, speed it up, hinder it, or block it; (b)
while a battery releases energy only when it is needed by a circuit, the working of attention
goes on continuously (most probably, as we have seen, in a cyclical way) in waking hours, so
much so that we cannot stop thinking, imagining, remembering, perceiving, and more in
general having conscious experiences.
A partial but very interesting parallel with my model of how attentional activity affects
the state of the nervous energy of the organism is offered by Cabanac and Russek’s (2000)
model of regulated biological systems. Cabanac and Russek starts by correctly pointing out
that describing regulation in biological systems in the classical terms of control theory
presents the disadvantage of not distinguishing signals from energy: control theory is more
concerned with signal processing than with energy flow, which is on the contrary the main
problem of any living being

A computer, or a T.V. set, are plugged into an infinite energy supply, and energy counts
for little in the problem engineers face in building or using them. On the other hand, energy
and matter supply is a major problem for animals. It is therefore necessary to revise the
concepts of regulation in order to face this specific problem in living beings (Cabanac and
Russek 2000, pp. 141-142).

According to Cabanac and Russek, living beings are open systems that accumulate free
energy and reduce their entropy at the expense of the energy input: they reach a steady state,
such that a constant amount of free energy available for use is maintained, and the input and
102 Giorgio Marchetti

output flows of energy are equal and constant. Their capacity of reducing their local entropy
and of organizing themselves at the expense of the energy flow through them, may represent
the thermodynamic basis of life and evolution. Cabanac and Russek’s model of regulation in
physiological systems (Figure 4), which is essentially a homeostatic one, is based on a set
point that indicates the normal level of function. Perturbations of the steady state require the
system to compensate for deviations from the set point. The compensation is achieved
through a regulation of the input and output flows, which are anatomically distinct (body
outflow - urine, heat loss, etc. - is not the same loop as inflow – water intake, heat production,
food intake, etc.). The inflow regulation is a negative feedback loop, in which an input
subsystem responds to perturbation of the steady state by increasing flow when energy is
drained and decreasing it when energy levels rise above the set point. The outflow is a
positive feedforward loop in which changes in the state relative to the set point induces
changes in the same direction in the output subsystem.
Cabanac (2000) observes that sensations of pleasure and displeasure are strongly
dependent on the actual internal state of the system, that is, how much the level of free energy
available for the system deviates from the set point: for example, while hypothermic subjects
feel cold stimuli as unpleasant and warm stimuli as pleasant, hyperthermic subjects feel the
opposite in response to the same stimuli: as soon as subjects return to normothermia, all
stimuli lose their strong pleasure or displeasure component and tend to become indifferent.
Thus pleasure can take place only in situations in which an internal perturbation has to be
corrected (for example, hyperthermia or hypothermia); once the internal perturbation is
corrected through the regulation of the input and output flows, all stimuli become indifferent
(unless, of course, the perturbation they introduce in the energy level of the system is such
that the pain threshold is reached or crossed, in which case they arouse displeasure).
Cabanac uses the word “alliesthesia” to indicate the fact that the hedonic dimension of
sensation is contingent upon the internal state of the stimulated subject: sensory pleasure is a
dynamic characteristic eventually generating its own extinction. Therefore, sensory pleasure
can be characterized by its physiological usefulness in correcting a physiological trouble or
deficit.
If we apply Cabanac and Russek’s model to my attentional model, the energy flow
becomes the nervous energy which is continuously used by the organism in the form of
attention. The application of attention induces perturbations of the energy level of the system,
which can generate either pleasant, unpleasant or indifferent sensations.
The hedonic dimension of the sensation - that is, its pleasantness, unpleasantness or
indifference - depends substantially on whether the energy level of the system is moving
away from, or toward the set point (as we have seen, pleasant sensations occur when
perturbations are corrected, bringing the energy level toward the set point, while unpleasant
sensations occur when perturbations are introduced, which brings the energy level away from
the set point), the distance between the actual energy level and the set point (indifferent
sensations occur when the energy level is near the set point; painful sensations occur when
the energy level reaches a certain distance from the set point), and most probably the speed at
which the energy level moves.
 A New Perspective on Human Consciousness 103

Figure 4. Cabanac and Russek’s (2000) model of regulated biological systems.

Let’s try to imagine how the internal state modifies when the person, touching a surface,
feels a sensation of “soft”. The initial application of attention – through the organ of touch - to
the surface produces a slight expenditure of nervous energy, which induces a temporary
decrease of the energy level of the system. This in turn entails – through the regulatory
negative feedback – the opening of the faucet at the input so as to let the energy level rise in
order to restore the set point. Subsequently, with the surface of the object not offering any
resistance to the fingers, less nervous energy is required at the output. The sudden increased
input flow not counterbalanced by an equal output flow makes the energy level return to the
set point, with the accompanying sensation of pleasure.
On the contrary, a sensation of “hard” implies, after the initial application of attention, a
subsequent increase of output flow, which, not being duly counterbalanced by the input flow,
leads to a further decrease of the energy level, with the accompanying sensation of effort and
sometimes also displeasure.
As I said, Cabanac and Russek’s model offers a partial analogy of my attentional model:
for example, it does not address the problem of the segmentation of the organ of attention in
specialized sub-units - what Szalma and Hancock (2002) term “structural considerations”, nor
does it account for the cyclical character of attentional activity – even though, in his other
works (Cabanac 1992, 1996, 2002), Cabanac clearly states that every conscious experience is
characterized by and can be analyzed along four dimensions, two of which are duration and
quality (the other two being intensity and pleasure/displeasure). Cabanac and Russek’s model
does however represent in an essential and vivid way the main mechanism by means of which
attention produces the phenomenal aspect of consciousness.
By offering a model of representation that is common to both human consciousness and
the other main physiological functions (such as pulmonary ventilation, blood circulation,
etc.), Cabanac and Russek’s model also gives biological plausibility, from an evolutionary
point of view, to my model of consciousness as a system that evolved from more primitive
104 Giorgio Marchetti

ones (according to the old principle Natura non facit saltum adopted also by Charles Darwin).
The fact that there is continuity between old and new systems, however, does not necessarily
imply that there are no differences between them or that they perform comparable functions.
Firstly, each system deals with a specific kind of energy. Secondly, while the old ones have
the main function of keeping the energy flow and oscillations under control, thus maintaining
as much as possible a constant amount of free energy available for use, human consciousness
has the primary aim of utilizing the energy flow and oscillations to the end of controlling the
other organs and systems. That is, human consciousness has the privilege of controlling the
other organs and systems by means of a unique and common kind of energy: nervous energy.
This latter aspect of my model of consciousness is also well captured by Cabanac’s
(1996, 2003) idea of the affective dimension of human consciousness as the “common
currency” for the trade-offs that take place in the mind to achieve the ranking of priorities and
insure that the most urgent motivation has access first to the behavioral final common path:
which, in Cabanac’s view, is what makes human consciousness useful for the person (for a
partly similar idea of the usefulness of the hedonic dimension for the person’s choices, see
Osvich, 1998).
But there is also another important aspect that, in my view, makes human consciousness
useful and above all advantageous for the person: the flexibility it allows. Human
consciousness, by controlling the other organs, allows the person to allocate his resources
according to the various needs and contexts, thus providing him with a higher degree of
freedom and autonomy than the other living beings have. This flexibility is primarily attained
by means attention, which the person can voluntarily focus both on his various organs, the
other beings and the environment, for variable amounts of time. This flexibility allows the
person to also face unexpected and new events, or devise new strategies to overcome
unresolved problems. Compared to other living beings that simply react to stimuli according
to preprogrammed, inherited patterns of behavior, human beings have the competitive
advantage of elaborating new behavioral reactions.
The idea that consciousness arises as a consequence of the modification of the energetic
state of the organ of attention induced by the use of attention itself is not at all common
amongst scientists dealing with consciousness. However, in my view, it is possible to find a
partial suggestion in Haikonen’s (2003) idea that some conscious states derive from the
modulation of attention. When dealing with the problem of the feelings of pain and pleasure,
Haikonen notices that they cannot be explained by means of a sensor detecting the property of
an external entity: pain and pleasure are not representations of things and objects of the
outside world. They are not properties of a sensed entity. The non-representational nature of
pain and pleasure is further exemplified by the fact that we cannot memorize pain and
pleasure, and evoke them afterwards. But if pain and pleasure cannot be explained by means
of a sensor detecting the property of a sensed entity, how can we account for them?
According to Haikonen:

Pain sensors do not sense pain, the sensed entity is cell damage and the caused signal
indicates only that pain is to be evoked. Thus the feel of pain is not a representation, instead it
is a system reaction. The pain signals themselves do not carry the feel of pain, instead the feel
arises from the effects that these signals have on the system and this in turn depends on the
way the signals are connected to the system (Haikonen 2003, p. 103).
 A New Perspective on Human Consciousness 105

Therefore, Haikonen considers feeling pain as a “system reaction”. What does this
“system reaction” consist of?

Pain “demands attention”; it disrupts any attention that is focused on any ongoing task.
Obviously pain signals are transmitted to every modality in the frontal cortex and the
message, so to say, is “stop whatever you are doing and try something else so that this signal
might stop!”. This is because the pain signal itself does not know who should do what to stop
the damage and therefore it has to broadcast its message to everybody and thus disrupt the
attended processes within each modality. Pain does not allow the other modalities to relax,
instead it tries to stop their present activity and start something else. (…) I consider this
disruptive broadcasting as a fundamental property of pain and I would like to go as far as to
propose that the subjective feeling of pain is indeed caused by attention disruption especially
in the frontal cortex area (Haikonen 2003, p. 104).

(it should be noted that, for Haikonen, attention is a biological neural system’s basic way
of favoring the strongest signals, a process that is already present in the simplest central
nervous system).
In Haikonen’s view, feeling pleasure also is a system reaction: “Pleasure, like pain is not
a property of a sensed entity. There is no pleasure to be sensed and represented, instead
pleasure is a system reaction that can be evoked by various sensations” (Haikonen 2003, p.
105). More specifically, pleasure entails: a) continuing the pleasure-causing activity to sustain
the feeling of pleasure; b) focusing attention on the pleasure-causing activity, and excluding
attention on other stimuli; c) memorizing pleasure-causing things and acts, so that they can be
identified and repeated in the future. For Haikonen, pleasure, like pain, is connected to
attention as well, but in a different way from attention:

While pain uses brute force to disrupt the attention within modalities pleasure tries to
sustain its attention focus by having non-related circuits and modules relax. In this way only
the pleasure evoking activity will be continued while other activities are suppressed
(Haikonen 2003, p. 105).

In addition to pain and pleasure, Haikonen lists some other elementary sensations
(“elementary” as opposed to more demanding sensations from a processing point of view,
such as the visual and auditory ones) that would elicit a basic system reaction, namely:

(a) good taste and smell, which elicit positive responses, such as acceptance of, and
approaching, the source of the good taste and smell;
(b) bad taste and smell, which elicit negative responses, such as rejection of, and
withdrawal from, the source of the bad taste and smell;
(c) match, which implies sustained attention;
(d) mismatch, which implies refocused attention;
(e) novelty, which implies focused attention.

According to Haikonen, system reactions are direct and rather automatic pre-wired
responses to elementary sensations: they do not require a complicated cognitive evaluation of
the stimulus or of the situation, thus enhancing the prospects of survival. The various
106 Giorgio Marchetti

combinations of system reactions give rise to various emotions: curiosity, astonishment,

caution, fear, anger, desire, love, happiness, sadness, envy, horror, etc.
Having explained feelings and sensations (such as pain, pleasure, taste, smell, match,
mismatch and novelty, but also beauty and ugliness) in terms of system reactions, Haikonen
defines strong qualia as: “temporal behaviour patterns of inner attention caused by system
reactions (…) We have strong qualia because we have system reactions that affect attention”
(Haikonen 2003, p. 148).
Therefore, Haikonen’s proposal, basing strong qualia on attention, and more precisely on
its variations (“I have proposed that ‘pain’, ‘pleasure’, ‘good’ and ‘bad’ get their specific feel
via the attention affecting mechanisms”, Haikonen 2003, p. 116) seems to tackle the problem
of phenomenal consciousness in a way similar to mine.
However, as far as I understand, there is a fundamental difference between his model of
consciousness and my model of consciousness. While in my model, the phenomenal aspect of
consciousness is explained with the modification of the energetic state of the organ of
attention which is determined and induced by the use of attention itself (in other words: qualia
are the modifications of the state of nervous energy supplied by the organ of attention), in
Haikonen’s model, attentional variation causes subjective feelings, but is not, and does not
coincide with, them. In fact, Haikonen’s model resorts to some additional components
(namely, “system state sensors” and their “related perception process”) to explain the
phenomenal aspect of consciousness, and how system reactions can be consciously felt:

In order to perceive and internally represent system reactions the system needs system
state sensors and their related perception process (…) pain, pleasure, taste and smell
(good/bad) sensations as well as match/mismatch/novelty states are able to initiate the basic
system reactions such as those listed before and also other physiological reactions. These
system reactions are perceived by system sensors and their respective perception process
(Haikonen 2003, p. 113) (italics are mine).

The explanation of how a machine can experience strong qualia is therefore shifted to the
perception process (indeed, Haikonen clearly states that: “perception processes are a
necessary prerequisite for consciousness”, 2003, p. 149, and that: “Consciousness arises from
perception, without percepts there is no consciousness”, 2003, p. 271), pushing it back into
another unit. Moreover, recognizing that not all percepts reach consciousness even though
they may affect behavior, Haikonen admits that “the perception process alone is not sufficient
to explain consciousness” (Haikonen 2003, p. 250). So, what is involved in conscious
perception? What is it that makes a percept conscious? According to Haikonen:

the difference between conscious and non-conscious operation would be the level of
active cross-connections and binding between modalities; the cross-modality reporting and
learning of related associative connections and thus the establishment of episodic memories of
the event. In non-conscious operation the cross-connections are minimal and the operation of
the different modalities is not unified, it is not about the same topic, there is no binding. In
conscious actions the operation of the different modalities would be unified; the inner
attention of each modality would be focused on the same topic (Haikonen, 2003, p. 254).

As we can see, Haikonen resorts to the notions that are very well-known in consciousness
studies of binding (see for example: Singer 2001) and widespread brain interactions (see for
 A New Perspective on Human Consciousness 107

example Baars 1988). However, this does not yet constitute an explanation of what happens
inside the perception process module that makes a percept conscious. This certainly
represents an explanation of what happens outside the perception process, of how the various
perception modules interconnect, and how all the system focuses on the same topic; this can
certainly explain some important features of consciousness, such as reportability - that is, the
capacity to report, either verbally or in another way, what is consciously experienced - and
the facilitation of further associations and actions on the percept. Moreover, there is no doubt
that Haikonen’s model represents a considerable advance on previous ones for several
reasons: compared to Baars’s model, for example, it explains in applicable engineering terms
how inner speech arises (for a more extensive review of Haikonen’s model, see Marchetti
2008). However, it does not explain which mechanisms and operations occur inside the
perception module to turn system reactions or any other sensations into strong qualia. As I
have tried to show in this work, qualia can be simply explained by resorting to the notion of
the modification of the energetic state of the organ of attention induced by the use of attention
itself. This notion implies that there no need to move, in an endless regression, the
explanation of the phenomenal aspect of consciousness to an additional component, such as
the “system state sensors”: to account for qualia it is enough to consider the working of
attention.

CONCLUSION
In this article I have tried to give an answer to a fundamental question concerning human
consciousness: how can we explain the phenomenal quality of our conscious experiences? To
answer this question, I resorted to two basic concepts: the perceptual system and the schema
of self. The perceptual system makes it possible for an organism to be conscious, whereas the
schema of self provides the rules that make an organism perceive, move, act, behave, and live
in general. From the uninterrupted interaction of the schema of self and the perceptual system
the stream of consciousness arises. Every conscious perception affects the schema of self,
modifying and updating it. Every modification of the schema of self implies a new particular
instruction to the perceptual system, and in general to the organism. The uniqueness of each
single “pulse of consciousness” (James 1890) is determined by the particular instruction that
the schema of self gives to the perceptual system each time.
Attention, which can be considered as the core part of the perceptual system, is not only
responsible for the selective aspect of consciousness, but also for its phenomenal quality. The
organ of attention is the source of the organism’s nervous energy; nervous energy gives the
organism the possibility of attentionally operating, thus performing actions capable of directly
affecting the organism’s state of nervous energy. The attentional activity performed by the
organism involves a variation in the state of nervous energy. It is this variation that constitutes
the phenomenal aspect of consciousness. When acting, the organism can directly experience
and feel its actions and the results of its actions, thus making possible the delimitation and
emergence of the person.
The schema of self - once it has learnt and embodied the notion that the organism, by
means of conscious perceiving, is able to affect the course of its own actions - provides the
organism with a new degree of freedom that gives it the possibility of directly controlling
108 Giorgio Marchetti

itself. The schema of self, whose main goal is to keep the organism operating, thus succeeds
in equipping the organism with the capacity to self-regulate itself, and consequently find on
its own the best ways and means of assuring its survival and of creating new strategies and
aims. This constitutes the fundamental passage from consciousness to self-consciousness

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to express my gratitude to Giulio Benedetti, Michel Cabanac, Pentti
Haikonen and Peter Jakubik for their insightful and constructive comments on a previous
draft of the paper. I am also thankful to Wendy Piemonte for reviewing the English text. The
responsibility for the final version of the work is only mine.

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Chapter 3

ILLUSORY PERCEPTIONS AND MEMORIES:

WHAT IS THE TIE THAT BINDS?

Timothy N. Odegard1, James M. Lampinen2 and Emily A. Farris1

1
University of Texas Arlington, TX, US
2
University of Arkansas, AR, US

ABSTRACT
Research suggests that both perceptual and memory representations involve discrete
features that are bound together to form coherent wholes. The process which combines
features into unified wholes is known as feature binding and is seen as an integral part of
conscious experience. Errors occur in both perceptual and memory based feature binding.
In perception, errors in feature binding produce illusory conjunctions. For instance,
participants presented with a red triangle and a blue square will sometimes mistakenly
perceive a blue triangle next to a red square. Illusory conjunctions demonstrate the
importance of attentional resources in the binding of features in perception. Feature
binding errors also occur in memory. Such errors are known as memory conjunction
errors. For example, participants presented with words such as blackmail and jailbird will
sometimes mistakenly remember the word blackbird. Such findings provide evidence for
the reconstructive nature of human memory. Considerable research has established the
existence and subjectively compelling nature of these sorts of errors. Moreover, relatively
well established theoretical literatures exist in an attempt to account for both illusory
conjunctions and memory conjunction errors. However, to date, no systematic attempt
has been made to draw parallels and connections between these two literatures. The
purpose of the present chapter is to demonstrate similarities and differences between
these two types of errors and to provide a unified comprehensive account of both types of
errors. In the process we hope to elucidate how feature binding can be used to better
understand both perception and memory.
118 Timothy N. Odegard, James M. Lampinen and Emily A. Farris

INTRODUCTION
Perception and memory are inextricably related to one another (Payne & Blackwell,
1998; Roediger, 1996). We must sense what is in our environment before we are able to
encode a mental representation of this information into our memory. Likewise, our memory
aids in our ability to perceive the world around us, allowing us to recognize objects, to
complete obscured patterns and in short, make sense of the world. In fact, the interplay
between the two is so great that it has been difficult to clearly distinguish between our
reliance upon one over the other when performing certain tasks (e.g., Tsal, 1989; Treisman &
Souther, 1986).
One established commonality shared between memory and perception is the reliance
upon top down, inferential processing (Briand & Klein, 1989; Treisman & Schmidt, 1982).
Both Bartlett (1932) and Kohler (1947) commented on the organization imposed on
perception and memory by previous experience with the world and on how this organization
aids us in perceiving and remembering aspects of our environment.
Consider for example, a series of experiments in which Bartlett (1932) presented
participants with unfamiliar drawings of objects and later tested their memories. His
participants often labeled the drawings with the names of something more familiar to them,
thereby placing the objects into more familiar categories. Categorizing these unfamiliar
objects improved his participants’ abilities to remember them. Yet, Bartlett noted that this
improvement came at a cost. Bartlett stated that labeling visual information “immediately
shapes what is seen and what is recalled” (p. 20). For instance, participants often labeled one
of the novel objects a turf cutter. Bartlett argued that this act of labeling led his participants to
mentally alter the shape to correspond to the shape of a turf cutter. Subsequently, participants
remembered this altered representation as opposed to the drawing that was actually presented
at study.
Thus, past experience with the world skewed these participants’ perceptions and
memories for what was presented. Our semantic knowledge interacts with our present
perceptions providing predictability and understanding to the world around us. Although
Bartlett’s participants often labeled the unfamiliar objects, they did not agree upon a single
label for each of the objects. Consequently, participants perceived and subsequently
remembered the drawings differently depending upon the labels used. More recent research
(Bransford & Franks, 1972; Broadbent & Broadbent, 1978) has emphasized the importance of
context in guiding our perceptions and our memories.
As Bartlett’s research demonstrated, perception and memory are highly organized and
influenced by top down processing (Hannigan & Reinitz, 2003; Schank, 1982). There is more
to cognition than the mere sum of its parts, and our phenomenology of the world is far richer
than the physical energy in the world that we are endowed to detect. An appeal to inferential
processing provides an account for why individuals are motivated to include certain details
that were not presented in their perceptions or memories, but top-down processing cannot
fully account for the coherence with which we perceive and remember the world around us
(Reyna & Lloyd, 1997). For example, in contrast to a straight constructivist account of
memory, individuals are able to perceive and remember objects regardless as to whether or
not they are capable of identifying and labeling them (Kahneman & Treisman, 1984;
 Illusory Perceptions and Memories: What Is the Tie That Binds? 119

Kahneman, Treisman, & Burkell, 1983; Treisman, 1992; Treisman, Kahneman, & Burkell,
1983; Treisman & Paterson, 1984).
To account for this ability, some researchers have suggested that our perceptual system is
designed to experience the world as discrete pieces of information, typically referred to as
features (Cavanagh, Arugin, & Treisman 1990; Treisman & Gelade, 1980 Cave & Wolfe,
1990; Wolfe & Cave, 1999; Wolfe, Cave, & Franzel, 1989; Zeki & Shipp, 1988).
Considerable evidence suggests that objects are parsed into basic feature representations that
are processed in different areas of the brain, or at least by different cells within the same area
of the brain (Ashbridge, Cowey, & Wade 1999; Mishkin, Ungerleider, & Macko, 1983; Van
Essen & Maunsell, 1983). The conundrum of exactly how discretely processed features
become represented as a coherent whole, maintaining the various relationships shared
between the different aspects of the environment is referred to as the binding problem. Many
see the binding problem as being central not only to memory and perception but to
consciousness itself (Singer, 2001).
The binding problem often has been discussed in terms of perceptual processing, but
cognitive processes, such as decision making and memory, also rely on the binding of discrete
pieces of information into a single psychological event. Roskies (1999) imposed a useful
distinction between perceptual and cognitive binding, acknowledging that higher order
cognitive processes also rely on feature binding. For example, most models have conceived of
memories as being composed of discrete features (e.g., Metcalfe, 1990; Moscovitch, 1994;
Schacter, Norman, & Koutstaal, 1998). Yet, our memories are experienced as bound
representations of past events or previously learned knowledge. Consider, for example,
episodic memories. A person is capable of reliving the experience of graduating from college,
including the different aspects that were present during the event (e.g., music, people, smells).
Although the aspects composing the episodic memory are processed in different cortical
areas, the person recalls them as belonging to the same memorial event (Tulving, 1983). This
seemingly simple ability to form associations between information presented in the
environment illustrates that the binding problem is just as real for memory as it is for
perception (Eichenbaum, 2000; Eichenbaum & Bunsey, 1995).
Given the relationship shared between perception and memory, it seems likely that an
understanding of perceptual binding may provide a basis to understand memorial binding. A
considerable amount of research has investigated perceptual binding (see Prinzmetal, 1995;
Wolfe & Cave, 1999 for reviews). In particular, illusory conjunctions have been used to better
understand feature binding. An illusory conjunction occurs when a person inappropriately
binds together features from two separate objects to form a novel object (Ashby, Prinzmetal,
Ivry, & Maddox 1996; Chastain, 1982; Khurana, 1998; Prinzmetal & Millis-Wright, 1984;
Treisman & Schmidt, 1982). For example, a participant simultaneously presented with a red T
and a green L, may report seeing a green T. Such errors are perceptual illusions and evoke the
subjective experience of actually seeing the composite object. Given the resurgence of
interest in memory illusions (Koriat, Goldsmith, & Pansky, 2000; Lampinen, Neuschatz, &
Payne, 1998; Roediger & McDermott, 1995; Schacter, 2001), the adaptation of procedures
and logic from the perceptual literature to the investigation of memory illusions may prove to
be a useful way to explore how perceptual and memorial binding are related.
For the purposes of the present discussion let us focus on memory conjunction errors, an
error analogous in many respects to illusory conjunctions. Like illusory conjunctions,
memory conjunction errors occur when aspects from two different memorial events are
120 Timothy N. Odegard, James M. Lampinen and Emily A. Farris

misremembered as having occurred in the same event (Reinitz, Morrisey, & Demb, 1994).
Also, there is research suggesting that memory conjunction errors, like illusory conjunction
errors, are accompanied by the phenomenology of being real (Reinitz & Hannigan, 2004;
Reinitz, et al., 1994; Odegard & Lampinen, 2004). In addition, top-down processing can
constrain the formation of both illusory conjunctions and memory conjunction errors. Finally,
many of the independent variables that have been demonstrated to influence the occurrence of
illusory conjunction also have been demonstrated to influence the occurrence of memory
conjunction errors (e.g., distance, similarity). This high level of functional concordance
between illusory conjunctions and memory conjunction errors suggests that similar processes
may be involved in the two types of illusions.
Given that illusory conjunctions have enhanced the understanding of perceptual binding,
a better understanding of memory conjunction errors will provide a testing ground for the role
of features and feature binding in memory. In particular, such an understanding will provide a
representational framework from which to better understand dual process models of memory
that appeal to the concepts of recollection and familiarity (Jacoby, 1991; Mandler, 1980). As
will be argued, ideas put forth from a binding perspective of memory mesh well with some of
the original accounts of recollection and familiarity. Also, a binding perspective provides a
compelling account of other illusory memories and the decline of veridical memories across
time.

PERCEPTUAL FEATURE BINDING

Basic perceptual features are the building blocks of perception and are processed with
minimal cognitive effort (Prinzmetal, 1981). For example, it is commonly held that colors
(e.g., red) and basic shapes (e.g., vertical lines) are basic perceptual features (Khurana, 1998;
Prinzmetal & Millis-Wright, 1984; Treisman & Schmidt, 1982). However, it has been
suggested that through experience more complex objects comprised of multiple simple shapes
(e.g., right angle) and even symbols (e.g., letters, words) can take on characteristics of basic
perceptual features (Estes, Allmeyer, & Reder, 1976; Mozer, 1983; Prinzmetal & Mills-
Wright, 1984; Treisman & Souther, 1986; Virzi & Egeth, 1984; Wolford, 1975).
These inconsistencies make it difficult to identify exactly what is and is not a basic
perceptual feature. As a result, Treisman and Paterson (1984) stressed that perceptual features
were not to be defined a priori based on assumptions of what constituted a basic perceptual
component or strictly in regards to neural representations but were to be empirically
validated. They outlined three criteria for the acceptance of a dimension as a basic perceptual
feature. First, a feature is basic if it can be processed at a preattentive level. Thus, a person
should be capable of processing basic features in parallel. Second, visual features allow for
texture segregation. Individuals should be capable of preattentively parsing the world in
regards to basic perceptual features (e.g., red versus green). Finally, when attention is taxed or
diverted, features are not adequately bound together allowing for the formation of illusory
conjunctions within scenes composed of objects containing multiple features.
Let us consider the first two criteria, before discussing illusory conjunctions. In contrast
to Gestalt Psychologists, Treisman and Gelade (1980) suggested in their feature integration
theory (FIT) that individuals are capable of processing the constituent features of an object
 Illusory Perceptions and Memories: What Is the Tie That Binds? 121

prior to processing the gestalt of the object (see also, Cavanagh, et al., 1990; Cave & Wolfe,
1990; Wolfe & Cave, 1999; Wolfe, et al., 1989; Zeki & Shipp, 1988). This results from the
individual features of an object being processed prior to the onset of directed attention. In FIT
terms directed attention results in the binding of features into an object representation
(Kahneman & Treisman, 1984; Kahneman, et al., 1983; Treisman, et al., 1983; Treisman &
Paterson, 1984). Thus, the object is not assembled until a person has had ample time to attend
to it. This would suggest that individuals should be capable of searching for and reporting the
presence of individual features (e.g., the hue red or a vertical line) more quickly than
searching for and reporting the presence of a conjunction of multiple features (e.g., a red
vertical line). Engaging in a conjunctive search requires additional time for directed attention
to process object representations for information presented in a visual scene.
To investigate this prediction, Treisman and Gelade (1980) manipulated the conjunctive
nature of the information that they asked their participants to search for in a visual field. For
feature search trials, participants were asked to search for the presence or the absence of two
features (e.g., find something red and find a vertical line). For conjunctive search trials,
participants were asked to search for objects containing both features (e.g., find a red vertical
line). The number of features being searched for was identical in both conditions, but still it
took participants longer to perform conjunctive searches than feature searches. Treisman and
Gelade concluded that it was not merely the number of features being searched for that
determined the amount of time that it took to search a visual field. Rather, it was the
conjunctive nature of the sought after information that increased the search time between the
two conditions. Presumably, individual features could be searched for in parallel, decreasing
the amount of time needed to identify multiple features when conducting a simple feature
search.
An important addition to FIT was made by Wolfe et al. (1989) in their theory of Guided
Search. They suggested that searches for simple features that compose a complex object
continually update and inform conjunctive searches. Additionally, they made the
counterintuitive prediction that engaging in a conjunctive search for objects containing three
required features would take less time than engaging in a conjunctive search for objects
containing only two required features. As predicted, their participants took less time to search
for objects containing conjunctions of three features as opposed to objects containing
conjunctions of two features, providing evidence for the first and second criteria established
by Treisman and Paterson (1984). By the first criterion features are processed in parallel and
by the second criterion features allow for texture segregation. Wolfe et al. interpreted their
findings to suggest that participants were able to parse the visual field into coarse sections and
guide the focus of attention to those sections that were most likely to contain a target match.
In the three feature condition, the information provided by the third feature allowed for the
search to be more fully refined, than that of the search established in the two feature
condition. Further refining the search through the use of the third feature did not take any
longer because the feature was processed in parallel with the other two features.
These early results provide an initial concept of what constitutes a basic perceptual
feature. Indeed it appears that there are dimensions along which individuals can process
information in parallel (e.g., shape and color). Additionally, it appears that features allow for
a coarse coding of the environment into different areas, allowing individuals to refine their
searches. Let us now turn to the research investigating illusory conjunctions to further
understand the role of binding in the formation of our perceptions of the world. Also, research
122 Timothy N. Odegard, James M. Lampinen and Emily A. Farris

investigating illusory conjunctions helps us to understand organizational principles that

determine exactly how perceptual information will be parsed in the environment. The manner
in which the environment is parsed constrains the formation of illusory conjunctions. In
particular, the investigation of illusory conjunctions provides a fuller understanding of the
role played by top down processes in determining what constitutes a feature. This point is of
particular interest to memory research because memory conjunction errors do not typically
involve such basic components as lines or colors. Rather, memory conjunction errors
typically involve entire objects, such as facial features (Hannigan & Reinitz, 2000), words
(Jones & Jacoby, 2001; Kroll, Knight, Metcalfe, Wolf, & Tulving, 1996; Reinitz, et al., 1994;
Underwood, Kaplek, Malimi, 1976), or even people, places and activities (Hannigan &
Reinitz, 2003; Odegard & Lampinen, 2004).

Illusory Conjunction Errors

Support for the existence of basic perceptual features and feature binding has been sought
through the investigation of illusory conjunctions. Occasionally when participants view a
scene they will errantly bind together features from different objects, forming the perception
of objects that were not actually presented in the visual scene. This often occurs when
attention is divided or overloaded. Such errors are referred to as illusory conjunctions and are
viewed as compelling evidence for the assertion that information is processed at a basic
feature level prior to being processed at a holistic level. Some theories have argued that
illusory conjunctions are capable of being produced solely by errors in perceptual processing
(Treisman & Schmidt, 1982; Wolford & Shum, 1980). In other words, the creation of illusory
conjunctions need not depend upon top-down processing. However, because of the
importance that we assume top-down processing to play in memory binding, we will discuss
in detail the role that top-down processing can play in constraining the formation of illusory
conjunctions.
Illusory conjunctions are termed illusory in that they are experienced as compellingly
real, when in actuality they are distortions of what is really being presented in the
environment. In accordance with this phenomenology, participants often report high levels of
confidence in their accuracy when reporting them (Treisman & Schmidt, 1982; Treisman &
Souther, 1986). Additionally, participants feel compelled to report illusory conjunctions. For
instance, in one experiment participants spontaneously reported experiencing illusory
conjunctions. For this experiment, Treisman and Schmidt informed their participants that a
series of numbers printed in black ink would be presented and asked their participants to
report the digits as they were presented. Each of the digits was flanked by a color. Quite
surprisingly, several participants spontaneously reported that something must be wrong or
have changed in the procedure because some of the digits were being presented in colors
other than black. Presumably participants were errantly binding the flanking colors and the
digits together to form illusory conjunctions. Such an impressive result suggests that
participants indeed experienced these errors in an illusory sense (see Prinzmetal, 1981 for
similar observations).
In addition to being illusory in nature, illusory conjunctions can be the product of purely
perceptual processing as opposed to memory errors (Treisman & Schmidt, 1982; Wolford &
Shum, 1980). Items typically used in illusory conjunction experiments are target, conjunction
 Illusory Perceptions and Memories: What Is the Tie That Binds? 123

and feature object probes. Target object probes exactly correspond to an object presented in a
visual display. Conjunction object probes are composed of features that were presented in
objects in a display, but these features were not presented in a single object within the visual
display. For example, a color from one object presented in the display might be combined
with a digit presented in another color within the display to form a novel color digit
combination. Thus, the features composing a conjunction lure probe were both presented, but
they were not presented in the same object within the display. Feature object probes are novel
combinations of a feature that was presented in a visual display, with another feature that was
not presented in the visual display. Falsely accepting a feature probe as having been presented
in a visual field is not caused by errantly combining two presented features to form an illusory
conjunction. To assume that the false acceptances of conjunction objects are due to errant
perceptual binding, participants must falsely accept significantly more conjunction than
feature objects (Hazeltine, Prinzmetal, & Elliot, 1997; Treisman & Schmidt, 1982).
In one of the most commonly used procedures, participants are presented with a visual
scene containing multiple objects. Immediately following the presentation of the scene,
participants are presented with a probe object. In some cases the probe object is a target, in
others a conjunction and in others a feature. They are asked if the probe object was shown to
them. Participants typically report having seen conjunction objects more often than having
seen feature objects. Although the probes are presented immediately after the presentation of
the visual scenes, this task is in essence a recognition memory test, requiring participants to
match the probe object against their memory for all of the objects just presented in the visual
scene.
Treisman and Schmidt (1982) had participants in their second experiment perform a
matching task, in an attempt to provide more compelling evidence that illusory conjunctions
are indeed perceptual and not memory illusions. Prior to being shown a display, participants
were shown a card containing a probe object and were asked to search for that object in the
upcoming visual scene. Even under these conditions, participants indicated having seen the
conjunction probes in the visual scene and did so more often than reporting having seen
feature probes. Although participants still rely upon their memory for the probe object,
participants only have to hold a representation of a single object in mind while viewing the
scene. These results provide compelling evidence that illusory conjunctions can be the
product of purely perceptual processing.
However, a simultaneous matching task used by Treisman and Schmidt (1982) in their
third experiment completely eliminated reliance on memory. For this procedure participants
were presented with a visual scene containing five colored letters and were asked to
determine if any of the letters presented within the display exactly matched one another. If
two identical letters were presented in the same color, participants were required to respond
“same.” If none of the same letters were presented in the same color, participants were
required to respond “different.” Unlike the probe matching tasks, this technique requires no
memory processing. Also, this technique does not require participants to provide verbal labels
for their perceptions, further refining the investigation strictly to perceptual processing. Even
under these conditions participants still misreported seeing two identical letters presented in
the same color even when two such letters were not present in the display.
The above research provides strong evidence for the perceptual and illusory nature of
illusory conjunctions. They also make evident the importance of careful interpretation of the
results of such studies. Before we can say with confidence that illusory conjunctions are
124 Timothy N. Odegard, James M. Lampinen and Emily A. Farris

occurring, a set of criteria must be met. First, to conclude that illusory conjunctions are the
product of perceptual and not memorial processing, we must determine that people are not
guessing. Second, a person must perceive the features in a visual scene. If this requirement is
not met, participants may engage heedlessly in guessing. Third, features must be free floating,
allowing them to be inaccurately bound together. We will discuss exactly how free features
are to float throughout an entire visual display in some detail, but the point to be made is that
features should not be bound into object representations. Finally, the task must be devoid of
constraints from top-down processing for illusory conjunctions to be completely arbitrary.
Let us consider the first criterion. Individuals should not be binding into their perception
what might have been on the screen, but rather, participants should be inappropriately binding
together features that were presented in the visual scene. Thus, there is traditionally a
comparison of conjunction errors to feature errors. Conjunction errors are the inaccurate
combination of two features presented in a single visual field. In contrast, feature errors are
the inaccurate combination of one presented and one non-presented feature. To the extent that
features presented in the visual field bias people’s perceptions, this suggests that on-line
perceptual processes are responsible. To the extent to which people falsely acknowledge the
presentation of a feature object, this suggests that they are guessing or are being influenced by
their memories for features from an earlier presented visual scene. Conjunction errors are
typically more common than feature errors.
Prinzmetal and Millis-Wright (1984) made the point that multiple processes could lead to
the same behavioral response even more explicit. They did not use the term illusory
conjunction when referring to any one behavioral response. Instead these researchers referred
to off feature errors and on feature errors. Off feature errors occur when participants report
the presence of an object that contains one feature that was presented and one feature that was
not presented. On feature errors are the inappropriate reporting of an object that contains two
features from a visual display in the wrong relationship to one another. Off feature errors can
only occur because of memory errors or guessing but not the inappropriate binding of two
presented features. However, in addition to memory and guessing, on feature errors can occur
because of the inappropriate binding of two presented features to form the perception of an
object.
To account for the overlap of processes, Prinzmetal and Millis-Wright (1984) introduced
equation 1 to obtain the approximate proportion of responses that were the product of illusory
conjunctions, or inappropriate binding.

on error
Pconj E (on ) Equation 1
on error off error

In equation 1 E (on) represents the probability of guessing the presence of a feature in the
field but reporting it in the wrong object. For example, a person may be presented with a
series of letters that include a red O and a green T, but the person reports a green O. A person
may not have perceived the color green, but rather simply guessed that green was present and
reported it as having seen a green O.
Equation 1 is included because it is illustrative of the combinatorial nature of processes
that can give rise to the same behavioral response. The equation further stresses the need to
 Illusory Perceptions and Memories: What Is the Tie That Binds? 125

access the presence or absence of illusory conjunctions by comparing different classes of

behavioral responses, opposed to simply accepting a single class as definitive evidence. It is
not included because it provides an accurate estimate of illusory conjunctions, nor of the
binding process. In fact, because the guessing parameter used is often too large, it most likely
does not provide an accurate estimate (Prinzmetal & Millis-Wright, 1984). However, see
Ashby et al (1996) and Prinzmetal, Ivry, Beck, & Shimizu (2002) for discussions of more
formal techniques for measuring illusory conjunctions and latent cognitive processes
potentially underlying them.
The second criterion that must be met to ensure that illusory conjunctions are the result of
perceptual processing is that a person must perceive the features presented in a visual scene.
If this requirement is not met, participants may engage heedlessly in guessing. For example,
in their fifth experiment, Treisman and Schmidt (1982) reduced the ability of their
participants to fully process the features presented in a visual field by limiting the rate of
exposure. Under such conditions, participants were just as likely to commit feature errors, as
they were to commit conjunction errors. Although this guessing may be constrained to
plausible errors, such results suggest that illusory conjunctions necessitate the processing of
basic features.
Third, features must be free floating, allowing them to be inaccurately bound together.
Features are processed at a basic level requiring very little cognitive capacity. While there is
not a consensus on exactly how binding occurs, the binding of individual features into a
single object representation requires additional cognitive capacity. When attention is divided
or presentation speeded, features are not bound together and are thought of as free floating
(Treisman & Schmidt, 1982; Wolfe et al, 1989). When participants are forced to provide a
response in such instances, free floating features can become inaccurately bound to one
another resulting in an illusory conjunction.
In a related point, the task must be devoid of constraints from top-down processing for
illusory conjunctions to be completely arbitrary (Hazeltine, et al., 1997; Prinzmetal et al.,
2002). However, the line between bottom-up feature based and top-down processing is a
precarious one indeed (e.g., Beck & Palmer, 2002), requiring great care be taken to ensure the
exact nature of illusory conjunctions. When such care is not taken, participants will respond
based on presumptions as to what could have or should have been present. For example, if
presented with an outline of an apple, a person may assume that it was filled with a red hue,
regardless as to whether or not a red hue was presented in the visual display. One way to
control for expectancy effects is to use materials devoid of as much meaning as possible.
Illusory conjunctions observed by Treisman and Schmidt (1982) were the product of
materials that were assumed to be unrelated to one another. Yet, even in cases in which
seemingly meaningless materials are used, participants do not produce responses that violate
basic rules that were used to construct the materials (e.g., Wolford & Shum, 1980),
suggesting that even in these cases responses are being curtailed by expectancies set by the
testing environment.

Constraining Illusory Conjunctions

Inferential processing can not completely account for our perception of the world. As
evidence for this assertion, we cited the capability of individuals to perceive information
126 Timothy N. Odegard, James M. Lampinen and Emily A. Farris

regardless of having previously experienced it. Although we ourselves setup this distinction
and Treisman and Schmidt (1982) argued against the holistic perspective of the gestalt
psychologists, feature analysis is influenced by organizational principles. Characteristics of
the visual environment constrain the formation of illusory conjunctions, and research suggests
that some order is present preattentively. This order biases exactly how illusory conjunctions
are formed. If illusory conjunctions can be biased, what then are the unifying aspects of the
visual environment that give rise to the formation of illusory conjunctions?
To answer this question we must examine the commonalities shared between variables
that constrain the formation of illusory conjunctions. It appears that features are constrained
in that they are bound to general areas of the visual environment. For instance, features have
been found to stay confined within words, syllables, groups of objects formed using good
continuation, and objects that look similar to one another. Thus, features may not be as free to
float around as had been originally proposed by Treisman and her colleagues. One of the
reasons that features become regionally bound is because of the level at which individuals
parse the environment. Even when information is presented fairly quickly individuals are still
capable of parsing visual information based on general principles.

Temporal Contiguity or Spatial Proximity

Several, simple aspects of the environment constrain the formation of illusory

conjunctions. Both temporal contiguity and spatial proximity have been suggested to underlie
the binding of features into object representations (Crick, 1984; Gathercole & Broadbent,
1984; Keele, Cohen, Ivry, Liotti, & Yee, 1988; McLean, Broadbent, & Broadbent, 1983).
Crick (1984) suggested that temporal contiguity is important for binding together features
because perceptual information is temporally marked as it passes through the thalamus.
However, others have argued that spatial proximity rather than temporal contiguity is
important in binding together features (Ashby et al. 1996; Gathercole & Broadbent, 1984;
McLean, et al., 1983; Prinzmetal et al. 2002).
By directly pitting temporal and spatial proximity against one another, McLean et al.
(1983) and Gathercole and Broadbent (1984) provided evidence that spatial location was
more important than temporal proximity for increasing rates of illusory conjunctions.
Participants in their experiments viewed digits presented very quickly one right after the
other. Embedded within this series of digits was a letter. These researchers manipulated the
temporal proximity of features to one another and whether or not features shared the same
location on the screen. They predicted that illusory conjunctions would be most likely to
occur between the letter and the colors from digits presented in the same location.
Specifically, they manipulated whether or not the digit +1 or –1 positions from the letter was
in the same or different location as the letter. They also manipulated whether or not the digit
+2 or –2 positions from the letter was in the same or different position as the letter.
Participants were required to report the color of the letter presented embedded within the
series of digits. The spatial location of the digits on the screen varied from the left to the right
of the fixation point located in the center of the screen. This allowed the researchers to
manipulate whether or not the digit and the letter shared the same spatial location. These
researchers were interested in the rate at which participants reported an illusory conjunction
of the letter and the color from one of the digits surrounding it in the list. If temporal
 Illusory Perceptions and Memories: What Is the Tie That Binds? 127

proximity determines binding, as suggested by some, then participants should be more likely
to form illusory conjunctions using the color from the digit +1 or –1 positions from the letter.
These errors should occur regardless of whether or not the digit is located in the same or
different positions as the letter.
However, participants were more likely to form illusory conjunctions using the color
from a digit +2 or –2 positions away from the letter when the digit and letter were presented
in the same location, than they were to form illusory conjunctions using the color from the
digit presenting +1 or –1 positions away from the letter when the letter and digit did not share
the same spatial location on the screen. These results suggest that features from the same
spatial location are more likely to be errantly bound together than are features that are
presented close together in time but in different locations (see Keele, et al 1988 for similar
results).
Unfortunately, these results do not generalize to the overall importance of spatial
proximity in the formation of illusory conjunctions because they merely demonstrate that
features presented in the exact same location are more likely to be bound into illusory
conjunctions. Also, the features used to form these conjunction errors were not presented on
the screen at the same time, increasing the role of memory in the formation of such errors.
Yet, past research has demonstrated that illusory conjunctions are more commonly formed
using features that are presented closer together in a single visual display (Ashby et al., 1996;
Chastain, 1982; Hazeltine, et al.,, 1997; Wolford & Shum, 1980).
Hazeltine et al. (1997) manipulated the distance that simultaneously presented features
were from one another. These researchers presented a row of five letters across the center of
the visual display. In the first experiment, participants were asked to report the presence or
absence of a green O. Participants were presented with target displays, which contained a
green O. They were also presented with feature and conjunction displays. Feature displays
contained a green letter but did not contain an O. Conjunction displays contained an O that
was not green and another letter other than an O that was green. For half of the conjunction
displays the green letter and the O were presented adjacent to one another in the array with no
intervening letter between them (near condition). For the remaining conjunction displays, an
intervening letter was present in between the O and the green letter (far condition). Thus,
these researchers effectively manipulated the distance between the two features needed to
form an illusory conjunction. As predicted if spatial proximity underlies the binding of
information, almost twice as many conjunction errors were reported for the near conjunction
displays than for the far conjunction displays.
These results demonstrate the importance of spatial proximity in the creation of illusory
conjunctions, but one of the limitations of Hazeltine et al’s (1997) findings is that distance
was confounded with the presentation of an intervening letter between the green letter and the
O in conjunction displays. Ashby et al. (1996) manipulated the distance that features were
from one another within a visual display in a manner that avoided this confound. For their
design, they presented participants with an array that contained a fixation point in the center
of the display and a pair of letters was presented in one of the four corners of the display. The
pair of letters was surrounded by $s, which past research had demonstrated to enhance the
number of conjunction errors committed for such materials (Treisman & Schmidt, 1982). The
target letters never were presented in the same pair. Instead these target letters were paired
with distractor letters, either a C or an S. The target and distractor letters within a pair were
128 Timothy N. Odegard, James M. Lampinen and Emily A. Farris

presented in different colors. Participants were required to report the presence and color of
target letters (i.e., Ts and Xs).
These researchers manipulated the distance between the target and distractor letters
within a pair, either near or far. The question of interest was how often participants would
inaccurately report that the target letter was presented in the color of the distractor letter and
whether or not this effect would be moderated by the distance between the letters. As
predicted, target letters were reported to have been presented in the color of the distractor
letter more often when the distractor letter was presented closer to the target letter. These
results demonstrate illusory conjunctions to be more common between features that are
presented closer together, suggesting that location is an important factor underlying feature
binding.
Although these results are compelling, other variables have been found to influence the
formation of illusory conjunctions. For example, Prinzmetal (1981) found that organizing
features into groups using good continuation resulted in more conjunction errors than merely
placing features spatially close to one another. Participants in this study were presented with
visual displays containing eight circles. These circles were presented such that four of the
circles formed a straight line of circles with very little space separating one circle from the
other. The remaining four circles formed another line. These groups of circles ran parallel to
one another, and the distance separating them was roughly equivalent to the diameter of one
of the circles. In addition to circles, vertical lines, horizontal lines and crosses were presented
within two of the circles. The task was to report the presence or absence of a cross. For target
displays, a cross was placed inside a circle and either a vertical or horizontal line was placed
inside one of the other circles. For conjunction displays, a cross was not presented in any of
the circles but a vertical line was placed in one circle and a horizontal line was placed in
another. For feature displays, only horizontal lines or only vertical lines were placed in the
display.
The distance between the vertical and horizontal lines and crosses was held constant in
the display, what varied was whether or not these features were placed in the same or
different groups of circles. Again participants were required to report whether or not a cross
was present in the visual display.
More conjunction errors occurred when the vertical and horizontal lines were presented
in the same group of circles as opposed to different groups of circles. Similar results were
found in the fourth experiment in which color as opposed to distance was used to distinguish
one group of circles from the other. For this experiment, four of the circles were positioned
next to one another and colored yellow. The other group of circles was colored pink.
Also, of note is that for these materials the groups of circles ran directly into one another
such that the last circle in the pink group was just as close to the first circle in the yellow
group as it was to the closest circle in its own pink group. Even when the features needed to
form the illusory conjunction of the cross were adjacent to one another, features from the
same group (i.e., the same color) were more likely to be inappropriately bound together
forming an illusory cross than features from different groups (i.e., different colors). These
results stress that there is more to binding than merely how close features are to one another.
 Illusory Perceptions and Memories: What Is the Tie That Binds? 129

ROLE OF SIMILARITY
Good continuation is not the only grouping principle that influences illusory
conjunctions. Similarity also influences the formation of illusory conjunctions. Ivry and
Prinzmetal (1991) observed that features within similar objects were more likely to be bound
together than features within objects that were more dissimilar to one another. In their first
experiment, they presented pairs of letters that were either displayed in similar or dissimilar
colors (e.g., red and orange, green and blue versus red and green, blue and orange). Letters
presented in similar colors were more likely to have their constituent features inappropriately
bound together forming conjunction errors than letters presented in dissimilar colors. For
example, when presented with an orange M and a red T participants were more likely to form
an illusory conjunction (e.g., red M) than when presented with a red M and a green T (e.g.,
green M).
In their second experiment, Ivry and Prinzmetal (1991) manipulated the similarity shared
between the two letters presented in a visual display and measured the proportion of illusory
conjunctions formed between color and letter. In the similar letter condition, participants were
presented with T and L or M and U. Participants were more likely to form illusory
conjunctions, inappropriately binding the colors from similar letters than dissimilar letters.
Thus, in addition to all of the other principles that have been identified to constrain the
formation of illusory conjunctions, the similarity shared between different objects also
constrains their occurrence.
Moreover, linguistic principles also influence the level at which participants parse the
environment. Word processing has been found to bias the formation of illusory conjunctions.
For example, features are more likely to be interchanged between aspects within a single
word than between other words (Prinzmetal & Keysar, 1989; Prinzmetal, Treiman, & Rho,
1986). Also, features are more likely to be interchanged within a syllable of a word as
opposed to between syllables.
An interesting question that has been addressed by some researchers is whether or not
semantic meaning is a feature that can be inaccurately bound to form illusory conjunctions.
This point is of importance to memory researchers because both perceptual and semantic
similarity has been found to result in recognition memory errors. As such, any feature account
of memory must be able to handle both perceptual and semantic qualities of a memory event.
Within the illusory conjunction literature there is an interesting result obtained by Virzi
and Egeth (1984). These researchers observed participants to occasionally form illusory
conjunctions involving colors and shapes by errantly binding in a color whose hue was not
presented but whose linguistic representation was presented (e.g., the word red). These errors
were rare but illusory conjunction errors of this sort occurred more often than feature errors.

Summary of Illusory Conjunctions

All of these environmental constraints are highly relevant to memory conjunction errors,
because memory conjunction errors often involve complex objects or words. On this point,
research has demonstrated what have been empirically validated as multiple basic perceptual
features acting as a single feature representation. For instance, letters are composed of
130 Timothy N. Odegard, James M. Lampinen and Emily A. Farris

multiple simple shapes, but it has been demonstrated that letters presented in different words
can migrate and recombine to form illusory conjunctions of words not presented in a visual
array (Mozer, 1983; Treisman & Souther, 1986).
Also, understanding the role played by similarity in illusory conjunctions is important
because similarity has been used to account for memory conjunction errors (Jones & Jacoby,
2001). What an appreciation of the perception literature reveals is that binding errors and
similarity processes are not orthogonal to one another. This distinction has been presupposed
in much of the memory literature.
The oddball result among all these is the importance of the same location in the formation
of an illusory conjunction (Gathercole & Broadbent, 1984; McLean, et al., 1983) because it is
more akin to a memory conjunction error than an illusory conjunction. The features making
up the conjunction error were not presented simultaneously but were separated across time.
Indeed this procedure is very similar to those that have been used to form memory
conjunction errors. However, the memory conjunction literature has yet to disambiguate the
influence of location and temporal contiguity.
Before turning our attention to memory conjunction errors and cognitive binding, we
must first attend to the understanding of perception and feature binding that has been garnered
from the vast amount of research that has been conducted on illusory conjunctions. First,
perception can be reduced to a basic level, but the level at which we process the world is
determined by organizing principles. Also, the level of analysis can be primed by the testing
environment.
The bottom line is that all of the variables reviewed above influence the parsing of the
environment into groups of objects. Objects that are closer together in a visual display are
more likely to be perceived as a group. Objects that form a line through good continuation are
not only close together but form a recognizable pattern. Those letters that form a word are
more likely to be processed as a unit. Within a single word those letters that form a syllable
are more likely to be processed as a unit. These units help to guide our attention within a
visual display and determine which features are most likely to be coarsely grouped together
and potentially inappropriately bound together.
Yet, the overall question still remains. What is the root cause of illusory conjunctions?
Given the extant literature, illusory conjunctions occur when the location information for
features is represented at a “fuzzy” level (Ashby et al., 1996; Prinzmetal et al., 2002).
Consider that speed of presentation must be very rapid or participants’ attention must be
divided in order to observe illusory conjunctions. Due to this lack of information the binding
process must rely on insufficient information and in such instances supplementary
information from organizational principles is more heavily relied upon. Then what is the root
cause of memory conjunction errors? Potentially they too are caused by fuzzy representations
of the past.

COGNITIVE FEATURE BINDING

Researchers investigate illusory conjunctions in an attempt to better understand the
functioning of our perceptual system as a whole. Taxing the boundary conditions of the
perceptual system gives rise to illusory conjunctions, and these errors provide a glimpse into
 Illusory Perceptions and Memories: What Is the Tie That Binds? 131

the processes underlying perception. Likewise, investigating memory illusions provides a

better understanding of processes underlying memory. In the present chapter, the accuracy of
our memories is not of central concern. Instead, we are interested in the extent to which
discrepancies, between what a person remembers occurring and what actually occurred, can
help us to better understand memory as a whole. Memory illusions, by and large, do not
represent memory pathology. Rather, as Schacter (2001) argued, memory illusions are a
normal consequence of memorial processing.

Memory Conjunction Errors

Memory conjunction errors are distorted memories containing details from different past
events. For example, consider an assault victim’s memory for the details associated with the
crime committed against her. After the incident she was asked to identify the perpetrator in a
line-up. At that time, she identified who she thought was the perpetrator. The case went to
trial, and the identified man was prosecuted. Several years later, DNA evidence exonerated
this man. Although his innocence was demonstrated, the survivor of the assault claimed that
every time she closed her eyes and remembered the event, she saw the face of the man she
identified in the line-up assaulting her. She did not see the face of the man who was
eventually convicted of the crime. The evidence suggests that this memory is a distortion of
what actually happened, making it an extremely vivid false memory.
There is every reason to believe that a great many psychological factors contributed to the
formation of this false memory. Yet, just as we have to account for the ability of the mind to
bind together discretely processed features to form an illusory conjunction, we also have to
account for the ability of the mind to bind together discretely processed memorial features to
form a memory conjunction error. Thus, memory conjunction errors are important to the
current discussion because they may arise from faulty feature binding.
From a feature binding perspective, memory conjunction errors occur when discrete
features from multiple memorial events become inappropriately bound together. In the
present example, consider the details from an event as being features. Stored in the woman’s
memory were features from the assault (e.g., clothing, smells, face, height, hair color, fear,
etc.). Also stored in the woman’s memory were details from the line-up, including the man’s
face that she identified. Inappropriately binding together features from these two events
would produce a false memory in the same manner that many researchers propose illusory
conjunctions to be formed. When considering this possibility, it is important to recall that the
term illusory conjunction was applied to those perceptual errors resulting from the errant
binding of perceptual features. An extension of this logic to memory requires that the term
memory conjunction error be applied to only those errors occurring when memorial features
are inappropriately bound together.
To more fully appreciate this logic, consider a commonly used procedure in this
paradigm that utilizes recognition memory tests. In a typical memory conjunction experiment,
participants are presented with study materials and later required to complete a recognition
memory test comprised of targets, conjunction lures and feature lures. A target directly
corresponds to a studied item. In contrast, a conjunction lure does not correspond to a single
studied item. Instead, a conjunction lure is composed of features that were presented in two
different studied items. For example, a participant might be presented with blackmail and
132 Timothy N. Odegard, James M. Lampinen and Emily A. Farris

jailbird at study and later might be presented with blackbird on a recognition memory test.
Blackbird was not presented at study, but both words (i.e., features) making it up were
presented. Like conjunction lures, feature lures were not presented at study, but they are made
up of one feature that was presented at study and another that was not. For example, say that
blackmail was presented at study, and blackbird is presented at test. The test item as a whole
was not presented at study nor was the feature bird, but the feature black was presented at
study. Finally, foils are included on the test to provide a baseline rate of guessing on the
memory test. Foils were not presented at study and neither were any of their constituent
features.
Participants typically accept more targets than any other item type. Additionally, they
accept more conjunction lures than feature lures and foils, and participants accept more
feature lures than foils (i.e., TARGET > CONJUNCTION > FEATURE > FOIL). Similar to
illusory conjunctions, if inappropriate binding occurred, it would only result in the acceptance
of conjunction lures and targets. For instance, a person could remember all of the features that
were presented in two different events (e.g., black, mail, jail, bird). Yet, they may not recall
how these features were put together originally. There are two possible outcomes in our
example. First, a person might combine the features to form a target (e.g., blackmail),
resulting in the acceptance of a target on the recognition memory test. Second, they might
combine the features to form a conjunction lure (e.g., blackbird), resulting in the acceptance
of a conjunction lure on the recognition memory test. Both of these responses were born out
of memory conjunction errors, even though one of the responses behaviorally represents an
accurate memory, while the other response behaviorally represents a false memory. To better
appreciate this example, consider the potential role played by feature and configural memory
traces in our memories for past events.

The Role of Feature and Configural Memory Traces

One popular version of the feature binding account appeals to the encoding of feature and
configural representations for a memorial event (Reinitz & Hannigan, 2001; Reinitz, et al.,
1994). Feature traces represent the individual features that were present during an event. The
configural trace contains information for exactly how these various features relate to one
another. In essence, it is a kind of blueprint. When the configural trace is gone, there is no
record of how the feature traces related to one another within an event. In addition, the
configural trace would be unavailable to indicate that the feature traces from a past event even
constitute a separate event memory. Thus, in the absence of a configural trace, a person must
rely on other information to place feature memories in relationship to one another when
compelled to remember the past. In such instances, a person may or may not replicate
relational information accurately. As the previous example highlights, when relational
information is replicated correctly, the resultant memory will be accurate. However, when
relational information is replicated incorrectly, the resulting memory will be inaccurate. To
entertain this understanding of memory, feature and configural representations must be
empirically demonstrated.
In this respect, there is evidence that our memories, like our perceptions, are processed at
a basic feature level. First, the retrieval of a memory produces activation across many
different cortical areas. For instance, remembering visual details for a past event correlates
 Illusory Perceptions and Memories: What Is the Tie That Binds? 133

with activation in the occipital lobe (Gonsalves & Paller, 2000; Kosslyn, 2005; Kosslyn &
Thompson, 2003; Kosslyn, Thompson, Kim, & Alpert, 1995). Likewise, recalling auditory
information correlates with activation in the temporal lobe (Noppeney & Price, 2002;
Wheeler, Petersen, & Buckner, 2000). Additionally, several researchers have demonstrated
that accurate performance on a recognition memory test can be predicted by the amount of
activation across several different cortical areas (Garoff, Slotnick, & Schacter, 2005;
Gonsalves & Paller, 2000; Kosslyn, 2005), suggesting that a single representation does not
underlie memory performance. These findings are analogous to the neurological evidence in
the perceptual literature that has demonstrated activation associated with a visual scene to be
spread across many different cortical areas.
Second, on occasion individuals will only recall some of the details that were associated
with a past event. For instance, people will sometimes say things like “I know that his name
started with a J but I can not remember what it was”. This is indicative of the tip of the tongue
phenomenon (see Brown, 1991 for a review). Even information that is well known to an
individual can become temporarily unavailable. In addition to features merely becoming
temporarily unavailable, many memory researchers assume that the details associated with a
memory become dissociated from one another and that they fade over time (Johnson &
Chalfonte, 1994; Johnson, Hashtroudi, & Lindsay, 1993; Reyna & Lloyd, 1997; Tulving,
1983).
In situations where people cannot remember all of the features from a past event, guided
memory techniques occasionally are used by therapists and law enforcement officials in an
attempt to help the individual recover the remaining details of the event (Hyman &
Kleinknecht, 1999; Loftus, 1993). When interviewed using these techniques a person is
compelled to search their memory, imagine what might have happened or think about what
happens in situations like the one they are trying to remember. Such techniques have been
demonstrated to foster false memories in lab based experiments (Hyman, Husband, &
Billings, 1995; Loftus & Pickrell, 1995; Pezdek & Hodge, 1999). One of the most popular
explanations of the results from such experiments is that these techniques encourage
individuals to extrapolate details for these events. When forced to extrapolate details,
individuals may unknowingly borrow features from other real events to provide flesh to the
false memories that they are creating and in doing so, produce memory conjunction errors, a
process that has been referred to as content borrowing (Lampinen, Meier, Arnal, & Leding,
2005; Lampinen, Ryals, & Smith, 2008).
Additionally, laboratory based procedures have demonstrated memory for features in the
absence of configural information using simpler materials. For example, Chalfonte and
Johnson (1996) presented their participants with 30 colored drawings of common objects.
Each drawing was presented in a cell of a 7 x 7 grid. Each of the objects was positioned in a
different location within the grid and was printed in a different color. For example,
participants might have viewed a drawing of a blue chair located in the top-left hand corner of
the grid. In this design, object, location and color were all considered to be basic features
represented within the gestalt of each of the pictures presented in the grid.
In a series of three experiments, young and elderly adults viewed arrays such as these and
later completed a recognition memory test. The questions of interest were whether or not their
participants would be able to: 1) correctly recognize that a chair was presented in the array,
2) recognize that the color blue was presented in the array and 3) recognize that an object had
been positioned in the top left hand corner of the grid. Recognition performance of this sort
134 Timothy N. Odegard, James M. Lampinen and Emily A. Farris

provided a measure of the ability of their participants to recognize individual features. In

addition, Chalfonte & Johnson were interested in whether or not their participants would be
able to correctly recognize objects, colors and location in the appropriate relationship to one
another. Recognition of this sort provides a rough estimate of the ability of their participants
to bind features together.
Past research has demonstrated normal aging to impair memory (Light, 1991; Spencer &
Raz, 1995). Consistent with this past research, elderly participants demonstrated
comparatively worse memories for location information than their younger counterparts.
However, the elderly participants experienced selective deficits in their memory. Their
memories for object and color information was equivalent to that of the younger participants.
In our blue chair example, the elderly participants would recognize that the color blue and
that a picture of a chair had been presented previously, but they would have difficulty
remembering exactly where these details had been located previously. This dissociation
suggests that each of these features was stored in separate representations, providing evidence
for memorial features.
In addition, the elderly participants showed a deficit in their ability to recognize these
simple features in the appropriate relationship to one another. Chalfonte and Johnson (1996)
concluded that the deficit of location information hindered the ability of their elderly
participants to accurately bind object and color features. Recalling where the color blue and
the chair had been located would allow these features to be bound together into a
representation of a blue chair. A similar conclusion was drawn by researchers investigating
illusory conjunctions. Prinzmetal and his colleagues (Ashby, et al 1996; Prinzmetal, et al
2002) theorized that location allows for perceptual features to be bound together. Reduced
access to location information results in an inability to adequately bind features together. This
same logic applies to the research of Chalfonte and Johnson. Location information informs a
memorial feature binding process allowing for memorial features to be bound together. This
explanation is very compelling given the perceptual nature of the materials used by Chalfonte
and Johnson (1996).
If we assume that memories are composed of discretely processed features, how then are
they bound together? Given the results presented thus far, location appears to be one type of
structural information that informs a memorial feature binding process. Yet, presumably there
are several different types of structural information that function to hold features in
relationship to one another. These various types of information would comprise what has
been referred to as a configural memory trace (Reinitz, et al., 1994; Reinitz & Hannigan,
2001). Similar to Johnson and her colleagues, we stress that feature binding is a process that
is informed by many forms of structural representations. The context in which a type of
structural information is presented will determine how diagnostic it will be to the binding
process.
This line of thinking gives rise to an important question. Does the structure of an event
generate an independent memory trace? In Essays in Radical Empiricism, William James
(1912) suggested that the structure inherent in an object was just as real as the features
themselves. This concept is similar to that proposed by several existing models of memory.
For example, a schema is in essence a type of configural trace. A script for going to a
restaurant allows a person to understand how the various features that make up the visit
should relate to one another (Bower, Black & Turner, 1979). Of course, a schema represents a
general level of knowledge, instead of an event specific level of knowledge (Forbus, Gentner,
 Illusory Perceptions and Memories: What Is the Tie That Binds? 135

& Law, 1994). If an event level representation was not available individuals could rely upon
schemas to piece together an event specific memory. However, some theories do posit
configural representations to exist at an event level. For instance, Forbus et al. appealed to an
event specific level of configural information in their account of analogical reminding.
Similarly, Brainerd and Reyna (2002) propose that each event gives rise to a gist
representation and that this gist representation informs a reconstructive free recall process
(Brainerd, Wright, Reyna, & Payne, 2002).
As such, researchers posit that both feature and configural representations are encoded
for memorial events. Presumably, assessing these configural traces would allow a person to
accurately piece back together the features that were originally experienced. Notice that we
have outlined several different types of configural representations that could be encoded.
Location, the gist, and even the theme of an event provide a blueprint for how the individual
features of an event relate to one another. Potentially, some of these traces have more
longevity in memory than others. For instance, location is a surface feature that should decay
from memory more rapidly than the gist or theme of an event (Reyna & Lloyd, 1997). Such
differences might undermine the ability of a person to accurately piece together the past.
Regardless, there seems to be reason to believe that features make up our memories for the
past. However, there is mounting evidence that these features engender a sense of familiarity
in the absence of the ability to consciously recollect them, and that this familiarity biases
responding on recognition memory tests in the memory conjunction paradigm.

The Role of Familiarity

Thus far we have argued that an errant feature binding process is responsible for both
illusory conjunctions and memory conjunction errors. However, that conclusion should be
drawn with caution because processes other than feature binding underlie false alarms in the
memory conjunction paradigm. This is important because memory conjunction errors are the
result of features from different events being erroneously combined to form a false memory.
These alternative processes need to be identified and accounted for in an attempt to ascertain
the extent to which inappropriate feature binding results in memory errors in this paradigm.
Consider, for instance, Jacoby’s (1991) dual process account of recognition memory.
According to Jacoby, recognition memory results from two processes, recollection and
familiarity. Conscious recollection is a relatively slow, deliberate process that accurately
retrieves contextual and relational information. Notice that recollection implies the retrieval
of a bound memory trace, without providing a clear explanation of how this binding would
occur. Familiarity, on the other hand, is a fast, automatic process that relies on feature
matches, in the absence of contextual or relational information. This process is often thought
of in terms of global feature matching, such as in MINERVA2 (Hintzman, 1988).
Familiarity is experienced as an ease of processing, which can occur because the
information itself or something related to it was presented previously. For instance, the
presentation of cup at study results in perceptual fluency for the presentation of the word cut
at a later time, and this perceptual fluency is experienced as familiarity for that item. In the
absence of any information to the contrary (e.g., remembering that cup was presented
opposed to cut), participants likely will misattribute this sense of familiarity for the test item
to the study session, resulting in the false acceptance of cut. In support of this idea, Jacoby
136 Timothy N. Odegard, James M. Lampinen and Emily A. Farris

and Dallas (1981) found a correspondence between performance on a perceptual recognition

task and an old new recognition memory test. Words that were more easily recognized on a
perceptual recognition task were more likely to be recognized as old on an old new
recognition memory test.
In addition, the presentation of cup at study would result in a sense of semantic fluency
for the later presentation of the word mug. Semantic fluency for an item can also be
misattributed to a previous study session resulting in the false acceptance of items that were
not presented at study. For instance, Brainerd, Reyna and Mojardin (1999; see also Odegard
& Lampinen, 2005) found that presenting participants with a test item’s synonym or antonym
at study increased rates of false alarms to the test item. The conclusion drawn from results
such as these is that both perceptual and semantic familiarity should influence the acceptance
of targets, conjunction lures and feature lures on a recognition memory test (Watson, Balota,
& Sergent-Marshall, 2001).
Presumably, target acceptance occurs either because the test item is consciously
recollected or because it seems familiar to the participant. According to the dual process
model, the false recognition of conjunction and feature lures results from familiarity. People
will falsely accept conjunction lures because they previously saw all of their perceptual
features. The fact that all of the features were presented previously evokes an ease of
processing, which results in a sense of familiarity with the conjunction lure. This sense of
familiarity can result in the false acceptance of a conjunction lure. However, only half of the
perceptual features of a feature lure were presented previously. Consequently, feature lures
should seem less familiar to a participant than conjunction lures. Of course, none of the
perceptual features that make up foils were studied previously, and the study session should
not influence levels of familiarity experienced for these items. The amount of overlap shared
between the different recognition items with the items presented at test roughly corresponds
to the rates at which these test items are falsely accepted. Thus, familiarity provides an
alternative account of memory conjunction errors, one that does not rely on an errant feature
binding process.
In support of the role of familiarity in the memory conjunction error paradigm,
manipulations known to influence recollection often fail to influence the acceptance of
conjunction lures (Jones & Jacoby, 2001; Jones, Jacoby, & Gellis, 2001), while these same
manipulations decrease the rate at which participants accept targets. For instance, past
research has demonstrated that dividing attention at study and test decreases participants’
abilities to utilize recollection but not familiarity (Gruppuso, Lindsay, & Kelley, 1997;
Jacoby, 1996). Dividing attention at encoding and retrieval did not decrease rates of false
alarms to conjunction and feature lures but did decrease the number of hits for targets (Jones
& Jacoby, 2001). These results suggest that participants rely on recollection when accepting
targets, but not when falsely accepting conjunction and feature lures.
In addition, Jones and Jacoby (2001) and Jones, et al. (2001) manipulated response time
to investigate the influence of recollection and familiarity in the memory conjunction
paradigm. Recall that familiarity is defined as a fast, automatic process. Even under
conditions of speeded response, participants should still have access to familiarity.
Conversely, recollection is a slower, more deliberate process (see Yonelinas, 2002 for a
review). Speeding the rate at which participants provide recognition responses should
preclude the ability of the participants to use recollection. When forced to provide speeded
 Illusory Perceptions and Memories: What Is the Tie That Binds? 137

recognition responses, participants correctly accepted fewer targets but accepted just as many
conjunction and feature lures.
These results underscore the importance of familiarity in the acceptance of conjunction
and feature lures. One might conclude that false alarms to conjunction lures merely result
from familiarity. As such, these results do not provide compelling evidence that erroneous
feature binding inappropriately combines features from multiple memories together to form
memory conjunction errors.

Evidence for Feature Binding in Memory

While familiarity most certainly plays a role in the acceptance of both conjunction lures
and feature lures in this paradigm, it should be noted that evidence exists suggesting that
something more than familiarity underlies false alarms to conjunction lures. First, familiarity
alone cannot account for an illusory sense of recollecting conjunction lures when they are
presented at test. Yet, participants have reported an illusory sense of recollection to
accompany false alarms to conjunction lures of compound words, line drawn faces and
autobiographical memories (Reinitz & Hannigan, 2004; Reinitz, et al., 1994; Odegard &
Lampinen, 2004). Reinitz et al. (1994) had their participants view 8 black and white images
of line drawn faces and later complete a recognition memory test. Conjunction lures were
formed by taking the eyes and nose from one presented face and combining them with the
hair and nose from another presented face. After falsely accepting some conjunction lures,
participants categorized their memorial experiences for conjunction lures in the remember
sense. Remember judgments are to be made when a participant can recollect some aspect of a
recognition item’s previous presentation (Rajaram, 1993). So these participants reported
being able to remember these features having been presented together.
Additionally, we obtained evidence for illusory or phantom recollection in a study of
memory conjunction errors for autobiographical events (Odegard & Lampinen, 2004).
Participants in our second study reported life events in a diary. We constructed conjunction
lures by taking features from one event and supplanting them into another event. For
example, the person from one event might be placed into another event. Participants not only
falsely recognized some of these conjunction lures, but they also reported being able to
actually remember the features as having been present during the wrong event. In addition,
we obtained similar results using compound words. By collecting confidence data along with
old new recognition performance we observed that participants were extremely confident that
a subset of falsely accepted conjunction lures had actually been presented (Lampinen,
Odegard, & Neuschatz, 2004). By plotting ROC curves of these data we obtained additional
evidence for phantom recollection of conjunction lures.
Second, familiarity for conjunction lures should be influenced solely by the previous
presentation of the constituent features of the conjunction lures. However, other factors
influence false alarms to conjunction lures. For instance, conjunction lures composed of
features that were presented close together in time are more likely to be falsely recognized
than conjunction lures composed of features that were presented further apart in time (Kroll et
al., 1996; Hannigan & Reinitz, 2000; Renitz, & Hannigan, 2004). Perceptual fluency should
not be influenced by the temporal proximity of one feature to another. Also, participants are
more likely to falsely accept a conjunction lure comprised of features that were taken from
138 Timothy N. Odegard, James M. Lampinen and Emily A. Farris

events that both belong to the same type or category of events (Hannigan & Reinitz, 2003;
Odegard & Lampinen, 2004). For example, we observed people to experience more illusory
memories when we constructed conjunction lures using details from two events that were
categorized by the participant as being the same type of event (e.g., social event).
Recall that one of the general conclusions drawn from reviewing the literature on
perceptual illusions was that features were more likely to migrate within a perceptual unit
than between a perceptual unit. Likewise, Hannigan and Reinitz (2003) found increased rates
of false alarms for conjunction lures composed of features taken from faces that were
presented together simultaneously. They have also observed the same to be true of
conjunction lures for compound words (Reinitz & Hannigan, 2004). Those objects that are
presented simultaneously are more likely to be processed as a perceptual unit than items that
are separated across time.
Even when events are separated across time, category membership groups events together
into memorial units. Being grouped in such a fashion increases the likelihood that features
between them will be inappropriately bound together forming a memory conjunction error.
Again, we observed features from life events that were classified as belonging to the same
category of events to form conjunction lures that were more likely to be falsely accepted than
by combining features from two life events that were classified as belonging to different
categories.
Recall that Prinzmetal (1981) observed similarity to underlie the formation of illusory
conjunctions. Presumably this is also true of memorial binding. Increased similarity between
events helps to group these events together in memory. When configural information is lost
other information must be utilized. In some cases, features from events that belong to similar
events may start to commingle forming memory conjunction errors.
Finally, although familiarity can account for the false recognition of conjunction lures, it
fails to provide an explanation for free recall of conjunction errors. Again, past research has
demonstrated that conjunction errors are reported on free recall memory tests (Odegard &
Lampinen, 2004; Reinitz & Hannigan, 2004; Reinitz, et al., 1994). Reinitz et al. (1994)
observed their participants to falsely recall recombinations of sentences that were presented at
study. Reinitz and Hannigan (2004) observed their participants to recombine words from
compound words presented at study to form conjunctions. Also, our participants falsely
recalled life events that contained combinations of features from different events. Although
free recall of conjunction errors was small in each of these cases, these results strongly
suggest that something other than mere familiarity underlies memory performance in the
memory conjunction paradigm. Yet, it should be stressed that familiarity most certainly
contributes to performance in this paradigm.
Collectively, the results reviewed from the memory conjunction literature suggest that
familiarity and errant feature binding both contribute to false alarms to conjunction lures.
Earlier we identified several criteria that if followed help to ensure that perceptual errors were
indeed illusory conjunctions, resulting from the errant binding of presented features.
Likewise, there are criteria that if followed help to ensure that researchers are investigating
errors resulting from the errant binding of memorial features. These criteria are born out of
the processes assumed to underlie memory conjunction errors.
First, to conclude that false memories are the product of errant feature binding, we must
determine that people are not guessing. Second, one must control for the extent to which false
memories result from familiarity in the absence of any errant feature binding. Of course, an
 Illusory Perceptions and Memories: What Is the Tie That Binds? 139

initial feeling of familiarity may compel a person to engage in a reconstructive process,

resulting in the errant binding of features (Lampinen, Meier et al., 2005; Lampinen et al.,
2008; Lampinen, Faries, Neuschatz, & Toglia, 2000; Lampinen, Neuschatz, & Payne, 1999).
However, given that recognition responses can be based solely on familiarity, such errors
should not be considered memory conjunction errors. Third, feature traces should be derived
from actual events. For instance, they should not be extrapolations from prototypes or
schemas. Although, participants may strategically use schematic knowledge when filling in
the details, these details need to correspond to actual features from a person’s past. Finally,
these memorial features must be free floating, allowing them to be inaccurately bound
together. Just as Treisman and Gelade (1980) referred to unbound features as “free floating”
features, Tulving (1983) referred to memorial details detached from a knowledge structure as
“free radicals.” Just as free floating features can be inappropriately bound together to produce
illusory conjunctions, free radicals can be inappropriately bound together to produce illusory
false memories.

Measuring Memory Conjunction Errors

Criteria 1 and 2 stress that multiple latent memory processes and guessing underlie the
behavioral data collected in the memory conjunction paradigm. Consequently, researchers are
unable to rely strictly on false alarms to conjunction lures as a means of measuring memory
conjunction errors. Thus, we must find a means of achieving the first two criteria. A similar
obstacle was present in the illusory conjunction literature. Researchers interested in illusory
conjunctions had to control for the extent to which participants responded based on faulty
memories and strategic guessing, opposed to faulty perception of what was presented. To
control for these other processes, a comparison was made between the rates of falsely
accepting conjunction and feature lures. The extent to which participants were more likely to
falsely accept conjunction lures than feature lures was seen as evidence of binding errors.
This logic was mathematically conceptualized by Prinzmetal and Millis-Wright (1984) in
equation 1. The application of the logic inherent in equation 1 to memory conjunction errors
results in the formation of equation 2.

Conerror Featureerror
Pconj Equation 2
1 Conerror

In this equation, rates of guessing are assumed to be equivalent for conjunction and
feature lures. Thus, subtracting feature errors from conjunction errors corrects for guessing.
Unfortunately equation 2 will not provide a pure estimate of illusory conjunctions,
because of differences between the illusory conjunction and memory conjunction paradigms.
For one, familiarity can result in false alarms to both targets and conjunction lures. In
addition, participants can accept both conjunction and feature lures because they recall a
previously presented feature making up the item and assume the other feature to have been
presented as well. This has been referred to as partial recollection (Marsh, Hicks, & Davis
2002; Jones & Jacoby, 2001). It could be assumed that subtracting out the acceptance of
feature lures from the acceptance of conjunction lures would correct for both partial
140 Timothy N. Odegard, James M. Lampinen and Emily A. Farris

recollection and familiarity. Of course, this is true only if conjunction and feature lures are
equivalent in the rate at which they evoke familiarity and partial recollection.
Yet, these assumptions are not true. Conjunction lures are more familiar than feature
lures. Also, it is not self evident that partial recollection is equivalent for conjunction and
feature lures. Both of the features in a conjunction lure were studied previously, changing the
probability that an individual will recollect the prior presentation of one of these features in
comparison to feature lures. Thus, a simple subtractive correction will not adequately control
for familiarity and partial recollection. Instead, methods to measure the influence of
recollection, memory conjunction errors, partial recollection and familiarity on the acceptance
and rejection of targets, conjunction lures and feature lures need to be introduced. Therefore,
we introduce several means by which these processes could be measured, but first, we briefly
define the processes that are of interest in this paradigm.
It is now widely held that recollection can play two roles (Brainerd & Reyna, 2002;
Brainerd, Wright, Reyna, & Mojardin, 2001; Lampinen, et al., 2004; Odegard, Koen, &
Gama, 2008; Odegard, Lampinen, & Toglia, 2005; Rotello & Heit, 1999; 2000; Rotello,
Macmillan, & Van-Tassel, 2000, Yonelinas, 1997). Recollection can lead to the acceptance of
targets and the rejection of related lures. In the current paradigm, these responses are fostered
by the ability of an individual to access relational information for the constituent features of a
memorial event. Recollection of relational information should result in the acceptance of a
target and the rejection of both conjunction and feature lures. For example, if when presented
with blackbird at test a person is capable of recollecting that black was presented with mail at
study, this information should allow a person to appropriately reject blackbird. Of course, a
person could imagine situations in which this strategy would be more useful than others. For
example, in previous research (Lampinen et al., 2004), we have told participants that studied
items did not share the same features. When given these instructions, recollecting a target is
maximally likely to result in the rejection of conjunction or feature lures. However, one could
also imagine a situation in which features were shared among the different study items. In this
situation, recollecting the presentation of a target will be less diagnostic when presented with
a feature or conjunction lure. Regardless, utilizing recollection to reject lures in this manner
has been referred to as recollection rejection and should occur for both conjunction and
features lures and this has indeed been observed to be the case (Lampinen et al. 2004;
Odegard, et al., 2008; Odegard, et al., 2005).
When relational information is unavailable but the features making up the recognition
item are recollected, a person may commit a memory conjunction error. Memory conjunction
errors can result in the acceptance of targets and conjunction lures and should be experienced
as compellingly real memories. In addition, partial recollection can occur. Participants may
recollect one of the features presented in a recognition test item and assume that the other had
been presented as well based on familiarity. Targets, conjunction lures, and feature lures, all
of which are composed of at least one feature that was presented at study, could be accepted
based on partial recollection. Finally, participants may accept targets, conjunction lures, and
features lures based on familiarity. A list and description of these processes is provided in
Table 1.
When addressing the problem of measuring each of these memorial processes,
differences between recollection and familiarity can be exploited to dissociate the processes
from one another. Yonelinas (2001) discussed the three C’s of recollection: consciousness,
control, and confidence. Recollection is accompanied by a conscious level of awareness for
 Illusory Perceptions and Memories: What Is the Tie That Binds? 141

the context or some detail associated with the presentation of an item, but familiarity is
experienced as a general feeling of previously having experienced the material. Also,
recollection allows a person to exert control over the testing environment. For example,
recollection allows a person to selectively respond to information presented from different
sources, but familiarity does not afford a person with this level of control. Finally,
recollection is typically associated with high levels of confidence, but familiarity judgments
are made under different levels of confidence corresponding to how familiar the test item is to
the participant. Each of these differences can be utilized to distinguish between recollection,
memory conjunction errors, partial recollection and familiarity.
To begin, self report techniques have been used to access the level of awareness that
accompanies participants’ memories for the past (Gardiner & Java, 1993; Odegard &
Lampinen, 2005; Odegard et al., 2005). For example, both remember know judgments and the
memory characteristic questionnaire have been used to address the phenomenology that
accompanies hits and false alarms to recognition test items (see Lampinen et al., 1998 for a
review of these methodologies). Given that recollection processes (i.e., Recollection,
Recollection Rejection, Partial Recollection) are experienced at a conscious, reportable level,
a straightforward means of investigating these processes is to require participants to complete
a modified recognition test that includes remember know judgments. The inclusion of
remember know judgments provides participants with the opportunity to self report the
quality of their memory experience.

Table 1. Parameters in the Conjunction Memory Model

Recollection (R) The ability to consciously recollect the previous presentation of

an event in its entirety
Recollection Rejection of The ability to reject a conjunction lure by consciously
Conjunction Lures recollecting the context in which at least one of the old features
(Rrconjunction) in the lure had been presented previously.
Recollection Rejection of The ability to reject a feature lure by consciously recollecting
Feature Lures (Rrfeature) the context in which the old feature in the lure had been
presented previously.
Memory Conjunction The recollection of both of the constituent features of a
Error (MC) conjunction that are inappropriately bound together resulting in
an illusory sense of recollecting of the conjunction lure.
Partial Recollection of Recollecting one of the features of a target and assuming based
Targets (PARtarget) on familiarity that the item as a whole was presented at study.
Partial Recollection of Recollecting one of the features of a conjunction lure and
Conjunction Lures assuming based on familiarity that the item as a whole was
(PARconjunction) presented at study.
Partial Recollection of Recollecting one of the features of a feature lure and assuming
Feature Lures (PARfeature) based on familiarity that the item as a whole was presented at
study.
Familiarity of Targets Accepting a target because the features seem familiar.
(Ftarget)
Familiarity of Conjunction Accepting a conjunction lure because the features seem familiar.
Lures (Fconjunction)
Familiarity of Feature Accepting a feature lure because the features seem familiar.
Lures (Ffeature)
142 Timothy N. Odegard, James M. Lampinen and Emily A. Farris

Remember know judgments have been used with the memory conjunction paradigm in
past research (Odegard & Lampinen, 2004; Odegard et al., 2005; Reinitz & Hannigan, 2004;
Reinitz, et al., 1994), but these self report judgments were not used to systematically
distinguish between those items that were recollected from those items that were only
partially recollected. To accomplish this, the testing procedure would be modified to allow
participants to provide old new and remember know judgments for each of the features
making up a recognition item and for the item as a whole. For instance, a person presented
with the recognition item blackbird would make an old new judgment for the word black. If
the participant judged the feature to be old, a remember know judgment would be made for
the word black. The participant would do the same thing for bird. These judgments provide
an estimate of a participant’s ability to remember previously presented features and the extent
to which these features are recollected (i.e., remember judgment) or simply seem familiar
(i.e., know judgment) to the participant.
Next, for those items where both features were judged to be old, the participant would
determine if the features had been presented together at study. In our current example, a
participant would determine if black and bird had been presented together. After making this
judgment, a remember know judgment would be made. The remember know judgment
provides a means of determining whether or not the participant has the feeling of consciously
recollecting the features together, or whether the participant simply knows that the features
were presented together. Additionally, this provides the opportunity for the participant to
report the ability to consciously recollect one or both of the features as having been presented
in a different context. In such instances, a new judgment would be made for the item as a
whole (i.e., black and bird were not presented together) and then a remember judgment would
be made as well. Rejecting items in this fashion is indicative of recollection rejection.
This technique provides a means of accessing the extent to which participants falsely
accept conjunction lures as old after first having identified the individual features as being
old. It also provides a means of estimating the extent to which participants’ report consciously
remembering some aspect about the feature (i.e., remember judgment) opposed to simply
finding the feature to be familiar (i.e., know judgment). In addition, it provides a means of
measuring the extent to which participants are able to consciously recollect the features as
having been presented together. As such, the conscious level of experience that accompanies
recollection of features and configural information can be used to provide gross estimates of
the memory processes outlined in Table 1. For instance, partial recollection would be reported
as remembering one feature and finding the other to be familiar, when the item as a whole is
accepted as old.
Yet, self report techniques are subjective in nature and are difficult to correct for
guessing. Furthermore, Lampinen et al. (1998) raised three major concerns with remember
know judgments. For one, great care needs to be taken to ensure that participants fully
understand that a remember judgment should only be made when they are capable of
consciously recollecting some aspect of the recognition item. Secondly, they noted
standardized instructions have not been introduced for this procedure. Some remember know
instructions sets may handle the first concern better than others. Finally, the procedure forces
participants to categorize their judgments into one of two types of memories. This
categorization is based on an assumption that memory is composed of two types of memory,
recollection and familiarity. Although our modification to the remember know procedure
 Illusory Perceptions and Memories: What Is the Tie That Binds? 143

allows us to provide estimates of several different types of memories, these memories are
derivations of recollection and familiarity.
To address some of these concerns, the aspect of control inherent to recollection has been
used to dissociate the influence of latent memory processes on recognition performance. For
instance, past researchers utilized control inherent to recollection to provide estimates of
familiarity and recollection using the process dissociation technique (Jacoby, 1991; 1996). In
this technique, the ability to distinguish between information presented from two different
sources (e.g., list 1 and list 2) is used to dissociate the influence of conscious recollection
from familiarity on recognition responses. To estimate these effects, two sets of recognition
instructions, inclusion and exclusion, are used. Exclusion instructions require participants to
distinguish the source from which information was presented at study and to accept only
those items that were presented from one of the two sources (e.g., list 2). Inclusion
instructions allow participants to select items from either of the two sources.
Thus, in our example, the proportion of list 1 items chosen under the inclusion
instructions minus the proportion of list 1 items chosen under the exclusion instructions
provides an estimate of the recollection process. The logic is that list 1 items selected under
the exclusion instructions resulted from familiarity and guessing, but the acceptance of list 1
items under the inclusion instructions resulted from recollection, familiarity and guessing.

R = I-E Equation 3

Familiarity can be estimated as the probability of selecting an item under the exclusion
instructions divided by the probability of not recollecting the item, when recollection and
familiarity are assumed to be independent.

F = E / (1-R) Equation 4

This model assumes that recollection can be used to oppose familiarity. A person capable
of recollecting the source of a test item can utilize this information to respond appropriately
under exclusion instruction. This logic can be modified and applied to the memory
conjunction paradigm. In the Process Dissociation procedure participants are asked to make
source judgments about previously presented information (i.e., within which list was a word
presented). Similarly, participants tested in the memory conjunction paradigm are asked to
distinguish between recognition test items that contain features presented in the same
relationship to one another at test as they were at study (i.e., targets) and those recognition
test items that are previously unstudied combinations of these previously studied features
(i.e., conjunction lures). The only difference between a target and a conjunction lure is the
relationship that the individual features share among one another.
When modifying the process dissociation procedure for use with the memory conjunction
paradigm, two sets of instructions analogous to exclusion instructions would be introduced.
One set of exclusion instructions would instruct participants to accept only targets (T
instructions). The second set would instruct participants to accept only conjunction lures (C
instructions). Recollecting the appropriate configural information needed to bind features
together will allow participants to appropriately respond to targets and conjunction lures
under these two instruction sets, realizing of course that feature lures should be rejected under
both of these instruction sets. Inclusion instructions can be modified to request that
144 Timothy N. Odegard, James M. Lampinen and Emily A. Farris

participants accept recognition test items that are composed of at least one feature that was
presented at study. Thus, participants are asked to accept targets, conjunction lures and
features lures (T+C+F instructions).
These instruction sets allow memory processes thought to underlie recognition memory
performance in the memory conjunction paradigm to be measured. As was the case with
process dissociation, equations can be derived for estimating the extent to which participants’
responses are based on different memory processes. For instance, estimates of recollection of
targets can be derived from equation 5.

R(Targets) = TAR(acceptance, T instructions) - TAR (acceptance, C instructions) Equation 5

The estimate derived from Equation 5 is based on the ability of participants to use
conscious recollection to control their responding under the different instructions.
Furthermore, we would argue that configural information enables participants to accurately
recollect the past. For instance, participants should only accept targets under T instructions
when they recognize that the features composing the features previously were presented in
that configuration. Additionally, access to this same configural information should enable
participants to reject targets under the C instructions. More formally, targets accepted under
the T instructions are based on recollection, memory conjunction errors, partial recollection
and familiarity.

Targets acceptance = R + (1-R) MC + (1-R) (1-MC) PAR

(T instructions) + (1-R) (1-MC) (1-PAR) F
+ (1-R) (1-MC) (1 – PAR) (1- F) B Equation 6

Targets accepted under C instructions are accepted based on partial recollection,

familiarity and response bias.

Targets acceptance = (1-R) (1 – MC) PAR + (1-R) (1- MC) (1 – PAR) F

(C instructions) + (1-R) (1-MC) (1 – PAR) (1- F) B Equation 7

As such, equation 5 provides an estimate of participants’ abilities to recollect the previous

presentation of a target by subtracting out the influence of everything except recollection and
memory conjunction errors on the acceptance of targets under T instructions. If memory
conjunction errors really do occur, there is no way of dissociating these errors from the
recollection of targets. However, this very same problem of dissociating recollection and
illusory recollection memory for targets from one another presents itself to many other
techniques as well (Brainerd, et al., 1999; Brainerd, et al., 2001; Jacoby, 1991; 1996;
Yonelinas, 1997).
Likewise, access to the appropriate configural information for a set of features should
allow participants to correctly respond to conjunction lures under the different instructions
sets. For example, under T instructions participants should reject conjunction lures. The
occurrence of recollection rejection should in large part be due to the availability of
configural information, providing participants with the control needed to correctly reject
conjunction lures under the T instructions and to accept them under the C instructions.
 Illusory Perceptions and Memories: What Is the Tie That Binds? 145

Equation 8 provides an estimate of the ability of participants to engage in recollection

rejection when responding to conjunction lures.

Rr(conjunction lure) = Con(acceptance, T+C+F instructions) – Con(acceptance, T instructions) Equation 8

Conjunction lures should be accepted based on all the processes outline in table 1 under
T+C+F instructions.

Conjunction lures acceptance = Rr + (1 – Rr) MC + (1 – Rr) (1 – MC) PAR

(T+C+F instructions) + (1 – Rr) (1 – MC) (1 – PAR) F
+ (1 – Rr) (1 – MC) (1 – PAR) (1 – F) B Equation 9

However, the ability to recall the appropriate configural information should result in
conjunction lures being rejected under T instructions.

Conjunction lures acceptance = (1-Rr) MC + (1 – Rr) (1 – MC) PAR

(T instructions) + (1 – Rr) (1 – MC) (1 – PAR) F
+ (1 – Rr) (1 – MC) (1 – PAR) (1 – F) B Equation 10

Again, subtracting these probability statements (i.e., Equations 9 and 10) from one
another reduces the statements to recollection rejection.
Finally, equation 11 provides an estimate of memory conjunction errors for conjunction
lures.

MC(conjunction) = (Con(acceptance, T instructions) - Con(acceptance, C instructions))/1 Rr(conjunction)) Equation 11

Conjunction lures are accepted based on memory conjunction errors, partial recollection,
familiarity and response bias under T instructions.1

Conjunction lures acceptance = (1-Rr) MC + (1 – Rr) (1 – MC) PAR

(T instructions) + (1 – Rr) (1 – MC) (1 – PAR) F
+ (1 – Rr) (1 – MC) (1 – PAR) (1 – F) B Equation 12

Conjunction lures are accepted based on partial recollection, familiarity and response bias
under the C instructions.

Conjunction lures acceptance = Rr + (1-Rr) (1 – MC) PAR

(C instructions) + (1 – Rr) (1 – MC) (1 – PAR) F
+ (1 – Rr) (1 – MC) (1 – PAR) (1 – F) B Equation 13

Subtracting the acceptance of conjunction lures under C instructions from the acceptance
of conjunction lures under target+conjunction+feature instructions (i.e., Equation 9) removes
all memory processes except memory conjunction errors.

1
Notice that an assumption is being made in equation 11 as to the precedence of recollection rejection over memory
conjunction errors. A similar assumption is made by several other models, such as Conjoint Recognition
(Brainerd, et al., 1999) and Phantom Recollection (Brainerd, et al., 2001).
146 Timothy N. Odegard, James M. Lampinen and Emily A. Farris

Although this technique would provide parameter estimates for some memory processes,
it fails to provide a measure of partial recollection. At best, this approach would yield an
estimate of the additive influence of familiarity and partial recollection on recognition
responding. In addition, this approach provides no means of formally modeling the memory
processes of interest, because the outcome space provides only 12 degrees of freedom2. As is
evident from Table 1, the number of memory processes of interest approaches the degrees of
freedom allotted in the outcome space. With the inclusion of independent estimates of
response bias for the three instruction conditions, any formal model becomes supersaturated.
This would preclude reliable parameter estimates from being obtained. In addition, it
precludes us from testing the fit of the model.
To account for the problem of measuring response bias, confidence judgments have been
used to provide estimates for several of the memory processes of interest in the memory
conjunction paradigm. For example, Yonelinas (1997; 1999) devised a method using ROC
analysis to provide estimates of recollection and familiarity. Subsequently, we developed a
similar model that provides estimates of recollection, illusory memories for lures, recollection
rejection and familiarity (Lampinen, Odegard, Blackshear, & Toglia, 2005).
Traditionally, researchers have participants make old new recognition judgments guided
by standard recognition instructions, while providing confidence judgments in their old new
judgments. Plotting rejection and acceptance rates at each confidence level generates an ROC
curve. In a standard ROC curve, targets are plotted on the Y axis and unrelated lures are
plotted on the X-axis. By the standard signal detection account, ROC curves should begin in
the bottom left hand corner (0,0) of the graph and curve up into the top right hand corner of
the graph (1,1).
Yonelinas (1997; 1999) observed that even when participants were being so conservative
that they should not accept any test items, they were still accepting some targets. This caused
the ROC curve to intersect the Y axis above (0,0). He suggested that this provided evidence
for a second memory process, recollection, in addition to the process of familiarity. This high
level of confidence presumably resulted from the ability of the participant to consciously
recollect the target. Graphically, the distance between 0 and the intercept of the Y axis
represents recollection of targets.
We adapted this logic for application with the two recollection processes thought to
underlie recognition performance for related lures, phantom recollection and recollection
rejection. First, participants sometimes report that their memories for related lures have been
extremely compelling. These illusory memories are experienced as recollections. Brainerd et
al. (2001) have referred to them as phantom recollections. As such, we refer to our ROC
model as Phantom ROC (PROC). We plotted ROC curves in which related lures were placed
on the Y-axis and unrelated lures were placed on the X-axis. Similar to Yonelinas (1997;
1999), we observed the Y-intercept of this ROC curve to be non zero. Even when participants
were being maximally conservative, they experienced phantom recollections for some of the
related lures. Graphically, the distance between 0 and the intercept of the Y-axis represents
phantom recollection of related lures. We have modeled performance in the memory
conjunction paradigm using this approach and observed participants to experience phantom
recollection for conjunction lures, but the same was not true for feature lures.

2
Actually, two of the probability statements for feature lures are redundant, reducing the number of degrees of
freedom to 11.
 Illusory Perceptions and Memories: What Is the Tie That Binds? 147

Furthermore, we observed the curve to fall below (1,1). Even when participants were
willing to accept every single unrelated distractor based on familiarity, there were some
related items that they were unwilling to accept. Presumably, participants’ ability to engage in
recollection rejection would allow them to reject even the most familiar of related lures.
Graphically, the distance below (1,1) and the point at which the curve intersects on the right
hand side of the graph represents recollection rejection of related lures. Again we have plotted
data from the memory conjunction paradigm using this approach and observed robust
estimates of recollection rejection for both conjunction and feature lures. Finally, familiarity
for targets and related lures is estimated using d′ (Snodgrass & Corwin, 1988).
Although, we have modeled data from the memory conjunction paradigm and obtained
estimates of recollection, phantom recollection, recollection rejection and familiarity, PROC
also fails to provide an estimate of partial recollection. Fortunately, PROC can be adapted to
provide estimates for all of the processes of interest in the memory conjunction paradigm with
the introduction of the multiple instruction sets discussed earlier. By obtaining confidence
judgments for participants’ responses under both inclusion and exclusion instructions a
measure of all the processes outlined in Table 1 can be obtained.
Under inclusion instructions (i.e., accept target, conjunction, and feature lures)
participants should accept feature lures. When instructed in this fashion, participants will be
capable of relying on their ability to recollect the one old feature in a feature lure in order to
accept feature lures under extremely high confidence. As was the case with targets and
conjunction lures under standard instructions, the extent to which participants recollect the
one old feature in a feature lure will elevate the intercept of the ROC curve at the Y-axis
above zero. This should graphically represent the ability of participants to recollect that one
of the features in the item was old. Thus, this combination of the control and confidence
inherent to recollection based processes provides an eloquent way of obtaining estimates for
all of the recognition based processes while controlling for familiarity and response bias.

INTERSECT BETWEEN ILLUSORY CONJUNCTIONS AND

MEMORY CONJUNCTIONS ERRORS
Given that we can distinguish between the different processes influencing recognition
performance in the memory conjunction paradigm, it is important to use these methodologies
to better understand these memory processes. In particular, we are interested in understanding
how feature memory and binding interact. To provide a basic framework for achieving this
goal, we reviewed the literature on illusory conjunctions and memory conjunction errors.
Illusory conjunctions and memory conjunction errors are similar to one another in many
respects, and many of the factors that have been demonstrated to influence illusory
conjunctions have subsequently been demonstrated to influence the formation of memory
conjunction errors.
One point to take away from the comparison of illusory conjunctions to memory
conjunction errors made here is the need for the systematic exploitation of these similarities to
fully explore memory conjunction errors and memory as a whole. Specifically, we suggested
that memorial features must be free floating, allowing them to be inaccurately bound together
to form memory conjunction errors. Although this was one of the basic principles driving the
148 Timothy N. Odegard, James M. Lampinen and Emily A. Farris

methodology used to better understand illusory conjunctions, as of yet, researchers

investigating memory conjunction errors have failed to follow suit. Recall that perceptual
researchers used attention to limit the ability of their participants to form bound object
representation effectively increasing the rates of illusory conjunctions. Dividing attention at
study could also be used in the memory conjunction paradigm to achieve a similar effect.
Given past research, another variable that should influence the cohesion of a memory
trace is the amount of a delay placed between study and test. Researchers suggest that the
passage of time causes traces to break apart. Concordantly, the passage of time is also thought
to result in the decay of features as well. Thus, it is uncertain how long free radicals are
available in memory. Subsequently, we predict the passage of time to influence estimates of
recollection rejection, partial recollection and memory conjunction errors more so than
familiarity. However, this effect should only be observed to the extent that the passage of
time breaks apart traces and the majority of the resultant free radicals do not decay from
memory.
Thus, by introducing variables such as divided attention and delay we can break apart
memory traces to provide the basic features needed for the formation of memory conjunction
errors. This allows us to determine if participants actually commit increased levels of memory
conjunction errors, under conditions that should likely produce them. We can also increase
the probability that certain types of conjunction errors will be committed, further supporting
the basic assumptions about memory conjunction errors previously outlined. Again drawing
from insights gained from reviewing the perceptual literature, it becomes clear that grouping
principles should constrain the formation of memory conjunction errors. For example,
temporal proximity has garnered some attention, and presenting features temporally closer to
one another increases the occurrence of memory conjunction errors. Yet, spatial proximity
has yet to be investigated in this paradigm, and presumably should have similar results as
grouping features together based on temporal proximity. Another variable that should act to
group memorial features is the amount of semantic overlap shared between the features
composing a conjunction lure and the target items from which the features making up the
conjunction lures were sampled.
Semantic similarity is important to the current discussion, because it gets at the heart of
the notion of what underlies recollection. Jones and Jacoby (2001) hypothesized that
increasing the semantic overlap between targets and conjunction lures would decrease false
alarms to memory conjunction errors. This is based on an assumption that the availability of
conceptual or semantic information for an item increases the odds that it will be consciously
recollected at a later time (Jacoby & Dallas, 1981). This was the case in a set of experiments
investigating the influence of meaning on the generation effect for compound words
(Gardiner & Hampton, 1985). Likewise, Payne, Neely, & Burns (1986) found meaning to
influence retrieval more so than other relationships such as rhyming and phonology. Given
these results, surface features do not seem to underlie the ability of participants to retrieve and
recollect information from memory.
This makes sense from the perspective outlined by Mandler (1980), who assumed inter-
item associates to be formed based on semantic overlap. These inter-item associations
increase the ability of an individual to retrieve information from memory. This would suggest
that cued retrieval is better served by a semantically opposed to perceptually related cue. For
example, being presented with mug at test should be more likely to cue the retrieval of the
prior presentation of cup than the presentation of cut. As such, one would expect recollection
 Illusory Perceptions and Memories: What Is the Tie That Binds? 149

rejection to be more prevalent for lure items that share a meaning based relationship to their
targets than for lure items that share a perceptually based relationship to their targets
(Odegard & Lampinen, 2005). This basic pattern would produce the decreased acceptance of
conjunction lures predicted by Jones and Jacoby (2001).
However, Ghatala, Levin, Bell, & Lodico (1978) did not find this to be the case in the
memory conjunction paradigm. When Ghatala et al. cued participants to think about the study
item using the same meaning as it would hold in the conjunction lure, participants were more
likely to commit false alarms to these conjunction lures. Increasing semantic overlap between
the features used to construct the conjunction lure and the meanings that they held within the
conjunction lure produced an effect opposite to the one predicted by Jones and Jacoby (2001).
Why might this be? One potential reason is that the induction of semantic fluency increased
the rate at which conjunction lures were accepted based on familiarity, in the absence of an
increase in recollection rejection. Another potential reason for these results might be that both
memory conjunction errors and familiarity increased for these items. Finally, one might
assume that familiarity, memory conjunction errors and recollection rejection all three
increased for these items.
Consider this third explanation in more detail. Semantically related conjunction lures
would be better cues for the originally presented targets, increasing recollection rejection and
therefore compensating for the increased familiarity experienced for these items. However,
participants would experience memory conjunction errors at increased rates as well,
producing a net increase in the acceptance of semantically related lures on a recognition
memory test. Yet, why would there be an increase in memory conjunction errors?
Memory conjunction errors might increase because features that share a similar meaning
may be organized into a memory unit. Recall that variables that induce a person to view
perceptual features as belonging to the same unit increased rates of illusory conjunctions
between features within these units. Also, similarity resulted in participants viewing features
spatially distal from one another as belonging to the same perceptual unit, increasing rates of
illusory conjunctions between these features. As such, semantic similarity might induce
participants to view memorial features as belonging together, especially when these features
are free floating.
Thus, it would be of interest to introduce a variable such as delay that should break apart
the features within a trace. Now, the semantic similarity shared between the features should
make it more likely that they will be inappropriately bound back together to form
conjunctions that match the meaning of the targets. One might assume that under such
conditions features may be equally as likely to be recombined to form targets and conjunction
errors. At the same time the decreased ability of participants to directly retrieve a coherent
trace for the studied materials will dampen recollection rejection. Thus, memory conjunction
errors will be unopposed by recollection rejection.
Indeed, we observed semantic overlap to increase the ability of participants to use
recollection rejection to reject conjunction lures (Odegard et al., 2005). Research
investigating the influence of semantic overlap on recollection rejection and memory
conjunction errors allows us to start to understand the relationship between recollection
rejection and memory conjunction errors. Our explanation of the effect of semantic overlap
makes an assumption contrary to the one made in equation 11. Specifically, we assume in this
instance that recollection rejection does not necessarily trump memory conjunction errors. As
such, memory conjunction errors may not necessarily be precluded by recollecting the
150 Timothy N. Odegard, James M. Lampinen and Emily A. Farris

original context of an item. This also gets at the heart of a question proposed by Treisman and
Schmidt (1982). They proposed that features even when bound into an object representation
may be used to form illusory conjunctions. Thus, even when a person recalls that black was
presented in blackmail, they may still feel confident that blackbird was also presented. This
highlights one of the benefits of the self report technique. This approach is not hampered by
the same level of assumptions as to the order of operations imposed upon the process
dissociation and ROC based techniques.
To conclude, the memory conjunction paradigm allows us to understand more fully the
nature of recollection. This understanding will be aided greatly by systematically utilizing
manipulations proven to influence illusory conjunctions. Yet, in the process it will be
important to focus some attention on distinguishing between perceptual and memorial errors.
To the extent that illusory conjunctions are experienced at encoding, we would expect this to
bias later memory performance. However, one might also assume, as we have throughout this
chapter, that retrieval based strategies reliant upon the availability of free radicals might
underlie the occurrence of memory conjunction errors.
This is yet another area that can be investigated using this paradigm. This encoding based
error is similar in many respects to an Implicit Associate Response (IAR; Underwood &
Reichardt, 1975). An IAR occurs when a person spontaneously thinks of semantically related
items when being presented with material at study. At test this person may be presented with
semantically related distractor items and falsely accept them. This false alarm may occur
because the person remembers the semantic related distractor, while failing to realize that it
was internally opposed to externally generated. However, unlike an IAR no amount of source
monitoring will allow a person to avoid this false memory, suggesting that if this encoding
type error did occur it would be a particularly insidious error to control.
Finally, the title poses an interesting question. What is the tie that binds illusory
perceptions and memories? First, it appears that both perception and memory are reducible to
a basic feature level. In addition, it appears that these features can become inappropriately
bound together to form illusions for events that never occurred. This suggests that feature
binding underlies both perception and memory. Second, it appears that illusory conjunctions
and memory conjunction errors are based on similar principles. The occurrence of these errors
is based on the processing of features as a unit. Features that are seen as being similar to one
another are processed as a unit. Features within these units are more likely to be
inappropriately bound together to form illusory perceptions and memories. From a retrieval
perspective, similarity is being used to bind free radicals together and allow a person to
experience the past.

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In: Encyclopedia of Cognitive Psychology (2 Volume Set) ISBN: 978-1-61324-546-0
Editor: Carla E. Wilhelm, pp. 159-195 © 2012 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 4

A NEW METHODOLOGY TO ASSESS INDIVIDUAL

DIFFERENCES IN SPATIAL MEMORY:
THE COMPUTER-GENERATED VERSION
OF THE REORIENTATION PARADIGM

Luciana Picuccia b, Andrea Bosco a,*, Alessandro O. Caffòa,

Guido D’Angeloa, Emanuela Soletia, Giulio E. Lancionia
and Manuela N. di Masia
a
Department of Psychology, University of Bari, Piazza Umberto I, Bari, Italy
b
Institute of Psychology, University of Paris V, Vaillant,
Boulogne Billancourt Cedex, France

ABSTRACT
Gender and age are assumed to affect spatial performance. However, systematic
attention to gender differences across life-span remains sparse. This paper provides an
overview on behavioural changes in human reorientation as effect of gender and age. A
total of 340 healthy participants, balanced by gender, were divided into three groups (166
children, 72 young adults, 102 aged adults) and engaged in a virtual version of the
Reorientation Paradigm. The task consisted of a learning phase, in which participants
acquired spatial information about the position of a target, and of a testing phase, in
which participants searched for the hidden target. Performances of the three groups have
been compared in: (a) an environment with layout information only, (b) an environment
with both layout and featural information, and (c) an environment with featural
information only. Accuracy in testing phase (i.e. number of correct searches) and
navigation style (i.e. measured as time spent and path lengths, in both learning and testing
phase) were evaluated. Results showed an age related effect in all the measures provided.
On average, children and aged adults spent more time and cover longer distance with
respect to young adults, in both learning and testing phase. In addition, the ability to
evaluate spatial information is not completely achieved in children and tends to decrease

*
Corresponding author: E-mail: [email protected]
160 Luciana Picucci, Andrea Bosco, Alessandro O. Caffò et al.

in aged adults. The interaction between gender and age showed that gender related
differences are absent in childhood, but became considerable in adulthood and remain
stable in old age. These results are in line with an explanation of gender-related
differences in spatial cognition founded on the interaction between biological and
environmental/cultural factors.

INTRODUCTION
Science has a deterministic approach: every event, including cognition, behaviour,
decision making and action, is determined by a steady sequence of prior episodes.
Accordingly, paraphrasing Murray and Kluckhohn (1953), we can assert that every human
being is like all other human beings. At the same time we cannot deny that sometimes things
are not so easy and every human being is like only some other human beings. This is the main
theoretic framework of differential psychology. The leading idea is to avoid the risk to hide
essential differences between persons as effect of averaging the level of their individual
performances. In the modern psychological approach to individual differences, it is usually
assumed that: (a) persons differ on a range of psychological attributes, (b) individual
differences are assessable, and (c) individual differences help in explaining and predicting
behaviour. For instance, in the realm of social behaviour we can safely predict that a large
sample of Americans, would exhibit certain distinct characteristics more frequently than will
a large sample of Italian balancing samples for age, gender, social class, and occupation. At
the same time in the realm of cognition some basic skills and in particular age and gender are
considered as important individual dimensions that should be taken into account when the
researcher is interested in understanding the ability of participants in a new task. On the
contrary, the averaged level of performance may mask multiple facets of the phenomenon
under study and conclusions are misleading if not totally bogus. The extent to which
individual differences have been studied in different research areas of cognition is related to a
multitude of factors. Unquestionably, they represent a core topic in spatial cognition.

A Brief Overview on Spatial Cognition

Spatial cognition is the capacity to discover, mentally transform and use spatial
information about the world in order to achieve a variety of goals, including navigating
through the world, identifying and acting an object, talking about objects in the space and
using explicit symbolic representation such as maps and diagrams to communicate about the
world. In spatial cognition domain, the research has been focused on two main streams:
information processing of spatial ability (also known as the psychometric approach) and the
encoding of environmental knowledge (e.g. Allen, Kirasic, Dobson, Long, & Beck 1996).
Spatial ability is defined as the ability to generate, retain, and transform abstract visual images
(Lohman, 1979). This research area has led to an improved understanding of spatial factors
traditionally identified in a psychometric approach including mental rotation of abstract or
concrete shapes, mazes, imagining the folding and unfolding of sheets of paper and finding
hidden figures among others. These tasks are usually referred as “small-scale” psychological
testing. On the other hand, “large-scale” psychological testing is suitable to assess
 A New Methodology to Assess Individual Differences in Spatial Memory … 161

environmental knowledge: the acquisition of information about the spatial attributes of

physical environments. Environmental spatial tasks have taken into account the ability to
learn the layout of new environments (such as rooms, buildings and towns) navigation in
familiar and novel environments (real or virtual) and interpreting verbally given spatial
directions (e.g. Bosco, Picucci, Caffò, Lancioni, Gyselinck 2008; Waller, Montello,
Richardson, & Hegarty, 2002; Gyselinck, Picucci, Piolino & Nicolas 2006; Lawton,
Charleston, & Zieles, 1996; Bosco, Sardone, Scalisi & Longoni, 1996). Nonetheless, the most
typical spatial experience is to acquire information through navigation with the purpose to
maintain the orientation within the environment. This aim can be accomplished as the
consequence of applying several strategies. The most basic one is the locomotor guidance that
is the ability to travel successfully in relation to a continuously detectable target, without any
memory requirement (Nadel, 1990). A slightly more complex strategy is landmark
navigation, that is, the ability to reorient with respect to a known object which requires
memory for a particular landmark. Path integration or dead reckoning is the ability to update
the distance and direction travelled from a starting point. Information for path integration
might come from internal body senses such as vestibular and proprioceptive systems
(Berthoz, Israel, George–Francois, Grasso & Tsuzuku, 1995) or from visual information
(Srinivasan, Zang & Bidwell 1997).
The research on navigation of human and nonhuman animals has often assumed that
spatial knowledge is organized as a cartographic, map-like representation, the so called
cognitive map (Tolman, 1948; Gallistel, 1990). Cognitive maps are referred to the human
aptitude for decoding, storing, recognizing, recalling spatial information and location
attributes, as well as in beginning a chain of spatial actions, that is, in pursuing a route
(Kitchin, Blades, & Golledge 1997). Cognitive maps might preserve spatial information such
as landmarks and geometric structure of the environment; route connections, distances and
directions.
In humans, constructing a spatial representation of space appears to require the
acquisition of at least three kinds of knowledge (Siegel & White, 1975): landmark, route, and
map-like (or survey) knowledge. Only after getting in touch with distinct cues and learning
the paths between them, one can build a cognitive map (Darken & Peterson, 2002; Golledge,
1987; Sadeghian, Kantardzic, Lozitskiy, & Sheta, 2006; Siegel & White, 1975). Landmark
knowledge is referred as to the ability to recognize visually the objects distributed in the
space regardless their absolute or relative positions.
Route knowledge constitutes the recollection of a sequence of spatially situated action
about how to get from a starting location to the next place. Survey knowledge is the gestalt-
like memory of relationships between locations. Individuals who focus on route knowledge
are considered as dependent on an egocentric way-finding strategy relating a location to a part
of one’s body.
Conversely, those focusing on survey knowledge are considered as applying an
allocentric way-finding strategy based on an absolute frame of reference or on the spatial
relations between objects in the environment. (Gramann, Muller, Eick, & Schonebeck, 2005).
The ability in building cognitive maps strongly depends upon several factors reflecting
individual differences such as age, sex/gender, basic abilities, preferred strategies (e.g.
Devlin, 2001; Kirasic, Allen, Haggerty 1992; Nori, Grandicelli, Giusberti, 2009).
162 Luciana Picucci, Andrea Bosco, Alessandro O. Caffò et al.

Gender Differences

The idea that there are marked differences in psychological functioning between male
and female individuals is well-established in neuropsychological literature (e.g. Astur, Ortiz
& Sutherland,1998). Considering the question of gender differences in cognitive functions,
spatial cognition is reported as the area presenting most differences between sexes. In order to
clarify the evidence concerning this class of differences is important to keep in mind the
above mentioned distinction between spatial abilities and environmental knowledge. Though
a general agreement has been reached for those tasks evaluating spatial abilities, the evidence
is uncertain with respect to the performance on more ecological task requiring environmental
knowledge (e.g. Montello, Lovelance, Golledge & Self, 1999). Reliable differences in spatial
abilities, advantaging men, have been reported in tasks such as mental rotation (e.g. Voyer,
Voyer & Bryden 1995), embedded figure test (e.g. Kimura, 1996) and in all those tasks
closely related to the encoding of metric aspects of spatial relationships (e.g. Iachini, Sergi,
Ruggiero, Gnisci, 2005). On the other hand women outperform men on some subtest such as
object arrays, recall of landmark (Levy, Astur & Frick, 2005). Moreover, a meta-analysis on
visuo-spatial abilities suggest that gender differences are confined to a selective groups of
ability (e.g. Hyde, 2005), and emerged specifically in those tasks requiring mental
manipulation of spatial information (Vecchi & Girelli, 1998). In contrast, the research
assessing gender differences in environmental knowledge has shown results ranging from a
clear advantage for men (e.g. Waller, Knapp & Hunt, 2001) to a lack of differences (e.g.
Brown, Lahar & Mosley, 1998).
This heterogeneity in the pattern of results might be viewed as the effect of statistical and
methodological factors. Starting with the first class of factors, an important statistical issue
concerns the limitation in group size. Usually, men and women overlapped considerably in
spatial navigation tasks (e.g. Saucier, Green, Leason, MacFadden Bell, & Elias, 2002).
Therefore relatively large group sizes are needed to obtain statistical differences. This effect
has been observed, for instance, in the object location memory (e.g. Postma, Jager, Kessels,
Koppeschaar & van Honk 2004). A second factor is related to the well-known file-drawer
problem (Rosenthal, 1979; Young, Bang & Kennedy, 2004; Kennedy, 2004). Studies yielding
no or unexpected effects might have not been published. One can plausibly speculate that
since the leading point of view regarding gender differences in spatial tasks usually favors
men, several studies showing no gender differences or, paradoxically, a female advantage
might have bumped into editors / reviewers refusals. Meta-analytic approach to gender
differences could partially solve this problem (e.g. Voyer, Postma, Brake and Mc Ginley,
2007) by estimating how many studies with non significant or contradictory findings would
be required to offset the significance of a given effect size. Although, meta-analytic approach
has been often adopted to determine the degree of the effectiveness of gender differences in
spatial abilities (Voyer et al. 2007; Hyde, 2005; Hyde, 1981, Maccoby & Jacklin, 1974), no
meta-analytic studies assessing gender differences in spatial navigation tasks are currently
available.
With regard to methodological issues, an important role in determining gender-
differences is played by the experimental setting adopted. Environmental knowledge is a
complex process depending upon numerous basic cognitive functions. Moreover, studies in
this field use a wide variety of measures that may yield unclear the most probable pattern of
gender differences and may cause unsatisfactory interpretation of findings. Spatial knowledge
 A New Methodology to Assess Individual Differences in Spatial Memory … 163

has been assessed in three main kind of experimental settings, that is, real environments (e.g.
Tlauka, 2006), simulated environments (e.g. Waller, 2005) and maps (e.g. Coluccia, Bosco &
Brandimonte 2007). According to Coluccia and Losue (2004) when navigation took place in
both real (e.g. Malinowsky & Gillespie, 2001; Iachini, Ruotolo, Ruggiero, 2008; Saucier et al.
2002; Schmitz, 1997) and virtual environments (Sandstrom, Kaufman & Huettel, 1998;
Waller, Knapp & Hunt, 2001; Moffat, Hampson & Hatzipantelis, 1998) women never
outperformed men, but in almost half of cases gender differences did not emerge. In the latter
situation gender differences emerged only in terms of spatial strategies adopted. In particular,
men seemed to rely on global reference points and configurational or survey strategies. On
the contrary, women showed to prefer the support of landmarks and of route strategies.
Supporting this evidence, Saucier et al. (2002) asked participants to navigate toward four
novel destinations in a university campus. Results suggested that men performed better in
navigational task if they were provided with Euclidean information (compass directions and
metric distances), whereas women performed better if they were provided with landmark
information (salient landmarks and egocentric directions). At the same time, Sandstrom et al.
(1998) assessing gender differences in a virtual version of Morris Water Maze task found that
both men and women were able to learn the task but they differed in the extent to which they
relied on particular types of cues. Men seemed to adapt more flexibly their frame of reference
with respect to women. Assessing gender differences through map study (e.g. Mc Fadden,
Ealse & Saucier, 2003; Coluccia & Martello, 2004; Dabbs, Chang, Strong & Milun, 1998; O’
Laughlin & Brubacker, 1998; McGuinnes & Spark, 1983) the number of studies in which
men performed better than women are only slightly superior to those in which gender
differences do not emerge. In addition it was the only experimental setting in which
exceptionally women outperform men. In particular, McGuinnes and Spark (1983) asked
participants after studying a map to sketch it and found that women included more details
than men. In addition, Galea and Kimura (1993) found that women recalled landmarks and
streets’ names better than men. No differences between sexes have been found in straight line
distance estimation, map completion and time spent to learning the map (Brown et al. 1998).
In summary, gender differences appear as function of context in which spatial information is
acquired. In particular, within virtual and real navigation context gender differences rise up
most frequently than in map studies. This effect could be related to the perspective of spatial
mental representation directly accessible within different contexts (Montello et al. 1999). Real
and virtual navigation, indeed, offers a route / egocentric (first’s person) perspective, instead
map provides a survey / allocentric perspective. Women compared with men might meet
some obstacles in forming a survey representation starting from an egocentric perspective.
Nonetheless, if the survey perspective is already available, such as in map task, gender
differences are leveled off. These results might be explained in terms of troubles encountered
by female participants in mentally manipulate spatial information (Vecchi & Girelli, 1998).
Another methodological issue deserving consideration in research on gender differences,
concerns task specificity. Regardless the environmental setting employed gender differences
could rise up as effect of task. They clearly emerge in pointing (e.g. Schmitzer-Torbert, 2007)
and wayfinding task (e.g. Chen, Chang, & Chang, 2009) but are small and sometimes
opposite to those expected in sketch map (e.g. Coluccia, Iosue, & Brandimonte 2007) and
distance estimation (e.g. Coluccia & Martello 2004). Moreover, studies focused on category
or coordinate relationships among objects can provide other support to the effect of task
specificity on gender differences. Categorical spatial relationships refer to abstract
164 Luciana Picucci, Andrea Bosco, Alessandro O. Caffò et al.

descriptions of the relation between objects (e.g. using words such as above / below, outside /
inside, left / right). These spatial relationships require the verbal encoding of object locations.
Coordinate relationships, on the other hand, refer to the encoding of the fine-grained, metric
spatial encoding of spatial relationships among objects (i.e. the distances). The latter
information seems essential in accurately reaching and grasping objects. (e.g. Kosslyn,
Thompson, Gitelman & Alpert, 1998).
More recently, Astur, Tropp, Sava, Constable and Markus (2004) assessed gender
differences by adopting virtual analogues of two classical paradigms in comparative research:
the Morris Water Maze (MWM) and the eight-arm radial maze (RAM). These tasks can be
thought as eligible instruments in evaluating coordinate and categorical encoding of spatial
relationships, respectively. Results showed significant gender-related differences in MWM
but not in RAM. More specifically, in RAM task participants did not need to encode spatial
locations in a very precisely fashion in order to determine which arm contained the goal. On
the other hand the MWM task required to acquire knowledge on both directions and
distances. This interaction between the encoding of different spatial relationships and gender
has been confirmed by Postma, Izendoorn and De Haan (1996). They found that men scored
higher than women in object location memory tasks tapping fine-grained and metric
properties of the environment, whereas there were not gender differences when the same task
was arranged to involve discrete andcategorical information. These results support the notion
that sexual dimorphism in spatial memory processes reflects the multidimensional nature of
tasks. (Rahman, Abrahams & Jussab 2005). Formerly, we have discussed a number of
findings suggesting that differences in tasks might determine differences in gender-related
performance. Coherently, one of the most influential theories on gender differences in spatial
cognition assumes environmental factors as crucial in gender –related differentiation.

Environmental Factors

Usually boys and girls do not play with the same toys, do not get involved in the same
activities (Newcombe, Bandura, & Taylor, 1983), and do not have the same amount of
experience with spatial tasks (Baenninger & Newcombe, 1989). These factors are likely to
affect spatial performance. Beanninger and Newcombe (1995) suggested as changes of
gender-related roles decreased / eliminated many gender differences. Coherently, Crawfold,
Chaffin and Fitton (1995) also suggested a decline of gender differences in spatial abilities in
the previous four decades. The environmental theories emphasize the role of contextual
factors such as cultural reinforcement of stereotypical roles (Bem, 1983, 1993; Geary, 1995;
Beanninger & Newcombe, 1995) and propose that spatial skills are strongly modulated by
experience and learning. In this view the different level of spatial ability could be due to
variable time spent in spatial activities by men and women. Usually males, since early
childhood, have more experience in activities that enhance the development of spatial ability
(Lawton & Morrin, 1999) such as videogames (e.g. Barnett, Vitaglione, Harper,
Quachenbush, Steadmea & Waldez, 1997), LEGO-construction (e.g. Beanninger &
Newcombe 1989) and team sports. According to Gaery (1995) children’s games are likely to
be intimately related to the development of the neurocognitive systems supporting primary
forms of cognition. Playing in childhood is strongly determined by sex differences in
interests, selective attention-to and imitation-of the same-sex adults’ behavior (Eibl-
 A New Methodology to Assess Individual Differences in Spatial Memory … 165

Eibesfeldt, 1989). Indeed, many of toys that are gender-appropriate for males involves spatial
manipulation activities, in contrast, most toys that are gender-appropriate for females seem to
focus on social interaction (Voyer, Nolan & Voyer, 2000). The role of experience was
magnified in a series of studies (Gagnon, 1985; Benninger & Newcombe, 1989). Gagnon
(1985) studied the effect of 5-hours videogame practice on undergraduate and graduate
students.
Following the session of practice there was a dropping effect of gender differences in
spatial visualization ability. In addition, some studies revealed that brief training could lighten
gender differences on visuo-spatial tasks, usually favoring men. Nonetheless, gender
differences still persisted after training in task such as mental rotation (Embretson, 1987).
However, the magnitude and expression of gender differences vary across cultures and
historical periods and therefore the expression is highly sensitive to contextual and cultural
factors (Oliver & Hyde 1993; Rohner 1976).
In order to prove this claim several studies have examined whether spatial advantage
showed by men is present across different populations. There were reports confirming gender
differences in African, Asian, and Western cultures (e.g., Berry, 1966; Li, Nuttall & Zhu,
1999). However, Eastern Canadian Eskimos from the Baffin Islands do not show sex
differences on a variety of spatial tasks, possibly because both men and women are
responsible of hunting in an environment very poor of landmarks (Berry, 1966).
This data strongly support the effect of habits on the ontogeny of gender differences in
spatial skills. However, other attempts to evaluate the influence of environmental factors in
gender differences are not able to fully substantiate theories on environmental factors. In
particular, Quasier-Pohl and Leheman (2002) aimed to verify if pattern of sex differences in
visuo-spatial tasks may be differentially due to environmental factors such as the degree of
application in technical and scientific courses of men and women. They found that
performance was mainly affected by academic discipline and gender, but effect size of gender
varied. It was largest with student majoring in arts, humanities and social science and smallest
with those majoring in computational science.
At the same time, Vlachos, Andreou & Andreou (2003) found that psychosocial factors
such as attending a specific university course may contribute to strengthening or weakening
sex differences. These results revealed that gender differences could emerge at different
degree as effect of experience and learning but they already exist. Baenninger and Newcombe
(1995) reviewed a number of studies on the relation between spatial experiences and
improvement in spatial ability. These studies have shown that although spatial improvement
occurs, it occurs in men as well as in women, and therefore, does not rule out gender
differences. The implications of this findings are that training may not wipe out the spatial
advantage between men and women which show some sort of.
In conclusion data and experimental evidences seems to suggest that environmental
theory of gender differences cannot wholly account for differences in spatial performances
and furthermore that gender differences in spatial experience and behaviour seem not to be
entirely driven by environmental factors. According to Casey (1996) gender-differentiated
input may maintain or widen an already existing biological predisposition, rather than
generate a differentiation starting from perfect parity.
166 Luciana Picucci, Andrea Bosco, Alessandro O. Caffò et al.

Biological Factors

Sex differences in spatial skills seem to be strongly related to organization and activation
of circulating hormones (e.g. Berenbaum, Korman & Leveroni, 1995; Driscoll, Hamilton,
Yeo, Brooks, Sutherland, 2005). Biological hypotheses are based on the assumption that
sexual hormones influence cognitive development and spatial memory (Williams, Barnett &
Meck, 1990). Specifically, level of androgens affects spatial task since this class of hormones
has an effect on the brain development (Burton, Henninger & Hafez, 2005). Geschwind and
Galaburda (1987) suggested a curvilinear interaction between spatial skills and prenatal
androgens such that optimal androgen level would be at the low end for males and high end
for females. Prenatal androgens slowed left cerebral hemisphere development, allowing right
hemisphere spatial skills to take the lead, with extremely high androgen levels slowing
development of both left and right hemispheres. In addition, several studies support earlier
development of right hemisphere in males than in females (e.g. Gratton, De Vos, Levy & Mc
Clintock, 1992). Indeed, the right hemisphere has been shown to be more involved than left
hemisphere in spatial task (e.g. Levine, Banich & Koch-Weser, 1988) this evidence has been
hypothesized to be related to males advantages in spatial skills. The relationship between
hormones and brain development has been confirmed by neuropsychological studies
observing greater functional hemispheric asymmetries in males than in females (e.g. Gron,
Wunderlich, Spitzer, Tomczac, Riepe, 2000). Given that the assessment of the hormonal
milieu during normal gestation is rare a large amount of studies have been focused on
individuals whose early hormonal histories were atypical in some way. This is the condition
of girls with congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CHA). They demonstrated to prefer toys and
activities that are traditionally preferred from boys (Barenbaum, 1993). Coherently, in a
comparative study it was found that rats exposed in the neonatal phase to gonadal steroids
(normal males and hormonally treated females) selectively attended to geometric cues when
they were presented jointly with other types of cues. In particular, landmarks are
overshadowed by the geometry of the room in which navigation occurred (Williams et al.
1990). Besides the effect of hormonal level in prenatal development, concentration of
hormones are not stable during life-span but are part of a dynamic system varying
significantly with developmental events such as puberty and cognitive decline. During
puberty, levels of total and bio-available testosterone increase in men, but also gradually
decrease in aged people. Coherently, biological theory postulates that gender differences in
spatial tasks emerge in puberty, remain stable in adulthood and decrease in elderly. In other
terms, it might be argued that another important factor affecting results on gender differences
is the age of the participants (Voyer, Postma, Brake and Mc Gillen, 2007).
Studies on childhood. Understanding how biological factors interact and contribute to
developmental outcomes is fundamental to developmental psychology. According to the
biological theory, the relationship between circulating testosterone and spatial abilities has
been reported in puberty (Nyborg, 1983; Hier & Crowley, 1982) but there are also
inconsistent findings exhibiting gender differences in pre-pubertal children. For instance,
Levine, Huttenlocher, Taylor and Langrock (1999) specified that sex differences in spatial
ability may begin in the adolescence or as early as in preschool years, depending on the task.
Sex differences on task involving mental rotation are more consistently reported beginning at
about 8 years of age. Furthermore in 8-9-years-old children, as in adult, mental rotation has
been implicated as the major source of gender differences on spatial tasks. In middle
 A New Methodology to Assess Individual Differences in Spatial Memory … 167

childhood years, boys outperform girls on spatial task involving mental rotation but not on
spatial task involving spatial perception. In the latter case, gender differences emerge by the
age of 13-years-old (e.g. Voyer et al. 1995). In contrast with these findings, Liben et al.
(2002), examining the effect of exogenously administered hormones in one clinical sample,
concluded that sex hormones associated with puberty did not have a large impact on spatial
performance assessed by mental rotation test, water level task and spatial visualization test. In
summary, spatial abilities have sometimes been reported to vary systematically as hormonal
change. Unfortunately, findings reported by one researcher are seldom replicated by another.
Although developmental course of spatial abilities has been largely investigated (even if
with mixed results), few attempts in investigating the interaction between gender and age in
navigation task has been made. Overman, Pate, Moore & Peuster (1996) examined the
performance of children (aging 7± 2) in large-scale real word simulation of a dry Morris
Water Maze and demonstrated significant age related differences in performance, though no
sex related differences. Coherently, Lehnung et al. (1998), adopting the same spatial task,
established that children can utilize an allocentric, distal landmark, place learning strategy by
the age 8–10 and again no gender differences emerged. Taken together, these studies
supported the biological hypothesis in which gender differences in children do not emerge.
Unfortunately, these findings are ambiguous. Newhouse, Newhouse and Astur (2007),
assessing biological hypothesis, found that male pre-pubertal children involved in a virtual
version of MWM task, adopted spatial strategy to solve the task. In opposition, girls seemed
to perform at chance level. The authors explained these results suggesting that gender
differences in children navigation performance might depend on a different brain organization
due to the differential exposure to prenatal sex steroid. In conclusion, mechanisms
determining gender differences in spatial cognition affected by hormones are still unclear and
request further investigations.
Studies on senescence. Currently, very little is known about the course of cognitive and
brain sex differences across life span. Indeed, the older population is the least studied group
for cognitive sex differences (Kimura, 1999), and findings are inconsistent regarding whether
men and women differ in cognitive functioning and age-related cognitive decline. Some
studies have indicated that the typical pattern of sex differences in spatial abilities generalizes
from early adulthood to old age (e.g. Herlitz, Nilsson, & Backman, 1997) whereas other
studies have claimed that sex differences do not persist into old age (e.g. Dollinger, 1995).
Evidences for sex differences in the magnitude of age-related cognitive decline are also
conflicting. Some studies have pointed to a greater age-related decline in men than in women
(e.g. Rowe, Turcotte, & Hasher, 2004) whereas others studies have pointed to a greater
decline in women than in men (e.g. Meinz & Salthouse, 1998). Finally, other studies have not
found sex differences in age-related cognitive decline (e.g. Maitland, Intrieri, Schaie, &
Willis, 2000). The literature on non-human animals strongly suggests a role of sex hormones
in modulating cognitive function across-age, but few studies involving aged participants have
been carried out. Nonetheless, comparative approach could give us some further information
on this issue. Williams et al. (1990) found that providing testosterone in aged rats, spatial
performance increase leveling off differences with adult rats. At the same time, Frick,
Burlingame, Arters and Berger-Sweeney (1999) found, in spatial navigation task involving
mice, that spatial reference memory decline begins at an earlier age in females than in males;
this finding might be related to the cessation of estrous cycling. Warren and Juraska (2000)
demonstrated that aged females in persistent estrus performed significantly better than both
168 Luciana Picucci, Andrea Bosco, Alessandro O. Caffò et al.

pseudo-pregnant aged females and aged males, showing that postestropausal hormonal status
may influence the course of aging in females. An attempt in investigating gender and aging
interaction has been carried out by Driscoll et al. (2003). In this study the authors compared
young (age 20-39) and healthy aged adults (age > 60) in a MWM task. Saliva samples were
also collected in order to check the level of circulating testosterone. According to literature
assessing spatial memory in elderly (e.g. Moffat & Resnick, 2002; Bosco & Coluccia, 2004),
the authors found a significant age-related deficit in performance. Despite this age-related
deficit, robust sex differences favoring men did not diminish. In addition, circulating levels of
testosterone predict spatial ability, even though testosterone levels significantly decrease with
age. This result is consistent with emerging reports suggesting enhancement of cognitive
function, including spatial ability, in healthy elderly men that received testosterone (Cherrier
et al., 2001; Yaffe, Lui, Zmuda, Cauley, 2002), but also contrasting results has been found
(e.g. Wolf & Kirschbaum, 2002). The difficulty to determine the cognitive effect of sex
hormones in any crucial period of life, such as puberty and senescence, could be due to the
fact that variation of sexual hormone level typically coincides with many other changes in the
life of individuals. Furthermore, findings from the aforementioned studies are uncertain
because many factors may co-vary with the hormonal one, included environmental ones.

Interaction Theory

There has been a movement in developmental psychology toward considering a complex

framework in which environmental and biological factors interrelate to influence individual
differences. In 1980, Petersen proposed a biopsychosocial framework for understanding
gender differences in cognitive abilities. In this theory, she identified the reciprocal effects
that socialization, biology, and psychology have on the development of gender differences. In
her theory, she considered: (a) the sociocultural factors that affect the individuals through
society, peers, and family, (b) the hormonal influences, and (c) psychological changes which
occur with the development. All these factors change and interrelate across the life-span. The
interaction approach asserts than gender differences are caused by a continuous interaction
between environmental factors - based on experience - and biological factors – in terms of
innate attitudes (Casey, 1996, 1999). Active biological / environmental correlations are the
basis for a ‘‘bent twig’’ model of individual differences which was originally proposed by
Sherman (1978) to explain male-female gender differences. According to her theory, boys
show more marked spatial interests with respect to girls. Thus, they will tend to prefer spatial
activities, such as carpentry and block play, choosing to participate in these activities when
they are made available to them, and spend much more time in these activities than girls
spend. This practice with spatial activities, in turn, helps to further develop these abilities, and
thus augments the initial difference in ability between boys and girls. In brief, the innate
predisposition to particular abilities influences the choice of particular activities. In this view,
males with innate predisposition for spatial ability, actively search for spatial experience and
spend more time for it than females.
The innate predisposition of males for spatial abilities depends on their particular pattern
of cerebral organization, characterized by high right hemisphere lateralization (Annet, 1992,
1994 Eglinton & Annett, 2008; Smythe & Annett, 2006). According to Annett, most people
inherit a right-shift factor which predisposes them to be right-handed and left-hemisphere
 A New Methodology to Assess Individual Differences in Spatial Memory … 169

dominant for language. In addition, the right-shift gene carries costs for spatial ability and is
expressed more strongly in females than in males. Based on Annett’s theory (Annett, 1994),
right-handers with all right-handed close relatives are likely to be homozygotic for the right-
shift factor, receiving this gene from both parents. They are more likely to be strongly left-
hemisphere dominant for language, to prefer verbal strategies for problem solving, and to be
at risk for poor spatial ability. In contrast, right-handers with non right-handed relatives are
more likely to be heterozygotic for this gene. According to Annett, females with the
heterozygotic advantage for the right-shift gene are not as strongly left-hemisphere dominant
for language, are less dependent on purely verbal strategies for problem solving, and
therefore, have the potential for good spatial ability. In addition, the work of Casey and
colleagues is especially noteworthy in evaluating the ways in which patterns of brain
organization may interact with critical environmental variables. Casey and Brabeck (1990)
correlate family handedness and spatial experience on a mental rotation task. The authors
found that, among women reporting extensive mental rotation-related spatial experience,
right-handed with non right-handed relatives had significantly highly mental rotation scores
than did the right-handed with right-handed relatives. Another studies supporting “bent-twig”
theory was carried out by Casey, Nuttal, Pezaris and Benbow (1995). They argued that an
important environmental variable is parental permission for cross-gender play. The authors
find that parental permission to play with masculine stereotyped toys increased cross-gender
role identity for women from mixed-handed families, but not for women from right-handed
families. Thus, Casey’s interpretation (Casey, 1996b) of the bent twig theory is that biological
predisposition allows humans to benefit more from spatial experience than when such
predisposition is absent. However, she also acknowledges that even when the biological
predisposition is present, relevant experience is required to develop effective spatial skills.
This means that spatial skills can still change in spite of biological constraints and that
experience is the mediator of such changes.

The Experiment

The aforesaid findings showed that several factors may account for gender-related mixed
results in action (e.g. navigation) as well as judgment-based (e.g. object location) spatial
tasks. Variables such as sample size, heterogeneous experimental settings and aging could
modulate gender differences in spatial performance. Conflicting results in orientation
performance may be clarified involving quite large, gender-balanced, samples and adopting
the same spatial task for assess gender differences across life-span. As specified above,
orientation skills is a quite complex cognitive component assessed with a great variety of
tasks. Discrepancies among studies could emerge simply as effect of the different task
employed. In addition, studies addressing the impact of developmental factors on gender
differences never include in their sample participants at different developmental stage.
Therefore, the research database for this kind of studies is usually composed of behavioral
data of adult participants, compared with those of children and aged adults (e.g. Choi &
Silverman, 2003; Driscoll et al., 2005). Nonetheless, the impact of developmental factors has
been largely recognized (e.g. Maitland, Intrieri, Schaie & Wills, 2000) but systematic
attention to gender differences in environmental knowledge tasks across life-span remains
sparse. In our knowledge no studies are available in which gender differences have been
170 Luciana Picucci, Andrea Bosco, Alessandro O. Caffò et al.

assessed along three main stages of life (childhood, adulthood and old age) adopting the same
spatial memory task.
The experiment of this chapter focuses on this issue. The spatial memory task adopted is
a virtual version of Reorientation Paradigm (VReor) (Hermer & Spelke, 1994; Bosco et al.
2008). Virtual environment has been successfully employed in research involving children
(e.g. Newhouse et al., 2007) and elderly (Moffat & Resnick, 2002). Virtual environments are
particularly appropriate in spatial cognition research because allow carrying out dynamic
testing and training in an ecologically valid manner, while still maintaining strict control over
all the aspects of the experimental setting. In addition, it has been demonstrated that the
neural basis for virtual navigation in humans has strong parallels to nonhuman animal
findings (Maguire, Burgess, O’Keefe, 1999). This advantage is particularly wished in
comparative studies. This is the case of Reorientation Paradigm.
The Reorientation Paradigm (RP) supports the idea that adult humans promptly solve a
task of spatial searching by conjoining geometric (layout of the environment) and non
geometric / featural (landmark) information after disorientation, while young children about
2-years-old (like others adult nonhuman mammals) do not (Hermer & Spelke 1996). The
authors claim that young children primarily reorient themselves using the geometrical shape
of the environment; instead the ability to use landmark information is reached only when
spatial language (e.g. “go to the left of”) has been acquired (e.g. Hermer, Moffet and
Munkholm, 2001). Several studies argued that children’s ability to use landmark and
integrating spatial information could vary as effect of the testing environment that is: spatial
layout, such as rhombic (e.g. Huttenlocher & Vasileya, 2003) and triangular environment
(e.g. Hupback & Nadel, 2005); size, such as small (e.g. Hermer & Spelke, 1994) and large
space (e.g. Learmonth, Nadel & Newcombe; 2002); the perspective taken, such as two-
dimensional (e.g. Goteaux & Spelke, 2001) and three-dimensional environments (e.g. Gibson,
Leichtaman, Kung & Simpson 2007). Little attention has been given to other possible
variables conditioning orientation ability in this task, in particular individual differences. In
RP research, neither gender differences have been systematically assessed nor have aged
participants been never recruited. According to Cheng & Newcombe (2005), the lack of
studies on gender differences in RP could be due to the size of sample not large enough to
draw conclusions on gender-related spatial behaviour. In addition, from a theoretical point of
view, the main aim in previous studies adopting RP with humans was evaluating differences
emerging between adults and children in order to verify the flexibility and accessibility of
spatial mental representations as effect of cognitive development. In order to reach this goal, a
gender balanced experimental design, was not strictly necessary to this end. Nonetheless, the
lack of interest in studying elderly population is probably due to the assumption that mature
humans are able to rely flexibly on both geometric and landmark information. In our view,
the assessment of age-related individual differences might be useful from different
perspectives. With regard to gender differences, a large body of studies (e.g. Sandstrom et al.
1998) found that females relied primarily on landmark information, whereas males used both
landmarks and geometric information. These differences may rise up in early childhood (e.g.
Gibbs & Wilson 1999) masking the true pattern of spatial information processing, assessed by
RP. In addition, the study of spatial behaviour in elderly may offer some indication on
developmental processes in integrating spatial information. However, the ability to integrate
different cues in the environment, such as the ability to process landmark information, could
vary as a consequence of developmental processes (Hermer & Spelke 1994) and it is
 A New Methodology to Assess Individual Differences in Spatial Memory … 171

reasonable to suppose that it can be compromised with aging (for a review, see Kirasic 2001).
Moreover, the interaction between gender and age might be relevant in order to understand
the evolution of gender differences across-life span.
In line with the latter consideration, two general hypotheses have been compared.
Following the biological approach, gender-related differences should be limited / absent
during childhood when the hormonal differentiation is not yet completed. They should be
present in adulthood and extinct / declined during old age. On the other hand, in line with the
environmental approach, there should be little, but not absent, differences between boys and
girls, marked differences in young adults and more or less unchanged situation in the aged
adults. Differences should advantage males. Moreover, additional hypotheses have been made
on the interaction between kind of environment, age and gender, respectively. In particular, it
was expected an interaction between age and type of available cue (i.e. layout or featural).
According to the original hypothesis of Spelke and colleagues (1994), children would be
anchored to a more archaic representation of space than adults. It promotes the use of layout
and is inclined to ignore featural information. If this hypothesis is correct, children would
show smaller differences in performance than the other two groups comparing situations in
which landmark was available and those in which it was not. Finally, kind of environment
was expected to interact with gender. Indeed, there is agreement on a larger inclination of
women than men in using landmark. If this is true, females are expected to show more
difficulties in solving the tasks when landmark is absent.

METHOD
Participants

Three-hundred-and-forty-five participants were originally recruited for taking part at the

experiment. The data of five participants (three children and two aged adults) were not
included in the subsequent analyses since they did not reach the proficiency in using the
apparatus. The final experimental sample were composed of three groups: (a) One-hundred-
sixty-six children (78 girls and 88 boys), ranging in age from 5 to 10 years (mean=8.1,
SD=1.8), (b) Seventy-two young adults (36 women and 36 men), ranging in age from 19 to
27 years (mean=24.4, SD=2.6), (c) One-hundred-and-two aged adults (54 women and 48
men), ranging in age from 60 to 80 years (mean=67.2, SD=5.6). A part of them were under
treatment for mild hypertension and age-related sleep disorders. Nonetheless it is often
reported that substances used to mend these problems are safe or even have a protecting effect
on cognitive performance. (e.g. Harrington, Saxby, McKeith, Wesnes & Ford, 2000; Amenta,
Mignini, Rabbia, Tomassoni & Veglio, 2002; Salzman, 2008). Participants were sequentially
admitted in a period of six months. Children were recruited from Primary Schools in the
district of Bari (South-East Italy) and received a little gift in exchange for participating.
Young adults were recruited from introductory courses of psychology at the University of
Bari and received an extra course credit in exchange for participating. The aged adults were
recruited in life-long learning Institutions (Third Age Universities) of the same geographical
area and received a little gift for participating. The vision of all participants was normal or
172 Luciana Picucci, Andrea Bosco, Alessandro O. Caffò et al.

corrected to normal. They took part at the experiment after they had provided their (or
parents’) written consent.

Apparatus and Material

Freeware software, the C-G Arena was used (Jacobs et al. 1997, 1998). A computer
monitor (19” wide) displayed a colored view of an environment from the perspective of one
positioned on the floor of the environment. The environment had an internal structure
composed by a circular, invisible arena, in which the participants could move and explore
freely the environment in a first-person perspective, controlling their movements with a
joystick. The monitor did not display any image of the participant during the experiment.

(a) (b)

(c)

Figure 1. A bird-eye view of the virtual environment showed width, depth and height of the rectangular
environment, the circular arena and its radius, and the four black response patches (a.). A bird-eye view
of the virtual environment showing width, depth and height of the square environment, the circular
arena and its radius, and the four black response patches (b.). A Screenshot of the output file showing
the route travelled by the participant in the testing environment. The path began in the centre of the
environment and finished when the participant reached the correct response patch, then the participant
was trapped and teleported to the next environment.
 A New Methodology to Assess Individual Differences in Spatial Memory … 173

(a)

(b)

Figure 2. A first-person screenshot of learning and testing environments (blue wall condition). In the
learning environment the target (a yellow sphere) is visible in one corner. In the testing environment
four identical boxes are placed at the corners. One box contains the sphere (a.). A bird-eye view of all
the three experimental environments, as appeared in learning and testing phases, respectively: a
rectangular environment with all white walls, a rectangular environment with three white walls and one
blue wall, a square environment with three white walls and one blue wall (b.).

The virtual space. The computer screen showed a perspective as if the participants were
15 units above the arena floor. This allowed the participants to feel completely comfortable
with the searching task described in detail below. The arena was 50 units in radius and had a
height of zero units. Consequently, participants were unable to see it; nonetheless, their
movements were restricted in the arena circle. The arena held four quadrants: northeast (NE),
northwest (NW), southeast (SE), and southwest (SW). The quadrants were invisible
components of the computer-generated display (see Figure 1c.). Two kind of environments
were created, and both of them housed an invisible arena: (a) a rectangular environment with
proportion of 2:3 as proposed in the original experiment of Hermer and Spelke (1996),
measuring 180 x 120 x 60 units, (b) a square environment measuring 120 x 120 x 60 units
174 Luciana Picucci, Andrea Bosco, Alessandro O. Caffò et al.

(see Figure 1a and 1b). As it is usual in VR experiments, a correspondence between physical

and a virtual space was introduced. For instance, Jacobs et al. (1998) took a length of a stride
to be the equivalent of 1 m. Hartley et al. (2004) used the virtual subject’s height as scale. In
this study, a standard walking speed was employed. Equating the speed of the participant’s
view (25 units/s) to a standard walking speed (4.5 km/h) we estimated the rectangular
environment to be approximately 9 x 6 x 3 mt., and the square environment to be
approximately 6 x 6 x 3 mt. With this regard, it may be noted, however, that any strategies
adopted is partially arbitrary. Three types of environments were generated. They differed both
in terms of layout information and in terms of featural information: rectangular environments
with four white walls (coded as L=layout information only), rectangular environments with
three white walls and a blue wall on one of the short sides (coded as LF=layout and featural
information), square environments with three white walls and a blue wall on one of the sides
(coded as F=featural information only).
Ceiling was light grey and floor was medium grey (see Figure 2a). Experimental session
counted in fifteen trials. Each trial was composed of a learning phase and a testing phase (see
description below). Trials were presented in a pseudo-random order, following the subsequent
scheme: LF, L, LF, LF, F, L, F, F, L, LF, F, L, LF, F, L.
The C-G learning environment. The learning environment consisted of a rectangular
environment that could have all white walls, or a blue short wall, or of a square environment
with one blue wall, depending on the experimental conditions. A yellow sphere, 7 units in
radius, was placed in one corner (see Figure 2b). Four 10 x 10 units square response patches
were located on the floor, inside the perimeter of the invisible arena, in relation to each
corner. The response patches were leveled with the arena floor and their color was black. The
use of a series of response patches was inspired by Kelly and Bishof (2005). They used the
response patches in a reorientation study that employed static images depicting three-
dimensional environments.
The C-G testing environment. The testing environment had the same shape and walls of
the learning environment. Instead of the sphere, there were four blue identical boxes (7 x 7 x
7 units), one for each corner (see Figure 2b). The four response patches were maintained. The
target corresponded to one of the patches.
Joystick and keyboard. Participants used a joystick to explore the C–G Arena. Holding
the joystick forward moved the participant’s view forward about 25 units/s; moving the
joystick backward moved the participant’s view of the same amount. Holding the joystick to
the left or to the right turned the participant’s view about 30–40°/s to the left or to the right,
respectively. Pressing the space bar on the computer keyboard allowed teleport from learning
environment to the testing environment.

Procedure

Each participant entered into the laboratory and sat on a chair in front of a computer
screen and a joystick. The eyes of the participants were approximately 50 cm from the centre
of the screen. The physical FOV (Field of View) has been calculated to be 42° on the
horizontal axis and 34° on vertical axis. They read and signed a consent form, then read the
following written instructions:
 A New Methodology to Assess Individual Differences in Spatial Memory … 175

Instruction A - What you need to do. You will start out in a learning environment, where
you will see a yellow sphere in one of the four corners. Please, explore the environment using
the joystick and pay attention to all the features of the environment. Walk and look until you
feel comfortable, then nod your head to the research assistant: you will be teleported to the
testing environment. You will find yourself in an environment identical to the previous one,
but with one blue box at each corner. Your initial orientation will be randomly settled during
the transitions between learning and testing environments. The yellow sphere will not change
places, it will stay in the same place, but it is hidden by one blue box. Your goal is to walk
around the environment and locate the corner where the sphere is placed. You should reach
the black response patch on the floor, associated to the corner, only when you are reasonably
convinced of your choice. You will know you have found the correct position when you hear a
beep; otherwise, you should look for another corner, until you hear the sound.
Instruction B - How to move and look about. Pushing the cloche of the joystick, you can
move forward. Pushing it to the left or to the right you can turn on to the left or to the right,
respectively. You can withdraw from the experiment at any time with no penalty. If you have
any questions about the experiment, ask the research assistant now. Once you are done with
it, we will give you more details about the study.
After this reading, all participants were requested to practice with the desktop virtual
environment apparatus. Prior to the start of the experiment, a training phase provided the
participants the opportunity to reach an adequate level of practice with: (a) joystick, (b)
procedure of the experimental session, (c) goal of the task. The training phase was carried out
in order to avoid or to minimize distortions due to different level of experience when facing a
virtual reality apparatus, especially in children and elderly people (Moffat & Resnick, 2002;
Newhouse et al. 2007). Another technique adopted to control for this kind of bias is to ask
participants how much they are confident with computer technologies. Participants answered
to a short questionnaire, in order to assess their ability in the use of personal computers and
videogames and console games. The use of personal computer and widespread software, such
as word processing, electronic sheets etc., give us information related to familiarity with a
monitor and to the degree of interaction that participants have with it. The use of videogames
and console games gave us information related to familiarity with virtual environments, and
with the tools for navigating in these environments. A low or high attendance in the
employment of joystick, cloche, game pads, can determine relevant differences in
performance in virtual navigation tasks (e.g. Gagnon, 1985).
Learning phase. After completing the training, participants entered the learning
environment, facing randomly one of the four walls. In this phase, participants were explicitly
requested to visit the environment looking for the yellow sphere, in order to subsequently find
it in the testing environment (where the yellow sphere was hidden). When they felt
comfortable with the task, they gave a signal to the research assistant, who promptly pressed
the space bar and teleported the participants into the testing environment.
Virtual disorientation. During the interval between learning and testing phase, lasting 2
seconds, the computer screen was switched-off. The C–G Arena application allowed
changing randomly the participants’ point of view with respect to the one they had in the
learning environment. This procedure induced interference in the egocentric mental
representation of the relative position of the target with respect to participants’ view. In other
terms, in the testing environment participants had to refer to their allocentric mental
representation of space: that is, the relationship between layout and featural cues (geometric
176 Luciana Picucci, Andrea Bosco, Alessandro O. Caffò et al.

and non-geometric characteristics) of the environment and the sphere’s position. This kind of
interference due to changing initial orientation in testing environment will be referred to as
virtual disorientation in the rest of the paper.
Testing phase. Participants’ initial facing position in the testing environment was
randomly settled (see above). They were requested to explore the environment to find the
yellow sphere hidden in one of the four boxes. Participants knew that the yellow sphere was
hidden but not moved from the original location. Thereafter, they were requested to discover
the box housing the sphere by reaching the response patch corresponding to that box. If the
chosen response patch was correct, participants heard a sound, and a trap captured her/him
and another trial began. If the response patch was wrong, participants had to search for
another corner until they had found the right one, as in typical searching tasks. Each
participant was involved in three experimental conditions, each condition was composed of
five trials, and for a total of fifteen trials (order of conditions was counterbalanced across
participants): rectangular environment with all white walls, rectangular environment with one
blue-wall near to the target, square environment with one blue-wall near to the target.
Location of the target was balanced across trials.
Response coding. The output files, generated by the program, recorded a large amount of
experimental data. The relevant ones for our aims are: (a) the layout of the invisible, circular
arena, and the route traveled by the participants both to explore the environment in the
learning phase and to reach the response patches in the testing phase, (b) the amount of time,
measured in seconds, that participants spent in the learning as well as in the testing phases,
(c), the path length, measured in virtual units, that participants walked both in the learning
phase to explore the environment and in the testing phase to reach the correct response patch.
We deemed with these five dependent variables since a very common matter in spatial
cognition studies is that, particularly when the task is very basic, gender differences
concerned navigation style rather than general accuracy in performance (Bosco et al. 2004;
Sandstrom et al. 1998; Saucier et al. 2002).
The analysis presented here focused on the participants’ first search in each trial (see
Figure 1c). The first search within each trial was coded twice, (a) on-line, during the
experimental session by a research assistant (blind to the experimental hypotheses)
specifically trained in evaluating if a response patch was intentionally reached, and (b) off-
line by means of visual inspection of an output showing the route traveled by the participants
in the testing environments (see Figure 1c). A third rater assessed the disagreements (less than
2% on more than 5,000 outputs examined).
Analysis of responses in rectangular, all-white-walls environment. The responses were
recorded as appropriate if the participants searched either at the correct corner ‘‘C’’ or at its
rotationally equivalent ‘‘R’’ corner. Only for this type of environment, the virtual trap was
associated with the response patches in the “C” corner and in the “R” corner, being both
corners correct.
Analysis of responses in the rectangular, blue-wall environment. The responses were
recorded as appropriate if the participants searched at the correct corner ‘‘C’’.
Analysis of responses in the square blue-wall environment. The responses were recorded
as appropriate if the participants searched at the correct corner “C”.
Dependent variables. Five dependent variables were considered here: the accuracy of the
performance in terms of number of correct responses, time spent and path lengths in the
learning phase, time spent and path lengths in the testing phase.
 A New Methodology to Assess Individual Differences in Spatial Memory … 177

Table 1. Mean (standard errors) of dependent variables as effect of age, gender and kind
of environment (Layout only, featural only, Layout + Featural), as recorded in the
learning phase (Spatial Learning) and in the testing phase (Spatial Memory). Accuracy
is referred to the number of correct searches (max= 5). Time spent (in seconds,
calculated only for correct searches) is referred to the time needed by participants to
feel confident with spatial information (Spatial Learning) or time needed to reach the
response patch (Spatial Memory). Path Length (in units of space, calculated only for
correct searches) is referred to the path covered to feel confident with spatial
information (Spatial Learning) or path covered to reach the response patch
(Spatial Memory)

Age groups
Children Young Adults Aged Adults
Females Males Females Males Females Males
Spatial Learning
-Time spent
Layout only 8.42 (0.19) 8.06 (0.25) 3.58 (0.26) 3.22 (0.24) 12.58 (0.70) 12.14 (0.72)
Featural only 6.37 (0.21) 6.44 (0.25) 2.01 (0.16) 1.20 (0.06) 6.71 (0.22) 7.39 (0.74)
Layout + Featural 7.18 (0.21) 6.65 (0.24) 2.25 (0.14) 1.72 (0.07) 8.62 (0.48) 8.51 (0.76)
-Path length
Layout only 5.65 (2.04) 3.61 (1.23) 18.60 (4.70) 10.96 (2.82) 18.85 (1.52) 26.27 (5.24)
Featural only 6.32 (1.76) 5.67 (1.97) 11.47 (2.45) 7.53 (2.34) 3.55 (0.99) 9.70 (4.20)
Layout + Featural 3.64 (1.27) 5.02 (2.00) 19.66 (4.72) 8.47 (3.06) 6.08 (2.89) 10.04 (6.06)
Spatial Memory
-Accuracy
Layout only 3.35 (0.11) 3.47 (0.11) 4.16 (0.15) 4.22 (0.19) 3.18 (0.15) 3.73 (0.18)
Featural only 3.35 (0.17) 3.50 (0.15) 4.55 (0.17) 4.94 (0.03) 3.81 (0.17) 4.52 (0.11)
Layout + Featural 3.58 (0.16) 3.38 (0.14) 4.44 (0.11) 4.83 (0.37) 3.87 (0.16) 4.26 (0.16)
-Time spent
Layout only 9.91 (0.71) 9.06 (0.52) 3.92 (0.44) 2.28 (0.24) 12.75 (2.17) 12.36 (0.83)
Featural only 6.21 (0.54) 6.23 (0.42) 1.90 (0.16) 1.10 (0.68) 5.90 (0.37) 5.06 (0.44)
Layout + Featural 7.60 (0.44) 6.87 (0.49) 1.64 (0.09) 1.36 (0.07) 7.33 (0.42) 7.35 (0.73)
-Path length
Layout only 149.56 (12.49) 127.93 (7.97) 131.45 (11.91) 74.49 (7.75) 157.21 (13.81) 119.09 (11.17)
Featural only 89.57 (7.92) 87.30 (6.83) 63.67 (5.44) 40.79 (0.68) 87.19 (7.06) 62.08 (5.99)
Layout + Featural 89.87 (8.79) 86.46 (7.29) 49.03 (2.66) 41.35 (0.47) 86.37 (9.29) 59.04 (6.82)

14 Learning phase

12
Time spent (in seconds)

10
L
8
LF
6 F

0
CHILDREN YOUNG ADULTS AGED ADULTS

Figure 3. Learning phase. Mean times spent, standard errors on bars, for each age group (children,
young adults, aged adults), and for each type of environment (white: layout information only, light
grey: layout and featural information, dark grey: featural information only).
178 Luciana Picucci, Andrea Bosco, Alessandro O. Caffò et al.

25 Learning phase

Path lenght (in units of space)

20

15 L
LF
F
10

0
CHILDREN YOUNG ADULTS AGED ADULTS

Figure 4. Learning phase. Mean path lengths, standard errors on bars, traveled to learn the
characteristics of the environment for each age group (children, young adults, aged adults), and for each
type of environment (white: layout information only, light grey: layout and featural information, dark
grey: featural information only).

RESULTS
Table 1 showed a synopsis of performances as effect of manipulated and controlled
variables.

Learning Phase

Time spent. A 2 x 3 x 3 mixed factors ANOVA was carried out on time spent to explore
the learning environment. Gender (Male, Female) and age (Children, Young Adults and Aged
Adults) were considered as between variables and kind of environment (Layout information
only, Layout and featural Information, Featural information only) as within variable. The
main effect of age emerged, F (2 , 334) = 190.05, p < 0.001, ηp2 = 0.53, P rep = 0.99. As
revealed by Scheffé post hoc test, young adults were significantly faster both than children,
who, in turn, were faster than aged adults. The effect of the environment resulted significant,
F (2 , 668) = 187.58, p < 0.001, ηp2 = 0.36, P rep = 0.99. The Scheffé post hoc test highlighted
that the amount of time spent on exploration was higher in the environment with layout
information only, with respect to the environments presenting featural information. A
significant interaction emerged between age and kind of environment, F (2 , 668) = 29.00, p <
0.001, ηp2 = 0.15, P rep = 0.99 (see figure 3). The environment with layout information only
requires more learning time for all the experimental groups, with respect to the other
environments. This is particularly marked in the aged adults group.
Path lengths. A 2 x 3 x 3 mixed factors ANOVA was carried out on path lengths inside
the learning environment. Gender (Male, Female) and age (Children, Young Adults and Aged
Adults) were considered as between variables and kind of environment (Layout information
only, Layout and featural Information, featural Information only) as within variable. The
main effect of age emerged, F (2 , 334) = 9.14, p < 0.001, ηp2 = 0.05, P rep = 0.99. As the
 A New Methodology to Assess Individual Differences in Spatial Memory … 179

Scheffé post hoc test revealed, both young and aged adults engaged in longer path lengths
than children. The effect of kind of environment resulted significant, F (2 , 668) = 20.24, p <
0.001, ηp2 = 0.05, P rep = 0.99.
As the Scheffé post hoc test revealed, environments providing the layout information
only required longer path lengths than the other two environments, which did not significantly
differ. A significant interaction emerged between age and kind of environment, F (2 , 668) =
15.84, p < 0.001, ηp2 = 0.09, P rep = 0.99, indicating that aged adults employ longer path
lengths if the layout information only is provided (see figure 4).

Testing Phase

Accuracy. A 2 x 3 x 3 mixed factors ANOVA was carried out on the number of correct
responses, considering gender (Male, Female) and age (Children, Young Adults and Aged
Adults) as between variables and kind of environment (Layout Only, Layout and Featural,
Featural only) as within variable. The main effect of gender emerged, F (1 , 334) = 6.59, p <
0.05, ηp2 = 0.02, P rep = 0.97, indicating that males outperformed females in the VReor task.
The effect of age was significant, F ( 2 , 334) = 33.5; p < 0.001, ηp2 = 0.17, P rep = 0.99.
The Scheffé post hoc test highlighted that reorientation ability increased significantly between
childhood and adulthood and decrease in the old age. Nonetheless, children performed poorer
than aged adults.
The effect of the kind of environment also emerged, F (2 , 668) = 19.02, p < 0.001,
ηp2 = 0.05, P rep = 0.99. The Scheffé post hoc test revealed that participants’ performance was
higher when they could rely on featural information (solely or in conjunction with layout),
with respect to the experimental condition only the featural information as well as the featural
information associated with the layout information.

5
Number of correct searches

3 L
LF

2 F

0
CHILDREN YOUNG ADULTS AGED ADULTS

Figure 5. Mean number of correct searches, standard errors on bars, for each age group (children, young
adults, aged adults), and for each type of environment (white: layout information only, light grey:
layout and featural information, dark grey: featural information only).
180 Luciana Picucci, Andrea Bosco, Alessandro O. Caffò et al.

Nunber of correct searches

4

3 F

M
2

0
CHILDREN YOUNG ADULTS AGED ADULTS

Figure 6. Mean number of correct searches, standard errors on bars, for each age group (children, young
adults, aged adults), and for gender (white: females, grey: males).

A significant interaction was observed between kind of environment and age, F (2 , 668)
= 5.52, p < 0.001, ηp2 = 0.03, P rep = 0.99. The Scheffé post hoc test showed that both young
and aged adults benefited of the featural information. However, children did not seem to rely
on the featural information to complete the VReor task (see figure 5).
Two planned comparisons were carried out in order to evaluate the two most impressive
hypotheses on interaction between gender and age. Firstly, performances of children and aged
adults were pooled together and compared with that of young adults (biological hypothesis).
This planned comparison did not reach the significance. Second, performances of young and
old adults were pooled together and compared with that of children. This planned comparison
was near to reach the significance: F (1 , 334) = 3.60, p = 0.058 (see figure 6).
Time spent. A 2 x 3 x 3 mixed factors ANOVA was carried out on time spent to explore
the environment until the detection of the target. Gender (Male, Female) and age (Children,
Young Adults and Elderly Adults) were considered as between variables and kind of
environment (Layout information only, Layout and featural information, Featural information
only) as within variable. The main effect of age emerged, F (2 , 334) = 95.39, p < 0.001,
ηp2 = 0.36, P rep = 0.99. As revealed by the Scheffé post hoc test, young adults were
significantly faster than children as well as aged adults, who did not significantly differ. The
effect of kind of environment was significant, F (2 , 668) = 65.39, p < 0.001, ηp2 = 0.16, P rep
= 0.99. The Scheffé post hoc test highlighted that the amount of time spent in searching the
target was higher in the environment without the landmark with respect to the environments
presenting it A significant interaction emerged between age and kind of environment, F (2,
668) = 9.61, p < 0.001, ηp2 = 0.05, P rep = 0.99. Each group of participants required more
time to complete the task when the layout information only was available. Nonetheless, the
aforementioned effect is significantly lager in aged adults with respect to the other two age
groups (see figure 7).
Path lengths. A 2 x 3 x 3 mixed factors ANOVA was carried out on path lengths covered
reaching the target. Gender (Male, Female) and age (Children, Young Adults and Aged
 A New Methodology to Assess Individual Differences in Spatial Memory … 181

Adults) were considered as between variables and environment (Layout information only,
Layout and featural information, Featural information only) as within variable. A significant
effect of gender emerged, F (2 , 334) = 15.55, p < 0.001, ηp2 = 0.05, P rep = 0.99, indicating
that males engaged in shorter paths, with respect to females. The main effect of age was
significant, F (2 , 334) = 14.88, p < 0.001, ηp2 = 0.08, P rep = 0.99. The Scheffé post hoc test
revealed that young adults engaged in shorter paths with respect to both aged adults and
children who did not differ significantly. The effect of environment reached the significance,
F (2 , 668) = 85.27, p < 0.001, ηp2 = 0.2, P rep = 0.99.

16
Testing phase
14
Time spent (in seconds)

12

10 L
8 LF
F
6

0
CHILDREN YOUNG ADULTS AGED ADULTS

Figure 7. Testing phase. Mean times spent, standard errors on bars, for each age group (children, young
adults, aged adults), and for each type of environment (white: layout information only, light grey:
layout and featural information, dark grey: featural information only).

180 Testing phase

Path length (in units of space)

160
140
120
L
100 LF
80 F
60
40
20
0
FEMALES MALES

Figure 8. Testing phase. Mean path lengths, standard errors on bars, for each age group (children,
young adults, aged adults), and for gender (white: females, grey: males).
182 Luciana Picucci, Andrea Bosco, Alessandro O. Caffò et al.

Paths were longer in the environment providing the layout information only, with respect
to the environments containing featural information. Finally, a significant interaction was
observed between environment and gender, F (2 , 334) = 3.96, p < 0.05, ηp2 = 0.01, P rep =
0.95, indicating that women needed longer paths to solve the task, especially when the layout
information was the only available (see figure 8).

DISCUSSION
This study was aimed to provide an overview on behavioural changes in human
reorientation as effect of gender and age. Three groups of healthy participants, approximately
balanced by gender, were admitted to perform a navigation task in a virtual environment.
Children (primary school pupils), young adults (University students) and aged adults (Third
Age University students) were required to search a hidden target (previously seen during a
learning phase) on the basis of layout cues (i.e. distinctive shape of the environment), featural
cues (i.e. a landmark) or both. We employed the virtual version of the Reorientation
Paradigm, an analogy of the test frequently used for measuring the ability to keep oriented of
nonhuman animals (as well as of infants and toddlers) after that a disorientation procedure
subtract them egocentric information of the environment. As aforementioned in the method
paragraph, five dependent variables were considered: the accuracy of the performance in
terms of number of correct responses, time spent and path lengths in the learning phase, time
spent and path lengths in the testing phase.

Spatial Learning

The Performance in the learning phase (corresponding to the correct searches in the
testing phase) provides useful information on the attitude of participants toward the
achievement of information needed for succeed the task. Times and path lengths provide quite
dissimilar implications. Spatial reorientation may be guided by the use of visual snapshots of
the environment (e.g. Gillner, Weiß, & Mallot, 2008), at the same time females appeared to
be particularly able to make use of these kind of approach to spatial orientation and
navigation (e.g. Burgess, Spiers, & Paleologou, 2004). Coherently, participants may tend to
cover long distances to observe the environment from different points of view obtaining in so
far a large number of visual snapshots useful in later recognizing the target position from,
virtually, any site of the environment. On the other hand, time spent in the learning phase
seems directly associated with level of self confidence about spatial learning, as confirmed by
studies on animal models of spatial anxiety (e.g. Ennaceur, Michalikova, & Chazot, 2009;
Ennaceur, Michalikova, van Rensburg, & Chazot, 2006; Yaski, & Eilam, 2008; Yaski, &
Eilam, 2008). Long time means relatively low confidence on learning, as well as a long path
means the need of many snapshots to form a suitable spatial mental representation of the
environment. Regarding our results, age and kind of environment showed main effects both
on time spent and path length, respectively. Moreover, the aforementioned variables showed
interaction effects on both the dependent variables. From the aforementioned results emerge
that participants needed a longer time and a longer path to acquire information in the
 A New Methodology to Assess Individual Differences in Spatial Memory … 183

environment characterized by the presence of layout only. This effect was larger in aged
adults than in the other two groups. They seemed to be slightly confident and requiring many
snapshots of the environment if they cannot hold on a landmark to identify the correct
location of the target. On the contrary, gender seems not involved in spatial learning style, at
least on the basis of our study.

Spatial Memory

The previous sub-paragraph has given to the reader some hints on learning of spatial
information. They could be useful to understand the way humans approach successfully the
searching task. With reference to the accuracy, main effects of gender, age and kind of the
environment emerged. Males outperformed females (difference in performance is about 5%)
on the overall measure of accuracy. This result has demonstrated that notwithstanding the
effortlessness of the task, it seems enough sensible to capture relatively small gender-related
differences. The reorientation task is based on propositional /categorical information (i.e.
“target is on the left/right of the landmark”). The observed difference, favouring males, in our
task seemed to contradict the results of Astur et al. (2004) and Postma et al. (1996). They
found that in categorical tasks (i.e. the virtual analogy of the eight-arm radial maze and a
categorical positional judgement task) males and females showed a comparable memory
performance. Actually, our results contradict only apparently the aforementioned findings
since in the VReor task participants have to be virtually disoriented during the retention
interval. This procedure tends to modify the spatial mental representation of the environment
and required to recur to an allocentric framework after that the egocentric one becomes
ineffective
In addiction, the skill of mentally manipulate spatial information appear to be less
developed for females than for males (e.g. Vecchi & Girelli, 1998). This suggestion might be
useful in explaining the main effect of gender in our results. In order to solve the task it is
required a re-alignment process that involves the ability to rotate mentally spatial information.
With regard to the effect of age, it has demonstrated that the ability to reorient within the
environment is strongly related to cognitive development. Indeed, difference of performance
between young adults and aged adults is about 12% and between young adults and children is
about 21% in both cases favouring young adults. The ability to elaborate spatial information
after disorientation is not completely achieved in primary school pupils (e.g. Choi &
Silverman, 2003), and tends to decrease in healthy aged adults, this decrease seems quite
large (e.g. Moffat & Resnick, 2002). Finally, the effect of kind of environment has shown that
the absence of landmarks threats seriously the ability of participants to reorient in the
environment. More specifically, the interaction between age and kind of environment has
shown that children are less able to capitalize on the presence of landmark in spite of the two
groups of adults. This is in line with previous findings related to an incomplete process of
integration among spatial cues: those related to the layout of the environment (or geometric
cues) and those related to featural characteristics of the environment, that is, landmarks (e.g.
Wang & Spelke, 2000). On the other hand, these results partially contradict previous findings.
Indeed, other researchers argued that the aforementioned primacy of layout information with
respect to landmarks in children is closely related to characteristics of the environment itself.
Following Ratliff and Newcombe (2008) and Learmonth, Newcombe, Sheridan and Jones
184 Luciana Picucci, Andrea Bosco, Alessandro O. Caffò et al.

(2008) an important example of these characteristics is the relative size of the enclosure used
as experimental setting. They concluded that children were able to rely on landmarks if the
enclosure was sufficiently wide, while their orientation is supported mainly by geometry of
the environment if it is particularly small. Our experimental virtual enclosure was constructed
to be perceived as quite large to stimulate a natural behavior of exploration (Bosco et al.,
2008). Nonetheless, our children showed a performance that we expected in a small
enclosure. It is worthy to note that the present is the first reorientation experiment on children
carried out in a virtual environment. Thus, one can suppose that visual mechanisms in virtual
task could be slightly different with respect to those involved in the real-world exploration.
For instance, McCreary and Williges (1998) found that, in a first-person navigation task,
primary school children showed an improvement of performance as effect of an extension of
physical field of view. However, our physical field of view (42°H, 34°V) was comparable to
the larger one involved in the aforementioned experiment. Consequently, our results on
children cannot be viewed, in our opinion, as effect of a small field of view. Nonetheless, new
experiments are needed in order to deeply figure out this result.
Two planned comparisons were also carried out in order to evaluate the main hypotheses
described previously in the introduction paragraph. If the biological hypothesis was correct
than we are inclined to suppose that performances of children and aged adults should be quite
similar as compared to that of young adults. That is, small differences between boys and girls
and aged men and women and large differences in young adults. Conversely, if the
environmental hypothesis grasped in an appropriate manner the interaction between gender
and age, then we expected that the two groups of adults may show a larger difference between
men and women than children participants, nonetheless a little difference is expected also in
the latter group of participants. This evaluation was carried out collapsing the performances
of children and aged adults (contrasting them with that of young adults) and collapsing the
performances of young and aged adults (contrasting them with that of children), respectively.
Only the latter comparison was near to reach the statistical significance. Moreover, children
did not show any gender effect. This result was interpreted as evidence that the experience /
educational opportunities differentiating males and females on navigational tasks are effective
only after a suitable amount of occurrences / occasions. At the same time the absence of
gender effect in children pinpointed that biological / innate point of view on spatial navigation
ability cannot be neglected (e.g. Lebine et al, 1999). On the whole, we can argue that the
interaction theory seems the most suitable to get a picture of our data. Until hormones do not
bring individuals in close proximity to their sexual maturity, the differentiation in terms of
environmental factors does not affect the basic ability to reorient in a very simple
environment.
Finally, measures of time spent and path length in the testing phase can support the
interpretation of data on accuracy. Indeed, all the groups need more time to solve the tasks if
only the distinctive layout is available. This difference is stronger in children than young
adults and the strongest in aged adults. Path lengths covered by participants to reach the target
is affected by the interaction of gender and kind of the environment. Indeed, females need of
a longer path with respect to males to reach the target, only in the experimental condition in
which the distinctive layout is available as single spatial cue.
As in previous studies, the age-related differences in reorientation cannot be accounted
for by experimental bias as the lack of computer experience, lack of proprioceptive/vestibular
hints or (in elderly people, e.g. Salthouse, 2000; Salthouse & Siedlecki, 2007) generalized
 A New Methodology to Assess Individual Differences in Spatial Memory … 185

psychomotor slowness. Firstly, an adequate training and familiarization with the virtual
environment were allowed until participants did not reach a proficiency criterion (see
method). A study by Moffat and Resnick (2002) reported age-related decline in virtual
navigation of aged compared to young people, even though participants were pre-trained to
face virtual navigation. In the present study we find that children are slower and cover longer
paths than young adults albeit they acknowledged the research assistants, during the pre-test
questionnaire, that they are experienced with videogames. Coherently, Hamilton (2003) stated
previously that the experience with videogame explained only marginally the place learning
performance of young adult participants.
The lack of proprioceptive and vestibular cues due to the absence of real locomotion into
the virtual environment and a restricted field of view cannot be seen as a threat to the
generalization of virtual environment results to actual navigation. This is true at least for
those results regarding individual differences (as stated by Driscoll et al., 2005) and in
general, it has been demonstrated that neural basis for virtual navigation are strongly
overlapped with those for the real one. Indeed, Ekstrom et al. (2003) directly record the
activity from a large number of neurons in the human medial temporal and frontal lobes while
participants explored and navigated a virtual environment. Their data demonstrate that human
virtual spatial navigation is based on cells that respond to definite spatial locations and cells
that respond to the visualization of a landmark as during real navigation.
As for Morris Water Maze, Reorientation task was largely used to assess spatial cognition
in nonhuman animals. Unlike the former one, the latter, in our knowledge, was not yet used to
understand gender and age-related navigational modifications. The diffusion of the Morris
Water Maze in age-related research is due to the association between the place finding task
and hippocampus both in nonhuman (Geinisman et al., 1995; Rosenzweig and Barnes, 2003)
and in human animals (Moffat, Kennedy, Rodrigue, & Raz, 2007). As well as the virtual
Morris Water Maze, Reorientation task may be very useful in the age-related studies since it
is supported by a huge amount of comparative literature, fulfilling the need for cross-species
behavioral comparisons. Nonetheless, taking into account those tasks requiring exclusively
distance evaluations might neglect the other important component of spatial memory based on
discrete / categorical spatial relationships. It represents a most important skill in mature
humans since it is strongly connected with verbal encoding of spatial information.

CONCLUSION
The purpose of this study was to assess the reorientation ability as affected by gender and
age. Our results demonstrate the effectiveness of the virtual version of reorientation task in
studying gender differences in spatial ability from childhood to senescence. They can be
summarized as follows: (a) the interaction hypothesis seems to grasp well our findings since
gender-related differences in reorientation are negligible in childhood, became larger in
adulthood and remain stable (tending to increase) in the old age. Consistently with previous
findings (Gibson, Leichtaman, Kung & Simpson, 2008) (b) children tend to disregard
landmark information while are confident as well as adults in reorient themselves based on
the layout information only. In the old age (c) people tend to be less confident of their
learning particularly if the absence of a landmark cannot support them in the searching task.
186 Luciana Picucci, Andrea Bosco, Alessandro O. Caffò et al.

Finally, (d) females need of a large number of snapshots of the environment in order to judge
as correct the location of the target, in particular if the landmark is absent. The VReor
paradigm seems particularly useful in evaluating general and individual differences in spatial
cognition (Bosco et al., 2008, Picucci and Bosco, 2006). It allows manipulating easily those
variables affecting the experimental settings such as size and shape of the environment,
number and characteristics of landmarks, as well as different characteristics of procedure:
retention interval, kind of task (e.g. working or reference memory), available frame of
reference (i.e. allocentric and / or egocentric). The forthcoming applications might be vary.
Firstly, VReor can be a basic instrument to evaluate the ability to reorient in the environment
after that a perturbation of egocentric frame of reference is set up. Recently, the need for
specific instruments evaluating topographical orientation is strongly felt. For instance, Iaria,
Palermo, Committeri & Barton (2009) asked to young and older participants to solve a
navigational task in a virtual environment designed to assess the use of cognitive map. Their
results suggest that the decreased efficacy in both forming and using cognitive maps
significantly contributed to the age-related decline in orientation skills. Morganti, Gaggioli,
Strambi, Rusconi & Riva (2007, 2006) compared virtual reality assessment with a more
classical neuropsychological battery in evaluating orientation in brain injured people and
demonstrating its reliability. Moreover, virtual versions of spatial cognition paradigms might
be useful in promoting specific interventions for enhance orientation skills. The interaction
theory argued that biological predisposition allows humans to benefit more from spatial
experience than when such predisposition is absent. Even when the biological predisposition
is present, relevant experience is required to develop effective spatial skills. This means that
spatial skills might elude biological constraints and experience is the mediator to success.
Nonetheless, examples of specific intervention on topographical disorientation are very
sparse. Brunsdon, Nickels, Coltheart, & Joy (2007) described a treatment of topographical
disorientation in CA a 6-years-old child. Davis & Coltheart (1999) reported a single case
study of rehabilitation of topographical disorientation in KL a 46-years-old adult. A difficulty
in rehabilitating these persons is represented by the need to customize the intervention
involving familiar places and other physical environments under controlled experimental
condition. Coherently with the latter considerations virtual environments seem to comply with
the need to provide frequent and experimentally controlled experiences of navigation to
people showed topographical disorientation. Recently, the employment of virtual
environment in training programs has been successfully demonstrated by Iaria, Bogod, Fox
and Barton (2009) examining the first case of a woman showing topographical disorientation
in the absence of brain lesions. Intensive overtraining with a simplified virtual environment
had strongly increased her ability to form cognitive map of the environment. This single case
sheds lights on the need to use virtual environments in spatial cognition intervention. In this
view, the knowledge of individual differences related to those virtual navigational
experiences allows to better tailoring interventions on topographical orientation disorder
taking into account specificity of each person in terms of cognitive prerequisites, actual
abilities and preferred strategies.
 A New Methodology to Assess Individual Differences in Spatial Memory … 187

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This research was supported by a grant of the University of Bari (Ateneo 2008) to the
Authors.

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Chapter 5

PRETRIAL PUBLICITY AFFECTS JUROR DECISION

MAKING AND MEMORY

Christine L. Ruva
University of South Florida, FL, US

ABSTRACT
Pretrial publicity (PTP) has been found to have a biasing effect on jury decision
making. This chapter explores how research and theory in cognitive psychology has been
used to examine the mechanisms responsible for PTP’s biasing effects on jury decisions.
This research can assist the courts in finding effective remedies for PTP bias. The chapter
explores how exposure to PTP is similar to exposure to misinformation in the reversed
suggestibility paradigm and that memory for the trial can be affected by misinformation
(PTP) presented before the trial (Lindsay & Johnson, 1989; Rantzen & Markham, 1992).
The chapter will also review research and theory examining whether memory errors (e.g.,
source misattributions) and biases of individual jurors are likely to be corrected by jury
members during deliberations. A review of relevant literature is followed by the
presentation of two research studies. The first study explores whether deliberation
reduces the biasing effects of PTP by comparing group (jury) and individual (juror)
decisions using the nominal group method.
This study also explores whether jurors who are exposed to PTP are likely to
misattribute information presented only in the PTP to the trial. The second study explores
the effects of both negative (anti-defendant) and positive (pro-defendant) PTP on juror
decision making. Both studies suggests that even if jurors are instructed not to use
information contained in the PTP to make decisions about guilt, they may be unable or
unwilling to do so because of source memory errors and their perceptions of the
defendant and trial attorneys.
This research also suggests that jury deliberations can increase (polarize) juror bias
and therefore, cannot be counted on to remedy the effect of PTP on jury decision making.
198 Christine L. Ruva

INTRODUCTION
The prevalence of pretrial publicity (PTP) in today’s media-rich culture is problematic for
the courts given their duty to protect a defendant’s Sixth Amendment right to a “speedy and
public trial, by an impartial jury” (United States Constitution) while protecting citizens’ First
Amendment rights to free speech. Research has demonstrated that PTP can bias juror decision
making by impeding jurors’ ability to reach a verdict based solely on evidence presented at
trial (Carlson & Russo, 2001; Dexter, Cutler, & Moran, 1992; Hope, Memon, & McGeorge,
2004; Kerr, Niedermeier, & Kaplan, 1999; Kovera, 2002; Kramer, Kerr, & Carroll, 1990;
Ogloff & Vidmar, 1994; Otto, Penrod, & Dexter, 1994; Ruva & McEvoy, 2008; Ruva,
McEvoy, & Bryant, 2007; Steblay, Besirevic, Fulero, & Jimenez-Lorente, 1999). A number
of lower courts’ decisions have resulted in reversals due to failure of these courts to protect
defendants’ rights to a fair trial (e.g., Irvin v. Dowd, 1961 and Sheppard v. Maxwell, 1966;
see Davis, 1986, Imrich, Mullin, & Linz, 1995 and Posey & Wrightsman, 2005 for reviews).
The courts have attempted to remedy the problem of juror bias associated with PTP exposure
in several ways (e.g., judicial instructions, voir dire, continuance, and change of venue; see
Steblay et al., 1999 for review). However, these remedies are often ineffective, unavailable,
or not easily obtained by a defendant (Deitz & Sissman, 1984; Dexter et al., 1992; Kramer et
al., 1990; Moran & Cutler, 1991).
The failure of the courts to find effective remedies for PTP bias may be due to an
inadequate understanding by the courts and social scientist as to how PTP imparts its biasing
effects on juror decision making (Moran & Cutler, 1991; Ruva et al., 2007; Studebaker &
Penrod, 1997). This chapter explores how research and theory in cognitive psychology have
been used to examine the mechanisms responsible for PTP’s biasing effects on jury decisions.
This research can assist the courts in making educated decisions on the types of remedies that
may be effective in combating PTP effects.

REVERSE SUGGESTIBILITY PARADIGM AND

SOURCE MEMORY THEORY
PTP may impart its biasing effects on jury decision making by affecting juror memory for
trial evidence. Research on the misinformation effect (Loftus & Palmer, 1974) and source
memory (Johnson, Hashtroudi, & Lindsay, 1993) suggest that jurors may have a difficult time
distinguishing between information that they receive before trial in the form of PTP and
evidence presented at trial. Research has consistently demonstrated that people’s memory for
an event can be significantly influenced by misinformation presented after an event (Loftus &
Palmer, 1974; see Ayers & Reder, 1998 for review). Research in this area is typically
conducted using Loftus and Palmer’s (1974) paradigm in which participants are first shown
the to-be-remembered event which is followed by the presentation of misinformation.
Participants are then given a recognition test asking them to indicate which items were
presented in the original event. The consistent finding of this research is that the misinformed
participants are more likely to attribute post-event misinformation to the original event than
are control participants who were not exposed to the misinformation.
 Pretrial Publicity Affects Juror Decision Making and Memory 199

In the reversed suggestibility paradigm the order of presentation of the misinformation

and the target event is reversed with the misinformation being presented before the target
event. Research using this paradigm has shown that memory performance is also affected by
misinformation presented before the to-be-remembered event (Lindsay & Johnson, 1989;
Rantzen & Markham, 1992). The reverse suggestibility paradigm creates an experimental
situation that is similar to the real world situation of juror exposure to PTP (misinformation)
and the trial (to-be-remembered event). Jurors may believe that the PTP they were exposed to
was part of the trial event because they are unable to distinguish between these two sources of
information. Such errors are called source memory errors (Johnson et al., 1993; Lindsay,
1994; Weingardt, Toland, & Loftus, 1994). Source memory (SM) errors occur because
memory performance for event information is generally better than memory for source
information (Kelly, Carroll, & Mazzoni, 2002).
Research has demonstrated that source memory errors increase as the delay between
encoding and retrieval of a fact increases (Frost, Ingraham, & Wilson, 2002). A delay
between exposure to information (e.g., PTP) and retrieval of that information (during jury
deliberations) could lead to a type of sleeper effect (Davis, 1986; Honess, Charman, & Levi,
2003) in which a low credibility or unreliable source (PTP) is not remembered and the
information is attributed to a credible or reliable source (the trial). These types of memory
errors suggest that some judicial remedies may be ineffective in combating PTP bias. For
example, judicial instructions admonishing jurors not to use PTP may be ineffective because
jurors cannot distinguish between the two sources of case information (PTP and trial
evidence). This is problematic because the courts generally assume that juries are able to
abide by judicial instructions admonishing them not to discuss the PTP during jury
deliberations (Steblay, Hosch, Culhane, & McWethy, 2006; Studebaker & Penrod, 1997).
Research investigating individual jurors suggests that judicial instructions have little if any
affect on PTP bias (Steblay et al., 2006) and source memory errors may be one reason for
their ineffectiveness.

VALENCE OF THE PTP AND SOURCE MEMORY

Although in most cases PTP is predominately negative or anti-defendant (Imrich et al.,
1995), some recent high profile cases have produced large amounts of positive or pro-
defendant PTP. These cases usually involve very wealthy defendants who are well known to
the public prior to being charged with a crime (e.g., Michael Jackson, Martha Stewart, and
Kobe Bryant; Ruva & McEvoy, 2008). Almost all of the PTP literature has focused on the
effects of negative PTP on juror bias. Therefore, little is known about the effects of positive
PTP on juror bias (Ruva & McEvoy 2008). In this chapter we explore the effects of both
positive and negative PTP on juror bias and whether the valence of PTP affects jurors’ source
memory accuracy. Research on autobiographical memory suggests that people have better
memory for positive events than for negative ones (Pollyanna principle: Christianson & Safer,
1996; Walker, Skowronski, & Thompson, 2003). The majority of laboratory research
suggests that people are more likely to recall emotional stimuli than neutral stimuli, but most
of this research only included negatively valenced emotional stimuli. Research including both
negatively and positively valenced information has mixed results, with some researchers
200 Christine L. Ruva

finding better recall of negative stimuli (Kern, Libkuman, Otani, & Holmes, 2005), others
findings better recall for positive stimuli (Lang, Dhillon, & Dong, 1995), and others finding
no differences between negative and positive stimuli, but both better recalled than neutral
stimuli (Doerksen & Shimamura, 2001).
Only a few studies have explored how emotional valence of material affects source
memory. In general, source memory is more accurate for emotional stimuli (Kensinger &
Corkin, 2003), but in the few cases when negatively and positively valenced items were
included, source memory was equivalent for the two types of emotional stimuli
(D’Argembeau & Van der Linden, 2004; Doerken & Shimamura, 2001).

IMPRESSION FORMATION AND VALENCE OF THE PTP

Pretrial publicity may also influence jurors’ verdicts by causing jurors to form either
negative (in the case of negative or anti-defendant PTP) or favorable (in the case of positive
or pro-defendant PTP) impressions of the defendant. These impressions then may influence
jurors’ interpretations of trial evidence and hence their verdicts (Otto et al., 1994). Research
on person perception has found that people pay more attention to negative information than
positive information (Fiske, 1980; Meffert, Chung, & Joiner, 2006; Rozin & Royzman, 2001),
which is referred to as the negativity bias. The negativity bias suggests that positive PTP
might not have as strong of an effect on defendant credibility and juror verdicts as negative
PTP. Direct testing of this hypothesis is needed and Experiment 2 presented in this chapter
was designed to test it.

GROUP DECISION MAKING

Research exploring the mechanisms responsible for the biasing effects of PTP has
primarily focused on juror decision making and has not included jury deliberations. Although
it is important to explore whether some mechanism mediates the effect of PTP on juror bias at
the individual or juror level, ultimately researchers must investigate whether these effects are
attenuated or accentuated by jury deliberations.

Groups Catch Errors

Although individual jurors may succumb to the memory errors and biases, courts have
assumed that groups (e.g., juries) are especially good at catching memory errors and
balancing out the biases of their members (Bourgeois, Horowitz, Fosterlee, & Graphe, 1995;
Davis, 1992; Pritchard & Keenan, 2002). As Davis, Spitzer, Nagao, and Stasser (1978) point
out:

Jurors may deviate systematically from the true value by virtue of imperfections in
perception, memory, recall, reasoning and many other features of the information-processing
apparatus of humans. However, these are irreducible and the whole point of using a group
 Pretrial Publicity Affects Juror Decision Making and Memory 201

rather than a single individual is that fluctuations in cognition may be muted in the former
(p. 36).

This conclusion implies, for example, that if one juror mistakenly misattributes the source
of PTP to be at trial and then tries to use this information during jury deliberations as
evidence for or against guilt, at least one other group member will catch and correct this error.
Thus, collaborating groups are thought to be less susceptible than individuals to source
misattributions and other types of memory errors. The supposedly superior “error catching”
ability of collaborating groups is one reason why our court system relies on groups of people
(juries) to make decisions about guilt (Bourgeois et al., 1995; Davis et al., 1978).
A number of studies have found that groups produce fewer memory errors (e.g., false
memories, inferential errors, and confusional errors) than do individuals (Clark, Stephenson,
& Rutter, 1986; Clark, Stephenson, & Kinveton, 1990; Hartwick, Sheppard, & Davis, 1982;
Hinz, 1990; Stephenson, Abrams, Wagner, & Wade, 1986; Vollrath, Sheppard, & Hinsz,
1989). However in other studies, collaborating groups were found to be more susceptible to
memory errors than were individuals or nominal groups (Basden, Basden, Bryner, & Thomas
1997; Basden, Basden, Thomas, & Souphasith, 1998; Sheppard, 1980, as cited in Clark et al.,
1990; Vollrath et al., 1989). These inconsistent findings may be due to methodological
differences, which make comparisons among studies difficult. Also, the majority of this
research has required group consensus on the accuracy of an item before it was recorded,
making comparisons between collaborative and nominal groups less meaningful. Findings
from research in which consensus on individual memory items are required are also difficult
to apply to jury decision making because jurors must come to a consensus on their final
decision (guilty vs. not guilty), but not on each fact or argument presented during
deliberations.
Very little research has been conducted to explore the effect of collaboration on memory
errors utilizing a method that does not require consensus and that uses the nominal group
method. The existing research of this type indicates that collaboration, rather than reducing
memory errors, may actually increase them. For example, Basden and colleagues, employing
Deese, Roediger, and McDermott’s (1995) paradigm, have demonstrated that collaborating
groups produce as many or more false memories than do nominal groups (Basden et al., 1997,
1998). Basden et al. (1997) attributed the collaborative groups’ higher number of false recalls
to members feeling some obligation to contribute and therefore lowering their response
thresholds.
Collaboration has been found to increase people’s confidence in both their accurate and
inaccurate memory judgments (Clark, et al., 1990; Stephenson & Wagner, 1989: Stephenson,
et al., 1986). This propensity for collaboration to increase people’s confidence in their
inaccurate memory judgments has been labeled the “misplaced overconfidence effect”
(Stephenson & Wagner, 1989: Stephenson, et al., 1986). Group members’ elevated
confidence in inaccurate memories suggests that collaboration may increase memory errors

Groups Balance Out Biases

Some research supports the view that groups balance out the biases of their individual
members, in that juries demonstrate less bias (e.g., bias due to PTP, inadmissible evidence, or
202 Christine L. Ruva

dispositional bias effects) than individual jurors (Kaplan & Miller, 1978; London & Nunez,
2000; Wright & Wells, 1985). Other studies have found little or no difference in
predeliberation versus post-deliberation biases (Davis et. al., 1978; Hans & Doob, 1976).
Whereas, other studies have found juries to be more biased (e.g., group polarization effect)
than individual jurors (Alderton & Frey, 1983 and 1986; Kramer et. al., 1990).
One explanation for these inconsistent findings derives from Kalven and Zeisel’s (1966)
liberation hypothesis which states that juror bias is likely to be most influential in ambiguous
cases. In ambiguous cases “the closeness of the evidence makes it possible for the jury to
respond to sentiment by liberating it from the discipline of the evidence” (Kalven & Zeisel,
1966, p. 165). That is, as ambiguity increases, the effect of non-legal or extra-evidentiary
factors on verdicts also increases, as well as the use of heuristic (rather than in-depth)
processing (Boyll, 1991; Petty & Wegner, 1998). Support for the liberation hypothesis was
demonstrated by Kerr et al.’s (1999) finding that the effect of jury deliberation on extralegal
biases interacts with trial strength (or ambiguity). That is, jury deliberation in moderate
(ambiguous) trials resulted in group polarization effects (increased bias), but either decreased
juror bias or had no effect on juror bias in strong trials. Kerr et al.’s findings also suggest that
studies which examine mock juror judgments in the absence of group deliberation may
underestimate bias when the case is ambiguous and overestimate bias when the case is
imbalanced (favoring either the prosecution of defense).
Of course, case strength (or trial ambiguity) is not the only factor responsible for the
inconsistent effects of deliberation on juror bias. Other factors noted in the literature include
variation of methods, type of bias examined (e.g., PTP, inadmissible evidence, or
dispositional bias), and strength of predeliberation bias (Davis, 1973; Kerr et al., 1999). This
chapter focuses on case strength (or trial ambiguity) because research shows that only a small
percentage of cases go to trial (less than 2%, Boyll, 1991) and those cases that do make it to
trial are often ambiguous as to guilt (evidentially close; Boyll, 1991). Therefore, the use of
ambiguous trials in PTP research should increase the ecological validity of this research. In
contrasts, using imbalanced trials may lead to underestimating the effect of PTP on jury
decisions and overestimating the ability of juries to reduce or eliminate these biases.
In summary, it is important for social scientist and the courts to understand how PTP
imparts its biasing effects on juror decision making for number of reasons. First, the
prevalence of PTP in today’s media rich culture makes it difficult to find jurors that have not
been exposed to PTP (Studebaker & Penrod, 1997), at least in high-profile cases. Therefore, it
is important for the courts to understand how PTP influences juror decisions so that they can
impose effective remedies to reduce or eliminate PTP bias. Second, the courts believe that
judicial instructions are effective in combating PTP bias (Steblay et al., 2006). Unfortunately,
judicial instructions admonishing jurors to disregard PTP will not be effective if jurors cannot
distinguish between information presented in the PTP and that presented at trial (source
memory errors). The experiments in this chapter explore jurors’ ability to accurately identify
the source of their case knowledge. Finally, the courts believe that although individual jurors
may succumb to memory errors and biases, juries will correct memory errors and balance out
biases of their members. Unfortunately, there is not a lot of support for this belief in the social
science literature. Instead, groups often polarize the biases held by the majority of their
members. The ability of groups to balance out biases and reduce memory errors is explored in
Experiment 1.
 Pretrial Publicity Affects Juror Decision Making and Memory 203

EXPERIMENT 1
Overview of Experiment

Experiment 1 consisted of two phases that were approximately four days apart. During
the first phase of the experiment mock-juror participants read negative PTP or unrelated
crime stories. During phase 2 the mock-jurors viewed a videotaped murder trial. Then half of
the jurors deliberated and came to a group decision about guilt (collaborating jurors) and the
other half made verdict decisions on their own (nominal jurors). After rendering verdicts all
of the participants completed the remaining experimental tasks on their own which included a
source memory test and a credibility questionnaire. The source memory tests included
information that appeared only in the trial, in PTP, in unrelated news articles, or in neither
trial nor the PTP (new information).

Hypotheses

Jurors exposed to negative PTP were expected to be more likely than nonexposed jurors
to find the defendant guilty and to misattribute information presented only in the PTP to the
trial (critical source memory error). The negative PTP exposed jurors were also expected to
rate the defendant as being less credible than non-exposed jurors.
These PTP exposure effects were expected to interact with juror collaboration on the
post-deliberation measures of guilt and on credibility ratings. Collaborating jurors who were
exposed to PTP were expected to be significantly more likely, after deliberation, to render
guilty verdicts, give higher guilt ratings, and perceive the defendant as being less credible
than all other groups. Group discussion was expected to polarize PTP exposed jurors
prediscussion preferences associated with viewing the defendant as guilty (Alderton & Frey,
1983, 1986; Davis, 1992; Kerr et. al., 1999; Kramer et al., 1990; Seibold & Meyers, 1986).
Collaboration was also expected to affect jurors’ confidence in their source memory
judgments, with collaborating jurors indicating higher levels of confidence in both their
accurate and inaccurate (misplaced overconfidence effect) source memory judgments than
nominal jurors. Due to the inconsistent findings in the collaborative memory research, no
prediction was made in regards to collaboration’s effect on critical source memory errors.

Method

Participants
The participants consisted of 558 jury-eligible students from a southeastern university
who received extra-course credit for their participation. One-hundred and twenty eight were
men and 430 were women and they ranged in age from 18 to 52 years (M = 20.6 years). There
were 138 participants in both of the collaborating groups, 140 in the nominal exposed groups
and 142 in the nominal nonexposed groups. Participants were randomly assigned to one of the
collaboration conditions (collaborative vs. nominal) at the beginning of phase 2.
204 Christine L. Ruva

Design
A 2 (PTP: exposed vs. nonexposed) x 2 (collaboration: collaborating vs. nominal)
between subjects hierarchical design was utilized for this experiment. There were 25 groups
(juries) per condition. The exposed jurors read negative PTP and the nonexposed jurors read
unrelated crime articles. The nominal groups were randomly generated after data collection
was completed and consisted of 5 to 6 individuals who worked alone on all experimental
tasks. The collaborating groups consisted of 4 to 6 people who deliberated as a jury and made
a group decision regarding guilt of the defendant. Of our 50 groups of collaborating jurors,
68% consisted of 6 jurors, 18% consisted of 5 jurors, and 14% consisted of 4 jurors. Many
researchers employ mock juries that contain fewer than 12 people because using 12-person
juries would make most mock jury research prohibitive. Research examining the effects of
jury size on outcomes suggests that 6-person juries are more variable in their outcomes, have
shorter deliberations, and are less likely to be hung than 12-person juries, but has established
little else (Devine, Clayton, Dunford, Seying, & Pryce, 2000; Saks and Marti, 1997).

Stimuli
Trial. The stimulus trial consisted of a videotaped murder trial (NJ v Bias) of a man who
was accused of murdering his wife and was edited to run approximately 30 minutes. Pilot
work and previous research (Hope et al., 2004; Pritchard & Keenan, 1999, 2002) indicated
that the trial was ambiguous as to guilt and was perceived as being realistic and believable.
Pretrial publicity. All participants read news articles about crimes that were taken from a
web-based archive for the Morning Call newspaper. Participants in the PTP exposed
conditions read modified PTP that had surrounded the NJ v Bias trial. These news stories
contained general information about the case (e.g., victim, when and where the crime took
place, description of the crime) as well as information that was not presented at trial and that
could have a biasing effect on juror verdicts (see Appendix A for examples of PTP and trial
facts).
Participants in the non-exposed PTP conditions read actual news articles involving a
woman who was accused of embezzling child support funds. These articles were similar in
composition to the news articles in the exposed condition (i.e., both packets contained 9
separate news articles of approximately the same length and consisted of 10 pages of text).

Measures
Verdicts and guilt ratings. The participants were asked for their verdicts (not guilty = 1,
hung = 2, or guilty = 3) and their guilt ratings which is a score that combines a verdict and a
confidence rating into a single score (1 = I am certain he is not guilty to 7 = I am certain he is
guilty).
Source monitoring test. The source memory test required participants to indicate whether
a particular statement appeared in the experiment either as part of the trial or in one of the
articles they read, and if so, the source of the item (i.e., trial, articles, or both the trial and
articles). This test contained information presented only in the trial, information provided
only in the PTP, information provided only in the unrelated articles, and information not
provided in either the PTP or the trial. Participants were also required to indicate how
confident they were in each of their source judgments using a seven-point Likert scale with 1
 Pretrial Publicity Affects Juror Decision Making and Memory 205

indicating that they were not at all confident and 7 indicating they were extremely/completely
confident.
Credibility and attorney ratings. The credibility of the defendant was assessed by asking
participants to rate the defendant, using a seven-point Likert scale, on a number of
characteristics relevant to credibility (e.g., memory accuracy, confidence, consistency of
testimony, bias/objectivity, and honesty; see Ruva & Bryant, 2004 for complete scale).
Participants also rated the prosecuting and defense attorneys on 3 characteristics (overall
ability, likableness, how well they each performed their respective roles by either proving
guilt or demonstrating reasonable doubt).

Procedure
First phase. During phase 1, the participants were told that the study had two-parts and
examined the stability of emotional reactions to different types of information. Therefore,
they needed to come back the following week for the second part of the experiment. This
cover story was provided so that the participants would not know they were part of an
experiment involving jury research.1 Participants then received packets containing either PTP
or unrelated news articles and were asked to read all of the articles thoughtfully. They were
then given 15 minutes to write down as much information as they could remember from the
news articles. After recall was completed they were asked to indicate their emotional response
to reading each piece of information.
Second phase. Approximately four days (M = 4.02, SD = 0.80, range = 4 to 7 days) after
exposure to the articles, participants viewed the videotaped trial. Prior to viewing the trial
jurors were informed that during the first phase of the study they might have read news
articles related to the trial that they were about to view. They were instructed not to use any of
the information from these articles when making verdict decisions. For this decision they
must only use the evidence presented during the trial. The videotaped trial was then
presented. Immediately following the viewing of the trial, each juror provided a verdict and
guilt rating. Then those in the nominal group were moved to a different room from that of the
collaborating group.
The collaborating jurors were given 30 minutes to deliberate and come to a group
decision. They were informed that if such a verdict was not reached within 30 minutes the
jury would be considered hung, resulting in a mistrial. They were informed that they would
receive a warning five minutes prior to the end of the deliberation period and at that time they
should finish deliberations and decide on a verdict. The experimenter then left the room and
did not return until it was time to give the 5-minute warning. If the jury had not reached a
unanimous decision at that time they were instructed to try their best to do so within the next
5 minutes.
The nominal jurors were asked to individually recall in writing as many trial facts as they
could. They were given 15 minutes to complete this task. They were then asked to indicate, in
the space provided on the recall sheet, which trial facts had the greatest influence on their
decision and why. They were given 10 minutes to complete this task. The nominal jurors then
individually completed a verdict form. This verdict form was the same as the one completed

1
A debriefing questionnaire was administered at the end of phase 2 in order to assess whether the participants
believed the cover story from phase 1 of the experiment. The majority of both PTP exposed (83%) and
nonexposed jurors (84%) indicated that they did in fact believe the cover story, χ 2 (2, N = 558) = .21, p =.65.
206 Christine L. Ruva

by collaborating jurors except that it did not provide the verdict option of hung. The purpose
of the recall task was two-fold: (1) to keep the time between trial and source monitoring test
equivalent across conditions and (2) to allow nominal jurors to engage in an activity that
resembled the process that a juror might engage in if that juror had participated in jury
deliberations.
Once the verdict forms were collected, jurors in both the collaborating and nominal
conditions each individually completed the SM test and indicated their confidence in each
answer (see Appendix A). Participants were then asked individually to report verdicts and
guilt ratings one final time as well as their ratings of the defendant’s credibility.

Results

The guilt measures, which included verdicts and guilt ratings, were completed by the
jurors three times: (1) just prior to deliberations (predeliberation measures), (2) just after
deliberations (collaborating jurors) or recalls (nominal jurors; post-deliberation measures),
and (3) just after the source memory test all jurors provided individual verdicts (post-source
memory measures).
For each guilt measure a 2 (PTP exposure: exposed vs. nonexposed) x 2 (collaboration:
collaborating vs. nominal) between-subjects hierarchical ANOVA2 was performed. A
hierarchical nested design with participants nested within groups and groups nested within
PTP exposure and collaboration conditions was employed because half of the mock-jurors
participated in group deliberations.
The nested error term3 was used for all of the F-tests except for those involving the
predeliberation guilt measures and the analyses using the nested error term the level of
analysis for the nominal juries is the group mean. Effect sizes for ANOVAs are reported as
Cohen’s (1988) d.

Predeliberation Guilt Measures

As predicted, jurors in the exposed PTP conditions were significantly more likely to vote
guilty than jurors in the nonexposed conditions (see Table 1), F(1, 458) = 54.89, MSE = .86, p
< .01, d = .63. Also as predicted, the jurors in the exposed PTP conditions gave significantly
higher guilt ratings than did jurors in the nonexposed conditions (see Table 1), F(1, 458) =
74.48, MSE = 2.51, p < .01, d = .74. There were no significant main or interactive effects of
collaboration on any of the predeliberation guilt measures (see top panel of Table 2 for
frequency of predeliberation verdicts by PTP and collaboration conditions).

2
Hierarchical ANOVAs allowed us to test for significant effects of groups nested within PTP exposure and
collaboration conditions and then use the more appropriate error term (nested error term) if this effect was
significant. Chi square does not allow for these types of analyses.
 Table 1. Means for the Guilt Measures for Experiment 1

Predeliberation Post-deliberation Post-Source Monitoring

Exposed Nonexposed Mean Exposed Nonexposed Mean Exposed Nonexposed Mean
Verdictsb
Collaborating 2.46 (0.89)a 1.83 (0.99) 2.15 2.22 (0.84) 1.72 1.97 2.25 (0.97) 1.67 1.95
(0.99) (0.72) (0.82) (0.94) (1.00)
Nominal 2.30 (0.96) 1.74 (0.97) 2.02 2.27 (0.97) 1.71 1.99 2.27 (0.97) 1.71 1.99
(1.00) (0.96) (1.00) (0.96) (1.00)
Mean 2.38 (0.93) 1.78 (0.98) 2.25 1.72 (0.85) 2.25 1.69
(0.90) (0.97) (0.95)
Guilt Ratingsc
Collaborating 5.29 (1.65) 4.08 (1.67) 4.69 5.63 (1.30) 3.96 4.79 5.45 (1.44) 4.04 4.75
(1.77) (1.27) (1.53) (1.53) (1.64)
Nominal 5.05 (1.50) 3.89 (1.61) 4.47 5.07 (1.61) 3.99 4.54 5.09 (1.60) 3.99 4.54
(1.66) (1.71) (1.74) (1.68) (1.73)
Mean 5.17 (1.58) 3.98 (1.64) 5.34 3.97 (1.50) 5.27 4.01
(1.49) (1.53) (1.61)
a. Standard deviations appear in parentheses.
b. The following scale was used to code verdicts: 1 = not guilty, 2 = hung, 3 = guilty. The hung option was only available for jurors in the collaborative
conditions when deciding verdict 2.
c. The following scale was used for guilt ratings: 1 = high confidence not guilty, 4 = unsure whether defendant is guilty or not guilty, 7 = high confidence guilty.
208 Christine L. Ruva

Table 2. Frequency Counts and Percentages for Verdicts for Experiment 1

Condition Not Guilty Hung Guilty Total

Predeliberation Verdicts
Collaboration x PTP
Collaborating Exposed 37 (27%)a NAb 101 (73%) 138
Collaborating Nonexposed 81 (59%) NA 57 (41%) 138
Nominal Exposed 50 (35%) NA 92 (65 %) 142
Nominal Nonexposed 88 (63%) NA 52 (37%) 140
Total 256 (46%) NA 302 (54%) 558 (100%)
Post-deliberation Verdicts
Collaboration x PTP
Collaborating Exposed 36 (26%) 35 (25%) 67 (49%) 138
Collaborating Nonexposed 60 (43%) 56 (41%) 22 (16%) 138
Nominal Exposed 52 (37%) NA 90 (63%) 142
Nominal Nonexposed 90 (64%) NA 50 (36%) 140
Total 238 (43%) 91 (16%) 229 (41%) 558 (100%)
Collaboration x PTP
Collaborating Exposed 52 (38%) NA 86 (62%) 138
Collaborating Nonexposed 92 (67%) NA 46 (33%) 138
Nominal Exposed 52 (37%) NA 90 (63%) 142
Nominal Nonexposed 90 (64%) NA 50 (36%) 140
Total 286 (51%) NA 272 (49%) 558 (100%)
a.
Row percentages appear in parentheses beside their respective means.
b.
Only collaborating jurors could render a hung verdict (null verdict) during the group decision.

Post-deliberation and Post- Source Memory Guilt Measures

Because the results for the post-deliberation and post-source monitoring measures were
similar these results are presented together. The post-deliberation results are listed first for
each analysis. As predicted, jurors exposed to PTP were significantly more likely than non-
exposed jurors to vote guilty, Fs(1, 96) = 15.49 and 20.48, MSEs = 2.35 and 2.03, ps < .01, ds
= .60 and .57 and give higher guilt ratings, Fs(1, 96) = 39.57 and 41.84, MSEs = 6.42 and
5.04, ps < .01, ds = .75 and .80 (see Table 1). There were no significant main or interactive
effects of collaboration on any of the post-deliberation or post-source monitoring guilt
measures (see Tables 1 and 2).
In order to examine further whether jury deliberation had an effect on the guilt measures,
three-way (PTP exposure, collaboration, and time of test) mixed-design hierarchical
ANOVAs were performed with the predeliberation and post-source monitoring data with
verdicts and guilt ratings as the within-subjects variable. On the verdict measure, there was a
significant effect of time of test and a significant interaction between time of test and
collaboration, F(1, 96) = 11.86 and 6.63, MSE = 0.285, respectively. Overall, jurors were less
likely to find the defendant guilty on the post-source monitoring measures than on the
predeliberation measures (see Tables 1 and 2), but this effect was only apparent for the jurors
 Pretrial Publicity Affects Juror Decision Making and Memory 209

in the collaborating conditions. This finding suggests a leniency shift in which deliberation
may heighten awareness of the defendant protection norm and highlight the reasonable doubt
standard that acquitting the guilty is less serious an error than convicting the innocent (Kerr,
1993). Regardless of time of test, PTP had a significant effect on verdicts with jurors in the
exposed conditions being significantly more likely to find the defendant guilty than jurors in
the nonexposed conditions, F(1, 96) = 30.65, MSE = 2.89, p < .01. The interaction between
time of test and PTP exposure was not significant, F(1, 96) = .30, MSE = 0.285, p = .51,
suggesting that PTP exposure does not contribute to the time of test effect.

Source Memory Test, Critical Source Errors

The PTP errors of interest were those in which participants misattributed information
contained only in the PTP as appearing in the trial or in both the trial and the PTP (Zaragoza
& Lane, 1994). The uncorrected mean proportions of source monitoring responses are shown
in Table 3. These mean proportions were not analyzed, per convention. Instead, the corrected
scores were used in all source memory analyses. Corrected scores were calculated as follows:
the proportion of critical source monitoring errors made by each participant was calculated as
an error score which was corrected by subtracting from it the proportion of new items
identified as being either in the trial or in both the trial and the PTP (see Table 3). As
predicted, jurors who were exposed to PTP made significantly more critical source
monitoring errors (M = .15, SD = .13) than did nonexposed jurors (M = .10, SD = .12),
F(1, 96) = 17.07, MSE = 0.02, p < .01, d = .40. That is, jurors exposed to PTP were
significantly more likely than non-exposed jurors to attribute information presented only in
the PTP to either the trial or both the trial and the PTP. Neither the main effect of
collaboration nor the interaction of collaboration and PTP exposure were significant, Fs(1,
96) = 0.49 and 0.015, MSE = 0.02, ps > .60), respectively.

Source Memory Test, Correct Judgments of Trial Items

There was a significant effect of PTP on correct source judgments for trial items
(corrected for guessing) with jurors in the nonexposed conditions accurately identifying
significantly more of the trial items as coming from the trial (M = .75, SD = .17) than did the
exposed jurors (M = .63, SD = .17), F(1, 457) = 76.56, MSE = 0.03, p < .05, d = .71. There
was also a small but significant main effect of collaboration, with collaborating jurors
providing more accurate responses (M = .70, SD = 0.16) than nominal jurors (M = .67, SD =
0.20), F(1, 457) = 6.36, MSE = 0.028, p < .01, d = .17. The interaction was not significant,
F(1, 457) = 1.11, MSE = 0.028, p = .24.

Confidence in Source Memory Judgments

As expected, jurors in the collaborating conditions were more confident than nominal
jurors about both their correct and incorrect SM judgments for the trial items (see Table 4),
Fs(1, 96) = 5.15 and 5.44, MSEs = 0.57 and 1.65, p < .05, ds = .20 and .08, respectively. PTP
exposure did not have a significant effect on these confidence judgments, Fs(1, 96) = 3.03
and 4.75, MSEs = 0.57 and 1.65, respectively, ps > .06. There was no significant effect of
collaboration or PTP exposure on confidence ratings for the critical SM errors, Fs(1, 96) =
1.07 and 1.43, MSE = 1.22, respectively, ps > .18.
210 Christine L. Ruva

Table 3. Mean Proportions of Source Monitoring Responses as a Function of PTP

Exposure and Collaboration for Experiment 1

Collaborating Exposed Jurors

Actual Source
Response Trial Pretrial Publicity New
Trial .67 .04 .01
Pretrial Publicity .05 .57 .22
Both .15 .14 .01
New .14 .25 .76
Collaborating Nonexposed Jurors
Actual Source
Response Trial Pretrial Publicity New
Trial .79 .13 .03
Pretrial Publicity .00 .00 .00
Both .00 .00 .00
New .21 .87 .97
Nominal Exposed Jurors
Actual Source
Response Trial Pretrial Publicity New
Trial .63 .04 .03
Pretrial Publicity .05 .56 .18
Both .11 .15 .02
New .21 .25 .77
Nominal Nonexposed Jurors
Actual Source
Response Trial Pretrial Publicity New
Trial .77 .13 .03
Pretrial Publicity .00 .00 .00
Both .00 .00 .00
New .22 .87 .96

Table 4. Mean Confidence Ratings for Correctly and Incorrectly Recognized Trial and
Critical Source Memory Errors for Experiment 1

Condition
Response Collaborating Nominal
Trial Correct 6.38 (0.59) 6.25 (0.70)
Trial Incorrect 5.56 (1.19) 5.33 (1.28)
Critical Source Errors 5.81 (0.94) 5.73 (1.06)
Note. Standard deviations are presented in parentheses following their respective means. Critical source
errors include items that were incorrectly attributed to the trial or both the trial and PTP.

Credibility Measures
As predicted, the jurors exposed to PTP perceived the defendant as less credible (M =
40.83, SD = 10.58) than jurors in the nonexposed conditions (M = 49.57, SD = 12.98), F(1,
96) = 41.48, MSE = 114.16, p < .01, d = .74. There was also a significant effect of
 Pretrial Publicity Affects Juror Decision Making and Memory 211

collaboration on perceived credibility of the defendant, F(1, 96)3= 8.71, MSE = 114.16, p <
.01, d = .32, with nominal jurors perceiving the defendant as more credible (M = 47.13, SD =
12.31) than did collaborating jurors (M = 43.20, SD = 12.62).

Mediation Analyses
One of the main purposes for this research was to explore how PTP imparts its biasing
effect on jury decision making. It was hypothesized that both critical SM errors and perceived
credibility of the defendant may be relevant mechanisms. In order to explore these
relationships both critical SM errors and perceived credibility of the defendant, were treated
as mediation variables in two mediation models of X → M → Y (where X is PTP, Y is post-
source monitoring test guilt ratings, and M is the mediating variable) (Baron & Kenny, 1986;
Shrout & Bolger, 2002). As Baron and Kenny (1986) suggested, we constructed three
regression equations for both models. For the model with critical SM errors the first equation
related guilt ratings to PTP (X → Y) and was statistically significant, β = 1.25, t(556) = 9.44,
p <.01. The second related critical SM errors to PTP (X → M) and was statistically
significant, β = −.05, t(556) = 4.6, p <.01. The third equation related the guilt ratings to both
PTP and critical SM errors and indicated that both critical SM errors and PTP were
significant, β = 1.28 and 1.19, t(555) = 2.45 and 8.84, respectively, ps <.05. The indirect
effect of PTP on the guilt ratings via the mediator (critical SM errors) was significant, Sobel
test z =2.17 (1982), p < .05. Therefore, the critical SM errors mediate the effect of PTP on
guilt ratings and may be mechanisms through which PTP imparts its biasing effects.
Another mediation analysis was performed to test the model of X → M → Y (where X is
PTP, Y is post-source monitoring guilt ratings, and M is perceived credibility of the
defendant) (Baron & Kenny, 1986; Shrout & Bolger, 2002). The first regression equations
related guilt ratings to PTP (X → Y) and was statistically significant, β = 1.25, t(556) = 9.44,
p <.01. The second related perceived credibility of the defendant to PTP (X → M) and was
statistically significant, β = -8.73, t(556) = -8.71, p <.01. The third related the guilt ratings to
both PTP and defendant’s credibility and indicated that both defendant’s credibility and PTP
were significant, β = -.09 and .50, t(555) = -20.07 and 4.67, respectively, p <.01. The indirect
effect of PTP on the guilt ratings via the mediator (perceived credibility of the defendant) was
significant, Sobel test z = 2.44 (1982). Overall, the mediation analyses suggest that the effect
of PTP on guilt ratings was mediated by both the perceived credibility of the defendant and
critical SM errors.
The results of Experiment 1 suggests that jurors who are exposed to negative PTP are
more likely to render guilty verdicts and view the defendant as less credible than non-exposed
jurors. Unfortunately, jury deliberations did not reduce PTP’s biasing effect on juror verdicts.
Instead, it increased juror bias with PTP exposed jurors who deliberated rating the defendant
as being lower in credibility than PTP exposed jurors who did not deliberate. This finding is
significant given that defendant credibility ratings were found to mediate the effect of PTP on
guilt ratings. PTP exposed jurors were also more likely to attribute information contained
only in the PTP to the trial or both the trial and the crime stories. Collaboration did not
significantly affect the rate of these critical SM errors. Again, this is important because these
critical SM errors were found to mediate the effect of PTP on guilt ratings.

3
The nested error term was used for all of the F-tests for which there were significant effects of groups nested
212 Christine L. Ruva

EXPERIMENT 2
The second experiment explores the effects of both negative PTP and positive (pro-
defendant) PTP on juror decision making. One of the purposes of Experiment 2 was a to
examine whether positive PTP would increase the percentage of not guilty verdicts and
critical SM errors, just as negative PTP increased the percentage of guilty verdicts and critical
SM errors in Experiment 1 (Ruva et al., 2007). As mentioned above, research on person
perception has found that people pay more attention to negative information than positive
information (Fiske, 1980; Meffert et al., 2006; Rozin & Royzman, 2001), which is referred to
as the negativity bias. This suggests that positive PTP might not have as strong an effect on
defendant credibility and juror verdicts as negative PTP. The effects of negative and positive
information on source memory are less clear, but the few studies that have included both
negatively and positively valenced items found source memory was equivalent for the two
types of emotional stimuli (D’Argembeau & Van der Linden, 2004; Doerken & Shimamura,
2001). Therefore, the negativity bias may not extend to memory for the PTP information and
its source.
Another purpose of Experiment 2 was to explore how a delay between trial exposure and
the source memory test affects jurors’ ability to distinguish between PTP and trial
information. Although, Experiment 1 found that critical SM errors mediated the effect of PTP
on guilt ratings, the rate of these errors was low. It is likely that the SM error rates for actual
jurors would be significantly higher because actual jurors are likely to experience much
longer delays between exposure to the trial and recall of this evidence during deliberations.
Actual trials are lengthy and there could be hours if not days between presentation of much of
the trial testimony and deliberation. A recent review of juror utilization in US District Courts
revealed that the average length of criminal jury trials in 2002 was 4.3 days (Litras &
Golmant, 2006) with the range being 2.2 to 12.3 days. Therefore, in an actual trial there could
be 2 or more days between evidence presented early in the trial and the recall of that evidence
by jurors during jury deliberations. If trial presentation ends late in the day or late on a Friday
this delay could be even longer. Past research has demonstrated that SM errors increase as the
delay between encoding and retrieval of a fact increases (Frost et al, 2002) and so we would
expect that increasing the time between trial presentation and the SM test would increase the
number of critical SM errors.

Method

Participants
The participants were of 159 jury-eligible university students (41 males and 118 females)
who received extra course credit for participating in the experiment. They ranged in age from
18 to 31 years (M = 19.17).

Design
This experiment utilized a 3 (PTP: negative, positive, or non-exposed) x 2 (length of
delay: immediate vs. 2-day) between-subjects design. The cell sizes for these six conditions

within PTP exposure and collaboration conditions.

 Pretrial Publicity Affects Juror Decision Making and Memory 213

were: 54 exposed to negative PTP (28 immediate and 26 delay); 53 exposed to positive PTP
(26 immediate and 27 delay); 52 exposed to the unrelated crime stories (24 immediate and 28
delay).

Procedure
The trial, negative PTP, and unrelated crime story stimuli were identical to those used in
Experiment 1, and the procedure was similar. The positive PTP (see Appendix A) was added
to explore the effect of pro-defendant PTP on juror verdicts and source memory. The
experiment consisted of two phases for those in the immediate conditions and three phases for
those in the delay conditions. In the first phase, participants were exposed to the PTP
(positive or negative) or unrelated articles, in the second phase (5 days later) they were
exposed to the trial and rendered individual verdicts. Participants in the immediate condition
completed the experiment during Phase 2 by completing the experimental measures in the
following order: (1) source memory test, (2) guilt measures (verdicts, guilt ratings, and
sentences), (3) ratings of the defendant’s credibility, and (4) debriefing questionnaire.
Participants in the delay condition returned for phase 3 and completed the measures in the
same order as participants in the immediate condition. The only differences from Experiment
1 were: (1) none of the groups deliberated and (2) a delay of 2 days between the trial and the
post-trial tasks was manipulated between subjects with participants in the delay condition
completing the post-trial tasks in a separate, third experimental phase.

Results

For all analyses the alpha level for significance was set at .05. Log linear analysis of
variance for proportions using maximum likelihood estimates (Feinberg, 1980) were used to
analyze verdicts. Unless otherwise specified, all other dependent measures were analyzed by
3 (PTP: negative, positive, or non-exposed) x 2 (length of delay: immediate vs. 2-day)
between-subjects ANOVAs. Effect sizes are reported as ω2 for ANOVAs and as Cramer’s V
for chi squares.

Guilt Measures
As in Experiment 1, assessment of guilt was measured in two ways, through jurors’
verdicts and guilt ratings. In Experiment 2, the verdict measure no longer included a hung
option (1 = not guilty and 2 = guilty). PTP had a significant effect on both juror verdicts, 2(2,
N = 159) = 20.65, p < .01. V = .37, and guilt ratings, F(2, 153) = 12.69, MSE = 2.81, p < .01,
2
= .13. As predicted, jurors exposed to negative PTP were significantly more likely to vote
guilty and to provide higher guilt ratings than jurors in either the positive PTP or non-exposed
conditions (see Tables 5 and 6), 2(1, N = 159) = 19.52, p < .01, V = .36 and F(1, 153) =
23.34, MSE = 2.81, p < .01, 2 = .12. Also as predicted, jurors exposed to positive PTP were
significantly less likely to vote guilty and provided lower guilt ratings than jurors in either the
negative PTP or non-exposed conditions, 2(1, N = 159) = 10.47, p < .01, V = .27 and F(1,
153) = 13.08, MSE = .2.81, ps < .01, 2=.07. The effect sizes for the effect of negative PTP
on the guilt measures are larger than those for the positive PTP effects providing some
support for the negativity bias.
214 Christine L. Ruva

Source Monitoring Test, Negative and Positive PTP Errors

The uncorrected mean proportions of SM responses are shown in Table 7, separated into
6 panels as a function of PTP exposure and delay conditions. The first panel reports the SM
responses for jurors in the negative PTP immediate condition, the second panel for the
negative PTP delayed condition, etc. As in Experiment 1, these mean proportions were not
analyzed, per convention. Instead, the corrected scores shown in Table 8 were used in all
source memory analyses presented below. The PTP errors of interest were those in which
participants misattributed information contained only in the PTP as appearing in the trial or in
both the trial and the PTP (Zaragoza & Lane, 1994). There was a significant effect of PTP
exposure on both negative and positive PTP errors, Fs(2, 153) = 45.24 and 20.11, MSEs =
.008 and 0.014, ps < .01, 2s = .29 and .17, respectively. As predicted, the jurors who were
exposed to negative PTP were significantly more likely than positive PTP and non-exposed
jurors to misattribute information contained only in the negative PTP to either the trial or both
the trial and PTP (see Table 8), F(1, 153) = 89.94, MSE = .008, p < .01, 2= .29. Negative
PTP jurors were more confident in these errors (M = 6.06, SD 1.04) than jurors in the positive
PTP or non-exposed conditions (Ms = 5.04 and 4.96, SDs = 1.49 and 1.43, respectively),
Fs(1, 76 and 69) = 11.35 and 6.42, MSE = 1.67, ps < .01, 2s = .09 and .05, respectively. Also
as expected, those jurors who read positive PTP were significantly more likely than jurors in
the negative PTP and non-exposed conditions to misattribute information presented only in
the positive PTP to either the trial or both the trial and PTP, F(1, 153) = 38.47, MSE = 0.01, p
< .01, 2 = .17. Jurors exposed to positive PTP were significantly more confident (M = 5.94,
SD = 1.05) in these errors than jurors in the negative PTP and non-exposed conditions (Ms =
4.70 and 4.83, SDs = 1.41 and 1.42), Fs(1, 66 and 67) = 15.98 and 10.62, MSE = 1.63, ps <
.01, 2s = .13 and .08, respectively. Also as expected, jurors in the delay conditions made
significantly more negative PTP and positive PTP critical source memory errors than jurors in
the immediate conditions, Fs(2, 153) = 42.03 and 22.64, MSEs = 0.01, ps < .01, 2s = .14 and
.09, respectively.

Table 5. Means for the Guilt Ratings for Experiment 2

PTP Conditions
Delay Conditions Positive PTP Negative PTP Non-exposed Mean
Immediate 3.65 (1.50) 4.96 (1.64) 3.79 (1.84) 4.17 (1.75)
Delay 3.33 (1.69) 5.19 (1.67) 4.11 (1.71) 4.20 (1.83)
Mean 3.49 (1.59) 5.07 (1.65) 3.96 (1.76)
Note. PTP = pretrial publicity. Standard deviations appear in parentheses.

Table 6. Frequency Counts and Percentages for Verdicts for Experiment 2

Condition Not Guilty Guilty Total

Positive PTP 39 (74%) 14 (26%) 53
Negative PTP 16 (21%) 38 (70%) 54
Non-exposed 32 (62%) 20 (38 %) 52
Total 88 (55%) 72 (45%) 159 (100%)
Note. PTP = pretrial publicity. Percentages for verdicts appear in parentheses.
 Pretrial Publicity Affects Juror Decision Making and Memory 215

Table 7. Mean Proportions of Source Monitoring Responses as a Function of Pretrial

Publicity (PTP) Exposure and Delay for Experiment 2

Actual Source
Response Trial Positive PTP Negative PTP New
Negative PTP Jurors Immediate
Trial .72 .02 .00 .00
Pretrial Publicity .02 .07 .66 .04
Both .15 .01 .10 .00
New .12 .90 .24 .96
Negative PTP Jurors Delay
Trial .61 .06 .09 .00
Pretrial Publicity .04 .07 .46 .00
Both .17 .02 .21 .00
New .17 .85 .23 1.00
Positive PTP Jurors Immediate
Trial .69 .03 .03 .00
Pretrial Publicity .03 .78 .11 .02
Both .17 .07 .02 .00
New .11 .12 .84 .98
Actual Source
Response Trial Positive PTP Negative PTP New
Positive PTP Jurors Delay
Trial .66 .07 .02 .00
Pretrial Publicity .04 .61 .08 .02
Both .15 .21 .05 .00
New .15 .11 .84 .97
Non-exposed Jurors Immediate
Trial .86 .04 .02 .00
Pretrial Publicity .01 .00 .00 .00
Both .00 .00 .00 .00
New .13 .96 .98 1.00
Non-exposed Jurors Delay
Trial .85 .13 .10 .00
Pretrial Publicity .00 .00 .00 .00
Both .00 .00 .00 .00
New .15 .87 .90 1.00
Note: Due to rounding error some table values may not add to 100%.

The significant main effects of PTP and delay on both negative and positive PTP errors
were qualified by a significant PTP x delay interaction, Fs(2, 153) = 15.25 and 5.40, MSEs =
0.008 and 0.014, ps < .01, 2s = .13 and .09, respectively. Delay had a significant effect on
the proportion of negative PTP errors for jurors in the negative PTP and non-exposed
conditions, with jurors in the delay conditions making significantly more of these errors than
jurors in the immediate conditions (see Table 5), Fs(1, 52 and 50) = 67.91 and 4.76, MSE =
0.008, p < .04, 2s = .21 and .01, but only in the negative PTP condition did delay explain a
nontrivial amount of variance.
216 Christine L. Ruva

Table 8. Corrected Mean Proportions of Source Monitoring Responses as a Function of

Pretrial Publicity (PTP) Exposure and Delay for Experiment 2

Type of Response
Condition Negative PTP Error Positive PTP Error Trial Correct
Negative PTP Immediate .09 (.08) .03 (.06) 72 (.12)
Negative PTP Delay .30 (.14) .06 (.08) .61 (.13)
Mean .19 (.15) .05 (.07) .66 (.14)
Positive PTP Immediate .05 (.05) .10 (.09) .69 (.12)
Positive PTP Delay .07 (.08) .27 (.21) .66 (.14)
Mean .06 (.07) .19 (.19) .67 (.13)
Non-exposed Immediate .02 (.04) .04 (.06) .86 (.11)
Non-exposed Delay .07 (.09) .11 (.12) .82 (.07)
Mean .05 (.08) .08 (.11) .84 (.09)
Note. Standard deviations are presented in parentheses following their respective means. Critical source
errors include items that were incorrectly attributed to the trial or both the trial and PTP.

Delay also had a significant effect on the proportion of positive PTP critical source
memory errors for jurors in the positive PTP and non-exposed conditions, with jurors in the
delay conditions making significantly more of these errors than jurors in the immediate
conditions, Fs(1, 51 and 50) = 28.10 and 4.62, MSEs = .014, ps < .04, 2s = .12 and .02,
respectively, but only in the positive PTP condition did delay explain a nontrivial amount of
variance. These results suggest jurors’ ability to discriminate between the 2 sources of
information they were exposed to (i.e., PTP and trial evidence) dramatically decreased over
the 2 day delay. Jurors in the delay conditions who were exposed to PTP made approximately
3 times as many PTP critical source memory errors as their no-delay counterparts.

Source Monitoring Test, Correct Judgments of Trial Items

Both delay and PTP had significant effects on correct source memory judgments for trial
items (corrected for guessing: as shown in the right hand column of Table 8), Fs(1 and 2,
153) = 9.85 and 37.13, MSE = 0.01, p < .01, 2s = .04 and .31, respectively. As predicted,
jurors in the immediate conditions accurately identified significantly more of the trial items as
coming from the trial than did jurors in the delay conditions. The non-exposed jurors
accurately identified significantly more of the trial items as coming from the trial than did
jurors in the negative PTP or positive PTP conditions, F(1, 153) = 73.90, MSE = 0.01, p <
.01, 2 = .31. These differences between the jurors’ correct trial judgments appear to result
from PTP exposed participants attributing 15% or more of the trial-only items to both the trial
and the PTP articles, compared with 0% for the non-exposed participants. These PTP exposed
participants discriminated between trial and new items as well as the non-exposed
participants, but they did not discriminate as well between trial and PTP information (see
Table 7).

Credibility and Attorney Measures

The maximum possible perceived credibility score was 87. As predicted, there was a
significant main effect of PTP exposure on jurors’ ratings of defendant credibility, F(2, 153)
 Pretrial Publicity Affects Juror Decision Making and Memory 217

= 14.17, MSE = 107.25, p < .01, 2 = .14. Negative PTP jurors perceived the defendant as
less credible (M = 37.51, SD = 10.06) than jurors exposed to positive PTP or unrelated news
stories (Ms = 48.04 and 43.71, SDs = 9.18 and 11.59, respectively), F(1,153) = 23.71, MSE =
107.25, p < .01, 2 = 12. In contrast, jurors exposed to positive PTP perceived the defendant
as more credible than jurors in the negative PTP or unrelated conditions, F(1,153) = 18.22,
MSE = 107.25, p < .01, 2 =.09. The effect sizes for the effect of negative and positive PTP
on the defendant credibility rating are similar, which is contrary to what was predicted based
on the negativity bias in person perception.
There was a significant effect of PTP exposure on jurors’ ratings of the prosecuting and
defense attorneys, Fs(2, 153) = 12.93 and 3.99, MSEs = 14.92, and 12.99 ps < .05, 2s = .13
and .04, respectively. Jurors exposed to negative PTP rated the prosecuting attorney more
favorably (M = 14.56, SD = 3.73) than jurors in the positive PTP and non-exposed conditions
(Ms = 10.81 and 12.18, SDs = 9.18 and 11.59, respectively), F(1,153) = 22.70, MSE = 14.92,
p < .01, 2 = .12. In contrast, jurors exposed to positive PTP rated the prosecutor less
favorably than jurors in the negative PTP and non-exposed conditions, F(1,153) = 15.09,
MSE = 14.92, p < .01, 2 = .08. The defense attorney received significantly lower ratings
from jurors in the negative PTP condition (M = 13.07, SD = 3.81) than from jurors in the
positive PTP and non-exposed conditions (Ms = 14.94 and 14.55, SDs = 3.68 and 3.18,
respectively), F(1,153) = 7.68, MSE = 12.99, p < .01, 2 = .04.

Mediation Analyses
As with Experiment 1, one of the purposes of Experiment 2 was to explore how PTP
imparts its biasing effects on juror decision making. In Experiment 1, negative PTP critical
SM errors (negative PTP) and the defendant’s perceived credibility were found to mediate the
effects of PTP on guilt ratings. The mediation analyses presented below will examine whether
these mediational effects replicate and will also explore whether positive PTP critical SM
errors and juror’s perceptions of the attorneys (attorney ratings) might be mechanisms of the
bias effects. To explore the relationships among these variables both the negative and positive
PTP critical errors, the defendant’s perceived credibility, and both the prosecuting and
defense attorney ratings were treated as mediation variables in five mediation models of X →
M → Y (where X is PTP, Y is post-source monitoring test guilt ratings, and M is the mediating
variable) (Baron & Kenny, 1986; Shrout & Bolger, 2002).
For the two models with critical SM errors the first equation related guilt ratings to PTP
(X → Y) and was statistically significant, β = 0.79, t(159) = 4.91, p <.01 (the first equation is
the same for all 5 models and will only be presented here). The second related either the
positive or the negative critical SM errors to PTP (X → M) and were statistically significant,
βs = −0.07 and 0.06, ts(159) = -5.46 and 6.00, respectively, ps <.01. The third equation
related the guilt ratings to both PTP and critical SM errors and indicated that for both models
PTP was significant, βs = 0.69 and 0.75, ts(159) = 3.95 and 4.17, ps <.01, and critical SM
errors were not, βs = -1.45 and 0.71, ts(159) = -1.41 and 0.59, ps >.56. The indirect effects of
PTP on the guilt ratings via the mediators (positive and negative PTP SM errors) were not
significant, Sobel test z = 1.37 and 0.59 (1982), ps > .56. Therefore, neither positive nor
negative PTP critical SM errors mediated the effect of PTP on guilt ratings. This result was
unexpected given the significant mediational effect of critical SM errors on guilt rating in
218 Christine L. Ruva

Experiment 1 and may be due to the procedural differences and the significantly smaller
sample size in Experiment 2.
Another mediation analysis was performed to test the model of X → M → Y (where X is
PTP, Y is guilt ratings, and M is perceived credibility of the defendant) (Baron & Kenny,
1986; Shrout & Bolger, 2002). The second regression equation related perceived credibility of
the defendant to PTP (X → M) and was statistically significant, β = -5.27, t(159) = -5.29, p
<.01. The third related the guilt ratings to both PTP and defendant’s credibility and indicated
the defendant’s credibility was significant, β = -0.10, t(129) = -9.58, p <.01, and PTP was not
significant, β = 0.27, t(129) = 4.67, p = 0.52. The indirect effect of PTP on the guilt ratings
via the mediator (defendant credibility) was significant, Sobel test z = 4.55 (1982), p < .01.
Therefore, as in Experiment 1 the defendant’s credibility ratings significantly mediated the
effect of PTP on guilt ratings. The fact that the effect of PTP on guilt ratings was no longer
significant after being adjusted for the mediator suggests total mediation.
Two more mediation analyses were performed to test the model of X → M → Y (where X
is PTP, Y is guilt ratings, and M is jurors’ ratings of the prosecutor or the defense attorney)
(Baron & Kenny, 1986; Shrout & Bolger, 2002). The second regression equation related
either the ratings of the prosecutor or defense attorney to PTP (X → M) and were statistically
significant, βs = 1.88 and -0.94, ts(159) = 5.02 and -2.70, respectively, ps <.01. The third
equation of each model related the guilt ratings to both PTP and the mediator (either the
prosecutor or defense attorney ratings) and indicated that both were significant for both
models: (1) model with the defense ratings, β = 0.64 and -0.18, t(159) = 4.26 and -5.20, ps
<.01; and (2) the model with the prosecutor ratings, β = 0.29 and 0.28, t(159) = 2.18 and
10.78, ps < 0.05. The indirect effects of PTP on the guilt ratings via the mediators
(prosecution and defense attorney ratings) were significant, Sobel test z = 4.55 and 2.40
(1982), ps < .05. Overall, the mediation analyses suggests that the effect of PTP on guilt
ratings was mediated by perceived credibility of the defendant and jurors’ ratings of the
attorneys, but was not significantly mediated by the either positive or negative PTP critical
SM errors.

CONCLUSION
The studies presented in this chapter suggest that negative PTP about a defendant can
bias both juror and jury decision making. Even though the jurors were admonished not to use
information contained in the PTP when making decisions about the defendant’s guilt, jurors
and juries who were exposed to negative PTP had nearly twice the conviction rates as non-
exposed jurors and juries. Experiment 2 found that positive PTP about the defendant also has
a biasing effect on juror decision making, with jurors exposed to positive PTP being
significantly less likely to vote guilty, and more likely to view the defendant as credible, than
non-exposed and negative PTP exposed jurors. Although negative and positive PTP pull
verdicts and credibility ratings in opposite directions, both have biasing effects on juror
decision making. The negativity bias suggests that negative PTP should have a greater
influence on juror decision making and defendant credibility than positive PTP. There was
some evidence of the negativity bias for verdicts, guilt ratings, and defense attorney ratings
 Pretrial Publicity Affects Juror Decision Making and Memory 219

with negative PTP resulting in greater effect sizes than positive PTP, but this same trend did
not hold for defendant credibility ratings.
These experiments also found that PTP exposed jurors were more likely than non-
exposed jurors to misattributed information contained only in the PTP to evidence presented
at trial, and they were very confident when they did so. The majority of the critical source
memory errors for the exposed jurors were due to attributing this information inaccurately to
both the trial and the PTP. The jurors did not forget that they read this information in the PTP,
but they also believed that they viewed it during the trial. The belief that they had received the
information from two separate sources coupled with their high confidence in these source
monitoring errors may have made this information extremely influential on their decisions. In
Experiment 2, the positive PTP critical source memory error effect was almost identical to the
negative PTP critical source memory error effect. These results are consistent with the earlier
studies (D’Argembeau & Van der Linden, 2004; Doerken & Shimamura, 2001), in that source
memory accuracy was comparable for negative and positive information. Of course, the
present study does not have an equivalent neutral condition (the non-exposed participants
read unrelated crime articles), but the comparison of source memory errors from positive and
negative PTP suggests that both groups experienced difficulty recalling the source of the
information.
There were conflicting results for the mediational effects of the critical PTP SM errors on
guilt ratings. Experiment 1 found that these errors mediated the effect of PTP on guilt ratings.
In contrast, Experiment 2 did not find evidence for this mediation. Although it is not clear
why the mediation effect did not replicate, it may be due to methodological (e.g., delay
between trial presentation and source memory test and deliberation) and sample size
differences between the experiments.
Exposure to either positive or negative PTP influenced jurors’ perceptions of the
defendant’s credibility and suggests that PTP may operate, at least in part, by causing jurors
to form either negative (negative PTP exposure) or positive (positive PTP exposure)
impressions of the defendant. These impressions may influence the jurors’ interpretations of
trial evidence and hence their verdicts (Otto et al., 1994) which is consistent with the finding
that the credibility ratings of the defendant significantly mediated the effects of PTP on guilt
ratings. The findings for the attorney ratings are a little more complicated and suggest that
negative information was more influential than was positive information (i.e., negativity
bias). That is, exposure to negative PTP influenced jurors’ ratings of both the defense and
prosecuting attorneys, producing a pro-prosecution bias. Exposure to positive PTP influenced
jurors’ ratings only of the prosecuting attorney, producing only a weak positive bias. PTP
exposed jurors’ impressions of the attorneys may have influenced their interpretation of the
trial evidence and hence their verdicts, as suggested by our finding that attorney ratings
significantly mediated the effect of PTP on guilt ratings.
Now turning to the effects of deliberation on jury decision making, Experiment 1
suggests that these effects depend on how juror bias is measured (e.g., verdicts, credibility
ratings of the defendant, SM misattributions). For example, we found that jury deliberation
did not have a significant effect on post-deliberation measures of verdicts, guilt ratings, or
prison sentences. In contrast, the comparison of predeliberation and post-source monitoring
verdicts suggested that group deliberation attenuated the bias associated with negative PTP.
Such attenuation has been termed a “leniency shift.” Deliberations presumably highlight the
law’s reasonable doubt standard and the fact that the conviction of the innocent should be
220 Christine L. Ruva

avoided (Kerr, 1993). Although attenuation was found for individual and not group verdicts,
it does provide some reassurance for a criminal justice system that relies on juries to eliminate
or at least reduce individual biases. Unfortunately, the group verdict is the one that matters in
actual trials. Therefore, this reduction in individual bias is relevant only if it affects the group
decision or process, which in this Experiment 1 it did not.
Deliberation was also found to increase juror bias in that jurors who deliberated viewed
the defendant as less credible than jurors who did not, regardless of PTP exposure. This
finding is consistent with past research showing that groups are likely to polarize individual
biases held by a majority of group members (Davis, 1992; Davis et al., 1978; Kerr et al.,
1999). Experiment 1 suggests that this type of bias is especially important because perceived
credibility of the defendant mediated the effect of PTP on guilt ratings.
One purported benefit of utilizing juries is that they are especially good at catching their
members’ memory errors. Does the deliberation process reduce memory errors? The research
presented here cannot directly answer this question because the jurors completed the source
monitoring test individually. It can address whether prior collaboration, involving discussion
of information contained on a source monitoring test, reduces the number of critical source
monitoring errors. We found no difference in the proportion of critical SM errors for jurors in
the collaborating and nominal conditions, but we did find collaborating jurors provided more
accurate SM responses than did nominal jurors.
Deliberation did not have a significant effect on confidence about critical source memory
judgments, but it did significantly affect confidence ratings about trial items with
collaborating jurors indicating more confidence in both their accurate and inaccurate source
memory judgments. Why the confidence results differed between critical source items and
trial items is not clear. It could be that jurors spent the majority of their deliberation time
discussing trial items. After all, these items should have been highly accessible because jurors
viewed the trial just prior to deliberations. These confidence findings are consistent with past
findings that collaboration increases people’s confidence in both their accurate and inaccurate
memory judgments (Clark, et al., 1990; Stephenson & Wagner, 1989: Stephenson, et al.,
1986). These findings are noteworthy because past research has shown that juror participation
in deliberations is related juror confidence (Kassin & Wrightsman, 1988) and because juror
confidence is not predictive of juror memory (Pritchard & Keenan, 1999) the jurors who
participate most in jury deliberations are not necessarily the most accurate (Pritchard and
Keenan, 2002). Thus, jury deliberations can bolster jurors’ confidence in their inaccurate
memories and thereby increase the discussion of inaccurate information. Increased discussion
makes it more likely that inaccurate information will become part of the collaborative
memory of the trial.

Implications for Legal System

One implication of this research for the legal system is that it may be impossible for
defendant to receive a fair trial if their cases involve a large amounts of anti-defendant pretrial
publicity. This is because jurors may mistakenly use PTP information to make verdict
decisions and may form negative impressions of the defendant before the trial. Another
implication of this research is that judicial instructions admonishing juror not to use
information contained in the PTP are likely to be ineffective due to jurors’ inability to follow
 Pretrial Publicity Affects Juror Decision Making and Memory 221

them due to source memory errors or impressions they have formed about the defendant. This
research also suggests that jury deliberation is likely to be an ineffective remedy against PTP
bias and may in fact increase (polarize) juror bias.
This research also suggests that influential defendants (e.g., Michael Jackson, Martha
Stewart, Kobe Bryant) could use the press to bias the jury in their favor, making it more
difficult for prosecutors to attain a conviction if jurors interpret evidence in a biased way
based on the positive PTP. In the present research we exposed jurors to only one type of PTP
(either positive or negative). More research is needed to examine how these two types of PTP
may interact. Both sides (prosecution and defense) may try to influence public opinion by
providing information that supports their story. Would exposure to both positive and negative
PTP result in a level playing field? That is, would exposure to positive PTP moderate the
effect of negative PTP on jury verdicts? More research is also needed to examine the factors
that affect jurors’ ability to discriminate between information they receive prior to trial and
facts presented at trial (e.g., length of deliberations; type of case; amount of pretrial publicity;
modality of pretrial publicity – written, video, audiotape; and type of pretrial publicity –
emotional vs. factual). Given the pervasiveness of PTP, it is important for researchers to
continue to explore the mechanisms underlying the PTP bias in order to provide the courts
with information they need to make educated decisions about judicial remedies to combat this
bias.

APPENDIX A: A SAMPLE OF ITEMS FROM THE PRETRIAL PUBLICITY

ARTICLES AND THE SOURCE MONITORING TEST FROM
EXPERIMENTS 1 AND 2
Sample Items
Item Type Item 1 Item 2
Negative PTP Lise Bias’ body was found in the doorway Lise did not know how to use guns and
of the couple’s bedroom. disliked them.
Positive PTP Dan and Lise were planning a second Dan never wanted a gun in the house, but
honeymoon. The second honeymoon had Lise insisted on having one for self-defense.
been Dan’s idea.
Trial Lise Bias was standing by the mirror when Daniel Bias had been to the shooting range
the gun went off. on the day of his wife’s death.
New Lise’ parents had been against her marrying Just prior to his wife’s death Daniel Bias
Daniel Bias. was reported to be having an extramarital
affair.
Unrelated Crime One reason the shortages weren't detected Godshalk took another $54,493 under
Stories sooner was that domestic relations simply another scheme in which she relied on a
wasn’t balancing its checkbook on time. flaw in a computer program to cover missing
money.
Note. The full source monitoring test is available by contacting the first author Christine L. Ruva. PTP
= pretrial publicity.
222 Christine L. Ruva

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In: Encyclopedia of Cognitive Psychology (2 Volume Set) ISBN: 978-1-61324-546-0
Editor: Carla E. Wilhelm, pp. 227-243 © 2012 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 6

TP-THEORY AS NEW PERSPECTIVE

ON COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY

Koji Tanida and Ernst Pöppel

Honda R&D Co.,Ltd., Ludwig-Maximilian University,
Munich, Germany

ABSTRACT
Recently, the fact that there is anticipation before cognition in the brain processing is
elucidated by brain science, although human behavior has been explained as cognition-
judgment-operation loop. The TP-theory (Temporal Predictive behavior model proposed
by Tanida and Pöppel in 2006) is a model which applies anticipation-operation-
comparison loop as new information processing with temporal frame to human behavior
including automobile driving. Why is driving referred? Driving an automobile is an
example of a goal-directed activity with high complexity in which different behavioral
elements have to be integrated and brought into a sequential order. On the basis of the
reafference principle and experimental results on temporal perception and cognitive
control, we propose a hierarchical model of driving behavior which can also be adapted
to other goal-directed activities. Driving is conceived of as being controlled by
anticipatory neuronal programs; if these programs are disrupted by unpredictable stimuli
which require an instantaneous reaction, behavioral control returns after completion of
the reactive mode to the anticipatory mode of driving. In the model different levels of
anticipation windows are distinguished which, however, are interconnected, in a bi-
directional way: A. Strategic level with a representation of the driving activity from the
beginning to reaching the final goal; B. Segmented tactical level with the sequence of
necessary milestones to reach the goal, which are characterized by adaptive scenarios; C.
Maneuver – in general operational level, where actions like passing another car or
keeping a lane are controlled; this level represents learned activities which have become
automatized; D. Short term integration level of two to three seconds, which allows
immediate anticipations; this temporal window represents the subjective present; E.
Synchronization level for sensory motor control and complexity reduction within
neuronal assemblies which allows the creation of mental content and consciously
available categories. A flow diagram schematically describes different driving situations
stressing the anticipatory mode of control. As mentioned before, this model is able to
228 Koji Tanida and Ernst Pöppel

apply to riding a motorcycle or a bicycle, cooking, gardening, DIY etc.. This chapter
gives the general explanation about the TP-theory.

Keywords: driving behavior, anticipation, feed-forward control, feed-back-control,

reafference principle, corollary discharge, temporal perception

“Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.”

Albert Einstein

“Brevity is the soul of wit.”

William Shakespeare, "Hamlet"

1. INTRODUCTION
von Holst and Mittelstaedt (1950) wrote down in their article (in German) “Since the
neurophysiology was born, the main question is what regular relationship is between an
impulse to the central-nervous-system inducted by a stimulus and an impulse directly or
indirectly returned from the central-nervous-system; between afferent and efferent. It has
been well known that there are many facts which cannot be explained by this classical
reaction-theory, nevertheless many physiologists think ‘a cause’ of each central nervous event
is led only by ‘a stimulus’ ”
And continuing furthermore, “It is very natural that they think so. Because nobody wants
to abandon a simple theory from his own motive unless a more excellent theory appears. And
furthermore, it is quite natural because it had been regarded as ‘a fact’ for a long time. The
characteristic of the concept we newly induced is making a complete change of the point of
view by 180 degree. That is, we didn’t raise a question of the relationship between given
afferent and its inducted efferent; ‘a reaction’, but we conversely examined central-nervous-
system using afferent inducted through effector organs and receptor organs from efferent
(named ‘reafferent’)”.
Their accomplishment was a discovery of anticipation-operation-comparison
informational loop replacing traditional cognition-judgment-operation loop. Furthermore
there have been many discoveries progressively in brain-science. For example, Pöppel (1997)
pinned down the fact that the longest duration of one consciousness is almost three seconds.
Thus the characteristics of the brain which controls human behavior and thinking have been
elucidated, and then it has been possible to explain theoretically human behavior and
thinking. Tanida and Pöppel proposed TP-theory (Temporal Predictive behavior model) using
recent brain-scientific and psychological knowledge in order to explain human behavior,
thinking, and stress-feeling in 2006.
This new theory serves as a compass to understand human in cognitive psychology and
must be helpful for development of artificial intelligence (AI) in application. Here, the TP-
theory including the theoretical backgrounds is discussed illustrating automobile driving
behavior as one example.
 TP-Theory as New Perspective on Cognitive Psychology 229

Photo Prof. Dr. Erich von Holst’s grave located to the south of Munich, Germany. (German behavioral
physiologist and also pioneer of flapping flight, November 28, 1908 - May 26, 1962). Photo by Tanida.

2. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND OF TP-THEORY –

THE REAFFERENCE PRINCIPLE
A theoretical frame for the development of an appropriate model is provided by the
reafference principle by von Holst and Mittelstaedt, (1950), as it represents operational
features which can be generalized for an explanation of complex and hierarchically structured
behavior. In fact, the basic ideas of the reafference principle go back to the nineteenth century
when both Mach (1885) and von Helmholtz (1896) tried to understand how perceptual
stability can be experienced in spite of the fact that the sense organs are stimulated when we
move around in the world. Ernst Mach in his seminal book “The Analysis of Sensations”
(“Die Analyse der Empfindungen”) made the point, that space perception must necessarily be
linked to motor processes. He described that stability of space is only given, if eye
movements are under voluntary control. If the eyes are moved passively up and down, objects
are no longer experienced as being located within a stable space, but appear to jump in the
vertical direction. Similarly, patients who after a brain injury no longer can move their eyes,
also experience spatial instability. Apparently, as Mach has suggested, voluntary impulses
and visual signal have to be matched to create the apparent spatial ability. (It is obvious that
the problem of spatial stability also applies to driving: How is it possible that under normal
circumstances we experience the world around us to be stable and we are moving with the
car?)
The details of a solution for spatial stability (and other modes of behavior) have been
modeled by von Holst and Mittelstaedt (1950) with the reafference principle; in Figure 1 the
230 Koji Tanida and Ernst Pöppel

basic concept is graphically illustrated. From a higher (strategic) center Zn a command K is

given to a lower center (Z2); from there a neuronal command is sent to an executive
center (Z1) which in turn innervates (by an efference E) an effector (EFF).
Simultaneously, a copy of the efferent command E is put into a store (EK: efference
copy). After execution of the movement, an afferent signal A (or the “reafference”) is
sent to Z1, where this reafferent signal is compared with the efference copy (EK). If A
(with a minus sign) corresponds to EK (with a plus sign), both signals cancel each other,
and the sensorimotor cycle is completed. If EK and A do not match, a message (M) is
sent to Z2 and Zn to correct or to re-initiate the sensorimotor cycle until it finally comes
to an end. This model refers to short term behavioral acts and explains for instance
perceptual stability for the organism. (This concept also may explain behavioral
problems: If for instance in a car simulator visual information which simulates the
impression of driving for the visual system is not matched by information from the
vestibular system because there is no or only very little stimulation of the vestibular
receptors, this mismatch of information represents inadequate reafferent information to
the organism, and car sickness may be the consequence.)

Zn
K
Z2
+
M
Z1
+ E
- EK +
A

EFF

Figure 1. Original concept of the reafference principle by von Holst and Mittelstaedt (1950); the model
is meant to explain self-initiated behavior of an organism and it provides a frame for an understanding
of spatial stability. (For details see text).

The basic idea of the reafference principle has stimulated a lot of theoretical and
experimental work allowing the development of conceptual frames for many behavioral
activities. In particular, Teuber (1960) has put the reafference principle into a broader frame
by developing the concept of “corollary discharge” which on an experimental basis has been
suggested previously by Sperry (1950). Teuber suggested an anticipatory adjustment for all
perceptual processes. With this generalization, the general notion of anticipation has been
linked to the reafference principle, and it is operationally associated with the efference copy.
A command given to the effector system is preserved as a copy within a neuronal assembly
(or perhaps in single neurons), and this copy serves as a basis for anticipation. When an action
has come to an end, the efference copy is erased, which signals to the organism the
 TP-Theory as New Perspective on Cognitive Psychology 231

completion of the action, and consequently anticipation or prediction are cancelled. This
mechanism enables the organism to distinguish afferent stimulation of the sense organs due to
changes in the environment from reafferent stimulation of the sense organs which is due to
self produced movements or actions; both stimulations in the extreme case might result in
identical patterns of neuronal activities on the receptive surface, but they can be disentangled
by the internal monitoring system as described by the reafference principle or corollary
discharges.
It has been an experimental question and still is, how the efference copy or corollary
discharges might be implemented on the neuronal level. Only recently, a cellular basis of the
corollary discharge has been described (Poulet and Hedwig, 2006). A network
implementation involving both cortical and subcortical structures has been suggested by
Sommer and Wurtz (2004). An essential requirement for a neuronal implementation is the
crosstalk between participating neuronal assemblies, and a particular conceptual frame for an
interaction between separate assemblies has been suggested by Edelman and Tononi (2000)
with the notion of “reentry”. They state that reentry is “the fundamental integrative
mechanism in higher brains” (p. 102); and later they say that reentry is a process of
“ongoing and recursive signaling between separate brain maps along massively parallel
anatomical connections, most of which are reciprocal. It alters and is altered by the
activity of the target areas it interconnects“ (p. 106). Thus, reentry is conceived of being a
general format for perceptual organization and motor coordination.
The reafference principle, corollary discharge and the derived notion of anticipation has
played in the past and is now playing an increasingly important role in the understanding of
behavioral control and also of modeling human behavior. One example is the description of
economic behavior and how it might be rooted within neuronal programs by Glimcher
(2003); he refers explicitly to the reafference principle. Another example is Hawkins (2004)
who in his analysis of intelligence focuses on the importance of prediction; the brain in his
view is basically an anticipative organ. Furthermore, in his theory of the development of
consciousness Merker (2005) puts the reafference principle into the center of his reasoning.
But also in the field of modeling human behavior basic concepts of the reafference principle
are included. Körner and colleagues (1997) for instance state that the neocortex constructs a
model of the environment and compares the sensory input to this model; after matches
between the two have been removed, the “ex-afference” is further analyzed. The perceptual
machinery and the interpretation of the percepts are used to generate and verify internal
hypotheses. Anticipation is also the key element of a model for perception developed by
Gross and colleagues (1999); in their action-perception-cycle they do not separate perception
and the generation of behavior as distinct neuronal programs, their goal being “the synthesis
of adaptive behavior in truly anticipating sensorimotor systems” (p1127). Besides its
importance for general concepts of behavior or for the development of explanatory models,
the reafference principle has proved to be also a useful tool in psychiatry. For instance
Lindner and colleagues (2005) have observed in schizophrenic patients a high correlation
between measures of oculomotor control and disorders of agency; they found that the poorer
the efference copy was represented during an oculomotor task, the higher were the problems
in the expression of self-reference in such patients. (This extremely interesting result would
also indicate that a rather simple psychophysical test might be used for diagnostic purposes.)
In addition to the theoretical and experimental developments as derived from the
reafference principle it should be noted, however, that similar theoretical notions have been
232 Koji Tanida and Ernst Pöppel

formulated like in the TOTE-concept of Miller and colleagues (1960); in this classical
analysis the authors state that behavior can be described as a sequence of a test phase (T) in
which a subject compares the current state with a goal state; if a discrepancy is registered an
operation (O) is initiated to reduce the discrepancy leading to a second test (T); if there are no
longer any discrepancies registered, i.e. the behavioral goal is reached, the system goes to the
exit operator (E). These previous analyses and models, i.e. the reafference principle, the
corollary discharge, the notion of anticipation or prediction, and the TOTE-model provide a
useful conceptual background for a model of driving behavior. For such a model it is,
however, also necessary to take into account information on temporal perception (Zakay and
Block, 1997) as it has already been suggested experimentally how important temporal control
can be for safe driving (Nagiri et al., 1994; Uno and Hiramatsu, 1999).

3. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND OF TP-THEORY:

INTEGRATED TIME WINDOWS
Human behavior is embedded within many temporal frames which are defined by
geophysical cycles like days or years, by the social environment which determines for
instance the time of work, or by the neuronal machinery of the brain itself which creates
temporal intervals for specific activities (Pöppel, 1997). These temporal frames give structure
to behavior, and one such frame is provided by the circadian oscillator (Aschoff, 1965) which
determines the phases of wakefulness and sleeping. Looking at the different activities during
one day, one observes that many of them represent goal-directed or anticipatory behavior.
Such actions may last for several minutes up to hours; examples would be preparing a meal,
having a meeting with colleagues, going shopping, giving a talk, doing sports, enjoying
gardening, or driving an automobile, a motorcycle or a bicycle to the workplace. All these
activities are characterized by similar properties: On a “strategic level” a person has made a
decision for a specific activity and has allocated a certain amount of time; such a decision
may remain implicit or unconscious as it can be part of the heuristics of regular daily
behavior. To successfully reach a goal, lower levels of behavioral control have to be
implemented like observing certain milestones in a sequential order, performing specific
actions under sensorimotor control, or integrating sensory information within short time
intervals. Driving an automobile, a motorcycle or bicycle within such a defined context
provides a good example for a better understanding of the different behavioral elements
which are necessary to reach an anticipated goal. This aspect of the sequential organization of
human behavior (Lashley, 1951), i.e. in particular anticipatory control in traffic behavior, has
not yet obtained the attention it deserves in spite of the value of such models like the “zero-
risk theory” by Näätänen and Summala (1976) or the “risk-homeostasis theory” of Wilde
(1988); in particular the hierarchical organization of temporally embedded control levels
should be analyzed in more detail, expanding a view which previously has been given for
instance by Summala (1985, 1996) who stressed the hierarchical organization of driving.
One of the biggest challenges of the nervous system is to deal with is the high complexity
of neuronal information (Pöppel, 2004). One source of complexity comes from stimulus
transduction which is principally different in the sense modalities like audition or vision,
taking less than 1 ms in the auditory system and more than 20 ms in the visual system. Thus,
 TP-Theory as New Perspective on Cognitive Psychology 233

auditory and visual information arrive at different times in central structures. Matters become
more complicated by the fact that the transduction time in the visual modality is flux-
dependent, i.e. that surfaces with less flux require more transduction time at the receptor
level. Thus, to see an object with areas of different brightness or to see somebody talking,
different temporal availabilities of local activities within the visual modality and similarly
different local activities across the two involved modalities have to be overcome. For
intersensory integration besides biophysical problems as given by the transduction times also
physical problems have to be considered. The distance of objects like other cars for instance
when driving on a highway is obviously never predetermined. Thus, the speed of sound
becomes a critical factor. Approximately at a distance of 10 m transduction time in the retina
(under photopic adaptation conditions) corresponds to the time the sounds requires to travel to
the recipient. Up to this „horizon of simultaneity“ auditory information arrives earlier in the
brain; beyond this horizon, visual information is earlier. Again, there must be some kind of
mechanism which overcomes this temporal problem. Besides biophysical and physical
aspects there is a further challenge introduced by the specific brain architecture (Nauta and
Feirtag, 1986). As has been shown in neuroanatomical studies there is a large degree of
divergence in the projection systems. It has been estimated that each central neuron innervates
approximately 10 000 other neurons. This means that local information is spread out over a
broad field of receptive neurons and because of the different transmission times along the
axons, which is for instance based on the different lengths of axons this local information is
not only distributed spatially but it is also spread out over time. A further aspect of
complexity is introduced by the mode of functional representation. Experiments using
imaging technology like functional MRI indicate that each brain state is characterized by a
spatiotemporal pattern of distributed modular activities (e.g., Osaka, 2003). Different modules
in the visual modality (being for instance responsible for color or motion perception) are co-
activated, and their activity has to be linked. Thus, not only on the cellular but also on the
modular level the brain has to deal with integration of spatially distributed and temporally ill-
defined neuronal information.
During driving the brain is permanently confronted with changing stimulus situations,
and how the brain may overcome this problem of complexity has to be included into a model
on driving behavior.
It is suggested that the problems mentioned above can be overcome if the nervous system
uses stimulus triggered neuronal oscillations (Pöppel, 1997; Podvigin et al., 2004). One
period of such an oscillation is thought to represent the formal basis of an elementary
integration unit within which temporally and spatially distributed information is integrated.
There is plenty of experimental evidence for such system states in the time domain of 30 to
40 ms; evidence comes from single cell studies in the sensory and motor system, from studies
on evoked potentials, from observations on reaction times or latencies in eye movements and
from temporal order threshold. Strong support comes for instance from experiments with
patients who have to undergo a general anesthesia.
In this situation the oscillatory activity within the neuronal assemblies which presumably
represent such system states, is suppressed, the result being that such patients process no
sensory information at all. This oscillatory process which is probably implemented in the
cortico-thalamic pathway provides a formal framework for complexity reduction, and it is
believed to be the neuronal basis for the creation of „primordial events“, i.e., the building
blocks of conscious activity (see level E in Figure 2).
234 Koji Tanida and Ernst Pöppel

On a next level of complexity reduction the primordial events are linked together.
Different experimental paradigms suggest an integration interval of approximately 2 to 3
seconds. Experimental support comes from different domains like temporal perception
proper, speech, movement control, vision and audition, and also short-term memory. All these
observations suggest that neuronal activities are temporally segmented into intervals of a few
seconds and that this segmentation is based on an automatic (pre-semantic) integration
process providing a temporal platform for conscious activity. It should be stressed that the
temporal platform does not have the characteristics of a physical constant but that an
operating range of approximately 2 to 3 seconds is basic to mental operations; (obviously, one
has to expect some subjective variability for such a temporal integration window).
What is the experimental evidence? If subjects have to reproduce the duration of either an
auditory or a visual stimulus one observes veridical reproductions with small variance up to 2
to 3 seconds, and large errors of reproduction with a strong tendency for a shorter
reproduction for longer intervals.
It appears as if short intervals can be experienced as a whole while longer intervals
temporally disintegrate, i.e., during short intervals of a few seconds it is possible to focus
one's attention on specific events.
A qualitatively different paradigm providing further insight into the integration process
comes from studies on temporal reversal of ambiguous figures. If stimuli can be perceived
with two perspectives (like a vase or two faces looking at each other) there is an automatic
shift of perceptual content after approximately 3 seconds. Such a perceptual shift also occurs
with ambiguous auditory material, such as the phoneme sequence KU-BA-KU where one
hears either KUBA or BAKU; one can subjectively not prevent that after approximately 3
seconds the alternative percept takes possession of conscious content. Temporal integration
for intervals of 2 to 3 seconds is also seen in sensorimotor control. If a subject is requested to
synchronize a regular sequence of auditory stimuli with finger taps, stimuli are anticipated
with very small variance by some tens of milliseconds (Mates et al, 1994; Miyake et al.,
2004).
This kind of sensorimotor synchronization is, however, only possible within the operating
range of a few seconds. If the next stimulus lies too far in the future (like 5 seconds) it is not
possible to program an anticipatory movement that is precisely linked to stimulus occurrence;
in such a case movements become irregular and subjects prefer to react to the stimulus instead
of anticipating it. Further observations on the duration of intentional movements gave similar
numerical values. As these observations are based on qualitatively different experimental or
observational paradigms it is proposed that temporal integration in the range of 2 to 3 seconds
is a general property of the neuro-cognitive machinery.
This universal integration process is automatic and pre-semantic, i.e. it is not determined
by what is processed, but it defines a temporal window within which explicit or implicit
activities are implemented (see level D in Figure 2).
Both temporal mechanisms, the one on complexity reduction in a high frequency domain
and the other one on temporal integration of just a few seconds have to be included into a
model of driving behavior.
 TP-Theory as New Perspective on Cognitive Psychology 235

4. THE TP-THEORY - HIERARCHICAL AND DYNAMIC STRUCTURE OF

GOAL-DIRECTED BEHAVIOR
On the basis of the considerations of the previous two sections it is possible to formulate
a hierarchical model of operational anticipation windows in traffic behavior. Although it is
predominantly referred to “driving an automobile” the model equally applies to other modes
of transportation like riding a motorcycle or a bicycle, and it explains also goal-directed
walking behavior in general. In the model five operational levels are distinguished (Figure 2).
These levels (A to E) represent different operations from the beginning of driving until
reaching the final goal. Level A refers to the long-term perspective on a strategic level where
the final goal (with necessary intermediate milestones) is anticipated. Before beginning to
drive the purpose of driving and the goal are determined. The driver allocates an approximate
time interval for the trip on the basis of previous knowledge of the traffic situation or on the
basis of information collected from such sources like the navigation system. To be able to do
this a subjective representation of time and the ability to estimate time in advance are required
(Zakay and Block, 1997). Level B is embedded within level A and it represents specific
milestones to reach the final goal. On this more tactical level specific segments are defined
like streets, corners or landmarks that indicate the present position of the vehicle. The driver
monitors on this level the performance, i.e. whether the strategic plan to reach the final goal
in due time can be maintained; thus, again monitoring of time is necessary (which can be
supported by a technical monitoring system). On level C specific maneuvers are represented,
again with a shorter time perspective compared to the higher tactical level. On this level
driving competence becomes important like passing a car, keeping the lane, or approaching a
corner. Whereas levels A and B represent higher cognitive operations, on level C
sensorimotor control is required which has been developed individually through driving
experience. Novice drivers mainly concentrate their attention to this level, often neglecting
the higher levels of operational control. Gaining driving competence means that the driver can
maneuver his vehicle effortlessly which allows more attentional resources for the strategic or
tactical level; skilled drivers can anticipate better (Kojima, 1995; Nagai et al., 1997). An even
shorter term anticipative control level is implemented on level D using the temporal platform
of approximately 3 seconds as an operational window. This level provides the behavioural
elements which are necessary for the next higher maneuver level. For instance steering the
vehicle requires a temporal platform of a few seconds in which the future position of the
vehicle is anticipated; if one would react only, the speed of driving would have to be reduced
substantially (which under critical situations is actually the case). The lowest level E of this
model refers to high frequency neuronal processes in the domain of some tens of milliseconds
(see above) that serve short term temporal integration and complexity reduction in the
sensorimotor and perceptual systems and, thus, creating also a temporal frame for decisions
(Körner et al., 1999). Whereas the low frequency processes (starting with level A) are
dominated by explicit representations, higher frequency processes (in particular level D and
E) constitute hardware properties of the brain and, thus, remain outside an explicit control. It
should be noted, however, that operations on the higher levels of the hierarchy may remain
implicit, if for instance certain routes are used regularly allowing the construction of an
internal heuristics. Such heuristics allow more effortless driving, and deliberations may occur
without paying overt attention to the specific circumstances of the traffic (Dijksterhuis et al.,
236 Koji Tanida and Ernst Pöppel

2006). Basically, the hierarchical structure of the model integrates both explicit or conscious
activities and implicit or unconscious activities; the explicit processes refer mainly to a longer
time perspective, (if specific heuristics have not taken over), whereas the implicit processes
represent short-term operations of neuronal systems.

start goal

Long term A
<Explicit
representation> strategic level (planning a trip, anticipating the final goal, …)

B
scale of time windows

potential interaction of levels

segmented tactical level (checking time, place, route, street signs, …)

C
maneuver level (keeping lane, obeying traffic rules, approaching a curve, …)

D
anticipative control level (braking, accelerating, steering, …) ~3 s

Short term E
<Implicit sensorimotor and perceptual level (integrating information, …) ~30ms
processing>

start goal
time (hours, minutes, seconds, milliseconds)

Figure 2. Hierarchical model of operational anticipation windows. Five levels are distinguished from
long term to short term control; with the exception of the lowest one all levels can interact with each
other in a bi-directional way. (For details see text).

As seen on the right side of the Figure 2, different levels may interact with each other
(with the possible exception of level E). Specific driving situations may feed back from level
C to B, and to A (for further details see Figure 3), or conversely, the higher levels may
modulate the lower operational levels. If on the segmental tactical level a disruption has
occurred (like for instance an accident that results in a slowing down of the entire traffic) the
driver may have to change his strategy on level A; at the same time he may alter his driving
behavior on the maneuver level by trying to pass other cars what he normally would not do. If
not enough time has been allocated for the entire trip, level A defines constraints of driving
behavior for all the lower levels of operation; the driver may increase his speed to
resynchronize with the anticipated milestones on level B, driving behavior will be adapted
accordingly on the maneuver level C, and short-term anticipative control on level D draws
higher attention.
For all the levels in this model (with the exception of level E which is necessary for
providing the mental content and without which there would not be any activity on any of the
higher levels) the principle of anticipation applies. On the strategic level the final goal is
anticipated, and to reach the goal all the lower levels of anticipatory control are necessary.
Thus, the highest level is crucially dependent on the functioning of the lower operational
 TP-Theory as New Perspective on Cognitive Psychology 237

levels. The purpose of driving could not be kept, if the segmented tactical level, the maneuver
level, the anticipative control level, or the lowest sensorimotor and perceptual level would be
out of control. Conversely, however, goal-directed driving would not be possible, if a goal
would not be defined. Such driving sometimes happens if no purpose is chosen, and the driver
just drives to enjoy driving itself. In this case levels A and B are missing or they remain
implicit, but the driver is still dependent on the operational levels C, D and E. For goal
directed driving, however, a bi-directional influence has to be implemented to allow control
of driving and flexible adaptations to specific driving situation.
The importance of anticipatory control in driving is described with a flow diagram in
Figure 3 for a specific driving situation. In the beginning a strategy is selected for the entire
trip (“start”) anticipating the final goal. After an evaluation of the traffic situation, the driver
begins to drive. The anticipation of an intermediate goal on the maneuver level (see Figure 2)
results in the selection and initiation of a movement program (Grillner et al., 2005);
simultaneously, an efference copy is stored. The movement program leads to a driving
operation, and the driver receives information on the result of his driving. In parallel self
monitoring of the driver is made possible. Next, the anticipated goal is compared with the
result of driving and if the anticipation is matched by the result (small difference), the next
operation within this feed-forward mode can be entrained. Within this anticipatory mode
which is conceived of as being the dominant mode of driving, the subjective state of the
driver is a feeling of comfort. If, however, the comparison of anticipation and the driving
result leads to a great difference, i.e. if anticipation is violated, a new operational route is
opened.
Additional information has to be processed, and within an operational time window a
choice has to be made between two alternatives: If there is sufficient time for voluntary
control, the driver can immediately go back to the anticipatory mode (left side of Figure 3)
having suffered only a short interruption. If, however, there is not enough time for voluntary
control, the driver is forced into the reactive mode of driving, or there may be no reaction at
all (like in an accident).
If a reaction is possible, new afferent information dependent on the situation will
determine further steps. Driving may be continued in a controllable way. If, however, the
situation is uncontrollable, adjustment of driving is necessary, or even a new strategy has to
be selected. The new strategy may imply to stop driving altogether.
The complementarity of the anticipatory feed-forward mode of driving leading to the
feeling of comfort, and the reactive feed-back mode resulting in a feeling of discomfort
(major box with the two shaded regions) is embedded within the next operational level (see
level B in Figure 2).
The driving situation on the maneuver level is linked to the tactical level, and again on
this higher level, anticipation and driving results are compared. A small difference indicates
that the driver has reached a milestone, or he has arrived at the final goal. If the driver has not
arrived yet, the internal control system of the brain goes back to the general evaluation of the
situation (see top of Figure 3). However, if the difference is great, additional information has
to be processed, and the feedback loop (resulting in discomfort) brings the internal control
system on another way back to the evaluation of the situation. In general, driving in this
model is always attracted to the anticipatory mode as this mode provides the neuronal basis
for the feeling of comfort.
238 Koji Tanida and Ernst Pöppel

start
start
m
i plem entation ofstrategy
implementation of strategy long term perspective
new strategy
strategy

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evaluation uatisituation
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stop driving
begin oror
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e.g. aneuverel vellevel

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Figure 3. Flow diagram of potential driving situations. Feed-forward and feed-back modes interact with
each other; however, the neuro-cognitive machinery is always attracted to the anticipatory mode of
driving which is characterized by more effortless processing of information. (For details see text).

Although the anticipatory mode as represented by feed-forward control is a dominant

feature of the driving model, the operational openness for feedback control is essential. Feed-
forward and feedback control loops also reflect top-down and bottom-up aspects of
information processing. Whereas the feed-forward anticipatory mode can also be looked at as
top-down processing, the feedback reactive mode can be interpreted as bottom-up processing.
The complementarity of both processing modes is a critical element of this model of
driving behavior, and this general notion of a dual control is supported by similar concepts for
instance by Desmurget and Grafton (2003) who stress the necessity of an integration of the
two loops, by Schill and colleagues (2001) who have suggested the necessity of bottom-up
and top-down control in oculomotor behavior, or by Summala (2000) who described these
two control modes for specific driving situations.The model presented here goes beyond the
different driving models which have been described by Michon (1985). And this model was
verified experimentally by Tanida and Pöppel (2006) and already empirically by you readers.
 TP-Theory as New Perspective on Cognitive Psychology 239

CONCLUSION
As has been outlined above, the TP-Theory provides a new, or in particular a
complementary view towards cognitive processing by stressing the importance of
anticipation. It can be assumed that the reason why rare items often are missed in visual
search (Wolfe et al. 2005) is due to the fact that an anticipatory frame ( Pöppel, 2006 ) is not
available. Traditionally, it is assumed that perceptual processes are mainly under the control
of sensory input. A famous statement from epistemology says that “nothing is in the mind that
has not been in the senses”. Given such a context it is no wonder that in experimental
psychology perceptual processes are mainly analyzed by presenting stimuli which a subject
can not anticipate. Great care is taken in experimental settings to randomize the occurrence of
stimuli. It is believed that one can obtain insight into perceptual processes and cognitive
evaluations only or mainly by “surprising” the subject with a stimulus. Thus, one can call this
kind of sensory processing “surprise perception”.
It is no question that this paradigm has provided important insights into the cognitive
machinery of humans; it is certainly correct to say that using reaction times and their
modulations by specific factors has led to a side corpus of knowledge. One such domain of
knowledge refers for instance to temporal processing in the range of milliseconds or seconds
(e.g. Pöppel 1997, 2004 ). However does “surprise perception” reflect reality? In fact only
rarely are we “surprised” by a completely new situation. Under normal circumstances,
perceptions support or confirm what has been already “anticipated”. It is therefore suggested
to talk also about “support perception”. One may use a phrase like: “What is new in the
world?” reflecting processes in the cognitive machinery which compare an anticipation about
a situation with the real situation. This view is one of the main features of the TP-Theory.
The model presented here is not only of theoretical interest by providing an expanding
frame for understanding cognitive processes, but is also of practical importance. Obvious
scenarios of application are the implementation and control of general strategies ( like in
economy or politics ), a deeper understanding of communication, in particular inter-cultural
communication, and also for Human-Machine-Interface (HMI ). It is believed that modern
ergonomics can only become “cognitive ergonomics” if the anticipatory mode of sensory and
cognitive processing is appreciated. If one looks at driving behaviour one can conclude that
by including this new way of thinking in the construction of HMI, both comfort will be
increased and risk will be decreased.
Essential knowledge for understanding cognitive processing comes from temporal
perception ( Pöppel 1997, 2004 ), but also from chronobiology ( Aschoff, 1965; Roenneberg
and Merrow 2005; Tanaka et al., 1993 ), from physiological regulations ( Tanida, 2001 ) or
from psychological observations ( Tanida, 2000; Hotta and Tanida, 2005 ). Although this
knowledge is important in itself it has to be stressed that these different factors play an
important role in modulating the different processes on the various levels of the model, but all
these factors do not change the structure of the model itself.
If one takes for example “fatigue” as a factor in driving behaviour, one can state that
fatigue is strongly influenced by the diurnal rhythm of all functions. As the five different
levels of the model are interconnected in a bi-directional way, one may make the following
conclusion: First signs of fatigue may effect the operational level, but by doing so, the upper
and lower levels of processing are also influenced. Fatigue can result in neglecting tactical
240 Koji Tanida and Ernst Pöppel

options and possibly missing the initiation of a new strategy. As driving is always goal
oriented, the selection of content, i.e. of what is consciously represented can be effected, as
attention mechanisms also suffer from fatigue. As a consequence what is processed within the
3-second-window of subjective presence, i.e. what is integrated to allow quick decisions
within a short-term frame, will also be affected.
Important new input about cognitive processing comes from research on the
representation of our body schema ( Iriki et al., 1996; Mararita and Iriki, 2004 ) or on
“embodiment” in general ( Pfeifer and Scheier, 1999 ). This new knowledge suggests a new
kind of HMI, and the development of “symbiotic engineering”. The TP-Theory provides a
framework to include these important new discoveries. To do so another aspect of cognitive
processing has to be mentioned, namely the necessary distinction between the internal point
of view and the external point of view. Usually in classical studies in cognitive processing
and also in engineering one focuses on the external point of view and explicit information
processing. What is usually neglected in such an approach is the internal point of view,
sometimes also referred to as the “empathic” relation. Cognitive processing, however, is
characterized by both, i.e. having an abstract external view toward a problem and being
empathically related to a situation. In the hierarchical model these two modes of subjectivity
are represented in such a way that the upper levels ( strategy and tactics ) emphasize explicit
knowledge and the external viewpoint, whereas the lower levels , in particular the second
lowest level, provides a framework for the internal point of view or the empathic relation. In
particular this level of approximately 3 seconds ( Pöppel, 1997 ) creates a subjective window
of presence within which “embodiment” is realized. Man and machine are blended, and a
feeling of unity is created that does not require an explicit cognitive representation. This
subjective impression of unity of man and machine, of the driver and the vehicle, is the proof
of successful symbiotic engineering.
Finally, the TP-Theory may give some useful input into the development of intelligent
robots ( Moravec, 1988 ). As has been shown it is essential for advanced robotics to merge
top-down and bottom-up processing ( Kaku, 1998 ). As is indicated above the model
presented here has included a switch that allows a change between top-down and bottom-up
processing, as the flow diagram in Figure 3 demonstrates. Most importantly, the TP-Theory
allows the integration of both, bottom-up and top-down processing, thus being open for new
information if it is necessary ( bottom-up, reactive mode, “surprise perception” ), but usually
operates in the anticipatory mode ( top-down, “support perception” ) comparing on the basis
of the classical re-afference principle ( von Holst and Mittelstaedt, 1950 ) stimuli as processed
in a window of presence with the explicit or implicit goal of action.

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In: Encyclopedia of Cognitive Psychology (2 Volume Set) ISBN: 978-1-61324-546-0
Editor: Carla E. Wilhelm, pp. 245-272 © 2012 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 7

LEARNING STRATEGIES AND APPROACHES OF

UNIVERSITY STUDENTS:
THE CHALLENGE OF THE 21ST CENTURY

Nora Irene Abate*

Universidad Nacional de Tucumán, Argentina

ABSTRACT
This work is based on a research on the learning strategies used by the students who
attend the last year at the faculty of Psychology at the National University of Tucuman, in
Argentina. In the different levels of education, several problems have been observed in
the learning processes. The cognitive approach provides the suitable theoretical
framework to include/understand and to analyze the learning strategies. The hypothesis of
this research was that the general average of the qualifications obtained by the students of
the fifth year of the university career of Psychology is related to the usage of learning
strategies: acquisition, codification, recovery and support. The examples are supported by
the application of a scale of learning strategies, (ACRA) of Roman and Gallego (1994),
in a random sample of students who attended the fifth year in the career of Psychology.
The conclusions allow asserting that some students preferably used the strategies of
acquisition and codification, as a way of learning limited to the requirements of the task
that allowed them to pass the subject. However, the others used all the strategies,
preferably those of recovery and support. That is to say, that besides learning they know
how to do it.
The results allowed me to verify the hypothesis and to establish the positive and
meaningful relation between the averages of the results and the learning strategies. The
importance of these findings will allow reframing the processes of teaching and learning
with the idea of training a critical, reflective and strategic student. Key words: Learning
Strategies of teaching and learning.

*
Corresponding author: Magister of Educational Psychology, Professor of Educational Psychology; Professor of
Cognitive Psychology, Researcher. Pablo Rojas Paz 78, capital San miguel de Tucumán, CP : 4000, Tucumán,
Argentina, personal telephone number: 03814353477, office telephone number : 0381156096228,
[email protected]
246 Nora Irene Abate

INTRODUCTION
The society of the 21st century, marked by relativism, uncertainty and transience of
knowledge is a challenge for education. In educational research, an idea that comes with a lot
of weight is to define it as a society of knowledge and information. As a consequence of
scientific, technical, economic and social development, the knowledge changes rapidly. It is a
highly competitive society which considers it essential that students develop in learning to
think, relate and understand, in addition to acquire, develop, organize, retrieve and use
knowledge. Therefore, the challenge it presents to education is a path of change in the
training process towards a student’s profile that uses its resources effectively and
strategically, i.e., to form students to guide their knowledge towards learning goals, so that,
faced with a situation they know what to do, with clear awareness of how, when and why,
according to The New Culture of Learning. (Well and Monereo, 1999) Fernando Sabater’s
assertions in his book The Value of Education are instructive about the new ways of learning:
“The ability to learn is made of many questions and some answers, of personal searching and
not of institutionally imposed findings, and criticism and doubt rather than satisfied
obedience to what is commonly established ....”( Sabater, 1997: 50)
However, the different levels of education are full of obstacles in the learning process. In
this regard, UNESCO, in 2002, undertook an investigation in 41 countries on five continents,
to learn the ability of students at the age of 15m faced with the challenges the contemporary
society will propose in different areas of the knowledge. The results obtained in our country
show the difficulty to respond to the instructions in reading and critical analysis of texts and
thoughtful writing and understanding. They also show difficulties in linking prior knowledge
with new information since they are only able to make connections with their basic everyday
knowledge. (UNESCO, 1999)
According to this scenario in the new millennium, higher education is immersed in
economic, political and social issues, that complicate the future of the institution and the
future of classroom practices. University, focusing on the model of traditional education,
based on the accumulation and transmission of knowledge, should be oriented to improve
processes of thinking, reflection and understanding, within the framework of different
disciplines. (Litwin, 1997)

HYPOTHESIS
The overall average scores of students in fifth year of the career of psychology is related
to the use of learning strategies: acquisition of information, strategies for encoding
information, information retrieval and support processing.

PART ONE: LEARNING

Historically, the education has been associated with understanding the processes of
teaching and learning. The different theoretical approaches, from cognitive to associasionism
have tried to explain how students learn.
 Learning Strategies and Approaches of University Students 247

The topic of the strategies is related to the learning process, which is why it is essential to
clarify this term, since the concept of learning that is supported will depend on how the
strategies are understood. (Well and Monereo, 1999)
According to this premise and the theoretical path that has been taken it is possible to
observe between the different authors, substantial overlap of the meaning of learning, but it is
also necessary to emphasize that it is impossible to provide a universally accepted definition,
which is integrated into a unified theoretical framework to account for all internal and
external phenomena that often tie in with the concept.
One of the concerns in education today is that the student leaves the storage of data, dates
and names, leaving aside the literal repetition, by seeking to reason, reflect and understand
what he's learning. In this sense, it seeks to give meaning to themselves what they learn and
establish relationships between knowledge and learning with the new information it is
presented.
In the learning process, students build relationships between new information and prior
knowledge, you can organize and monitor the entire process, as you can think and reflect
about the stages by means of learning strategies.

STRUCTURES OF COGNITIVE SYSTEM: MEMORY

The structural components will now be described: the memory and its systems: sensory
register, short-term memory, long-term memory; and the diagrams. Both components will
help to understand how the cognitive system works and how learning strategies act.
The memory function outstands for the preservation of history and culture in the world; at
the dawn of humanity, when people were not able to write, memory was the only records of
the culture. Its function was merely repetitive: keep history through stories. The memory is
involved in every act of our life, without memory it is impossible for a subject to interact with
reality, with himself and with others. If we stop for a moment to remember what we did the
day before or remember what we did an hour earlier, the report will come as the mechanism
that allows us to recall, relive events, anecdotes from our lives, knowledge learned earlier,
that are stored in it. Studies of the memory date back to the late nineteenth century, precisely
in 1879 Ebbinghaus (1850-1909) German philosopher began studying human memory in an
experimental way. Its purpose was to study objectively the human memory, based on an
associationist approach and empirical knowledge. In Germany, “The School of Verbal
Learning” continues the line of investigation proposed by Ebbinghaus.
From another perspective, one can mention the research by Frederick Bartlett, English
psychologist, who in his book "Remembering" (1932), outlines the position of the subject and
his activity towards the learning task. He explains the essential role of memory as a
constructive process that occurs at the confluence of different variables: the area where the
task is done, the properties of the material that must be learned, prior knowledge of the
subject and its age. This position is antagonistic to the experimental and simplistic conception
of memory that Ebbinghaus had proposed. Instead, Bartlett gives a different nuance, while
continuing the experimental line; he adds the importance of memory prior to each subject

in relevant enviromental conditions.

248 Nora Irene Abate

This leads to consider a fundamental aspect of memory, its constructive nature, i.e. that
those things human beings assimilate from the environment are not as shown by reality;
instead, a change is made on the basis of what they already own and the new information
incorporated. A central concept that uses Bartlett is "scheme", this concept has already been
used by Henry Head (1920) in the field of Medicine and Bartlett takes it to the field of
psychology, to refer to experiences that we have of the world and that form a set of models,
from which we interpret and conceptualize the different events. During recent decades,
studies about memory have recovered the central importance that it had in the learning
process, and mainly in research on learning strategies. The memory for this stream of thought
is defined as the capacity that human beings have to record, retain and retrieve information.
So, the information that we receive from the environment we have to withhold it through
some strategies so that it is save in our memory. If it is not stored properly, then we will not
be able to remember when necessary. These strategies play different roles: the acquisition is
the process by which information is recorded in the half, the initial coding to organize the
information so that our memory system can be used. Another of the processes of the memory
system is the storage, it consists on saving the information in the memory and keeping it until
we need it. Recovery can find the information you have stored in the forms of knowledge.
These strategies are essential for understanding how the learning process works. The
acquisition, encoding, storage and recovery, are required to carry out the learning process, but
they do not describe by themselves what happens to the information from the moment it
reaches the sensor system until it is kept in our memory. The answer to this question is given
by two studies that referred to the memory system. The first explains how the memory works
departing from three systems and they vary in their function and the processes that are
activated. (Atkinson and Shiffrin, 1968). The second suggests that the information passes
through different levels of processing: deep and superficial. (Craik and Lockhart, 1972).

THE MODEL ATKINSON AND SHIFFRIN

In general, the following pages will present the theoretical developments on the report
from the perspective of the multi-store theory by Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968) and then refer
to the contributions of the theory of levels of processing by Craik ( 1979) and Craik and
Tulving (1985). In this sense, the memory system is shown in its functional aspect and its
importance in the development, implementation and execution of strategies for learning. It
should be clarified that the multi-store theory is not the only effort to develop studies
concerning memory and its processes. His choice is based on that it is compatible with the
theoretical foundation of the art of the Learning Strategies Scales, ACRA. (scale acquisition
of information, level of encoding information, scale information retrieval and scale of support
for Roman and Gallego, 1994)
With the cognitive picture of the fifties and the approach of information processing
emerged with Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968) the multi-store model of memory. In this model,
the memory is regarded as formed by interconnected systems: the sensory register or sensory
memory (RS), the short-term memory (STM), and long-term memory (LTM). Within the
broad field of memory studies, different authors have proposed different names, for example:
semantic and episodic memory, Tulving (1979), declarative and procedural memory,
 Learning Strategies and Approaches of University Students 249

Anderson (1982), implicit and explicit memory, Schacter and Graf (1985). For the purpose of
this work, it will be developed, as announced previously, the multistore-model proposed by
Atkinson and Schiffrin (1968), there are also studies by Waugh and Norman (1965) and Hunt
(1971) that now have broad validity.
While the emphasis of this model is on the structural analysis of the report, it stressed the
procedural aspects, such as acquisition, consolidation, storage and retrieval of information,
precisely because these functional mechanisms are behind the process and the learning
strategies that are used. These allow the transmission of information and to establish
relationships between systems.
In this model, it is considered that the structure of the human mind is a system for
acquiring and processing information consciously. A characteristic feature is the conscious
control processes and control processes, especially in the review of STM. The structure of
the report responds to a basic architecture of the human mind, which describes stages in the
acquisition of information, from the existence of these interconnected systems, where
information stays for a certain time in each of them. This leads to differences in functions and
abilities between different systems. (Carter, 1997; Pozo, 1998, Baquero, 2001). Here are the
characteristics of each of the memory systems, including an emphasis on cognitive processes
that develops our minds to transfer knowledge from one system to another.

SENSORY MEMORY OR REGISTRATION

It is in this record where attentional strategies are activated, which allow you to select,
process and transport the information from the sensory register to the short term memory and
there the strategies of repetition are placed to keep information until it is transferred to long-
term memory.
They are input filters that constitute an element of the memory system that are associated
with the senses, particularly with the perception. Their function is to keep the information for
very short periods of time, about half a second. This memory consists of different registers
according to the sensory modalities, so, it is possible to distinguish between a sensory echoic
memory and a sensory iconic memory, the first is related to the auditory information and the
second to visual information, there is also a haptic record for the tactile information. (De
Vega, 1990, Navarro Guzmán, 1993)
The sensory system keeps the details of the information collected and since the
information has not been influenced by the categories of the subject, it is presented in a
primitive state; it is therefore a precategorial record. The sensory memory allows the
recognition of sensory stimuli, the information received can be transferred to the short-term
memory or it is forgotten, and in this case it is lost.

SHORT-TERM MEMORY
The information that comes from the sensory system is selected to move to another
structure: the STM. It is in this system where the strategies of fragmentation and repetition are
activated, allowing the persistence of information until it is transferred to the LTM.
250 Nora Irene Abate

Turbey (1973) suggests that from the sensory system the information is transferred first
to a device called of selection and categorization, so that not all information enters into the
system, operating a selection so that only information that is considered relevant to the STM
arrives.
The STM is characterized by retaining a limited number of units of information. In the
reference literature it is mentioned the work of George Miller The Magical Number Seven
(1956). This book is a symbol within the developments of cognitive psychology, as it states
that the capacity of short-term memory is seven, plus or minus two items or units of
information. Determining in this way a limited capacity for memory, but related to the context
and task. (Carretero, 1997)
The STM not only has its limitations in storage capacity, but it also has limitations in the
period in which the information is. Therefore another aspect that characterizes the STM is
that a stock is transitory. Thus, the information may be withheld in a structure which is called
seal or review buffer for a few seconds, but if it is not transferred, it is forgotten or, if we hold
it any longer we must put into action the strategies of repetition. A clear example that helps to
explain it is the attempt to retain a phone number; if it is not written on paper, or strategies are
used to remember it such as memory techniques or rhymes, the number is forgotten.
It is therefore essential to consider that as it is a transient system and of limited capacity,
it is easily saturated with a lot of information. Therefore, if the information presented is dosed
and well organized, the learning will be more effective.

FUNCTIONS OF THE SHORT-TERM MEMORY (STM)

The STM is defined as a complex structure that fulfills different functions, such as
mechanism of retention of information and as a functional memory. (De Vega, 1990)

a) STM as a Mechanism of Retention of Information

The STM is considered as the system that receives the information that comes to the
subject through the senses, which uses the encoding strategies, retention and retrieval of
information on a transitional basis.
As mechanism of retention, the functions that characterize it are: the retention, forgetting
and recovery. The importance of understanding these features is projected onto the teaching-
learning process, given that this limitation can be overcome using strategies of development
or organization.
The STM has already been regarded as a limited stock in its ability to retain information
units: one of the potentials for increasing its capacity is the formation of chunks, i.e. groups or
mergers of common units or pieces of information. These units or chunks can vary according
to the properties of information and preparation of the material done by the subject. In this
sense, the units of information can be letters, numbers, words or phrases, you should be aware
that this is not physical but psychological units, whose complexity and size can vary, and
depends on how the subject develops the information . (De Vega, 1990; Pozo, 1998)
 Learning Strategies and Approaches of University Students 251

The Condensation in the chunks of information is used to organize it and make it

meaningful. In the base of this process underlies the idea of understanding, as a process that
the subject uses in the mechanisms of grouping, and not just an association with another
element. One advantage is that it encourages learning in an automatic way, given that
cognitive mechanisms are activated in a rapid, accurate way and thus it increases the
operational efficiency of the STM. An example of this in learning is that if you want to
increase the number of units of information to process, then you must provide instances of
trial in order to develop or group them, and thus expanding the capacity of the STM and
avoiding excessive demands.
Regarding the role of retention and forgetting, it is necessary to remember that in
previous pages it was raised the limit of time and retention of information in the STM.
Some studies state that the time for withholding information is relative and it varies from
15 to 30 seconds. The period of retention time is difficult to establish because other factors
may allow the persistence of information for a while longer: the strategies of repetition and
review. There are two theories to explain forgetting: on the one hand, the theory of the
temporary impairment, according to which, the information disappears with the passage of
time and on the other hand, the interference theory of forgetting, which states that the entry of
new information in the system moves the already established one. (De Vega, 1990) This
allows us to understand when students explain the difficulty presented by the amount of
information you need to learn in the limited time they are offered. Information retrieval is
another function of the STM along with the retention and forgetting. When the information is
still in the STM, you can recover instantaneously because the units of information are aware
and active in this process of recognition memory. The STM is also involved in the process of
retrieving information from the LTM. This is a complex and dynamic process that depends on
the strategies of development and organization.

HOW THE STM WORKS

Taking up some of the features already listed, we can affirm that the STM is a structure
which can be implemented in different processes and it fulfills several functions: active
control, coordination, organization and implementation of the information coming from both
the sensory register and from the cognitive system itself. These are functions that allow the
acquisition of new information and the use of prior knowledge. (De Vega, 1990; Pozo, 1998)
In the control operations performed by the CCM it employs different strategies: repetition,
retrieval of information from the LTM and execution of complex cognitive tasks. (De Vega,
1990)
The strategies of repetition allow the persistence of the material in memory for a longer
time than it is usually achieved and the transfer of information units to the LTM. This transfer
function is very important in the learning process, since the strategies and organizations from
which the combination and integration processes will allow information to be filed within the
overall structure of the LTM; i.e. in the patterns of knowledge, to be retrieved when
necessary. From this it follows that it is necessary to establish meaningful relationships
between what we want to file and the rest of the knowledge already stored in the long term,
this step is key to the learning process. This can be seen in students in examinations; they
252 Nora Irene Abate

were asked about prior knowledge learned in other subjects that are relevant to the current
situation but they showed that they "forgot" that knowledge.
It is in the CCM where the confluence and integration of information coming from the
sensory register with the one that comes from the LTM takes place.
The processes of integration of information are made through re-encoding operations and
image formation.

Recoding: This process is described by George Miller (1956), it involves expanding

the capacity of the CCM. It is achieved by grouping the information in chunks that
occupy little space, but have a lot of information. Recoding is called "chunking", it
consists in forming a new code. I.e., that knowledge that is stored in the LTM is
encoded in the STM when it is a knowledge that is related to it.
The formation of images and memory techniques: the method of "loci" from Ancient
Greece was used to memorize long speeches. It consisted in thinking a place and
giving a space in the imaginary place to the item to be learnt. To remember, from this
approach, would mean to go mentally to that place. It provides learning strategies
such as organizing information, repetition and review. Another method applied is the
memory technique, through a keyword; it uses rhymes that are associated with
images of what we remember.

Both recoding and image formation are embedded in processes that establish meaningful
relationships between new information and knowledge stored in the LTM and elements of the
information being recalled (Cabezas, 1987). The knowledge of these processes has important
implications for learning as we often hear students claim that information is excessive and the
time is short, so, knowing the importance of strategies such as memory techniques, imaging,
recoding, and organizational development, leads to an appropriate use of cognitive resources
in the teaching-learning process.
To summarize, the STM is involved in the execution of complex cognitive tasks, in this
sense and from the above considerations it follows that the STM is an active warehouse
where functions as repetition and recoding are executed: the first allows to retain the material
in the STM for a longer period of time and if it is accompanied by encoding it allows to
transfer this information to the LTM. The second comes from the interaction of the STM and
the LTM, which allows the material to relocate and expand the capacity of the CCM.
In this context, the storage capacity of STM is not automatic, it is a conscious process and
it involves the functions of retention, replication, recovery and re-encoding.

LONG-TERM MEMORY (LTM)

The information that remains in the LTM is usually off and latent and it only becomes
active according to the necessities imposed by the task or the context; this recovery process
takes time and effort.
The system uses cognitive strategies to incorporate and store information so organized in
our system of LTM so that when you need it it can be restored quickly in order to make
learning effective and lasting.
 Learning Strategies and Approaches of University Students 253

The LTM has no limits on your storage memory, it is information we saved during our
whole life as an archive of our life. So that, for example when we look at a picture that has
some years, it triggers the memories that remained in the LTM. Some authors believe that this
system has two components: episodic memory and semantic memory (Tulving, 1983).
Episodic memory is used to store the events of our life experiences and lessons. Semantic
memory, in turn, stores the knowledge we have about the world.
But not all information that is filed with the LTM is recoverable, as the memory has a
selective function: What is not unused is forgotten. It also allows reconstructing the learning
but depending on current needs, therefore, memory is an active system that constructs and
reconstructs knowledge depending on the requirements of our cognitive system.
Different authors, including De Vega (1990) and Navarro Guzmán (1993) find that the
LTM also involves oblivion, and to explain it he takes the basis of proposals from Baddeley
([1982, 1990). This author proposes two possible explanations: first, we forget the effect on
time that produces the fading of the print, the second is the theory of interference, which
occurs in the oblivion of the retention period, when it incorporates new information to the
existing one and oblivion is produced by the interference. The information is coded and
transferred from the STM to the LTM, it operates a replica of semantic information, and this
means that when studying a text, in that moment you are able to give precise details of dates
and events, however after some time you are able to remember the general idea of the text.
We do not remember exactly, since this system does not encode superficial aspects of the
information, but semantic aspects. This will mark a difference between the STM and the
LTM, the first memory is literal and immediate, whereas the second recalls general aspects
and fragments of information.
In this sense, we can say that in the LTM the following systems operate:

Selection: Essential aspects are remembered and the rest is forgotten or modified.
Interpretation: It remembers according to what we believe happened.
Integration: It unites aspects of prior learning with new ones that are saved.

The LTM, while a warehouse that can store more information, concepts in the MLP seem
to be organized in the form of propositions, which are statements that have a subject and a
predicate (e.g. "the canary is a bird"). These propositions form networks to which we are
continually adding new concepts. Authors mentioned above (De Vega, 1990; Navarro
Guzmán, 1993) believe that networks of concepts are organized hierarchically and they form
categories, so that when you store a concept such as "pine" it is related to the category of
conifers and the category tree. In turn, these networks can activate concepts related to the
similarities or differences. The construction of these networks is of fundamental importance
in the learning process, it demands from the students an active position, the use of strategy
and organization and from the teacher that the information would be presented clearly and
accurately.
Bower (1975) noted that in the LTM there are structures such as:

Space models of the environment, including representations relating to images of

objects and places.
Concepts of objects and their properties.
Beliefs about people, ourselves and ways of social interaction.
254 Nora Irene Abate

Attitudes and values towards events and social objectives.

Motor skills, problem solving and understanding of the language, music and painting.

According to Gagné and Glaser, (1987) although Bower’s list is broad enough there are
other elements in the LTM that deserve special attention, such as images, declarative
knowledge (know what) procedural knowledge (how), patterns and cognitive abilities. The
following sections will develop these concepts. To characterize memory systems, we can say
that although they has different functions, they are in constant interaction, i.e. the functioning
of the sensory register is related to the CCM and it can never be considered isolated from the
operation of the LTM. The path taken shows the importance of these systems in the learning
process. Undoubtedly, the research carried out regards the importance of maintaining the
strategies in the processing of information, both the storage and acquisition, as the recovery
and control of information, emphasizing the need to establish meaningful relationships
between new information and the one that is already stored in our memory. Thus, there is an
effective learning process, lasting and meaningful.

THE SCHEMES
It is important for this piece of work to explain how the schemes are involved in the
processes of representation, acquisition, encoding and retrieval of knowledge.
There will be a revision that will help to understand what the schemes are their roles in
knowledge representation and the strategies involved here.
The various investigations in the field of cognitive psychology attempt to explain that the
knowledge that individuals possess of the world is represented and organized in our cognitive
system. This knowledge is stored in the LTM. It is organized into a set of schedules.
These representations of knowledge are the ways in which they are reported internally
and they organize the information coming from the subject's relationship with the outside
world, with objects and people, throughout their lives.
They are not exact copies of reality, they imply active processes in the processing of
information that enters the system, and they are the result of constructive processes that take
place in the schemes.
Originally the term schema in the field of psychology comes from Europe, with Piaget
(1926) and Bartlett (1932) that independently led to the idea of schema. Prior to this date in
1920, lays the notion of schema in the field of medicine with Henry Head.
Piaget used it to explain the thinking in children; however Bartlett used it in studies of
memory and understanding, in social areas. However, this notion is recovered long after by
information processing psychologists and especially those employed in the development of
artificial intelligence.
The work of Sierra and Carretero (1996) and Carretero (1997) marked differences with r
genetic psychology notion of schema. In this regard, they consider that diagrams are
representations of the different fields of knowledge and they are likely to be completed to the
extent that more information may be included with each pattern forming subschema. When
the schema is activated, it becomes a guide to find information to fill gaps and build a
coherent and complete interpretation. If there is no additional information, a subschema can
 Learning Strategies and Approaches of University Students 255

be constructed with the inferences made from the information we have about the situation in
particular, the typical example is the "restaurant schema" (Carter, 1997). This means that
generally, anyone ever attended a restaurant so in the LTM this pattern is present, which
allows us to predict what may happen, for example the waiter comes, he gives the table, he
brings the menu, we choose food and we follow all the usual steps. However, if there is a fast
food restaurant, this scheme does not allow generic behavior in a location with different
characteristics and therefore a subschema must be built to act differently, depending on the
situation. As a summary, below there are some general features that all the schemes theories
share:

1. They are high-level cognitive units: units that include simpler units, e.g. dressing
includes clothing, shoes.
2. The components of the schedules are updated, modified or varied, depending on the
context e.g. dressing for a party is different from dressing to work, both clothing and
shoes etc.
3. Multifunctional schemes: the importance and usefulness of the schemes is large. This
is demonstrated in the processes of understanding and retrieval, and retrieving the
information from the system and the related knowledge that are stored in the
schemes.
4. Training Scheme: the pattern formation of the mechanism is unknown, what is
argued is that it is formed from the experience.

The schemes are involved in the higher psychological processes: perception,

comprehension and memory. From the literature (Carretero and Sierra, 1996, Carretero, 1997,
Pozo 1998) there are different names referring to the content of knowledge, and we can also
mention the terms schema, script (scripts), frames (frames) and mental models.
The schemes, as stated above, are guides whose function is to guide and direct the
process of construction and reconstruction of information. This knowledge representation
schemes in long-term memory is related to how to organize and structure the knowledge of
what is the role played by diagrams in teaching and learning and consequently in
understanding of strategies for acquisition, encoding and retrieval. (Well, 1996, 1998, Carter,
1997) In general, it is argued that knowledge representation schemes present the following
features:

The contents that make up the schemes with respect to an object, situation or concept
are activated together, as they are related, so that when you activate one of the
components, it activates the rest.
They are organized into holistic units, responding to a temporary organization and
they are grouped by interrelated subunits.
The knowledge that remains is stored in three types, declarative knowledge,
procedural knowledge, and finally the strategic knowledge and conditional
knowledge. Here we deepen the characteristics of knowledge: declarative, procedural
and conditional or strategic.
256 Nora Irene Abate

STRATEGIES AND KNOWLEDGE

The learning strategies activate different types of knowledge that are in the schemes: the
declarative, procedural and conditional or strategic knowledge. The declarative knowledge is
knowledge that can be explained, it refers to "what it is”, it is general and specific, covering
the background that we possess of the world and things. Procedural knowledge, also called
procedural, it refers to "how something is done” it is the specific knowledge of the strategy, it
is related to the actions that must be followed to achieve the goal, the practical components; it
is a know-how. Pozo (1998), Postigo and Pozo (2000) argue that the declarative knowledge is
conscious and it is acquired verbally; procedural knowledge instead is acquired through
action, the practice of gradual and progressive manner, it tends to be automatic. Knowing the
importance of this knowledge in the learning process allows understanding the difficulties
students face in their tasks.
More specifically, it may happen that students solve a problem, but they can not explain
or define what kind of knowledge is required. Thus returning to the initial approach that holds
that "say" and "doing" are two different ways to know the reality, but they are necessarily
linked. (Entwistle, 1988; Pozo, 1998; Postigo and Pozo, 2000) Then this development will be
completed with a third kind of knowledge, which in literature is called conditional knowledge
or strategic knowledge, which encompasses the above and it includes the knowledge of
"when" and "why" to apply this or that strategy. It is knowledge on the specific circumstances
that influence the use of certain strategies for achieving a goal. The three types of knowledge
lead in turn to different types of learning and the use of different strategies. (Well, 1998; and
Monereo Castelló, 2000) In associative learning, you go from declarative knowledge to
procedural knowledge automatically. It is a kind of learning that is convenient when it is not
necessary to make associations among contents; learning is repetitive and superficial.
However, when the declarative knowledge is related to procedural and conditional
knowledge, the student can explain what he knows, how, when and in what circumstances
and why you should apply this or that strategy. According to this approach, one can say that
learning is profound, intentional, targeted to understanding and besides it is strategic in
connection with the personal variables, the type of task and context in which it develops. For
example, when reviewing a text the student can establish connection between similar
concepts previously studied cases and infer which approach is needed or if you require other
texts to revise and extend the concept to understand.

ROLES OF THE SCHEMES

The cognitive systems exchange information with the reality; they construct
representations of reality that are filed in the LTM. These representations of knowledge are
organized into schemas, and refer to all domains of knowledge, these schemes are being built
throughout our lives, they are active and they allow us to give sense and meaning to what
surrounds us. The function of schemas in memory processes is related to the encoding process
(Brewer and Nakamura, 1984) and also with the recovery process. (Rumelhart and Ortony,
1977).
 Learning Strategies and Approaches of University Students 257

Coding

Several authors, De Vega, (1990) Sierra (1996), Carretero (1997) have described this
process. They consider that the role of coding is essential in guiding the selection, abstraction,
interpretation and integration that occur when new information is acquired. How do the
schemes proceed to memorize the contents?
As explained earlier in the section of the memory systems, the cognitive system receives
a variety of information, which encodes only one part, one that has relevance to the system or
the enabled scheme. The process is as follows: it abstracts the meaning of the information that
enters the memory system, it is interpreted according to the schema activated and it interacts
with the background remaining in the system. The strategies of coding involved in the
preparation and organization of new information establish relationships with prior knowledge.
Otherwise, if there is no prior knowledge, the information is lost or retention is minimal and
superficial. (Ausubel, Novak and Hanesian, 1973) Thus, the selection process within the
coding is understood [...] as an application or projection of the new content on existing
knowledge; the application depends largely on the availability of a sufficient base of
knowledge and well developed. (Sierra, and Carretero, 1996:150).
The schemes involved in the process of abstraction recover the significant aspects and
discard the surface, so that only selected information is recorded and those aspects of the
format or presentation details such as lexical and syntactic forms are discarded. The schemas
interpret the information received from inferences about the information selected. (Sierra and
Carter, 1996:151)
Integration processes faced with the acquisition of new knowledge get involved in the
modification of the existing scheme or in the formation of a new scheme, some of the forms
that are mentioned are:

Addition, it incorporates new knowledge to the scheme

Restructuring, it reorganizes knowledge schema
Formation of a new scheme, it is integrated when the contents of some knowledge
representation consists of an overview that contains them.

RECOVERY
The schemes are involved in the process of recovering the contents stored in the LTM;
this statement can be found in different authors. (Sierra and Carretero, 1996 Carretero, 1997;
Pozo, 1998)
Recovery strategies are actively involved in the schemes that reinterpret information
already stored and thus modify or restructure the original information. (Sierra and Carretero,
1996). In recovery, the processes of selection and verification get involved in the existing
schemes to determine which is appropriate to integrate the new knowledge. The development
carried out shows that:

The diagrams are representations of all domains of knowledge.

258 Nora Irene Abate

Each pattern can be formed by sub schemes; this refers to the specialization of
knowledge in each domain.
Their different functions cover different processes: understanding, memory and
conduct.
They have an impact on the processes of encoding and retrieval.
They explain and interpret the phenomena that other theories had left aside.
They highlight the active and dynamic nature of the acquisition, encoding and
retrieval of information and therefore, they explain the use of learning strategies.

THE THEORY OF THE LEVELS OF PROCESSING BY CRAIK

This theory provides an alternative theoretical explanation to the multi-store model of
Atkinson and Schiffrin, since during the learning process, it becomes difficult to distinguish
where one or the other acts. In this sense, the knowledge we have is not saved in rigid
compartments, given that when new information is added to the system it activates the
connections with other knowledge already stored. It should be added that these relations will
be superficial or deep according to the strategies put into play.
However, while highlighting the contributions of the theory of levels of processing by
Craik, you can not discuss the importance of the differentiation of memory systems:

[...] The conclusions reached by research on levels of processing memory is reinforcing

the need for improved strategies for control and storage of information by students,
establishing relationships between what they already know and what we want to teach.
(Carter, 1997:141)

The research that has been conducted helps to understand the importance of the
functional aspect of the memory and the actions and proceedings conducted by the students to
recall information. (Well, 1996) In this sense, the interest is directed to examine how
information is processed and which are the possible stages of processing.
According to this theory, what determines the remembrance is the nature of encoding
processes as determinants of relative permanence of the information. In this sense, they
consider the memory as a unitary system that has different levels of processing: structural,
phonological and semantic levels that occur in the sensory perception and pattern recognition,
to the attribution of meaning. In other words, what are stored on a permanent basis are traces
of information arising from the processes of coding, focusing primarily on operations of
perception and understanding. The qualitative differences of these processes are the ones that
allow a determination of good or bad addition of the information in our memory system. (De
Vega, 1990).
For the authors, the memory is an active process and it is not an information store. The
theory of levels of processing emphasizes the degree and quantity of information to be
processed. The central point in this theory would be the use of strategies of revision that
would allow a deeper learning. Consequently, a difference is presented between development
revision and maintenance revision. The first means a greater level of depth in the information
processing and it provides higher level of performance than the second, since it tries that
 Learning Strategies and Approaches of University Students 259

information remains in the system. Thus, the nature of the processes is given more importance
than the time of permanence of the information in the memory.
On the other hand, what this theory of the levels wants to explain in relation to learning
is the importance of coding strategies that are made, an example of this are the investigations
of intentional learning and incidental learning, which compares the performance of learning
tasks between groups of experts and novices. We show that if cognitive processes are the
same what make the difference are the strategies that are used. (Navarro Guzmán, 1993).
In learning tasks, it is possible to consider levels in the process, a surface level that is
based on sensory and physical characteristics of the information. It refers to the features
related to the structure of the information that is based on the strategies of repetition and
learning by heart: for example if we read the word table, attention is paid to the shapes of
letters. It recognizes an intermediate level in the process that concerns the nature of
phonological features, i.e. the physical characteristics of words and adding the sound units
corresponding meaning. In contrast, in the deep level of processing one learns best, in a
meaningful or comprehensive way, allowing the analysis of the concepts in relation to the
meaning given, building relationships and partnerships with stored information and
knowledge in a wider context.
In general we can say that the theory of levels of processing considers a number of
assumptions:

There is no difference among the systems but in the amount of information

processed.
Different standards can be considered in information processing: deep and
superficial, the differences lays in that each one involves different strategies that lead
to different levels of understanding.
The information that we learn best is the one that is processed at a higher level of
depth. Consequently, the deeper levels of analysis allow such information to be more
elaborate, comprehensive and meaningful.
The repetition or memorization of the information does not assure that it is
transferred to the LTM.

Pozo Municio emphasizes the importance of levels of processing in learning, proposed by

Craik and Tulving, saying:

[...] the more significant or deeper processing and learning materials are, the more
durable and general are the results. Understanding is the best alternative to the review.
(Municio Pozo, 1998:267)

The contributions of this theory lead to one of the best known classifications within the
learning strategies: deep and superficial, and it is related to investigations conducted by
Entwistle (1988) and Marton (1981) for educational work in the classroom. These authors
claim that it is possible to differentiate approaches to learning: surface, deep and strategic,
related to the intentions of the students in completing the learning tasks. According to
research done, the two theories have implications for learning.
The multi-store-model of Atkinson and Shiffrin said that the memory system is composed
of three different systems: sensory memory or register, short-term memory and long-term
memory, each having different attributes. While the theory of levels of processing by Craik
260 Nora Irene Abate

and Lockhart refers to the degree of processing that occurs after we receive information of the
stimuli until they are stored in long-term memory (LTM), which involves different strategies.
The memory is not a passive system, but it depends on the treatment that the subject does
with the information. Thus, both theories contribute to understand the strategies necessary to
ensure a process of reflexive, comprehensive and meaningful learning.

DIFFERENT APPROACHES TO LEARNING

Cognitive research in recent decades is becoming important in analyzing the learning
processes that students use in the classroom. In this sense, it highlights the research done by
F. Marton his collaborators and the University of Gothenburg and Noel Entwistle at the
University of Edinburgh. These authors find that in one group of students, it is possible to
establish differences in the degree of understanding achieved. (Entwistle, 1988:65)
Accordingly, it is possible to distinguish approaches in addressing the tasks of learning,
which are primarily based on the concept that the student is learning and intention with which
they perform that task. In the use of approaches underlay the implementation of learning
strategies. (Coll, 1988; well Munici, 1996.1998).
In the surface approach, the student focuses on the task, he expresses the intention to
remember the material from which there is an increase in knowledge by literal repetition and
memorization of information. The student plays a passive role towards information,
objectives and tasks are nominated by someone else, in this case can be the teacher. The task
is imposed, the treatment of the material relates to the external aspects, it does not establish
relations with other knowledge, the task is completed, and soon forgotten. In the deep
approach the student seeks the construction of personal concepts and the search for the
meaning of what they are learning, the intention is aimed at developing relations between
knowledge, comparisons. He is personally and emotionally involved with the task, it is an
essential part of his personal life. The intent is aimed at linking and organizing the study
material with previous knowledge, for which the student has an active and critical role.
On the other hand, Entwistle (1988) incorporates a third approach: the strategy that
combines both approaches depending on the requirements of the task, adding that the student
seeks or achieves success in the proposed tasks which are planned and well organized;
proposing clear objectives for learning, which organizes the time and the effort to achieve
better results.
Accordingly, for the purposes of this work, it should be noted that these approaches are
linked to different conceptions of learning and use of strategies. (Pozo Municio, 1998, 1999,
Roman and Gallego, 1994) Thus, the approach involves a superficial associative learning in
which strategies are used for the acquisition and consolidation, particularly the development
of simple strategies. In the deep learning approach predominates the use of constructive
strategies for complex development, organization and retrieval. In the strategic approach
dominates the strategic learning and support strategies.
 Learning Strategies and Approaches of University Students 261

LEARNING STRATEGIES
One of the concerns in education today is that the student leaves the storage of data, dates
and names, leaving aside the literal repetition, by seeking to reason, reflect and understand
what he's learning. In this sense, he seeks to give meaning to himself and what he learns and
to establish relationships between knowledge and learning with the new information that is
presented.
It is the cognitive approach that helps to understand the processes used to learn, these
developments lead to change old practices that led the students to repeat long poems,
memorizing numbers and formulas, by the quest for autonomy in planning and responsibility
for learning.
Early studies can be placed around the fifties, the so-called cognitive revolution. These
studies aim to develop systems for solving problems, new procedures arise like acrostics, the
memory techniques and other techniques used to recall and review, to prevent forgetfulness.
A number of educational programs emerge on the scene, exercising the application of
techniques to learn, or recipes for the study, called “How to study”, which emphasize the
repetition in an easy automatic way. (Well and Monereo, 1999)
Authors such as Castelló and Monereo, (2000) highlight that it is in the eighties when the
study and research of learning strategies are secured in the field of Cognitive Psychology.
Since then several studies and research are presented on learning strategies and
metacognition, problem solving in a given area of knowledge with experts and novices.
(Carter, 1997; Pozo, 1998; Monereo and Pozo, 1999).
Other authors working in contexts where the problems arise are the example of
educational research in the classroom. The tasks that students perform largely include what
information is selected from the environment and how it is processed. The tasks organize the
experience; therefore, researchers need to refer to the environment in which these tasks are
developed. (Carter and others, 1998).
The word strategy derives from the military field. In this area it is defined as "the art of
coordinating military forces in order to win a war." The concept became known to the area of
politics, economy and all areas of knowledge; it is precisely in the educational field where it
has become a key concept and fundamental to understanding the learning process. According
to the theoretical support of this work and then by an extensive bibliography of reference, it
presents the following definition of learning strategies:

[...] Those sequences integrated processes, which are used for the acquisition, storage and
retrieval of information with the aim of learning where cognitive processes are activated in a
conscious, deliberate and intentional way. Thus, the strategies of learning are intimately
connected with the motivation and metacognition. The strategies relate to the knowledge of
what, how, when and why they do it, they are activated depending on the learning goal and the
characteristics of each discipline. (Abate, N: 2006).

Learning strategies that have certain characteristics that should be clarified because if
they are viewed as processes that apply in an intentional and deliberate way to a task, it can
not be reduced or confused with automatic routines or techniques: these are the visible parts
of the strategies; for example, highlight the text, finding the main idea, drawing up schemes.
262 Nora Irene Abate

To implement the strategies the following conditions are required on the psychological
functioning:

A knowledge or metacognition of the own psychological behaviour.

The awareness of its existence
The motivation, intentions and goals. Self monitoring and evaluation of actions based
on that goal.

CLASSIFICATIONS OF STRATEGIES ACCORDING TO THE PROCESSES

INVOLVED: ACQUISITION, CODING, RECOVERY AND SUPPORT
This classification comes from a working hypothesis put forward by the Roman
authorities and Gallego (1994) who consider that the main cognitive processes relate to the
acquisition, encoding, storage and retrieval. Following this line of thought, it is possible
therefore to distinguish learning strategies that are activated for the acquisition, encoding and
retrieval. A central contribution is the support strategies (Dansereau, 1985) pertaining to the
implementation of processes of social and metacognitive nature.
In recent decades, research on learning strategies emphasize the importance of studies on
the memory on which it is defined as the capacity that human beings have to record, retain
and retrieve information.
The emphasis of this model is on the structural analysis of memory and procedural
aspects such as acquisition, encoding, storage and retrieval.
The acquisition is the process by which information of the environment is recorded, while
the encoding allows organizing the information initially, so that our memory system can be
used. The storage consists of storing information in memory and keeping it until we need it.
Recovery can find the information you have stored in the forms of knowledge.
While the processes of support refer to conditions in which the learning processes are based,
including non cognitive and metacognitive nature. At the same time they help or enhance the
performance of other strategies.
Below is the classification of strategies proposed by Roman and Gallego (1994), which is
to be used in this research:

1) Acquisition Strategies: Strategies include attention and repetition.

2) Coding strategy: to include memory techniques, preparation and organization.
3) Strategies for recovery: they include search and response generation.
4) Strategies of support include the metacognitive and social ones.

Acquisition Strategies

In these strategies, the attention is the central process, which allows "selection,
processing and transportation of the information from the environment to the registration of
the senses.” (Gallego and Román, 1994:8)
 Learning Strategies and Approaches of University Students 263

The structure of the human mind is a system for acquiring and processing information
consciously. A characteristic feature is the process of conscious control, especially control
review processes, which occur in the CCM.
Within the acquisition strategies there are different attentional strategies and repetition.
They are based on the associative learning and they provide a superficial approach.

Coding Strategies

The encoding process gives a code to the information, it presupposes a degree more or
less deep and it leads to the understanding and meaning.
The function of these strategies is also to collaborate with the passage of the information
present in the STM to the LTM, i.e. after the execution of the processes of attention and
repetition are the processes of elaboration and organization of material. Its purpose is to look
for relationships between materials previously saved with the new information that is
incorporated and integrated into broader meaning structures. (Román and Gallego, 10:1994)
The strategies of coding referred to the memory techniques, preparation and organization.
Organizational strategy refers to a higher level of complexity and it is a profound
approach to the meaning they build; conceptual structures from which they establish the
relationship between knowledge. Organizational strategies play a key role in the recovery
process. In this sense, it depends on the quality of internal relations and connections are
established between new knowledge and those that remain in memory, to be able to achieve
an adequate recovery. The organization of the information depends on the characteristics of
the student, the nature of the subject, the context of aid and the teacher. (Well, 1998;
Monereo, 1990) Both, the development strategies and the organization strategies put into
action a series of cognitive processes including: selection of relevant information,
relationships with prior knowledge, production of meanings within a semantic hierarchy and
consistency, integrated into the structure of knowledge in each subject.
According to the points made above, the student plays an active position in dealing and
processing of information, as these strategies impose a high degree of personal involvement
with the material. That is, these strategies create a conceptual metacognition, developing
personal information and allowing further reflection on their own processes of understanding.
This step is central to a better use of the learning process. (Nisbet and Shucksmith, 1997).

Recovery Strategies

Once the information is processed, the subject must be able to recover and remember the
knowledge that is stored in the LTM. The information that remains in the LTM is usually
latent and inactive, it is activated only in accordance with the requirements imposed by the
task or context, this recovery process takes time and effort. The various investigations carried
out in the field of cognitive psychology try to explain that the knowledge that individuals
possess of the world is represented and organized in our cognitive system, in a set of schemes.
(Carterretero, 1997; Pozo, 1998) Thus, the selection in the coding process is defined as:
264 Nora Irene Abate

...] An application or projection of the new content on existing knowledge; application

depends largely on the availability of sufficient and well developed knowledge. (Sierra, and
Carretero, 1996:150)

We can say that the cognitive system uses strategies to incorporate information and store
it in an organized way in our system of LTM, so that when you need it it can be restored
quickly in order to make learning effective and lasting. We use the following processes:

Selection: Essential information is remembered and the rest is forgotten or neglected.

Interpretation: Information is recalled according to what we believe happened
Integration: It unites aspects of prior learning with new ones that are saved.

Strategies encourage the search for information on schemes and the connection of those
events, or facts to the present moment. (Gallego and Román, 1994) Its function is to
reinterpret the information already stored and thus modify or restructure the original
information of the schemes. (Sierra and Carter, 1996)
In recovery, the selection processes involved and verification taking place in the existing
schemes determine which is appropriate to integrate the new knowledge. The implementation
of strategies for encoding, presupposes the storage as a constructive process and recovery,
and reconstruction as a process which is put into operation in the organization and
reorganization of concepts.

Support strategies

Within this category there are social strategies and metacognitive strategies, both
supporting strategies. During the processing of the information processes involved in nature
and not metacognitive knowledge can help or interfere with the learning process due to
external and internal factors that interact. Among the strategies are the socio-emotional, social
and motivational, involving key aspects that influence both the learning process and its
outcomes. Among the aspects that include the socio emotional strategies it can be mentioned
for example the time control, organization of learning environment, management and control
effort, social interaction, motivation, among others. These strategies are stated by Román and
Gallego (1994).

[...] Support and enhance of the performance of acquisition and the recovery increased
motivation, self-esteem and attention. (Gallego and Román, 1994:15)

Its purpose is to improve the material and psychological conditions in which learning
occurs. Keeping this in mind, we can say that in the process of learning, there are important
motivating factors, interactional and affective, that are as important as the cognitive ones.
Among support strategies there are also metacognitive strategies, the study of this issue is
central to the research on learning strategies. (Well and Monereo, 1999; Mateos, 2001). In
the 70s John Flavell introduced the term metacognition to describe one's awareness of
cognitive processes. Initially the researchers were interested in studies of metacognition in
 Learning Strategies and Approaches of University Students 265

relation to memory, thus it can also be found in the literature the term metamemory reference.
Referring to this concept, Nisbet and Shucksmith (1997) propose the following definition:

[...] Metacognition is the term that designates the ability to learn the knowledge, thinking
and reflecting on how we react or respond to a problem or task. " (Nisbet and Shucksmith,
1997:55).

SECOND PART: THE METHOD

The methodology used was quantitative. The logic of quantitative research points to an
objective knowledge, rigorous product and hypothetical deductive method. In this sense, it
involves the search for general explanations, through a statistical treatment of data.
Participants

The participants were students who were enrolled last year in the career of Psychology, at
the National University of Tucumán, Argentina. The elected population of students (N = 136)
attending the fifth year in 2002 were a randomly selected sample consisting of 105 students (n
= 105) of both sexes, of different ages ranging between 22 and 26, who joined in 1998. This
sample was chosen because it was considered that cognitive strategies are evolutionary and
contextual, as noted by Paris "it is acquired with the exercise, you can learn it and teach it."
(Paris, 1983: 93).

Instrument

The range of learning strategies (ACRA, Román and Gallego, 1994) consists of four
subscales: level I strategies for acquiring information; level II strategies of encoding
information; III scale retrieval of information and level IV strategies to support the
prosecution. (ACRA).
The booklet is for individual use and it allows each student to read the material carefully
and to take the time to answer, there is no set time limit for the development of the scale.
Also the student is given an answer sheet, indicating their choice; it presents the option of
choice in four different modes for each of the scales.
At the end of the answer sheet, there are four boxes to enter a partial score and a box for a
total score obtained by the sum of the parts. The answers obtained are multiplied by the value
and these results are added, thus giving a score for each scale and if these are in addition to
the four scales (A + B + C + D) it yields a total score.
In case the subject has not scored in answering questions, no value is assigned. This
means that the four scales can be obtained: a total score of all items per scale and all scales
rated each of the strategies to be analyzed, identified by a number of items partial scores
according to the item selected.
266 Nora Irene Abate

Procedure

We conducted a pilot test with students from fifth year of the career of Psychology. The
results set the design of this study and test the instrument in evidence.

Design and Statistical Analysis

This is a non-experimental research; it is a descriptive correlational design with a

transectional-correlation. In this design the data is taken in one moment, and its purpose is to
describe variables and to analyze their interrelationships. The difference that is established
with the other designs is that data collection is in an unique moment. In this regard it states:
"This design aims to describe relationships between two or more variables at a time."
(Hernández Sampieri, 1987: 194)
Dependent variable: The averages of the grades are the grades of students attending the
fifth year of the career of psychology until the test. Independent variable: It is the total score
obtained by pupils in the Scale of Learning Strategies, ACRA: Acquisition, Consolidation,
Recovery and Support. (Gallego and Román, 1994)

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Analysis of the use of learning strategies

In order to investigate what strategies the students used, it was assumed that the overall
averages are related to the strategies used. In order to obtain more precise conclusions the
sample was divided into two groups: A and B students. A group of students, whose average is
below the overall average grades, and group B, composed of students who are at or above
average general notes. The overall average is 6.33.
This classification is very important for the purposes of this study to characterize and
compare the two groups, thus making possible a more detailed and careful analysis. In group
A is given the use of acquisition strategies, retention of information and repetition. The
information is kept until you perform this task. In this way information is acquired by the
sensory register and held in the STM by the use of these strategies. The internal process of
repeating and reviewing the material allows the newly encoded information units that are
maintained for longer periods of time.
The degree of use of strategies for acquiring and developing, lets say that the presentation
of information in the schemes is to establish relationships between the external surface and
prior knowledge and new information. The relations are fragmented, do not reflect or
establish comparisons, similarities and differences between knowledge and learning and new
information, or to own conceptualizations. If you just look again and again and again, the
information is maintained in the CCM, but it does not necessarily go to the LTM. Therefore
the resulting learning is limited. The knowledge obtained in this way is declarative. Students
know the information, but the relationships built are related to conceptual material that works
at the moment.
 Learning Strategies and Approaches of University Students 267

The B group of students used the tactics of classification, search for information,
organization of the task with which students initiate processes that relate to enforcement,
planning and evaluation at different levels of learning. In other words, their mode of study
involves the use of support strategies, including the metacognitive and social ones. The use of
these strategies ensures the implementation of complex psychological processes such as
thinking, understanding and implementation of inferences from general theoretical principles,
establishing relationships and personal interpretations of information, with changes and
reorganizations within the same cognitive structure resulting from the addition of new
content. These strategies are prevalent features of the CCM and LTM. The first involved in
the processes of generalization and transfer of knowledge at this stage is the material received
that must be met in order to work through processes of clustering, testing or development, to
store later in the LTM.
The CCM, in its role of working memory, receives the material recovered from the LTM,
compared with the new units of information, and recognizes, combines or integrates with the
material received, in order to form new concepts. Then, that information is conveyed to the
LTM and the depth of complex strategies and organizational development will certainly be
recovered. The LTM system is involved in the storage of declarative knowledge, procedural
and conditional schemes, as already explained in previous pages these procedures lead to an
understanding of knowledge about things, how to do things, and knowledge about where and
why to use them.
In short, the B group of students used the three types of knowledge and strategies that
lead to significant, comprehensive and strategic learning. (Well, 1998; and Monereo Castelló,
2000)
In summary, the above analysis can affirm that the groups A and B use different learning
strategies, so that there will also be different results in learning.
The results corroborate the hypothesis stated.
It was shown that the strategies used by both groups of students differ in the degree of
complexity of cognitive processes and the role of memory systems and patterns of thought.
It was found that the cognitive processes used by students in group A were related,
preferably with the acquisition of learning strategies, repetition and review, with coding
strategies, particularly strategies of memorization. It was found that the internal process of
repeating the material, allowing the newly encoded information units to be kept in the system
and to form part of the knowledge structures. The information is stored in the MLP from the
repetition and the use of memorization techniques. The knowledge gained in this way is saved
to form the patterns and declarative knowledge.
It could be demonstrated that students in Group B used all strategies, but emphasized the
choice of recovery strategies and support. Acquisition strategies enabled them to register and
obtain information from the media, but from the strategies of development and organization,
cognitive processes are activated that allowed complex information processing. In this way,
the students organized and structured differently from traditional knowledge, establishing a
system of relations between prior knowledge and new information incorporated into the
system.
It was determined that knowledge and storage can be retrieved using searching strategies
or generating response. Cognitive processes are used to relate the search for ideas and
concepts that enable the acquisition of self awareness of the task to regulate the learning
achieved, thus the proposed objectives may evaluate its effectiveness. It was found that
268 Nora Irene Abate

strategies used for reflection and understanding makes it possible to relate the knowledge
stored. This intent on learning leads to the development of conditional or strategic knowledge,
which refers to the awareness of knowing what, why and what strategies to use. This
awareness offers students a degree of control over their learning process and the development
of metacognitive knowledge.
The results indicate that the goals that guided the learning tasks are different in both
groups. In group A they were directed to solve the task, resulting in the activity itself, but
knowledge is limited to that offered by the material. The strategies used by students,
preferably, were the acquisition and memorization that characterized as passive and
dependent, both the task and the teacher's directions.
However, students in Group B used preferentially oriented strategies to regulate their
own learning, seeking meaning to the task performed, and understanding in several stages of
the learning process. This would include involvement in the task and the achievement of their
aims. The student of this group was characterized by being active in the construction of
meanings and independently of the particulars of the teacher in carrying out the task.

Students Group A

1) They Use a small number of learning strategies.

2) They have limited understanding of the strategies used to solve the learning situation.
3) The repertoire of strategies is limited in the selection process, control and monitoring
of strategies used.
4) The intentions are directed exclusively to fulfill the task.

Students Group B

1) They use a wide range of learning strategies.

2) They understand when, where and why these strategies are important.
3) They select, supervise, monitor and evaluate the strategies used.
4) Their intentions are aimed to achieve success.

FINAL WORD
For all the above and agreeing with the work done, we can say that traditional teaching,
which uses the accumulation of knowledge through strategies of acquisition, repetition and
memorization must move towards a learning process aimed at encouraging the use of
organizational strategies, preparation, reflection and understanding, i.e. coding strategies,
recovery and support. Thus, encouraging the student to take responsibility and monitor their
own learning. It seems, then, that to teach and to learn how to learn is the most important goal
of education. Undoubtedly, one of the most important aspects of learning to learn means to
encourage students to build tools to help them become aware of their learning process, the
strategies used and that it is him who oversees and monitors the process of learning, which
includes the possibility that the student reviews and verifies the causes of their difficulties,
ultimately fostering metacognitive knowledge.
 Learning Strategies and Approaches of University Students 269

The formation of the student should then be directed to the construction of learning
strategies that enable them to enter a complex and changing world, where they continually
face many problems.
These findings are relevant for teachers of the School of Psychology, reflecting concern
on their practices in respect to each subject, and to design actions to improve academic
outcomes.

[...] Education is obliged to provide nautical charts for a complex world and in perpetual
turmoil and at the same time, the compass in order to navigate it. (Unesco, 1999).

Addressees: This book is directed to teachers and pupils of all the educational levels, not
only to the university students but it also offers a general frame for the study of the strategies
and the importance of the education with a view on reflexive and significant learning. Outside
this setting, it is directed to the Spanish-speaking countries, for the similar educational
problematic, for the theoretical foundation that we share and for the applied technology of
ACCRA that help to build learning strategies because its authors are Spanish, Roman and
Galician.
Academic Institutions: To the educational institutions of all levels since it can be a text
consulted by the pupils as well as by the teachers.
Channels of diffusion: From the checked bibliography one distinguishes that there is no
registered book published by a publishing house that approaches the learning strategies at
University. Given that the topic is of current interest and the educational problematic needs of
a deep boarding and of all the actors that are involved in it.

Curriculum Vitae

Psychologist- Magister in Educational Psychology, National University of Tucumàn-.

Regular Assistant teacher in Educational Psychology - Regular Assistant teacher in Cognitive
Psychology. Assistant teacher in Problematic of the school living together. Faculty of
Psychology, National University of Tucumàn . Researcher categorized by the Council of
researches. Participation in different projects as researcher: school failure, top Education,
learning strategies, school violence, disability. Member of scientific committee, head of
thesis, commissions of evaluation. Expert member of disability, named by the Provincial
Health System. Psychologist of the Disability board. Precedents: Chapters of the book:
“Analysis of the relation school - family opposite to the school failure” Co-author “The
School Failure. Reconstruction of some processes...” Faculty of Psychology. UNT.
Authoress of the chapter: The approach of the Cognitive Psychology and his
contributions to the learning. In Educational Psychology. UNT Manifestations of the violence
in the relation between teachers and pupils Coautora in the book To learn to live Through
Both " Problems of Learning: Un Interpretation ". Co-author. School, family and cultural
diversity. Between the subordination and the cooperation Co-author. Article of the magazine
Tests and Experiences. Editions Educational Innovations. Year 7 N º 36. Noviembre/
December of Buenos Aires. Mexico.
The learning strategies in the construction of the knowledge in the Top Education Author.
270 Nora Irene Abate

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Editor: Carla E. Wilhelm, pp. 273-293 © 2012 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 8

COGNITIVE REHABILITATION IN MIDDLE-AGED

ALZHEIMER PATIENTS

Elisabetta Farina and Fabiana Villanelli

Neurorehabilitation Unit, IRCCS Don Gnocchi Foundation,
University of Milan, Milan, Italy

INTRODUCTION
General Principles of Cognitive Rehabilitation Treatment of Middle-Aged
AD Patients

Literature data support the notion that Alzheimer Disease (AD) patients show some sort
of cognitive reserve capacity that can be exploited in cognitive training. In fact, recently some
randomized controlled trial have demonstrated the efficacy of cognitive stimulation
treatments in order to improve cognitive status and quality of life in people affected by
dementia (Spector, 2003; Olazaran, 2004). On the other hand, in AD clinical heterogeneity is
the rule, not the exception, and the disease is invariably progressive. For these reasons,
cognitive rehabilitation interventions must be accurately tailored to the clinical characteristics
of the patients. It must also be considered that AD affects family as well as the patient, and
these interventions must take into account the needs of both patients and caregivers.
Interventions must try to reduce disability, preserving residual cognitive, affective and physic
abilities as long as possible. A multidimensional evaluation, taking into account residual
cognitive and functional abilities, the possible presence of psychobehavioural disturbances, of
associated general illnesses, and of the familiar and social support is necessary to establish
reasonable goals for the cognitive rehabilitation program. This evaluation should include:

1. A complete battery of neuropsychological tests, covering all main cognitive

functions (short and long term memory) better if tests of “ecological” memory are
included, such as the Rivermead Behavioral Test, (Wilson et al., 1990), semantic
memory, language comprehension and production, visuospatial and visuoperceptive
functions, constructive and ideomotor praxia;
274 Elisabetta Farina and Fabiana Villanelli

2. Scales to evaluate psychobehavioural disturbances, e.g. the Neuropsychiatric

Inventory (Cummings et al, 1994) or the Revised Memory and Behaviour Checklist
(Teri et al., 1992), and depression (e.g., the Geriatric Depression Scale) (Yesavage et
al. 1982-83) or the Cornell Depression Scale for Dementia (Alexopoulos et al, 1988);
3. Tools to evaluate functional disability. Traditional “generic” functional scales, such
as ADL and IADL (Lawton et al, 1969) are insensitive to the large variety of
impairment shown by middle-aged AD patients in everyday life, and they do not
reflect adequately the kind and the amount of help that is needed for cognitively
impaired persons to plan and perform an action, a variable that can be modified by
treatment. Therefore we recommend the use of more sensitive tools, such as the
Alzheimer's Disease Activities of Daily Living International Scale (ADL-IS), that
covers a large sample of activities of daily living, and shows high correlations with
measures of cognitive functions and stage of dementia (Reisberg et al., 2001). A
good option may be the use of performance measures of functional abilities: these are
tools in which an individual is asked to perform or simulate an activity and is
evaluated in a formal manner on that performance with standardized criteria. They
have been used in medical rehabilitation for diagnosis and to demonstrate therapeutic
progress, and have shown to predict survival, hospitalization, use of assistance, long-
term-care and nursing home placement (Kuriansky and Gurland, 1976; Jette and
Branch, 1985, Williams, 1987; Guralnik et al., 1989; Reuben et al., 1992). Other
claimed advantages are good patient’s acceptability, and good interrater reliability
(Guralnik, et al., 1989; Reuben and Siu 1990; Mahurin et al., 1991). An example of
performance measure is the Direct Assessment of Functional Status (DAFS,
Lowenstein et al., 1989): the DAFS features mainly IADL skills (communication
abilities, transportation, financial skills, shopping skills), along with two BADL skills
(eating and dressing/grooming skills), and time orientation. Performance is rated as
correct or incorrect. Our group has recently standardized another performance
measure, The Functional Living Skills Assessment (FLSA) focused on mild
ambulatory AD patients, which explores 8 areas of interest (Resources, Consumer
Skills, Public Transportation, Time Management, Leisure, Telephone Skills, Self-
Care and Health) and assesses a large range of functions, allows us to follow the
patient evolution in an analytical manner (but it also provides a total score, that it
easy to calculate and to follow serially) (Farina et., 1999; Farina et al., submitted). In
two studies about cognitive rehabilitation in dementia, we demonstrated that the
FLSA was the most sensitive instrument to detect functional changes in AD patients
after performing a cognitive training of a 5-week duration (Farina et al., 2002; Farina
et al., 2006 a)
4. Specific scales to evaluate comorbidities (even if they are less often present in
middle-aged AD patients than in older ones) e.g. the CIRS (Parmalee PA et al 1995).
5. Tools to assess the impact of providing care to AD patients on family members’ life,
such as the Caregiver Burden Inventory (CBI, Novak et al., 1980), and to detect
depressive symptoms in caregivers (e.g. Beck Depression Scale, Beck et al., 1961).

New diagnostic criteria for dementia consider not tenable the distinction between
presenile and senile dementia (Reisberg, 2006), and even if some studies about the
epidemiology of AD have claimed the younger AD patients have a disease evolution more
 Cognitive Rehabilitation in Middle-Aged Alzheimer Patients 275

rapid than the oldest, these data have been denied by other studies (with the exception of
genetic dominant forms- Reisberg et al, 1989-). On the other hand, the clinical impression and
the problems shown by middle aged AD patients in clinical practice are really different from
older patients: a temporary stabilization of the cognitive status after starting a treatment with
cholinesterase inhibitors is rarer than in older patients, the evolution of the disease is usually
rather quick, and atypical forms of AD (e.g. with early and or relatively selective involvement
of language or visuoperceptive functions) are frequently seen. This raises the possibility that
the patient might be affected by other dementias (above all dementias of the frontotemporal
spectrum). Middle-aged AD patients are also different as far as cognitive rehabilitation or
stimulation is concerned.
In our practical experience of several years, we rarely saw clear improvement at
neuropsychological tests or in functional tasks of middle-aged AD patients treated with
cognitive rehabilitation or stimulation. On the contrary, this was the case for a good
percentage of older patients recruited in our studies (Farina et al., 2006 a e b). Mostly middle-
aged patients seem to follow a steady slope of deterioration, with almost every technique used
(training of functions relatively conserved in the first phase of the disease, both with paper-
and pencil and with computerized tasks; use of external aids or devices; training of the
procedural memory in the activities of daily living; training with techniques based on implicit
memory, such as errorless learning, spaced retrieval and forward or backward cueing. For
most patients, cognitive-oriented techniques must be abandoned relatively quickly for more
“generic” and simpler methods, such as occupational and recreational activities, which can
give some results, more as far as behavioral problems are concerned rather than from the
cognitive or functional point of view. To this aim, the choice of occupational/recreational
activities must be accurately tailored on the past occupations and on the preference of the
patient. It is necessary to question the patient, the spouse and/or other relatives about that,
grading the degree of satisfaction that the patient seemed to find in a certain activity, and how
frequently and from how long the patient practiced the activity. It is also necessary to test
whether the patient is still able to perform the chosen activity without aid, or with minor aid.
These are patients that are cruelly struck by the disease while still working and living a life
with plenty of things to do and with social contacts. They rapidly loose their social and
financial status, must retire from work and driving (not always voluntarily) and are often
obliged to live a retired life at home (families of middle-aged dementia patients are usually
shamed to show the patients to previous neighbors and friends). Therefore, they are easily
frustrated if they realize that are no longer able to perform occupational activities, which
would have been very easy for them before the disease started.
It has been underlined that collaboration with the patient’s family is an important part of
the rehabilitation program: younger AD patients are different from the older ones also from
this point of view, e.g. for the possible presence in the family of children in their teens (and
even in their childhood), or in any case too young in order to understand the disease and
accept it. Psychological intervention extended to all the family (patient, spouse, children, and
others) can be particularly important in middle-aged patients. Performing sessions in the
clinical setting does not exhaust the whole rehabilitation program: on the contrary, it is the
point of departure for activities that, once planned during the sessions at the hospital, must be
implemented and continued at home with the aid of the family. To this aim, familiar persons
must be instructed relative to the specific techniques used in this kind of patient (e.g. errorless
learning and forward cueing) and psychologically supported in order to face and manage
276 Elisabetta Farina and Fabiana Villanelli

possible difficulties that can take place during the home sessions: e.g. the excessive
confidence between the patient and his/her caregiver may reduce the patient’s compliance and
cause irritability: in this case the time of each home session must be reduced: sessions for
collaborating patients may be 30-45 minutes long, while in the case of reduced compliance
they must be 20 minutes maximum. The family collaboration with the rehabilitation program
is essential from other points of view: the family must motivate the patient to take part in the
hospital sessions and must assure a regular frequency; relatives must favor the birth of a
therapeutic alliance between the patient, his/her family and therapists; they must stimulate the
patient to generalize learning obtained in rehabilitation sessions to daily life.
Group intervention of cognitive stimulation can be particularly indicated in AD patients
because it allow socialization, which has a positive effect on mood; however, AD is not
common in middle age, and it is difficult to form groups. Therefore, in most cases patients
receive rehabilitation in individualized sessions, or in groups formed by a very few patients
(2-3), at least in our center.

DIFFERENT TECHNIQUES IN COGNITIVE REHABILITATION

In the following paragraph, we will give some details about the different techniques that
can be used with patients affected by dementia.
In the first stage of AD, “specific” techniques, favoring relearning (or new learning) of a
limited amount of information (e.g. the association face-name) can be proposed, such as
spaced retrieval, the method of vanishing cues and errorless learning. These methods have
been originally proposed as focusing on implicit memory, a type of memory preserved in
early AD.
With the spaced retrieval technique, the patient is asked to retain an object that is
presented at very short (few seconds) but increasingly longer intervals (5, 10, 20, 40, 60, 90,
120’’ etc.). Intervals are filled with interfering tasks (such as a conversation). When the
patient is unable to recall an item (for example after a 120 s interval), he/she receives a
feedback and the retention interval is shortened to the previous step when the patient managed
to recall a piece of information (90 s in this case). Spaced retrieval has shown its effectiveness
in allowing AD patients to retain face-name associations (Camp and Foss, 1997), to localize
objects (Bird and Kinsella, 1996) and to carry out prospective memory-related tasks (Mc
Kitrick et al., 1992; Kixmiller 2002). Clare et al. (1999, 2000, 2002) administered spaced
retrieval, in association with errorless learning and vanishing cues, to some AD patients who
had to retain ecologically relevant face-name associations or personal information (see later
on). Another implicit memory-oriented learning approach is the method of vanishing cues
(previously successfully administered to amnesics): the patient is required to retrieve a verbal
piece of information and he receives all the letters (cues) he needs to meet this goal. There are
two different procedures: patient is asked to spontaneously retrieve a verbal piece of
information (for example the name of a person). If he/she does not recall it, he/she is provided
with an increasing number of letters to get the right word until the patient manages to retrieve
it (“forward cueing”). At the second step, the patient is provided with a number of letters
equal to the letters he previously needed to retrieve the item, but one less, and so on. The
alternative procedure (“backward chaining”), initially provides the patient with all the letters
 Cognitive Rehabilitation in Middle-Aged Alzheimer Patients 277

composing a to be recalled item. The letters are then progressively decreased according to the
patient’s ability to retain the piece of information. The method of vanishing cues has shown to
be effective in teaching AD patients face-name associations (Van der Linden and Juillerat,
1998), addresses and telephone numbers (De Vreese, 1999). Bird at al. (1995) managed to
reduce behavioral disturbances in some demented patients by combining spaced retrieval with
the method of vanishing cues. The studies of Clare et al. (1999, 2000, 2002) have been
already mentioned.
Errorless learning has been derived by studies on amnesic subjects and focus on
minimizing the number of errors during the learning process. This technique appears to be
more beneficial in improving the ability of patients with explicit memory impairment to
acquire new pieces of information than the errorful learning method. According to Wilson
and Evans (1996), errorless learning improves learning by relying on implicit memory, which
is very likely to be affected by errors, as it is perseverative and poorly flexible. Clare et al.
(1999) successfully administered the errorless learning technique to a mild AD patient who
had to learn 11 face-name associations concerning her club companions. However in this
study, the errorless learning technique was combined with a language processing strategy, and
with the vanishing cues spaced retrieval methods. The same authors (Clare et al., 2000) have
then presented, together with the previous study, the results they obtained by administering
the same combination of procedures to other 2 subjects. In this case, the patients were
successfully trained to learn face-name associations or personal information. Another patient
was trained to learn face-name associations of well-known people by using the errorless
learning principle in association with one of the other techniques at a time. In the same article,
the authors also administered the errorless learning technique to teach the use of external aids
(calendar, diary, black board) to two AD patients in order to reduce the number of their
repetitive questions (see later on).
However, in spite of these promising premises, more recent studies have questioned the
usefulness of errorless learning in patients with dementia (Dunn and Clare, 2007; Haslam et
al., 2006; Metzler-Baddeley and Snowden, 2005). From these studies, it seems that
advantages of the errorless learning technique are limited (e.g., it can be useful to learn
general information rather than specific ones), and that only some patients can benefit from it.
Moreover, if the patient has still a residual of explicit memory, he/she will learn more
throughout this residual than by using implicit memory.
It must also be recognized that most studies focusing on spaced retrieval, vanishing cues
and errorless learning are small and there is poor evidence of a generalization in daily living
tasks. More, it can be difficult to determine what kind of information may be useful to
(re)learn for AD patients in everyday life, and the errorless learning technique can be difficult
to use with some patients to their impulsiveness.
Another possibility with AD patients in the first stage is the use of external aids and
supports, such as alarm clocks, place cards, diaries, boards, colored posters, and electronic
aids. However, available data on this subject are limited, and further investigation is
necessary.
Bourgeois et al. (1997) obtained a reduction of repetitive questions in a group of mild to
moderate AD patients thanks to the use of a “memory book” they produced with the
caregiver’s help and containing family pictures, a checklist of daily living activities and
drawings of to be done activities with time schedule. Also Clare et al. (2000) obtained a
reduction of repetitive questions by using external aids (calendar, diary, board) with two
278 Elisabetta Farina and Fabiana Villanelli

mildly affected AD patients and administering errorless learning. However, only one patient
did not loose the improvement at the follow up. Zanetti et al. (2000) trained 5 mild to
moderate AD patients to learn 7 ecologic prospective memory-related tasks by the means of
an electronic diary. The results produced by the use of the electronic diary were then
compared with two control conditions (free retrieval following “spontaneous” learning and
retrieval supported by a written list of cues). Patients performed significantly better in the first
case than in the control conditions.
The most important prerequisite of studies on external aids is that thanks to the use of
environmental supports, the to be done activity becomes less episodic and semantic memory
dependent (the two compromised memories) and more procedural memory dependent. For
example, by combining the use of big boards showing the name of given objects or places
with oral instructions and practical demonstrations, it is possible to improve patients’
performances in instrumental activities of daily living such as preparing breakfast, a coffee
and so on.
Patients must be motivated to use external aids in their activities of daily living until they
become part of their daily routine and increase their independence. For this reason, this
intervention must be individually tailored and the method that encourages the patient to use
aids must be carefully studied and administered (for example by dividing the learning process
into different steps, by detecting the most effective way to elicit the appropriate reaction, by
using errorless learning).
Very recently, preliminary data indicate that patients with Alzheimer disease can benefit
also from the stimulation of "residual" neuropsychological functions carried out through
computerized programs (Cipriani et al., 2005). In a pilot study, Tàrraga and coworkers (2006)
compared an experimental group of AD patients, treated with a multimedia internet-based
system (Smartbrain) and an integrated psychostimulation program, and two control groups,
the first treated only with the psychostimulation program, and the second one not submitted to
cognitive stimulation. Both groups received acetylcholinesterase inhibitors. After 12 weeks of
treatment, the experimental group improved in two measures of cognitive global function
(MMSE and ADAS-Cog), and this improvement was maintained at the follow-up. Another
recent study, including patients with AD and with MCI (Talassi et al., 2007) compared a
rehabilitation program including a computerized training along with a more generic and
global approach, and a program including only the last one.
Both MCI and AD patients improved with the program including also the computerized
approach from the cognitive and psychiatric point of view. AD patients treated only with the
global approach showed minor cognitive improvement.
In the mild to moderate phase of dementia, more “global” and less specific interventions
must be proposed.
Reality Orientation Therapy is the most known cognitive stimulation technique in AD,
developed in the 50’s and then improved during the following ten years (Taulbee and Folsom,
1966).
It is a technique that, through a focused and continuous stimulation, helps the patient to
reorient himself/herself towards the environment: this leads the patient to a better
comprehension of what surrounds him improving his/her sense of control and self-esteem.
The theoretical foundations of the ROT are multiple. However, all the authors seem to agree
in founding the rehabilitation process on the stimulation of the parts still partially integral of
 Cognitive Rehabilitation in Middle-Aged Alzheimer Patients 279

the individual mental state, with the aim to develop some form of independence (Brook,
1975; Florenzano, 1988).
There are two forms of ROT: formal ROT and informal ROT. Informal ROT approach is
double: it involves a reorganization of the environment by the means of aids, such as
calendars, clocks, signs (indicating toilets, kitchen etc.) and a repetitive reality reorientation
through direct stimulation. The staff throughout the day carries out these activities in order to
let patients recall basic information such as present day, month, year, age, location etc.
Formal ROT is a structured group therapy. Formal ROT group sessions (composed by a
maximum of five people at the same involutional stage) take place in a room built as a
common house, and equipped with a big clock, a calendar and a black board; they usually last
one-hour maximum. The first part of the session is devoted to acclimatization following the
daily space-time orientation criteria (present day, month, year and location), while during the
second part some exercises are proposed (dealing with space, time and personal orientation).
According to literature, ROT has been found to improve verbal orientation and memory
for personal facts; other studies have reported slight improvements also in other cognitive
measures, behavior and social interaction. However, it is uncertain whether ROT produces a
positive impact on daily living activities and what is the persistence of its effects.
In last the 20 years, various researches have analyzed ROT efficacy in AD. The
metanalysis carried out from the Cochrane Collaboration (Spector et al., 2000) has concluded
that there is a sure evidence of effectiveness both for cognitive and behavioral aspects (even if
the positive effect seems of short duration); the author thinks therefore that the ROT would
have to be considered like part of the treatment of people with dementia. A recent controlled
randomized multicentric study (Spector et al., 2003) in which patients received a treatment
inspired mainly to the ROT and to the cognitive stimulation has confirmed the possible
benefits for the patients affected by dementia, who in this study improved regarding to
controls in several parameters (MMSE, ADAS-Cog, Quality of life-Alzheimer' s Disease
scales). Authors have calculated that the amplitude of the improvement was substantially
comparable to those obtainable with inhibitors of cholinesterase in clinic trials. Unfortunately,
the effect does not last a long time. However, there is some evidence that a program
supported in the time can maintain the advantages acquired (Orrell et al., 2005). A
retrospective study has concluded that the application of repeated cycles of ROT during initial
and intermediate stages of disease could delay the cognitive decline and institutionalization
(Metitieri et al., 2001).
ROT appears effective also when administered by a caregiver trained to offer the
program at home (Onder et al., 2005).
Reality orientation enhances the effects of donepezil on cognition in Alzheimer's disease.
ROT approach is often combined with two emotion-oriented techniques ( Ishizahi et al.,
2002; Onor et al., 2007): Reminiscence Therapy and Remotivation Therapy. They are, in fact,
called 3R therapies.
The Reminiscence technique aims to bring into consciousness past experiences and
unresolved conflicts, thus helping elderly people to put their experiences into perspective and
preparing for death (Head at al., 1990; Burside and Haight; 1994). The idea is that, since
remote memory is usually the last to deteriorate, RT could be an effective means of
communication for demented patients. This therapy usually involves group meetings, in
which participants are encouraged to talk about past events (e.g., aspects from their
childhood, love relationships and marriage, education and work life, anniversaries and
280 Elisabetta Farina and Fabiana Villanelli

celebrations of historic events); they are often assisted with aids such as music or objects
associated with those events in order to stimulate memory and mood. According to the
Cochrane Review, the randomized (or almost randomized) trials that have been carried out on
this subject (Baines et al., 1987; Goldwasser et al., 1987; Orten et al., 1989) are not sufficient
to reach any conclusions on the efficacy of the Reminiscence Therapy, although the best trial
(Baines et al., 1987) reports a slight but statistically insignificant improvement in behavior.
(Spector et al., 1999). A more general literature review on emotion-oriented approaches in the
care for persons suffering from dementia concluded that mainly positive results (including
increased social interaction and decrease of behavior problems) are achieved with these kinds
of approaches. Unfortunately many studies have methodological limitations and are done
independently, which makes comparison difficult (Finnema et al., 2000).
The Remotivation Therapy was initially developed to treat schizophrenic patients but was
then administered also to institutionalized elderly patients with psychogeriatric problems
(Abrahams et al., 1979; Levy, 1987). The therapist aims to mobilize patient’s interest in his
environment by stimulating him every day, individually or in a group session, and leading
him to focus his attention on simple subjects and/or events (history, holidays, food, money
etc.). Unlike what happens in psychotherapy sessions, subjects concerning emotional
problems such as the relationship with the family, diseases, institutionalization, religion and
so on, are avoided as much as possible. The Remotivation therapy involves a highly
structured method in its group sessions. However, the studies about the effectiveness of this
technique in patients with dementia are scanty. Janseen and Giberson (1988) outlined that
after a Remotivation therapy training, patients affected by various degrees of dementia
showed a greater interest in group activities and an increased verbal and emotional
communication level.
With the progression of dementia, treatments with recreational activities, such as games
and art therapies (e.g., music, dance, art), that are frequently offered to people with dementia
in nursing homes or day-care centers, can be useful to ameliorate mood and avoid social
isolation of people with dementia. As discussed above, this kind of treatments can be
particularly useful in the practical management of middle-aged AD patients. The primary
purposes of recreational activities, according to the American Therapeutic Recreation
Association (ATRA) guidelines, are to restore, remediate or rehabilitate in order to improve
functioning and independence as well as reduce (or eliminate) the effect of illness or
disability. Activity is a basic human need expressed in leisure and work pursuits;
unfortunately, dementia leads to boredom and isolation due to a low rate of activity
participation, and this results in agitated or passive behaviors, and in functional loss.
Recreational Services are thought to provide recreation resources and opportunities in order to
improve patients’ health and well being (Fitzsimmons, 2003). Chosen interventions of
recreational activities for AD patients must match the functional skills of the persons with
dementia and their personality style of interest to provide stimulation and enrichment to the
patient and thus mobilize the patient’s available cognitive resources. However, only a few
controlled studies have been performed to demonstrate efficacy of recreational activities in
AD: there is some evidence that these interventions decrease behavioral problems, improve
mood and increase socialization (Karlsson et al., 1988; Gerber et al., 1991; Rovner et al.,
1996). Recently, it has been suggested that even some extremely easy activities, such as
Bingo, can significantly improve cognitive performances in AD patients (unlike motor
activity) (Sobel, 2001) Additional support for this recreational approach in AD treatment
 Cognitive Rehabilitation in Middle-Aged Alzheimer Patients 281

comes from the works of Teri and Logsdon (Teri et al., 1992; Teri, 1994), who have
developed a protocol that includes behavior psychotherapy and a number of interventions
aimed at increasing the number of pleasant activities. This protocol has shown to improve the
mood of patients and caregivers alike.
Recreational activities can be combined with occupational interventions: some data
suggest a positive effect on functional abilities of demented patients by programs based on
procedural learning (Zanetti et al., 1997, 2001): a significant reduction of time spent to
perform selected activities of daily living was noted. On the other hand, educating caregivers
about the impact of the environment on dementia-related behaviors, and about the
relationship between excess stimulation and behavioral disturbances, has been shown to slow
functional decline and to reduce behavior problems in a randomized, controlled trial (Gitlin et
al., 2001). In another study, a brief structured intervention at home by an occupational
therapist (suggesting adaptation of the environment, and strategies for control of reactive
behaviors and improvement of residual functional abilities), and by a psychologist (giving
psychological support to caregivers, and giving advice on family relationships, psychological
consequences of caring and verbal and non-verbal communication) led to a significant
reduction of the frequency of problem behavior and, to a lesser extent, of time spent for
caring (Nobili et al., 2004). Adherence to occupational therapy recommendations can improve
quality of life of AD patients living in the community and diminish caregiver burden (Dooley
and Hinojosa J, 2004).
Our group has recently demonstrated cognitive and functional gains in demented patients
treated with training of activities of daily living (based on stimulation of procedural memory)
or recreational-occupational activities (plus support psychotherapy for patients and caregivers
Farina et al., 2002, 2006 a). Patients treated with recreational-occupational activities also
showed a significant improvement in behavior. A limitation of our studies was that in both
cases we compared mentioned techniques to other non-pharmacological treatments; therefore,
we had no control (not-treated) group. Therefore, we performed an additional aimed to
overcome this limitation, by comparing a control group (AD subjects receiving only standard
medical care) with AD patients taking part to a stimulation program based on recreational and
occupational activities, associated to a brief cycle of support psychotherapy for patients and
caregivers. When comparing baseline with post-training condition, patients displayed a
substantial reduction in disruptive behavior, and a tendency to a general reduction of
behavioral symptoms compared to controls. This reduction was mirrored by a significant
reduction of caregiver reaction to behavioral disturbances (Farina et al., 2006 b).
Patients in the moderate to severe phase of dementia can benefit of music therapy, even if
this kind of treatment has been proposed also in the early phases of the disease. Music therapy
is a potential non-pharmacological treatment for the behavioral and psychological symptoms
of dementia. It is, in fact, a safe and effective method for treating agitation and anxiety in
moderately severe and severe AD. This is in line with the result of some studies on music
therapy in dementia (Sherratt et al., 2004; Svansdottir HB et al 2006), even if a recent
Cochrane report concluded that more and better quality research is required to investigate the
effectiveness of music therapy in reducing problems in behavioral, social, emotional and
cognitive domains in patients with dementia (Vink et al., 2004). But the effect of music
therapy could not be limited to reduction of agitation and anxiety: a randomized placebo-
controlled trial with blinded observer rater aimed to explore whether music, live or pre-
recorded, is effective in the treatment of apathy in subjects with moderate to severe dementia,
282 Elisabetta Farina and Fabiana Villanelli

concluded that live interactive music has immediate and positive engagement effects in
dementia subjects with apathy, regardless of the severity of their dementia, while pre-
recorded music is non-harmful but less clearly beneficial (Holmes et al., 2006).
Other studies have claimed that music could enhance cognitive performances of AD
patients (Van de Winkel et al., 2004). In a recent study considerable improvement was found
as far as autobiographical memory is concerned in the music condition, associated with a
significant reduction in state anxiety, suggesting anxiety reduction as a potential mechanism
underlying the enhancing effect of music on autobiographical memory recall (Irish et al.,
2006).
For patients with severe dementia, Validation Therapy (VT), which was developed by
Naomi Feil (1993, 1996) between 1963 and 1980 to offer an alternative to ROT and
particularly for older demented patients living in care retirement communities, is frequently
proposed as non-pharmacological treatment. Feil describes VT as a method to encourage the
intellectual development in elderly people with mild or severe orientation disorders, that is
aimed at restoring patients’ self-esteem, reducing stress, anxiety and isolation from the
external world, decreasing the need of safety measures, promoting contacts with other people,
facilitating their independence and helping them to carry out unsolved vital tasks. According
to the author, when more recent memory fails, elderly people try to restore balance to their
life by retrieving earlier memories. Painful feelings that are expressed and “validated” by a
trusted listener will diminish, while painful feelings that are ignored will gain strength,
leading the elderly individual to social isolation and vegetative state. Feil classifies
individuals with cognitive impairment as having one of four stages of a continuum of
dementia: Malorientation, Time Confusion, Repetitive Motion and Vegetation. Each stage is
identified by sets of both cognitive and behavioral characteristics: through the empathic
listening, eye and physical contact, the therapist tries to understand the patient’s point of view
to establish an emotional contact with him or her; the goal is not to reach awareness of reality
but to understand the meaning of the patient’s behavior. The therapist of Validation accepts
that a confused old man retires into his shell as a consequence of aging, and accepts his going
back to the past as a survival mean, and a healthy process that lessens the age-related burden.
In this way, the therapist “validates” the elderly individual’s feelings and uses the empathy to
be on the same wavelength with his interior reality. VT can be administered to the single
patient, but whenever possible, it involves group meetings.
Various observational studies have indicated that there are positive effects in using VT
with regard to the interactions that patients are able to make during validation groups
(Bleathman and Morton, 1988; Babins et al., 1988). However, although the Cochrane
Collaboration review has identified 18 studies on the efficacy of this technique, only two of
them were randomized controlled trials (Robb et al., 1986; Toseland et al., 1997); these
studies indicate that there is no statistically significant benefit but only a positive trend of
Validation Therapy concerning some outcomes; in addition, the potential advantage of this
therapy could depend only on a greater attention to the patient (Neal and Briggs, 1999).
Multisensory environments such as Snoezelen® rooms are becoming increasingly popular
in health care facilities for individuals with moderate-severe dementia. Snoezelen® provides
sensory stimuli to stimulate the primary senses of sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell,
through the use of lighting effects, tactile surfaces, meditative music and the odor of relaxing
essential oils (Pinkney 1997). The clinical application of snoezelen has been extended from
the field of learning disability to dementia care over the past decade. The rationale for its use
 Cognitive Rehabilitation in Middle-Aged Alzheimer Patients 283

lies in providing a sensory environment that places fewer demands on intellectual abilities but
capitalizes on the residual sensorimotor abilities of people with dementia (e.g. Hope 1998).
Some encouraging results have been documented in the area of promoting adaptive behaviors
(e.g. Baker et al 2001, Long 1992, Spaull 1998), reducing agitation (Baillon et al., 2004), or
apathy (Verkaik et al., 2005). However, the clinical application of Snoezelen® often varies in
form, nature, principles and procedures. Such variations not only make examination of the
therapeutic values of Snoezelen® difficult, but also make difficult the clinical development of
Snoezelen® in dementia care. A Cochrane review of evidence for the efficacy of Snoezelen®
in the care of people with dementia concluded that data were too limited to reach a firm
conclusion (Chung et al., 2002) Acrossover randomised controlled study aimed to evaluate
the effect of Snoezelen® on the mood and behavior of patients with dementia, in comparison
to Reminiscence Therapy concluded that both interventions had a positive effect (Baillon et
al., 2004)
Gentle Care® is a prosthetic life care system developed by Moyra Jones (1996). The aim
of this system is to help families and professional carers in understanding the diseases that
cause dementia, thus allowing caregivers to develop a "prosthesis of care" based on the
premise of carefully defining the deficit the person is experiencing: this “prosthesis of care”
will seek to arrange an environmental fit between the person with dementing illness and the
physical space, the programs, and the significant people with whom the person must interact.
The Gentle Care® system accommodates and supports existing levels of function and
development, rather than challenging the person with dementia to adapt and perform in ways
no longer possible. Carers are assisted to evaluate the functional deficits and strengths of the
client, they are provided with problem solving strategies, and they are taught to integrate daily
activities with programs that exploit the patient’s residual abilities (Vitali, 2004). The
physical space must assure security, mobility, easiness of access, privacy, comfort, and
socialization; it must suggest to the patient its own function, and it must be flexible to adapt to
patient and carer changes. Meaningful activities, that aim to satisfy fundamental
psychological needs, are integrated to build a daily routine, specific for each patient
(according to his/her moral and cultural background, attitude, capability).
Finally, it deserves a mention the positive effects that physical activity and exercise can
have in patients with dementia. In the last years, many data have accumulated on this point.
Exercise training combined with teaching caregivers behavioral management techniques
improved physical health and depression in patients with Alzheimer disease in a randomized
controlled trial (Teri et al., 2003). A recent work, comparing supervised walking,
comprehensive exercise (walking plus strength training, balance, and flexibility exercises),
and social conversation (casual rather than therapeutic themes) found that participants
receiving comprehensive exercise exhibited higher positive and lower negative affect and
mood. (Williams and Tappen, 2007). In another study, a simple exercise program, 1 hour
twice a week, led to significantly slower decline in ADL score in patients with AD living in a
nursing home than routine medical care (Rolland et al., 2007).
A recent review suggests that literature supports the claim that physical activity enhances
cognitive and brain function, and protects against the development of neurodegenerative
diseases (Kramer and Erickosn, 2007)
Another article reports the effects of language-enriched physical fitness interventions
provided by universitary undergraduate students to 24 mild- to moderate-stage Alzheimer's
disease patients. Socialization experiences consisted of supervised volunteer work and
284 Elisabetta Farina and Fabiana Villanelli

cultural/recreational activities. Changes in global functioning and neuropsychological test

performance were evaluated and compared to those of a similar group of untreated patients
from the Consortium for the Establishment of a Registry for Alzheimer's Disease (CERAD).
Cohorts completing 4 semesters or longer showed no significant between-year changes after
their first year on the Clinical Dementia Rating, a measure of global functioning, and on 5 or
6 of the cognitive and language measures. Comparisons with the CERAD sample suggested a
slower rate of decline for the AD treated group. The stabilization of global and cognitive
performance was not apparent among participants who completed only 2 semesters. (Arkin
2007) Exercise sessions consisted of flexibility, balance, aerobic, and weight resistance
activities. Highly significant fitness gains were achieved in the six-minute walk test, upper
and lower body strength, and duration of aerobic exercise (Arkin, 2003).
This work is also notable for other reasons: it is an example of the most recent tendency
in the literature about cognitive rehabilitation in AD, that is the combination of interventions
of different nature (global/aspecific interventions are associated to selective/specific training):
another example is a randomized study on AD and Mild Cognitive Impairment patients
comparing a psychomotor intervention associating spatial-temporal reorientation, ADL
training, socialization, and specific cognitive exercises (to train attention, language,
visuospatial abilities, calculation, and frontal functions) with psychosocial intervention alone,
and showing that the experimental group appears cognitively stable after six months, and less
depressed after twelve months (Olazarán et al., 2004)
Arkin (2007) comments in this manner why she chose to perform a combined
intervention (page 73): “Clinically, there is much to said for leaving the combined
intervention intact. By offering a variety of activities, you are providing multiple and different
opportunities for participants to be successful. Someone whose language skills are seriously
compromised and resist improvement can still achieve pleasure and satisfaction from rocking
babies at a day care center and/or make tangible and esteem-building gains in speed or
duration of aerobic activity or increases in amounts of weight lifted. A frail individual who
cannot do well on the physical activities may benefit from the cognitive activities and be able
to read stories to preschoolers or newspapers to a blind person”.
Another reason for which the Arkin’s work is interesting is that she included in her study
two middle-aged AD patients. A 59 years old patient completed 4 years of treatment, thus
entering in a small (4 persons) group showing stabilization in language measures, and less
marked decline than CERAD controls at MMSE. On the whole, however, it is very difficult to
extract information about middle-aged patients in the existing literature about cognitive
rehabilitation in AD: no work specifically mentions these patients.

CONCLUSION
A Clinical Experience

In our clinical experience, it is difficult to initiate middle-aged patients to “classical”

group training, because of the age difference with most AD patients (they do not have the
same social and cultural background as elderly patients). Therefore, these patients are often
treated with individual rehabilitation sessions. We want to detail, however, an experience in
 Cognitive Rehabilitation in Middle-Aged Alzheimer Patients 285

which two patients, both of them age 58 at the beginning of training, were treated together
twice a week for 40 sessions.
The objectives of the program and techniques used to attain these objectives were the
following:

Controlling the progression of the deficits:

(a) Temporal and spatial reorientation (use of external aid)
(b) Language: maintenance of the written and spoken language abilities (stimulation
of verbal initiative during conversation on subjects of interest for the patients)
(c) Attention and concentration (attentive matrices)
(d) Praxia: work with paper and pencil (copying or painting pictures, manual
activities with different materials) or more ecological ones (connecting the
buttons, putting on the shoes, connecting the shoe-strings, putting on the coat,
opening and closing pens, opening and using common objects etc).
(e) Visuo-perceptive deficits (exploration of paintings and of the environment)
Maintenance of the AVQ (stimulation of the procedural memory in the activity of
daily living)
Maintenance of autobiographic memory
Improving mood and well-being
(a) Games (cards, domino, bingo, goose game)
(b) Pleasant home activities (care of the grandson or of the garden)
Emotional management of the patients (anxiety, depression, anger)
Psychological support of caregivers (planned conversations at the beginning and end
of treatment, conversations upon caregiver’s request or to educate the caregivers to
stimulate the patients at home).

The activities for these patients had been chosen to respect the following criteria:

Asserting the dignity of the patients

Not emphasizing the difficulties of the patients but supporting their residual abilities
Preferring pleasant activities
Respecting individual personality (taste, preferences)
Supporting spontaneous participation
Aiding the patient to establish social roles (inside the family or the entourage of
friends, and inside the group of cognitive stimulation)
Favoring self-esteem

The clinical sessions were structured in the following way: greetings of the therapist to
welcome the patients and their relatives (the wife for a patient and the daughter for the other).
The greetings were very affectionate: the aim was to let the patient and their families know
themselves, and to favour the relationship between the therapist and the patient and between
the therapist and the relatives. The objective was, also, a global care of the patients in order to
create positive feelings and motivate the patient to come to the hospital for the session of
cognitive rehabilitation spontaneously. After the first greetings the therapist moved with the
patients to a wide, luminous receiving room in order to begin the work.
286 Elisabetta Farina and Fabiana Villanelli

The patients sat down one beside the other and the therapist took a place near them and
not in the classic position from behind a writing desk, in order not to break the relaxing and
pleasant atmosphere that had been created. The patients in the first stages of the disease are
often aware of their cognitive deficits, they feel themselves defidient towards the other people
and therefore are victims of anxiety and depression much more than the older ones. That’s
why we underline the importance of maintaining a good and positive mood as the base of the
therapy.
After a short talk to find out how they felt that day and how the last week went on, the
therapist began a first session of temporal and spatial reorientation taking advantage of
personal calendars that the patients took home and were used to consult daily with their
relatives. This aspect must be emphasised because it evidences how much is important for the
patient to continue the cognitive stimulation at home in order to create that positive routine
that contributes to maintaining and increasing residual cognitive and functional abilities.
During the session the therapist stimulated one specific cognitive function or purposed
recreational occupations (see above).
After 45 minutes, the dismissal was similar to the beginning of the training session: the
therapist returned with the patients to the relatives who were in the waiting room. The
therapist, with the aid of the patients, reviewed with the caregiver the activities carried out
during the session and then said good-bye to all, reminding them of the next meeting date
which was also written by the patients on their personal agenda.
Apart from the general objectives already mentioned, the training had the specific aim to
favor the acquaintance between the two families (the patients and their relatives go out
together during the week end in order to spend a little time taking walks or drinking coffee
and talking together) to give psychological and psychoeducational support to the caregiver
and to the patients as they request.
Even if the Alzheimer disease showed a rapid course in these two patients it
demonstrated positive results improving patients’ mood and self-esteem and ameliorating the
caregivers abilities to cope with the disease.
The experience surely has, also, shown that the small group (2 or 3 people) is a profitable
formula for the treatment of middle-aged AD patients. Other experiences would be useful in
order to improve the protocol of treatment for this type of patient but we are sure that it’s
important to take total care of the person concerning his/her cognitive, social, relational,
psychological and emotional aspects.

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In: Encyclopedia of Cognitive Psychology (2 Volume Set) ISBN: 978-1-61324-546-0
Editor: Carla E. Wilhelm, pp. 295-309 © 2012 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 9

THE COGNITIVE EFFECTS OF ANXIETY

ON SEXUAL AROUSAL

Philippe Kempeneers1,2, Romain Pallincourt2 and Sylvie Blairy3

1
University of Liege, Unit of Clinical Psychology, Belgium
2
Alexians’ Psychiatric Hospital, Henri-Chapelle, Belgium
3
University of Liege, Unit of Cognitive-Behavioural Clinical Psychology, Belgium

ABSTRACT
Anxiety and sexual arousal have often been considered as incompatible. Since the
end of the 20th Century, however, researches have impaired theories centred on the
inhibitory effect of the stress and on peripheral explanations; they rather focus attention
on the complexity of the relations between the two states and on cognitive mechanisms.
Now sexual arousal tends to be regarded as a complex response that requires the
convergent interpretation of internal and external stimuli. Anxiety may have different
effects on this process, sometimes neutral, sometimes facilitating and sometimes
inhibitory.
On the one hand, anxiety can trigger a vegetative emotional reaction that may be
associated to a concomitant erotic stimulation. Thus, anxiety facilitates the sexual
response: this can be called a priming effect. This effect is regularly observed in labs,
mainly among women. It likely also works in certain compulsive sexual behaviours or,
more commonly, in those numerous persons that report being sexually aroused when
stressed.
On the other hand, anxiety can cause a massive irruption of non erotic cues in
working memory. Therefore, cognitive function available for treating erotic stimuli is
diminished and sexual response is impaired. This is an effect of cognitive interference. A
trait called erotophobia could be regarded as a vulnerability factor to cognitive
interference. Erotophobic subjects are characterized by a trend to focus upon danger-
related information when they are in a sexual situation and by a higher risk of sexual
dysfunction.

Anxiety is a recognised etiological factor in the domain of sexual dysfunctions. Previous

researches have reported reduced sexual responses in individual suffering from anxiety
296 Philippe Kempeneers, Romain Pallincourt and Sylvie Blairy

(Bodinger et al., 2002; Leiblum et al., 2007; Meana & Nunnick, 2006; Purdon & Holdaway,
2006; Rellini, 2008.) Whether this is caused by concerns regarding self-image, one’s physical
appearance, one’s performance as a lover or the fear of getting pregnant, or fears of being
abandoned or worries relating to everyday difficulties, or whether it is the result of a social
phobia, a panic disorder or a history of sexual abuse, all the observations converge towards
one point: anxiety and sexual stimulation are not a good match.
Among clinicians, it was widely believed, for a long time, that anxiety was an
antagonistic state of sexual responses. Many authors have theorised on this issue. The most
well known, Masters and Johnson (1970) described the now famous performance anxiety
mechanism: worried about their sexual performance, dysfunctional patients cannot indulge in
pleasure; they behave like a worried spectator, concerned about their own performance, thus
managing to inhibit the sexual responses for which they are hoping and praying. This form of
vicious circle was presented as the primary cause of chronic sexual dysfunction. In 1974,
Kaplan pointed out that other causal factors were sometimes added to the anxiety of
performance, which were more deeply rooted in the history of the subject but also related to
anxiety: the fear of intimacy, for instance, the feeling of guilt associated with sexuality or the
fear of being abandoned. The fact is that up until quite recently, clinicians tended to represent
anxiety and sexual arousal as irreconcilable states. They were more or less explicitly inspired
by the works of Wolpe (1958) on reciprocal inhibition. The principle of reciprocal inhibition
postulated an incompatibility between certain neurovegetative states. Specifically, anxiety, a
state where the activity of the sympathetic system predominates, was considered to be
incompatible with sexual arousal, whose initiation requires parasympathetic activity.
According to Wolpe (1958), anxiety and arousal states are mutually exclusive. Wolpe’s
theory attributes the inhibitory effect of one state upon the other to a direct physiological
causality effect.
In the beginning, the theory of reciprocal inhibition was very appealing to clinicians
sensitive to the almost constant presence of elements of anxiety implicit in functional
problems. However, beyond the field of sexual dysfunctions, various elements caused doubt
regarding such a simple and direct inhibitory relationship. First, several anecdotes evoked the
possibility of sexual arousal stimulated by stress. For examples, stories of lovers who were
stimulated by the fear of being caught in the act, stories of couples where sexual relations
following a “good old” argument were all the more intense, or stories of rape carried out in
the heat of anger. Clinical observations then became systematic. Since the work of Marshall,
Laws & Barbaree (1990), we now know that certain types of criminal sexual behaviour are
stimulated by stress or are the result of humiliation. It is also the case for certain cases of
paraphilia and for compulsive sexual behaviour where stress is often a trigger (Bancroft &
Vukadinovic, 2004; Kafka, 2007). Moreover, surveys carried out among the general
population also showed that anxiety and arousal can sometimes go hand in hand. For instance,
the survey published in 2003 by the Bancroft team showed that 28.3 % of the interviewed
men have reported that anxiety put a strain on their sexual interests, while 20.6 % considered
it to be stimulating. Twenty percent is fairly significant. It is highly unlikely that we are only
dealing with marginal cases of compulsive or deviant sexuality. The survey by Lykins,
Janssen and Graham carried out in 2006 on female students also showed similar results. In
this survey, 10 % of the students reported to be sexually stimulated by anxiety. Clearly,
anxiety is not only an antagonist of sexual functioning; it can also, and quite often, be an
agonist. This rapidly led to the belief that anxiety-arousal relations were probably more
 The Cognitive Effects of Anxiety on Sexual Arousal 297

complex than the reciprocal inhibition theory suggested. During the last two decades, we have
gone from a theory centred on inhibition and the peripheral physiological mechanisms to a
theory insisting more on the complexity of the relations between the two states and on the
cognitive explicators.

THE CONTRIBUTION OF PLETHYSMOGRAPHY

As mentioned above, the observations made outside the field of sexual dysfunctions have
cast doubt on the theory of reciprocal inhibition. Consequently, numerous studies have
investigated the understanding of anxiety-arousal relations. In this context, the
plethysmographic techniques were often employed. Plethysmography allows sexual arousal to
be assessed in a subject by providing a direct description of the person’s state. The level of
arousal is inferred from genital vasocongestion. In men, a sensor ring is fitted around the
penis; it is sensitive to variations in pressure, thus allowing the tumescence of the organ to be
measured. This is what is known as penile plethysmography. In women, a vaginal probe
sensitive to colour variations in the wall of the vagina allows the extent of the blood flow in
this area to be determined. This is vaginal photoplethysmography. The measurements
generally take place when the subject is exposed to erotic stimuli, either audio (recorded
material) or video (explicit films).

Initial Experiments

The first experimental arguments against the theory of reciprocal inhibition were put
forward by Hoon, Wincze and Hoon in 1977 on female subjects, and by Wolchik et al. in
1980 on male subjects. They were reproduced in 1990 by Palace and Gorzalka on a sample of
women. In these experiments, before viewing erotic images, half the subjects were exposed to
an emotional film that induces anxiety (accident scenes), and the other half of subjects were
exposed to an emotionally neutral film (the control condition.) The participants’ sexual
arousal was measured. The result showed that sexual arousal among participants firstly
exposed to anxiogenic stimulus was not inhibited compared to participants firstly exposed to
a neutral film. On the contrary, in the studies by Hoon et al. and Palace and Gorzalka, the
initial exposure to an anxiogenic stimulus even seemed to facilitate arousal. Such results did
not support the idea of an incompatibility between anxiety and arousal states. The observed
priming effect of the one on the other observed in women even tended to support the opposite
theory of psychophysiological processes common to both states.

Sympathetic Activity

Sympathetic activity was considered by Wolpe as the physiological foundation of the

anxious inhibition of sexual reactivity. The experiments of Hoon et al. and Wolchik et al. did
not completely invalidate this mode of action. Indeed, it was possible that the so-called
anxiogenic stimuli did not provoke a sufficiently intense sympathetic reaction to exercise an
298 Philippe Kempeneers, Romain Pallincourt and Sylvie Blairy

inhibitory effect on arousal. However, Lange et al. (1981) and Meston and Heiman (1998)
had directly stimulated the sympathetic system using chemicals. Lange and his team injected
male subjects with effective doses of epinephrine, a sympathicomimetic substance, just before
being exposed to erotic films. They compared their sexual arousal with subjects receiving an
injection of a placebo. No difference emerged. Their results were in line with the results of
Wolchik’s previous studies (1980). Meston and Heiman (1998), administered ephedrine,
another sympathicomimetic substance to female subjects and reported a slight increase of
arousal compared to the placebo group. Here, the results were the same as those of the initial
experiment by Hoon et al. (1977). Similar results were also obtained by Meston and Gorzalka
(1995, 1996) where the sympathetic activity of female subjects was induced through physical
exercise. In conclusion, it appears that anxiety and the accompanying sympathetic activity are
perfectly reconcilable with sexual arousal; they may even slightly encourage it: this is far
from the principle of reciprocal inhibition.

Experimental Reproduction of Performance Anxiety

Wolpe’s theory is clearly not the most pertinent theory to explain the links between
anxiety and arousal. However, anxiety is definitely almost a constant in clinical dysfunctional
tables. Therefore, it is possible that sexual anxiety has particularities that distinguish it from
other negative emotions. The inhibition of arousal could be the result of perceptual and
cognitive components specific to performance anxiety. Masters and Johnson, who considered
performance anxiety to be the main factor responsible for arousal problems, insisted on the
specific attitude caused by this type of fear: the patients became spectators of their own
performance rather than the actors. Isn’t it this particular mental state that characterises
sexual anxiety and renders it incompatible with sexual arousal?
In order to test this hypothesis of a specificity of performance anxiety, Barlow, Sakheim
and Beck attempted to reproduce the appearance conditions in an experiment in 1983. They
measured arousal in male subjects who were given erotic films to watch after they had been
threatened with electric shocks if their erectile performance did not reach an acceptable level.
Arousal in these subjects, who were supposedly made anxious regarding their sexual
performance, was compared to the arousal of subjects, on the one hand, who were also
threatened with shocks but not in relation to their erectile performance, and, on the other
hand, to subjects who had not been threatened. The purpose of the study was to compare the
respective impact of performance anxiety (first condition), anxiety not linked to performance
(second condition) and the absence of anxiety (third condition). The results were completely
opposite to what the clinical considerations of Masters and Johnson predicted. Not only was
sexual arousal greater in the threatened subjects compared with those who had not been
threatened but, what’s more, sexual arousal in the subjects threatened in relation to their
erectile performance was even greater than in the subjects who were threatened, though not in
relation to their sexual responses.
In 1990, Hale and Strassberg operationalized performance anxiety in a slightly different
way. Male subjects were exposed to erotic stimuli. The sexual anxiety was provoked by
somewhat hurtful intervention of an experimenter after an initial phase of plethysmographic
measurements: when the experimenter examined the first set of results, he pretended to be
disappointed that the level of erection achieved was lower than normal. The experiment then
 The Cognitive Effects of Anxiety on Sexual Arousal 299

continued and the arousal obtained during the second phase of the experiment by the
supposedly disconcerted subjects with respect to their sexual performance, was compared
with the control subjects; on the one hand, the subjects who were made anxious without any
link to erectile performance (threat of electric shocks independent of the levels of erection)
and, on the other hand, subjects who were not made anxious. Contrary to Barlow et al.,
(1983) Hale and Strassberg (1990) observed an inhibiting effect on sexual arousal caused by
stress. However, the mode of anxiety induction had no specific effect: the subjects who were
made anxious in relation to their erectile performance or in relation to the possibility of an
electric shock showed equivalent levels of arousal, in both cases lower than the control
subjects who suffered no pressure or threats.
In 1997, Elliot and O’Donohue carried out a similar experiment with women.
Performance anxiety was induced by making the subjects believe that the experimental
session would be filmed on video. Research assistants would watch the recordings later and
assess the subjects according to levels of “attraction”, “personality” and “body language”.
This procedure did not provoke any significant reduction in sexual arousal: it remained
equivalent to that of the control subjects.
In conclusion, the results from these three experiments do not support the hypothesis of a
particularity of performance anxiety that endows it with an actual inhibitory effect on sexual
arousal.

The Exception of Dysfunctional Subjects

In experimental conditions, anxiety does not appear as a typically inhibitor variable of

sexual responses. Further, the links to performance changes nothing. In most
plethysmographic studies, it has no impact on arousal, in fact, if anything, it encourages it
(Barlow, Sakheim & Beck, 1983; Elliot & O’Donohue, 1997; Hoon, Wincze & Hoon, 1977;
Lange et a., 1981; Meston & Gorzalka, 1996; Meston & Heiman, 1998; Palace & Gorzalka,
1990; Wolchik et al., 1980). It is only in Hale and Strassberg’s study (1990) that it seemed to
act against arousal. However, clinicians tended massively to consider anxiety as one of the
major causes of sexual dysfunction. Were clinical intuitions really so wrong? Or maybe the
inhibitory effect of anxiety is due to particularities present in clinical subjects and not in
experimental subjects?
The results from an experiment conducted in 1987 by Beck, Barlow, Sakheim and
Abrahamson on clinical subjects support this hypothesis. The authors have employed the
paradigm of the threat of shocks used by Barlow et al. in 1983. They compared
plethysmographic measurements taken on men with non-organic erectile problems with those
from men with no history in erectile dysfunction. Like Barlow et al. in 1983, they noticed that
anxiety induced by the threat of shocks in non-clinical subjects had no effect at all or even
slightly facilitated arousal; however, in dysfunctional subjects, it clearly had an inhibitory
effect.
The results from Palace and Gorzalka (1990, op. cit.) and Meston and Gorzalka (1996,
op. cit.) also support the theory of a different response to anxiety in dysfunctional subjects.
The priming effect of anxiety on arousal observed in non-clinical female subjects was not
observed as clearly in women suffering from a functional orgasm disorder.
300 Philippe Kempeneers, Romain Pallincourt and Sylvie Blairy

Overall, these results corroborate the clinical point of view of anxiety being responsible
for sexual dysfunctions: anxiety can well and truly have an antagonistic effect on sexual
responses; only, the anxiety-arousal relationship is not as simple and linear as initially
suggested. To be specific, the inhibitory effect of anxiety probably requires the intervention
of a third-party mechanism. If this mechanism is absent, as would be the case in most non-
clinical subjects in the plethysmographic experiments, then anxiety has no impact on arousal,
or even potentialises it, and if it is present, which would be the case in dysfunctional patients,
then anxiety inhibits arousal. This raises the following question: what is the third-party
mechanism without which anxiety does not inhibit anything?

Cognitive Interference

Several studies converge towards designating distraction as an agent that is directly

responsible for the inhibition of sexual responses.
In 1976, Geer and Fuhr had shown that arousal in male subjects exposed to erotic
recordings diminished when they were subjected to distracting auditory stimuli at the same
time. In 1979, an experiment by Farkas, Sine and Evans led to the same observation. In 1985,
Adams, Haynes and Brayer showed that the same was true in female subjects.
Based on a literature review carried out by Barlow’s team between 1985 and 1994,
Sbrocco and Barlow (1996) concluded that distraction brought non-clinical subjects down to
the same level of sexual arousal as clinical subjects affected by anxiety, the idea being that
the latter were already distracted by their anxious preoccupations alone. All in all, what
distinguishes functional and dysfunctional subjects for Sbrocco and Barlow, is neither the
presence of anxiety nor its intensity, or even the fact that it is related to performance – this
seems commonly experienced by non-clinical subjects without this disrupting their sexual
responses – but the fact that it has this particular power in dysfunctional subjects to divert
their attention towards non-erotic considerations (e.g. a negative self-image, their partner’s
disappointment). The cause of sexual dysfunctions is now conceived in terms of cognitive
interference. From this point of view, anxiety indirectly explains functional problems: it
encourages interference, i.e. it diverts the attention from erotic stimuli to non-erotic stimuli,
but it is neither a sufficient nor necessary condition to inhibit arousal. It is insufficient
because anxiety cannot interfere with the attention dedicated to the erotic situation; in this
case, it has no effect, and it is not necessary because stimuli and thoughts other than
anxiogenic can also create an interference, mobilising attention to the detriment of the erotic
situation.
The inhibitory role of cognitive interference was again confirmed by Elliot and
O’Donohue (1997, op. cit.). As mentioned above, the anxiety induced in this study on female
subjects had no influence on their arousal. However, the experiment also had a second aim
which was to assess the effect of distracting stimuli. While viewing erotic recordings, some
subjects had to listen to sentences and repeat them according to more or less simple or
complex instructions. Here, the effect was clearly significant: the inhibition of arousal was
directly proportional to the level of distraction.
Contrary to distraction, anxiety has therefore no specific inhibitory effect. When anxious
subjects have a reduced level of arousal, anxiety has obviously provoked the diversion of
their attention from the erotic situation. This cognitive way of thinking also provides elements
 The Cognitive Effects of Anxiety on Sexual Arousal 301

that explain the atypical results of Hale and Strassberg’s study (1990, op. cit.), one of few to
have found that anxiety induced through experimental manipulation gave rise to a reduction
in sexual responses (see above). When questioned about the thoughts they had during the
experiment, the stressed subjects’ answers were quite distinct from those of the control
subjects owing to the higher number of non-erotic preoccupations that had attracted their
attention (i.e. “Why didn’t I get an erection?”, “Will the electric shock hurt me?”)
Finally, in 2001, Koukounas and McCabe observed that sexual arousal in male subjects
exposed to erotic films strongly correlated with the impression they said they had of their
attention being fully absorbed by the film.
Finally, these studies have led to a better understanding of the nature of the anxious
inhibition of sexual responses. We now think that cognitive interference is the true modus
operandi

TOWARDS A COGNITIVE THEORY OF

THE AROUSAL-ANXIETY RELATIONSHIP

It is now clear that anxiety can have various influences on arousal: it can have an
inhibitory effect, via the interference effect, or play the role of facilitator, known here as the
priming effect. Besides the studies that relate directly to sexual arousal, an additional series of
work and concepts have enabled us to specify the possible nature of cognitive mechanisms
involved in priming and interference effects. A cognitive theory of the arousal-anxiety
relationship has begun to take shape.

The Priming Effect

Plethysmographic studies have not merely shown that, in the absence of the interference
vector, anxiety and arousal remain perfectly compatible, they have also shown that the first
could even have an agonistic effect on the second. The increase in sexual reactivity observed
in subjects exposed to experimental conditions (Barlow et al., 1983; Hoon et al., 1977;
Meston & Gorzalka, 1995, 1996; Meston & Heiman, 1998; Palace & Gorzalka, 1990)
effectively provides objective support for the feeling reported by numerous people that stress
in fact favours arousal. All that remains is to explain this effect. Various models elaborated in
the domain of the psychology of emotion help to elucidate the issue.
It is now established that the production of emotions is a process comprised of several
stages (Damasio, 2003; LeDoux, 1996). Firstly, a rapid and mostly unconscious analysis of
the trigger situation is made. The operation mainly takes place in the amygdale; this is at the
origin of a somewhat undifferentiated primary physiological reaction, essentially comprised
of vagal modifications. Secondly, cortical connections come into play and determine a
secondary processing of the stimuli during which the emotion is adjusted, specified and led to
consciousness. At this stage, the information from the environment (signs of danger for
instance, or indications of a pleasant event) will direct the interpretation of the experience,
giving it a particular affective character (sometimes worrying, sometimes exciting). At the
same time, the information concerning the internal state (primary vagal modifications)
302 Philippe Kempeneers, Romain Pallincourt and Sylvie Blairy

confirms the emotional nature of the situation: “I can feel that it is affecting me”. Thus,
through an interactive process, the particular physiological and subjective characteristics of
the emotion are revealed. The same is probably true for sexual arousal: internal feelings and
the erotic stimuli mutually guide each other to create a specifically erotic emotion.
In numerous situations of everyday life, we can observe a coupling mechanism between
the characteristics of the trigger stimulus and the primary physiological reaction. External and
internal stimuli in some way mutually confirm each other, leading to the emotional
experience. During this process, biases can however occur: the coupling normally expected
between the primary physiological reaction and the characteristics of the trigger situation can
indeed be altered by the intrusion of information that is foreign to the initial conditions. Thus,
unexpected emotions are produced. Two experiments illustrate this bias in the sexual domain;
their results showed that the sexual emotion can be caused by elements that are completely
foreign to erotic stimuli. As such, they give us an idea of the mechanisms that probably
contribute to the element that prime arousal through anxiety.

1. Valins (1972) reports having exposed male subjects to erotic slides. During this time,
a device measured their heart rate and they were made to listen to the sound of their
own heartbeat. At least that is what they thought because, in reality, the heartbeats
they heard were manipulated by an experimenter who made the rhythm vary at
random, increasing it when certain images were shown and reducing it for others.
When they were asked to point out the photos they liked the most, the subjects
showed a tendency to select those that were associated with a pseudo-modification of
their heartbeat.
2. In an experiment conducted in 1974 by Dutton & Aron, male subjects had to cross a
footbridge that overlooked a canyon. Straight after this stressful ordeal, an interview
took place with a female researcher. During the interview, the researcher asked the
subjects to make up a story based on the drawing of a woman, then, when they had to
leave, she gave them her card. Compared with subjects who had the same interview
with the same researcher, though without having had to cross the harrowing
footbridge beforehand, a significantly higher number of the stressed subjects made
up stories with a sexual content and contacted the researcher afterwards in the hope
of seeing her again.

These two experiments showed that the sexual emotion may be encouraged by the
perception of a physiological activation whose origin is absolutely not erotic. Produced
through arbitrary manipulation by Valins or through a sensation of fear by Dutton and Aron,
the perceived physiological activation is coupled with a sexual stimulus that is foreign to its
cause but concomitant in such a way that the emotion develops or reinforces itself in a sexual
direction. This mechanism probably also plays a role in the priming elements revealed by the
plethysmographic studies: the physiological activation induced by stress is attributed to an
erotic source, with the result of encouraging the emotion and sexual responses.
Sexual arousal is an experience that results from the converging interpretation, in an
erotic sense, of a series of signals from both the internal and external environment. To be
exact, it should be noted that the genital vasocongestion reaction does not signal the end of
the arousal process. It is merely a stage in a process that is only finally expressed with the
subjective sensation of arousal. The reader will undoubtedly have noticed that, without it
 The Cognitive Effects of Anxiety on Sexual Arousal 303

being their exclusive privilege, the priming effect seems to be more widespread among
women. At the same time, the genital reaction measured by plethysmography in women is not
necessarily accompanied by a conscious impression of arousal. In men, on the other hand,
there are quite good correlations between plethysmographic measurements and subjective
feeling of arousal. This inter-gender difference can undoubtedly be explained through the
more external location of the male genital organs: this anatomical data means that in
comparison to women, men have a greater number of perceptive retroactive channels; the
physiological signs of their arousal are more accessible via the visual channel and tactile
sensations, which all allow a closer adjustment of genital and subjective responses. Probably
as a result of this, genital vasocongestion in women appears to be a less specific response of
arousal, less differentiated or less accomplished than it is in men (Chivers, 2005). Regardless
of gender difference, the relative imbalance between the genital response and the subjective
feeling bears witness to the sequential nature of the sexual arousal process. From the primary
physiological response to the subjective experience, arousal is an experience that occurs
progressively, during cognitive processes of increasing complexity and through certain
hazards such as possible attribution biases.

The Effect of Interference

Anxiogenic stimuli are not always interpreted in a pro-erotic sense. The priming effect of
arousal through anxiety is not an absolute. It clearly is not the case in numerous individuals
suffering from a functional arousal or orgasm disorder. For these people, sexual inhibition
based on anxiety remains a tiresome reality. However, the explanation of the phenomenon no
longer refers to an improbable physiological incompatibility of the two states but rather
cognitive interference.
In individuals suffering from sexual dysfunction, the anxiety that occurs in a sexual
situation seems to act as a source of distraction; it triggers an intense cognitive activity,
focused on danger, which interferes with the processing of erotic stimuli. Typical sexual
anxious preoccupations – “Is it going to work?”, “What does my partner think of me?” – or
even everyday concerns, sometimes have this ability to overwhelmingly monopolise the
subject’s attention, to the point where the remaining resources are insufficient to ensure the
normal execution of a sexual response. Therefore, it is not stress in itself that is the efficient
inhibitory factor but the degree of distraction that it causes in certain people.

Erotophobia and Emotional Stroop

Not everyone is as vulnerable to the effects of anxious interference. People who risk
suffering from sexual dysfunction seem to have a particular profile that Byrne and Schutle
(1990), and later Sbrocco and Barlow (1996), qualified as erotophobia. Erotophobia consists
of a tendency to associate sexuality with ideas of danger. There is a cognitive and emotional
structure similar to the one that can be found in numerous anxiety disorders, though in this
case, the object is sexuality. Therefore, it is a phobia linked to sexuality.
It has now been demonstrated that, in anxious individuals, the cognitive processing of a
stimulus in relation to their emotional difficulties is far more costly in terms of attention than
304 Philippe Kempeneers, Romain Pallincourt and Sylvie Blairy

the processing of the same stimulus in a person who is not anxious. This phenomenon was
objectivised using a variant of the Stroop test called emotional Stroop. Through the Stroop
test, it is possible to measure the interference of one cognitive activity over another. In its
classic form, the test consists of presenting the subject with a series of written words using
different coloured ink; the person is instructed to name the colours of the inks used and not to
read the words. The examiner takes note of how quickly the instruction is obeyed to name the
colours, knowing that this speed depends on the ease with which the subject manages to
inhibit the execution of an interfering activity, i.e. an automatic tendency to read the words
presented. The effect of interference of reading over naming the colours is measured here in
time units: the greater it is, the more time will be required to execute the instruction. Reading
has become automatic in almost every literate person who is exposed to written words, and it
is this automatic behaviour which, in the Stroop test, creates an activity that is capable of
interfering with another, less banal activity, such as naming font colours. As regards the
emotional Stroop, it introduces an additional variable, the affective connotation of the words
given to read. This Stroop variant shows that the effect of interference also depends on the
emotion – anxiety in particular – caused by the stimulus. For instance, in anxious people
suffering from social phobias, that is who are anxious in social relations, concerned about
rejection, they need more time to name the colour of ink that is used to write a critical word
such as “humiliation”, than to name the colour of an affectively neutral word such as
“geology”. However, this difference in reaction time is not found in people who do not suffer
from a social phobia (Mattia, Heimberg & Hope, 1993). In the same way, there are longer
reaction times in people with arachnophobia, with words such as “spider” or “web” (Lavy,
Van den Hout & Arntz, 1993); or with words such as “suffocate” in people who suffer from
panic disorder (McNally, Riemann & Kim,1990); with words relating to a trauma experienced
by the subject (e.g. “rape”, “Vietnam”) in the case of post-traumatic stress disorders (Kapsi,
McNally & Amir, 1995; McNally, English & Lipke, 1993); and with words such as
“accident” in people suffering from generalised anxiety (Martin, Horder & Jones, 1992). In
anxious people, the reaction times are systematically longer for words that evoke their
specific anxious concerns. The effect of interference due to the emotional load of the stimulus
leads us to believe that in people who are sensitive to it, some specific themes provoke an
automatic cognitive activity centred on the notion of danger. Absorbing a significant amount
of the subject’s mental resources, this activity hinders the achievement of another task.
To our knowledge, erotophobic subjects have never been assessed using emotional
Stroop-type tests, which would target words that evoke sexual situations. However, it would
not seem to be excessively rash to suppose that the same would be true for these people as for
other anxious subjects. Therefore, Kempeneers and Barbier (2008) suggest considering
erotophobia as a factor of cognitive interference. In a sexual situation, erotophobic subjects
would tend to develop a cognitive activity focused on the notion of danger. Encroaching upon
the resources allocated to the processing of the situation’s erotic components, this activity
would lead to an increased risk of sexual dysfunction in these subjects.

The Working Memory

The inhibitive power of distraction leads us to consider that these people are endowed
with a limited ability to process information. Above a certain quantitative threshold, the
 The Cognitive Effects of Anxiety on Sexual Arousal 305

cognitive resources required to process a second supposedly distracting stimulus (i.e. non
erotic) must be taken from those allocated to the processing of a primary stimulus (i.e. erotic).
The concept of working memory seems to be adapted to the description of the process.
According to Eyzenck (1991) and Peretti & Ferreri (2004), in people suffering from chronic
anxiety who are confronted with sensitive themes, it is as though the working memory is
saturated by information relating to the management of a source of danger, to the point where
the execution of other tasks is altered. The working memory is a concept that was proposed
and developed by Baddeley (Baddeley, 1992; Baddeley & Hitch, 1974). On a schematic level,
it can be compared with the random access memory of a computer. It is the functional entity
that allows you to momentarily keep in mind elements of information that are useful to
accomplish a task. These elements are taken from the external environment on the one hand –
an erotic stimulus for instance – and from the internal environment on the other hand –
memories of similar experiences, schemas of actions learnt, moral values evoked by the
situation, etc. Contrary to other forms of memory allocated to storing information in the long
term, the working memory functions in a transitory way. The information only spontaneously
remains for a few seconds. This goes hand in hand with its limited availability: the mass
influx of new information tends to suppress those relating to the tasks in hand. In the terms of
this model, anxiety provokes a saturation of the working memory in erotophobic subjects to
the detriment of the resources essential to the execution of sexual responses. Elements of
information relating to the management of danger come to the fore and compete with the
erotic information.

The Attentional Benefit of Anxiety

The work of Mandler (1984) on the attentional effects of emotions is also of interest.
According to Mandler, stress always has the effect of increasing vigilance. This explains why
anxiety can sometimes facilitate the execution of certain tasks. In 1908, Yerkes & Dodson
had pinned down the non-linear character of the relationship between stress and the level of
performance to tasks requiring attentional functions: stress was sometimes detrimental to
performance, and sometimes it improved it. It seemed to the authors that the optimal level of
performance resulted from moderate stress rather than the absence of stress, and that a level
of stress that was too high tended to exert a detrimental effect on performance. In reality,
Mandler specified in 1984 that the intensity of the emotion is probably not the decisive
variable concerning the evolution of the performance; instead, it is the element on which the
increased attention provoked by the stress is focused. If it is focused on the elements relating
to the task in hand, it logically produces an increase in the level of performance. If, on the
contrary, it is focused on elements that are external to the accomplishment of the task, then
the subject is distracted and his/her performance is poorer. It is easy to transpose Mandler’s
model to the area of sexual performance. When anxiety suddenly appears in a sexual
situation, there are two possible scenarios:

1. The majority of the subject’s attention may be drawn to elements of danger that are
foreign to the erotic task in hand. His/her working memory is saturated with
information of a non-erotic nature resulting in a reduction in sexual performance.
306 Philippe Kempeneers, Romain Pallincourt and Sylvie Blairy

This is a case of the interference effect which can be found in stressed erotophobic
subjects in a sexual situation.
2. In the absence of such a mechanism that shifts the cognitive resources, attention is
maintained on the information of an erotic nature. This information thus benefits
from a positive attentional balance that can result in an improvement in sexual
performance. Under these conditions, a priming effect is obtained. This tendency
would be more likely to occur in non-erotophobic subjects.

It should be noted that the model elaborated based on the work of Mandler is situated at
the opposite end of the scale to Wolpe’s. While the latter considered anxiety and arousal to be
natural antagonists, the former tends to consider them as naturally agonistic.

CONCLUSION
While anxiety can inhibit sexual responses, plethysmographic studies have shown that
this is not always the case. According to the circumstances, anxiety sometimes hinders
arousal and sometimes facilitates it. The anxiety-arousal relationship turns out to be more
complex than Wolpe (1958), Masters & Johnson (1970) and Kaplan (1974) originally
imagined; they considered these states as incompatible.
Finally, the decisive factor of sexual inhibition would appear to be cognitive interference,
distraction. It is only when anxiety causes a distraction from erotic stimuli that it may be
considered responsible for sexual inhibition. This is not the case for everybody; some people
are more prone than others and this tendency seems to be a characteristic of people with a
history of non-organic sexual dysfunction. Otherwise, anxiety does not have an impact on
levels of arousal; in fact, it improves it.
The results from studies using the plethysmographic tests seem to be linked to studies
carried out in related domains. Subject to empirical confirmation, we can therefore suggest
the following cognitive theory concerning the relations between anxiety and arousal: sexual
arousal can be regarded as a complex response that requires the convergent interpretation of
internal and external stimuli. Anxiety may have different effects on this process, sometimes
neutral, sometimes facilitating and sometimes inhibitory.
On the one hand, anxiety can trigger a vegetative emotional reaction that may be
associated to a concomitant erotic stimulation. Thus, anxiety facilitates the sexual response:
this can be called a priming effect. This effect is regularly observed in labs, mainly among
women. It likely also works in certain compulsive sexual behaviours or, more commonly, in
those numerous persons that report being sexually aroused when stressed.
On the other hand, anxiety can cause a massive irruption of non erotic cues in working
memory. Therefore, cognitive function available for treating erotic stimuli is diminished and
sexual response is impaired. This is an effect of cognitive interference. A trait called
erotophobia could be regarded as a vulnerability factor to cognitive interference. Erotophobic
subjects are characterized by a trend to focus upon danger-related information when they are
in a sexual situation and by a higher risk of sexual dysfunction.
Finally, anxiety often increases vigilance. The increase in attention thus obtained may
focus on erotic stimuli, therefore reinforcing the priming effect. At the opposite end of the
 The Cognitive Effects of Anxiety on Sexual Arousal 307

scale, the gain in attention may also be dedicated to danger signals of no erotic value; under
these conditions, it is the interference effect which is reinforced.

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Editor: Carla E. Wilhelm, pp. 311-348 © 2012 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 10

LIMITS TO GENERAL EXPERTISE:

A STUDY OF IN- AND OUT-OF-FIELD
GRAPH INTERPRETATION

Wolff-Michael Roth
University of Victoria,
British Columbia, Canada

ABSTRACT
Graphs are pervasive features in professional science journals, which makes
graphing one of (if not the) most important practice (and therefore skill) of professional
science. Scientists generally are expected to be experts in graphing. Contrary to this
expectation, recent investigations showed that scientists asked to interpret graphs from
introductory-level textbooks in their own field did not at all exhibit expert-like behavior.
The present study was designed to understand better the nature of graphing practices
among professional scientists. I investigated the similarities and differences in scientists’
interpretation of structurally identical in-field and out-of-field graphs. Seventeen
physicists interpreted 3 graphs that were derived from entry-level university textbooks in
ecology—for cross validation purposes, these were the same graphs used in an earlier
expert-expert study—and 3 structurally identical graphs from the field of physics. My
analyses reveal that the graphing expertise of physicists is limited even within their field.
Their graph interpretations are highly idiosyncratic and contingent both within and across
content domains.
Common to the interpretive practices on in-field and out-of field graph was that
scientists interpreted them according to the purposes of (a) graphing in science in general
and (b) those of the graph interpretation interview session specifically. In using varying
resources and in experiencing breakdowns, they exhibited considerable differences
between in-field and out-of-field graph interpretations.
Working on in-field graphs, they drew on general knowledge and prior experiences
from their professional life, whereas in the context of out-of-field graph interpretations,
scientists provided verbal equivalents for the visible, surface features of the line graphs
and drew on mundane everyday life experiences to explicate them.
312 Wolff-Michael Roth

INTRODUCTION
Research in the cognitive and learning sciences has tremendously increased our
understanding of what it means to be an expert in a domain and how to acquire the
characteristics of an expert. Although there are lively debates about how someone acquires
the characteristics of an expert, the characteristics themselves largely remain undisputed. In
much of the literature concerning expert-novice differences, scientists are shown to exhibit
exemplary expertise in comparison with novices, for example, in problem solving, in using
representations, in experimentation strategies, and in ecological sorting tasks (e.g., Shafto &
Coley, 2003). Graphing is no exception (Larkin & Simon, 1987) and practicing chemists
outperformed chemistry students on tasks requiring transformations of graphs into other
representations or vice versa (Kozma & Russell, 1997). Because graphing is one of the central
practices of professional science at work without which science as such would not exist
(Latour, 1987), scientists are assumed to be general experts in many of graph-related studies
of expertise (Tabachneck-Schijf, Leonardo, & Simon, 1997). But contrary to general
expectations about scientists’ graphing competencies, recent studies showed that scientists,
too, experience difficulties in interpreting graphs, even when these have been culled from
introductory, first-year undergraduate-level courses and textbooks in their own field (Roth &
Bowen, 2001). Furthermore, statistically reliable differences between the success rates of
university-based and public-sector scientists were detected, which led to the hypothesis that
performance is due to familiarity rather than to special ability (Roth & Bowen, 2003). Thus, it
was shown that eighth-grade students in a learning environment with great family
resemblance to research in the natural sciences developed data analysis and representation
skills that were significantly better than those of teacher candidates with bachelors and
masters degrees in one of the natural sciences (Roth, 1996). It is improbable that scientists,
successful in their careers (i.e., publication rates, grants, scholarships or awards), have
cognitive deficiencies that lead to their trouble during graph interpretations. To understand
and explain scientists’ graph-related expertise requires a different method for analyzing how
scientists know and learn mathematical representation, and therefore new approaches focus
on graphing not as cognitive abilities but as social practice (e.g., Roth & McGinn, 1998).
Perhaps more radically still, a cognitive anthropology of graphing focuses both on the cultural
and phenomenological dimensions of expertise (Roth, 2003); and such a position has led to a
better understanding of the problems scientists experienced in graph-related practices and
competencies.
The research presented in this chapter was designed to investigate the nature of scientists’
graph interpretation expertise with a special focus on the similarities and differences between
in-field and out-of-field graph interpretation practices but keeping constant the affiliation that
was a variable in a previous study where the sample consisted about half and half of
university and public sector scientists (Roth & Bowen, 2003). In the present study, university-
based physicists provided graph interpretations for (a) a set of three graphs from ecology that
had been used in the earlier expert-expert study of graphing with ecologists and (b) three
structurally equivalent graphs from introductory courses in their own field (physics). I use the
same social practice perspective that informed the earlier study, which amalgamates the
cultural and phenomenological perspectives, to understand and explain scientists’ graphing
 Limits to General Expertise 313

expertise especially the limits of this expertise related to graphs issuing from both within and
outside their domain.
Previous studies of scientists’ graphing (e.g., Roth & Bowen, 2003) were mainly
concerned with graphs within the scientific field of the expert participants. If graphing is a
general expertise, then we would expect scientist to transfer their practices from one domain
to another. In this study, I am concerned with the question of the extent to which graphing
expertise goes beyond the boundary of a field. In the extension of existing studies to
understand graphing expertise of scientists, the present one was designed to answer the
question, “What are the similarities and differences in scientists’ interpretation between in-
field graph and out-of-field graph?”

BACKGROUND
Graphs and graphing are quintessential aspects of science; without them, science, as we
know it today, would not exist (Edgerton, 1985). However, graphs were not used generally in
scientific reporting until the XIXth century. In theoretical ecology, for example, the approach
of modeling populations by means of graphs emerged as recently as the 1950s (Kingsland,
1995); in physics, although introduced in the 1920, entropy-temperature graphs still are not
used widely in the teaching of the field, though such graphs have many advantages over
others in modeling and making visible important aspects of thermodynamics (Roth, in press).
In scientific and engineering communities, graphs have been used for three major purposes.
First, graphs are material objects that constitute and represent other material but natural
objects; existing anthropological and sociological studies have shown how the natural objects
are translated through hierarchies of inscriptions until ultimately published (Latour, 1993).
Second, graphs serve a rhetorical function in scientific communication. They are constructed
such that the research results are difficult to question, and if such were the case, the critic
would have to spend at least as much effort and resources into producing the critique as it
took to produce the original result (Latour, 1987). Third, graphs act as conscription devices
that mediate collective scientific activities, both bringing scientists together and constituting a
joint focus for their ongoing talk that is conducted both over and about them (e.g., Ochs,
Gonzales, & Jacoby, 1996).
In this study, I adopt a social psychological perspective, which ascertains that all higher
cognitive functions are but traces of societal relations: any sign and its use are concretely
available in and through participation in societally organized activity (Bakhtin, 1986;
Vygotsky, 1986). In this perspective, the focus of research shifts from the analysis of mental
structures to the structures of participation in the practices of communities of knowing.
Graphs constitute signs and their use is objectively given in society; and any related higher-
order mental function can therefore be studied sociologically (Vološinov/Bakhtin, 1973).1
Graph interpretation practices always occur in social context in which the meanings of graphs
are the outcome of negotiations within the collectivity; and interpretations reflect concrete

1
As I make use of both the French and the English translations of this work, which sometimes differ in substantial
ways, I am referencing both authors under which the French version has been published. There is some
confusion about the extent to which Bakhtin contributed, although he is the author of the French version of the
book. The English version is entirely attributed to Vološinov, though some Anglo-Saxon authors do attribute
the book to Bakhtin as well.
314 Wolff-Michael Roth

(singularized) realizations of general possibilities for saying something about a graph. To

analyze graph interpretation as a social practice, this conceptual framework needs a set of
components including ongoing concerns, standard practices, material and linguistic resources,
and sets of typical breakdowns (Bowen, Roth, & McGinn, 1999).
In this study I take a social psychological framework to analyze the physicists’ graph
interpretation practice. The standard graph-related practices in physics include such activities
as designing experiments for the purpose of producing graphs, constructing graphs from the
experimental data, writing articles in which graphs are used as evidence, and interpreting and
critiquing graphs that other people produced. Sets of material resources in graphing include
axis labels, units, and scales as well as mathematical and statistical software that allow the
production and manipulation of graphs. Sets of linguistic resources in physics include
mathematical formulas as another formal language to describe the same phenomenon as much
as verbal language. Absence of appropriate tools or changing of familiar contexts can lead to
breakdown, which is constituted by interruptions of standard practices and slow-downs in the
progress of an activity.

RESEARCH DESIGN
This study was designed to better understand the activities in which physicists interpret
in-field and out-of field graphs. By investigating the practices of their interpretation both in-
field and out-of-field graphs, focusing on the similarities and differences, one might get at the
general features of graphing competency and give some suggestions to the educators who
want to teach their students the graphing competency in their teaching context.

Participants

A total of 21 (18 male, 3 female) physicists participated in this study, including two
individuals who majored in applied mathematics but work in a physics-and-astronomy
department. There were 15 professors, one postdoctoral fellow (1 year since PhD), and five
PhD students (just graduated; 6 months, 9 months, 2 years, and 2 years from graduation). The
professors had obtained their PhD degrees between 6 to 42 years prior to our
interviews/think-aloud protocols (X = 23.25, SD = 14.1 years). All participants had a
minimum six years of experience in doing independent research. All but one individual were
involved in teaching graduate, undergraduate, or laboratory courses in physics and physics-
related department such as astronomy, geophysics, ocean physics, and physical chemistry—
thereby keeping constant the variable that led to differences in performance in the Roth and
Bowen (2003) study. For purposes unrelated to the present study, four physicists worked in
groups of two.
The present study is concerned with the results from the remaining 17 individuals
because the independent contributions of collaborating physicists could not be established
from the transcripts. An undergraduate research assistant (pseudonym David), with a double
major in physics and anthropology, conducted the interviews/think-aloud protocols with the
physicists as part of a work term of the cooperative program in which he was enrolled.
 Limits to General Expertise 315

For the purposes of the second part of this study, I draw on the interviews conducted with
Annemarie, an associate professor in a department of physics and astronomy who had
received her PhD more than 30 years prior to our study. She regularly published in academic
journals and was acknowledged as an excellent teacher in the science faculty as evidenced by
teaching awards. David attended a coop program. Seeking employment and being interested
in anthropology, he was hired and trained specifically for eliciting graph interpretations from
physicists pertaining to graphs from within and outside their field (i.e., ecology). In his
program, he was near the median in terms of achievement. He liked the experience doing
social science research so much that he first took courses in qualitative research methods and
then changed his major to anthropology.

Tasks

In this study, six graphs, three from biology and three from physics were used to compare
the interpretation of in-field and out-of-field graphs. The three biology graphs had been
employed previously in studies with ecologists (Roth & Bowen, 2001, 2003). These graphs
include a distribution, a population dynamics (model), and an isoclines graph typical of those
found in introductory first- or second-year undergraduate textbooks in ecology, especially
those texts that take a more theoretical perspective. The physics graphs were constructed by a
similar method: they were selected and prepared from university-level physics textbooks such
that they were (deep-structure) analogues of the biology graphs and were accompanied by a
caption that was adapted to the physics content of the graph. (There were some slight surface
variations due to the available textbook materials: for example, the biology population graph
does not have units on the abscissa, whereas the physics graph has an abscissa label that has
concrete numbers on both end of its axis.) For the analogies to be correct, both the structure
of the phenomena and their representation had to be similar. Possible graph candidates were
photocopied and the appropriate captions were added.
One set of graphs used in the present study featured two curves with “forces” that affect
some phenomenon. In the out-of-field case, the task displays birthrate and death rate as
functions of population size (density); the two curves intersect twice (Figure 1a). As
inscription, the graph constitutes a model of the type that ecologists began using during the
1950s and 1960s (Kingsland, 1995). Birthrate and death rate constitute opposite forces on the
population size. A population is in equilibrium when the two forces are equal. The in-field
equivalent from physics was created using a mathematical software package based on a
dynamical system from classical mechanics (Figure 1b). The graph constitutes the model of a
two-dimensional pendulum bob moving above two magnets. There are therefore two forces
acting on the bob, one to the left, and the other to the right depending on the bob’s relation
with respect to the magnet (magnetic force) and its position with respect to the lowest point of
its trajectory (gravitational force). In this pair of tasks, participants were specifically asked to
focus on the two intersections of the opposing forces (rates) and the resulting three sections
along the abscissa. The correct interpretation identifies the two intersections as an unstable
and a stable equilibrium, respectively. Such graphs can be found, for example, in introductory
courses dealing with atomic physics, where there are repulsive and attractive electrical forces
acting between two atoms. Thus, for example, the Lennard-Jones potential results from two
316 Wolff-Michael Roth

forces, an attractive force at long ranges (van der Waals force) and a repulsive force that
derives from the overlap of electron orbitals (based on the Pauli exclusion principle).

Figure 1. One of the three pairs of graphing tasks featuring an out-of-field and an in-field graph. a.
Graph culled from an ecology textbook for teaching stable and unstable equilibrium. b. Graph produced
using a mathematical modeling program using a real two-dimensional magnetic pendulum in the
Earth’s gravitational field.

The second set of graphs featured distributions taken from textbooks in ecology and
quantum mechanics, respectively. Whereas in the biology distribution graph, three different
types of plant distribution have to be used to make inferences about the differential
adaptations to environmental conditions, in the physics distribution graph the different
distribution of electron charges in consecutive four s-shells are used to make inferences about
the differential ionization energies for each shell (K, L, M, . . .). The caption attached to each
graph provided the participants with the associated situation. Thus, in the ecology graph, the
participants weer informed about the actual study in South Texas that had led to the
publication of the results in a journal, from where it was taken and adapted for didactic
purposes in textbooks and ecology courses. The task instructs participants to think aloud
about the implications that could be drawn from the graph.
The third set of graphs features the interaction of two variables in their effect on a third
variable represented in the form of isoclines (lines of equal effect). The three biology isocline
graphs represent essential, substitutable, and complementary resources, respectively. The
three physics isoclines graphs represent a compressible-gas-to-liquid phase transition, ideal
gas, and incompressible-gas-to-solid phase transition. The physics graph was created using a
graphics package to produce a contour plot and was representative of thermodynamics graphs
 Limits to General Expertise 317

in our collection of physics textbooks featuring the interaction of pressure and volume of a
substance at various temperatures.

Collection of Data Sources

The physicists were asked to participate in a graph interpretation session for the purpose
of providing expert answers to the selected graphs. Participants were given the following
instructions: “Make as many inferences as possible for each of the graphs. Think aloud. If you
read text that appears on the page, read it aloud. We are interested in what is going through
your mind as you are trying to tell us what you infer.” Prior to the graphing sessions, a brief
structured interview was conducted to establish biographical background information. All
physicists were asked a standard set of questions to find out about the physicist’s background.
These questions included the time since PhD, how many postdoctoral years they did, how
many years they have held a faculty position, the specialty area in which they conduct
research, the courses they have typically taught, and the approximate per annum rate of peer-
reviewed journal articles they published.
When participants stopped talking during a session, the research assistant was instructed
to remind them to talk aloud by asking them to “say what you are thinking right now.” (This
was not always the case, as shown in the second part of the findings presented here.) The
research assistant also tried to avoid answering questions as much as possible, because it was
essential to get as much data as possible directly from the participants. (The transcripts
provided below both provide evidence for his resistance to respond to queries about the
correctness of interpretations and the continued nature of queries from the participants.) Once
the physicists stopped interpreting but had not addressed certain salient issues, I had prepared
a standard set of pre-formed questions and prompters for the physicists so they would
continue to interpret those aspects of the graphs not yet talked about. For example, few
physicists addressed the question about where along the abscissa (i.e., for which “N”) the
increase in the population was largest in the population graph; in these cases, the research
assistant asked where the increase in terms of the absolute number of individuals in the
population was largest. The participants were instructed to indicate when they had nothing
more to say and therefore when they considered being done. In this case, the research
assistant asked participants to turn to the next graph. The sessions including all six graph
interpretations lasted between 30 and 100 minutes.

Data Sources

To begin with, all interviews were completely transcribed verbatim and, where necessary,
video offprints coded according to their temporal position on the tape were inserted into the
transcript to show gestures toward particular aspects of the graphs. In a second pass, the VHS
videotapes were digitized (Macintosh iMovie); offprint images capturing characteristic
moments were created from this software and imported into the transcripts. From all the
transcribed interviews, one was randomly selected for close analysis in this chapter. For
salient and theoretically interesting episodes, the transcription was improved to contain
multiple video images, the length of the pauses, or the overlap between speech and gestures.
318 Wolff-Michael Roth

In a second moment of analysis, theoretically interesting episodes and entire sessions were
digitized and transcribed to include pauses longer than 0.10 seconds, overlapping speech with
the interviewer, change in stress and loudness, and so forth (accuracy better than ±10
milliseconds). At a third level of analysis, the entire sound track of the interview was
graphically represented in terms of waveform, speech intensity, and pitch using PRAAT
(http://www.fon.hum.uva.nl/praat/), a freely available, cross-platform (PC, Macintosh, UNIX)
software package for linguistic analyses. Information on these speech parameters were
extracted directly from the displays, which were also saved using the relevant software
features.
Using Peak™ DV 3.21, which allows the graphical representation of the waveform,
pauses in and overlaps of speech were determined and entered into the transcript; this
program was also used to coordinate utterances with the video offprints of the situation.
Individual utterances were timed with an accuracy of ±0.001 seconds but rounded to the
nearest 10 milliseconds and coordinated with the frames that allowed timing to 33
milliseconds (30 frames/second rate of the VHS video). The sound track was then analyzed
for loudness (volume), intensity, and pitch. The complete output of PRAAT was checked and,
where it was problematic, pitch was determined manually from the waveform.

Data Analyses

The present analyses are based on the assumption that reasoning is made observable by
interaction participants in and as practical, socially structured, and embodied activity
(Garfinkel, 1967). For example, by uttering, “Oh, it says a function of population,”
Annemarie made available to David surprise and discovery: she declares a form of
realization, which we might gloss as, “Oh, until now I have not attended to the fact the text
states that birthrate and death rate are functions of population.” In this way, interaction
participants continuously made available for one another actions and reasons for why they do
what they do. The analyst does not have to assume any evaluation of Annemarie’s state of
knowledge. Rather it is how she displayed her putative interpretation as a resource in the
ongoing analysis of the graphical material that is significant. In other words, the-topic-of-
interpretation is used as resource-for-interpretation. The videotapes, transcripts, and artifacts
produced by the observed individuals therefore are natural protocols of the participants’
efforts in communicatively establishing their mutual sense that they made of the task at
hand—consisting of both interpreting the graph and making the think-aloud/interview
situation happen in a recognizable and scientifically acceptable way. These protocols
constituted the materials that were structured, elaborated, and theorized in this study.
This ethnomethodologically informed approach also requires that “the analyst be, with
others, in a concerted competence of methods with which to recognize, follow, display,
describe, etc., phenomena of order* in local productions of coherent detail” (Garfinkel, 2002,
p. 176). As the experience during data analysis showed, it turned out to be an advantage that
the author, too, had obtained a graduate degree in physics. For example, when I analyzed the
data with a social psychologist colleague (D. Middleton) he differed in the interpretation of
the following utterance, in which the research assistant first described a procedure in terms of
the subtraction of death from birthrate, then stopped, and re-articulated the procedure in terms
of an addition of birthrate and death rate, where the second term is negative. The first way of
 Limits to General Expertise 319

relating birthrate and death rate for finding the overall rate of change (b – d) is typical in the
community of biologists, from which the graphing task was taken, and which is implied in the
positive values the death rate takes in the task (Figure 1). (For the transcription conventions
used, see the appendix.)

Fragment 1
040 D: well, yeah, if you take, well shall i think i use the half if you take the
birth minus the death (.) rate (0.63) `well the birth plus the death which is negative, you are
gonna get (0.13) some positive (0.98) growth rate; right?=

Physicists, on the other hand, typically sign negative those rates that decrease the quantity
at hand but add the constitutive rates, here this would be b + d where d would be a negative
quantity. A correct interpretation—the research assistant David exhibiting knowledge typical
of a physicist rather than a biologist—requires familiarity with the practices of physics. My
colleague, a social psychologist unfamiliar with the practices within the physics community—
or the ecology community that I have studied ethnographically for more than a decade—
provided interpretations that were not grounded in and consistent with the standard practices
of the field. Once my colleague and I took this knowledge into account, we came to a shared
interpretation (provided below).
Following the precepts of interaction analysis (Jordan & Henderson, 1995), I began by
taking my data sources to collective analysis sessions, which last about three hours each, and
where all the members of my laboratory contribute to working through the tapes in a second-
by-second manner. Our collective analysis proceeds in the following way. The researcher at
the controls—here this was me—runs the video until someone requested to stop to talk about
a feature or episode—usually the episodes have a duration of somewhere between several
hundred milliseconds to the order of 10 seconds. The person requesting the stop points out
what is salient to him, described and interpreted the episode, and generated hypotheses to be
tested in the remainder of the same tape and in the remainder of the database. The other
person also provides his description and interpretation. The episode is discussed until all
analysts in the room feel that there is nothing more to say about it at the moment—though
subsequent periods of writing often turn up additional features, which would be discussed
during some future meeting (in the situation with D. Middleton, this often occurred on the
following day). In this way, we worked image-by-image through the video and,
correspondingly line-by-line through the transcript.
When appropriate—e.g., when there is interactional trouble observable in the video—I
hypothesized what might happen next before moving on to confirm or disconfirm the
hypothesis. I then spent the following hours writing individual analyses, commented upon,
confirmed or disconfirmed in the remainder of the database. I subsequently shared these
analyses with laboratory members, especially with those unfamiliar with the dataset, who
therefore served as disinterested peers reviewers as a means to increase the consistency and
reliability of the analyses. Continuing the analysis, I both generated new hypotheses and
categories and, simultaneously, (dis-) confirming existing ones. The results presented in this
paper emerged from weeks of intensive analysis.
Analyzing the tapes from a first-time-through perspective assists researchers in avoiding
teleological interpretations, whereby the outcomes of interactions are used to give sense to
historically earlier interactions. This prevents me from providing sense to the moment of
320 Wolff-Michael Roth

interaction that none of the participants could have had, because at the moment of their
interaction they could not see what the ultimate outcome would be. For example, after having
read the problem stem and talking about the graph for a short while, Annemarie turned to
David and asked, “Is that right then?” (see below, Fragment 6, turn 33). At the outset,
Annemarie, as all participants, would interpret a graph as part of a project that would
ultimately lead to the design of instruction of graphs and graphing. She was asked to serve as
an expert, and provide her reading of the graphs. But when she asked the question, Annemarie
changed the frame. Although she could be seen as the expert on graphing in her own
academic domain, Annemarie requested information from the research assistant whether she
was right. I understood this as a problematic moment (interactional trouble) for the research
assistant (David), for he had to deal with the attempt to change the frame whereby the
presumed expert was asking questions rather than the other way around. Depending on the
circumstances, I attempted to predict answers to questions such as “How is David getting
himself out of this situation?” and “How will David respond to this request?”

LEVELS OF IN-FIELD AND OUT-OF-FIELD PERFORMANCE

Given the predominance of graphs in science and given that graphing is one of the
quintessential scientific process skills, one might assume that scientists with PhDs (high
publication rates, grants, and awards) would provide correct—acceptable to someone who
teaches an introductory course in the discipline—interpretations of graphs taken from
introductory textbooks, especially when these are from their own field. My study shows that
this is not the case not only across domains but also within the domain. For the first analysis
of graph interpretation, I present the levels of physicists’ interpretations of graphs in both
fields, physics and ecology, comparing the present to the results of ecologists of a preceding
study (Roth & Bowen, 2003).
Their interpretations are compared with the correct standard answers on some aspects of
the graph, where standard answers are the kind of interpretations that university professors
provide in their teaching about these and similar graphs (Table 1).
Table 1 shows the percentages of the correct, standard answers of physicists both in- and
out-of-field. Paired t-tests were conducted for each of the three task pairs and evaluated at an
alpha level adjusted according to the Bonferroni correction to correct for experiment-wise
error rates due to multiple testing (i.e., α = 0.017, α = 0.0033, and α = 0.00033). For the
distribution graphs, the scientists did significantly better in the in-field than on the out-of-field
task, t(16) = 7.61, p < 0.00033. There were 76% correct solutions on the in-field graph but no
correct solution on the out-of-field graph.
Using the identification of the two equilibrium points as performance measures, there
was no statistically detectable difference between in-field and out-of-field performance on the
dynamics graphs, t (16) = 1.32, p > .017. The mean score on all 4 items was x = 1.53, SD =
1.37. Finally, using the correct identifications of the three scenarios as measures, there was no
statistically detectable difference between in-field and out-of-field performance on the
isocline graphs, t(16) = 0.80, p > 0.017. The mean score on the 6 items from the in-field and
out-of-field graphs was x = 1.35 (23 correct for 17 physicists), SD = 1.41.
 Limits to General Expertise 321

Table 1. Frequency of standard answers on the part of the physics compared to the
biologists in a previous study

Task Physicists (N = 17) Biologists (N = 16)1

In-field
In-field Out-of-field Public
University Total
Sector
(N=8) (N=16)
(N=8)
Distribution
Ionization/Adaptation 13 0 7 2 9
(76%) (0%) (86%) (25%) (56%)
Dynamics
Unstable Equilibrium 8 5 8 4 12
(47%) (29%) (100%) (50%) (75%)
Stable Equilibrium 7 6 7 3 10
(41%) (35%) (86%) (38%) (63%)
Largest increase in N - 3 1 0 1
- (18%) (13%) (0) (6%)
Isoclines
Compressible/ 4 5 6 2 8
Essential (24%) (29%) (75%) (25%) (50%)
Ideal Gas/ 4 4 6 2 8
Substitutable (24%) (24%) (75%) (25%) (50%)
Incompressible/ 4 2 6 2 8
Complementary (24%) (12%) (75%) (25%) (50%)
Summary Statistics X = 6.67 X = 3.71 X = 5.13 X = 1.75
SD = 3.73 SD = 1.80 SD = 1.69 SD = 1.81
Note 1: The data about the biologists has been culled from Roth and Bowen (2003).

To be able to compare the results of this study with that of my preceding study involving
ecologists (Roth & Bowen, 2003), which involved individuals employed at the university and
others working in the public sector, the mean performance on all standard answers were
compared. For the biologists in the previous study, the university-based scientists tended to be
more successful than non-university public sector scientists, t(14) = 3.88, p < .01, which I
attributed to the difference in familiarity with the tasks—professors teaching undergraduate
courses are more familiar with these kinds of graphs than public sector scientists not teaching
introductory courses. In the present study, the physicists’ mean frequencies of correct,
standard answers on in-field graphs was not significantly higher than in out-of-field graph
interpretation, t(16) = 2.06, p > 0.05. The in-field graph results of the physicists can be
compared with that of university-based biologist group, because all of the physicists held
university jobs. The percentages of correct answers in the biologist group tended to be higher
than the in-field graph result of the physicist group. The mean frequency of correct solutions
for physicists’ out-of-field graphs was similar to that of non-university public sector
biologists. I present the fuller explications of the physicists’ interpretive practices in each task
in the following paragraphs.
322 Wolff-Michael Roth

In the distribution graph pair, the fundamental problem appears to be what many
physicists articulate as their lack of the context- and domain-specific knowledge. In the
interpretation of the different plant distribution, one of the physicists explained the
distribution using “evolution” as explanatory concept (“evolution has been done in such a
way that some different plants have evolved to take advantage of a different niche”). Others
did not explicitly use expressions such as the differential adaptation or the different
photosynthetic mechanisms for the different types of plants, although all of the university
biologists used this theoretical concept. But, for the different ionization energy in each shell
distribution, most of physicists (76%) used an appropriate explanation (one that an instructor
of an undergraduate course would accept) such as the definition of ionization or the binding
energy of the atom. Some of them explicitly noted that the ionization energy cannot be
inferred directly from the graph; in this, they articulated domain-related background
knowledge that could not be gleaned from the graph itself. However, this kind of
interpretation did not appear in the context of physicists’ interpretations of biology graphs.
For the stability of the equilibrium points in the dynamics graph pair (Figure 1), the
frequency of the standard correct answer was not significantly different for the in-field graph
task. The videotapes show that in their interpretation of the dynamics graph pair, some
physicists identified (stable, unstable) equilibriums. In the population dynamics graph, five
(29%) physicists identified the unstable equilibrium point correctly and five incorrectly
identified it as a stable equilibrium. One correctly identified it following active elicitation by
the research assistant and one identified it as unstable using incorrect reasoning. Three
physicists gave explanations for the characteristics of the intersection point (e.g., “steady state
solutions to the population”) and two did not comment at all. For the stable equilibrium point,
six (35%) physicists identified it correctly and one identified it as an unstable equilibrium.
One individual identified it correctly after the research assistant intervened, actively
requesting an explication; one physicist described it as “convergent point”; and two called it a
point of “equilibrium.” Four individuals described the features of the equilibrium point (e.g.,
“the population is constant”) and two refrained from commenting about the feature. Four
physicists correctly identified the stability of both equilibrium points in the population
dynamics graph. Three physicists correctly identified the largest increase of the population
size as that point in the graph where the function (b[N]-d[N])·N was maximized; 11 physicists
suggested that the maximum increase was where (b - d) = (b - d)max, two thought the
maximum was where b = bmax, and one pointed to the left intersection as the answer. One of
those who mentioned that the largest increase occurs where (b - d) = (b - d)max explained that
the three possible values of (b - d) = (b - d)max would be at very low N, at very large N, or
somewhere in between.
In the physics dynamics graph task (Figure 1b), seven (41%) physicists correctly
identified the stable equilibrium, and one of them named it “equilibrium,” and the other called
it “neutral equilibrium” (Table 1). Two individuals incorrectly identify it as an unstable
equilibrium. Five physicists described the features of the equilibrium point such as “the forces
are equal,” “feels no force,” “remains motionless or stationary,” or “oscillates over some
range of x” without, however, identifying the stability of the equilibrium point. One
individual did not note any special features concerning the intersection of the two graphs. In
sum, therefore, physicists generally were somewhat familiar with the concept of equilibrium:
all except one noted some of the features of the intersection points in terms of equilibrium or
related concepts, although they did not necessarily comment about the extent of the stability.
 Limits to General Expertise 323

Similarly, eight (47%) physicists identified the unstable equilibrium in the physics dynamics
graph, one named it “equilibrium,” and another individual wrongly denoted it as a “stable
equilibrium.” Four participants described features of the equilibrium point and one call it “a
point of inflection”; and two individuals did not comment at all about the unstable
equilibrium point. Six physicists noted the stability of both equilibrium points. In sum,
therefore, only two physicists identified all the stabilities of equilibrium points in the graphs
from both fields.
The third task consisted of triplets of isocline graphs. On both in-field and out-of-field
versions, the frequency of correct answers was low (< 30%). One physicist provided the
standard correct answer in all of the three biology isoclines graphs consistent with the
concepts of “essential,” “substitutable,” and “complementary” resources. Two physicists
provided a correct answer in all of the three physics isoclines graphs as the “compressible
phase transition,” “ideal gas,” and “incompressible phase transition” cases. No individual
provided the correct answer on all of the six isoclines. On average, then, physicists were
correct on 2.35 out of the 6 aspects (39%) of the in-field graphs and provided 1.47 standard
answers on the 7 aspects (21%) of the out-of-field graphs. In total, this amounted to 3.82
(29%) correct answers on the 13 aspects of interest. The physicists’ success rates on both in-
field and out-of-field graphs were similar to the response patterns of public sector scientists in
ecology.

DIFFERENCES ACROSS DOMAINS

The physicists’ interpretations of in-field and out-of-field graph differed in many
respects. In general, they tended to draw on different types of graphical resources across the
pairs of structurally identical tasks. When I began this study, I hypothesized that there might
exist some clear patterns in the extent (time, words) to which participants engaged with the
tasks across domains. The most dominant pattern was that the physicists spent more time and
talked more on in-field graphs than on out-of-field graphs. From the total 51 in-field and out-
of-field graph pairs, there were 31 pairs (60.8%) in which the participants spent more time on
in-field graphs than on the corresponding out-of-field graph. The videotapes and transcripts
revealed an obvious pattern: they talked more (had more to say) about the in-field graph than
about the corresponding out-of-field graph. For example, one typical physicist produced more
than twice the number of words in his in-field graph interpretation: From the total 7652 words
he produced, 5212 words are uttered in in-field graph interpretations whereas 2440 words
were related to out-of-field graph interpretations. The distribution of time/words across tasks
was not constant, however: for the distribution, dynamics, and isograph sets, he produced
465/1897, 767/1790, and 1208/1525 words. A total of six physicists talked more about in-
field graphs across the three tasks.
From a social practice perspective, the resources mobilized during performance are
particularly important. Here, I articulate some of the differences in material resources—e.g.,
axis labels, units, and scales—physicists used for their in-field and out-of-field graph
interpretations. In a Cartesian graph the axes constitute important structures that may hinder
or facilitate interpretation. In this study, nearly all physicists explicitly articulated the nature
of the axes during the beginning stages of each task. There were more variations in out-of-
324 Wolff-Michael Roth

field graph than in in-field graph in confirming the axis, although there were differences in
the degree to which the axes were represented in each task. I exemplify the findings with
materials from the distribution graph pair depicted in Figure 1.
In the dynamics graph pair, there are no scales or units on either axis of the biology
dynamics graph axis; but there are axis labels “rates” (vertical axis) and “N.” The structurally
equivalent task from physics includes concrete numbers on the horizontal axis labeled “x.”
On the vertical axis, there are concrete numbers and labels referring to force functions
without any other labels or units. These differences are possible mediators for variations
across the two tasks. My videotapes show that in their interpretations of the abscissa of the
biology dynamics graph, eight physicists asked questions about the nature of “N,” despite the
fact that this letter is used in many fields to denote numbers, population sizes, and densities.
Four physicists suggested that the letter denoted “population,” one thought of it as population
density, one treated it as population size, and one used it as “some [generic] parameter.” Two
did not make a comment concerning the nature of the abscissa. One physicist attempted to
confirm with the research assistant whether he could assume the two axes to be linear and he
wanted to know whether the intersection of abscissa and ordinate identified the true origin of
the grid. For the ordinate label “rates,” two physicists made explicit references to it. One
physicist furthermore suggested that “rate” had to be associated with particular units and
continually referred to the slopes of the curves, to distinguish “rate” (as in “birthrate,” “death
rate” from “change of the rate” (as in slope of the two curves). Another physicist tried to
express rate as a particular number with a particular unit, and using a concrete unit is, to him,
a way of making sense:

well, no, to make any sense at all, this [rate] would have to be death rate per ten to the
fifth or ten to the fourth per some number of population. Otherwise it wouldn’t make sense at
all. This would just be per second or per year or per something like radioactive decay, so this
death rate to have any sense presumably has to be per some number of the population.
Presumably, because one of the population is highest here, I mean this is almost flat, the first
approximation except there is no– this is a linear scale, presumably, right?

The double nature of the “rates” involved gave rise to considerable interpretive problems
that a number of physicists—including the one featured in the case study below—could not
satisfactorily resolve. Thus, the commonly used term “rate” refers to the slope of a function,
which in the present case are birthrate and death rate. But because the two functions depend
on the variable N, the slopes b' and d' of the functions at any one point are given by the
differentials b' = ∂b/∂N and d' = ∂d/∂N. Each function, however, also is a derivative of the
population with respect to time, that is, b = ∂N+/∂t and d = ∂N-/∂t. The derivatives of the two
functions displayed are therefore b' = ∂2N+//∂N∂t and d' = ∂2N-//∂N∂t. It is this double
dependence of two rates on time and on the population size (density) that appeared to have
been at the origin of the troubles for these physicists.
In the physics dynamics task, the legend of the attractive force functions on the ordinate
tended to confuse a number of the physicists. In some instances the research assistant
explained in advance that the legend represented two simultaneous plots of force functions.
Nearly all participants took the vertical axis to represent forces or force functions. Five used it
as a magnitude or strength of the force. Most of the physicists took the “x” on the abscissa as
position or location or displacement for granted—which is one of the standard ways in which
 Limits to General Expertise 325

distances are denoted in the field, especially in the one-dimensional and two-dimensional
cases when the problem does not ask for radial coordinates. One individual asked whether the
graph represented the magnitude of the force in time—similar to the interpretation of “N” as
time found among biologists (Roth & Bowen, 2003) and related to the problem of
understanding “rates” as functions of time. One physicist initially interpreted “x” as denoting
the distance between the two forces and then changed repeatedly how he referred to the sign.
Seven physicists explicitly talked about the scales or units and two suggested that the scales
were “weird.” One physicist expressed himself for an extended period about the fact that the
origin of the graph was not in the middle, and finally made the assumption that the center
would be the origin (“zero”).

CONTINGENT NATURE OF INTERPRETATION

In this section, I provide a more global picture of the contingent nature of graph
interpretation by following several scientists across the different in-field and out-of-field
graphs. To get a better understanding of how particular interpretations actually emerged, I
provide a detailed case study of the beginning of one graph interpretation session in the
subsequent section.
From a social practice, graphs are but material resources that are mobilized in and
through agency for the purposes at hand, which are realizations of collective possibilities and
motives. Any conscious action inherently is understandable, because human beings have
grounds for actions that can be verbally articulated, and language “is a practical
consciousness-for-others and, consequently, consciousness-for-myself” (Vygotsky, 1986, p.
256). In this perspective, the relationship of a graph to its interpretive referent, which is a
fundamental relation onto which other relations are grafted during interpretations, is the result
of social practice and cannot be deduced from a graph independently of the context of its use.
More importantly, it is a thing that cannot be detached from the language generally and words
particularly, and in this impossibility, it becomes a social phenomenon such that cognition
inherently lies inside and outside, at and across the individual | collective boundary: “The
word is a thing in our consciousness . . . that is absolutely impossible for one person, but that
becomes a reality for two” (p. 256). That is, the interpretations bear all the marks of the
sociality of the research session—think aloud protocols/interview sessions—and cannot
therefore be taken as evidence of skills independent of this context even though the
participants may draw on their prior experiences and knowledge as resources for coping with
the present tasks (Roth & Middleton, 2006). I suggest that graph interpretation is not just the
result of a deployment of embodied context-independent cognitive skills but that it constitutes
a highly contingent and therefore context-dependent practice. (This is so because the
dispositions to act and the current field are mutually constitutive: What is perceived is a
function of the dispositions and the particulars perceived activate certain dispositions, see
Bourdieu, 1990.) In other words, physicists’ graph interpretations are situated in the context
of each in-field and out-of-field task and in the interactions with the interviewer and are
contingent on the resources the physicists bring with them to the tasks. At the same time, the
singular productions in the various sessions realize collective possibilities in a concrete way,
and therefore are not so singular at all: the verbal productions could not be understood unless
326 Wolff-Michael Roth

they were already embodied as possibilities on the part of the listener (research assistant) and
the analyst (me).
To exhibit how their interpretation is situated in the context of the task, I present several
examples selected on heuristic grounds from across tasks. Thus, on the biology distribution
graph task, one physicist started his interpretation by looking at the axes and then one-by-one
talked about the three elevation-dependent plant distributions. He completed his spontaneous
interpretation within three minutes by saying “that’s all about I can say about that particular
graph.” It can be seen in the following that he explicitly expressed the correlation between
two curves labeled C3 and CAM, although he could not explain further the reason underlying
their distribution.

The c-three here seems to be very much uh, important at the higher elevations two
thousand and comes down to, to a minimum but it does seem that to uh, increase again at the
uh, hottest and driest. So, so it’s a little bit hard to tell exactly uh, whether there is an exact
correlation between the elevation and weather, it’s hotter, drier, cooler. So, the reason for the
dip in the C-three curve I guess, you know that will require further examination. On the other
hand, the CAM plant seems to flourish most best at that elevation where the dip occurs in the
c-three curves, so there must be a sort of negative correlation between those two types of
plants.

In his biology dynamics graph interpretation, this physicist asked what “N” was while
looking at the graph and caption. Before he proceeded to articulate an interpretation each of
the three regions defined by the two intersection points, he pointed out the inconsistency
between the caption and the form of the graph. The interactions that constitute the meaning of
the graph can be seen more dramatically in the biology isoclines graph. He started his
commentary with the utterance, “Oh, god! I’m not used to this type of graph. Okay. This is,
okay. The amount . . . so I have to learn to interpret these.” He inquired about what the graphs
represent through reading the caption repeatedly, pointing out or tracing the related parts on
the graph plate with frequent long and short pauses. After 4 ½ minutes and after several failed
attempts at producing an interpretation, he finally asked the research assistant guiding
questions including “I’m puzzled by exactly what the significance of the graph actually is.
You got some questions that might lead me.” With the help of the interviewer’s leading
comments, he finally described the problem:

Yeah, okay. But the problem, the problem that I am seeing, I mean, why your trend i-,
what, heuh ((sighs)), what your trend is supposed you can see in this particular one is uh, you
got two variables and you want a third dimension. Okay, now, that’s a problem, we always
have. I would say that a probable, that’s a very common situation physical scientists as you
got two, two variables and then you got your function itself, might need a plot things three
dimensionally, in physical chemistry, well, what we do this, we, we would plot at a weak
view, and then on hell, we’d sketch a third. With the modern uh, graphics package, you can
actually plot them in three-dimensions uh, and so what you have to, while you do, but
sometimes you reduce them to two dimensions by doing projections. Oh, okay, now, let me
see ((6 second pause)) but what, what actually puzzles me in this particular, I haven’t got a
clear idea in my own mind as to what, okay, if we’re at a third dimension, what uh, what
would we be plotting and what would we be projecting, okay, so, okay.
 Limits to General Expertise 327

Although the situation of plotting three dimensionally is very common in his own field of
physical chemistry—after all, the p-V-T diagrams used for the in-field representation is a
basic element of any introductory course in the field—this physicist expressed experiencing
difficulties in forming a clear idea as to what the graph really means. Immediately following
this episode, it was in and through the interaction with the research assistant that this physicist
was led to plot a three-dimensional graph. Only after drawing this three-dimensional graph
changed the situation did the individual come to provide a correct reading for the three cases
of biology isoclines. This again shows the extent to which the available social resource, the
conversation with the research assistant, allowed him to change his reading to one that is
accepted in the field. Some readers may think about this event as a weakness of the study, but
it turns out that even under the most rigorous control for the contextual factors, interview and
survey researchers is marked by the social interactive nature of the data collection process
(e.g., Suchman & Jordan, 1990). Even if the researcher were required not to speak at all, we
would still have to take into account the orientation of the participant (e.g., Bakhtin, 1986),
who is speaking for and to the researcher, and who uses language that came to him or her
from the generalized other and, in and through this session, returns to this other.
A similar kind of contingency of the task and interactions among available resources and
interviewer can also be found in the in-field graph interpretations. For example, before
starting the interpretation of the physics dynamics graph, the physicist had a long discussion
with the interviewer about the scale of the abscissa, because there are concrete asymmetrical
numbers on both ends of the x-axis. But, in his physics distribution graph, he identified the
graph as “density versus distance from the nucleus” from the origin and provided a more
detailed identification of the graph (“this is a prediction of the probability density finding an
electron at a given distance”). Concerning the physics isoclines graph interpretation, he
expressed the family resemblance between the two graphs that made a pair:

Okay, we’re back to one of these things again, Okay. But at least we’ve solved that.
Okay. You know we had plot things three dimensionally, okay, so we got Vee-one and Vee-
two are two variables plotting um, and then we’ve got curves again which are gonna be three
dimensional projections, okay . . . well, it goes back to the same thing on that plant nutrient
basically-

After pointing to the similarity between the two tasks (“we’re back to one of these things
again”), he talked about the three sets of isoclines in terms of real-world phenomena in his
own field, such as ideal gases, incompressible liquids, and compressible liquids. He ascribed
to the graph aspects of things that he was familiar with in his everyday life.
On the biology dynamics graph one individual referred to two intersections without
explaining stabilities and proceeded to talk about the three regions defined the two
intersections. Another physicist began by interpreting the three regions from right to left. In
the interpretation of the middle region, he identified two intersections “a” and “b” as stable
equilibrium at first, but whereas he explained the population change in the middle region, he
caught himself and corrected “b” to be a stable equilibrium and “a” an unstable one. A third
individual did not mention the stability of intersections, but merely explained one of the
properties of equilibrium: “if the birth and death rates are equal presumably, the population is
constant.” A fourth physicist used a particular example of “rats in the cage” in his biology
dynamics graph interpretation of the three regions from left to right. He added the general
328 Wolff-Michael Roth

interpretation in the order of middle, right, and left graph sections. In the interpretation of
physics dynamics graph, I analyzed their interpretation structure in similar way as in the
biology dynamics graph. For example, a fifth physicist started in the left section and
described the properties of particle movement around the left intersection and then unfolded
his interpretation of the particle movement according to its initial momentum and starting
point. His interpretation did not distinguish the three regions. Another individual divided the
graph into two regions: where there is only a rightward force and where the two forces act
simultaneously. He described the intersections as a case where the sum of the two forces is
zero. He completed his interpretation by talking about the energy of across the three regions.
All the other physicists’ structure of dynamics graph interpretation can be understood
similarly. The interpretations exhibited different structures in the interpretation of the biology
and the physics graph. In the biology dynamics graph interpretation, five of them changed the
focus in the order of the left, middle, and right sections. Four individuals structured their
interpretation in this order: left and right regions, then the intersection points, and then the
region between the intersection points.
These results show differences within and between pairs of tasks. No two physicists
enacted the same sequence through the different graph regions. Thus, two physicists who took
the same sequence of left, center, and right regions in their interpretation, differed in the
structural details of their interpretations. A third individual pointed out the two intersection
points, did not mention their nature as equilibrium points, and then explained the change of
the population by comparing birthrate and death rate in the left and center regions (as defined
by the intersections in Figure 1), and evaluated each situation.
She continued to the area to the right of the right intersection, but did so only to compare
the birthrates and death rates. She returned to the left section of the graph and talked about the
reason of higher death rates in the left section, and then proceeded to the center section of the
graph defined by the two intersections. She did express trouble identifying where the
population increases. She did not articulate population change in the right section, but she
asked the research assistant why the death rate was higher than the birthrate and expressed
interest about the biology of that phenomenon.
Another physicist compared the birthrates and death rates in the three sections. He then
compared the death rates and birthrates at the two intersections. He talked about the change in
population size in the three sections from right to left and finally summarized the population
change for left section compared with that of right and center sections.
In sum, then, whereas the performances of the experts sometimes are thought to be more
or less homogeneous—the very notions of practice and community of practice suggests
commonalities not shared with other practices and communities—this study is consistent with
others that find considerable within and between expert performances, some even pointing to
the occurrence of better performances by non-experts (e.g., Abel, Lima Silva, Campbell, &
De Ros, 2005; Shafto & Coley, 2003). Whereas the results so far pointed out the rather low
performance levels and the heterogeneity and contingency of the interpretations, I have yet to
focus on the concrete details and relations from which the individual sessions evolved in the
dialectic tension between (social, material) resources, which constitute affordances and
constraint, and the agency that mobilized them. This is the topic of next section.
 Limits to General Expertise 329

THE WORK OF STRUCTURING A GRAPH READING TASK:

ANATOMY OF A PROBLEMATIC GRAPH READING
In a previous section, I show that the number of physicists who provide interpretations of
entry-level graphs in physics (in-field) and ecology (out-of-field) is rather low. The graphs
clearly did not encode 10,000 words of experts but rather constituted unfamiliar and foreign
entities that resisted these experienced scientists’ efforts in making sense. Or, to put it in a
tongue-and-cheek perspective, in many instances even 10,000 words were insufficient to
produce graph readings that were consistent with the canon of the field. Existing models of
graph interpretation in the field of cognitive science often take cursory descriptions of graph
interpretation sessions as their point of departure, thereby failing to take into account the
microlevel details of actual interpretation sessions that tell us a lot of what really rather than
possibly happens in the interpretations. How can we get access to what actually happens, as
seen by those involved? More poignantly, how can we get access to processes that are
invisible—and perhaps compiled—in the performances of experts? That is, I am asking here
for how we can access to a life-world perspective that some in artificial intelligence already
embody in their modeling efforts (Agre & Horswill, 1997). In some existing cognitive science
studies, what experts say (after the fact) that they are doing is taken as fact. Yet there is
mounting evidence that what expert scientists, engineers, teachers, and other practitioners say
they have done and what they could be seen as doing is often very different (e.g., Bourdieu,
1990). In some social sciences, it has been shown that methods normally hidden from view
come to the fore and are mobilized when experts are in trouble, in situations of “breakdown,”
when their ordinary ways of functioning no longer work so that in the attempt to
accommodate participants exhibit their methods of and for social conduct (Garfinkel, 1967).
Rather than observing experts in situations where they provide unproblematic accounts of
what they have done, an appropriate research method puts them—often with peers—into
situations where they make available all those skills and procedures that really constitute their
expertise (e.g., in the control room of the London Underground [Heath & Luff, 2000]).
To show what is salient and how experienced physicists interact with the graphing tasks
in my study, I provide an ethnomethodologically and conversation-analytically informed
study of the first 7 minutes of one session. Any good model ought to be able to predict both
efficient as well as incorrect performances, on the part of experts and non-experts alike. I
provide the account in part as a test bed that others may be able to use as a standard for graph
interpretation models.
The session concerns the ecology dynamics graph and Annemarie, a 30-year veteran of
her department whose teaching skills have been rewarded through university-wide awards. In
this session, we see her articulate the difficulty of ordering the display sufficiently for getting
a good handle on the problem.
When she eventually began to find an orientation, the resource most salient to her are the
slopes of the curves, ultimately leading her to produce an interpretive text that was
inconsistent with the scientific norm. She expressed a lot of uncertainty about what she
perceived and what she did and, to decrease this uncertainty, she engaged in repeated attempts
to receive feedback on her progress—counter to the protocol that she nevertheless had agreed
to prior to the session.
330 Wolff-Michael Roth

“I Can Hardly Absorb What That Means”

As a participant approaches a task, it initially is unstructured, though as soon as the eyes

are laid on the sheet, structuring beings to operate and separate out the different parts. The
work of structuring the text, however, requires reading, which therefore unfolds in time. As it
unfolds in real time, reading has to structure what initially is nothing but a “flat” text—this
would be apparent if the text had been read by a text-to-speech program currently available
on many computers. It is immediately apparent that the voice is not a human one because the
prosodic cues that allows listeners to structure hearing are considerably off normal.
Intonation, as made available through the different prosodic parameters, is an important
means to structure, for ourselves and for others, any form of text that thereby obtains its
meaning (Vološinov/Bakhtin, 1973).
The session pertaining to the population dynamics graph begins when Annemarie
changed the sheets in front of her over to the second task featuring the dynamics graph from
ecology. At this point, her right hand moves toward the caption, the pen stopping on the top
right corner (Figure 2). After several seconds, she asks whether the research assistant wants
her to read aloud. From the perspective of conversation analysis, it is a question because the
research assistant treated it as such: he responds in the preferred affirmative, “sure, if you’d
like to” (turn 002).

Fragment 2
001 A: do you want me to read it out loud?
002 D: sure, if youd like to

In this situation, Annemarie asks David whether she ought to read aloud although she has
been instructed to do so earlier and although she has already done so on the preceding task. At
the same time, the question–answer sequence ascertains that Annemarie is familiar with the
experimental condition that asked participants to think aloud while providing a reading of the
graphing tasks.

Figure 2. The hand/pen combination moves to the text when the scientists are oriented toward it; but the
responsibility for the text always is attributed to the researchers.

Annemarie then goes ahead reading aloud the caption in a stop and go fashion, including
long pauses (1.41, 1.33, 1.68, 4.50, 1.74, 1.72, 2.04, and 1.66 seconds), where I heuristically
take the one-second rule as a heuristic for denoting something as a long pause: In
conversations as well as in school science classrooms, the maximum pauses normally do not
 Limits to General Expertise 331

exceed one second (Jefferson, 1989). More so, the voice is strongly modulated, the pitch
jumping repeatedly upward, the speech intensity changing from relative piano (low volume)
to higher levels, and to points of almost disappearing. This continually changing production
of the text in and through the utterance is evident in the following fragment 3 taken from the
early part of the session while Annemarie is still reading the caption.

Fragment 3
012 (1.66)
013 A: <<p>focus on the birth and death rates (0.70) at the two intersection
points of the lines.> (0.93) and on ‘what happens to ^population sizes in the ↑zones of
population size ‘below (0.64) be↑tween an ab↑ove the inter[sec]tion
014 D: [uum]
015 A: points.
016 (1.20)
017 .HHhssssss. <<f>i can hardly absorb what that means.>
018 (2.02)

Figure 3. Sound wave, speech intensity, pitch, and spectrogram for a stretch of talk ((turn 013).

As shown in Figure 3, there are considerable variations in several parameters of the

prosody, including pitch, speech rate, speech intensity, energy distribution across spectrum,
and so on. Because these variations co-occur with the sounds that we hear as words, the latter
can be heard with continually changing intonation, emphasizing some words, deemphasizing
others, making it clear that the listener is addressed or speaking with such a low volume as if
the speech addresses the speaker alone, and so forth. That is, a first level of structure arises in
and from the prosodic variations that both lend and constitute differential emphasis to
different parts of the text. There are several jumps in the pitch, which can be heard as
emphases of the syllable heard. At one point in turn 013, the production of the word overlaps
with a break in the voice, resembling a cackle, following which the voice fades away (Figure
3). The figure also shows—in the spectrogram—that there is a sudden shift of the sound
energy into higher frequency ranges—as indicated by the dark areas at higher frequency
ranges—associated with the cackle and a jump in the pitch to higher values during the
332 Wolff-Michael Roth

production of the word “above” (turn 13, Figure 3). Finally, the rendering of the utterance
above the sound wave shows a change of the delivery rate, as letters come to lie closer or
farther away from one another.
Although this is an introductory level graph, Annemarie does not just “rattle off” a
reading to produce an interpretation. There are pauses as if Annemarie wants to give herself
time “to absorb” the meaning of the words she has just read. Evidence for the pauses is seen
in turns 012, 016, and 018. The pauses can be heard and experienced as moments of gathering
up. There are other, shorter pauses visible within turns (e.g., turn 013). These pauses
punctuate the production of text when Annemarie actually reads. Twice in the fragment,
however, Annemarie provides us with evidence of exasperation, which, as she explains,
comes from the text that hardly allows her to absorb what it means (turn 017).
The effect of the modulation of the voice parameters is a structuring and commentating.
Thus, the increases in intensity, increases in pitch, and changes in the delivery rate can be
heard as emphases or de-emphases to the text. The cackle during the production of the word
“above” can be heard as a commentary to the reading not directly available in verbal form,
but subsequently taken up in the text itself. It is a social evaluation in the concrete utterance
unavailable in the text itself but rendered public in and through the intonation
(Bakhtin/Medvedev, 1978). Thus, in turn 017, Annemarie comments that she “can hardly
absorb what that means,” where “that” refers to the text that she has been reading, a reference
further ascertained by the hand position pointing to the caption (Figure 4). We can therefore
see in the cackle the growth point of a meta-idea, Annemarie’s understanding of the
difficulties she has in understanding what the task as a whole and possibly the text in
particular means.2 The transcript also shows that the production of the utterance involves
intensities much higher than that of the surrounding talk; the intensities move to a low volume
(i.e., piano) right after Annemarie returns to the reading of the caption. Here, the piano-level
intensity expresses an orientation where she is reading more for herself rather than to the
researcher, whereas the normal and higher speech intensities are oriented toward the other.

Figure 4.The hand placed near the text exhibits orientation to an aspect of the task that the researcher is
responsible for (e.g., Roth & Middleton, 2006).

2
In dialectical approaches to psycholinguistics, growth points are whole units that embody meaning but in an
underdeveloped, germ-cell-like fashion (McNeill, 2002). As speech unfolds, meaning comes to be more fully
articulated by verbal means. Analytically, growth points are identified after the fact by means of backtracking
from the fully articulate and evident meaning to the point that there is a first sign for its appearance.
 Limits to General Expertise 333

In essence, therefore, the first few moments provide considerable evidence for the work
of structuring required in making sense of the task. Annemarie is struggling to impose
structure in and through her reading and to articulate an initial interpretation of the
caption/instruction. This concern for an understanding of the caption/instruction, which she
defines as the “trouble to get out,” is also evident in the moments that follow, as shown in the
next section.

“I’m Having Trouble Getting Out”

In the following fragment, we can directly observe the shift associated with an instruction
available in the caption, and therefore an orientation toward what the task specifies her to do,
and therefore, to her domain of responsibility (Roth & Middleton, 2006). Across the turns 019
to 021, we can clearly hear Annemarie reading, and, together with her hand position (Figure
4), understand her to be oriented toward the text. But as she reads the text “focus on the birth-
and death rates at the two intersection points” (turn 021), she moves her pencil to the upper
(right) intersection point and pauses (Figure 5), which we can see as a shift in her orientation
to the task itself.

Fragment 4
019 <<pp>discuss the implication of the birth and death rates in the figure as regards
conservation of such a species.>
020 (2.80)
021 <<pp>focus on the birth and death rates at the two intersection points of the [lines,
[((moves pen to upper intersection))
022 (3.23)
023 and on what happens to population sizes in the zones of population size below,
between, and above the intersection points.>

Figure 5. A part of the text (“focus on the birth and death rates at the two intersection points”) turns into
an instruction, clearly observable in the .

The fact that Annemarie has changed orientation toward the graph and to the intersection
point should be understood not as the mere realization of an instruction, but as a form of
behavior the description of which is appropriately described by the instruction (“focus on . ”).
There are never linear and causal relations between “instructions” (plans), on the one hand,
and the situated actions that realize what the instructions (plans) describe, on the other hand
(e.g., Suchman, 1987). Rather, the text prospectively configures the behavior without being
334 Wolff-Michael Roth

able to determine it, as we know from other sessions that reading the same text does not cause
the participant to orient immediately to this part of the graph. In fact, in numerous instances
on my videotapes, the graph interpretations do not deal with the intersections as locations
where the graph is sectioned into three areas at all. Whether participants implement the focus
on the intersection points therefore is an empirical matter.
A long pause follows (turn 22) before Annemarie continues reading the caption with very
low voice intensity but leaving the pen at the intersection (as in Figure 5). At this moment,
therefore, there is a double orientation. On the one hand, her gaze has returned to the text,
which she continues reading with very low speech intensity, almost inaudibly. (We can hear
this also as indicating an orientation to the experimenter, who knows the text, and for whom
the text itself therefore does not have to be read.) On the other hand, her pen rests at the
intersection point, like a marker of the object about which she is being asked after she has
focused on the intersection. That is, the pen continues implementing the focus that she has
been asked to enact, or rather, she acts in a way so that we can now say that “focus on the
intersection point” is a description of what she has done. In fact, the pen is an embodied
pointer to an aspect of the setting, which she does not have to keep in mind and mentally
track because both feature and pointer are materially present in the situation where she can
find both whenever needed. This dialectical double orientation makes the text to be about the
particular aspect of the graph.
Annemarie is still focusing on the text that is asking her to focus on the intersection
points and “on what happens to population sizes in the zones of population size below,
between, and above the intersection points” (turn 023). In this instance, as she is reading the
end of the text, the pen moves repeatedly vertically up and down (Figure 6). That is, here we
have a text and a gesture produced simultaneously, which therefore can be seen and heard as
part of the same meaning unit (McNeill, 2002). However, this meaning unit, if it denotes a
vertical direction for “below, between, and above the intersection points” is not that intended
by the instructor of the course from which the graph was culled or by other instructors using
the particular graph. The “correct” interpretation of the prepositions is a left-right orientation
on the graph, which corresponds to increases and decreases in the population sizes (densities)
denoted by the letter N on the abscissa. Here, the instruction and the situated action no longer
overlap, at least for this very instance at which the pen moves vertically while the words
“below, between, and above” are being uttered. There is therefore both a dialectical, inner
contradiction between text and gesture, on the one hand, and a logical contradiction between
the spatial relations denoted in the text and that denoted by the gesture, on the other hand.

Figure 6. The instruction “below, between, and above the intersection points” is associated with a
repeated vertical movement of the pen.
 Limits to General Expertise 335

In the long pause that follows (16.37 s), the pen enacts the vertical up-down movement
for a second time (as in Figure 6). She appears confused. As Fragment 5 shows, after a 11-
second pause, Annemarie moves the hand with the pen downward to the text where she places
the pen tip to the right of the first paragraph and the left hand to its left (Figure 7). She has
oriented from the graph to the text, apparently seeking further assistance, and then asks the
research assistant a question about the text.

Figure 7. This overlay of two offprints shows how, after pausing to speak for a while and oriented
toward the graph, Annemarie returns to the text, a shift in orientation flagged by the change in hand/pen
positions.

Fragment 5
023 and on what happens to population sizes in the zones of population size below,
between, and above the intersection points.>
024 (16.37) ((after 11 s, the hands move from the graph to the text [Figure 7]))
025 so the first sentence <<p>is not (0.20) relevant to this right? (0.20) i=am> i=m
having trouble (0.15) n::=’GETting ^out ((movement along text with pencil)) (0.37).
<<pp>as long as> i need it further away. (0.47) ((Literally moving paper further
away.)) .hhh whats here?

In asking the research assistant about the relevance of the text, Annemarie clearly
attributes the responsibility for it to him, a pattern found across the database (Roth &
Middleton, 2006). There is text, but, in her assessment, it is not relevant to the task itself. If it
is indeed irrelevant, then it constitutes either bad practice or—because all social action is
considered to be driven by motives—a deliberate distracter used in a task designed for
psychological research purposes rather than reflecting the authentic practices of science. That
is, in these particular situations, it appears legitimate to ask questions, as the queries pertain to
the caption below the graph to be interpreted, and this text also contains the instructions.
When the text generally and the instructions specifically do not appear to be clear, queries are
frequently oriented to the research assistant and not treated as illegitimate to the think-aloud
protocol described to the participants beforehand. In this instance, the query is followed by a
statement about the task in progress “I’m having trouble getting out,” where a particular
emphasis is placed prosodically on the “getting” and a somewhat smaller emphasis on the
“out.” Annemarie then suggests that she needs “it further away” and then moves the task
sheet away from her and lifts it off the table (Figure 8). That is, she literally moves away from
the text in an attempt to get out of it, metaphorically speaking, acquire some distance, and,
perhaps, approach it in a new way from the distance gained.
336 Wolff-Michael Roth

Figure 8. Annemarie formulates that she needs the paper “further away” to overcome her “trouble
getting out.” a. This overlay shows how she moves the hand/pen downward while uttering “getting
out.” b. She moves task sheet away and lifts it off the table.

Here Annemarie articulates “having trouble getting out,” while her hand is next to the
text. The responsibility for the text is that of the researcher (Roth & Middleton, 2006), and the
responsibility for the difficulties therefore are rested with the researcher—as this and other
studies have shown where the graphs were denoted as bad, poorly designed, and other
negative adjectives by scientists from the discipline of ecology (Roth & Bowen, 2003).
Responsibility for the trouble thereby is transferred at least partially to the researcher, who
had constructed this text that Annemarie “can hardly absorb what it means” (turn 017) and
from which she “has trouble getting out.” Eventually, however, Annemarie orients to the task
as she perceives it; and here, as the next section shows, what is most salient to her are the
slopes of the two curves rather than their heights, as required for a correct interpretation of the
graph.

Focusing on Slopes: “Is That Right Then?”

After another long pause (17.42 s), during which she stares at the paper, Annemarie re-
reads part of the text and then, by means of a much louder and heard as a resolute “So,”
begins a reading of the graph itself. She places the task sheet on the desk and begins to
gesture with her pen over different parts of the graph and then with uttering “death rate” (turn
031), articulates a first description of the graph, “death rate increasing and the birthrate
increasing and the birthrate is increasing faster than the death rate” (turn 031). As she speaks
about the death rate and birthrates, she moves the tip of the pen along the corresponding lines
across the left intersection point (Figure 9).

Fragment 6
029 ↑here ((pencil to the graph)) (.) we have the
030 (2.07)
031 death rate increasing (0.69) and the birth rate increasing and the birthrate is
increasing (0.57) faster (0.95) than the death rate.
032 (1.71)
033 so they=re both increasing but the birthrate invar is faster increasing than the death
rate so presumably that means that the population is increasing. (0.93) is that right
then?
 Limits to General Expertise 337

Figure 9. As she describes the behavior of the two curves, Annemarie moves the pen along the line
currently being talked about. a. The pen moves with the utterance “Death rate increasing.” b. The pen
moves after Annemarie verbally articulates “birthrate is” and while she utters “increasing.”

In this instance, it is apparent that what is salient to Annemarie are the slopes of the two
curves rather than their heights; and her pen movement suggests that this salience occurs
across the intersection point. That is, she does not act as experts have been described to act in
this type of graph. Thus, in economy, the corresponding graph would show an intersection of
supply and demand curves with an equilibrium situation around the intersection. According to
an existing study of graphs with equilibrium points at intersections, experts do not focus on
and interpret the slopes but rather the relative values of the curves on either side of the
intersection point (Tabachneck-Schijf et al., 1997).3 In fact, in the supply-demand graphs,
experts apparently compare the two curves above and below the intersection point with
respect to the ordinate, whereas in ecology—despites the influence economic models have
had on its theories and graphical models (Kingsland, 1995)—the two curves are compared
above and below the intersection point with respect to the abscissa. In the present instance, it
is not only the verbal text that describes the curve as increasing, but the gesture with the pen
tip following the two curves also enacts the observable increase as the hand and gaze moves
from left to right (Figure 9).
After a pause, Annemarie resumes by first summarizing, “so they are both increasing but
the birthrate is faster increasing than the death rate,” and then states the conclusion, “so
presumably that means that the population is increasing.” We note the hesitancy, “presumably
that means,” which allows the inference to stand provisionally rather than making it an
established fact. Indeed, Annemarie is uncertain about the conclusion and, counter the
experimental condition that asked her to think aloud until she has reached her conclusions,
she asks the experimenter to provide her with feedback, “Is that right then?” (turn 033).
At this point, then, her conclusions are unexpected. Annemarie clearly has pointed to the
two graphs as increasing across the intersection and has described both graphs as increasing,
though the birthrate is increasing faster than the death rate. The inference she draws from the
“faster” increase is that the population is increasing, which, as a quick comparison of birthrate
and death rate to the left of the intersection shows, is not the case: here, the population would
be decreasing because the latter exceeds the former. We may ask at this point, “Will
Annemarie recover from this error?” and “Will there be further evidence for the fact that the
slope of the curve rather than the relative heights of the curve to the left and right of the

3
The economist does not interpret the supply-demand graph (see below) by comparing the relative heights of the
curves to the left and right of the intersection bur rather compares the graphs on ordinate values above and
below the intersection.
338 Wolff-Michael Roth

intersection are salient in and to her perception?” Cognitive models are only good if they are
predictive, and the CaMeRa model proposed elsewhere suggests that “experts” perceive the
relative heights rather than the slopes in curves such as the ones presented here (Tabachneck-
Schijf et al., 1997). If the CaMeRa model only predicts the behavior of the one expert who
constituted the test case, then it is even more limited as it would not describe expertise in
general. In particular, the CaMeRa model does not specify why the economy expert focuses
on the comparisons of the two curves with respect to the ordinate, whereas the experts in
other disciplines focus on the comparison of the two curves with respect to the abscissa. Thus,
there appears to be a difference not only between the economist in the Tabachneck-Schijf et
al. study and the ecologists in my own previous study (Roth & Bowen, 2003), but the same
difference exists with respect to the physicists in the present study, as the latter also tended to
compare the two graphs in the left-right rather than up-down directions. Pertaining to the
directionality, we may further ask whether Annemarie will continue to treat the left and right
of the intersections indistinctly or whether she will distinguish the two sides. The brief
exchange with the research assistant that followed her query provides further evidence of
what she perceived.
As the beginning of Fragment 7 shows, there is a pause. Then the research assistant
harrumphs. There is another pause, which Annemarie breaks by uttering with a rising
intonation toward the end, “round this region” (turn 037), during which the research assistant
harrumphs a second time. There is another pause, and then David begins to speak (turn 040).
He first talks about subtracting the death rate from the birthrate, then about adding the death
rate, which is negative, to the birthrate, which yields “some positive . . . growth rate” (turn
040). (Signing quantities such as death rate negatively and adding them to other, positively
signed quantities is an approach characteristic of the physics culture in which both the
research assistant an the research participant are part.)

Fragment 7
034 (0.88)
035 D: hhum
036 (0.43)
037 A: round [this] region?
038 D: [khmm]
039 (0.73)
040 D: well, yeah, if you take, well shall i think i use the half if you take the birth
minus the death (.) rate (0.63) `well the birth plus the death (.) rate which is negative,
you are gonna get (0.13) some positive (0.98) growth rate; right?=
041 A: =^yea ^[i=]m looking at the slopes of the curve[ss].
042 D: <<p>[so]> [uh]=<<p>okay.>

Following David’s description of the general procedure, subtracting or adding the two
rates to get their combined effect as the growth rate, Annemarie responds that she is “looking
at the slopes of the curves” (turn 041). Here there is a contrast between David’s description of
the subtraction/addition of the two curves, which requires the subtraction/addition on a point-
by-point fashion, Annemarie’s utterance juxtaposes the consideration of slopes. In her
utterance, the personal pronoun and verb, “I’m,” are emphasized, setting what she has been
doing in contrast with what David has been describing—if she had heard David say what she
has been doing, she would not have needed to repeat it, even if in other words. David’s
 Limits to General Expertise 339

subsequent production realizes the preceding utterance as a description different from what he
has described, “uh okay,” which can be heard as an “okay, I understand what you are doing.”
So in this situation, Annemarie explicitly points again to the fact that she is looking at the
slopes rather than at the heights of the curves, and she is setting her approach against that
which David describes—the one in which birthrates and death rates are added/subtracted.
There is further evidence throughout the transcript that confirms Annemarie’s continued
focus on the slopes. Thus, as shown in Figure 10, there are repeated occasions where she
holds the pen along the death rate curve, indicating its slope rather than the height at a
particular position, where it has to be compared to the height of the birthrate curve. This
comes dramatically to the fore in a subsequent instance further analyzed below.

Figure 10. Annemarie repeatedly laid the pen parallel to the slope, showing and constituting her focus
on the slopes all the while talking about heights of the curves.

In this situation, we also see how the think-aloud protocol has been changed to another
type of situation in which the research assistant actually provides feedback when queried
repeatedly, whereas feedback was to be given only after the session. But both research
assistant and research participant collude to make the event emerge in this particular way. In
fact, in the course of this part of the session concerning the population dynamics graph,
Annemarie will continue to ask for feedback, as it becomes apparent that she struggles with
making sense. Allowing the session to unfold in this way accommodates the participant and a
possible loss of face in this encounter that places her opposite an undergraduate student from
her own department, who apparently knows more about the graph than she does. Clearly, the
change in situation from a pure think-aloud protocol without any clarifying query–answer
sequence to one in which question–answers are accepted as part of the process is a decision
achieved collectively requiring the collusion of both.4
From the point of view of the conversation, which is a social phenomenon sui generis,
the utterances cannot be understood in terms of and reconstructed from the independent
contributions of two speakers. Each utterance presupposes and waits for signs of the effect of
the speech act in and from the mutual other for whom the utterance has been produced
(Suchman, 1987). There is therefore an interlacing of utterances so that they can be
understood only as irreducible and mutually constitutive: Each utterance implies both the one
it succeeds and the one that it precedes. That is, a conversation has to be modeled as a
transactional phenomenon, where the contributions uttered by the participants are

4
In this particular instance, Annemarie and David eventually change the session into one where the latter comes to
tutor the former in providing a standard correct reading. The analysis of the particulars of this tutoring session
have been provided elsewhere (Roth & Middleton, 2006).
340 Wolff-Michael Roth

interdependent (Bakhtin, 1986). The conversation therefore constitutes the unit of analysis so
that the utterance “Am I right then?” cannot be treated as a question until the next turn, which
exhibits the effect part of the speech act as a whole. Cognition, expressed in conversation,
therefore cannot be reduced to the individual but, inherently, implies shared consciousness
and the sociality of cognition .
Some cognitive scientists may consider this situation to be a main problem for the field.
But this is not so at all. Cognitive scientists with a social penchant, as any social psychologist,
find their data not within “but entirely and completely without—in the word, the gesture, the
act. There is nothing left unexpressed in it, nothing ‘inner’ about it—it is wholly on the
outside, wholly brought out in exchanges, wholly taken up in material, above all in the
material of the word” (Vološinov/Bakhtin, 1973, p. 19). Everything psychological exists and
is learned in the real processes of communication and verbal interaction; and society is in the
mind precisely because mind is materially found in society. Thus, we can read the transcript
from turn 033 to turn 040 as a request for feedback, which, when it does not come forth, is
further specified as to the exact location on the graph to which the query corresponds, before
David’s utterance reifies the utterance and its clarification as a question. That is, we can read
the transaction as a persistent query and the initial reaction as hesitation; the persistence pays
off, as David responds in an acquiescent manner. But this gloss is possible only from
hindsight.

“Am I on the Right Track?”: Further Evidence for Focusing on Slopes

The salience of the slopes in and to Annemarie’s perception is further accentuated in

Fragment 8, where she summarizes what happens to the population in the right part of the
graph. Annemarie is in the process of summarizing the trend that as the birthrate is increasing
faster than the death rate is increasing” (turns 110–114), “the population is in good shape”
(turn 116). The production in this case is not quick, and Annemarie continues to pause
frequently, as she has done throughout, in producing this summary. Her right hand moves the
pencil tip along the birthrate curve as she articulates the salient feature, “increasing faster
than the death rate is increasing” (Figure 11).

Fragment 8
106 A: well it just–
107 (1.18)
108 feels that as long as the
109 (1.17)
110 um birthrate
111 (4.90)
112 is increasing
113 (1.15)
114 faster than the death rate is increasing
115 (1.23)
116 then the population is in (0.15) good ↑`shape. (0.86) but when the birthrate
begins to decline
117 (1.98)
118 and the death rate stays the same ((pencil aligned with the death rate curve))
((pause, pencil comes to left of intersection 2))
 Limits to General Expertise 341

119 (3.55)
120 its okay for a while but eventually– clearly the ah (0.85) clearly the uh::
121 (1.14)
122 population is going to diminish. ↑am I on the right ˇtrack ((rH on paper near
text))
123 (2.02)

Figure 11. This overlay of three offprints shows the gesture produced simultaneously with the utterance
“As long as the birthrate is increasing faster than the death rate, then the population is in good shape.”

This description of a population in good shape changes, however, as the pencil tip moves
across the maximum of the birthrate curve (Figure 12a), a section that Annemarie articulates
as one where “the birthrate begins to decline” (turn 116). There is a pause, followed by a
statement that “the death rate stays the same” (turn 118). While she utters the description, she
places the pencil parallel to the death rate graph (Figure 12b). As long (“for a while”) as the
birthrate is above the death rate, “it’s okay” (turn 120), but when the birthrate lies below the
death rate, then the “population is going to diminish” (turn 122).

Figure 12. a. “When the birthrate begins to decline . . .” b. “And the death rate stays the same.”

In this situation, it is clear once again that Annemarie perceives and describes the slopes
of the curves, which are the givens in her reasoning about what happens to the population of
which the curves at hand constitute the birthrates and death rates. Annemarie is not just
talking about the birthrate and death rate, but about the birthrate as “increasing faster” than
the death rate in the area, as shown by her pencil, where both curves have positive slopes and
the former being larger than the latter. She describes the situation to the right of the birthrate
maximum as one in which “the birthrate begins to decline” (turn 116) while “the death rate
stays the same” (turn 118). Here, clearly, going from the left to the right, the death rate
increases for increasing N, whereas Annemarie perceives something that stays constant,
342 Wolff-Michael Roth

something literally aligned with the pencil held closely to the death rate curve in the region
that she currently talks about (Figure 12b).
In Annemarie’s talk, there is apparent a temporal dimension from left to right in the
graph. That is, she does not take the graph to be a representation of birthrates and death rates
as a function of the population (density). Thus, moving from left to right, she utters temporal
terms: “as long as” (turn 108), “for a while” and “eventually” (turn 120), “begins to decline”
(turn 116), and “is going to” (turn 122). Later in the session it becomes apparent that she
treats the curves as if they were plotted against time so that going from left to right means a
progression of the population in time rather than a plot of birthrate and death rate against the
population (density). Neither here nor elsewhere in the session does Annemarie continue by
suggesting that the population—when it is to the right of the right intersection point—would
decrease and move toward the intersection point. Rather, as indicated here, the “population is
going to diminish” (turn 122), which she later articulates as becoming extinguished. She also
suggests that in this region, “your total number is going to be on a decline which will be
difficult to recover from because the slop of this curve is quite steep at this point.”
Here again, as throughout the transcript, there is uncertainty apparent in Annemarie’s
talk. She does not make definite statements but frames what she says for example as “it just
feels that” and toward the end, she asks for feedback on whether she is “on the right track”
(turn 123). There are also pauses and repetitions, such as from turn 119 to turn 122, where she
both states that something is “clearly” the case all the while it takes repeated attempts to make
the statement forthcoming. She is uncertain about what she has done and how it compares to
the standard answer, which the research assistant is presupposed to know, as evident from the
very fact that he is asked whether what she has said is right.
In summary, then, in contrast to the claims made in the literature about expertise, the
scientists in this study generally, exemplified here by the data concerning Annemarie, were
far from fluent in the production of their readings; and, more often than not, they made
inferences and derived conclusions that professors and instructors of introductory level
courses in physics and ecology would not have accepted as correct. Some readers may be
tempted to claim that at least some of the participants in this project clearly were not experts.
But this is contrary to those who claim (e.g., Linn, Layman, & Nachmias, 1987) that graphing
is one of the core scientific process skills and that one would expect a scientists to be able to
read a graph that students in introductory courses of their own discipline are expected to
provide correct explanations of.

CORE PRACTITIONERS AND LIMITED NATURE OF EXPERTISE

This study was designed to investigate the nature of scientists’ graph interpretation
expertise, especially the limits of this expertise related to graphs issuing from both within and
outside their domain. A study concerning expert graphing in a leading cognitive science
journal suggested that experts would be reading dynamic equilibrium graphs such as the one
presented here or those in economics (Figure 13) in the following way.

This [supply and demand line] has been stored in the expert’s mental image (visual
buffer). . . . The expert wishes to explain why the price, if it were currently above the
equilibrium price, would be driven down to that price. He does this by considering (in a
 Limits to General Expertise 343

pictorial representation) a higher price, showing that at this price there would be a surplus
(greater supply than demand), and then reasons verbally that the price would decline. Thus, he
uses both pictorial and verbal representations in this explanation. (Tabachneck-Schijf et al.,
2007, p. 321)

Figure 13. Fundamental laws in microeconomics that relate producer supply and consumer demand are
of the same dynamic nature as birthrates and death rates are for populations.

The present study shows that with respect to the graph featuring the two dynamic
equilibriums, 47% and 41% of the physicists have been able to identify the unstable and
stable equilibriums, respectively, in the in-field graph situation; in the out-of-field situation,
the rates were 29% and 35%. Although the reasons varied across individuals, the physicists
generally did not talk about the graphs as dynamic situations in the way that the economist
did in the Tabachneck-Schijf et al. study. More so, the physicists in the present study, in the
same way as the ecologists in a previous study (Roth & Bowen, 2003), analyzed the dynamics
in terms of difference in the two curves to the left and right (horizontally above and below) of
the intersection point; whereas the economist expert compared the two curves vertically
above and below the intersection point. It is evident that their inferences came from
perceptions that are different than those postulated for experts in the cited study. And the
perceptions are in part driven by the cultural expectations rather than by some form of raw
perception taking in by the eye that acts like a camera. More so, as the detailed example of
Annemarie shows, there is no evidence for any of the processes described to occur in the
CaMeRa model, including as to what is being stored in mind and what is not. Thus, for
example, whenever this study shows that whenever Annemarie needed to access visual
information, she oriented toward the required aspect. Even when she was merely indexing a
part of the graph, she did not do so mentally—there is no sign even in my second-to-second
and frame-by-frame approach—but physically, keeping her pencil right on the feature that she
kept track of. Rather than stating that the population (N) would decline in the region of the
graph where death rate curve lies above the birthrate curve and then moves left to the next
equilibrium point, those physicists who did not produce the standard correct answers took the
graph as implying a crash of the population. Whereas this is the case for the left equilibrium,
we need to be cautious with our interpretation about the actual model that the participants
expressed. Thus, to the left of the lower equilibrium, the dynamic and the static model lead to
the same implication: the population crashes. To the right of the right equilibrium, however,
the population declines but only until it reaches the equilibrium (to which, if it overshoots, it
will return). However, the scientists who did not infer the equilibrium generally stated that the
population, once in this region, would crash. That is, many scientists in this study did not see
344 Wolff-Michael Roth

the intersections as equilibrium points whereas this is the starting point for the CaMeRa
model.
The graph reading expertise of scientists is limited even within their field but, in some
instances, even more so when scientists are asked to interpret graphs from outside their field.
In this study, scientists interpreted in-field and out-of-field graphs in an experimental setting
rather than at work. This type of setting is regularly used in studies where scientists serve as
an expert reference group to be compared with novices. Experts not only are assumed to be
capable of successfully completing tasks in their own domain but also to have a capacity for
transferring skills between domains. (For a critique of the assumption that experts transfer,
see Lave [1988].) The present study does not support the notions (a) that graph reading/
interpreting is a general scientific process skill and (b) that experts (easily) transfer skills to
other fields. Interestingly, however, this study may lend support to another one conducted in
the discipline of petroleum science where novices, intermediate experts, and full experts were
asked to interpret images of rocks (Abel et al., 2005). In that study, there was gap between the
explanations experts gave when explaining their discipline and what they said when making
decisions in their discipline. When they described rocks or explain their discipline, they
appeared to employ precise vocabulary, whereas they were not able to articulate even semi-
formal justifications for their interpretations of petrographic representations. Although the
present study did not ask the experts to explain their domains, there, too, appeared to be a gap
between what the physicists teach in their courses and what they expect their students to
know, on the one hand, and the explanations that they provided when working on tasks taken
from undergraduate courses, on the other hand. However, such an interpretation would run
counter to that provided in my previous study, where university scientists who also taught
undergraduates by far outperformed equally prepared non-university scientists.
The physicists’ interpretive practices in this study were far from those that one would
expect experts to exhibit, as my participants frequently provided no more than literal readings
and failed to perform standard interpretive practices even on in-field graphing tasks but
especially on out-of field graphing tasks. We are confronted with these results despite the
following aspects that should have made it easy for them to produce standard (correct)
interpretations. First, the graphs in this study are similar to those that one can find in typical
undergraduate courses of physics and ecology. Second, each pair of physics and ecology
graphs has structural similarities in their surface and deep structure, a fact that should have
facilitated transfer. This study shows that graphing (graph interpretation) cannot be assumed
to be a general scientific process. Rather, it is a social practice employed for achieving
specific purposes in particular contexts. My work shows that the scientists exhibited
somewhat greater ease with in-field graphs than with the out-of-field graphs.
This study exhibits the contingent nature of graph interpretation even among those who
might be considered to be experts with respect to core procedural knowledge in the science.
This contingent nature of graph interpretation exists for both in-field and out-of-field graphs.
We also find that the points or features in a graph that become salient cannot be determined a
priori but rather emerge from the context of the task. For example, in dynamics graph
interpretation, almost all of them (15 in biology dynamics graph and 14 in physics dynamics
graph) mentioned the intersections. On the other hand, in the distribution graph interpretation,
none of them attended to the intersections, although there were many intersections between
the different plant and electron distribution graphs. The flow of the focus changes of their
interpretation differed from person to person within a task, which also made evident the
 Limits to General Expertise 345

contingent nature of their interpretation practice. The function of the ongoing purpose, which
is a determinant of a social practice, appears to be common across domains.
When participants interpreted a graph, they drew on available material resources,
including axis labels, units, and scales. This study shows, however, that we do not know a
priori which of these resources any individual scientist will be drawing on, and, as the case of
Annemarie showed, two aspects might be interfering. We therefore need to conduct our
studies concerning expertise very carefully, making sure that we ascertain what the actual
structures are that are salient to the participant, which in some instances may actually involve
contradictory uses of one and the same resource. There were differences between in-field and
out-of-field graphing tasks; more questioning and variations of interpretation occurs in out-of-
field than in-field graph while they access these material resources. For example, the
physicists spontaneously revealed their background knowledge related to the axis labels in the
physics distribution graph (e.g., Bohr radius, distance from the nucleus), even though these
are not mentioned in the graph or caption. None of them asked about what the axis label “x”
is in physics dynamics graph, but in population dynamics graph, many of them asked about
the meaning of “N”—despite the fact that scientists universally use this label to indicate
(relative, absolute) number of cases.
When physicists worked on in-field and out-of-field graphing tasks, they used various
resources in their interpretation. In our database, we find considerable differences in the use
of linguistic resources between the two fields. This leads to the differences in the extent to
which background knowledge is articulated, and in the precision of the knowledge that is
rallied in the interpretation. For the out-of-field graphs, physics experts drew more on
experience from everyday life or on common sense, whereas in-field graph interpretations
more experience from their professional work was used. Many of the out-of field graph
interpretations were limited to literal readings, which participants frequently explained in
terms of their lack of background knowledge, and participants confronted breakdown more
frequently in out-of-field than in in-field graph interpretations. This result can be thought of
as showing that graph interpretation practice reflects familiarity with the world referenced.
This finding is consistent with the claim that interpretation does not get information out of the
graph, but that graphs constitute occasions for the concrete articulation of knowledge of
familiar worlds (Roth, 2004). In this sense, success in interpreting graphs is a function of
familiarity with the referenced world and of the degree to which the individual establishes a
link between representation and world. If individuals are unfamiliar with some graph, they
tend to seek connections with their everyday life world and experiences. Graph interpretations
then are characterized by common sense and everyday language.
In summary, therefore, practicing scientists’ expertise with respect to reading graphs
appears to be more limited than generally thought. More so, the skills that scientists generally
exhibit when it comes to familiar graphs—e.g., from their own work or work in their area of
research or teaching—is not transferred to introductory-level graphs even if these are from
their own domains. Again, the results of this study point to a more limited nature of expertise,
which likely is linked to the levels of familiarity with the specific representations and the
contextual particulars in which they appear.
346 Wolff-Michael Roth

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The research for this article was funded by a grant from the Social Sciences and
Humanities Research Council of Canada. Some of the analyses were developed while
working closely with colleagues, including, above all, David Middleton and Jin Yoon. My
gratitude goes to them for their interest in my work. G. Michael Bowen (Mount Saint Vincent
University, Halifax, Nova Scotia), my peer reviewer, provided incisive comments that
allowed me to improve on the penultimate version.

APPENDIX: TRANSCRIPTION CONVENTIONS

In this chapter, I draw on transcription conventions common to conversation analysis
enhanced by transcription features specific for researchers interested in marking prosody
(Selting et al., 1998). I added specific features for transcriptions that include video offprints.
The transcription is neither grammatical—see punctuation—nor consistent with spelling rules
but attempts to exhibit the sounds as produced.

Feature in context Explication

Time in hundreds of seconds
Pause less than 0.10 seconds
Double brackets surround transcriber comments.
Outbreath, each “h” corresponding to 0.1 seconds.
Colon indicates lengthening of phoneme, each colon
corresponding to 0.1 seconds.
Equal sign means “run-in” of the phonemes or “latching” of
different speakers, meaning no pause between phonemes.
Square brackets in consecutive turns indicate extent of
overlapping speech, features.

Punctuation marks indicate movement of pitch toward end of

utterance segment, down, strongly down, up, and strongly up,
respectively
Triangular brackets mark prosodic features, here “piano,” that
is, lower than normal intensity.
Feature in context Explication
“Pianissimo,” much lower than normal speech intensity, next
to inaudible intensity.
“Diminuendo,” decreasing speech intensity.
“Allegro,” fast.
Higher than normal pitch register.
The bracket marks the coincidence of an offprint (part thereof)
with the transcription of words.
↑↓` Arrows and diacritics indicate movement of pitch: upward and
downward jump, downward and upward contour of phonemes
that follow.
Capital letters indicate louder than normal speech.
 Limits to General Expertise 347

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Editor: Carla E. Wilhelm, pp. 349-374 © 2012 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 11

CONCEPTUAL COMBINATION:
MODELS, THEORIES, AND CONTROVERSIES

Bing Ran1 and P. Robert Duimering2

1
School of Public Affairs, Pennsylvania State University at Harrisburg
Middletown, PA, US
2
Department of Management Sciences, University of Waterloo,
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

ABSTRACT
This paper provides a comprehensive and critical review of the major theories and
models of conceptual combination, by highlighting agreements and controversies in the
literature, and identifying future directions for research. The review summarizes the basic
arguments of ten major models and then presents an analytical framework to compare
and contrast these models along four dimensions: (1) the causal role of schemata in the
model; (2) the role of cognitive harmony or consistency in the model; (3) the pragmatic
orientation in the model; and (4) the explanatory scope of the model. The review
identifies areas of agreement and disagreement among the various models and theories
and calls for a synthesis theory to address various theoretical weaknesses and empirical
gaps in the current explanations.

1. INTRODUCTION
Conceptual combination refers to the cognitive process by which people use two or more
concepts to construct a new conceptual entity that a single concept is insufficient to describe.
Researchers agree that the ability to combine concepts plays a fundamental role in diverse
cognitive processes such as learning, communication, language comprehension, the
composition of thoughts, and the expansion and structuring of knowledge.

1
Tel: +1 717 948 6057; Fax: +1 717 948 6320 Email: [email protected]
350 Bing Ran and P. Robert Duimering

In the last thirty years, there has been a very strong interest in the cognitive mechanisms
involved in combining concepts in cognitive psychology and related fields such as linguistics,
artificial intelligence, and philosophy. Many models and theories of conceptual combination
have been proposed, among which ten models are of particular significance: Fuzzy Set
Theory (Zadeh 1965, 1976, 1982; Osherson and Smith 1981, 1982); the Selective
Modification Model (Smith, Osherson 1984; Smith, Osherson, Rips and Keane, 1988);
Amalgam Theory (Thagard, 1984); the Concept Specialization Model (Cohen & Murphy,
1984; Murphy, 1988, 1990, 2002); the Composite Prototype Model (Hampton 1987, 1988,
1989, 1990, 1991); the Dual-Process Model (Wisniewski, 1997a, 1997b, 1999; Wisniewski &
Love, 1998), the Constraint Model (Costello & Keane, 2000, 2001), the Competition Among
Relations in Nominals (CARIN) Model (Gagné, 2000, 2001; Gagné & Shoben, 1997),
Coherence Theory (Thagard 1989; 1997), and the Interactive Property Attribution Model
(Estes and Glucksberg, 2000; Choi, Oh, Yi & Shin, 2007). This paper will critically review
these ten models by identifying areas of agreement and disagreement among them, and
various theoretical weaknesses and empirical gaps in the current explanations that might be
addressed by a future synthesis theory.
The paper is organized as follows. In the next section each of the ten models will be
briefly described and evaluated. Then an analytical framework will be proposed to summarize
agreements and controversies among the models. Questionable assumptions and issues in the
current theorizing will also be critically examined in the context of a discussion of future
directions for conceptual combination research.

2. CURRENT MODELS OF CONCEPTUAL COMBINATION

In this section, we will briefly summarize ten significance models of conceptual
combination. The ten models can be sorted into two groups. In the first group, each model
was proposed as a logical extension or modification of previous models: Fuzzy Set Theory,
Selective Modification Model, Concept Specialization Model, Dual-Process Model, and
Interactive Property Attribution Model. Our review will trace the development of these
models, focusing on how each addresses earlier theoretical weaknesses. In the second group,
the remaining five models each focus on particular aspects of the conceptual combination
process: Amalgam Theory, Coherence Theory, Composite Prototype Model, Constraint
Model, and CARIN Model. Our review will examine the specific aspects that are emphasized
by each model in this group.

2.1. Conceptual Combination as the Intersection of Fuzzy Sets

The earliest attempt to describe the phenomenon of conceptual combination was

conducted by mathematicians known as fuzzy set theorists. This attempt generated a
formalized explanation of how humans combine smaller conceptual units into more complex
ones (Osherson and Smith 1981, 1982; Zadeh 1965, 1976, 1982). The model is based on the
idea of referential semantics in which the meaning of a concept represented by a word equates
to the extensional set of things denoted by the word. For example, the meaning of the concept
 Conceptual Combination 351

bird refers to the set of all birds. When two concepts are combined, the resulting concept is
then the intersection of the two extensional sets. Thus, if X and Y are the extensional sets of
concepts x and y respectively, the conceptual combination xy is understood as the intersection
of the set X and the set Y, that is the set of things that are both X and Y. For example, the
meaning of pet fish is the intersection of pet and fish, i.e., the set of things that are both pet
and fish. More formally, in classic set theory, the conceptual combination XY is defined as
follows: (Let X, Y be sets) the intersection of X and Y (denoted X∩Y) is the set {z : z X,
z Y}. In fuzzy set theory, the intersection of two fuzzy sets A and B with respective
membership functions fA(x) and fB(x) is a fuzzy set C, whose membership function is related
to those of A and B by fC(x) = Min [fA(x), fB(x)], x X. (Zadeh 1965).
As a formal logic model of conceptual representation, fuzzy set theory provides a strong
tool to describe and analyze phenomena such as conceptual combination. The description is
clear, logical, and parsimonious. However, as a description of conceptual structure, fuzzy set
theory was strongly criticized by psychologists. The major criticisms could be summarized as
follows.
The first criticism relates to whether set theory is an appropriate theory of concept
representation. For example, the applicability of set theory in concept representation is
limited. Osherson and Smith pointed out that the extensional view of concepts “is best suited
to ‘kind’ notions (such as dog, tree and animal), to ‘artifact’ notions (like tool and clothing),
and to simple descriptive notions (like triangular and red) where the extensional sets are
easier to define. More difficult to describe are intentional or intricate concepts such as belief,
desire, and justice” (Osherson and Smith, 1981 p.38). The diversity of different kinds of
concepts imposes difficulties on how set theory formally describes their structure, and
whenever non-kind concepts are combined, the intersection of sets is difficult to describe or
formalize. Based on this observation, Murphy argued that “(i)t is very difficult to interpret
(set theory) as a psychological theory at all. Even if all pet fish fall into the intersection of
pets and fish, this does not tell us what people do with their concepts pet and fish in order to
create a new concept” (Murphy 1988, p.531). To be considered a psychological model, set
theory should provide an intensional explanation of how or why people combine concepts.
The second criticism relates to what are known as conjunction effects. Fuzzy set theory
will lead to a contradiction in its calculation whenever an object is more prototypical of a
conjunction set than of its constituent sets (Osherson and Smith, 1981). For example, it can be
shown empirically that a guppie is more prototypical of the conjunctive concept pet fish than
it is of either pet or fish. That is, Cpet fish (guppie) > Cpet (guppy) or Cfish (guppy). However, the
intersection of the fuzzy sets is defined as: ( x F) (Cpet fish (guppy)) = min (Cpet (guppy),
Cfish (guppy)) which implies: Cpet fish (guppy) < Cpet (guppy) or Cfish (guppy). In other words,
“it is possible, contrary to fuzzy-set theory, for the characteristicness of an instantiation of a
conjunctive concept to be greater than either of the characteristicnesses of its constituent
simple concepts” (Jones, 1982 p.284). This apparent contradiction suggests that set
intersection is insufficient to describe the conceptual combination process.
The third criticism relates to concepts that are not intersective. For example, Murphy
(1988) noted that set intersection does not account for the meaning of combinations like
apartment dog, which does not correspond to the intersection of the sets apartments and dogs.
Moreover, nonpredicating adjectives, when combined with nouns, do not produce meaningful
intersections. “The interpretation of atomic engineer as someone who runs equipment to make
352 Bing Ran and P. Robert Duimering

atomic energy is not the intersection of atomic things (whatever they are) and engineers. ….
the intersection of the two sets does not define the combined concept” (Murphy, 2002 p.445).
A final criticism is related to the symmetric property of set intersection which contradicts
our intuitive understanding of the meaning of many conceptual combinations. Set theory
presumes that noun-noun combinations are symmetric (i.e., true conjunctives), because X∩Y
is equal to Y∩X. However, our intuitive understanding of the combination XY usually has
very different meaning than its YX counterpart. For example, “a desk lamp is a kind of lamp,
but a lamp desk is a kind of desk” (Murphy, 2002 p.445).

2.2. Selective Modification Model

The weaknesses of using fuzzy set theory to explain conceptual combination led to an
alternative explanation: the selective modification model proposed by Smith, Osherson and
colleagues (Smith, Osherson 1984; Smith, Osherson, Rips and Keane, 1988). This model
consists of two arguments describing how concepts are mentally represented and how these
mental representations are combined. The model assumes that concepts are represented by
Attribute-value pairs. For example, apple may be represented by Color-red, Shape-round,
Taste-sweet etc. Each attribute is associated with a certain weight, or “diagnosticity,” which is
an empirically-determined numerical value that indicates “how useful the attribute is in
discriminating instances of the concept from instances of contrasting concepts” (Smith et al.
1988 p.487). Each value is also associated with a certain weight to indicate its relative
salience. For instance, red might be more salient than round in the apple concept, as
determined by “votes” for the value by experimental subjects. Despite different terminology,
attribute-value pairs essentially correspond to slots (or dimensions) and features in a
schematic concept representation (Rumelhart & Ortony, 1977; Rumelhart, 1980).
The model further proposes that the meaning of an adjective-noun combination results
from a process of “adjective modification” in which, the adjective modifies the noun: “Each
attribute in the adjective concept selects the corresponding attribute in the noun concept; then,
for each selected attribute in the noun, there is an increase in the salience (or votes) of the
value given in the adjective, as well as an increase in the diagnosticity of the attribute.
Consider shrivelled apple as an example. Presumably shrivelled contains attributes pertaining
to shape and texture; accordingly, it would select these attributes in the apple prototype, boost
their diagnosticities, and shift their votes away from round and smooth and toward irregular
and bumpy” (Smith, et al. 1988 p.492).
Selective modification is regarded as the first psychological model of conceptual
combination. The main contribution of this model is that it highlighted important aspects of
conceptual combination, including typicality effects (i.e., that the typicality of a combination
is not a simple function of the typicality of component concepts) and the conjunction effect
(i.e., when an item is well described by a conceptual combination, it is usually more typical of
that concept than of the two components). However, the model suffers from two major
drawbacks. First, the scope of the model is limited to only one kind of conceptual
combination, namely predicating adjective-noun phrases such as red apple or long vegetable.
The model does not explain other types of combinations such as nonpredicating adjective-
noun combinations like atomic engineer (Murphy, 2002) or noun-noun combinations like
telephone television.
 Conceptual Combination 353

Second, the process of conceptual combination described by this model is problematic.

As discussed by Murphy: “The main problem with this theory that later writers have criticized
is its assumptions about modification. Consider the way modification works for the concept
red apple. The adjective red finds its match in the schema: There is a feature with the same
name. That feature now gets all the votes, and its dimension gets a higher diagnosticity rating.
However, there are more complex cases that aren’t so easily accommodated. It has been
argued that sometimes, the exact feature would not be present in the concept already, and yet
people can figure out how to modify it. Indeed, there may not be an obvious dimension for
the modifier to affect. Furthermore, sometimes more than one dimension is altered. Thus, the
modification process itself has been argued to be much more complex than Smith et al. let
on” (Murphy, 2002 pp.449-450).

2.3. Concept Specialization Model

Murphy and Cohen proposed the concept specialization model to address weaknesses of
the selective modification model (Cohen & Murphy, 1984; Murphy, 1988, 1990, 2002).
Similar to the previous model, the concept specialization model assumes a schematic
representation of concepts where nouns are represented as schemata with slots (dimensions)
and fillers (values for each dimension). Based on this representation, “conceptual
combination is a process in which a head noun concept (is) specialized by one or more of its
slots being filled by the modifying concept” (Murphy, 2002 p.453). In this process,
“knowledge is involved in choosing the best-fitting slot” (Murphy, 2002 p.453). For example,
to understand the combination apartment dog, the modifier apartment is used to fill some slot
in the head concept dog. What dimension or slot of dog is picked by the modifier apartment?
Our background knowledge will guide us to choose the slot of dog that makes the most sense
with apartment as the filler. In this case, apartment is classified as a type of Habitat and so
fills the Habitat slot in the head concept dog. This provides the interpretation of “a dog that
lives in an apartment”. Beyond this slot-filling process, the model proposes that further
interpretation and elaboration occurs in which we use our background knowledge to expand
our initial interpretation. This process seeks to make an interpretation more coherent and
complete by retrieving information from our background world knowledge that is relevant to
the interpretation. For example, people might elaborate that an apartment dog is cleaner,
smaller and quieter than other dogs. This elaboration generates a rich conceptual combination
with emergent features that were not part of the original concepts.
As an extension of the selective modification model, concept specialization can account
for more complex combinations. As Murphy explained: “one way to relate these two models
is to think of the feature weighting model (selective modification model) as a simpler version
or subset of the specialization model. That is, the specialization model is very similar in the
way it deals with simple features, but it adds another layer of conceptual operations – the
elaboration based on world knowledge” (Murphy 1988 p.535). However, later researchers
noted two major issues in this model’s explanation.
First, the concept specialization model can account for limited types of interpretations
(Costello & Keane, 2000; Wisniewski & Gentner, 1991). The model can only account for
conceptual combinations where the head and modifier concepts are linked by some kind of
thematic relation, but ignores the possibility of property-based interpretation. Wisniewski &
354 Bing Ran and P. Robert Duimering

Markman (1993) used the example robin hawk to illustrate. Robin hawk could be interpreted
as “a hawk that preys on robins”, by filling the Preys slot in the schema representation of
hawk with the modifier name. The meaning generated this way explains the thematic relation
between hawk and robin. However, it does not allow for properties of the modifier to be
transferred into the head representation. This means that an interpretation such as “a hawk
with a red breast” cannot be explained by this model.
Second, the process of concept specialization is worth further scrutiny. The model
suggests that people attempt to place the modifier into the best fitting slot in the head noun’s
schema. However, beyond a metaphorical description, the mechanisms involved in
cognitively “filling a slot” are not specified in the model. Intuitively, it is not the whole
modifier concept that fills the slot in the head concept. For example, the meaning of
apartment dog does not result from the whole concept of apartment filling the Habitat slot of
dog, but only certain aspects of apartment. The concept of apartment has its own rich and
complex schematic structure, potentially including dimensions related to rent, size, storey,
apartment number, landlord, etc. None of these dimensions would be relevant to the Habitat
slot of the concept dog, but what happens to them in the slot filling process is not clear.

2.4. Dual-Process Model

Wisniewski (1997a, 1997b, 1998, 1999) proposed the dual-process model as a successor
to address some of the weaknesses in the concept specialization model and to account for a
wider range of empirical data. The model assumes that concepts are represented by a
schematic structure, and proposes three general types of conceptual combination: property-
based, relation-based, and hybrid interpretations. “Relation-linking interpretations involve a
relation between the referents of the modifier and head concepts. For example, people
sometimes interpret robin snake as ‘a snake that eats robins’. In property interpretations,
people assert that one or more properties of the modifier concept apply in some way to the
head concept, as in ‘snake with a red underbelly’, for robin snake. A third, less frequent type
of interpretation is hybridization. These interpretations refer to a combination of the
constituents (e.g., a robin canary is ‘a bird that is a cross between the two – half robin and
half canary’) or to a conjunction of the constituents (e.g., a musician painter could refer to
someone who is both a musician and a painter)” (Wisniewski 1997b. pp.168-169). The dual
process model proposes that these different interpretations arise from two different cognitive
processes: relational combinations result from integration (also known as scenario creation),
while property-based combinations result from comparison and construction (hybridization
may be considered as both).
In a process similar to Fillmore’s (1968, 1976, 1982) case and frame grammar, scenario
creation generates a relation-based interpretation, “…creating a plausible scenario involving
the constituents of the combination. … For example, a plausible interpretation of truck soap is
‘soap for cleaning a truck’, because truck can be bound to the recipient role of cleaning (i.e.,
the thing being cleaned), while soap to the instrument role (what is used to do the cleaning)”
(Wisniewski, 1997b. p.174).
Property-based interpretations start from comparing commonalities and differences
between the head and modifier concepts along comparable dimensions, and selecting a
property from the modifier to apply to the head. When multiple differences are found, several
 Conceptual Combination 355

factors regulate the choice of the best property to be transferred to the head concept, including
the communicative context, the salience of the property, cue and category validity, and
plausibility. After comparison, the selected property is used to construct a new version of that
property for the combined concept. “The new property must bear enough resemblance to its
source in the modifier so that people can determine how the modifier contributes to the
meaning of the combination… at the same time, the construction of the new property must
not alter the head noun concept in such a way that it destroys its integrity” (Wisniewski
1997b, p.176). For example, “in interpreting fork spoon, people could begin by aligning the
handle of fork with the handle of spoon, and the end of fork with the end of spoon and note an
important difference: forks have prongs on their ends but spoons have ‘little bowls’ on their
ends… the comparison process identifies where in the representation of spoon the property
‘has prong’ can be incorporated (on the end of spoon). However, there is a conflict between
mentally connecting this property to the end of spoon and staying within the referential scope
of spoon… People can resolve this conflict by mentally attaching the prongs to the end of the
little bowl and shortening them or by mentally attaching the prongs to the top of the spoon”
(Wisniewski, 1997b. pp.176 - 177).
The dual-process model extends the concept specialization model by providing an
explanation of different types of interpretations, by accounting for processes involved in
property-based conceptual combinations, and by synthesizing schema based theories of
conceptual combination into one model. However, critics of the dual-process model have
argued that it lacks a detailed explanation of the underlying cognitive mechanisms involved.
For example, Costello and Keane (2006) noted that “the elaboration or construction process
… is clearly a very complex process that is, as yet, unspecified” (p.334). Similarly, Murphy
(2002) pointed out that “what is not yet known is the online process by which one of these
interpretations is constructed / selected. …. The feature-mapping process involves comparing
the two concepts, identifying a feature of the modifier that could be plausibly transferred over
to the head noun, and carrying out that transfer. The slot-filling process involves seeing
whether there is a relation available in the head noun that the entire modifier could fill, and
then constructing that relation. Furthermore, both of these are complicated by the possibility
of construal (e.g., interpreting skunk as referring to a bad smell), which allows many more
ways of possibly relating the concepts. How all these alternatives are considered (or if they
aren't, how they are ruled out) is at this point not clear” (pp.458 - 459).

2.5. Interactive Property Attribution Model

The interactive property attribution model was proposed by Estes and Glucksberg (2000)
as an extension of Wisniewski’s dual process model. Specifically, this model provides an
explanation of property-based interpretation by suggesting that it is not similarity between
component concepts, but feature interactions between the head and modifier, that guide
property-based interpretations. By assuming a schematic representation of component
concepts, the model proposes that “the modifier and the head play different, but equally
important, roles: The head provides relevant dimensions, whereas the modifier provides
candidate properties for attribution. For example, in the combination shark lawyer, the head
concept lawyer provides relevant dimensions for attribution (e.g., TEMPERAMENT,
COMPETENCE, COST, etc.), and the modifier shark provides salient candidate properties
356 Bing Ran and P. Robert Duimering

(e.g., “predatory,” “aggressive,” and “vicious”) that can be attributed. …(I)n the interactive
property attribution model …, instead of exhaustively aligning the dimensions and comparing
the features of the two concepts, people align the relevant dimensions of the head with salient
properties of the modifier” (Estes and Glucksberg 2000, pp. 29 - 30).
The interactive property attribution model made two important extensions beyond
previous models. First, it proposes that the head and modifier do not need to exhaust their
complete list of dimensions for comparison and alignment as suggested by dual-process
model; instead, only certain dimensions of the head concept are activated which are relevant
to salient properties of the modifier. The second extension is the observation that relevance
and salience of dimensions and features are context-dependent, rather than context-
independent as assumed by most previous models. That is to say, “a salient feature of a
modifier may increase or even introduce the relevance of a dimension in the head concept,
and vice versa. For instance, NUMBER OF LEGS is not a particularly relevant dimension of
table, since almost all tables have four legs. However, that dimension becomes relevant in the
combination octopus table, when interpreted as a table with eight legs” (Estes and Glucksberg
2000, pp. 30).
The preceding five models of conceptual combination have been reviewed
chronologically according to their first appearance in the literature, because each can be
regarded as an extension or replacement of previous models, which addresses prior
limitations and offers increasing explanatory power. The remaining five models to be
reviewed were proposed over a similar time-frame, and emphasized particular aspects of the
conceptual combination process, but were not proposed as explicit extensions of previous
models.

2.6. Amalgam Theory

Thagard (1984) proposed a theory of conceptual combination within the context of

philosophical investigations on the phenomenon of scientific concept development. It is “a
theory of how new concepts can arise, not by abstraction from experience or by definition,
but by conceptual combination. Such combination produces a new concept as a non-linear,
non-definitional amalgam of existing concepts” (Thagard, 1984 p.3). The basic claim of
amalgam theory is that “conceptual combination requires mechanisms for reconciling the
conflicting expectations contained in the candidate concepts” (Thagard, 1984 p.4).
Using formalized language, this theory assumes a schematic representation of concepts
(the paper adopted the term “frame” from Minsky 1975) with slots and values (i.e., each
concept has slots Ci with values Ci,1 ... Ci,n), and proposes that a new concept C3 is formed
from initial concepts C1 and C2 by selecting from C1,j and C2,k, a subset of slots C3,m for
combined concept C3. Thagard proposed six procedural rules to regulate the process of slots
and value selection. For example, “a concept concerning a kind of physical object which has a
value for size is also likely to have a value for weight. Conceptual combination should
preserve such linkages” (p.7). Other rules propose that if a slot is chosen by conceptual
combination, the value of the slot will depend on the adjectival concept, the variability of the
concept, specific examples of the combination, or the representativeness of given instances of
the combination. Specifically, the theory proposed that when we try to reconcile conflicting
slots, we tend to favor those that contribute to desired problem solutions. For example,
 Conceptual Combination 357

“suppose that in forming the combined concept of a Canadian violinist you notice that your
friend the Canadian violinist prefers hamburgers to classical French cuisine. In order to
explain this preference, you may add the default expectation about Canadians to your frame
for Canadian violinist, overruling the expectation derived from the frame for violinists”
(Thagard, 1984 p.9). To reconcile the conflicting preference of food by Canadian violinist,
we favor the connotation that “Canadians usually prefer hamburgers” to resolve the conflict
that was brought in by Canadian and violinist (who supposedly prefer classical French
cuisine).
Amalgam theory was the first model to suggest that conceptual combination is a kind of
problem solving process of reconciling conflicting expectations contained in the candidate
concepts. This general line of thinking is consistent with Thagard’s (1997) later theorizing of
coherence on this problem (to be discussed below). The six procedural rules specify how
features of the candidate concepts and empirically observed instances are reconciled into a
non-conflicting set for the new, combined concept. However, how these rules might be
implemented cognitively is not specified by the theory. Further, the theory emphasizes the
importance of specific examples in resolving the conflicting expectations contained in our
component concept schema. For example, four of the six rules are example-driven
procedures, in which empirical observations influence the meaning of a combination.
However, some conceptual combinations do not have ready-made examples, especially novel
combinations such as triangular basketball or tasty computer. How conflicting expectations
are reconciled for such novel combinations needs more theoretical exploration.

2.7. Composite Prototype Model

Hampton proposed the composite prototype model (Hampton 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990,
1991) at about the same time as Murphy proposed the concept specialization model. The
model assumes that concepts are represented schematically as sets of attributes connected by
theory-driven relations. For example, we might know that birds have wings and can fly
(attributes) and that having wings is an enabling condition for flight. Attributes are assumed
to have a quantitative “degree of definingness” called Importance2. “At the top end of the
scale of attribute importance there may be some attributes which are so important as to be
necessary for category membership. For example HAS GILLS may be treated as a necessary
attribute of FISH” (Hampton 1991 p.106).
Based on these assumptions, Hampton proposed that “a conjunctive concept is then
represented semantically by a composite prototype… which is formed as the union of the sets
of attributes from both ‘parent’ (constituent) concepts. Thus initially the concept PET FISH
will have all the attributes of both PET and FISH prototypes” (p.107). The combined set of
attributes is then modified based on a necessity constraint, which specifies that a necessary
attribute of one constituent concept will also be a necessary attribute for the conjunctive. For
example, if has gills is necessary for fish, then it will also be necessary for pet fish. For non-
necessary attributes, their importance is determined as a monotonic positive function of

2
The notion of importance has been proposed as definingness (Smith, Shoben, and Rips, 1974), cue validity
(Murphy, 1982), diagnosticity (Smith & Osherson 1984) or centrality (Barsalou & Billman, 1989). It reflects
the relative likelihood of an item belonging to a category given that it does or does not have the particular
attribute.
358 Bing Ran and P. Robert Duimering

importance for each constituent concept and attributes with low average importance will be
dropped from the conjunctive set.
After forming the set of attributes for a conceptual combination, a consistency checking
procedure is applied, and “(w)here there are incompatible attributes, a choice has to be made
to delete certain attributes” (p.107). The consistency constraint incorporates several rules.
When a non-necessary attribute of a constituent concept has a conflict with the necessary
attribute of the other constituent concept, it will not be used by the conjunctive. “For
example, if PETS typically breathe air, but this is inconsistent with living underwater, which
itself is necessary for the concept FISH, then breathing air will not be possible for PET FISH”
(p.108). When the conflict is between two necessary attributes of two constituents, then the
conjunction is an empty set - a “logical impossibility” (p.108). “When the conflict involves
two non-necessary attributes, then the choice of which to delete will depend on their relative
importance, on the overall consistency that can be achieved with respect to the other inherited
attributes, and on the context in which the phrase is being used” (p.108).
The composite prototype model contributes by proposing the necessity and consistency
constraints, which exhibit a strong pragmatic orientation. This model is applicable to both
novel and mundane combinations. As Hampton (1991) explained, “the proposed model could
be applied to the conjunction of well-defined concepts with a core of common element
defining features, with the desired results. The necessity constraint would ensure that all
defining features of each concept remain critical for the conjunctive concept, and the
consistency constraint would ensure the correct identification of nonoverlapping sets. Well-
defined concepts would therefore require no different treatment in the model” (p.108).
It is notable that this model bears some similarity to fuzzy set theory, in that the union of
the attribute sets of constituent concepts corresponds closely with the intersection of the
extensional sets denoted by each constituent concept. Hampton’s model can, therefore, be
viewed as a kind of extension of fuzzy set theory by suggesting cognitive processes involved
in the intersection of extensional sets. It also bears similarity to Wisniewski’s hybridization
interpretation whereby the meaning of a conceptual combination is taken to be a hybrid of the
constituent concepts.

2.8. Constraint Model

The constraint model was proposed by artificial intelligence scholars Costello and Keane
(1997a, 1997b, 1998, 2000, 2001). This model focuses on the efficiency of the conceptual
combination process based on pragmatic principles, which have been implemented as a
computational model called C3. The following will focus on the theoretical model and ignore
technical details associated with its computational implementation.
Similar to other models, the constraint model assumes that concepts are represented in a
schematic structure. When people understand a novel combination, they construct a combined
concept to represent that combination. In the process of combining, people assume that
everyone involved in the communication follows the cooperative principle as theorized by
Grice (1975). “Three constraints … follow from this assumption. By following these
constraints the listener can construct the correct concept as intended by the speaker” (Costello
2004). The first constraint is called plausibility. Because it is assumed that everyone in the
communication is cooperating, the intended combined concept should be something the
 Conceptual Combination 359

listener already somewhat knows. Thus the listener assumes that the new combined concept
must describe something plausible which is similar to things the listener has seen before. The
second constraint is called diagnosticity. Because the speaker is assumed to be cooperating,
the intended combined concept is one best identified by the two words in the phrase
(otherwise the speaker would have selected other words). Thus the listener knows that the
new combined concept must contain some properties which are best identified by (that is, are
diagnostic of) each word in the phrase. The third constraint is called informativeness. Because
the speaker is cooperating, the intended combination is one for which both words in the
phrase are necessary (otherwise the speaker would have used fewer words). Thus the new
combined concept must be more informative than either of the constituent words. Costello
illustrated his idea with the example of shovel bird understood as “a bird that has a flat, wide
beak like a shovel, for digging worms” (2004). In this case, the listener constructs an
understanding with the diagnostic properties of shovel (flat, wide, and used for digging) that
is something plausible (bird digging worms) and informative (flat, wide beak).
The constraint model contributes by emphasizing pragmatic principles and addressing the
possibility of multiple interpretations for novel combinations and how different
interpretations are selected. For this reason Costello (2004) describes the model as a
pragmatics of conceptual combination. Theoretically, however, it is notable that Grice
discussed cooperation in communication in relation to four cooperative principles (quality,
quantity, relevance, and manner), to explain how listeners could arrive at a speaker’s meaning
and why speakers could mean more than they said. Grice argued that it is a violation of the
cooperative principles that produces extra meaning not contained in what is said. Although
the constraint model borrows the general idea of cooperation, the proposed plausibility,
diagnosticity, and informativeness constraints do not correspond directly to Grice’s four
cooperative principles. Thus, whereas many communicative and pragmatic constraints may
influence human cognition, why these particular three are emphasized by Costello & Keane is
not clear.

2.9. Coherence Theory

Thagard (1997) proposed a coherence theory of conceptual combination following the

basic line of thinking in his 1984 paper that conceptual combination involves solving a
problem by reconciling conflicting expectations contained in the candidate concepts. The
basic argument of coherence theory is that elements in a conceptual system (concepts,
propositions, parts of images, goals, actions etc.) can cohere (i.e., fit together) or incohere
(i.e., resist fitting together; Thagard, 1989, 1997, 1998). If two elements cohere, there is a
positive constraint between them. Otherwise, there is a negative constraint between them. “A
positive constraint between two elements can be satisfied either by accepting both of the
elements or by rejecting both of the elements. A negative constraint between two elements
can be satisfied only by accepting one element and rejecting the other. The coherence
problem consists of dividing a set of elements into accepted and rejected sets in a way that
satisfies the most constraints” (Thagard & Verbeurgt 1998 pp.2-3). Conceptual combination
is therefore viewed as an “instance of coherence conceived of as maximization of constraint
satisfaction” which “requires us to apply some concepts to a situation and withhold other
concepts in such a way as to maximize the overall satisfaction of the constraints determined
360 Bing Ran and P. Robert Duimering

by the positive and negative associations between the concepts” (Thagard 1997). In practice,
Thagard models such problems by constructing a constraint network with elements of all
possible inferences of the head and modifier concepts. He then uses certain connectionist
algorithms to propagate association weights in a way that maximizes coherence by accepting
some elements and rejecting others. The output is “an interpretation of the relation between
the head and modifier, as well as a collection of inferences about the object denoted by the
head as characterized by the modifier. If the most coherent interpretation is nevertheless not
very coherent, then move to other mechanisms such as analogy and explanation that produce
incoherence-driven conceptual combinations” (Thagard 1997).
Thagard (1997) used racial stereotypes associated with the conceptual combination well-
dressed black to illustrate. He suggested that people confronted with this combination might
activate a network of associated concepts such as aggressive or poor ghetto inhabitant for
black; and businessman, not poor and not aggressive for well-dressed. The positive
constraints in this network include the associations that ghetto blacks are aggressive, while
negative constraints include the negative association that ghetto blacks tend not to be
businessmen. Apparently, this is not a coherent network. To understand the meaning of this
combination, we need to come up with the most coherent interpretation, which best satisfies
the constraints. A connectionist algorithm is used to maximize coherence by rejecting
aggressiveness, resulting in the interpretation of well-dressed black as “a black businessman
who is not an aggressive ghetto black”.
Different from his earlier amalgam theory, Thagard’s coherence theory does not depend
on schematic concept representation and uses connectionist logic to achieve coherence rather
than a system of logical rules. Perhaps the most important contribution of this theory to the
field of conceptual combination is the explicit orientation toward coherence and consistency
in a cognitive network. The basic assumption is that a conceptual network tends to evolve
toward a more stable and harmonious state through “the maximal satisfaction of multiple
positive and negative constraints that is achieved by some parallel constraint satisfaction
algorithms” (Thagard & Verbeurgt 1998 p.1). As such, coherence theory exhibits a basic
assumption of goodness-of-fit or harmony as emphasized by Gestalt psychology. However, as
explained by Thagard (1997), the current coherence-driven constraint-satisfying model has
difficulties explaining non-predicting combinations such as apartment dog and incoherence-
driven novel combinations like web potato where meaning may be motivated not by
coherence but by the failure to find coherence. Finally, the connectionist algorithms used in
coherence theory are not a direct reflection of mental activity, but a simulated approximation
of the mind.

2.10. CARIN Model

The Competition Among Relations In Nominals (CARIN) theory (Gagné, 2000, 2001;
Gagné & Shoben, 1997, 2002) provides a model of conceptual combination that uses our
prior experience of the kinds of thematic relations that words have in compounds to predict
what interpretations people will produce, and what compounds people will find easiest to
understand. In linguistics, thematic relations between two words in a compound have often
been examined by developing taxonomies of relations required for interpreting combinations
(Kay & Zimmer, 1976; Gleitman & Gleitman, 1970; Downing 1977; Levi, 1978). For
 Conceptual Combination 361

example, Levi (1978) identified 15 thematic relations (such as Cause, Has, Make, For, Is,
Use, About, etc.) to classify the meanings of many familiar compounds.
Unlike models which use a feature based schematic representation of concepts, the
CARIN model assumes a kind of schematic representation of the relations between concepts.
That is to say, it assumes a slot-type structure where slots are not features of the concept but
of the kinds of thematic relations it can have with other concepts. The internal feature
representation of concepts is largely irrelevant in this model, where the goal of conceptual
combination is to fit compounds into existing relational templates. Specifically, the model
argues that people possess distributional knowledge based on their experience of how often
particular relations are used with particular concepts, corresponding with variable relation
strengths for concepts. These relations “compete for the interpretation of the combined
concept and … the difficulty of interpretation is a function of the relative strength of the
selected relation. … Interpretations are easier if the required relation is of high strength than if
the thematic relation is of low strength. Other things being equal, it is easier to arrive at the
correct interpretation for mountain stream than it is for mountain magazine because the
Locative relation has a greater strength relation than does the About relation” (Gagné &
Shoben, 1997 p.81). Thus combinations involving typical thematic relations will be easier to
understand than those involving atypical relations.
The CARIN model proposes a linguistic taxonomy of 16 thematic relations between
component words, including Cause, Has, Make, For, Is, Use, Located, etc. By paying
attention to the kinds of thematic relations that words assume and adding weights to these
relations, the model predicts the priority between different thematic relations when
constructing an interpretation for a compound. The model differentiates between the roles of
the head and modifier concepts and, unlike other models which primarily emphasize the head
concept, CARIN places most emphasis on the modifier by suggesting that it selects a thematic
relation for the compound during the combination process. It is easy to conclude, however,
that the 16 relations proposed in the model are too abstract to capture the variety of
meaningful interpretations that can arise in conceptual combinations. For example, the
combinations birthday cake and bravery medal share the For relation between their
components. However, treating these as the same relation overlooks crucial differences
between the interpretations of For in these two combinations: a birthday cake is a cake used
for the purpose of celebrating birthday while a bravery medal is a medal rewarded because of
bravery. The relations denoted by simple words such as Make or For imply very complex
meanings corresponding to complex conceptual structures. Using this complex conceptual
structure to link two concepts will inevitably result in a rather vague interpretation. In general,
each of the 16 proposed relations is itself a category of diverse relational meanings, which
lacks the precision to account for particular interpretations of conceptual combinations.

3. AGREEMENTS AND CONTROVERSIES –

AN ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORK

The preceding review demonstrates that conceptual combination research has produced a
variety of theories with different emphases and terminology. As such it is impossible to
compare and contrast every aspect of the literature in this paper. However, we will use a
362 Bing Ran and P. Robert Duimering

relatively coherent analytical framework to summarize the major issues related to conceptual
combination and to provide a basis on which to compare and contrast the models and theories
in an integrative way. The framework consists of four dimensions reflecting major
characteristics of the various models: (1) the causal role of schemata in the model; (2) the role
of cognitive harmony or consistency in the model; (3) the pragmatic orientation of the model;
and (4) the explanatory scope of the model. In addition to using the framework to summarize
major characteristics of the models, we will also provide a critical analysis and challenge
some of the fundamental assumptions related to these four dimensions. Table 1 summarizes
major characteristics of the ten models in relation to our framework.

3.1. The Causal Role of Schemata

Perhaps the most prominent aspect of the conceptual combination literature is that most
models rely on schema theory in two ways. First, most models assume a schematic
representation of conceptual structure. Except for fuzzy set theory and coherence theory, all
of the current models assume a schematic representation of noun concepts as dimension-value
pairs. Although the CARIN model emphasizes thematic relations between the two constituent
concepts, if thematic relations are understood as a kind of dimension reflecting how concepts
connect with one another, then there is not too much difference between feature-based
schema models and thematic relation models. Second, schemata play a causal role in the
cognitive mechanisms proposed by many of the models, where conceptual combination is
understood in terms of certain cognitive operations that take place along dimensions in the
schema. For example, the selective modification, concept specialization, dual process,
CARIN, and interactive property attribution models all propose cognitive processes related to
the idea of slot-filling, where a modifier, or some aspect of a modifier, fills a slot in the head
concept schema. Schemata play a different causal role in the composite prototype model,
which proposed mechanisms of composing a schema to represent the conceptual combination
from the union of the prototypical attributes of both component concepts, based on necessity,
importance, and consistency constraints. Only the constraint model appears to assume a
schematic concept representation, which plays no obvious causal role in the operation of its
three proposed constraint mechanisms (plausibility, diagnosticity, and informativeness).
Despite their fundamental roles in current theories of conceptual combination, several
questions could be raised about the nature of schemata and the workings of associated
cognitive processes such as slot filling. The causal role of schemata in current theories of
conceptual combination is based on several problematic assumptions: 1. Schema represents
our fundamental conceptual structure, independent of communicative context; 2. Pre-existing
schema dimensions and values are necessary, sufficient, and exhaustive for cognitive
processing; 3. The weights associated with a schema’s dimensions and values are absolute
and will carry over to any cognitive processing task. There are issues related to each of these
assumptions.
The first assumption, that schema represents our fundamental conceptual structure, deals
with the nature of schema as either intrinsic to our cognition or retrospectively imposed.
Schema theory describes “how knowledge is represented and about how that representation
facilitates the use of the knowledge in particular ways” (Rumelhart 1980 p. 34). Schema
theory assumes a logical structure to organize knowledge in the human mind, in which
 Conceptual Combination 363

features are organized at a lower conceptual level relative to the super-ordinate dimensions.
This structure seems to match our intuitive experience: when we think about a concept, we
may feel that it is logically related to other concepts in a manner similar to the dimensions or
values proposed by schema theory. For example, we may know that apples are typically red
and that red is a color, so the concepts apple, red, and color have a logical relationship that
could be described by an apple schema consisting of a dimension/slot color with value red.
However, the fact that we understand these concepts as being logically related to one another
does not necessarily imply that our minds represent them in such an organized manner in
permanent memory. It is possible that our minds represent knowledge in less structured ways
and that logical structure is imposed after the fact, as part of online processes of thinking
about these concepts and the logical relations between them. Hierarchical concept taxonomies
serve situation-specific purposes or goals, suggesting that they may be created or activated
online in response to communicative context, rather than permanently stored in memory. Red
might be a subordinate concept within an apple schema if we are selecting fruit at the
supermarket, but apples might be subordinate to red if we are classifying objects based on
color, and red might be irrelevant to apple if we are thinking metaphorically about New York
City.
The second assumption that a schema’s pre-existing set of dimensions and values are
necessary, sufficient, and exhaustive for cognitive processing is quite problematic. The fact
that we can quite easily make sense of novel combinations counters such a view. For
example, the novel combination smart apple has the same structure as the more mundane red
apple, but it is hard to imagine that our schematic knowledge of apple would include an
intrinsic dimension/slot for intelligence with different values in smartness. How many
dimensions are needed to account for all of the possible knowledge that we have regarding a
concept and for all potential conceptual combinations? How would we know whether a
limited number of dimensions such as color, shape, texture, etc. would be capable of
representing our complete knowledge of the concept apple? What about social concepts such
as country and suicide, or abstract concepts like love and hate? How should we determine a
necessary, sufficient, and exhaustive set of slots/dimensions for these kinds of concepts?
Apparently, certain extra dimensions or associations must be activated and constructed online
in the process of conceptual combination, rather than being stored in memory independent of
context.
By the same token, many schema dimensions may be eliminated or filtered out in the
process of conceptual combination. It was observed earlier that the specific cognitive
mechanisms involved in filling a slot are not specified by any of the current models of
conceptual combination. The example of apartment dog was used to illustrate that the
modifier concept apartment is at least as complex in structure as the head concept dog,
including potential dimensions related to rent, size, storey, apartment number, landlord, etc.,
yet most of these are irrelevant to the meaning of this combination. Thus, if apartment fills a
habitat slot in dog, is it the entire complex modifier concept that fills the slot? Or is much of
this conceptual structure filtered out during the combination process, and if so, how does this
filtering process work? In general, most current models place primary emphasis on the
structure of the head noun schema and overlook both the potential complexity of the modifier
schema structure and theoretical difficulties associated with the slot filling process.
The third assumption, that the weights associated with dimensions and values in a schema
are absolute and will carry over to any cognitive processing task, deals with the way that the
364 Bing Ran and P. Robert Duimering

importance, saliency and diagnosticity of an attribute are evaluated in various models of

conceptual combination. In some of the models, the importance and diagnosticity of an
attribute are evaluated within the concept itself and treated as an absolute value. Thus, if
certain attributes are most central for category membership, they will be assigned a higher
weight which will be carried over to the combination. However, when combining concepts,
the importance of an attribute is not just related to individual concepts alone. The weight of
an attribute seems to vary in relation to the context in which the concept is used. In other
words, diagnostic and important features of a concept depend on the set of other concepts that
are salient at the time of use and should not be evaluated just within a single concept. For
example, when the meaning of the novel combination chocolate computer is understood as “a
chocolate shaped like a computer”, most of the attributes of computer are dropped regardless
of how important they might be for the individual concept, and the importance of the
dimension shape increases from a low weight to the much higher value for this combination.
Based on this analysis of assumptions underlying schema-based models, we would argue
that a schematic representation of conceptual structure is insufficient to account for the
complexity of conceptual combination. Pre-existing schema dimensions and values cannot
provide a necessary, sufficient, and exhaustive set of knowledge resources appropriate to the
required cognitive processing. A different model of how conceptual information is stored and
processed in the mind is needed to address the preceding limitations. In this respect,
Thagard’s coherence theory may suggest a potential alternative in that its proposed cognitive
mechanisms do not depend on a priori schematic conceptual structure. Instead of an overly
restrictive schematic representation, a connectionist framework requires only that networks of
associated concepts are activated online during cognitive processing.

3.2. The Role of Cognitive Harmony or Consistency

The second dimension of our analytical framework considers the role of cognitive
harmony or consistency in conceptual combination. When we combine two previously
unrelated concepts, there might be conflicting connotations, expectations, and attributes
contained in the component concepts that need to be reconciled before a coherent
understanding can be generated. For example, in the combination television cellphone, the
first concept television might bring in the attributes of large screen and a remote control,
which would conflict with attributes of the second concept cellphone such as small screen and
no remote control respectively. Three conceptual combination models (amalgam theory,
coherence theory, and composite prototype model) propose explicit consistency checking
mechanisms for combining concepts with conflicting expectations to generate a meaning that
is coherent, consistent and harmonious. Amalgam theory proposes six procedural mechanisms
by which features from candidate concepts and instances are reconciled into a non-conflicting
set for the new, combined concept. The composite prototype model proposes mechanisms that
focus on how necessary attributes of head and modifier influence the meaning of the
combined concept. Coherence theory proposes parallel weight propagation among elements
in a conceptual network to maximize coherence. Two other models (the concept
specialization and dual-process models) discuss the issue of consistency implicitly by
suggesting that world knowledge is used to construe or clean up conflicts in the combined
concepts.
 Conceptual Combination 365

Consistency is discussed intuitively without an explicit operationalization in most of

these models, but Hampton proposed a means of empirically estimating attribute coherence
scores as part of the composite prototype model. For example, “the PET and BIRD attributes
were set up as rows and columns of a two-way matrix, and … subjects … were instructed to
take each row attribute in turn and to rate it against each column attribute using a scale from
+2 meaning can occur together, to -2 meaning impossible to occur together ... For each
attribute, an average coherence score was calculated, based on the mean ratings given to the
attribute, averaged across subjects and across the attributes of the other concept” (Hampton,
1987, pp. 66). This is a useful contribution in that it provides a way to measure the degree of
consistency empirically, rather than relying on an intuitive notion of consistency, and in the
case of coherence theory could be used to validate connectionist simulation models.
Consistency and harmony issues are usually approached from the connectionism and
consistency perspectives in cognitive psychology. Connectionism began in the field of
artificial intelligence with the goal of understanding cognition by viewing the brain as a
network of interconnected neurons (Rumelhart et al. 1986). Connectionist models consist of
interconnected and distributed processing units that perform simple computations
concurrently transforming inputs into outputs to neighboring units. Thagard’s coherence
theory follows this connectionist tradition in terms of the basic assumptions of goodness-of-
fit or harmony. The idea of harmony in connectionist approaches is also very similar to what
has been historically called cognitive balance or consistency in the psychological literature.
Consistency theories began in 1940s and include a group of theories that were proposed in
attempts to “uncover the structural-dynamic characteristics of human cognition” (Simon &
Holyoak 2002, p.283) towards consistency. “These conceptions, symmetry, consonance,
balance, and simplicity, are, of course, implied in that idea with which Gestalt theory started
and which always was central to it, namely, the idea of a ‘good’ figure… this model implies a
number of different entities with certain properties and standing in certain relations, which
make up a constellation of factors tending toward a standard (consistent) state” (Heider, 1960
p.168).
The basic assumption of these theories is that inter-related cognitive elements tend to
form a stable structure, whereas inconsistent elements are associated with psychological
tension and a tendency towards reestablishing stability or harmony. Conceptual combination
could be understood as forming a stable structure of attributes associated with two component
concepts, such that conflicting attributes associated with each concept are reconciled.
Particularly in the case of novel combinations, perceived inconsistency among attributes may
be associated with tension and psychological forces to reorganize the cognitive elements into
a more balanced or harmonious state. For example, we might interpret elephant fish as “a fish
with a trunk,” but nonetheless experience some residual psychological imbalance or
discomfort in relation to this constructed meaning. The remaining imbalance comes from
perceived inconsistency between this constructed interpretation and a larger cognitive field
associated with our background knowledge of concepts associated with elephant and fish. In
this circumstance, it is likely that further cognitive effort beyond the initial interpretation will
be exerted to make the larger field harmonious. What cognitive mechanisms are involved in
reducing discomfort and making the system of attributes coherent and harmonious? How do
we empirically examine the state of harmony before and after a combination? How could the
tradition from consistency theories and connectionist models be carried over to the research
366 Bing Ran and P. Robert Duimering

of conceptual combinations so that we do not re-invent wheel when proposing explanations?

Future models of conceptual combination should address these sorts of questions.

3.3. The Pragmatic Orientation

The third dimension in our framework considers the pragmatic orientation of conceptual
combination models. Studying how people construct and understand a conceptual
combination is largely the study of how meaning is constructed and communicated in the
context of a two-word combination. There are two senses of meaning in this situation: the
semantic meaning and the pragmatic meaning. Semantic meaning refers to the literal meaning
or the informative intent of an expression, whereas pragmatic meaning refers to the implied
meaning or the communicative intent of the expression. A nice way to think about the
difference is that semantics considers “what X means”, while pragmatics considers “what a
speaker means by saying X”. Five of the models reviewed (amalgam theory, concept
specialization model, dual process model, constraints theory, and interactive property
attribution model) consider pragmatic aspects of the communicative context in their
explanation of conceptual combination, where communicators might cooperate to achieve
intended meaning, use context and general knowledge to contribute to the meaning of the
combination, or make sense of the combination in terms of judging the plausibility, intention,
goal, and appropriateness of the combined concepts. However, the degree of emphasis and the
focus on pragmatic principles varies greatly between the five models.
For example, amalgam theory proposed that there are three kinds of conceptual
combinations, pure, data-driven, and goal-directed, based on the degree that context is
involved. A context could consist of prospective instances of the new combined concepts, or
of a goal of solving a problem by reconciling the conflicting expectations contained in the
candidate concepts. The interactive property attribution model discusses only the linguistic
context of the combination, involving the collocation and pairing of words in the
combination, rather than a broader communicative context that might contribute to the
construction of a plausible and appropriate meaning. The concept specialization model does
not consider how context or communicative intent contribute to meaning, but relies heavily
on the concept of “background knowledge” to explain the plausibility and appropriateness of
the meaning of combinations. As a direct descendent of the concept specialization model, the
dual-process model has a stronger pragmatic orientation and discusses how context,
plausibility, informativeness, and definingness contribute to comparison processes and the
construction of combined meaning. Costello and Keane’s (2000) constraint model explicitly
proposed three pragmatic constraints that influence conceptual combination – diagnosticity,
plausibility and informativeness – and implemented them in a computational simulation.
However, the underlying cognitive mechanisms that might correspond to these constraints are
very vague. In computer simulations, for example, Costello and Keane operationalized the
informativeness constraint as the appearance of a new predicate that was not contained in the
prototype of the head concept but whether similar processes might operate in the mind is
unknown.
Constructing the meaning of a conceptual combination involves numerous factors, among
which the communicative context is undoubtedly one of the most important. Conceptual
combination is largely a problem of communication, where someone intends to communicate
 Conceptual Combination 367

a meaningful message to others with a certain context. Pragmatics provides useful tools to
help conceptualize this process. However, current models that include pragmatic
considerations generally lack detailed explanations of how pragmatic factors function
cognitively. For example, Murphy proposed that knowledge serves two functions in the
concept specialization model. “First, outside knowledge must often be consulted in order to
decide which slot is the appropriate one to specialize… the second reason for consulting
outside knowledge is to elaborate or clean up the concept in order to make it more coherent
and complete” (Murphy 1988 p.533). However, the nature of “outside knowledge” is not
clearly defined and is treated as a kind of black box in which the cognitive mechanisms that
guide its function are unknown. Similar observations could be made about variables such as
context, appropriateness, and relevance in various models. These pragmatic factors have face
validity, but the cognitive mechanisms underlying them are in need of more detailed
specification.
One reason such cognitive mechanisms may be difficult to specify is an apparent
assumption that pragmatic constructs such as context or knowledge require a different
representation and treatment than that used for conceptual meaning. Is it possible that we
could treat meaning, context, and knowledge in more or less the same way, using a common
representational scheme, so that whenever we discuss the meaning of a conceptual
combination, we naturally include aspects of context and knowledge in the discussion?
Ideally, future models of conceptual combination need to consider how pragmatic factors
could be integrated with conceptual meaning in a parsimonious fashion.

3.4. Explanatory Scope

The last dimension of our framework compares the theories of conceptual combination
based on the explanatory scope of each model, referring specifically to the following four
distinctions: novel vs. mundane combinations, true vs. spurious conjunctives, head vs.
modifier roles, and noun-noun vs. adjective-noun combinations. With respect to the first of
these distinctions, a mundane combination is the one that is commonly used in everyday
language, such as red apple, while a novel combination is the one that rarely if ever appears
in our daily language, such as elephant fish. It has been suggested that novel conceptual
combinations are a key source of creative thought, thus several of the models focus on the
cognitive processes of combining concepts in novel ways.
For the second distinction, a true conjunctive refers to a symmetric conceptual
combination of two component concepts (X and Y), such that the combined concept (XY or
YX) represents something that is a member of both category X and Y, regardless of
component sequence. On the other hand, if XY and YX have different meanings, they are
considered to be spurious conjunctives. For example, if pet fish has the same meaning as fish
pet it is a true conjunctive. Two models of conceptual combination explicitly focus on true
conjunctives. In fuzzy set theory the meaning of a combination is defined symmetrically as
set intersection (i.e., X∩Y = Y∩X). In the composite prototype model a particular syntactic
structure of “X that is also Y” is used in experiments to ensure that combinations reflected
true conjunctives (e.g., “machines that are also vehicles,” “furniture that is also a household
appliance,” etc.). Most of the other theories, however, assume that XY and YX have different
meanings and, therefore, focus their attention on spurious combinations.
368 Bing Ran and P. Robert Duimering

The third distinction relates to the different roles of head and modifier concepts in
contributing to the meaning of a combination. In the current literature, the head noun or head
concept (sometimes simply called head) refers to the central word or concept in the
combination (usually corresponding to the second word in the combination in the English
language). The modifier refers to the word or concept in the combination that changes some
aspect of the head (usually corresponding to the first word in the combination in English).
Five of the models explicitly discuss the role of head or modifier, but they differ with respect
to which concept is believed to contribute most to the combined meaning. The selective
modification, concept specialization, and dual process models propose that the head concept
dominates the meaning of the combination, while the CARIN model proposes that the
modifier dominates by selecting thematic relations for the combination. The interactive
property attribution model proposes that both head and modifier contribute equally to the
meaning of the combination.
The fourth distinction is between noun-noun and adjective-noun combinations. It is
interesting to note that grammatical terminology is often intermingled with cognitive
terminology in the current literature. When we define conceptual combination as a
combination of two (or more) concepts, we are discussing the cognitive structure of this
combination. However, cognitive structure cannot be explicitly discussed without reference to
the grammatical structure of words and their relations. Thus in all of the current models, a
combination of two concepts equates to a combination of two words. For example, the two-
word combination “elephant fish” refers to a combination of two concepts elephant and fish.
Because of this, researchers frequently use grammatical terms to refer to cognitive
combinations. Noun-noun combinations, such as “zebra bird,” refer to combinations of two
concepts represented by nouns in the English language. Adjective-noun combinations, such as
“red apple,” refer to combinations of one noun concept and one adjective concept that,
arguably, refers to a feature of the object denoted by the noun. The latter are sometimes sub-
categorized into predicating adjective-noun combinations (e.g., “beautiful story”) in which
the combination can be re-written into a semantically correct sentence (“story is beautiful”),
and non-predicating adjective-noun combinations (e.g., “atomic engineer”) in which the
combination cannot be re-written into a semantically correct sentence (i.e., the sentence
“engineer is atomic” is meaningless). Except for the selective modification model, most of the
current models are intended to explain noun-noun combinations and only a few are adequate
to explain adjective-noun combinations.
These four distinctions (novel vs. mundane combinations, true vs. spurious conjunctives,
head vs. modifier, and noun-noun vs. adjective-noun) are based on current terminology used
in the literature to characterize the explanatory scope of the ten models. However, it should be
noted that these distinctions themselves raise certain questions of concern in relation to
theorizing about the conceptual combination process.
First, the assumption of the existence of genuinely conjunctive concepts is questionable.
Zadeh (1982) assumes that conjunctive concepts are distinguishable from spurious
conjunctions and that fuzzy set intersection is applicable only to genuinely conjunctive
concepts. Psychologically, if we artificially define concepts strictly in terms of categorical
denotations, there may be genuine conjunctives representing something that is both in
category X and Y. Hampton (1988) used such a strategy in experiments by directly asking
subjects to think about conjunctives like “machines that are also vehicles.”
 Table 1. A summary of the ten models evaluated against the analytical framework

Schema Consistency Pragmatic Explanatory scope

orientation
schematic schema as reconciling context, intent, head - noun- adjective- mundane true vs.
representation causal conflicting plausibility, goal, modifier noun noun vs. novel spurious
factor expectation appropriateness con-
junctives
Interactive yes yes no somewhat yes yes no novel spurious
property
attribution
CARIN yes yes no no yes yes both spurious
Coherence no no yes no no yes yes both not
explicit
Constraint yes no no yes no yes no novel spurious
Dual process yes yes yes yes yes yes no novel spurious
Composite yes no yes no not yes no both true
prototype explicit
Concept yes yes somewhat somewhat yes yes yes both spurious
specialization
Amalgam yes yes yes yes no yes yes both both
Selective yes yes no no Yes no yes both spurious
modification
Fuzzy set no no no no no yes yes mundane true
370 Bing Ran and P. Robert Duimering

However, whenever we move to the linguistic level and use two words to denote a
conceptual combination (e.g., “apartment dog”), it could be argued that the vast majority of
empirically observed conceptual combinations, if not all, are really spurious conjunctives,
because our intuitive understanding of the meaning of combination XY is usually very
different from the meaning of YX. To repeat an earlier quote, “a desk lamp is a kind of lamp,
but a lamp desk is a kind of desk” (Murphy, 2002 p.445). In the communicative context,
syntactic constraints function by which one word sub-consciously functions as a logical
operator X (i.e., the modifier) while the other word functions as a denotation Y (i.e., the head)
such that X transforms Y into the denotation XY. Thus, when conceptual combinations are
interpreted within a natural linguistic context and not defined artificially, it seems that there
really are no genuine conjunctives and all combinations XY become so-called spurious
conjunctives.
Another questionable implicit assumption made by most of the current models is that
nouns represent concepts deserving of a rich schematic representation, while other parts-of-
speech do not represent concepts and do not need to be represented by a similar cognitive
structure. The earlier example of apartment dog showed that modifiers (apartment) are also
rich concepts but, compared to head concepts, modifiers are treated by most theories in much
simpler terms as mere slot fillers. In this example, the noun apartment acts as an adjective to
modify the meaning of dog. In general, it is clear that concepts exhibit a greater variety of
linguistic manifestations than just nouns, including adjectives, verbs, prepositions, adverbs,
etc., which deserve an equally rich representation of their conceptual structure. If the modifier
or non-noun component of a conceptual combination does more than just provide a value for
a slot of the head noun concept, what might be the appropriate schematic representation of the
modifier concept? How do the two schemata of the head and modifier concepts interact and
influence one another in the interpretation of a conceptual combination? Future models of
conceptual combination need to address these two questions.

CONCLUSION
Conceptual combination is a fundamental process of human cognition, in which people
use two or more concepts to articulate and comprehend more complex meanings than a single
concept can denote. Through conceptual combination we develop new ideas, communicate
with one another, learn and expand our knowledge. This paper contributes to the study of
conceptual combination by comprehensively and critically reviewing ten major models,
which have been proposed over the last thirty years by researchers in cognitive psychology,
linguistics, artificial intelligence, and philosophy. We have examined fuzzy set theory, the
selective modification model, amalgam theory, the concept specialization model, the
composite prototype model, the dual-process model, the constraint model, the CARIN model,
coherence theory, and the interactive property attribution model. We have summarized the
basic arguments of each model and critically examined their major issues and theoretical
limitations. In addition, we proposed an analytical framework to compare and contrast the ten
models along four dimensions: (1) the causal role of schemata in the model; (2) the role of
cognitive harmony or consistency in the model; (3) the pragmatic orientation in the model;
and (4) the explanatory scope of the model. We identified areas of agreement and
 Conceptual Combination 371

disagreement among the various models and theories. For example, all models assume a
communicative purpose for the combination and a correspondence between linguistic words
and psychological concepts. Most also agree that the component concepts (modifier or head)
play different roles in the conceptual combination process, and interact with one another to
generate a meaning in harmony with a person’s background knowledge. Different models
disagree substantially on the cognitive mechanisms involved, however, and emphasize
different aspects of the process.
Finally, we have offered suggestions for future research directed toward the development
of a synthesis model of the conceptual combination process. A suitable theory should address
the limitations and problematic assumptions of schema theory as a representation of
conceptual structure in online cognitive processing. It should accommodate the requirement
for cognitive consistency by specifying both the cognitive mechanisms involved in reducing
inconsistency and provide empirical methods for measuring the degree of consistency before
and after combination. Pragmatic considerations should be integrated with cognitive
considerations, such that background knowledge and aspects of the communicative and
linguistic context of conceptual combination can be represented consistently with how
concepts are represented. Lastly, a complete theory of conceptual combination must account
for the diversity of combinations observed empirically (including both novel and mundane),
accommodate the different roles of head and modify concepts in the combination process,
reflect the conceptual complexity of the full range of linguistic parts-of-speech beyond just
head nouns, and account for the interaction of complex head and modify concepts and their
relative contribution to meaning during the combination process.

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In: Encyclopedia of Cognitive Psychology (2 Volume Set) ISBN: 978-1-61324-546-0
Editor: Carla E. Wilhelm, pp. 375-403 © 2012 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 12

A TEST OF THE COGNITIVE THEORY OF OBSESSIONS:

STUDY OF INTERNAL STRUCTURE AND VALIDITY
OF THE OBSESSIVE BELIEFS QUESTIONNAIRE IN
ITALIAN INDIVIDUALS

Stella Dorz1 1,4, Caterina Novara1, Massimiliano Pastore2,

Ezio Sanavio1, Luigi Rocco Chiri3 and Claudio Sica3
1
Department of General Psychology, University of Padova, Italy
2
Department of Developmental and Social Psychology, University of Padova, Italy
3
Department of Psychology University of Firenze, Italy
4
Casa di Cura Parco dei Tigli, Private Clinic (Padova), Italy

ABSTRACT
Background: A widely-held belief is that obsessions arise from the misinterpretation
of normal intrusive thoughts (e.g., misinterpreting unwanted harm-related thoughts as a
sign that one is going to act on them). This leads the person to perform compulsions such
as repeated checking. Misinterpretations are said to arise from various types of beliefs
(e.g., the belief that thoughts inevitably give rise to actions). In support of this theory,
some studies have shown that such beliefs are correlated with obsessive-compulsive
disorder (OCD). The Obsessive Beliefs Questionnaire (OBQ) is an 87-item self-report
instrument developed by an international group (Obsessive Compulsive Cognitions
Working Group - OCCWG) to assess cognitions thought to be relevant to the etiology
and maintenance of obsessions and compulsions. The OBQ contains six scales measuring
as many dysfunctional beliefs: Inflated responsibility, Overimportance of thoughts.
Excessive concern about the importance of controlling one’s thoughts, Overestimation of
threat, Intolerance of uncertainty, and Perfectionism. To date, the OBQ has been mainly
studied in clinical and non-clinical individuals drawn from English-speaking populations.
Results showed that the questionnaire generally has a good internal consistency

1
Stella Dorz, Dipartimento di Psicologia Generale, University of Padua, via Venezia, 8, 35131 Padova, Italy (049-
8276600) or Casa di Cura Parco dei Tigli, via Monticello, 1, 35037 Teolo-Padova, Italy (fax. 049-9997549).
Email: [email protected]
376 Stella Dorz, Caterina Novara, Massimiliano Pastore et al.

(Cronbach alpha coefficients equal or above .80) and an adequate test-retest reliability.
However, three OBQ domains (Tolerance of uncertainty, Overestimation of threat and
Perfectionism) appeared to be OCD-relevant but not OCD-specific, since they did not
discriminate individuals with OCD from anxiety controls. In addition, correlations with
measures of OCD symptoms, mood and worry, showed that the OBQ was as highly
correlated with the non-OCD symptom measures (anxiety, depression and worry) as it
was with OCD ones. Lastly, an exploratory factor analysis revealed that a three-factor
solution best explained the internal structure of the questionnaire. In summary, such
results raise doubts about the cognitive theory of obsessions and compulsions even
though more studies are needed before the theory can be reformulated.
Aims and method: The present paper reports on the Italian validation of the OBQ: the
extent to which the psychometric properties of the OBQ (and, in particular, its internal
structure) are equivalent to the original one may reveal interesting clues about the
structure of beliefs and their relationships with OCD symptoms. The OBQ was
administered to 752 Italian undergraduate students along with the Padua Inventory (a
measure of OCD symptoms), the Beck Anxiety Inventory and the Beck Depression
Inventory.
Results: Exploratory factor analyses did not replicate the original six-factor structure
of the OBQ, nor the three-factor structure obtained by analyizing the original American
sample. A confirmatory factor analysis revelead that the Italian version of the OBQ was
best described by five factors and 46 items. In particular, the Italian version was
characterized by the absence of the intolerance of uncertainty and overestimation of
threat scales, and by the subdivision of the responsibility scale into the scales
responsibility for harm and responsibility for omission. Internal consistency and temporal
stability of the five scales of Italian version of the OBQ was satisfactorily;
intercorrelations among the five scales were moderately high. Results from convergent
and discriminant validity revealed that Perfectionism, Responsibility for harm and
Control thoughts resulted good predictors of OCD symptoms, whereas Responsibility of
omission and Importance of thoughts did not predict OCD symptoms at all in a regression
analysis model.
Findings were discussed in terms of relevance and specificity of cognitive constructs
to OCD symptoms.

INTRODUCTION
The cognitive model of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) has its origins in the
theories formulated by A.T. Beck (1976). In summary, they posit the existence of cognitive
structures, defined as schemas; various types of disfunctional schemas underlie different
psychopathologies. A schema is defined as a thought structure which has been learned over
time and which acts as a cognitive filter, directing attention and guiding the interpretation of
experiences and events. When such schemas become overly rigid or active, it can lead to
cognitive distorsions, that is, to the systematic interpretation of present, past and future
information according to certain faulty criteria, thereby producing emotional and cognitive
disorders. Disfunctional schemas reveal themselves in certain beliefs and automatic thoughts.
As previously mentioned, the cognitive theory hypothesizes a schema-disorder
correspondence, that is, the presence of certain specific schemas, and therefore typical beliefs,
for certain psychopathological disorders. To illustrate, mood disorders are associated with
beliefs regarding loss, failure and self-criticism (Beck, 1976: “I am worthless”); social phobia
is viewed as arising from dysfunctional schemas associated with rejection and ridicule by
 A Test of the Cognitive Theory of Obsessions 377

others (Beck, Emery e Greenberg, 1985: “being rejected is terrible”). Personality disorders, as
well, are linked to different beliefs: dependent personality disorder would be underpinned by
the conviction that “I can only feel good when there’s someone there to protect me”,
borderline personality disorder would stem from various beliefs concerning the self and the
outside world (“the world is a dangerous place”, “I cannot make it alone”, “the others cannot
help me”; Beck, Freeman and Emery, 1990). But, what about OCD?
The cognitive theory of OCD has as its starting point the well-established finding that
cognitive intrusions (i.e., thoughts, images, and impulses that intrude into consciousness) are
experienced by most people (e.g., Salkovskis & Harrison, 1984). An important task for any
theory is to explain why almost everyone experiences intrusions (at least at some point in
their lives), yet only some people experience intrusions in the form of obsessions (i.e.,
intrusions that are unwanted, distressing, and difficult to remove from consciousness).
Salkovskis argued that cognitive intrusions -- whether wanted or unwanted reflect the
person’s current concerns. The concerns are automatically triggered by internal or external
reminders. For example, intrusive thoughts of harm befalling others may be triggered by
encountering potentially dangerous objects (e.g., the sight of sharp kitchen knives).
Salkovskis proposed that intrusions develop into obsessions when intrusions are appraised as
posing a threat for which the individual is personally responsible. To illustrate, consider the
intrusive image of stabbing one’s child. Most people experiencing such an intrusion would
regard it as a meaningless cognitive event – mental flotsam – with no harm-related
implications. Such an intrusion would develop into an obsession only if the person were to
appraise it as having serious consequences for which he or she is personally responsible.
Likewise, compulsions are conceptualized as efforts to remove intrusions and to prevent any
perceived harmful consequences. In addition to beliefs about personal responsibility, several
other types of beliefs are thought to be important in producing obsessions and compulsions.

THE OBSESSIVE COMPULSIVE COGNITION WORKING GROUP

(OCCWG)
In 1995, as part of a symposium realized during the International Congress of Cognitive-
Behaioural Therapy (WCBCT, Denmark, July 1995), a group of academics, researchers and
experts in OCD started to discuss the following questions: (1) which cognitive domains are
central to OCD? (2) how can these domains be reliably measured? The discussion proved to
be promising, and was so worthwhile that it provoked and stimulated further, numerous
meetings.
The research group took on the name of OCCWG (Obsessive Compulsive Cognitions
Working Group) and the instrument which, in time, it would develop, took the name of the
Obsessive Beliefs Questionnaire (OBQ).
During the series of meetings that followed, the group identified, on the basis of clinical
and theoretical knowledge, the cognitive domains (or beliefs) thought to be central to OCD.
The idea was to develop an instrument capable of assessing these domains, to be used in both
clinical and research contexts.. Five beliefs were initially identified as being relevant and
centrally important:(1) inflated perception of responsibility, (2) thought-action fusion and
other beliefs relative to the excessive importance attributed to thoughts, (3) excessive
378 Stella Dorz, Caterina Novara, Massimiliano Pastore et al.

importance attributed to the necessity of controlling one’s own thoughts; (4) the
overestimation of the likelihood of negative events occuring; (5) intolerance of uncertainty. A
sixth domain, perfectionism, was subsequently added and was considered to be an important
part of, though not unique, to OCD. A brief description of such domains is (OCCWG, 1997):

1. Inflated perception of responsibility: defined as a belief according to which the

individual thinks she has the power to cause or prevent negative events. The
prevention of these events is perceived as essential and they may have consequences
both for the real world and at a moral level. Certain beliefs may concern the
responsibility for errors of commission, as well as omission.
2. Importance of thought processes: defined as the belief that the mere presence of a
thought can indicate that it is important. Other beliefs, such as those concerning
magic thoughts and the fusion of thoughts and actions are part of this domain.
3. Control of thoughts: this domain reflects the importance of exercising complete
control on ones own intrusive thoughts, impulses and mental images and the belief
that this is both possible and desirable. Four other subdomains were identified: (a)
the importance of monitoring one’s mental life; (b) the belief that there are moral
consequences if one’s thoughts are not controlled; (c) the belief that there are
psychological consequences when one fails to control one’s thoughts; (d) the belief
that efforts to control one’s own thoughts should be successful.
4. Overestimation of threat: defined as the esageration of the gravity of a possibly
harmful event.
5. Intolerance of uncertainty: characterized by three types of beliefs: (a) the belief that it
is necessary to be certain of decisions taken; (b) the belief that one has limited
capacities in the face of unforeseen changes; (c) the belief that ambiguous situations
are difficult to deal with.
6. Perfectionism: in relation to OCD, it was defined as the tendency to believe that there
is a perfect solution for every problem, that doing things perfectly is not only
possible but necessary and that even small problems can have serious consequences.

DEVELOPMENT OF THE OBSESSIVE BELIEFS QUESTIONNAIRE

(OBQ)
The Obsessive Beliefs Questionnaire is composed of 87 items, divided into six subscales,
which reflect the beliefs identified by the OCCWG (1997, 2001). The questionnaire
respondents are asked to indicate the degree to which they agere with each of the phrases
using a 7-point Likert scale which varies from 1 (not at all in agreement) to 7 (completely in
agreement). The scales are: (a) control of thoughts, 14 items; (b) importance of thoughts, 14
items; (c) responsibility, 16 items; (d) intolerance of uncertainty, 13 items; (e) overestimation
of threat, 14 items e (f) perfectionism, 16 items. The score for each scale is calulating by
summing each of the items.
The measure underwent a procedure of validation mainly using samples from the USA.
An initial study conducted by the group (OCCWG, 2003) on large clinical (248 patients with
OCD, 105 patients with anxiety disorders without OCD) and non-clinical samples (87 non-
 A Test of the Cognitive Theory of Obsessions 379

clinical adults and 291 university students) investigated internal consistency, test-retest
reliability and criterion, convergent and discriminant validity. While the analyses produced
optimal levels of internal consistency and temporal stability for all the scales (Cronbach’s
alpha values ranged from .87 for the control of thoughts scale to .93 for the perfectionism
scale; temporal stability, measured over an interval of two months, varied between .48 for the
control of thoughts scale and .83 for the perfectionism scale), results concerning indicators of
validity were not as satisfactory. The OCD group scored significantly more highly on all
scales as compared to the normal subjects, but when compared to the clinical non-OCD group
there were significant differences only on three of the six scales (responsibility, control of
thoughts, importance of thoughts). Convergent validity analyses resulted in moderate
correlations between the six scales of the OBQ and the other OCD symptom measures (with
the exception of the importance of thoughts scale); moreover, the correlations between the
OBQ scales and the measures of general distress (e.g. anxiety, depression, worry) were
approximately similar to those with the OCD symptom measures. Lastly, the intercorrelations
between the various dimensions of the OBQ were fairly high, indicating a degree of overlap
between the various constructs measured.
Other studies on samples in different countries confirmed doubts regarding the
psychometric properties of the OBQ. Sica and colleagues (2004) compared 43 Italian
individuals with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), 17 with generalized anxiety disorder
(GAD) and 50 non-clinical controls (SC), using the OBQ and various measures of obsessive-
compulsive symptoms, depression, anxiety and worry. Overall, three cognitive domains out
of six (intolerance of uncertainty, control of thoughts and perfectionism) discriminated OCD
from GAD and non-clinical controls, whereas overimportance of thoughts and inflated
responsibility barely discriminated clinically anxious individuals from non-clinical ones. An
additional domain, overestimation of threat, did not discriminate OCD from GAD. In
addition, in a study on French-speaking individuals, the six factor structure of the OBQ was
not replicated (Careau, O'Connor, Turgeon, & Freeston, 2003).
In general, therefore, the original OBQ scales, in addition to a notable degree of
intercorrelation in the original American studies, have not always proved to have
discriminative power. Furthermore, it was not clear if the internal structure of the instrument
reflected the theoretical premises upon which it had been built.
All these elements might effectively indicate an overlap between the cognitive domains
and their ill-defined differentitation and specificity. Further analysis and development of the
instrument were indispensable at that point. The OBQ, therefore, needed to be reassessed and
revised, reducing the pool of items and redefining the structure an their underlying constructs
(OCCWG, 2005).
A factor analytic model was used to investigate the factorial structure of the OBQ. A total
of 410 American outpatients diagnosed with OCD completed the OBQ and a battery of
questionnaires assessing OCD, depressive and anxiety symptoms. For comparisons, the
answers from the same non-OCD samples of the 2003 study (105 non-obsessional anxious
patients, 87 non-clinical adults from community and 291 undergraduate students) were
utlized.
The exploratory factor analysis provided evidence of a three-factor structure (which
explained 42% of the variance). The first scale, made up of 8 items from the threat estimation
scale and 8 from the responsibility scale, was defined as the Responsibility/Threat Estimation
scale (16 items). It is concerned with the necessity of preventing negative consequences for
380 Stella Dorz, Caterina Novara, Massimiliano Pastore et al.

oneself or others, the responsibility for and consequences of inactivity (e.g. “negative events
are less likely to occur if I’m careful”, “I think that not preventing danger is as bad as causing
it”). The second scale, called Perfectionism/Certainty (16 items) is made up of 12 items of the
perfectionism scale and 4 items from the intolerance of uncertainty scale. It measures the
presence of a high degree of rigidity, reflection on errors and feelings of uncertainty. (e.g. “I
don’t think things are ok unless they’re perfect”, “I must be absolutely certain of each of my
decisions”). Lastly, the third scale is defined as Importance/Control of thoughts and includes
9 items from the importance of thoughts scale and 3 from the control of thoughts scale,
resulting in a total of 12 items. The items concern the consequences of experiencing
unacceptable and intrusive thoughts or mental images, the fusion of thoughts and actions, and
the necessity to control each thought. (e.g. “having negative thoughts means that I’m not
normal”).
The final version is therefore composed of 44 items (named OBQ-44) subdivided into 3
scales. Such version had very good levels of internal consistency (respectively =.93, .93 and
.89). Comparing the various groups, OCD individuals obtained scores significantly higher
than non-OCD individuals on the Responsibility/Estimation of Danger scale and on the
Importance/Control of thoughts scale, but not on the Perfectionism/Certainty scale. In all the
comparisons, OCD and non-OCD patients obtained scores significantly higher than normal
groups. Overall, results indicated a superior convergent and discriminant validity in
comparison with the 87-item version. Lastly, regression analyses have shown that this version
of the OBQ is predictive of OCD symptoms even after measures of general distress
(depression and anxiety) have been controlled for (OCCWG, 2005).

Aims of the Current Study

A key element of any psychological measure is content validity (an important component
of construct validity) because it provides evidence about the degree to which the elements of
the assessment instrument are relevant to, and representative of, the targeted construct(s)
(Haynes, Richard and Kubany, 1995). However, domains and facets of many constructs
change over time and across contexts; in other words, the relevance and representativeness of
the elements of a self-report measure are unstable and conditional in nature (De Vellis, 1991;
Ebel and Frisbie, 1991). As a consequence, validity should be established when the
instrument is used with cultural groups on which it has not been standardized. Without
evidence of translation and psychometric adequacy, and appropriate normative data, the use
of assessment instruments with different cultural groups remains problematic (Kinzie and
Manson, 1987). Furthermore, studies on different cultural groups may help to refine the
theoretical constructs themselves.
The present study has therefore two main aims: a) investigating the psychometric
characteristics of the OBQ. Since the instrument was developed in the USA, it requires an in-
depth analysis to demonstrate its reliability and validity with an Italian population. In fact, as
we will see, our study shows that the Italian version of the OBQ cannot be considered
equivalent to the original one; b) stressing the limits of cognitive constructs thought to be
related to OCD, limits already emerged in the original studies of the OBQ.
In this way we hope to contribute to the advancement of our knowledge about the
cognitive components of OCD.
 A Test of the Cognitive Theory of Obsessions 381

Since a previous Italian study has already ascertained the psychometric characteristics of
the OBQ in clinical patients (Sica et al., 2004), we elected to enroll a large sample of non-
clinical individuals in order to study the internal structure of the questionnaire through factor
analytic strategies. Indeed, it is almost impossible to find in Italy clinical samples of the
required size, given the low prevalence of the OCD in the general population (about 1-2%).
Moreover, a plethora of research has shown that non-clinical subjects experience OCD
phenomena, albeit with less intensity and distress compared to clinical subjects (e.g., Burns,
Formea, Keortge, & Sternberger, 1995; Salkovskis & Harrison, 1984; Sterneberger & Burns,
1990). Hence, there is widespread use of non-clinical samples in the investigation of OCD
(for a critical review, see Gibbs, 1996).

METHOD
Participants and Procedure

The data used in this validation study come from two research phases, the first occurred
between June and September 2002, with the recruitment of a total of 412 subjects from the
student population (the psychology and engineering faculties, University of Padova, Northern
Italy). In accordance with the most recent methodological procedures - which suggest the
exclusion of participants with psyhopathological characteristics from non-clinical samples -
37 subjects were excluded on the basis of their scores on the Padua Inventory (a widely used
measure of OCD symptoms).
A further 11 subjects, who did not complete all items of the OBQ, were also excluded.
The final sample was therefore composed of 364 subjects (44% females), with a mean age of
21.2 (SD=2.4) and 14.1 years of education (SD=2.1). The second phase of data collection
involved 388 subjects (psychology faculty, University of Padova) who completed the
questionnaire battery between March and June 2005. Two subjects who had not completed all
of the items were excluded from the sample. The final sample was therefore made up of 386
subjects (82.1% females), mean age =20.2 (SD=2.8), years of schooling=13.9 (SD=0.8).
Two comparisons were conducted which verified the overlap between the variables of
age (21.2 vs 20.2, F(1,750)=1.5, NS) and years of school (14.1 vs 13.9, F(1,744)=1.3, NS)
between the two samples. There was a higher percentage of female students in the second
sample as compared with the first (44% vs 82.1%). The final sample was composed of 752
subjects (63.4% females), with a mean age of 20.7 (SD=2.6; range 18-43), with 13.9 years of
schooling, and mostly not married (n=735, 97.7%).
Eligible participants were requested to complete a battery of self-report measures.
Administration of measures was undertaken in groups and the sequence of measures was
rotated in order to control for order effects. A psychologist was always available to respond to
requests for clarification. All individuals participated on a voluntary basis and gave their
written consent before taking part.
382 Stella Dorz, Caterina Novara, Massimiliano Pastore et al.

MEASURES
Translation of the OBQ

The Italian version of the Obsessive Beliefs Questionnaire was developed by the Italian
group through the following steps:

(1) three independent translations of the original questionnaire (87 items) by three
members of the group
(2) comparison of the three translations and discussion of the points of disagreement in
order to decide on a single version,
(3) back-translation completed by a native speaker of English,
(4) comparison of the original English version and the back-translation in order to
identify any incongruencies or differences in meaning,
(5) adaptations and modifications of form in order to facilitate the comprehension and
reading of the text,
(6) pilot administration on small groups taken from the non-clinical population in order
to verify comprehensibility and legibility, (7) further modifications and final
improvements.

Other Measures of Psychopathology

The Padua Inventory (PI; Sanavio, 1988) is a 60-item self-report instrument developed in
Italy, assessing OCD symptoms using a total scale and four subscales: Impaired Mental
Control, Contamination, Checking, Urges and Worries. In the original study (Sanavio, 1988),
using an Italian normative sample of 828 subjects of varying ages, the total scale
demonstrated very good internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha = .94); Cronbach’s alpha
coefficients ranged from .70 to .90 for the four subscales. A 4-week retest reliability
coefficient for the total scale was calculated for males (.84) and for the female sample (.86).
The Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI; Beck, Epstein, Brown & Steer, 1988) is a 21-item self-
report inventory that measures the severity of anxiety, focusing predominantly on
physiological aspects of anxiety. Beck et al. (1988) reported excellent internal consistency
(Cronbach’s alpha = .92) and a 1-week retest reliability coefficient of .75. The Italian version
of the BAI was administered to 654 undergraduates, 831 community controls and 64 anxious
patients.
The findings indicated good internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha = .89) and a 30-day
retest reliability of .62, as well as good convergent, divergent, and criterion validity (Sica &
Ghisi, 2007). The Beck Depression Inventory (BDI; Beck & Steer, 1987). It is a widely used
21-item self-report inventory that measures the presence and severity of depression. The
Italian version of the BDI was administered to 900 Italian adults (Centomo & Sanavio, 1992).
The findings indicated good internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha = .82) and a 30-day retest
reliability of .74.
 A Test of the Cognitive Theory of Obsessions 383

RESULTS
Three-Factor Solution

Given that the final version of the OBQ seems to have a three-factor internal structure,
(OCCWG, 2005) we wanted to verify the suitability of this model for use with the Italian
population.
A maximum likelihood factor analysis with varimax rotation (three factors) was
performed. The Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin index was 94.2. The three-factor solution explained
31.5% of the variation. The eigenvalues for the three factors are: 20.1, 3.7 and 3.5. Table 1
reports the factorial loadings of the items.

Table 1. Factor Loading of the Obq Items (Three Factors Solution)

Item n° ITEM scale I II III

86 If I don’t control my thoughts, I’ll be punished C .63
75 Being unable to control unwanted thoughts will make me C .62
physically ill
15 I can have no peace of mind as long as I have intrusive thoughts C .57
54 To avoid disasters, I need to control all the thoughts or images C .56
that pop into my mind
69 Having intrusive thoughts means I’m out of control C .54
72 Harmful events will happen unless I am very careful TE .54 .30
76 Having violent thoughts means I will lose control and become IP .52
violent
18 The more I think of something horrible, the greater the risk it will IP .52
come true
64 Having bad thoughts means I am weird or abnormal IP .51
14 The more distressing my thoughts are, the greater the risk that IP .51
they will come true
5 If I don’t control my unwanted thoughts, something bad is bound C .50
to happen
61 I am more likely than other people to accidentally cause harm to TE .49 .34
myself or to others
77 To me, failing to prevent a disaster is as bad as causing it R .48
29 I must be ready to regain control of my thinking whenever an C .47 .36
intrusive thought or image occurs
50 If I do not take extra precautions, I am more likely than others to TE .47
have or cause a serious disaster
59 I should be able to rid my mind of unwanted thoughts C .47
12 I would be a better person if I gained more control over my C .46
thoughts
46 Having nasty thoughts means I am a terrible person IP .46
41 For me, not preventing harm is as bad as causing harm R .44
38 In all kinds of daily situations, failing to prevent harm is just as R .43
bad as deliberately causing harm
58 Having a blasphemous thought is as sinful as committing a IP .43
sacrilegious act
17 I must know what is going on in my mind at all times so I can C .42 .32
control my thoughts
49 Thinking about a good thing happening can prevent it from IP .41
happening
384 Stella Dorz, Caterina Novara, Massimiliano Pastore et al.

Table 1. (Continued)

Item n° ITEM scale I II III

79 Even ordinary experiences in my life are full of risk TE .41
23 Even if harm is very unlikely, I should try to prevent it at any R .41 .39
cost
82 When anything goes wrong in my life, it is likely to have terrible TE .41 .31
effects
16 Things that are minor annoyances for most people seem like TE .40 .32
disasters for me
24 For me, having bad urges is as bad as actually carrying them out IP .38
37 If I have an intrusive thought while I’m doing something, what C .37
I’m doing will be ruined
68 Even when I am careful, I often think that bad things will happen TE .37 .32 .37
8 Whenever I lose control of my thoughts, I must struggle to regain C .37
control
7 When I hear about a tragedy, I can’t stop wondering if I am R .36
responsible in some way
81 If I take sufficient care, I can prevent any harmful accident from R .33
occurring
34 If I have aggressive thoughts or impulses about my loved ones, IP .33
this means I may secretly want to hurt them
55 I should not have bizarre or disgusting thoughts IP .33
3 If I am uncertain, there is something wrong with me TI .32 .32
83 Having a bad thought is morally no different than doing a bad IP .31
deed
48 If an intrusive thought pops into my mind, it must be important IP
66 Having an unwanted sexual thought or image means I really IP
want to do it
2 Having control over my thoughts is a sign of good character C
1 Having bad thoughts or urges means I’m likely to act on them. IP
51 If I don’t do as well as other people, that means I am an inferior P .72
person
78 If I don’t do a job perfectly, people won’t respect me P .72
56 For me, making a mistake is as bad as failing completely P .70
22 If I fail at something, I am a failure as a person P .70
36 If someone does a task better than I do, that means I failed the P .70
whole task
19 In order to be a worthwhile person, I must be perfect at P .64
everything I do
84 No matter what I do, it won’t be good enough P .64
45 For me, things are not right if they are not perfect P .64
28 If I can’t do something perfectly, I shouldn’t do it at all P .59
13 Things should be perfect according to my own standards P .56
80 When things go too well for me, something bad will follow TE .30 .46
40 Small problems always seem to turn into big ones in my life TE .32 .45
70 It is terrible to be surprised TI .44
30 Bad things are more likely to happen to me than to other people TE .40 .44
87 I need the people around me to behave in a predictable way TI .44
63 If something unexpected happens, I will not be able to cope with TI .30 .43
it
65 I must be the best at things that are important to me P .42 .39
85 I often think that I will be overwhelmed by unforeseen events TI .36 .42
47 I often believe I am responsible for things that other people don’t R .31 .37 .32
think are my fault
 A Test of the Cognitive Theory of Obsessions 385

Item n° ITEM scale I II III

26 If an unexpected change occurs in my daily life, something bad TI .36
will happen.
9 I am much more likely to be punished than are others TE .30 .36
42 I should be upset if I make a mistake P .32
10 If I’m not absolutely sure of something, I’m bound to make a TI .32
mistake
11 There is only one right way to do things P
43 I should make sure others are protected from any negative R .61
consequences of my decisions or actions
32 It is essential for me to consider all possible outcomes of a situation TI .60
57 It is essential for everything to be clear cut, even in minor matters TI .58
25 I must think through the consequences of even my smallest actions R .56
71 Even if harm is very unlikely, I should try to prevent it at any cost R .30 .56
31 I must work to my full potential at all times P .54
53 In order to feel safe, I have to be as prepared as possible for TI .31 .53
anything that could go wrong
21 It is ultimately my responsibility to ensure that everything is in R .52
order
74 I must keep working at something until it’s done exactly right P .45 .51
20 When I see any opportunity to do so, I must act to prevent bad R .50
things from happening
62 For me, even slight carelessness is inexcusable when it might affect R .49
other people
33 Even minor mistakes mean a job is not complete P .49
67 If my actions could have even a small effect on a potential R .49
misfortune, I am responsible for the outcome
73 I should go to great lengths to get all the relevant information TI .49
before I make a decision.
35 I must be certain of my decisions TI .45
39 Avoiding serious problems (e.g., illness or accidents) requires TE .35 .44
constant effort on my part
44 If I exercise enough will-power, I should be able to gain complete C .42
control over my mind
52 I believe that the world is a dangerous place TE .40
6 I often think things around me are unsafe TE .39
60 I should be 100% certain that everything around me is safe TI .38 .38
27 If I don’t act when I foresee danger, then I am to blame for any R .30 .34
consequences
4 If I imagine something bad happening, then I am responsible for R .33
making sure it doesn’t happen
TE= Threat estimation; TI= Tolerance for uncertainty ; IP= Importance of thoughts;
C= Control of thoughts; R=Inflated responsibility; P= Perfectionism;
Factor loadings >.30 are reported.

The first factor is composed by items which belong to control of thoughts scale (n=12),
importance of thoughts (n=11), overestimation of threat (n=7, but with factor loading <.5) and
responsibility (n=6, but with factor loading <.49) and corresponds to the Importance/Control
of Thought scale of the OBQ-44. All the items of the orginal Importance/Control of Thought
scale load onto this factor, even if they have coefficients below .5; however, items with higher
loadings are not part of the original scale (i.e. items 86, 75, 15, 54, 69, 72).
The second factor corresponds to the Perfectionism/Certainty scale (OBQ-44) and is
composed of items from perfectionism (n=13), intolerance of uncertainty (n=9) and
overestimation of threat (n=9). All the items with factor loadings above .50 are part of the 44-
386 Stella Dorz, Caterina Novara, Massimiliano Pastore et al.

item OBQ scale, and come from the original perfectionism scale (OBQ-87). Items 31, 33 and
74, which in theory should belong to this scale, load onto factor three. Item 11 did not have
factor loadings of above .3 on any of the resultant factors.
The third factor corresponds to the Responsibility/Threat scale (OBQ-44) and is
composed of items from responsibility (n=9), intolerance of uncertainty (n=6) and, to a
smaller degree, by items from overestimation of threat. Numerous differences make
comparison difficult with the original scale of the OBQ-44.
In conclusion, the internal structure of the Italian version of the OBQ presents substantial
differences compared to that identified in the original American version (OBQ-44). A
different conceptualisation of the structure of the cognitive domains in the Italian population
must therefore be considered.

EXPLORATIVE FACTOR ANALYSIS: SIX-FACTOR SOLUTION

Since the structure found in the American version was not replicated, in order to study the
internal structure of the Italian version of the OBQ, an explorative factor analysis was
employed. The maximum likelihood method with varimax rotation was used. The number of
factors to take into consideration was decided on the basis of: (1) a scree test (Cattell, 1966);
(2) the simplicity of the structure and (3) the interpretability.
The application of these criteria led to a six-factor solution (see Table 2), which explains
39.6% of the variance. The eigenvalues for the six factors are: 19.04, 4.26, 3.60, 3.09 e 2.38.
The Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin goodness-of-fit index was .885, indicating that the correlation
matrix is acceptable for factor analysis (Tabachnick e Fidell, 1996).
Factor I has high loadings from items that measure perfectionism (n=13) and items from
the intolerance of uncertainty scale (n=5), which are mainly focused on the predictability of
events (e.g. item 70: “I can’t stand unexpected things happending to me”). It seems to be a
type of perfectionism that is extended to future events, or else to a willful control of events,
both present and future.
Factor II includes, above all, items from responsibility (n=10) and intolerance of
uncertainty (n=5), but also four items which measure perfectionism and one item each from
overestimation of threat and intolerance of uncertainty. However, both the items from
responsibility and those from intolerance of uncertainty are focused on making safe decisions
and on the desire that no harm be done to others. (e.g. from the responsibility scale: “I have to
be sure that others won’t suffer harm because of my decisions”, from intolerance of
uncertainty: “Before making decisions I should spend time gathering all available
information”). The remaining items are more difficult to interpret and also have high loadings
on other factors, or very low loadings on all factors.
Factor III is composed of items from overestimation of threat (n=9), from importance of
thoughts (n=3), from control of thoughts (n=3) and from intolerance of uncertainty (n=2) plus
one from responsiblity. The first two groups of items seem to be focused on the idea of the
world as a dangerous place and that merely thinking negatively can increase the chance of
something bad happening. The remaining ones are more difficult to interpret or have high
loadings on other factors.
 A Test of the Cognitive Theory of Obsessions 387

Factor IV is mainly made up of items from control of thoughts (n=11) with one item, the
presence of which is difficult to explain, from intolerance of uncertainty.
Factor V is composed of items from responsiblity (n=5), from overestimation of threat
(n=3) and from importance of thoughts (n=3). The items from importance of thoughts also
have high loadings on factor III. The other items, in contrast, are focused on the idea that it is
necessary to prevent harmful events. It seems therefore that the concept of responsibility is
divided into responsibility for harm (factor II) and omission (this factor).
Factor VI is made up of items belonging to the importance of thoughts scale (n=7). The
items are concerned with the fusion of actions and thoughts but, in contrast to items from
factor III, regard self-evaluation: “having bad thoughts means I’m a bad person”.
In summary, the six-factor structure of the 87-item OBQ is not entirely clear and does not
reflect the cognitive domains upon which the instrument was constructed.

Table 2. Factor loading of the OBQ items (six factors solution)

Item n° ITEM subscale I II III IV V VI

45 For me, things are not right if they are not perfect P .70
78 If I don’t do a job perfectly, people won’t respect me P .68
19 In order to be a worthwhile person, I must be perfect at P .67
everything I do
36 If someone does a task better than I do, that means I P .66
failed the whole task
22 If I fail at something, I am a failure as a person P .65
56 For me, making a mistake is as bad as failing P .63
completely
51 If I don’t do as well as other people, that means I am an P .63
inferior person
28 If I can’t do something perfectly, I shouldn’t do it at all P .62
13 Things should be perfect according to my own P .62
standards
84 No matter what I do, it won’t be good enough P .48 .48
74 I must keep working at something until it’s done P .47 .44
exactly right
70 It is terrible to be surprised TI .43
65 I must be the best at things that are important to me P .43
26 If an unexpected change occurs in my daily life, TI .42
something bad will happen.
60 I should be 100% certain that everything around me is TI .39
safe
11 There is only one right way to do things P .39 .34
87 I need the people around me to behave in a predictable TI .37
way
10 If I’m not absolutely sure of something, I’m bound to TI .34
make a mistake
43 I should make sure others are protected from any R .69
negative consequences of my decisions or actions
32 It is essential for me to consider all possible outcomes TI .60
of a situation
25 I must think through the consequences of even my R .56
smallest actions
388 Stella Dorz, Caterina Novara, Massimiliano Pastore et al.

Table 2 (Continued)

Item n° ITEM subscale I II III IV V VI

71 Even if harm is very unlikely, I should try to prevent it R .54

at any cost
21 It is ultimately my responsibility to ensure that R .53
everything is in order
67 If my actions could have even a small effect on a R .51
potential misfortune, I am responsible for the outcome
33 Even minor mistakes mean a job is not complete P .51
73 I should go to great lengths to get all the relevant TI .51
information before I make a decision.
20 When I see any opportunity to do so, I must act to R .51
prevent bad things from happening
53 In order to feel safe, I have to be as prepared as TI .49
possible for anything that could go wrong
39 Avoiding serious problems (e.g., illness or accidents) TE .49
requires constant effort on my part
62 For me, even slight carelessness is inexcusable when it R .49
might affect other people
57 It is essential for everything to be clear cut, even in TI .49
minor matters
31 I must work to my full potential at all times P .46
68 Even when I am careful, I often think that bad things TE .42 .38
will happen
27 If I don’t act when I foresee danger, then I am to R .41
blame for any consequences
35 I must be certain of my decisions TI .37
23 Even if harm is very unlikely, I should try to prevent it R .37
at any cost
4 If I imagine something bad happening, then I am R .34
responsible for making sure it doesn’t happen
48 If an intrusive thought pops into my mind, it must be IP .29 .24
important
42 I should be upset if I make a mistake P .22 .21
85 I often think that I will be overwhelmed by unforeseen TI .65
events
16 Things that are minor annoyances for most people TE .65
seem like disasters for me
40 Small problems always seem to turn into big ones in TE .62
my life
30 Bad things are more likely to happen to me than to TE .57
other people
80 When things go too well for me, something bad will TE .55
follow
47 I often believe I am responsible for things that other R .55
people don’t think are my fault
61 I am more likely than other people to accidentally TE .49
cause harm to myself or to others
18 The more I think of something horrible, the greater the IP .48
risk it will come true
52 I believe that the world is a dangerous place TE .41 .46
6 I often think things around me are unsafe TE .40 .45
79 Even ordinary experiences in my life are full of risk TE .43
 A Test of the Cognitive Theory of Obsessions 389

Item n° ITEM subscale I II III IV V VI

14 The more distressing my thoughts are, the IP .42
greater the risk that they will come true
86 If I don’t control my thoughts, I’ll be punished C .42 .30 .33
9 I am much more likely to be punished than are TE .41 .30
others
75 Being unable to control unwanted thoughts will C .41 .36
make me physically ill
63 If something unexpected happens, I will not be TI .40
able to cope with it
8 Whenever I lose control of my thoughts, I must C .38
struggle to regain control
49 Thinking about a good thing happening can IP .38
prevent it from happening
12 I would be a better person if I gained more C .30 .58
control over my thoughts
2 Having control over my thoughts is a sign of C .57
good character
29 I must be ready to regain control of my thinking C .53
whenever an intrusive thought or image occurs
44 If I exercise enough will-power, I should be able C .36 .51
to gain complete control over my mind
15 I can have no peace of mind as long as I have C .50
intrusive thoughts
59 I should be able to rid my mind of unwanted C .48
thoughts
5 If I don’t control my unwanted thoughts, C .47
something bad is bound to happen
17 I must know what is going on in my mind at all C .46
times so I can control my thoughts
3 If I am uncertain, there is something wrong with TI .46
me
69 Having intrusive thoughts means I’m out of C .39
control
37 If I have an intrusive thought while I’m doing C .37
something, what I’m doing will be ruined
54 To avoid disasters, I need to control all the C .34
thoughts or images that pop into my mind
38 In all kinds of daily situations, failing to prevent R .61
harm is just as bad as deliberately causing harm
77 To me, failing to prevent a disaster is as bad as R .57
causing it
41 For me, not preventing harm is as bad as causing R .33 .56
harm
50 If I do not take extra precautions, I am more TE .37 .47
likely than others to have or cause a serious
disaster
82 When anything goes wrong in my life, it is likely TE .34 .43
to have terrible effects
72 Harmful events will happen unless I am very TE .30 .40
careful
76 Having violent thoughts means I will lose control IP .30 .40
and become violent
34 If I have aggressive thoughts or impulses about IP .39
my loved ones, this means I may secretly want to
hurt them.
66 Having an unwanted sexual thought or image IP .36
means I really want to do it
390 Stella Dorz, Caterina Novara, Massimiliano Pastore et al.

Table 2 (Continued)

Item n° ITEM subscale I II III IV V VI

81 If I take sufficient care, I can prevent any R .36
harmful accident from occurring
7 When I hear about a tragedy, I can’t stop R .29
wondering if I am responsible in some way
58 Having a blasphemous thought is as sinful as IP .63
committing a sacrilegious act
55 I should not have bizarre or disgusting thoughts IP .62
24 For me, having bad urges is as bad as actually IP .60
carrying them out
46 Having nasty thoughts means I am a terrible IP .54
person
83 Having a bad thought is morally no different IP .53
than doing a bad deed
64 Having bad thoughts means I am weird or IP .34 .42
abnormal
1 Having bad thoughts or urges means I’m likely IP .24
to act on them.
TE= Threat estimation; TI= Tolerance for uncertainty ; IP= Importance of thoughts;
C= Control of thoughts; R=Inflated responsibility; P= Perfectionism;
Factor loadings >.30 are reported.

COMFERMATIVE FACTOR ANALYSIS

Since the previous analyses did not reveal a satisfactory internal structure for the OBQ,
the six-factor structure emerging from the explorative factor analysis was subjected to a
confirmative factor analysis in order to assess the goodness-of-fit of the model to the data.
In contrast with the explorative factor analysis, the aim of which is simply to identify the
factor structure given the set of variables, the confermative analysis tests a hypothesized
factor structure or model, and evaluates its goodness-of-fit with the data. Confermative factor
analysis (CFA) could be seen as an underlying model of the more general approach of
anaylsis defined as the of model of structural equations. The hypothesized model was tested
with LISREL 8.30 (Jöreskog e Sörbom, 1996).
The analysis was conducted in the following stages: (1) on the basis of the results of the
explorative factor anaylsis, each of the six factors was singularly subjected to comfermative
analysis; (2) if the factor did not adequately explain the data, then items were excluded on the
basis of statistical and theoretical considerations and the model was retested until the
goodness-of-fit criteria had been met. The sample of 752 subjects was utilized.
As suggested by various authors (Beckstead, 2002; Browne e Cudeck, 1993; Hu e
Bentler, 1999) the goodness-of-fit of the model (in our case, of single factors to the data) was
evaluated in relation to various indices of fit: RMSEA (Root Mean Square Error Of
Approximation, acceptable for values under .06), GFI (Goodness of Fit Index, acceptable for
values above .9), AGFI (Adjusted Goodness of Fit Index, acceptable for values above .9), and
CFI (Comparative Fit Index, acceptable for values above .9).
The first factor, defined as Perfectionism, was initially evaluated by taking into
consideration all 18 items which had emerged from the previous explorative analysis. Either
 A Test of the Cognitive Theory of Obsessions 391

because they did not improve goodness-of-fit, or on the basis of theoretical considerations,
items 26, 70, 10, 60, 87, 36, 65 were excluded (all belonging to the intolerance of uncertainty
scale). The final scale is therefore composed of 11 items: 11, 13, 19, 28, 33, 45, 51, 65, 74,
78, 84. All were already present in the scale of origin (OBQ-87). The model has adequate
goodness-of-fit indices: RMSEA=0.076; GFI=0.936; AGFI=0.904; CFI=0.926.
The second factor tested, defined as Responsibility for harm, was composed of 21 items
from various scales. Items 20, 23, 27, 31, 33, 35, 60, 73 were excluded as they do not increase
goodness-of-fit. Items 39, and 68 (from overestimation of threat), and 53 (from intolerance of
uncertainty) were retained since, from a theoretical point of view, they refer to the concept of
responsibility which is central to the theory. The final scale is composed of 10 items: 4, 21,
25, 39, 43, 53, 62, 67, 68, 71. All items were already present in the scale of the OBQ-87. The
model has good indices of goodness-of-fit: RMSEA=0.0474; GFI=0.975; AGFI=0.963;
CFI=0.966.
Overestimation of Threat: items belonging to various scales load highly onto this factor,
including overestimation of threat and the importance of thoughts. Various attempts were
made to verify the goodness-of-fit of the model to the available data, in particular by
evaluating an overestimation of threat dimension. In the end, no version of the model
produced satisfactory goodness-of-fit indices and this factor was therefore excluded.
Control of thoughts: factor four corresponds to the domain of control of thoughts with
high loadings by 12 items: 2, 3, 5, 12, 15, 17, 29, 37, 44, 54, 59, 69 all orginally belonging to
scale control of thoughts with the exception of item 3 which belongs to the intolerance of
uncertainty. Goodness-of-fit was tested with unsatisfactory results: RMSEA=0.073,
GFI=0.881, AGFI=0.918, CFI=0.882. The weakest item was item 3, which was excluded,
parlty also for theoretical reasons. The model was then restested. This new model appears to
fit the data well: RMSEA=0.068, GFI=0.902, AGFI=0.929, CFI=0.906. The scale, named
Control of thoughts is therefore composed of 11 items (2, 5, 12, 15, 17, 29, 37, 44, 54, 59,
69).
Responsibility for omission: Items which load highly onto such factor come from the
responsibility scale (n=5) and 3 items each from overestimation of threat and importance of
thoughts. The model does not satisfy the minimum criteria of acceptability. Items 82, 72, 76,
34 and 66 were therefore eliminated. The factor was reconceptualized as a different type of
responsibility, different from factor two in that it refers to a concept of prevention or
omission, rather than harm through errors of commission. For theoretical reasons, items 20
(“If I have the opportunity then I must do something to prevent misfortunes from
happening“) and 23 (“I should try and prevent, at any cost, even the most improbable
misfortunes”) were added to this scale, even tough they were excluded from factor II because
they did not meet the CFA criteria. The final scale is composed of 7 items, all coming from
the responsiblity scale (7, 20, 23, 38, 41, 77, 81). In contrast with factor 2, defined as
responsibity for errors of commission, this factor seems to refer to a type of responsibility by
omission. The model deomonstrates good indices of goodness-of-fit: RMSEA=0.065;
GFI=0.979; AGFI=0.958; CFI=0.960.
Lastly, factor six corresponds to the domain defined as importance of thought. It’s
loaded by 7 items originally from scale importance of thought (14, 24, 34, 46, 55, 58, 83),
which corresponds to the contruct defined as Thought-Action Fusion (TAF; Shafran, 1996).
The model has satisfactory indices of goodness-of-fit: RMSEA=0.0803; GFI=0.967;
AGFI=0.934; CFI=0.900.
392 Stella Dorz, Caterina Novara, Massimiliano Pastore et al.

The final version of the Italian OBQ (OBQ-Italian 46 ; OBQ-I46) is therefore composed
of 46 items divided into five factors.

PSYCHOMETRIC CHARACTERISTICS OF THE OBQ-I46

Internal Consistency and Test-Retest Reliability

Internal consistency was evaluated using Cronbach’s alphas. Generally values with the
range from .7-.9 are considered to be very good, even if values around .6 are still acceptable
(e.g., Bergstrom et al., 1998). Test-retest reliability on a subsample of 102 subjects was
evaluated using a Pearson’s correlational test. Table 3 reports the reliability coefficients for
the five scales of the OBQ-I46.

Table 3. Number of items, Internal concistency , test-retest reliability of the OBQ

subscales

Item di Cronbach Test-retest

OBQ
Perfectionism 11 .86 .84
Responsibility for harm 10 .80 .73
Control of Thoughts 11 .82 .67
Responsibility of omission 7 .65 .67
Importance of Thoughts (TAF) 7 .68 .77

In general, internal consistency seems satisfactory at least for four of the five scales with
values varying from .68 (“Importance of thoughts”) to .86 (“Perfectionism”). The
Responsibility by omission scale has slightly lower internal consistency, although still at an
acceptable level. As far as Perfectionism is concerned , the weakest item is item 11 (“There is
only one way to do things correctly”), the exclusion of which would increase the value to .87.
In Responsibility for harm scale the elimination of item 4 (“If I imagine something bad is
going to happen then it is my responsibility to make sure it doesn’t actually happen”) would
increase the coefficient to .81. In Control of Thought scale, the elimination of item 2
(“Having control over your thoughts is a sign of good character”) would increase the
coefficient to .82. In Responsibility of omission scale the weakest item is 20 (“If I can I must
do something to prevent misfortunes from happening”), the exclusion of which would lead to
a coefficient of .68. The temporal stability is good, if not very good, (range .67-.84), taking
into consideration the fairly large time interval between testing points.

INTERCORRELATION BETWEEN THE SCALES

In order to evaluate the level of differentiation between, or independence of, the
constructs measured by the OBQ-I46, a matrix correlation was calculated and analyzed using
 A Test of the Cognitive Theory of Obsessions 393

the sample of students (n=752). Table 4 displays the pattern of association that is moderately
high, varying from .39 to .66. Analysing the correlations individually, moderate correlations
can be seen between the two scales measuring the two types of responsibility (harm and
omission, r=.65) and between the scales Control of thoughts and Importance of thoughts
(r=.58).

Table 4. Intercorrelations between OBQ scales

Perfectionism Responsibility Control of Responsibility

for harm Thought of omission
OBQ
Perfectionism -
Responsiblity for harm .54 -
Control of thoughts .50 .54 -
Responsiblity of omission .43 .65 .53 -
Importance of thoughts .39 .44 .58 .48
All correlations are significant at p<.001.

CRITERION-ORIENTED VALIDITY
We compared a sample of students with “highly obsessive tendencies” with a sample
defined as having “low obsessive tendencies”. Students were divided into the two groups on
the basis of the Padua Inventory.

Table 5. Comparison Between Subjects Defined With High Obsessive Tendencies vs

Low Obsessive Ones On The Basis of Padua Inventory Score

Low OCD High OCD F p

tendency tendency
N=158 N=166
M SD M SD
OBQ
Perfectionism 22.8 8.1 38.3 12.4 174.19 0.0001
Responsiblity for harm 28.8 9.7 42.0 9.2 156.2 0.0001
Control of thoughts 23.4 8.5 35.1 11.2 110.45 0.0001
Responsiblity of omission 14.5 4.6 19.6 5.7 77.37 0.0001
Importance of thoughts 11.1 4.6 16.1 6.1 68.001 0.0001
BAI 4.8 4.03 16.3 9.2 206.15 0.0001
BDI 3.1 3.5 14.6 10.2 178.19 0.0001
394 Stella Dorz, Caterina Novara, Massimiliano Pastore et al.

Those with scores above the 75th percentile were placed in the former group and those
with scores under the 25th percentile in the latter. The first group was composed of 158
subjects, with mean age= 21.1 1.56 (range 17-37), females=88 (55.7%) vs males=70
(44.3%). The group with the PI score higher than the 75th percentile was composed of 166
subjects, with mean age=20.7 1.65 (range 18-27), females=108 (65.1%) vs males=58
(34.9%). It is worth noting the different proportions of male and female students in each of
the groups, with a prevalence of females in the second group ( 2=2.97, p<.05), in line with
data from the literature. Moreover, students with high OCD tendencies obtained higher scores
to measures of general anxiety and depression (BAI and BDI).
In Table 5 the means and standard deviations on the OBQ-I46 scales across the groups
are reported. A one-way analysis of variance was completed with group as the independent
variable (low vs high). The subjects with “high obsessive tendencies” obtained scores
significantly higher on all scales of the OBQ-I46 with respect to subjects with “low
tendencies”.

CONVERGENT AND DIVERGENT VALIDITY

The convergent validity was evaluated considering the correlations between the scales of
the OBQ-I46 and the scales and total scores of the PI. Furthermore, correlations between
OBQ-I46, the BAI and the BDI were calculated. Table 6 shows the pattern of correlations, all
at significance levels of p<.001.
The cognitive domain most highly correlated with the OCD symptoms was
Perfectionism, with r varying between .51 (PI1: impaired control over mental activities) and
.32 (PI4: urges and worries of losing control over motor behaviors), while the scale with
lower, yet still significant, correlations is the Importance of thoughts with r varying between
.34. (PI1) and .17 (PI4). Generally, the scales of the OBQ-I46 correlate acceptably (between
.32 and .51) with the PI total score, while the values of the lowest correlations are with scale
4, which, in effect, measures impulses, a dimension which is not especially representative of
the OBQ (range between.32 and .17).

Table 6. Convergent validity: correlations of the obq scales with the padua inventory

PI1 PI2 PI3 PI4 PI Total

OBQ
Perfectionism .51 .36 .36 .32 .51
Responsiblity for harm .44 .34 .35 .23 .45
Control of thoughts .44 .28 .33 .25 .43
Responsiblity of omission .35 .22 .26 .23 .35
Importance of thoughts .34 .20 .26 .17 .32
The correlations are significant at p<.001.
PI1=impaired control over mental activities; PI2=becoming contaminated; PI3=checking behaviors;
PI4=urges and worries of losing control over motor behaviors.
 A Test of the Cognitive Theory of Obsessions 395

Since, both theoretically and statistically, the influence of measures of psychological

distress (anxiety and depression) on measures of OCD symptoms has been demonstrated,
partial correlations were calculated in order to control for the effects of BAI e BDI. Table 7
displays the correlations of the OBQ-I46 scales with PI, once the effect of anxiety and
depression, as measured by BAI and BDI, has been removed. Almost all of the correlations
remain significant, even if, as expected, their strength is reduced. Overall, the indices of rs for
all of the scales are lowered. Specifically, while all of the OBQ-I46 scales continue to
correlate significantly with the total score of the Padua Inventory (between .23 a .37),
correlations with scale 4 (urges and worries of losing control over motor behaviors) are lower
– some of them reaching non-significance.

Table 7. Convergent validity: partial correlation of the OBQ scale with Padua Inventory

PI1 PI2 PI3 PI4 PI Total

OBQ
Perfectionism .37** .26** .26** .11* .37**
Responsiblity for harm .35** .27** .28** .09* .37**
PI1 PI2 PI3 PI4 PI Total
Control of thoughts .36** .20** .26** .12* .34**
Responsiblity of omission .33** .18** .21** .16** .32**
Importance of thoughts .25** .12** .19** .04§ .23**
*p<.01, **p<.001, §=Not Significant.
PI1=impaired control over mental activities; PI2=becoming contaminated; PI3=checking behaviors;
PI4=urges and worries of losing control over motor behaviors.

Regression Analysis

This procedure was employed in order to verify the capacity of the cognitive measure to
predict specific OCD symptoms after emotional distress variables had been controlled for.
Given the nature of the dependent variable a linear regression was calculated. With the aim of
controlling for the effect of the variables of depression and anxiety, the variables were entered
into the model in blocks, first with the insertion of the BAI and BDI scores, and secondly all
scores from the OBQ-I46 scales were entered simultaneously.
In the first regression analysis the total score of the PI, representing many symptomatic
manifestations of OCD, was used as the dependent variable. The BAI and BDI scores were
inserted into the first block, followed by the OBQ scales in the second. The R2 of the resultant
model was .52. Table 8 displays the beta values and the associated levels of significance for
each of the variables entered into the model.
The results suggest that the cognitive variables, with the exception of scales
Responsibility of omission and Importance of thought, predict additional variance of the
obsessive symptomology, over and above that explained by anxiety and depression.
396 Stella Dorz, Caterina Novara, Massimiliano Pastore et al.

A second series of analyses evaluated the power of Perfectionism, Responsibiliy for

harm, and Control of thoughts to predict the scores of single PI scales in order to verify
whether there was a relationship between the various cognitive domains and specific OCD
symptom clusters. The three scales individually predicted different OCD symptoms (i.e., the
different PI subscales), with the exception of scale 4 of Padua Inventory (Urges and worries
of losing control over motor behaviors) at a significant level. Interestingly, Responsibility for
omission positively and significantly predicts scale 4 of the PI.

Table 8. Output of linear regression analysis using as dependent

variable Padua Inventory total score

Sig. R2
Block 1 BAI .92 .0001
BDI .74 .0001 .39
Sig. R2
OBQ
Block 2 Perfectionism .38 .0001
Responsiblity for harm .31 .001
Control of thoughts .26 .003
Responsibility of omission .24 NS
Importance of thoughts -.04 NS .52

Normative Values and Gender Differences

Table 9 reports the mean scores and the standard deviations of the various scales of the
OBQ-I46. Significant differences emerge between males and females in Control of thoughrs
and Responsibility of omission.

Table 9. Norms divided by gender

OBQ Males Females F p

Perfectionism 30.1 11.5 30.6 11.9 .30 NS
Responsibility or harm 36.1 10.8 35.7 10.4 .18 NS
Control of thoughts 31.2 11.3 28.5 10.2 11.45 .001
Responsiblity of omission 18.3 5.7 16.7 5.3 16.4 .0001
Importance of thoughts 13.4 5.7 14.1 5.5 2.69 NS

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS

The main aim of this study was to verify the psychometric properties of the Italian
version of the Obsessive Beliefs Questionnaire. A first attempt was made in order to verify
the goodness-of-fit of the three-factor model proposed by the recent revision made by the
 A Test of the Cognitive Theory of Obsessions 397

OCCWG group, without appreciable results. An explorative factor analysis was then
therefore completed. It revealed six factors: perfectionism, responsibility for harm,
overestimation of danger, control of thoughts, responsibility for omission, importance of
thoughts. Several differences emerged in contrast with the original American 87-item version:
the absence of the intolerance of uncertainty, divided between perfectionism and control of
thoughts; the subdivision of the responsibility scale into the scales responsibility for harm and
responsibility for omission.
Lastly, the confirmatory factorial analysis reduced the number of factors and as well as
the number of items/scales. The Italian version of the Obsessive Beliefs Questionnaire is
therefore composed of 46 items, divided into five scales.
Scale 1 corresponds to the domain of Perfectionism, and is composed of 11 items all
originally belonging to the Perfectionism scale of the OBQ87. Analyzing the content of the
items, the scale measures that type of perfectionism linked to the need to always do things
perfectly, and to perceived failure when high standards are not met.
Scale 2, defined as Responsibility for harm, is composed of 10 items which measure that
sense of responsibility that is felt when an action is deemed to be immoral or harmful. Seven
items out ten pertained to the original scale of responsiblity from the OBQ87, while of the
three remaining items two belonged to the overestimation of danger scale and one to the
intolerance of uncertainty scale. Analyzing the content, the scale measures the degree of
conviction relative to perceived responsibility for facts or actions taken. In concert with the
theme, even items that come from other scales seem to relate, albeit indirectly, to the same
concepts (e.g. item 68: “even when I’m careful I sometimes think that I could cause or suffer
a bad event”).
Scale 3, defined as Control of thoughts, is composed of 11 items all originally from the
Control of thoughts scale. The content of the items is linked to the need to have complete
control over thoughts and over the consequences, both emotional and concrete, of failures and
shortcomings.
Scale 4, defined as Responsibility for omission, is composed of 7 items originally
belonging to the responsibility scale, with the exception of item 50 (overestimation of threat).
Through analysis of the content of the items it emerges that this dimension concerns a type of
excessive responsibility that is most concerned with prevention of harm or harm by omission.
Lastly, scale 5, defined as Importance of thoughts, is composed of 7 seven items all
originally from the Importance of thoughts scale. The scale measures the strength of the
conviction that having a thought in itself means that it is important, the idea of thought-action
equivalency is well illustrated in the concept of “Thought-action fusion”.
The reliability of these dimensions was evaluated using Cronbach’s alpha test of internal
consistency and Pearson’s formula of temporal stability. In accordance with the convention
that a Cronbach alpha of =.70 is seen as acceptable and values equal to .80 are considered
good, the internal consistency of the Italian version of the OBQ can be judged to be largely
acceptable for the scales measuring Responsibility for omission and Importance of thoughts,
and good for the other subscales (Control of thoughts, Responsibility for harm and
Perfectionism). The scales also demonstrated a good or very good level of temporal stability.
Lastly, the five domains correlated each other at a relatively high degree.
In summary, we have seen that three dimensions of the Italian version of the OBQ mirror
the orginal constructs identified by the OCCWG (perfectionism, need for thought control and
importance attributed to thoughts), and another one is expressed in two different elements
398 Stella Dorz, Caterina Novara, Massimiliano Pastore et al.

(responsibility for omission and for harm). Two original dimensions of the OBQ are
eliminated (overestimation of threat and intolerance of uncertainty) from Italian version.
Looking at the two constructs of responsibility, the literature demonstrates that, generally,
common sense attributes a more negative meaning to decisions which require an action, even
when confronted with options which results in the same negative consequences. This
phenomenon, which has been called the omission bias, was fully described by Spranca
(1991). Generally, imagining possible, negative, hypothetical situations, people are more
inclined to feel greater regret if they have completed an action, than if they have not acted.
Spranca et al. (1991) found that actions were viewed more positively than inaction when
either led to positive consueqences, in contrast, when the consequences were negative it was
the action that was viewed more negatively than the failure to act. Kordes-de Vaal (1996)
found similar results in a replication which extended Spranca’s experimental paradigm,
subjecting four groups to scenarios represenative of situations in which the possible negative
outcome could be linked to an action (the subject deliberately choses to do harm to another)
or inaction (the subject, while possessing information necessary to avoid a disasters, chooses
not to). The results showed a significant difference in the level of perceived causality in
personal terms. The studies of Spranca and others, in sum, suggest a different attitude, even in
terms of morality and immorality, regarding the conseuquences of action and inaction, which
is a result of various factors: the physical movement connected to action and its inevitable
absence in inaction, the presence of salient, alternative causes in the case of inaction, as well
as the idea that the consequences of inaction would be similar even if the agent was not
present or ignored the effects of inaction. The conclusion of these studies therefore appears
clear: people are more inclined to consider themselves responsible for consequences when
they are linked to an actual action, rather than to inaction, even when the consequences are
effectively the same. This therefore justifies the presence of different measures of
responsibility.
It is important to note that the presence of various measures of responsibility might
depend also on the fact that our sample does not present problems of a psychopathological
nature. Indeed, Wroe e Salkovskis (2000) presented various different scenarios to an OCD
group, an anxious non-OCD group and a non-clinical group, asking each for a self-evaluation
concerning responsibility, morality and perceived distress. The results revealed significant
differences between the OCD group and the other two groups: the OCD group did not show
the bias of omission. The explanation lies, according to the authors, in the peculiarity of
obsessive thought patterns and the assumption of responsibility which is typical of the
disorder. Because of these characteristics, the obsessive individual even “interpets” inaction
in terms of choice and, therefore, feels equally responsible as in the case of an actual action.
Actually, also in the current study the Responsibility for omission scale predicted symptoms
(Urges and worries of losing control over motor behaviors) not so typical of clinical OCD:
such dimension could not be as useful as others when used with clinical population.
In any case, to our knowledge, this subdivision of the concept of responsibility for actions
and inaction, which emerged from the factor analysis of the OBQ, is only present in the
Italian context. Whether this is due to cross-cultural factors or to the type of sample studied
constitutes an interesting avenue for future research.
The two theoretical domains that were not found in this study have, in some way,
peculiar characteristics. The first (overestimation of threat) is extremely generic and, it could
be hypothezied, is more connected to one’s value system. For instance, Sica, Novara and
 A Test of the Cognitive Theory of Obsessions 399

Sanavio (2002(b)) evaluated superstitious and non-superstitious individuals on the original

OBQ and well-established measures of obsessive-compulsive symptoms, depression, anxiety
and worry. After controlling for anxiety and depression, highly superstitious subjects scored
higher than subjecys low in superstition on the OBQ domain of overestimation of threat. An
alternative explanation sees general perceptions of threat being linked to any state of anxiety
(“the world is full of danger” ). Even in the three-factor American version, this dimension
loses importance in favour of the concept of responsibility. Lastly, also in another Italian
study the overestimation of danger did not discriminate between OCD patients and patients
with generalized anxiety disorder (Sica et al., 2004).
The intolerance for uncertainty scale, on the other hand, was originally composed of two
sets of items: those dealing with a sense of vulnerability (e.g., “I often think that I will be
overwhelmed by unforeseen events”) and those concerned with the need of certainty (e.g., “I
must be certain of my decisions”; OCCWG, 1997). Such ambiguity is confirmed by the fact
that, in normal and anxious individuals, the internal consistency of this scale is not sufficient
(Sica et al., 2004). Furthermore, as we have seen, the OCD population does not obtain scores
that are significantly higher than those of anxious patients on the Perfectionism/Certainty
scale of the OBQ-44. There are, therefore, three possibilities for this scale: 1) the domain is
conceptual ambiguous; 2) the domain has not been adequately measured (i.e., the items do not
adequately represent the concept); 3) the domain is only detectable in patients.
All dimensions of the OBQ-I46 discriminate individuals with OCD tendencies from those
who did not report this feature. Moreover, all dimensions were significantly associated with
OCD symptoms also when general distress (i.e., anxiety and depression) was controlled. On
the other hand, other results questioned the specificity of such dimensions (a core theoretical
point of cognitive theory of OCD). First, all the five scales correlated in a similar way with
various symptoms of OCD (i.e., the different scales of Padua Inventory). Bearing in mind also
the relatively high degree of overlap among the different dimensions, it may mean that the
OBQ-I46 is not able to predict specific symptoms pattern, a strong limitations considering the
heterogeneity of OCD manifestation. Second, only three dimensions (Perfectionism,
Responsibility for harm and Control thoughts) resulted good predictors of OCD symptoms in
a linear regression model, whereas Responsibility of omission and Importance of thoughts did
not predict OCD symptoms at all.
Interestingly, perfectionism and control of thoughts were among the best predictors of
OCD symptoms in a recent study carried out across three cultures (Sica, Taylor, Arrindell &
Sanavio, 2006). Moreover, as mentioned before, a study completed on Italian patients showed
that perfectionism and control of thoughts were two of the three cognitive domains which
better discriminated patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder from patients with
generalized anxiety disorder and non-clinical individuals (Sica et al., 2004). Another study
has stressed the specificity of the control of of thoughts domain. In an investigation carried
out in Spain, 31 OCD patients, 22 depressed patients, 31 non-obsessive anxious patients, and
30 non-clinical community subjects were compared on the Obsessional Intrusions Inventory-
Revised (ROII; Purdon & Clark, 1994), a measure containing six scales measuring OCD-
dysfunctional beliefs similar to those measured by the OBQ . Between-group differences
indicated that two dysfunctional appraisals (worrying that the thought will come true, and the
importance of controlling thoughts) were specific to OCD patients. (Morillo, Belloch &
Soriano, 2007).
400 Stella Dorz, Caterina Novara, Massimiliano Pastore et al.

Additional studies are therefore warranted to ascertain whether perfectionism and control
of thoughts are more important and specific than other cognitive domains in predicting OCD
symptoms.
The domain of importance of thoughts may be culture-specific, instead. For instance, a
study comparing individuals with differing degrees of religious involvement showed that the
importance of thoughts belief was linked to OCD symptoms in individuals with a substantial
degree of religiosity (Sica, Novara & Sanavio, 2002(a)). Lastly, importance of thought may be
relevant for a subgroup of individuals of clinical interest with overvalued ideation, a well
known feature of some OCD individuals (Neziroglu & Stevens, 2002) .
From a methodological point of view it should be emphasized that further information on
the usefulness of the OBQ, in theoretical, clinical and psychotherapeutic terms, can only
come from studies of the clinical population, which have as their aim the verification of the
specificity of the constructs in the OCD population. Indeed, we do not know whether the data
obtained in this study would be replicated if the questionnaire had been administered to a
clinical population. On the other hand, studies conducted by various independent research
groups have obtained results which are partly convergent with those which we have
presented.
Finally, two last theoretical considerations appear to be important. First, as we menton
before, recent research on OCD underscores the considerable heterogeneity of this disorder.
For example, in their review, McKay and colleagues (2004) have identified as many as nine
subtypes or replicable dimensions of OCD: contamination/washing, harming/checking,
hoarding, symmetry/ordering, obsessions, sexual and religious, certainity, sexual-somatic, and
contamination/harming. Studies on OCD heterogeneity, among other things, therefore
suggests that OCD subtypes may differentially relate to cognitive features (e.g., Tolin, Woods
& Abramowitz, 2003), an issue that warrants more study. Second, the cognitive theory of
OCD postulates that beliefs are causally related to OCD symptoms. However, as has emerged
in research of other emotional disorders (e.g., Segal, Williams & Teasdale, 2002), beliefs and
schema may be also consequences of psychopathology. Several studies are under way to
ascertain such a possibility.

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Reviewed by Corrado Caudek, Professor of Quantitative Methodology, Department of

Psychology, University of Firenze, Italy
In: Encyclopedia of Cognitive Psychology (2 Volume Set) ISBN: 978-1-61324-546-0
Editor: Carla E. Wilhelm, pp. 405-431 © 2012 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 13

HAPTIC ABILITIES IN INFANCY AND THEIR RELATION

TO VISION: A REVIEW

Arlette Streri1
Université Paris Descartes, France

ABSTRACT
The old debate concerning the primitive unity (nativist conception) or the separation
(empiricist conception) of senses at birth has been revived in recent years, as difficulties
in the methodology of studying perception in babies were overcome. How can babies
know by touch? To answer to this question, three aspects of human infants’ haptic
abilities are presented in this review. How the young babies: 1. Perceive information and
form a perceptual representation of objects derived from the hands alone; 2. Transfer this
information to vision in an intermodal process; 3. Obtain haptic knowledge in limited
exploration conditions as they do in the visual modality?
Using a habituation/dishabituation procedure, experiments have revealed that infants,
from birth, are able to discriminate object shapes in the manual as well as in the visual
mode. These abilities are a prerequisite for understanding the relations between the haptic
and the visual sensory modalities in cross-modal transfer tasks. Using an intersensory
successive preference procedure, several experiments provided evidence for cross-modal
recognition from touch to vision from birth. The links however are limited, partial and
not reciprocal. Nevertheless, adaptations of paradigms for studying visual cognition
reveal that the haptic system shares some amodal mechanisms with the visual modality.
Despite various discrepancies between both modalities, conceiving the world is possible
with the hands as well as the eyes soon after birth.

Keywords: haptic perception, haptic cognition, cross-modal transfer, vision, infancy

1
Address for correspondence: Arlette Streri, “Laboratory for Psychology of Perception” UMR. 8158, centre
Biomédical des Saints-Pères - 45, rue des Sts Pères 75270 Paris cedex 06 France Email:
[email protected]
406 Arlette Streri

INTRODUCTION
In recent years, there has been an increased interest in the development of haptic
exploration in animals and human beings (see Hatwell, Streri, and Gentaz, 2003). In the
haptic modality, the mouth and the hands are the best organs for perceiving and knowing the
properties of the surroundings. In many mammals, the mouth and the vibrissal system are the
most sensitive body parts and the main tools of perceptive exploration. In rodents, for
example, the perception of the environment relies mainly on the vibrissae (Carvell and
Simons, 1990). In nonhuman primates, the mouth, rich in tactile receptors, remains privileged
for sniffing, mouthing, etc. but the differentiation of the anterior limbs into prehensile
extremities allows considerable broadening of exploratory abilities. For nonhuman primates,
the hands are also an important tool used for feeding, running, stroking, active manipulation,
etc. permitting them to vary their activity in relevant ways (Tomasello, 1998).
However, such specialization culminates in human beings. Bipedalism has freed the
hands and arms from locomotion, creating increased opportunity for manual expression
(Corballis, 2003). Hands and arms have become a principal tool of investigation,
manipulation and transformation of the world. The importance of manual activities in human
beings has been approached through anthropological studies, which have established a causal
link between the development of human intelligence and the conquest of bipedal walking and
the subsequent freeing of the hands. Once the hands became free, tools could be created,
causing an increase of brain capabilities. As a consequence, in the research about the
evolution of our species, brain and hands are always closely linked (see Corballis, 2003, for a
discussion). Moreover, although not universally accepted, researchers have also suggested
that in our species, articulate language emerged from manual gestures (Armstrong, 1999;
Corballis, 2002; Rizolatti and Arbib, 1998). There are also a number of suggestions that the
left-lateralization of right-handedness and speech dominance in the left-side of the cerebral
cortex are causally related in the evolution of our species, although there is disagreement as to
the direction of the causality. Another hypothesis would be that the two processes might have
evolved independently (see Corballis, 2003, for a discussion).

RESEARCH IN INFANCY:
A GAP BETWEEN THE VISUAL AND HAPTIC MODALITIES
Despite the importance of the role of hands in human intellectual development, several
decades of research in infancy have been devoted mainly to the visual mode (see Clifton,
2001, for a historic review). Numerous studies have brought a wealth of evidence for
perceptual and cognitive competencies in very young infants (Kellman and Arteberry, 1998).
There is clear evidence that size and shape constancies are present at birth (Slater and
Morison, 1985; Slater, Mattock and Brown, 1990). Neonates are sensitive to complex stimuli
such as face-like patterns (Goren, Sarty and Wu, 1975) and look preferentially at faces that
are judged attractive by adults (Slater, Quinn, Hayes and Brown, 2000). Young infants are
able to understand complex visual events and can reason about physical laws that constrain
objects’ movements in space and time. They are sensitive to strange or impossible events that
contravene these laws (see Spelke, 2003, for a review). For example, two and a half month-
 Haptic Abilities in Infancy and their Relation to the Vision 407

old infants understand that an object exists even if it is hidden behind another object or a
screen and that an object cannot occupy the same place as another object or go through it (see
Baillargeon, 1995; Spelke, Breinlinger, Macomber, Jacobson, 1992). Despite this knowledge
concerning the development of visual perception, much less is known about comparable
issues for haptic processes. Is it possible to show similar competencies in the haptic modality,
particularly in the manual mode?

MAIN REASONS OF THIS GAP

Basic characteristics of the haptic system stem from the fact that the hands are both
perceptual systems able to explore and recognize the surface of objects and their properties
and motor organs performing daily actions controlled by tactile-kinesthetic reafferences (see
Hawell, 1994; Loomis and Lederman, 1986). Wealth of research has been devoted to the
description and development of manual skills in infancy and children, because manual skills
are specific to the haptic system.
They give it a unique and original property among the senses. In contrast, few studies
have focused on the emergence and development of haptic perception and cognition in very
young infants. The main reason is that, for a very long time, newborns and older infants have
been described as displaying many reflex reactions and clumsy arm movements. Particularly,
newborns’ hands are often described as closed or exhibiting either grasping or avoiding
reflexes, which are inappropriate behaviors for holding an object and gathering and
processing information (Twitchell, 1965).
Another reason for the paucity of research in this area is that young infants spontaneously
display numerous behaviors with their mouth but not with their hands. Numerous studies of
neonatal imitation of tongue protrusion or mouth opening (Meltzoff and Moore, 1977),
coordination of hand-mouth actions (Butterworth and Hopkins, 1988), etc. reveal early
developing competencies and skills of young babies’ mouths. Given these data, the mouth has
been considered by researchers as an exploratory tool and an important part of the haptic
system, playing a major role in an infant’s gathering of information about objects.
Consequently, the manual system of the haptic modality was neglected and almost
forgotten. For example, to provide evidence of cross-modal transfer from mouth to eyes in
one month-old infants, Meltzoff and Borton (1979) wrote in their paper published in Nature,
“As infants of this age (26 to 33 days) will not explore objects manually, the tactual stimuli
were constructed by modifying pacifiers so that small, hard rubber shapes could be mounted
on them…” p. 403.
This argument was taken up by Gibson and Walker (1984) in the same cross-modal
transfer task at the same age. They wrote, “Since manual exploration was out of the question,
oral exploration provided the haptic experience for familiarization” p. 457. Thus, numerous
researchers thought that manual exploration was very limited in infancy (see Rochat, 1989). It
is very likely that, from birth, mouthing and oral exploration are fundamental means for
infants to interact with objects. But, these interactions are often aided by the hands and not
directly taken up by the mouth.
408 Arlette Streri

OVERVIEW
Our research has focused mainly on the role of the hands as perceptual systems
considered in isolation. This paper addresses first the question of abilities of infants to
perceive object properties by the hands considered in isolation, i.e. without visual control.
These abilities are a prerequisite for understanding the relations between the haptic mode and
the visual mode. Considering that several studies provided evidence of early lateralization and
handednesses in infancy (Caplan and Kinsbourne, 1976; Petrie and Peters, 1980; Hawn and
Harris, 1983), in our experiments, infants were often stimulated both with the left and the
right hand. Next, the paper considers two kinds of relation between vision and touch: cross-
modal transfer of shape between the sensory modalities and haptic cognition in comparison to
visual cognition. Finally, we suggest that our results from normal infants can shed light on
research from children with autistic spectrum disorder as well as work with children with
visual impairment or blindness.

1. PERCEPTION OF THE SHAPE OF OBJECTS

Some Considerations in Human Adults

Touch is a perceptual system that depends on contact with surfaces and on the quality of
proximal reception. However, the tactual perceptual field is limited to the zone of contact
with the object and has the exact dimensions of the surface of the skin in contact with the
stimulus. In a passive touch condition, parallel processing and spatial discrimination abilities
through the skin are nevertheless possible by way of a vibratory stimuli transmission system
(Geldard and Sherrick, 1965). However, to comprehend the whole object and obtain a good
representation of it, voluntary movements must be made to compensate for the smallness of
the tactile perceptual field. The kinaesthetic perceptions resulting from these movements are
necessarily linked to the purely cutaneous perceptions generated by skin contact, and they
form a whole called “haptic” (or tactilo-kinaesthetic, or active touch) perception. As a result,
object perception in the haptic mode is highly sequential. This property increases the load on
working memory and requires a mental reconstruction and synthesis to obtain a unified
representation of a given object (Revesz, 1950).
In adults, the hands alone are able to gather information about the different properties of
objects. But these properties do not have the same salience under haptic exploration with or
without vision (see Klatzky, Lederman and Reed, 1987). Haptic identification of different
properties of the objects is possible, each being detected by means of specific exploratory
procedures (EPs). For example, enclosure is a necessary procedure to detect global shape;
contour following allows a good detection of precise shape while lateral motion on the object
surface is sufficient to detect texture. However, not of all these exploratory procedures are
exhibited by the infants. Therefore, it is difficult to know which properties the infants can
detect. Perhaps, they detect only one or two properties when they are holding an object in
their hands.
Texture and shape are two amodal properties processed by both vision and touch but they
present several dissimilarities in its functioning. In adults, vision is specifically suited to
 Haptic Abilities in Infancy and their Relation to the Vision 409

processing the spatial or macrogeometric properties of objects (shape, volume, size) and can
process many objects at a glance. In contrast, touch is excellent for providing information
about the material or microgeometric properties of objects (texture, hardness, weight,
temperature) but must process each object in sequence (Klatzky et al., 1985; 1987). In this
paper, we mainly focus on object shape because shape allows object identification and is the
basis for object categorization. Texture also allows identification and discrimination between
two objects, but only when they are the same shape.

Studies in Infancy

In newborns and young infants, grasping and avoiding reflexes used to be regarded as the
dominant behaviors mediating interactions with the environment. The grasping reflex in
neonates looks like the adult’s enclosure procedure. Newborns strongly close their fingers on
an object or an experimenter’s finger. Therefore, according to Katz (1925), as well as Roland
and Mortensen (1987), it is impossible to perceive the fine details of an object, or even
recognize an object with a single grasp. The tactile information about object shape is sampled
sequentially by several fingertips sweeping over the object’s surface in different directions
with different velocities. In these conditions, grasping may be insufficient to detect fine
features. However, several grasps may be perfectly adequate to perceive global shape.

Method

Beyond hand reflexes, newborns are able to handle a small object. To reveal such an
ability, we applied a habituation and dishabituation procedure to the manual mode, just as it is
used in the visual mode (see Streri and Pêcheux, 1986a). Infants were seated in a rigid seat
and an experimenter put a small object in their right or left palm. Newborns rarely tried to
look at an object that they held. When necessary, the experimenter hid the object with her
hands to prevent the baby from looking at it. Older infants often tried to look at the object,
and therefore we used a white cloth screen to separate the visual field from the tactile field,
allowing infants to explore the objects freely without seeing them. Thus, all information was
gained by the hands alone.
The habituation/dishabituation procedure involved two phases. The habituation phase
included a series of trials in which the infants received a small object in one hand. A trial
began when the infant held the object and ended when the infant dropped it or after a duration
defined by the experimenter. This was repeated several times. As a consequence, the
habituation process entailed several grasps of a determined duration. Usually, the minimum
duration for a simple grasp was 1 sec of holding and the maximum was 60 sec or 90 sec
according to the infant’s age. The inter-trial intervals were short (between 4 and 10 seconds).
Over the course of these trials, we observed a decrease in holding times until a criterion
defined by the experimenter was reached (75% decrease in our studies). The total holding
time was taken as indicator of familiarization duration, without including the inter-trial
intervals. The decrease in holding times was considered as revealing the infants’ abilities to
memorize the shape and recognize it. Moreover, it is now well established that habituation
and memory processes are closely linked, revealing a form of mental representation of stimuli
410 Arlette Streri

(cf. Bornstein and Benasich, 1986; Pascalis and De Haan, 2003; Rovee-Collier and Barr,
2001). The mean number of trials to reach habituation was between four and fifteen trials and
often varied according to the complexity of shapes. Then, in the dishabituation phase, a novel
object was put in the infant’s hand. If an increase in holding time of the novel object was
observed, we inferred that a reaction to novelty was revealed and that the baby noticed the
difference between the two objects. This procedure, controlled by the infant, is effective for
revealing the early discriminatory capacities of young babies (see Streri, 1993, for a review).
As a consequence, beyond the grasping reflex, young infants can process information about
the shape of objects.

Results

Streri, Lhote, and Dutilleul (2000) showed that newborns (the youngest was 16-hours
old) were able to detect differences in the contours of two small objects (a smoothly curved
cylinder versus a sharply angled prism) with both the right and left hands. Habituation and
test phases were performed with the same hand. After habituation with an object (the cylinder
or prism) placed in the right or left hand, confirmed by two more trials, a novelty reaction was
observed when a new object (the prism or cylinder) was put in the same newborn’s hand. So,
this was the first evidence of habituation and reaction to novelty that was observed with the
left as well as the right hand in newborns. Newborns were able to discriminate between the
curvilinear vs. rectilinear contours of small objects. As a consequence, we can conclude that
haptic memory in its manual mode is also present from birth.
In the first six months after birth, the young baby is also capable of a reasonably good
performance in the detection of other discrepancies between shapes. From the age of two
months, geometric shapes (e.g., curvilinear vs. rectilinear) and topological relations (e.g., full
shapes vs. shapes pierced with a hole) are well differentiated (Streri, 1987; Streri and Milhet,
1988). At this age, the baby is also capable of discriminating a volumetric object (a cotton
reel) from a flat object (a cross) (Streri and Molina, 1993). At five months, similar
performances with the same shapes are observed.
However, all these performances do not mean that the baby has a clear representation of
what is being held in the hand. Because young infants are unable to realize the necessary
integration and synthesis of information required in working memory under haptic
exploration, shape perception is probably partial or limited to the detection of clues such as
points, curves, presence or absence of a hole, etc. The information gathered is provided from
enclosure of the object, which seems to be an effective exploratory procedure for such a
performance. To obtain a good representation of object shape, contour following is a better
exploratory procedure (Lederman and Klatzky, 1987). Contour following has never been
observed in young infants working with or without vision.
When two-handed exploration is possible, from the age of four or five months, the baby
can hold a voluminous or large-sized object. In Streri and Spelke’s (1988) experiment 1,
infants were presented with two rings, one in each hand, under conditions that masked their
view of the rings and their own bodies. The rings were connected either in a rigid or a flexible
device (by a wooden bar or elastic band). A habituation/dishabituation procedure was used.
Infants were first allowed to manipulate either the rigid or the flexible connected rings at will
on a series of habituation trials. Each trial ended when an infant dropped a ring, and the trial
 Haptic Abilities in Infancy and their Relation to the Vision 411

series ended when their manipulation times declined to a habituation criterion. Then, infants
were presented with the novel display for the second phase. Owing to the infants’ active
exploration on objects involving the shoulder, the arm and the hand, they are able to
discriminate between the objects manipulated according to their rigid or their flexible
properties.

Conclusion

To sum up, from birth infants are able of encoding, remembering and recognizing a
certain amount of information gathered on object shape. The grasping reflex, involving rough
exploratory procedures such as enclosure with light squeezes/releases on objects, is sufficient
to detect similarities and differences between objects. Consequently, the processes such as
habituation, discrimination and memorisation appear to be similar in the manual and visual
sensory modalities. Infants can detect invariants in the tactile as in the visual modality,
revealing the same competencies in the information processing of some properties of objects
such as their shapes. This last conclusion is important: because the processes appear to be
similar in the two modalities, we can ask about how infants transfer information across the
haptic and the visual sensory modalities.
We analyze two kinds of relation: first, the interactions between the haptic and the visual
mode in cross-modal transfer tasks. These abilities represent an important aspect of
perception. They allow for economical and adaptive behaviours with surrounding objects, and
lead to a unified and coherent perception of the environment. Second, we attempt to know if
haptic cognition exists in infancy like visual cognition in situations where infants cannot
haptically process all information on the objects. Cross-modal transfer methodology from
touch to vision was used because visual recognition can reveal information processed by the
hands.

2. CROSS-MODAL TRANSFER OF SHAPE BETWEEN TOUCH

AND VISION

“… It is important to note that the ability to integrate cues from different sensory
modalities did not arise with the appearance of humans. Rather, it is an ancient scheme that
antedates mammals and even the evolution of the nervous system... In fact, it would be
unprecedented to find an animal in which there exists a complete segregation of sensory
cortex.” (Stein and Wallace, 2001, p. 107).

Since the first evidence of cross-modal transfer of shape was in adult nonhuman primates
(Cowey and Weikrantz, 1975; Davenport and Rogers, 1970; see Stein and Meredith, 1993), it
is clear that language is not a necessary condition for sensory integration. Actually, various
forms of sensory integration have now been documented. For example, transfer between
touch and vision has been found in apes (Davenport, Rogers and Russel, 1975) as well as in
monkeys (Murray and Mishkin, 1985; Gunderson, Rose, and Grand-Webster, 1990).
Intersensory integration between auditory and visual stimulation has been observed in infant
and adult rats (Spear and McKinzie, 1994) and also in birds (see Lickliter and Banker, 1994).
412 Arlette Streri

Rodents are able to detect intersensory equivalence based on a variety of amodal stimulus
attributes such as time, number, rate and location in cross-modal transfer tasks (see Tees,
1994). However, the question of the unity of senses at birth in human beings is not answered.

First, a Philosophical Question

For several centuries, this question has been addressed by philosophical answers to
Molyneux’ s famous question: will a person born blind and recovering sight as an adult
immediately be able to distinguish visually between a cube and a sphere? (Gallagher, 2006;
Proust, 1997). But Diderot (1749-1792), the first philosopher to compare the blind person to a
neonate, contended that there is no doubt “that vision must be very imperfect in an infant that
opens his/her eyes for the first time, or in a blind person just after his/her operation”. Diderot
was right when he said that newborn’s vision is very imperfect. However, many experiments
have since provided evidence that neonates perceive several elementary properties of the
world, such as face, colour, shape, movement, etc. (see Slater, 1998). Moreover, Molyneux’s
question describes precisely the cross-modal task from hand to eyes in infancy. Although
newborns are not directly comparable to congenitally blind people (see Gallagher, 2006, for a
discussion), if they are able to form a perceptual representation of the shape of objects from
the hand and to recognize it visually, a positive answer to Molyneux’s question would be
evidenced. A positive answer would mean that a link between the hands and the eyes exists
before infants have had the opportunity to learn from the pairings of visual and tactual
experiences.
For a long time, the answer to Molyneux’s question was negative. According to the
empiricist model, three arguments have been proposed. 1. The neonate’s experience is
confused; 2. The sensory modalities do not naturally communicate; 3. Molyneux’s problem
receives a negative answer because that experience in the manual mode (considered as the
most robust modality to really know the world) is not sufficiently developed to educate the
visual modality to perceive.

The Infants’ Answer

More recently, Molyneux’s question has received several positive empirical answers.
Cross-modal transfer of texture (smooth vs. granular) and substance (hard vs. soft) from the
oral modality to vision has been shown in one month-old infants (Meltzoff and Borton, 1979;
Gibson and Walker, 1984). Two month-old infants were able visually to recognize the shape
of an object that they have previously manipulated with their right hand (Streri, 1987).
However, several questions regarding intermodal transfer remain. First, research on the
newborn’s vision suggests that babies might have connected some information between
sensory modalities over one or two months. Second, the cross-modal transfer data in oral-
visual transfer of texture were sceptically received and the results seemed weak, in that they
have not always been reproduced (see Maurer, Stager and Mondloch, 1999). Third, mouthing
behavior involves different exploratory procedures from handling, which are more complex
and various. These discrepancies suggest that information processing by the two modes of
exploration might not be developed in a similar manner or have the same function. Finally,
 Haptic Abilities in Infancy and their Relation to the Vision 413

according to the Klatzky and Lederman (1993) classification, texture and substance are
material properties and not geometric properties, thus requiring different exploratory
procedures.

Experiments

Recently, Streri, and Gentaz (2003) conducted an experiment on cross-modal recognition

of shape from the right hand to the eyes in human newborns. They used an intersensory
paired-preference procedure that included two phases (Spelke, 1976): a haptic familiarization
phase in which newborns were given an object to explore manually without seeing it,
followed by a visual test phase in which infants were shown the familiar object paired with a
novel one for 60 seconds. Subjects were 24 newborns (mean age: 62 hours). Tactile objects
were a small cylinder (10 mm in diameter) and a small prism (10 mm triangle base). The sizes
of the objects were adapted to the sizes of the newborns’ hands. Because the newborns’ vision
is immature and their visual acuity is weak, visual objects were the same 3D objects, but
much larger (45mm triangle base and 100mm in length for the prism and 30mm in diameter
and 100mm in length for the cylinder) (see Table 1a).

Table 1. Cross-modal recognition of object shape

414 Arlette Streri

An experimental group (12 subjects) received the two phases successively (haptic then
visual) whereas a baseline group (12 subjects) received only the visual phase. The comparison
of looking times between the two groups allowed us to provide evidence of cross-modal
recognition of shape from hand to eyes in the experimental group.
Results showed that the newborns in the experimental group looked at the novel object
for longer than the familiar one. In contrast, the newborns in the baseline group looked
equally at both objects. Moreover, in the experimental group, infants made more gaze shifts
toward the novel object than the familiar object. In the baseline group this was not the case.
The results suggest that newborns recognized the familiar object through a visual comparison
process and through a comparison between the haptic and visual modes. Moreover, the
discrepancy between the size of visual and tactile objects was not relevant for cross-modal
recognition. Shape alone seems to have been considered by newborns.
In conclusion, newborns are able to transfer shape information from right hand to eyes
before they have had the opportunity to learn the pairing of visual and tactual experiences.
These results challenge the empiricist philosophical conception and modern connectionist
models (McClelland, Rumelhart and Group, 1986; Elman, 1996) that sensory modalities
cannot communicate in newborns. The results reveal an early developing ability, largely
independent of common experience, to detect abstract amodal higher-order properties of
objects. It is a necessary prerequisite to the development of knowledge in infancy. At birth,
the various perceptions of objects are unified to make the world stable.

How should we interpret this result? Several explanations have been proposed:

1. Maurer (1993) suggested that newborns cannot yet distinguish among the
various senses. On this view, early cross-modal transfer is based on a lack of
distinction rather than on a cross-modal recognition of objects. A synesthesia
phenomenon would be more appropriate to understand the relations between
sensory modalities: “… The newborn’s senses are not well differentiated but are
instead intermingled in a synesthetic confusion. […] Energy from the different
senses, including the proprioceptive sense of his or her own movement, is largely
if not wholly undifferentiated: the newborn perceives changes over space and
time in the quantity of energy, not the sense through which it arose” (Maurer,
1993, p 111-112). The phenomenon of synesthesia has been described as a
“mixing” of the senses (Rich, Bradshaw, Mattingley, 2004) or as being
evidenced in a person who experiences sensations in one modality when a
second modality is stimulated, even though no physical stimulation in the first
modality is presented (Marks, 1975; Ramachandran & Hubbard, 2001). The
most common form of synesthesia is known as colored hearing, where speech
sounds or music produce colored visual images as well as auditory perceptions.
2. Meltzoff (1993) proposed the Active Intermodal Matching hypothesis (A.I.M.),
because in the experiment on cross-modal transfer (Meltzoff and Borton, 1979),
one month-old infants matched what they saw and what they explored orally
(preference for the familiar texture). As a consequence, young infants use a
supramodal code that allows them to unify information processed from different
sensory modalities in one common framework. The same mechanism explains
neonatal imitations, such as tongue protrusion or mouth opening. According to
 Haptic Abilities in Infancy and their Relation to the Vision 415

Meltzoff’s hypothesis, imitation taps perception, cross-modal coordination and

motor control. Early imitation is mediated by A.I.M. and young infants use the
cross-modal equivalence between the dynamics of the visual stimulus and the
motor response that infants generate and feel.
3. E. J. Gibson (1969) suggested that infants are able to abstract amodal or common
information. Abstraction of common information involves equivalence between
modalities with regard to amodal properties such as location, texture, movement,
shape, duration, etc. Since Gibson’s suggestion, the concept of amodal
perception is often used to describe the link between modalities. A common
percept independent from any one sense is created.

To draw a conclusion from our data, we have to confront them with these three
explanations. It is necessary to examine whether cross-modal transfer is a general property of
the newborn human brain or whether it is evidenced only in certain directions of transfer. In
concrete terms, (1) if newborns cannot distinguish between senses then, in cross-modal
transfer tasks, whatever the first stimulated modality, recognition should be evidenced in the
second modality. (2) The same argument can be taken up for testing the concept of amodal
perception: a bi-directional transfer should be evidenced. (3) If A.I.M. hypothesis is correct,
a preference for the familiar object should be shown in the recognition test phase – infants
matching the felt (or seen) object with the seen (or felt) object.
In a first experiment, Streri and Gentaz (2004) tested for cross-modal transfer from the
left hand to eyes as well as transfer from the right hand (see Table 1b). Twenty-four newborns
had the tactile habituation phase with the left hand, 24 other newborns had it with the right
hand and 12 newborns did not receive a tactual habituation phase. In the visual phase, all
newborns looked at the familiar object and at the novel object in four sequential trials (one
object per trial). Cross-modal recognition was again evidenced from the right hand:
Newborns looked longer at the novel object. No visual recognition was evidenced from
infants in the left hand group. In the control group, newborns looked equally at the two
objects. The interpretation of the handedness factor at birth is very difficult (Streri and
Gentaz, 2004). Some authors suggested that handedness might be determined by foetal
position (Michel & Goodwin, 1979). Two-thirds of infants are born in a left vertex
presentation, which is probably also their position in the womb 3-4 weeks prior to birth. It has
been suggested that, due to the foetal position, the left arm is stuck to the mother’s back and
consequently receives a lesser flow of arterial blood than the right arm. Other studies in
connected fields also observed asymmetries favouring the right side before and after birth
(Streri, 1993). Newborns present a spontaneous preference for lying with their head turned
toward the right while supine (Coryell & Michel, 1978; Gesell, 1938; Turkewitz, Gordon, &
Birch, 1965). Handedness in cross-modal transfer from hand to eyes might have the same
origin.
In another and recent experiment, Sann and Streri (2007, experiments 1 and 2) tested the
transfer from eyes to hand and from hand to eyes to ascertain whether a complete primitive
unity of the senses would be shown (see table 1c). After a haptic habituation to an object
(cylinder or prism), infants saw the familiar and the novel shape in alternation. After a visual
habituation with either the cylinder or the prism, the familiar and the novel shape were put in
the infant’s right hand. The tactile objects were presented sequentially in an alternating
416 Arlette Streri

manner. Following haptic habituation, a visual recognition was again observed while
following visual habituation, no haptic recognition was found.

Discussion

The results bear on the three models described earlier.

1. An account that relies on a confusion of the senses is not supported. Haptic

inputs are transferred to the visual modality but the reverse is not true. The
senses are not mixed. Plausibly, synesthetic correspondences between sensory
modalities, namely between the auditory and visual modalities, exist in children
(Mondloch and Maurer, 2004). But actually, there is no evidence that the
newborn’s perception is synesthetic. Our results cannot stem from synesthesia
for several reasons. Some of these correspondences can be attributed to intensity
matching, but shape is a structural property that cannot be defined in terms of
“intensity of the stimulation”. According to Ramachandran and Hubbard (2001),
synesthesia is a sensory effect rather a cognitive one based on memory
associations. Our cross-modal transfer tasks between touch and vision with
successive presentations need cognitive processes such as memory and
comparison processes. Such processes are not involved in an intersensory paired-
preference procedure as used in Mondloch and Maurer’s (2004) experiments
where the visual and auditory stimulation are simultaneously presented.
Nevertheless, several forms of intersensory integration are possible at birth
because intersensory integration is not a unitary process (see Lewkowicz, 2000,
for a review).
2. Intermodal matching is not possible because the transfer is not reciprocal. A felt
object is matched with a seen object but a seen object is not matched with a felt
object. A common framework may exist, but the matching process is not
reciprocal as regards the object properties, at least in the case of cross-modal
transfer of shape information. Moreover, in our experiments, newborns and older
infants looked more at the novel object than the familiar object unlike the
Meltzoff and Borton’s (1979) experiments.
3. Detection of amodal information seems to be the best supported hypothesis
because habituation and dishabituation are observed in both modalities.
Newborns detect invariants whatever the modality that receives information. But
this hypothesis must be made more precise. How amodal information is
perceptually linked since transfer is not reciprocal?

Our results suggest that the similarity of processes does not necessarily lead to the
similarity of representations. Information processed by vision is, from birth, immediately
global and complete (Slater, Mattock, Brown and Bremner, 1991), whereas information
processed by touch, if it is global thanks to the grasp, it is also limited to the stimulation of
skin receptors. Moreover, the synthesis of successive information is not realized. This
discrepancy in the manner of information gathering could be the cause of non reciprocal
transfer between vision and touch. A seen object can be processed as a whole and the
 Haptic Abilities in Infancy and their Relation to the Vision 417

newborn does not manually recognize this totality from a felt feature. In contrast, an infant
can visually recognize a feature of an object that he or she previously felt. Amodal perception
would be obtained from the simplest processed information, that is, information gathered by
the haptic modality. The amodal percept is only partial because, as we saw it, the newborn’s
hand is not able to gain a complete percept of the object. As a consequence, cross-modal
transfer of shape between touch and vision is not a general property of the newborn human
brain since it is evidenced only in one direction, from touch to vision and only from the right
hand and not from the left hand.
To valid this scenario, we compared two properties (shape vs texture) by testing the bi-
directionality of texture in cross-modal transfer in newborns (Sann & Streri, 2007,
Experiments 3 and 4). To our knowledge, no study has examined whether a cross-modal
transfer between vision and touch exists in newborns for a property other than shape, such as
texture. Some results were however reported about texture processing. Molina and Jouen
(1998) showed that newborns are able to modulate their manual activity on objects that vary
only according to their texture. The study was based on the recording of the pressure activity
level exerted on objects. To access haptic perception, they used Hand Pressure Frequency
(HPF), which consists in the recording of the successive contacts between the skin and an
object while the object is being explored by the hand. Results showed that a continuous high
hand pressure was exhibited when newborns held smooth objects and a discrete continuous
low pressure when they held granular objects. In another study, Molina and Jouen (2001)
conducted an experiment to investigate intersensory functioning between vision and touch for
texture information in neonates. Using HPF, they compared manual activity recorded on
objects varying in texture in the presence or absence of visual information. The visual object
had either the same (matching condition) or different (mismatching condition) texture
information. In the matching condition, holding times increased but HPF remained
unchanged. In the mismatching condition, holding times remained unchanged but HPF
systematically changed during test period. Taken together, these results revealed that manual
activity is modulated by vision. This experiment pointed out the newborn's ability to compare
texture information between vision and touch. Using a perceptual conflict procedure,
Bushnell and Weinberger (1987) found cross-modal asymmetries for both shape and texture
information even on the part of infants as old as 11 months. Infants detected the difference
between a smooth egg-shaped object and a fur-covered cube and between a smooth cross and
a fur-covered cube (shape + texture) but did not react to the presentation of a smooth cube
and a smooth cross whereas they differentiated between the smooth cube from the smooth
egg. Infant’s haptic exploration is not as effective on its own as when it is “directed” by visual
information (Bushnell and Weinberger, 1987). Nevertheless, as these studies do not involve
memory, they do not tell us anything about cross-modal transfer in infants.
A comparison between shape and texture in bi-directional cross-modal transfer tasks
would reveal how information is gathered and processed by the visual and tactile modalities
and, as a consequence, would shed light on the perceptual mechanisms of newborns. If the
perceptual mechanisms implied in gathering information on object properties are equivalent
in both modalities at birth, we can expect to observe a reverse cross-modal transfer. By
contrast, if the perceptual mechanisms differ in the two modes, a non-reversible transfer
should be evidenced. Thirty-two newborns participated to two experiments (16 in cross-
modal transfer from vision to touch condition and 16 in the reverse transfer). The material
was one smooth cylinder vs one granular cylinder (a cylinder with pearls stuck on it). The
418 Arlette Streri

results revealed a reverse cross-modal recognition of texture between both modalities. These
findings suggest that the exchanges between the sensory modes seem to be similar for the
property of texture. Why do we observe a reverse cross-modal transfer for texture and not for
shape?
As regards the manner of gathering information, previous studies showed that adults
perceived texture most precisely when they were permitted to move their hands in a lateral
gliding motion across the surface of stimulus objects (Lederman & Klatsky, 1987; 1990).
However, newborns do not display this exploratory procedure. The grasping reflex is a rough
exploratory procedure but it seems sufficient to differentiate between granular vs smooth
objects. The visual scanning of the surface of an object is also sufficient to differentiate a
granular from a smooth object. As a consequence, our results suggest that the manner of
gathering and exchanging information about texture across modalities is equivalent in touch
and vision from birth. This is not the case for the shape processing. Texture is a material or
microgeometric property better processed by touch than by vision (see Hatwell et al., 2003).
Our results reveal that newborns process this property by the hands as well as by the eyes.
Shape, a geometrical or macrogeometric property, is better processed by vision than by touch.
Our results confirm also this evidence. Neuroimaging data obtained in human adults
suggested there may exist a functional separation in cortical processing of micro- and
macrogeometric cues (Roland et al., 1987). More recently, Merabet et al. (2004) confirmed
the existence of a functional separation and suggested that the occipital (visual) cortex is
functionally involved in tactile tasks requiring fine spatial judgments is normally sighted
individuals. The discrepancies of findings concerning bi-directional cross-modal transfer
tasks of texture and shape seem to support the neuroimaging data obtained in adults.
In conclusion, our investigation of bi-directional cross-modal transfer sheds light on the
perceptual mechanisms already present at birth. Our findings suggest that links between
modalities exist from birth. Nevertheless, these links do not constitute a primitive and global
unity of the senses: First, cross-modal transfer is not a general property of the brain since
transfer of shape information is revealed from the right hand but not from the left hand (Streri
& Gentaz, 2004) and not from vision to touch (Sann & Streri, 2007; Exp. 2). Second, cross-
modal transfer depends on object properties since it is fully realized with texture but not with
shape (Sann & Streri, 2007). Thus, cross-modal transfer depends both on the constraints and
specificities of each sensory mode and on object properties.

The Development of Cross-Modal Transfer between Touch and Vision

Other research was performed using a bi-directional cross-modal transfer task, from
hands to eyes and from eyes to hands with two month-old babies (Streri, 1987, exp. 2) and
with 4 to 5 month-olds (Streri and Pêcheux, 1986b). The findings in bi-directional cross-
modal transfer tasks have revealed that two month-old infants visually recognize an object
they have previously held (Streri, 1987, exp. 2), but the tactile recognition of an already seen
object is not observed (see table 1d - 1e). A plausible explanation of these results of cross-
modal transfer is that, as in newborns, the levels of representation reached by each modality
are not equivalent sufficient to exchange information between sensory modalities. This
hypothesis is validated by the fact that, if a two month-old baby is presented with a degraded
visual stimulation (a bi-dimensional sketch of an 3D object) that can give a blurred percept
 Haptic Abilities in Infancy and their Relation to the Vision 419

(see Table 1f), tactile recognition is possible, which is not the case with a visual volumetric
object (Streri and Molina, 1993). Our results are supported by the Ernst and Banks’s model
(2002) of human adults’ performances. In this study, adults performed an intersensory
integration task comparing the size of objects between touch and vision. Results revealed that
visual capture was observed when the visual stimulus was clear (“noise-free”) and haptic
capture was observed when the visual stimulus was quite noisy. In other words, the sensory
modality that dominates over people’s performance is the one that carries the lower level of
variance.
At five months, the asymmetrical relationship is the opposite. For the first time, a baby
becomes capable of tactually recognizing an object already looked at, but the reciprocal
touch-vision relationship temporarily disappears (Streri & Pêcheux, 1986b) (see Table 1g).
Touch-to-vision transfer occurs at birth and at two months of age but disappears at five
months, whereas the infant manually recognizes an object he/she has already seen. The baby
is at a stage when manual skills dominate exchanges with the environment. For example, the
coordination between vision and touch is extensively practised: when an object is near to
babies, they will reach out to grasp it immediately and when an object is put in their hands,
they will look at it. One hypothesis would be that manual skills in reaching for grasping the
seen objects temporarily interferes with the perceptive function of the hand that appears from
birth. The lack of touch-to-vision transfer at 5 months is transitory because at six months and
over, touch-to-vision transfer is once again observed (Ruff and Kohler, 1978; Rose, Gottfried
and Bridger, 1981a).
Failures in reciprocal cross-modal transfer are again found in 1 year-olds (Rose and
Orlian, 1991). In this study, infants received four tasks: after visual familiarization, infants
were tested either for visual recognition (V-V) or cross-modal transfer (V-T); after tactual
familiarization, they were tested either for tactual recognition (T-T) or cross-modal transfer
(T-V). The results indicated that the V-V condition was the easiest and the V-T condition was
the more difficult. T-T and T-V conditions gave intermediate results.
Several reasons for these discrepancies in infancy were proposed. 1. The eyes processed
information about shape faster and better than the hands (Streri, 1987; Rose & Orlian, 1991).
2. The level of representation is not equivalent in both modalities. The tactile percept is vague
or partial whereas the visual percept is already precise and global (Streri, 1987; 1993). 3. The
asymmetry in cross-modal transfer (T-V > V-T) occurs because the eyes and hands pick up
different object characteristics, rather than directly picking up the same invariants or amodal
properties (Rose & Orlian, 1991; See also, Rose, 1994). The last two interpretations are not
contradictory. Because the necessary exploratory procedure to detect precise shape (contour
following) is not displayed in young infants, they might gather information partially with
their hands and more completely with their eyes, thus perceiving different invariants. As a
consequence, information initially gathered and stored in one sense is elaborated in such a
way as to become unavailable to another.
In children, the results are contradictory: Some studies have shown that they perform
significantly better on visual-tactual transfer than on tactual-visual transfer (Rudel and
Teuber, 1964, 1971; Stoltz-Loike and Bornstein, 1987), other studies do not report such
differences in performance (Rose, Blank & Bridger, 1972; see also Freides, 1974 for a
review). In contrast, adults’ performances are often less good in the V-T condition than in the
T-V condition (Connolly and Jones, 1970; Jones and Connolly, 1970; Juurmaa & Lehtinen-
Railo, 1988; Newham & MacKenzie, 1993; cf. Hatwell, 1994). Recently, a PET study
420 Arlette Streri

revealed that the human brain mechanisms underlying cross-modal discrimination have two
different pathways depending on the temporal order in which stimuli are presented
(Kawashima et al., 2002). The dorsal premotor cortex, the ventral premotor cortex, and the
inferior temporal cortex of the right hemisphere were activated during VT but not during TV.
Moreover, psychophysical measures on the same adult subjects provided evidence that the
percentage of correct responses was the lowest during VT compared to that during TV. These
results are recently confirmed by an fMRI study (Miquée et al., 2007).
Thus, the T-V condition appears better performed than the V-T condition from birth and
throughout life for cross-modal information of shape. From 1968, Lobb suggested that the
presumed superiority of transfer in the tactual-visual sequence was an artefact of visual
superiority for shape perception. More precisely, Connolly and Jones (1970) claimed that
information is translated into the form required immediately by the task and that this is a
function of order of presentation. Information reaching a less adept modality (the haptic
mode) is translated into the code of the most adept modality (the visual mode). This implies
that the development of cross-modal functions consists of learning to perform the translation.
Our results obtained in bi-directional cross-modal transfer of shape from birth and beyond
support this point of view.
In short, coordination between touch and vision exists at birth. The links between the two
modalities are not complete however, because they depend on the efficiency of information
processing in each modality (vision or touch). The relations between sensory modalities are
mainly determined by the haptic mode in infancy as well as in children and adults. Transfer of
object shape is rarely reciprocal because the manner of gathering and memorizing information
in the visual and haptic sensory modalities is quite different, but coordination is always
present either from the hands or from the eyes. As a consequence, intersensory integration is
dynamic in the course of development.
This conclusion concerns mainly the shape of objects. Although other research has to be
performed with other object properties such as material properties (texture or substance) from
birth, these findings seriously undermine the hypothesis of the primitive unity of the senses,
while affirming that the links between the sensory modalities are always present. Our results
suggest that amodal perception is an obligatory cognitive process (Fodor, 1983) that allows an
organism to adapt to its environment. But, this process becomes flexible and penetrable in the
course of development, because the hands are both the motor system by which reaching for
and grasping are carried out and the active perceptual system through which spatial
information is gathered from the environment.

Haptic Cognition in Infancy

The study of intermodal perception focuses on how and when infants perceive
information from different modalities as belonging to a single unified object representation
(Hatwell, 1994). Haptic and visual receptors are stimulated and infants have to create a
common percept or representation of the object that they see and feel. Physical reasoning is
the study of infants’ expectations for the way that objects should move and interact in the
environment. These studies focus on what kind of knowledge infants possess about the
physical world. For example, the knowledge that objects are solid, bounded entities that
maintain their physical properties through space and time leads infants to attend to certain
 Haptic Abilities in Infancy and their Relation to the Vision 421

types of information when viewing physical events (Spelke et al. 1992; Spelke, 1994).
Intermodal perception and physical reasoning in young infants have been developed relatively
independently. Recently, using a violation-of-expectation method, Schweinle and Wilcox
(2004) examined 5.5 month-olds’ abilities to coordinate information from the tactile and
visual modalities and use their intermodal object representations to interpret physical events.
Infants were tactilely presented with a ball that was either rigid or compressible. Following
the tactile exploration trials, infants viewed a test event in which the ball moved back and
forth through a tunnel. The ball was either larger or smaller than the tunnel opening. When
the ball was much larger than the tunnel opening, the infants correctly judged that the
compressible ball, but not the rigid ball (violation of expectancy) could pass through the
tunnel and when the ball was much smaller than the tunnel opening, the infants correctly
judged that both the compressible and the rigid ball could fit through the tunnel. Thus, infants
are capable of using information about object substance encoded tactilely to interpret a
passing-through event presented visually.
In a different manner, experiments show that the haptic system has its own encoding
processes and that infants can use their hands to gain knowledge of the world in the same
manner as vision. Perception of partially occluded objects provides the point of departure for
these studies of haptic cognition. To study infants’ perception of unity under occlusion,
Kellman and Spelke (1983) developed a method using habituation and recovery of visual
attention. This method included two phases. In the habituation phase, infants saw a display
containing a rod behind an occluder. The rod moved in translation behind the occluder. In the
test phase, infants were presented with two visual displays: a complete rod or two separate
pieces corresponding to the visible areas present in the occlusion display. The logic was the
following: if in the habituation phase, infants thought they saw a complete rod, they should
look less at the complete rod than at the separate pieces. The reverse is also true. If in the
habituation phase, infants thought they saw two visible pieces, they should look longer at the
complete rod than at the separate pieces in the visual test.
All the experiments provided evidence that 4 month-old infants consider the occluded rod
as complete in the condition where it is in translation behind a stable occluder. When the
occluder moved in a contingent manner with the rod or when the occluder moved and the rod
was stable, or when the whole display was stable, then perception of the complete rod was not
clear. Infants evidently perceive objects by analyzing the motions of surfaces so as to form
units that move as wholes, but not by analyzing the colors, textures, and shapes of surfaces so
as to form units of maximal simplicity and regularity. So, when the visible edges of these two
parts of occluded rod were not linked according to similarity or any other Gestalt principle,
but they were moved back and forth with a common lateral translation, unity was perceived
(see Kellman and Arterberry, 1998, for a review). As a result, common motion of the rod
alone specifies object unity. Subsequent research (Kellman, Spelke, and Short, 1986) sought
out the motion relationships that underlie perception of object unity. They found that rigid
translations along any axis, including translations in depth, led to infants’ perception of unity.
In contrast, rotary motion did not lead to infants’ perception of unity until they were at least 6
months old (see Eizenman and Berthental, 1998). All the results provided evidence that
young infants are able to complete missing information and to conceive a partially seen object
in its totality. This ability also occurs in other species, such as the domestic chick (Regolin
and Vallortigara, 1995).
422 Arlette Streri

In a series of experiments, we adapted these designs from visual perception to examine

haptic perception. We used the cross-modal paradigm to discover whether perception of unity
is amodal and involves a similar process in the haptic mode under the same conditions as the
visual mode. Four to 5 month-old infants held two rings, one in each hand, under a cloth that
blocked their view of the rings and the space between them. In one condition the rings were
rigidly connected and moved together, whereas in the other condition the rings could be
moved independently (see Table 2a). After exploring the rings haptically, infants received, in
an alternating manner, a visual test with pairs of rings that were connected or separated.
Across all experiments, infants explored the rings bimanually during habituation, producing
patterns of rigid or independent motion, but they never touched the connection. The
experiments provided evidence that infants perceive the unity and boundaries of objects by
detecting the motion patterns that they themselves produced. Infants who explored the
independently moveable rings perceived two distinct objects, while infants who explored the
rigidly moveable rings perceived a single object (Streri and Spelke, 1988).
In the other experiments, Streri and Spelke (1989) tested whether figural goodness or
motion relationships predominate in the haptic modality. Either the rings moved rigidly
together and had the same substance, texture, weight, etc. or the rings differed in all these
characteristics (see Table 2b). In the haptic modality as in the visual modality, infants appear
to perceive object unity by analyzing motion relationships but not by analyzing figural
goodness.
Streri, Spelke, and Rameix (1993) sought out the kind of motion relationships that
underlie unity perception in the haptic mode. In five experiments, 4 to 5 month-old infants
manipulated a device made up of a small and a large surface that they could hold in each hand
by a handle. In one condition, the surfaces were rigidly connected. In the second condition,
the handles could be moved by sliding the small surface vertically along the large surface. In
the final condition, the small surface could be pulled away from the large surface and pushed
towards it (see Table 2c). In a passive condition, the experimenter held and moved the device.
After haptic habituation to the device, infants received in the visual modality the connected
device or the two separated surfaces. The findings revealed that infants who explored the
rigidly connected device visually perceived the display as a single unit. When infants
explored the device either by sliding or by moving apart the two elements, they perceived it
as two units. When the experimenter moved the display, the infants’ responses were
indeterminate. Infants looked equally at the two visual displays.
Finally, Streri, Gentaz, Spelke, and Van de Walle (2004) investigated infant’s perception
of unity in relation to two properties of the assemblies. First, we varied whether the two rings
were connected to the same pivot point or to two spatially separated pivot points. Second, we
varied whether the two rings underwent a single rigid, rotary motion, opposite rotary motions
(like scissors), or independent rotary motions. We asked whether infants perceive object unity
in the haptic mode on the basis of patterns of rotary motion, and whether their perception is
affected by specific spatial and temporal properties of the motion patterns (see Table 2d).
When the infants explored the unconnected independent movement display, they perceived
two units. When the infants explored the connected rigid movement display, they visually
perceived one unit. When the infants explored the connected independent movement display
or the connected opposite movement display, their perception was ambiguous. The findings
suggest that all rigid rotations are potentially informative to infants. The perception of object
unity is influenced by three spatio-temporal properties of rotary motion: the presence or
 Haptic Abilities in Infancy and their Relation to the Vision 423

absence of a common fixed point of rotation, the presence or absence of a common pattern of
rigid displacement, and the presence or absence of a contingent motion.
In short, with their hands considered in isolation, infants are able to detect some physical
constraints on the movement of simple or composite objects. They are able to complete
missing information thanks to their own movements on the objects manipulated only with
their hands. They possess representational capacities that are similar in the visual and haptic
sensory modalities.

Table 2. Perception of object unity in the haptic mode

Infants’ thinking ability has recently been explored in another domain of competences,
that of the detection of numerosity. Using habituation-dishabituation procedure, several visual
studies have provided evidence that infants, as early as birth, are sensitive to number and
discriminate between two vs three points (Starkey Cooper, 1980; Antell & Keating, 1983)
or can compute subtraction or addition when 5-month-olds (Wynn, 1992). However, there is a
debate about whether this ability results from sensitivity to perceptual features or from a more
general abstract representation of numerosity. One way to answer this question is to examine
whether infants recognize cross-modal numerical correspondences. A first attempt to examine
such an ability in infants was carried out by Starkey, Spelke, and Gelman (1983, 1990). In
two series of experiments, they provided evidence that 6-to 8-month-old infants can match a
number of sounds to the same number of visual objects. Infants were habituated to pictures of
two or three heterogeneous objects while hearing two or three drumbeats. Infants looked
longer at the pictures with the number of items corresponding to the number of drumbeats.
This result is crucial because it suggests that infants have an abstract, amodal mechanism for
numerical representation across the visual and auditory modalities. Thus, this mechanism
424 Arlette Streri

might depend on cognition rather than on perception. Do infants show similar numerical
abilities in the haptic mode? A recent research investigated infants’ ability to abstract
numerical information from a set of objects presented in the haptic sensory mode (Féron,
Streri, & Gentaz, 2006). 4½-to 5-month-old infants were first haptically familiarized with two
or three objects with different shapes presented one by one in their right hand. Then, they
were presented with visual displays containing two or three objects, in alternation. To prevent
a possible cross-modal transfer of shape, the visual objects were a mix of topological and
geometrical characteristics of the haptic objects. For purposes of comparison, infants in a
baseline condition also received the two visual displays but without any previous haptic
familiarization. Results showed different patterns of looking preferences in the three
conditions. In both conditions of haptic familiarization, infants looked longer at the display
whose number of objects did not match the number of objects previously held, whereas
infants in the baseline condition did not show significant preferences for any of these two
displays. These findings reveal that infants can count the number of different objects received
in their hand and detect numerical correspondences between a haptic sequence of objects and
a visual scene. An amodal mechanism of detection of numerosity exists in the haptic as well
as in the visual mode but also in the auditory mode (see Starkey, Spelke & Gelman, 1983 ;
1990).
In the two different domains presented, young infants have been found to detect an
abstract piece of information independently of the properties of the handled objects. The
infants are able to abstract and fulfill missing information from complex events that they
produce with their hands. In consequence, perception of object boundaries as well as
detection of numerosity rest on the same processes through vision and touch. These studies
seem to indicate that when infants have to think about things, the mechanism involved
transcends the specificities of sensory modalities. In other words, a common, amodal process
seems to underlie the infant’s thought in various cognitive tasks.

CONCLUSION
The purpose of our research has been to obtain a developmental overview of the sighted
infant’s manual system working without vision. Our studies have allowed us to compare and
delimit the performances of each system considered in isolation and to test also their
efficiency or, in contrast, their impairment of another system. To sum up, this paper has
provided evidence for various abilities of hands in infancy from birth. The newborns’ haptic
mode is not limited to oral exploration. On the contrary, our research has revealed several
competencies of infants’ manual exploration. Newborns and infants, while holding an object,
are able to gather some properties of this object. Some properties are specific to the haptic
mode – for example temperature – and can be processed only by touch. Other properties such
as shape or texture are amodal (i.e. gathered and processed by two modalities). As regards the
object shape, our findings reveal that newborns and older infants are able to detect invariants
by their manual exploration in the same way as by visual exploration. They discriminate
between various shapes with their hands alone. They understand also, due to their bimanual
exploration, that objects are solid, bounded entities that maintain their physical unity through
space in the same manner as with their visual exploration. As a consequence, the cognitive
 Haptic Abilities in Infancy and their Relation to the Vision 425

abilities of infants when they are exploring objects with their hands alone are not mediated by
vision. The haptic system has its own encoding processes that are similar to those of the
visual mode.
These results allow us to begin to understand how congenitally blind infants can perceive
and understand the world by touch. Of course, the neurologically healthy young infants in our
experiments who were working without visual input are not directly comparable to blind
infants. Still, our results suggest that the haptic mode is the best candidate to substitute for
their visual deficits. We suggest that when blind infants contact and explore objects with their
hands, they come to perceive and understand the world.
When the sensory modalities have to interact with each other, in the cross-modal transfer
tasks, our findings do not support the complete unity of senses hypothesis at birth suggested
by Gibson (1966) and Gestalt theory but reveal that a link always exists between the sensory
modalities. This link is not obtained due to a matching process or a confusion of the senses,
but rather appears to be due to an abstract amodal percept that is mainly settled by the haptic
mode. This amodal percept is not fully complete, because infants’ manual exploration is
limited and does not allow infants to obtain a good perception of the whole object. Moreover,
the haptic mode is the less efficient mode to process shape information. The link between
sensory modalities stems from a necessary, always maintained, and flexible process.
Plausibly, these properties allow infants to regulate their activity in relevant ways in the
course of development.
We know that infants with autism have some problem integrating information among the
sensory modes. This deficit in sensory integration is probably related to their well-
documented difficulty in body schema. We suggest that research on intermodal transfer tasks
between touch and vision in normal infants may provide a model for this population.

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Editor: Carla E. Wilhelm, pp. 433-464 © 2012 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 14

EMOTIONAL MODULATION OF SELECTIVE

ATTENTION: EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE IN
SPECIFIC PHOBIA

Marlen Figueroa1, Sonia Rodríguez-Ruiz11, José L. Mata1,2,

Walter Machado-Pinheiro3 and Jaime Vila1
1
University of Granada, Granada, Spain
2
University of Jaén, Jaén, Spain
3
Federal Fluminense University, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

1. INTRODUCTION
Empirical research has demonstrated that emotional information is rapidly and
extensively processed and that assessment of that information takes place automatically,
outside of conscious awareness (Edelstein & Guillath, 2008). This processing bias
presumably occurs in conditions that require the healthy or anxious individual to scan the
enviroment for information (Mathews & MacLeod, 1994). So, the attention is captured by, or
shifted towards, emotionally relevant stimuli. Multiple factors can explain how emotion
drives attention. This chapter throws light on some of these factors.

Emotional Arousal and Survival

From an evolutionary point of view, some authors propose that philogenetically prepared
fear-eliciting stimuli, due to their survival value, drive attention independently of the
individual`s anxiety level (Lipp & Derakshan, 2005; Öhman et al., 2001).
Similarly, Lang and collaborators (1997) suggest that preferential processing of
threatening information is an adaptive response whenever an arousing stimulus appears in the

1
Departamento de Personalidad, Evaluación y Tratamiento Psicológico Facultad de Psicología Universidad de
Granada Campus de la Cartuja s/n 18071, Granada (Spain) Phone: (+ 34) 958 24 37 53 (Lab) (+ 34) 958 24 62
50 (Office) Fax: (+ 34) 958 24 37 49 E-mail: [email protected]
434 Marlen Figueroa, Sonia Rodríguez-Ruiz, José L. Mata et al.

environment. Bradley and colleagues (2001, 2003) have examined the behavioral and
physiological responses toward emotional images and have found that these emotional
responses vary according to the valence and arousal of the images. In fact, Cisler and
coworkes (2007) indicate that the difficulty in disengaging oneself from emotional stimuli is
explained by their arousal.
The atttentional interference in high arousal conditions has also been confirmed in other
studies showing delayed response latencies when people are looking at erotic or unpleasant
images (Schimmack, 2005). Also Chen and collaborators (2002) found similar attention
deployment to specific stimulus contents (i.e. positive and negative words). Therefore,
affective influences on attention can be predicted by arousal ratings of affective images.

Hemispheric Asymmetry in Emotional and Attentional Processing

Neuropsychological theories emphasize the relevance of the hemispheric mechanisms

underlying the emotional processing. Borod and colleagues (2001) propose two alternative
hypotheses:
The right hemisphere hypothesis. This hypothesis states that the right hemisphere is
specialized in emotions, independently of their affective valence (positive or negative).
Therefore, right hemisphere strategies (integrative and holistic) and functions (non-verbal and
viso-spatial) are specifically linked to the processing of affective stimuli. In addition, the right
hemisphere has a greater multimodal integration capacity (Goldberg & Costa, 1981) and
larger connections between lobe and axonal regions than the left hemisphere. According to
this hypothesis, the right hemisphere meets all the requirements for processing emotional
information.
The valence hypothesis. This hypothesis has two versions. The first one proposes that the
right hemisphere is specialized in unpleasant and negative emotions whereas the left
hemisphere is specialized in pleasant and positive ones, independently of the processing mode
(i.e. perception and expression).
The second version claims that the hemispheric specialization occurs for the expression
and experience of emotion, but that the right hemisphere is dominant for the perception of
emotions of both valences (Davidson, 1984).
So far, the right hemisphere hypothesis has received more support (Borod et al., 2001;
Mathews & Klug, 1993; Richards et al., 1995; Van Serien & Heijt, 1995, amongst others). In
contrast with the large number of studies examining this hypothesis, less research has been
done into the valence hypothesis.
In line with the latter hypothesis, Mathews and Klug (1993) demonstrated that
participants showed a right hemispheric interference only when processing threat-related
words. However, those who reported higher trait anxiety levels also showed this interference
with positive words. Similarly, and congruent with the right hemisphere hypothesis, Richards
and coworkers (1995) reported that participants with high anxiety levels show significant
interference with emotional contents (both positive and negative ones) presented in the left
visual field (right hemisphere) in comparison with neutral content.
 Emotional Modulation of Selective Attention 435

Attention, Anxiety and Negative Affect

Although emotional stimuli are processed in a preferential manner over neutral ones in all
individuals, people who manifest higher anxiety levels present greater attentional biases
during affective processing. The direction of the bias is, however, unclear. Various studies
(Buodo et al., 2006; Cisler et al., 2007) confirm that anxious individuals assign more
attentional resources to processing threatening information than people without anxiety.
Accordingly, it has been suggested that anxious individuals are oversensitive or hypervigilant
in detecting danger (hypervigilance or facilitation hypothesis) (Beck et al., 1985; Heinrichs et
al., 2001). However, other investigations (i.e. Foa & Kozak, 1986) point in the opposite
direction, showing that highly anxious individuals tend to inhibit or avoid deep processing of
threatening information, which leads them to a “cognitive avoidance” of threat stimuli
(avoidance or inhibition hypothesis).
Recently, some authors (Mogg, Bradley, Bono & Painter, 1997) have integrated these
two hypotheses in a model that suggests that anxious people are hypervigilant toward
threatening stimuli in the early stages of information processing, avoiding this information in
late stages (hypervigilance-avoidance theory) (Amir, Foa & Coles, 1998). Mogg et al.
(2004), for example, have shown that anxious people manifest greater engagement toward
highly threatening images when presented for short periods, but that they also manifest
greater avoidance to these images when they are presented for longer periods.
A possible explanation of the changes in attentional bias regarding emotional stimuli may
be found in Posner's (1986) theoretical model of selective attention. Posner’s model proposes
a series of elemental operations involved in selective attention: 1) interruption of ongoing
behavior, 2) disengagement of the attentional focus, and 3) movement and re-engagement of
the attentional focus toward a new location.
Within this framework, Posner and collaborators (Postner, Cohen & Rafal, 1982) have
developed a signal-target paradigm to study the operations involved in selective visual
attention. The procedure consists of asking the participants to press one of two computer
keyboard buttons (e.g., “n” or “b”) as quickly as possible when identifying the correct
position of the target stimulus (e.g., an asterisk) that appears on the screen to the right or left
of the central fixation point (e.g., a cross, where the participants are directing their eyes). The
target is normally presented after the appearance of a signal stimulus on the screen (i.e., an
arrow pointing toward the position where the target will appear or a lit up triangle in the same
place where the target will appear). The signal can be presented either indicating the same
visual field where the target will be presented (valid trials) or indicating the opposite visual
field (invalid trials). The reaction times (RTs) and the number of errors made when detecting
the target are, in general, larger in the invalid trials than in the valid ones. Thus, in the invalid
trials an attentional interference occurs, whilst in the valid trials an attentional facilitation
takes place. Therefore, the latency in the RTs and the number of incorrect responses (IRs)
made when detecting the target in the invalid trials determines the cost of disengagement,
movement and re-engagement of selective visual attention toward the target.
There are many versions of this task. One example is the version developed by Stormark
and colleagues (1995) who used emotionally negative words (i.e., death, anxiety, murder,
illness) and neutral ones (i.e., day, month, hour, week) as signals of the target stimuli,
presented in the location where the target was to be shown (valid trials) or in the opposite
location (invalid trials). The results of this study demonstrated that control participants had
436 Marlen Figueroa, Sonia Rodríguez-Ruiz, José L. Mata et al.

lower RTs in valid trials and higher RTs in invalid trials when the signal was a negative word
than when the signal was a neutral word. These results confirm that (a) emotional signals
presented in the same location as the target facilitate the ability to focus attention
(engagement), and (b) emotional signals presented in the opposite location as the target
increase the cognitive cost of attentional change interfering in the movement of attention
(disengagement). The changes of selective attention found in this task have been related to the
facilitation effect observed in anxious individuals toward threatening information. For
example, Amir and coworkers (2003) have suggested that individuals with social phobia
would get engaged on socially threatening stimuli.
Stormark, Field, Hugdahl and Horowitz (1997) have specifically reported data that
support the hypervigilance-avoidance hypothesis using different intervals of time between the
signal and the target (Stimulus Onset Asynchrony [SOA]) to evaluate the influence of
emotionally relevant words in participants with alcoholism (i.e. beer, bar, vodka, liquor bar).
The results of this study provide evidence that people with alcoholism show higher RTs for
targets invalidly signaled by alcohol words than for targets invalidly signaled by neutral
words when the signal-target interval was short (SOA= 100 ms). This result suggests an
increased difficulty to disengage attention from affective stimuli at a preattentive or automatic
level (hypervigilance). However, the same people showed the oppositve effect -lower RTs for
targets invalidly signaled by alcohol words than for targets invalidly signaled by neutral
words- when the signal-target interval was long (SOA= 500 ms). This result suggests an
increase facilitation to disengage attention from affective stimuli at a non-automatic or
controlled level (avoidance).
Other studies have reported similar effects. Vassilopoulos (2005), in a study with social
phobics, concluded that high levels of anxiety provoked both hypervigilance for threatening
signals in short presentations and avoidance of the same stimuli in long presentations. Mogg
and Bradley (2002) have defended similar conclusions.
Koster and collaborators (2005) have conducted two studies to examine if negative mood
or dysphoria also produces attentional bias. Differing from the previous findings, their results
reveal that participants with negative mood keep their attention on negative words presented
during long intervals (SOA= 1500 ms), which is probably caused by difficulty in disengaging
their attention from those words. Healthy participants, on the contrary, kept their attention
focused on positive words. These data support the existence of mood-congruent attentional
bias in dysphoria. Thus, positive mood eases the processing of positive information and
negative mood the processing of negative information. However, this effect occurs in the later
and not the earlier stages of information processing.
As regards the difficulty in disengaging attention from threatening stimuli, Koster and
colleagues (2004) point out the existing confusion concerning whether anxious individuals (a)
are hypervigilant and engaged on threatening information, or (b) have difficulty in
disengaging from that information. Based on their results, they conclude in favour of the
second option. The same conclusion would be applicable for people with negative mood,
dysphoria or depression.
Vassilopoulos (2005) studied socially anxious participants to determine if the differences
observed amongst participants with high and low social anxiety were due to individual
differences in propensity to anxiety or due to general differences in negative affectivity.
Given their results, the author suggests that participants with high depression or negative
affect show greater avoidance of threatening words, whereas those with high trait anxiety
 Emotional Modulation of Selective Attention 437

show higher avoidance of socially negative words but higher vigilance toward socially
positive ones.

Emotional Processing and Motivated Attention

Another possible explanation of why emotional information influences attentional

behavior is offered by motivational models of emotion (Lang, 1995; Lang, Davis & Öhman,
2000). Under this framework, emotions are considered action dispositions intimately linked to
two basic motivational systems, one appetitive and the other defensive. The appetitive system
is activated in contexts that promote sustenance and procreation, whereas the defensive
system is activated in contexts involving danger and threat. Attention is considered an
adaptive process, intimately related to these motivational systems, and absolutely necessary
for the organism's survival. Attentional resources are primarily allocated to situations
motivationally relevant for the organism. This type of attention is called “motivated attention”
(Bradley, Cuthbert & Lang, 1999). An example of how motivation drives attention is seen in
the cascade model of defensive reactions. This model assumes that, in natural settings,
defensive reactions follow a sequence or cascade of responses from attention to response
mobilization as a function of proximity of the danger and the arousal level. The initial phase
of the sequence is characterized by the freezing response, a state of attentive immobility when
the danger is first encountered at a safe distance and the arousal level is low. The sequence
changes into active defense, either flight or fight, when the danger is approaching and the
arousal level is high.
Consisting with this model, several investigators have suggested that when people
observe highly arousing negative images, they activate the defensive system producing a
freezing-like reaction (Azevedo et al., 2005). Fox and collaborators (2007) have proposed that
the freezing reaction found in animals could survive in humans at a more subtle level being
revealed in greater response latencies during tasks that involve presentation of fear-relevant
stimuli, specially in individuals with high anxiety levels.
Garcia Pereira and colleagues (2006) also suggest that the presentation of positive and
negative emotional images activates the two motivational systems prompting
approach/avoidance behavioral tendencies. Therefore, viewing pleasant and unpleasant
images should activate the appetitive and the defensive system, respectively, favouring motor
actions congruent with the activated system (approach or avoidance).
Duckworth and coworkers (2002) measured the reaction time to the detection of positive
and negative images and words under two response conditions: pulling a lever (approach) or
pushing the lever (avoidance). Participants were faster at pulling the lever to detect the
positive stimuli than detecting the negative ones. On the contrary, they were faster at pushing
the lever to detect the negative stimuli than detecting the positive ones. Therefore, the
reaction time was facilitated when there was congruence between the type of stimulus
(positive/negative) and the type of response (approach/avoidance). Incongruence produced
the opposite effect.
Similarly, Wentura and collaborators (2000) instructed participants to withdraw the
finger from a key (avoidance condition) or to press the key (approach condition) in response
to the presentation of affective words in a Go/No-Go task. It was found that responses to the
negative words were faster in the avoidance condition whereas responses to the positive
438 Marlen Figueroa, Sonia Rodríguez-Ruiz, José L. Mata et al.

words were faster in the approach condition. Congruence between the motivational system
activated by the stimuli (appetitive/defensive) and the type of response (appraoch/avoidance)
was the key factor to produce improved reaction times.
Within this perspective, the delayed reaction times, observed when unpleasant stimuli are
presented in paradigms that request pressing a key, could be explained as being due to
incongruence between the type of response requested (approach) and the motivational system
activated by the stimuli (the defensive one).
The goal of the present investigation was to examine the attentional bias toward
significant stimuli in a group of people with intense specific fears (subclinical phobics),
compared to a control group, using a modified version of Posner’s signal-target attentional
task (Posner, Cohen & Rafal, 1982). Participants were tested for attentional biases toward
phobic/non-phobic images and toward standard pleasant, neutral and unpleasant images.
Within this general goal, the investigation addressed three major topics: the laterality, the
stimulus onset asynchrony, and the negative affectivity effect. The three topics will be
analyzed separately following a sequential subdivision of the results into three parts. Specific
hypotheses for each part will be presented after description of the method.

2. METHOD
2.1. Participants

The participants were 77 students and staff from the University of Granada who
displayed either an intense fear toward a specific potentially phobic stimulus but no fear
toward another potentially phobic stimulus (experimental group: 36 women and 4 men) or no
fear toward any of both stimuli (control group: 33 women and 4 men). The participants' ages
in the experimental group were between 18 and 27 years old (M= 23.52; SD= 4.97) and those
of the control group were between 18 and 39 years old (M= 22.84; SD= 4.14). The
experimental and control groups were selected in accordance with the results of the
abbreviated ADIS-IV interview schedule (Brown, Di Nardo, & Barlow, 1994). Fearful
participants had intense fear, at least, of one specific phobic stimulus (score higher than 6),
but no fear, at least, of another specific phobic stimulus (score lower than 3), within a list of
potentially phobic stimuli. Control participants were people with no intense fears of any of
the phobic stimuli in the list (scores lower than 6), and with no fear of any of the two stimuli
(phobic and non-phobic) to be presented and previously selected by an experimental
participant. None of the participants had any anxiety disorder or was undergoing
pharmacological or psychological treatment. None displayed auditory and/or visual
deficiencies or any other physical problem. They participated voluntarily in the investigation.

2.2. Design

We used a mixed factorial design with one between-group factor (the Experimental and
Control groups) and four within-subject factors corresponding to four manipulations of the
attentional task: Laterality of the target (Valid versus Invalid trials), Stimulus Onset
 Emotional Modulation of Selective Attention 439

Asynchrony (Short versus Long SOA interval), Visual field Presentation (Right versus Left
visual field), and Type of Affective Image (Pleasant, Neutral, Unpleasant, Phobic and Non
phobic).

2.3a. Attentional Task

The attentional task was a modified version of Posner’s signal-target attentional task. The
signal stimuli were the affective images presented in the right or left visual field of the screen
and the target stimulus was an asterisk (*) presented on the same or opposite location of the
signal stimulus. Participants were instructed that the images preceding the target would
predict in two thirds of the trials the correct location where the target would be presented
(valid trials). In the remaining trials, the images would be non-predictive (invalid trials).
Participants had to press one of two keys as quickly and accurately as possible to indicate if
the target appeared on the right or left visual field. The task included one practice block of 36
trials and five experimental blocks of 60 trials (5 x 60 = 300 trials). Each trial had the
following sequence:

1. Presentation of the fixation point (+) in the center of the computer screen for a
randomized variable time of 550, 600, 650, 700, 750 or 800 ms.
2. Presentation of the affective image to the right or left side of the fixation point
(occupying 25% of each half of the computer screen) for a time period of either 100
ms or 800 ms.
3. Presentation of the target stimulus (*) to the right or left side of the fixation point for
a time period of 2 seconds.
4. Subject's response during this period pressing the “n” or “b” key depending on
whether the target appeared on the right (“n”) or left (“b”) side of the fixation point.
5. A randomized inter-trial interval of 900, 940, 980, 1020, 1060 or 1100 ms duration..

In the practice block, all images were neutral. In the experimental blocks, affective
images were phobic, non-phobic, pleasant, neutral and unpleasant presented in random order.
Within each experimental block, there were 40 valid trials (8 trials per affective category) and
20 invalid trials (4 trials per affective category). Within each type of trial (valid or invalid)
and affective category there were equal number of trials with 100 ms or 800 ms SOA, and
presented in the right or left visual field (see Table 1).

2.3b. Affective Images

The pleasant, neutral and unpleasant images were selected from the International
Affective Image System [IAPS] (Lang et al., 1999). Twelve images of each category were
used.The pleasant and unpleasant images were matched in arousal level. The rest of the
images (12 phobic and 12 non-phobic ones) were selected from a phobic image library taken
from the Internet (Viedma et al., 2008). These images were specific for each fearful and non-
fearful participant and included spiders, snakes, dogs, cats, cockroaches, wasps, pigeons,
440 Marlen Figueroa, Sonia Rodríguez-Ruiz, José L. Mata et al.

heights, darkness, deep water, bats, and injections-blood. All images were presented with a
646 x 699 pixels resolution and were centered on a black 1024 x 768 sheet.

Table 1. Experimental block design

40 Valid trials (VT) 8 VT with Pleasant images (P) 4 VT (P) SOA 100 2 VT (P) 100 Right
2 VT (P) 100 Left
4 VT(P) SOA 800 2 VT (P) 800 Right
2 VT (P) 800 Left
8 VT with Neutral images (N) 4 VT (N) SOA 100 2 VT (N) 100 Right
2 VT (N) 100 Left
4 VT (N) SOA 800 2 VT (N) 800 Right
2 VT (N) 800 Left
8 VT with Unpleasant images (U) 4 VT (U) SOA 100 2 VT (U) 100 Right
2 VT (U) 100 Left
4 VT (U) SOA 800 2 VT (U) 800 Right
2 VT (U) 800 Left
8 VT with phobic images (Ph) 4 VT (Ph) SOA 100 2 VT (Ph) 100 Right
2 VT (Ph) 100 Left
4 VT (Ph) SOA 800 2 VT (Ph) 800 Right
2 VT (Ph) 800 Left
8 VT with Non Phobic images (NPh) 4 VT (NPh) SOA 100 2 VT (NPh) 100 Right
2 VT (NPh) 100 Left
4 VT (NPh) SOA 800 2 VT (NPh) 800 Right
2 VT (NPh) 800 Left
20 Invalid trials (IT) 4 IT with Pleasant Images (P) 2 IT (P) SOA 100 1 VT (P) 100 Right
1 VT (P) 100 Left
2 IT (P) SOA 800 1 VT (P) 800 Right
1 VT (P) 800 Left
4 IT with Neutral Images (N) 2 IT (N) SOA 100 1 VT (N) 100 Right
1 VT (N) 100 Left
2 IT (N) SOA 800 1 VT (N) 800 Right
1 VT (N) 800 Left
4 IT with Unpleasant Images (U) 2 IT (U) SOA 100 1 VT (U) 100 Right
1 VT (U) 100 Left
2 IT (U) SOA 800 1 VT (U) 800 Right
1 VT (U) 800 Left
4 IT with Phobic Images (Ph) 2 IT (Ph) SOA 100 1 VT (Ph) 100 Right
1 VT (Ph) 100 Left
2 IT (Ph) SOA 800 1 VT (Ph) 800 Right
1 VT (Ph) 800 Left
4 IT Non phobic Images (NPh) 2 IT (NPh) SOA 100 1 VT (NPh) 100 Right
1 VT (NPh) 100 Left
2 IT (NPh) SOA 800 1 VT (NPh) 800 Right
1 VT (NPh) 800 Left

2.3c. Subjective Assessment of Phobic/Non-Phobic Images

The subjective assessment of 8 phobic and 8 non-phobic images (those used in the last
block of the attentional task) was undergone by participants, after completing the attentional
task, using the 4 scales of the Self-Assessment Maninkin (see below) and following the same
procedure applied in the elaboration of the Spanish norms of the International Affective
Picture System (Moltó et al., 1999; Vila et al., 2001). The participants, after receiving the
 Emotional Modulation of Selective Attention 441

instructions, practiced the assessment of 3 neutral images. Following that, they assessed the
16 affective images presented in random order. The images stayed projected, occupying
100% of the computer screen, for 6 seconds. Immediately after the presentation of each
image, the Valence, Arousal, Dominance, and Attention scales were projected on the screen,
in that order, and the participants made their ratings on the screen using the computer mouse.

2.4. Apparatus and Instruments

The attentional task and the subjective assessment of the images were controlled by a
Pentium IV computer running on Windows XP and the E- prime software. This software
provides a standardized programming language common to psychological research. In this
study, it was used to obtain: (a) the randomized presentation of the visual stimuli and (b) the
recording of the participant's responses (Reaction Times, Incorrect Responses, and Subjective
Ratings).

2.5. Dependent Variables

2.5.1. Behavioral Measures

Reaction time (RT): Latency time in milliseconds to detect the presentation of the target
at the correct location. In this investigation, the median of the RTs for each type of trial is
used as the dependent variable.
Incorrect responses (IR): Frequency of errors in pressing the correct key after the
presentation of the target. In the present work, the average IR for each type of trial is used as
the dependent variable.

2.5.2. Self-Report Measures

Self-Assessment Manikin [SAM] (Lang, 1980). The SAM consists of human-like figures
that embody the dimensions of valence, arousal, and dominance, with five figures
representing nine (1-9) intensity levels within each dimension. SAM’s valence rating ranges
from a figure with a large smile to a figure with a pronounced frown, arousal rating ranges
from a figure that appears agitated to a figure that looks drowsy, and the dominance-
submissiveness rating ranges from a very large figure to a very small figure. Recently, a
fourth dimension, labelled ‘attention’, has been included (Joffily, Jandre & Volchan, 2005).
Attention ratings range from a figure outwardly oriented (alert) to a figure inwardly oriented
(thoughtful). This assessment method has been extensively used in emotional research (e.g.,
Bradley & Lang, 1994).
Positive and Negative Affect Schedule [PANAS] (Watson, Clark & Tellegen, 1988). This
questionaire measures two dimensions of affectivity (positive and negative) either as trait or
state. It contains 20 adjectives (10 for each dimension) with a scoring format from 1 (“not at
all”) to 5 (“extremely”). The PANAS is said to possess excelent pychometric properties with
Northamerican and Spanish samples (Lostao et al., 1999; Robles & Páez, 2003).
STAIT Anxiety Inventory [STAI] (Spielberger, Gorsuch, & Lushene, 1970). This
questionaire measures the level of anxiety a person experiences. It includes a state version
442 Marlen Figueroa, Sonia Rodríguez-Ruiz, José L. Mata et al.

[STAI-S] and a trait version [STAI-T]. The instument comprises 20 items for each version
with a scoring format from 0 (“Hardly ever”) to 3 (“Nearly always”) for each item.
Anxiety Disorder Interview Schedule for DSM-IV [ADIS-IV] (Brown, Di Nardo, &
Barlow, 1994). This semistructured interview was used for the selection of the participants.
The ADIS- IV is a diagnostic instrument for clinical assessment of anxiety disorders, with
sound psychometric properties (Brown et al., 1994). It follows the DSM-IV diagnostic
criteria. In our study, it was used to confirm absence of any formal anxiety disorder in all
participants, except for intense fear of specific objets and situations (sub-clinical phobia) in
participants belonging to the experimental group.

2.6. Procedure

Participants were first contacted informally by announcements in classes and personal

communication. They then attended a laboratory session divided into three phases. In the first
one, the participant was informed of the general aim of the study, signed the informed consent
form, and completed the ADIS-IV, the PANAS-Trait, and the STAI-Trait. At the end of this
phase, participants were classified as experimental, control, or neither experimental or
control. Experimental participants were matched with control participants in such a way as to
have, as a whole, the same phobic and no-phobic stimuli in both groups. People not
complying with the inclusion criteria did not participate in the following phases of the study.
In the second phase, participants performed the attentional task and the subjective assessment
of the phobic/non-phobic images in this order. During both tasks, the researcher stayed in an
adyacent room to the experimental one. On completion of the attentional task, the researcher
went into the participant's room to give instructions on how to assess the images using the
SAM scales. In the final phase, participants completed the PANAS-State and STAI-State
questionaires, were thanked for their collaboration, and received a certificate that accredited
their voluntary participation in the study.

2.7. Data Analysis

The SPSS 15 for Windows statistical package was used for all analyses. One-way
ANOVA tests (for self-report measures) and mixed-factorial ANOVAs (for behavioral
measures) were conducted. These ANOVAs used specific combinations of the repeated
measure factors in order to facilitate the analysis and presentation of the results into three sub-
analyses: a) Sub-analysis 1: focused on standard Affective Images (Pleasant, Neutral and
Unpleasant) and Visual Field Presentation (Left and Right); Sub-analysis 2: focused on
Phobic Images (Phobic and Non-Phobic), Laterality (Valid and Invalid), and SOA (100 and
800 ms); and Sub-analysis 3: focused on individual differences in Negative Affectivity. All
analyses considered possible violation of the assumption of error variance homogeneity, and
the Greenhouse-Geisser correction was applied to repeated measure factors. Results are
reported with the original degrees of freedom and the corrected probability values. In the
analyses of significant interactions, pairwise comparisons were performed using t-test. The
level of significance was set at 0.05 for all analyses.
 Emotional Modulation of Selective Attention 443

3. SPECIFIC AIMS AND RESULTS

3.1. Sub-Analysis 1: Modulation of Attention by Standard Affective Images
and Visual Field Presentation

A large research literature (Borod et al., 2001; Edelstein & Guillath, 2008; Lipp &
Derakshan, 2005; Mathews & Klug, 1993; Mathews & MacLeod, 1994; Öhman et al., 2001;
Richards et al., 1995, amongst others) has confirmed the adaptive tendency to favor
attentional processing of emotional information as well as the dominance of the right
hemisphere in attentional tasks. Hence, in this first sub-analysis, we intended to examine the
emotional modulation of attention toward standard affective images (pleasant, neutral and
unpleasant) regarding the right and left visual field in sub-clinical phobic and control
participants. Given the non specific character of the standard affective images, we expect to
find increased RTs and an increased number of IRs in all participants in trials where pleasant
and unplesant images are presented, compared to neutral ones (arousal effect). Also, we
expect to find increased RTs and an increased number of IRs for all participants in trials
where the standard affective image is presented in the left visual field compared to trials
where the affective image is presented in the right visual field.

3.1.1. Reaction Time

The 2(x3x2) ANOVA with one between-group factor, Group (with 2 levels:
Experimental and Control) and two repeated measure factors: Image (with 3 levels: Pleasant,
Neutral and Unpleasant) and Visual Field Presentation (with 2 levels: Right and Left)
showed significant main effects of Image (F(2,152)=7.117, p<0.01) and Visual Field
Presentation (F(1,76)=17.997, p<0.001). The Group factor and the interactions were not
significant. The significant effect of Image reflects the longer RTs to respond to the target in
trials where pleasant and unpleasant images are presented, in that order, compared to neutral
ones (see Figure 1.1). The significant effect of Visual Field Presentation reflects the longer
RTs to respond to the target in trials where the affective images are presented in the left visual
field compared to those presented in the right visual field (Right: M=399 ms; Left: M=413
ms).

3.1.2. Incorrect Responses

The 2(x3x2) ANOVA showed a significant main effect of Visual Field Presentation
(F(1,76)=4.000, p<0.05). Participants, irrespective of the Group, made more mistakes when
responding to the target in trials where the affective images were presented in the left visual
field than in the right visual field (Right: M=0.190: Left: M=0.329).
The Image factor was not significant, although the tendency replicates the RTs results:
Participants, irrespective of the Group, made more mistakes in trials where pleasant and
unpleasant images are presented, in compared to neutral ones (see Figure 1.2).
444 Marlen Figueroa, Sonia Rodríguez-Ruiz, José L. Mata et al.

410

408

RTs
406

404

402

Pleasant Neutral Unpleasant

Standard Affective Pictures

Figure 1.1. Average RT after pleasant, neutral and unpleasant image presentation.

0.33

0.30

0.27
IRs

0.24

0.21

0.18

Pleasant Neutral Unpleasant

Standard Affective Pictures

Figure 1.2. Average number of IRs after pleasant, neutral and unpleasant image presentation.

3.2. Sub-Analysis 2: Modulation of Attention by Phobic Images, Laterality

and Soa

According to the vigilance-avoidance hypothesis (Amir, Foa & Coles, 1998; Mogg,
Bradley, Bono & Painter, 1997; Mogg et al., 2004), phobic stimuli with high negative valence
and arousal should modulate the performance of anxious people in an attentional task
showing interference or facilitation depending on the stage of the information processing
(Buodo et al., 2006; Cisler et al., 2007; Lang et al., 1997; Schimmack, 2005). In early stages
(short presentations), anxious people would show greater engagement to phobic images
(hypervigilance), whereas in later stages (long presentations), they would show greater
disengagement (avoidance). Engagement and disengagement would be indexed by
interference versus facilitation in our attentional task. Therefore, in this sub-analysis we
intend to examine: (a) the asynchrony effect between the affective images and the target
 Emotional Modulation of Selective Attention 445

presentation in Short and Long SOA trials, and (b) the influence of the spatial location in
Valid and Invalid trials.
We expect to find, in anxious participants, increased RTs and an increased number of IRs
in trials where phobic images are presented, compared to non-phobic ones, and compared to
control participants. As regards SOA and Laterality we expect increased RTs and an
increased number of IRs in Short SOA trials and in Valid trials. Finally, subjective measures
(SAM, STAI-S and PANAS-S) should confirm the selection criteria: Participants in the
experimental group should assess the phobic images as more unpleasant, more activating,
with less control and with more external attention than control participants. They should also
score higher in anxiety (STAI-S) and negative affect (PANAS-S).

3.2.1. Reaction Time

The 2(x2x2x2) ANOVA with one between-group factor, Group (with 2 levels:
Experimental and Control), and three repeated measure factors: Laterality (with 2 levels:
Valid and Invalid), Image (with 2 levels: Phobic and Non-Phobic), and SOA (with 2 levels:
Short and Long) showed significant main effects of Image (F(1,75)=4.063, p<0.05),
Laterality (F(1,75)=11.318, p<0.001), and SOA (F(1,75)=133.239, p<0.001), and an
interaction effect of Laterality x SOA (F(1,73)=11.908, p<0.001).
The significant Image effect is similar to the effect described in 3.1.1 (see Fig. 2.1):
longer RTs in trials where phobic images are presented, compared to non-phobic ones. As
expected, these differences are larger for experimental than control participants. The
significant SOA effect indicates longer RTs in trials with 100 ms SOA than in trials with 800
ms SOA. The significant Laterality effect indicates longer RTs in Invalid than in Valid trials
and Laterality), the direction of the changes is the same as indicated above.

413

409
RTs

405

401

397

Phobic No Phobic

Specific Affective Pictures

Figure 2.1. Average RT after phobic and non-phobic image presentation.

However, the above effects should be considered taking into account the significant
Laterality x SOA interaction. This interaction is analyzed below taking into consideration also
the Group and Image factors. When the main effects are again found, in this interaction
analysis, at the different levels of each factor (SOA
446 Marlen Figueroa, Sonia Rodríguez-Ruiz, José L. Mata et al.

A. SOA EFFECT IN VALID AND INVALID TRIALS

Valid Trials: There was a significant main SOA effect (F(1,75)=51.974, p<0.001) and a
significant Image x Group interaction (F(1,75)=3.889, p<0.05). The significant interaction
indicates that only the experimental group had longer RTs in valid trials where phobic images
are presented. The differences were not significant in control participants (see Fig. 2.2).
Invalid Trials: The results indicated significant Image (F(1,75)=3.890, p<0.05) and SOA
(F(1,75)=102.665, p<0.001) effects.

(a) (b)

Experimental Group Control Group

Experimental Group Control Group

440
440
430
430
420
420

RTs
RTs

410
410
400
400
390
390
Phobic No Phobic
Phobic No Phobic

Specific Affective Pictures Specific Affective Pictures

Figure 2.2. Average RT after phobic and non-phobic image presentation for each group in Valid (a) and
Invalid (b) trials.

B. LATERALITY EFFECT IN TRIALS WITH SHORT AND LONG SOA

Short SOA trials: The were significant main effects of Image (F(1,75)=4.615, p<0.05)
and Laterality (F(1,75)=22.817, p<0.001), and significant interaction effects of Image x
Group (F(1,75)=4.095, p<0.05) and Laterality x Group (F(1,75)=3.909, p<0.05). The
significant Image x Group interaction indicates that only the experimental group had longer
RTs in short SOA trials where phobic images are presented. The differences were not
significant in control participants (see Figure 2.3).
Long SOA trials: No significant effects were found in any of the main factors (Image,
Laterality and Group) and interactions.

3.2.2. Incorrect Responses

The 2(x2x2x2) ANOVA, Group (with 2 levels: Experimental and Control), Laterality
(with 2 levels: Valid and Invalid), Image (with 2 levels: Phobic and Non-Phobic), and SOA
(with 2 levels: Short and Long) showed a significant main effect of Group (F(1,75)=5.483,
p<0.05) and two significant interaction effects, Image x SOA (F(1,75)=5.209, p<0.05) and
Laterality x SOA (F(1,75)=11.605, p<0.001). The significant Group effect indicates that the
experimental group, in general, made more errors than the control group (see Fig. 2.4). This
graph also shows the tendency for all participants to make more errors in trials where the
phobic stimulus is presented.
 Emotional Modulation of Selective Attention 447

(a) (b)

Experimental Group Control Group Experimental Group Control Group

445 445

430
430

415 415
RTs

RTs
400 400

385 385

370
370
Phobic No Phobic
Phobic No Phobic

Specific Affective Pictures Specific Affective Pictures

Figure 2.3. Average RT after phobic and non-phobic image presentation for each group in Short (a) and
Long (b) SOA trials.

0.20

0.18

0.16
IRs

0.14

0.12

0.10

Phobic No Phobic

Specific Affective Pictures

Figure 2.4. Average of number IRs after phobic and non-phobic image presentation.

As regards the Image x SOA interaction, the tendency to make more errors in trials where
the phobic stimulus is presented becomes significant at long SOA interval (800 ms). At short
SOA interval (100 ms), the difference between phobic and non-phobic trials is not significant.
On the other hand, the significant Laterality x SOA interaction indicates that all participants
made more errors in invalid trials than in valid trials, but only at short SOA interval (100 ms).
At long SOA interval (800 ms) the differences between valid and invalid trials were not
significant.
The following analyses focus on the significant Laterality x Soa interaction also taking
into account the Group and Image factors.
448 Marlen Figueroa, Sonia Rodríguez-Ruiz, José L. Mata et al.

SOA EFFECT IN VALID AND INVALID TRIALS

Valid Trials: There were significant main effects of Group F(1,75)=3.773, p=0.05), and
Image (F(1,75)=3.773, p=0.05), and significant interaction effects of Image x Group
(F(1,75)=3.889, p=0.05) and Image x SOA (F(1,75)=3.773, p=0.05). The experimental group
commited more errors in valid trials where the phobic image was presented than in valid trials
where the non-phobic image was presented. No such differences were found in the control
group (see Fig. 2.5).
Invalid Trials: The results only showed a significant main effect of Group
(F(1,75)=6.045, p<0.05).

(a) (b)

Experimental Group Control Group

Experimental Group Control Group
0.35
0.35
0.30
0.30
0.25
0.25
0.20
IRs

IRs 0.20
0.15
0.15
0.10
0.10
0.05
0.05
0.00
0.00
Phobic No Phobic Phobic No Phobic

Specific Affective Pictures Specific Affective Pictures

Figure 2.5. Average number of IRs after phobic and non-phobic image presentation for each group in
Valid (a) and Invalid (b) trials.

3.2.3 Subjective Measures

Participants in the experimental group significantly reported more negative affect
(PANAS-E, F(1, 75)=11.150, p<0.001) and more anxiety (STAI-E, F(1, 75)=18.784,
p<0.000) after the experiment than control participants (see Table 2.1). They also assessed the
phobic images as significantly more unpleasant (t(75)=14.175, p<0.001), more arousing
(t(75)=9.488, p<0.001), less controllable (t(75)=9.862, p<0.001), and eliciting higher external
attention (t(75)=6.130, p<0.001) than control participants . They also assessed the non-phobic
images as significantly more pleasant (t(75)=3.195, p<0.01), less arousing (t(75)=3.308,
p<0.001), and more controllable (t(75)=2.872, p<0.01) than control participants (see Table
2.2).

3.3. Sub-Analysis 3: Modulation of Attention by Trait Anxiety and Negative

Affect

Previous studies have supported the existence of an attentional bias in people that inform
of high levels of anxiety and negative affect (Compton, 2000; Harman et al., 1997; Koster et
 Emotional Modulation of Selective Attention 449

al., 2005; Vassilopoulos, 2005). The aim of our final sub-analysis is to examine whether the
combination of anxiety and high negative affect maximizes the attentional bias found in our
previous analysis (sub-analysis 2). We expect to find that participants with intense fears of
phobic stimuli and high levels of negative affect would show higher indices of attentional bias
(RTs and IRs) and higher indices of negative reaction to the phobic images. For this analysis,
the experimental and control groups were divided into two groups -high and low in negative
affect- according to their score in the PANAS-T scale.

Table 2.1. Mean and standard deviation of PANAS-S and STAI-S scores for each group

PANAS-S (Negative) PANAS-S (Positive) STAI-S

Mean SD Mean SD Mean SD
Experimental 10.25 6.323 16.925 5.775 21.900 9.828
Group
Control Group 5.757 5.402 19.810 7.717 13.729 6.136
Experimental
10.250 6.323 16.925 5.775 21.900 9.828
Group
Control Group 5.757 5.402 19.810 7.717 13.729 6.136

Table 2.2. Mean (and standard deviation) SAM scores after phobic and non-phobic
images presentation for each group

Valence Arousal Dominance Attention

Phobic Non- Phobic Non- Phobic Non- Phobic Non-
Phobic Phobic Phobic Phobic
Experimental 1.80 7.57 7.98 3.24 2.28 6.31 7.48 4.42
Group (1.07) (1.17) (1.20) (1.69) (1.34) (1.59) (1.69) (1.53)
Control 5.20 6.60 5.12 4.46 5.04 5.46 5.54 4.66
Group (1.03) (1.47) (1.44) (1.53) (1.09) (0.89) (0.96) (1.25)

3.3.1 Reaction Time

The analyses presented in this sub-study followed a mixed-factorial ANOVA using
2x2(x2x2x2) repeated measures, with Group (with 2 levels: Experimental and Control) and
Negative Affect (with 2 levels: High and Low), as between-group factors, and three repeated
measure factors: Laterality (with 2 levels: Valid and Invalid), Image (with 2 levels: Phobic
and Non-Phobic), and SOA (with 2 levels: Short and Long).
The results showed statistically significant effects of Image (F(1,73)=4.889, p<0.05),
Laterality (F(1,73)=10.979, p<0.001), SOA (F(1,75)=140.694, p<0.001), Negative affect
(F(1,73)=7.406, p<0.008), and in Laterality x SOA (F(1,73)=11.544, p<0.001), SOA x Group
x Negative Affect (F(1,73)=5.946, p<0.017) and Image x Group x Negative Affect
(F(1,73)=3.752, p<0.057) interactions.
The significant main effect of Negative Affect indicates that the group with high negative
affect had longer RTs in general. However, the Image x Group x Negative Affect interaction
indicates that only the experimental group with high negative affect had delayed responses in
450 Marlen Figueroa, Sonia Rodríguez-Ruiz, José L. Mata et al.

trials where the phobic images were presented compared to non-phobic ones. No such
differences were found in the experimental group with low negative affect or in the control
group with high and low negative affect (see Figure 3.1).

(a) (b)

Low Negative Affect High Negative Affect

Low Negative Affect High Negative Affect

480.00 480.00

460.00 460.00

440.00 440.00
RTs

RTs
420.00 420.00
400.00 400.00
380.00 380.00
360.00 360.00
Phobic No Phobic Phobic No Phobic
Specific Affective Pictures Specific Affective Pictures

Figure 3.1. Average RT after phobic and non-phobic image presentation for Experimental (a) and
Control (b) group regarding Low and High negative affect.

To follow this triple interaction further, we performed an analysis including only the two
extreme groups of the Group x Negative Affect interaction (the group with high negative
affect from the experimental group and the low negative affect from the control group) for the
valid and invalid trials separately. The results of this analysis showed that only in valid trials
the experimental group with high negative affect had longer RTs than the control group with
low negative affect (t(36)=2.015, p<0.05) (see Fig. 3.2). In invalid trials the differences were
not significant.

(a) (b)

Low Negative Affect High Negative Affect

Low Negative Affect High Negative Affect

480 480
460 460
440 440
RTs

420
RTs

420
400 400
380 380
360 360
Phobic No Phobic Phobic No Phobic
Specific Affective Pictures Specific Affective Pictures

Figure 3.2. Average RT after phobic and non-phobic image presentation for each group in Valid (a) and
Invalid (b) trials.

Finally, a similar analysis with only the extreme groups was performed for Short and
Long SOA trials separately. The results showed that only in Short SOA trials the
experimental group with high negative affect had longer RTs in trials where the phobic image
was presented, compared the non-phobic one (t(36)=2.534, p<0.05) (see Fig. 3.3). No such
differences were found in the control group.
 Emotional Modulation of Selective Attention 451

(a) (b)

Low Negative Affect High Negative Affect

Low Negative Affect High Negative Affect

480 480

460 460

440 440

420 420

RTs
RTs

400 400

380 380

360 360

340 340

Phobic No Phobic Phobic No Phobic

Specific Affective Pictures Specific Affective Pictures

Figure 3.3. Average RT after phobic and non-phobic image presentation for each group in Short (a) and
Long (b) SOA trials.

3.3.2 Incorrect Responses

The 2x2(x2x2x2) ANOVA, with Group (2 levels: Experimental and Control) and
Negative Affect (with 2 levels: High and Low), as between-group factors, and three repeated
measure factors: Laterality (with 2 levels: Valid and Invalid), Image (with 2 levels: Phobic
and Non-Phobic), and SOA (with 2 levels: Short and Long), showed significant effects of
Group (F(1,73)=5.935, p<0.05), Laterality x SOA (F(1,73)=13.105, p<0.001), Laterality x
Negative Affect (F(1,73)=6.470, p<0.01), SOA x Image (F(1,73)=5.884, p<0.01), Laterality x
SOA x Image (F(1,73)=4.186, p<0.05), Image x Negative Affect (F(1,73)=4.661, p<0.05), and
Image x Group x Negative Affect (F(1,73)=3.817, p<0.05).
The significant Image x Group x Negative Affect interaction indicates that high negative
affect participants from the experimental group made more errors in trials where the phobic
image was presented than in trials where the non-phobic image was presented.
These differences were not observed in low negative affect participants from the
experimental group or high and low negative affect participants from the control group (see
Figure 3.4).
The remaining effects concerning Laterality and SOA were identical to those reported in
the previous sub-analysis.
Finally, given the differences observed for experimental and control groups with high and
low negative affect, we performed similar analyses to those performed for RTs using the
extreme groups (Experimental group with High Negative Affect and Control group with Low
Negative Affect).
For valid and invalid trials, we found that only in valid trials the experimental group with
high negative affect, compared to the control group with low negative affect, made more
errors in trials where the phobic image was presented, (t(36)=2.296, p<0.05), than in trials
where the non non-phobic image was presented (t(36)=1.056, p=0.298)(see Figure 3.5).
452 Marlen Figueroa, Sonia Rodríguez-Ruiz, José L. Mata et al.

(a) (b)

Low Negative Affect High Negative Affect Low Negative Affect High Negative Affect

0.60 0.60

0.50 0.50

0.40 0.40
IRs

0.30 0.30

IRs
0.20 0.20

0.10 0.10

0.00 0.00

Phobic No Phobic Phobic No Phobic

Specific Affective Pictures Specific Affective Pictures

Figure 3.4. Average number of IRs after phobic and non-phobic image presentation for Experimental
(a) and Control (b) group regarding Low and High negative affect.

(a) (b)

Low Negative Affect High Negative Affect Low Negative Affect High Negative Affect

0.70 0.70

0.60 0.60

0.50 0.50

0.40 0.40
IRs
IRs

0.30 0.30

0.20 0.20

0.10 0.10

0.00 0.00

Phobic No Phobic Phobic No Phobic

Specific Affective Pictures Specific Affective Pictures

Figure 3.5. Average number of IRs after phobic and non-phobic image presentation for each group in
Valid (a) and Invalid (b) trials.

3.3.3. Subjective Measures

This analysis was restricted to the Self-Assessment Manikin of the phobic and non-
phobic images in participants from the experimental group with high negative affect and
participants from the control group with low negative affect. Participants from the
experimental group with high negative affect assessed the phobic images as significantly
more unpleasant (t(36)=8.520, p<0.001), more arousing (t(36)=6.205, p<0.001), less
controllable (t(36)=8.135, p<0.001), and eliciting higher external attention (t(36)=4.702,
p<0.0001) than control participants with low negative affect. No significant differences were
found between both groups in the ratings of the non-phobic images in any of the SAM scales
(see Table 3.1).
 Emotional Modulation of Selective Attention 453

Table 3.1. Mean (and standard deviation) SAM scores after phobic and non-phobic
images presentation for each group

Valence Arousal Dominance Attention

Phobic Non- Phobic Non- Phobic Non- Phobic Non-
Phobic Phobic Phobic Phobic
Experimental Group 1.88 7.02 8.10 3.53 1.96 5.83 7.66 4.70
High (1.32) (1.30) (1.14) (1.69) (1.29) (1.52) (1.83) (1.64)
Negative Affect
Control Group 5.06 6.59 5.25 4.12 5.25 5.51 5.44 4.29
Low Negative (0.97) (1.37) (1.62) (1.68) (1.20) (0.79) (1.00) (1.30)
Affect

4. DISCUSSION
Our findings will be discussed following the same sequence of analyses presented in the
previous section and relating those findings to the key theoretical issues raised in the
introduction.
As regards the first analysis (sub-analysis 1), our findings have three relevant
implications. Firstly, they support the hypothesis that emotional stimuli capture and drive
attention producing difficulties in stimulus disengagement. The result is an interference in
attentional tasks following perception of highly arousing emotional stimuli, whether positive
or negative, in comparison with perception of neutral low arousing ones. In our study, a
significant effect was found of the affective arousal of standard pleasant and unpleasant
images impairing performance on the attentional task. The viewing of those images produced
longer reaction times and a higher number of incorrect responses than neutral images in all
participants (Chen et al., 2002; Cisler et al., 2007; Schimmack, 2005).
Secondly, they support the right hemisphere hypothesis. All affective stimuli (pleasant,
neutral and unpleasant, as well as phobic and non-phobic), presented in the left visual field
(right hemisphere), generated more emotional interference than the same stimuli presented in
the right visual field (left hemisphere). This effect was independent of stimulus valence and
arousal (Borod et al., 2001). It is unclear why neutral images, necessarily with low arousal,
also impair performance. It might be argued that all IAPS images, including those assessed as
neither very pleasant nor very unpleasant, are nevertheless emotional since they represent
natural scenes which, in our study, always contained people.
Thirdly, according to Duckworth et al. (2000) and Ventura et al. (2002), it would be
expected shorter reaction times when participants are viewing pleasant images compared to
unpleasant ones due to compatibility between the type of movement (approach) and the
motivational system activated by the images (appetitive). Our results show delayed reaction
times when viewing both unpleasant and pleasant images. The delayed reaction times when
viewing unpleasant images can be indeed explained as due to the incompatibility of the
requested movement (approach) with the motivational system activated by the image
(avoidance). Garcia Pereira et al. (2006) offer an explanation for the lack of faster reaction
times when participants view pleasant images (of erotic content): the potentially conflictive
reaction (sense of shame) when viewing those images in an experimental context.
454 Marlen Figueroa, Sonia Rodríguez-Ruiz, José L. Mata et al.

As regards the results of the second analysis (sub-analysis 2), our findings also have
relevant implications. The higher RTs and IRs shown by all participants in trials where
phobic images are presented, compared to non-phobic ones, might be explained as due to an
arousal effect. Nevertheless, they can also be explained as due to the valence of the stimuli
(their unpleasantness). In this sub-analysis, there were no pleasant images. All images were
unpleasant and highly arousing (phobic). However, according to the hypervigilance
hypothesis, the higher RTs and greater number of IRs that occur when participants are
viewing phobic images, should occur more in invalid trials than in valid ones, exactly the
opposite as actually happens (Stormack et al., 1995).
Two complementary alternatives can explain this reversal of the expected attentional
effect in valid and invalid trials. On one hand, according to Beck and collaborators (1985), the
hypervigilance shown by phobic participants toward their own fear stimuli would make them
to get engaged to those stimuli, thus increasing the difficulty to disengage in order to respond
quickly to the target presented in the same visual field (valid trials). On the other hand,
according to Foa and Kozak (1986), the reaction times and incorrect responses are higher in
valid trials because phobic participants would change their attention to the opposite visual
field in order to avoid the threatening stimulus. This attentional change would increase the
cost of reengaging to stimuli presented in the visual field where the target appears (the same
as the threatening stimulus). The hypervigilance-avoidance hypothesis (Amir, Foa & Coles,
1998; Mogg, Bradley, Bono & Painter, 1997) can be considered a compromise between these
opposite alternatives. This hypothesis proposes that both types of attentional biases
(hypervigilance and avoidance) may occur sequentially: hypervigilance in initial stages and
avoidance in later ones.
In our study, phobic participants showed delayed RTs in trials where phobic images,
compared to non-phobic ones, were presented in short SOA intervals (100 ms). Thus, the
phobic participants seemed to be automatically engaged to phobic images presented for short
periods, therefore showing difficulty in disengaging from them. This result is consistent with
the hypervigilance-avoidance hypothesis since this hypothesis assumes that the participant’s
engagement to phobic stimuli occurs at a pre-attentive or not conscious level (during short
presentations) and not at an attentive or conscious one (during long presentations) in which
disengagement or avoidance would be more probable (Mogg et al., 2004). The result is also
consistent with the notion of fear preparedness, i.e., the idea that individuals show
unintentional and preferential processing and facilitated attention toward phylogenetically
prepared threatening stimuli (Lipp & Derakshan, 2005; Öhman et al., 2001).
As regards the results of our third analysis (sub-analysis 3), they strengthen the findings
of our previous analyses highlighting, at the same time, the relevance of individual
differences in anxiety and negative affect. Phobic participants with high negative affect
showed greater interference in responding to the target after phobic image presentations than
phobic participants with low negative affect and than control participants with both high and
low negative affect. Furthermore, when the analysis is restricted to the two extreme groups
(phobic participants with high negative affect and control participants with low negative
affect), significant differences are observed between both groups, concerning reaction times
and incorrect responses, in valid trials with short SOA after phobic image presentation. These
finding support the idea that emotional modulation of attention is amplified in phobic
participants with high negative affect due to the addition of the anxiety levels (phobia) and
 Emotional Modulation of Selective Attention 455

the negative affect (mood) that they inform of (Buodo et al., 2006; Cisler et al., 2007;
Vassilopoulos, 2005).
Regarding the subjective measures, as expected, phobic participants reported more
negative affect and more anxiety, both as a trait (in general) and as a state (after the
experimental tasks), than control participants. They also assessed the phobic images as
significantly more unpleasant, more arousing, less controllable, and eliciting higher external
attention than control participants.
These differences were even higher when only the extreme groups (experimental
participants with high negative affect and control participants with low negative affect) were
compared. However, in this later comparison, the differences observed concerning the
assessment by all participants of non-phobic images (more pleasant, less arousing and more
controllable for experimental than control participants) disappeared.
The explanation in terms of ‘emotional relief’ experienced by phobic participants when
processing non-phobic images does not seem tenable when negative affect is also taken into
consideration.
In general, our findings are consistent with the cascade model of defensive reactions
(Bradley & Lang, 2000). Bradley and collaborators (2001) propose that the participants in a
laboratory context react to unpleasant images (in this case, phobic ones) in a similar way to an
animal freezing response: participants are directed toward the stimulation source, processing
the context in a detailed manner, recovering important information from memory and
implicitly preparing themselves for action.
This freezing-like reaction would explain the slowing down effect and the higher error
probability when pressing the key after the unpleasant images in phobic participants
(Duckworth et al., 2000; Garcia Pereira et al., 2006; Ventura et al., 2002). The tendency of
control participants to show the same effect can be explained by the fact that the phobic
images selected by phobic participants (non-phobic for control participants), due to their
content (mainly, spiders, snakes, cockroaches, rats, worms, and blood), tended to produce
higher arousal and negative valence than the non phobic images also selected by phobic
participants (mainly, dogs, deep water, pigeons, and heights).
The cascade model of defensive reactions can also explain the simultaneous combination
of hypervigilance and avoidance observed in attentional tasks when threatening stimuli are
used as signals of the target.
The cascade model assumes a sequence of four defense reactions to the presence of
danger or threat as a function of the proximity of the danger (arousal level) and the
availability of an escape route: attentive freezing (when the danger is first detected at a safe
distance), flight (when the danger is approaching and a escape route is available), fight (when
the danger is approaching and no escape route is available), and tonic immobility (when a
dominant predator has already made physical contact with the prey). The analogy of this
sequence is observed in humans when psychophysiological responses to phobic and defense
stimuli are recorded (Vila et al., 2007).
The initial defense response is usually an attentional response (passive defense),
accompanied by bradycardia, followed by a motivational response in preparation for flight or
fight (active defense), accompanied by tachycardia. The same analogy could be applied for
the attentional bias effect. Under this theoretical framework, a passive (hypervigilance) and
active (avoidance) defense sequence could explain the attentional bias reported in the
literature and found in our study.
456 Marlen Figueroa, Sonia Rodríguez-Ruiz, José L. Mata et al.

The implications of these findings must be tempered by two main limitations of our
study: (a) the sub-clinical character of our experimental group, and (b) the differences in
arousal and unpleasantness of the phobic and non-phobic images selected by the fearful
participants. Thus, future research should take into account the use of highly arousing visual
stimuli for both potentially phobic and non-phobic images in the clinical target population.
Assuming these limitations, our results also have some clinical contributions concerning the
mechanisms by which exposure therapy is effective in the treatment of phobic patients. The
pre-attentive approach toward feared stimuli and their subsequent avoidance may be a key
factor in the maintenance of the anxiety disorder. Therefore, the exposure to those stimuli
using both brief and long presentations might also be a key factor in their reduction.
In summary, this chapter reviews the factors involved in the emotional modulation of
attention and presents the results of a study using a modified version of Posner’s signal-target
attentional paradigm in a group of people with intense specific fears and a control group with
no such fears. Signals were affective images (pleasant, neutral, unpleasant, phobic and no-
phobic) presented under manipulation of visual field, laterality and SOA.
Results confirm the emotional modulation of attention and suggest that the factors
involved are: a) the arousal of the affective stimuli and their visual field presentation
(hemispheric dominance) when non-specific affective stimuli are examined, b) the arousal
and the negative valence of the affective stimuli when specific phobic stimuli and phobic
individuals are examined, c) the pre-attentive hypervigilance and attentive avoidance induced
by the phobic stimuli in phobic individuals when signals are presented using a short SOA
interval in the same visual field than the target (valid trials), and d) the high negative affect of
phobic individuals that potentiates the sequence of defense reactions (hypervigilance and
avoidance) to the threatening stimuli.
Present results hightlight the relevance of atentional bias in emotional information
processing and the role of hypervigilance and avoidance in healthy and sub-clinical
population and in people with high and low negative affect.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The present research was supported by grants from the Spanish Ministry of Science and
Technology (project PHB2004-0114-PC), the European Union (project SEJ2004-07956/PSI)
and the Junta de Andalucía (research group HUM-388).

APPENDIX: THE ITALIAN VERSION OF THE OBQ (OBQ-I46)

This inventory lists different attitudes or beliefs that people sometimes hold. Read each
statement carefully and decide how much you agree or disagree with it.
For each of the statements, choose the number matching the answer that best describes
how you think. Because people are different, there are no right or wrong answers.
To decide whether a given statement is typical of your way of looking at things, simply
keep in mind what you are like most of the time.
 Emotional Modulation of Selective Attention 457

Use the following scale:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Disagree Disagree Agree a Neither agree Agree a Agree Agree very
very much moderately Little nor disagree little moderately much

In making your ratings, try to avoid using the middle point o the scale (4), but rather
indicate whether you usually disagree or agree with the statements about your own beliefs and
attitudes.

1. Having control over my thoughts is a sign of good character

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

2 If I imagine something bad happening, then I am responsible for making sure it doesn’t
happen

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

3. If I don’t control my unwanted thoughts, something bad is bound to happen

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

4. When I hear about a tragedy, I can’t stop wondering if I am responsible in some way

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

5. There is only one right way to do things

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

6. I would be a better person if I gained more control over my thoughts

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

7. Things should be perfect according to my own standards

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

8. The more distressing my thoughts are, the greater the risk that they will come true

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

9. I can have no peace of mind as long as I have intrusive thoughts.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7
458 Marlen Figueroa, Sonia Rodríguez-Ruiz, José L. Mata et al.

10. I must know what is going on in my mind at all times so I can control my thoughts

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

11. In order to be a worthwhile person, I must be perfect at everything I do

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

12. It is ultimately my responsibility to ensure that everything is in order

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

13. Even if harm is very unlikely, I should try to prevent it at any cost

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

14. For me, having bad urges is as bad as actually carrying them out

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

15. I must think through the consequences of even my smallest actions

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

16. If I can’t do something perfectly, I shouldn’t do it at all

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

17. I must be ready to regain control of my thinking whenever an intrusive thought or

image occurs

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

18. Even minor mistakes mean a job is not complete

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

19. If I have aggressive thoughts or impulses about my loved ones, this means I may
secretly want to hurt them

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

20. If I have an intrusive thought while I’m doing something, what I’m doing will be
ruined

1 2 3 4 5 6 7
 Emotional Modulation of Selective Attention 459

21. In all kinds of daily situations, failing to prevent harm is just as bad as deliberately
causing harm

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

22. Avoiding serious problems (e.g., illness or accidents) requires constant effort on my
part

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

23. For me, not preventing harm is as bad as causing harm

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

24. I should make sure others are protected from any negative consequences of my
decisions or actions
1 2 3 4 5 6 7

25. If I exercise enough will-power, I should be able to gain complete control over my
mind

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

26. For me, things are not right if they are not perfect

1 2 3 4 5 6 7
27. Having nasty thoughts means I am a terrible person

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

28. If I do not take extra precautions, I am more likely than others to have or cause a
serious disaster

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

29. If I don’t do as well as other people, that means I am an inferior person

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

30. In order to feel safe, I have to be as prepared as possible for anything that could go
wrong

1 2 3 4 5 6 7
460 Marlen Figueroa, Sonia Rodríguez-Ruiz, José L. Mata et al.

31. To avoid disasters, I need to control all the thoughts or images that pop into my mind

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

32. I should not have bizarre or disgusting thoughts

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

33. Having a blasphemous thought is as sinful as committing a sacrilegious act

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

34. I should be able to rid my mind of unwanted thoughts

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

35. For me, even slight carelessness is inexcusable when it might affect other people

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

36. I must be the best at things that are important to me

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

37. If my actions could have even a small effect on a potential misfortune, I am

responsible for the outcome

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

38. Even when I am careful, I often think that bad things will happen

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

39. Having intrusive thoughts means I’m out of control

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

40. Even if harm is very unlikely, I should try to prevent it at any cost

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

41. I must keep working at something until it’s done exactly right

1 2 3 4 5 6 7
 Emotional Modulation of Selective Attention 461

42. To me, failing to prevent a disaster is as bad as causing it

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

43. If I don’t do a job perfectly, people won’t respect me

1 2 3 4 5 6 7
44. If I take sufficient care, I can prevent any harmful accident from occurring

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

45. Having a bad thought is morally no different than doing a bad deed

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

46. No matter what I do, it won’t be good enough

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

REFERENCES
Amir, N., Foa, E., & Coles, M. (1998). Automatic activation and strategic avoidance of
threat-relevant information in social phobia. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 107, 285-
290.
Amir, N., Elias, J., Klumpp, H.,& Preworski, A. (2003). Attentional bias to threat in social
phobia: facilitated processing of threat or difficulty disengaging attention from threat?.
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Reviewed by Lourdes Anllo-Vento (University of California, San Diego, USA) and Elisabeth
Mackay (University of Granada, Spain). It is the author´s responsibility to contact the
reviewer and take into account any suggestions or comments.
In: Encyclopedia of Cognitive Psychology (2 Volume Set) ISBN: 978-1-61324-546-0
Editor: Carla E. Wilhelm, pp. 465-488 © 2012 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 15

THE MODERATING EFFECT OF SWITCHING COSTS IN

CONSUMERS’ RELATIONSHIP DISSOLUTION:
A CROSS-CULTURAL ANALYSIS

Carmen Antón Martín1 and Carmen Camarero Izquierdo2

1
Department of Business and Marketing,
University of Valladolid, Spain
2
Department of Business and Marketing,
University of Valladolid, Spain

ABSTRACT
The current work analyzes the impact of deficiencies in firms’ policies on the
customers’ intent to break the relationship and the moderating role of switching costs.
The work is developed in the context of car insurance services. Concretely, in this
context, we differentiate two legal situations that can influence the dissolution process:
the countries where consumers comply with the legal obligation to take out car insurance
and the countries where consumers feel that the legislation is more permissive and fail to
comply with the legal obligation. A comparison of consumers from these two contexts
(Spanish and Venezuelan consumers) allows us to derive some conclusions.

Keywords: Relationship dissolution, customer switching behaviour, services marketing

INTRODUCTION
In relationship marketing research, consumer relationship dissolution is a phenomenon
that recently has provoked interest in the literature (Hocutt, 1998; Keaveney, 1995; Mittal and
Lassar, 1998; and Bansal and Taylor, 1999, 2002). Keaveney (1995) indicates that when

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+
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466 Carmen Anton Martin and Carmen Camarero Izquierdo

firms lose a customer they are not only losing future earnings and incurring the cost of finding
new customers. Customers are becoming increasingly intolerant of inconsistency or
mediocrity, and they can choose to dissolve the relationship as soon as any problem arises.
They are likely losing a loyal customer, which means giving up high margins. Keaveney and
Parthasarathy (2001) likewise warn that consumers’ switching behavior in services markets
can be particularly serious when the service is delivered continuously, such as in insurance,
banking, public services, medical insurance, telecommunications, or generally in services
where customers take out a subscription. A premature end to the relationship may mean that
customers end up costing the firm more than they bring in.
In this perspective, the objective of the current work is to deepen our understanding of
what drives consumers to dissolve a relationship with their service suppliers. Specifically, this
current work is based on previous studies assessing determinants of customer intent to switch
(Antón et al., 2007, Bansal et al., 2005) and distinguish between two factors impacting
relationship ending, factors predisposing towards ending and those precipitating the break, as
well as the moderating effect of switching costs. This model of intent to end the relationship
is compared for the case of car insurance clients in two differing cultural contexts, Spain and
Venezuela. The difference between the two countries revolves around one particular
commercial aspect, namely a lax approach to the application of and compliance with the law.
Although civil liability insurance for motor vehicles is compulsory in both countries, the
impact which current legislation has on consumer purchase behaviour differs. Whereas in
Spain consumers are aware of and comply with the legal obligation to take out motor vehicle
insurance, law enforcement in Venezuela is less stringent and consumers fail to comply with
or are even unaware of the legal obligation to hold such insurance. These situations determine
the extent to which consumers are more inclined or more reluctant to end relationship when a
supplier fails to live up to expectations. To test empirically the hypotheses proposed we have
collected information on car-insurance customers. The work ends with a section presenting
our main conclusions and the management implications.

DETERMINANT FACTORS OF RELATIONSHIP DISSOLUTION

Halinen and Tähtinen (2002) theoretically argue for the need to categories the
antecedents of dissolution in three levels: predisposing factors, precipitating factors, and
attenuating factors of the switching intention. On the theoretical basis of this work, we follow
this classification.

Predisposing Factors

The factors that predispose to relationship dissolution are factors that create the
conditions in which individuals pay more attention to certain elements that will precipitate
dissolution. Duck (1981), in the context of personal relationships, and Halinen and Tähtinen
(2002), in the context of business relationships, indicate that predisposing factors already
exist when parties enter into a relationship, making it vulnerable to breakdown. These factors
could also appear during the relationship; but their effect is not immediate as they need the
 The Moderating Effect of Switching Costs in Consumers Relationship Dissolution 467

accumulation of several incidents to be considered by the consumer. The factors that

predispose may be related to the fulfillment of the tasks inherent to the relationship –
deficiencies in delivering the service quality required or desired by the consumer – or to the
dyadic relationship – decrease in the commitment and interest demonstrated by the firm in the
relationship.
In the current proposal, it is considered that the main predisposing factors are deficiencies
in the quality of the service (Hess et al., 2003), and the firm’s poor efforts to maintain the
relationship (Dwyer, Schurr & Oh, 1987).

Poor Service Quality

The quality of the service, from the perspective of Grönroos (1990), is conceptualized
from two dimensions: the technical quality (what is delivered to the consumer) and the
functional quality (how it is delivered). The most widely-employed measure of this variable is
the one proposed by Parasuraman et al. (1988) – the SERVQUAL scale, which consists of
five dimensions (tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy). But this scale
has led to some controversy. Brady and Cronin (2001), for example, criticize it and propose
an alternative. These authors contend that the perceived service quality is instead made up of
three dimensions: the outcome, interaction and physical environment quality. Outcome
quality is defined as what the customer obtains when the productive process ends; interaction
quality refers to the interaction that takes place while the service is being delivered; and
environment quality refers to the conditions of the environment where the service is delivered
or the product is sold.
In line with this last definition of quality, Keaveney (1995) suggests that consumers
voluntarily exit a relationship because of personal dissatisfaction with the quality of the
service received – outcome – or with the service provider – interaction. Many researchers
have also suggested that the quality of the customer-organization interaction affects the
customer’s response to failings in services (Berry, 1995; Kelley & Davis, 1994). The
literature on loyalty also indicates that customers value the company’s resources and skills
very highly – resources and skills that are manifested in the service quality (Mittal & Lassar,
1998). High quality can motivate consumers to strengthen their relationship with their service
provider (Hess et al., 2003; Bell et al., 2005), or not (a result obtained by Cronin & Taylor,
1992). What does seem to be clearer is that poor quality or changes in the firm’s quality levels
provoke a change in consumers’ attitudes towards the firm and probably a change in their
behavior, as is demonstrated by Bansal et al. (2005), Dabholkar & Walls (1999), Roos (1999)
or Zeithaml et al. (1996).

Low Organization Commitment to Customer

In the relationship marketing literature relationship commitment is understood as the
desire to develop and maintain long-term exchange relationships, a desire that materializes in
the realization of implicit and explicit promises, as well as sacrifices in favor of the economic
and social well-being of all the parties having some interest in the relationship (Anderson &
Weitz, 1992; Dwyer et al., 1987; Morgan & Hunt, 1994; Walter & Ritter, 2000). The
organization’s commitment refers to its interest in the consumers and its efforts to maintain
their loyalty by adapting to their specific needs, offering frequent communication, special
treatment and full information. This attitude from the firm is a result of the assumption that
consumers can obtain more value from a relationship of continuing loyalty, and may therefore
468 Carmen Anton Martin and Carmen Camarero Izquierdo

forgo the opportunity to choose another supplier to fulfill their needs (Sheth & Parvatiyar,
1995). When consumers perceive added value in the firm’s efforts to offer them special
treatment to foster their loyalty, they will not switch suppliers. Indeed in some cases the
firm’s efforts to build customers’ loyalty and keep them satisfied excludes any other type of
relationship that the consumer might contemplate with any of the firm’s competitors (Wathne
et al., 2001; Dwyer, Schurr & Oh, 1987), which makes the switching intention even more
improbable. In contrast, it can be also maintained that low commitment on the part of the firm
reflects its lack of interest in the consumers and will lead to disenchantment, dispelling any
intention of loyalty. Breakdown can result from a faulty relational process and consequent
dissatisfaction with the relationship itself (Duck, 1991). Not only may expectations about the
purpose of the relationship and the quality delivered be disconfirmed, but also expectations
about correct or appropriate behaviors. In that line, Rusbult et al. (1983) found a low
commitment to be a significant predictor of relationship ending. Also, according to
Michalski’s (2004) findings in banking services, significant reasons for ending are failures in
interactions, not in core services.

Precipitating Factors

The factors that precipitate dissolution are events pushing the consumer to take measures
to end the relationship (Duck, 1981; Halinen & Tähtinen, 2002; Halinen, Havila & Salmi,
1999). They may be sudden and dramatic, or form part of a series of events pushing the
consumer towards switching suppliers. Like in the previous case, they are failings in the
fulfillment of the tasks – sudden price raises – or deficiencies in the interaction in the
relationship – sporadic conflicts or episodes that demonstrate the firm’s lack of interest in the
client – which provoke consumers’ anger and lead them to take immediate measures.
In the current proposal, it is considered that the main precipitating factors are the
perception of price unfairness (Keaveney, 1995), and the experience of episodes of
dissatisfaction or critical incidents (Roos, 1999, 2002).

Unfair Price
There are two tendencies with respect to consumers’ perception of the price of the
product. The first maintains that consumers regard high prices as a signal of high quality and
vice versa (Dodds et al., 1991; Teas & Agarwal, 2000); while the second, in contrast, suggests
that low prices can also function as a signal of good value for money (Kirmani & Rao, 2000).
In either case, whether a low price is perceived as low quality or a high price is perceived as
abusive, when customers are dissatisfied with the value for money or perceive the price to be
unfair, their intention will be to switch suppliers (Campbell, 1999; Homburg et al., 2005).
Keaveney (1995) suggests that consumers voluntarily switch suppliers because of their
personal dissatisfaction with the price paid. This dissatisfaction arises when the consumers
perceive the price to be unfair or excessively higher than alternative options. Athanassopoulos
(2000) and Bansal et al. (2005) also show that among the reasons consumers switch suppliers,
price-related issues are important. Buyers will be conscious of the savings opportunities that
other options provide, and the chance to make savings can become a substantial concern
(Wathne et al., 2001), as well as the motive for an immediate switch.
 The Moderating Effect of Switching Costs in Consumers Relationship Dissolution 469

Anger Incident
Roos (1999, 2002) analyzes critical incidents as a method for studying consumers’
switching decisions. These critical incidents or episodes can affect consumers’ behavior, and
specifically their intention to dissolve the relationship, either completely or partially. These
critical incidents can become anger incidents when the events or episodes have provoked
anger and manifest dissatisfaction in the consumer. Bougie, Pieters and Zeelenberg (2003)
show that anger is an emotion that, according to emotions theory (Roseman et al., 1994),
encloses specific experience content. According to their study, anger also mediates in the
relation between consumers’ dissatisfaction with the service and their behavioral response –
ending the relationship.

Moderating Factors

The factors with a moderating effect are variables that either attenuate or reinforce the
effect of the direct determinants. These moderators may be exit barriers associated with the
relationship, such as the existence of switching costs, or emotional links created in the
relationship, or the lack or unawareness of attractive alternatives. The absence of these
barriers, in contrast, could reinforce consumers’ switching intention. In the current work we
analyse the moderating effect of switching costs.
Switching costs are defined as those costs that consumers associate with the process of
switching from one supplier to another (Burnham et al., 2003; Wathne et al., 2001). When
consumers manifest that it is not worthwhile switching suppliers, this may be because they
are perceiving obstacles to it. These may include searching, transaction and learning costs,
discounts for loyalty, habit, emotional costs and cognitive effort, together with the financial,
social and psychological risk. Specifically, Burnham et al. (2003) describe three types of
switching cost: procedural switching costs – these include the economic risk and evaluation
costs, and involve expenditure of time and effort; financial switching costs – involve the loss
of benefits and financial resources; and relational switching costs – the loss of the personal
relationship and the relationship with the brand, which involves psychological and emotional
discomfort due to the loss of identity and the breaking of bonds.
Switching costs represent an impediment to exploring new suppliers (Wathne et al.,
2001). To the extent that individuals perceive costs or barriers to exit, they will tend to
maintain their supplier (Burnham et al., 2003; Lee et al., 2001). If switching costs are low,
dissatisfaction with the service quality, price or firm will motivate the intention to switch
suppliers. In contrast, if they are high, dissatisfied consumers are likely to manifest a “false
loyalty”. Numerous studies have shown that switching costs act as a moderating variable that
negatively affects the relation between satisfaction and intention to maintain the relationship
(Burnham et al., 2003; Jones et al., 2000; Oliva et al., 1992; Sharma and Patterson, 2000). As
the costs rise, the influence of satisfaction on the intention to maintain the relationship
declines, and vice versa. Then,

H1. Consumer perception of switching costs restricts the positive impact of factors
predisposing towards dissolution (poor quality service and perceived commitment)
on consumer intent to dissolve the relationship with the provider.
470 Carmen Anton Martin and Carmen Camarero Izquierdo

H2. Consumer perception of switching costs restricts the positive impact of factors
precipitating dissolution (unfair price or anger incident) on consumer intent to
dissolve the relationship with the provider.

THE CASE OF CAR INSURANCE: THE MODERATING EFFECT OF

SWITCHING COSTS IN DIFFERENT CULTURAL CONTEXTS
In this work we explore relationship dissolution by consumers from a cross-cultural
perspective for the case of automobile insurance. Car insurance is a service in which
dissolution of a relationship is a problem from the standpoint of the firm and a meditated
decision from the consumer viewpoint. This is a service, as Keaveney and Parthasarathy
(2001) point out, in which customers’ behaviour in switching suppliers may be particularly
worrying for the firm, since it does not normally recover costs until customers have spent
several years with it. If customers cancel their insurance, the firm can lose a considerable
amount of money.
Car insurance services are conditioned by the law. The legal requirements involved in
insurance differ depending on the country in which it is taken out. On the one hand there are
countries where stringent legislation exists controlling the obligation to have car insurance.
Insurance is compulsory by law for all car owners, the penalties for driving without are stiff
and the number who fail to comply with the law is low. This is the case for the majority of
American states and in European countries. By contrast, in other countries car insurance is
governed by laws which are not applied stringently and the number of uninsured drivers is
quite high. Such is the case in the majority of Latin-American countries (Argentina, Bolivia,
Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Nicaragua,
Panama, Peru, the Dominican Republic and Venezuela). Uruguay has no compulsory
insurance and we failed to find any laws in this respect for Cuba, Haiti, Honduras and
Paraguay (Castelo, 2006). Despite what the law lays down for all these countries, the
insurance system does not work well and does not cover all risks. The main problem is the
low number of cars insured and the number being driven whose policies have expired
(Castiglione, 2004). These differences in the law lead to two highly differing purchase
contexts and different switching costs which might impact consumers’ breaking the
relationship. The goal of our work is to assess sensitivity of the dissolution process to
membership of either of these cultural and switching costs contexts.
The extent to which switching costs moderate the impact of predisposing and
precipitating factors on the intent to break the relationship is conditioned by the consumer
attitudes towards the law. Consumers who have a positive attitude towards compliance with
the law and are therefore aware of the obligation to take out insurance (either with the current
provider or with a new one) will feel bound to take out insurance when breaking the
relationship, therefore, they will be reluctant to initiate a switching process. In this case, the
moderating effect of switching costs will be higher. On the other hand, consumers who are
less aware of the obligation consider dissolution a viable option and feel free to decide
whether to acquire insurance will react more intensely and immediately to failings on the part
of the firm, therefore, the moderating effect of switching costs will be reduced. If an
individual feels free to break with the insurance company without the need to then become
 The Moderating Effect of Switching Costs in Consumers Relationship Dissolution 471

immediately involved in seeking another (since they perceive that being without any
insurance is a viable option), the threshold tolerance towards poor company service and
failures is likely to be lower. Despite the switching costs, the individuals feel themselves free
to take them on or not once the relationships is dissolved, then, the moderating effect of
switching costs will be lower.

H3. When consumers feel that the law is permissive (Venezuela), switching costs will
have less moderating effect on predisposing (H3a) and precipitating factors (H3b)
than when consumers feel that the law is compulsory and strict.

Empirical Study

In order to verify the hypotheses posited, we conducted an empirical study, the results of
which we present in this section. We firstly detail the scope of the study and identify the
sample chosen for the analysis. We then present the measurement scales for each variable
together with their validation and finally comment the outcomes to emerge from the proposed
models.

Scope of the Study

As mentioned, the empirical study was performed comparing two countries which clearly
differ in their enforcement of the law regarding automobile insurance and which evidence
differing consumer behaviour: Spain and Venezuela.
Legislation governing civil liability and motor vehicle insurance has been in force in
Spain since 1968, and has undergone various changes which have led to the current text,
dating from 2004 and which has been adapted to meet EU requirements. Compulsory civil
liability insurance covers personal injury and damage to other vehicles. There is also an EU
body in all member states (Insurance Compensation Consortium) which acts as a direct
insurer when no private insurance is held, and a Guarantee Fund, in certain cases of lack of
insurance or insurer insolvency, etc. Current legislation also aims to speed up the procedure to
penalise cases of non-compliance with the obligation to hold insurance. Disobedience of the
law in this respect is sanctioned with disqualification from driving in the country, the vehicle
being impounded and a heavy fine being imposed. According to data issued by the Spanish
Insurance Compensation Body and the Spanish Traffic Authorities (DGT), 6.9% of vehicles
on the road in Spain are currently uninsured.
Civil liability insurance has only been mandatory in Venezuela since 2001, although the
law has limited effectiveness. Automobile insurance aims not so much to safeguard possible
victims of traffic accidents but rather the vehicle insured. Bearing in mind that injured
persons do not normally receive compensation and that in general the courts are not ready to
deal with such claims, recourse to the law tends to result in only insignificant amounts being
awarded (Castelo, 2006). Moreover, drivers are not aware of the obligation to be insured, due
to the fact that the law is hardly enforced through a policy of sanctions preventing offences.
Many people are not even aware of the existence of this recently introduced law. The high
cost of insurance policies on the one hand and unemployment rates on the other means that
472 Carmen Anton Martin and Carmen Camarero Izquierdo

over half of all private vehicles owned by Venezuelans are uninsured. Even amongst those
who belong to the more favoured socioeconomic spheres, 25% of all vehicles remain
uninsured (Study of the Penetration into the Market of Insurance in Venezuela, concluded in
September 2003, Datanalisis). The contrast in the degree to which the law regarding car
insurance is observed in Spain and Venezuela, as well as people’s attitudes towards such
legislation may also be linked to the cultural differences prevailing in the two countries. On
the basis of Hofstede’s framework (1984), Spanish culture demonstrates a greater level of
uncertainty avoidance (10-15) than Venezuela (21-22). Uncertainty avoidance indicates to
what extent people feel threatened by uncertainty and ambiguity and try to avoid these
situations (Hofstede, 2001). Uncertainty-avoiding cultures try to minimize the possibility of
such situations and adhering to strict laws and rules, safety and security measures. Clearly,
this cultural difference could explain the different behaviours towards automobile insurance
regulation: a tendency to violate the law and a laxity in the legislation and a certain tolerance
towards the non-fulfilment of the law in Venezuela and law enforcement with economic
sanctions in order to reduce the overall level of uninsured drivers in Spain.

Sample and Measurement of Variables

To gather the information, surveys were conducted amongst people who held automobile
insurance in Spain and Venezuela. Surveys yielded a sample of 247 individuals in Spain (data
gathered during March and April 2005) and 142 in Venezuela (data gathered in July and
August 2005). In order to determine the kind of relationship which exists with the insurance
firm, respondents were asked how they contacted the firm. In Venezuela a total of 32.9% of
the sample habitually contact with their insurance firm through its offices, 14.5% do so by
telephone, and the rest through an insurance broker. In the Spanish case, 45.9% of the sample
contact with their insurance firm through its offices, 37% do so by telephone, 16.3% through
an insurance broker, and 0.7% of them use the internet. Although as pointed out previously
drivers have been obliged to take out civil liability insurance in Venezuela since 2001, when
respondents were asked whether they were aware of the existence of the law, a large majority,
despite holding such insurance, not only stated that they were not aware but that insurance
was not compulsory. This supported our argument regarding the lack of law enforcement.
We describe below how we constructed and validated each of the variables. All items
were assessed on a five point Likert scale.

Intent to Exit (Dissolution)

Relationship dissolution was measured in the decision-making stage, when consumers
consider switching suppliers, the phase that Duck (1982) calls “intra-psychic”. The stage
involves intentions, so we cannot be sure that the consumer will actually dissolve the
relationship in the near future. But this approach does allow us to undertake a cross-sectional
analysis, and it is in line with previous research (Hellier et al., 2003; Hocutt, 1998; Jones et
al., 2000; Mittal and Lassar, 1998; Ping, 1994, 1995). The measurement scale used was based
on the scale proposed by Ping (1995).
 The Moderating Effect of Switching Costs in Consumers Relationship Dissolution 473

Table 1. Descriptive statistics, reliability and convergent validity(*)

DESCRIPTION Loadings (t-statistic)

Mean (SD)
Spain Venezuela Spain Venezuela
Intent to exit ( SPA=0.74 SPA=0.84 AVESPA=0.66)
( VEN=0.92 VEN=0.95 AVEVEN=0.86)
I have considered changing companies 2,05 (1,33) 2,50 (1,42) 0.90 (66.35) 0.92 (54.23)
I have no intention to renew with this company 2,34 (1,56) 2,42 (1,42) 0.60 (9.09) 0.92 (59.00)
I intend to insure my automobile with another company in 0.90 (56.26) 0.94 (56.85)
the future 2,03 (1,33) 2,48 (1,46)
Outcomes quality ( SPA=0.85 SPA=0.92 AVESPA=0.87)
( VEN=0.92 VEN=0.95 AVEVEN=0.92)
My company responds quickly to my needs 3,63 (1,07) 2.30 (1,38) 0.94 (144.61) 0.96 (86.30)
When I have had a problem my company has responded 0.92 (87.80) 0.96 (90.71)
efficiently 3.73 (1,16) 2.21 (1,32)
Interaction quality ( SPA=0.90 SPA=0.92 AVESPA=0.77)
( VEN=0.92 VEN=0.94 AVEVEN=0.82)
The attitude of this company’s employees demonstrates 0.92 (98.33) 0.92 (65.74)
their willingness to help me 3.35 (1,05) 2.33 (1,21)
The attitude of this company’s employees demonstrates 0.87 (26.57)
that they understand my needs 3.39 (0,98) 2.51 (1,21) 0.92 (91.27)
This company’s workers are very competent 2.61 (1.21) 2.19 (1.21) 0.78 (19.21) 0.88 (41.04)
Physical environment quality ( SPA=0.80 SPA=0.90
AVESPA=0.83) ( VEN=0.77 VEN=0.89 AVEVEN=0.81)
The offices and branches of my company are modern and 0.89 (42.00) 0.87 (25.27)
well-equipped 3.54 (1,07) 2.30 (1,22)
The offices of my company give an image of 0.93 (79.36) 0.92 (89.20)
professionalism 3.42 (1,06) 2.36 (1,18)
Price unfairness ( SPA=0.90 SPA=0.95 AVESPA=0.91)
( VEN=0.91 VEN=0.95 AVEVEN=0.91)
The price I pay for the service I receive from the insurance 0.95 (123.58) 0.95 (102.0)
company is fair 2.91 (1,22) 2.65 (1,33)
The service I receive is good value for money 3.10 (1,17) 2.43 (1,30) 0.95 (135.90) 0.96 (128.1)
Perceived commitment ( SPA=0.82 SPA=0.87
AVESPA=0.65) ( VEN=0.83 VEN=0.88 AVEVEN=0.66)
The company maintains a frequent and constant 0.83 (39.45) 0.81 (21.56)
relationship with me 2.37 (1,16) 3.06 (1,42)
The company gives me full and useful information about 0.80 (31.49) 0.81 (25.97)
its products 2.83 (1,24) 2.82 (1,33)
I feel I get special benefits for being a good customer 2.62 (1,24) 3.13 (1,40) 0.83 (41.81) 0.83 (34.20)
The company is flexible in adapting its offer to my 0.75 (20.89) 0.79 (18.15)
specific needs 2.68 (1,07) 3.04 (1,31)
Anger incident
I have recently had an experience with this company that 1.00 (-)
angered me 2,15 (1,30) 2,35 (1,39) 1.00 (-)
Switching costs ( SPA=0.67 SPA=0.85 AVESPA=0.75)
( VEN=0.64 VEN=0.84 AVEVEN=0.74)
If I switched my insurance company, I would have to pay 0.86 (11.06) 0.84 (7.31)
high costs 3,26 (1,24) 3,53 (1,39)
It I switched my insurance company, I would loose some 0.87 (12.12) 0.88 (11.53)
advantages I have acquired 3,10 (1,37) 3,41 (1,40)
474 Carmen Anton Martin and Carmen Camarero Izquierdo

Deficient Service Quality

Measuring service quality still seems to be a controversial topic, as we have mentioned.
In our case we opted to follow Brady and Cronin’s (2001) proposal, which combines those of
Grönroos (1990) and Parasuman et al. (1988), and implies that the perception of service
quality is founded on three dimensions: the outcome, interaction and physical environment
quality. These three dimensions define the base of the perceived service quality, and other
second-order dimensions may underlie them. Taking this approach, we measured these three
aspects of quality adapting the scale used by these authors.

Low Perceived Commitment

The scale for the firm’s commitment as perceived by the consumer was built especially
for this current work. We tried to include different aspects that the relationship marketing
literature attributes to a service provider’s relational orientation policy, on the basis of items
proposed by Anderson and Weitz (1992), Gundlach and Cadotte (1995), Kumar et al. (1995a
and 1995b), and Mohr and Spekman (1994): willingness to invest; shared information; loyalty
and commitment to the customer; or perceived desire to continue.

Price Unfairness
The consumer’s perception of an unfair price and poor value for money were each
measured by a separate item. These items were built for this current study starting from the
results obtained by Keaveney (1995) in her descriptive study of consumers’ motives for
terminating relationships.

Anger Incident
This variable was measured using a single indicator, where respondents were asked to
state if they had had any recent experience with their supplier that had upset them and caused
them to lose confidence in the firm.

Switching Costs
To measure switching costs we made use of the proposal by Burnham et al. (2003) – cost
in time and effort, financial costs and psychological costs – and the scale used by Sharma and
Patterson (2000), to propose a simpler scale of two single indicators measuring these aspects.
Since the measures have been taken from different studies and have been developed in
various contexts, it was deemed appropriate to undertake a series of analyses enabling us to
determine their psychometric properties and to assess reliability and validity.

Measurement Invariance Test

Our study was carried out in different countries (two contrasting cultures) and therefore
testing the invariance of the latent measurements is advisable so as to safeguard a comparison
of the measurements between samples or groups. The aim is to test the generalisation or
universality of the measurement scales (measurement equivalence) applied to two cultural
groups or contexts. Universality of measurements is important to ensure contrasting outcomes
are due to real differences and not variations in the way the scale is used or interpreted. In
 The Moderating Effect of Switching Costs in Consumers Relationship Dissolution 475

order to conduct a comparison amongst different groups or cultures the same psychological
metric must be used (Maurer et al., 1998). Following the proposal of Steenkamp and
Baumgartner (1998), we first assess configural invariance and then metric invariance. For this
we used confirmatory factorial analysis (Lisrel 8). Items proposed to measure service quality,
perceived price and perceived commitment were previously recoded such that higher values
in the items indicated poorer quality, perceived price and commitment.
This reclassification allows us to value the hypotheses along the lines proposed. Given
the chi-squared statistic dependence on the size of the sample, the main indicators used to
evaluate the model fit are CFI, RMSEA and the 2/gl ratio. The value of these indicators meet
the established criteria of a CFI above 0.9, RMSEA below 0.07 (Bollen, 1989) and a 2/gl
ratio between 1 and 5 (Wheaton et al., 1977; Carmines and Mc Iver, 1981).
In order to demonstrate the existence of configural invariance the hypothetical structure
must satisfactorily fit both the Spanish and Venezuelan group (Durvasula et al., 2001). In
other words, we may state that configural invariance has been verified if non-restricted multi-
group CFA shows a good fit. In this case, the measurement model estimations proposed with
the multi-group analysis evidence a satisfactory fit (CFI=.97, RMSEA = 0.068 and 2/gl =
694.273/334 = 2.07). In the two samples all the lambda values are significant in their
respective dimension and are above 0.6. Results indicate a similar factorial structure for the
latent measurements in the two groups. Once configural variance has been verified, metric
invariance can be tested. The metric invariance test involves evaluating the equality of the
factor loadings (lambda values) in the various groups. This equality is required to compare
the values of the causal relationships between the groups (beta values). The test is performed
with confirmatory factorial analysis on the measurement model, using multisample estimation
and the covariance matrix as input data. Two models are compared, the restricted model that
forces equality of the lambda value estimators in all the groups and the free model that
estimates the unrestricted lambda values. In our case, the difference in the chi-squared (diff 2
(19) = 18.21) between the restricted and the free model is not significant and since the
restricted measurement model yields an acceptable fit (CFI = 0.97, RMSA = 0.066 2/gl =
712.491/353 = 2.02) we take the metric invariance between the samples analysed as being
proved. As analyses have evidenced configural invariance and metric invariance for the
Venezuela and Spain samples, then we can test H3. Table 1 shows the set of proposed
indicators, descriptive statistics and the estimation of the measurement models. Tables 2, 3
and 4 show the correlation matrices.

Estimation of the Structural Model

Figure 1 shows a graphic representation of the structural model we aim to analyse.

Although the measurement scales of the variables are reflective in nature, as has been
evidenced in the previous procedures used to validate the corresponding scales, the
explanatory variables we propose in our hypotheses (predisposing factors and precipitating
factors) are second order formative constructs as shown in the figure. The formative nature of
these variables leads us to opt for the Partial Least Squares (PLS) approach as the estimation
model.
 Table 2. Correlation matriz (Total)

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10)
(1) Poor outcomes quality 1.000
(2) Poor interaction quality 0.698 1.000
(3) Poor physical quality 0.518 0.586 1.000
(4) Low perceived commitment 0.544 0.620 0.445 1.000
(5) Price unfairness 0.610 0.466 0.350 0.599 1.000
(6) Anger incident 0.289 0.284 0.126 0.284 0.232 1.000
(7) Switching costs -0.247 -0.346 -0.248 -0.279 -0.289 -0.098 1.000
(8) Predisposing factors 0.818 0.921 0.707 0.816 0.612 0.312 -0.349 1.000
(9) Precipitating factors 0.618 0.493 0.342 0.607 0.949 0.565 -0.280 0.627 1.000
(10) Intention to exit 0.453 0.456 0.250 0.448 0.426 0.425 -0.203 0.504 0.505 1.000
Variance extracted 0.896 0.792 0.819 0.653 0.910 - 0.744 0.542 0.663 0.760

Table 3. Correlation matriz (Spain)

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10)
(1) Poor outcomes quality 1.000
(2) Poor interaction quality 0.604 1.000
(3) Poor physical quality 0.326 0.427 1.000
(4) Low perceived commitment 0.532 0.539 0.382 1.000
(5) Price unfairness 0.515 0.310 0.180 0.561 1.000
(6) Anger incident 0.298 0.282 0.060 0.232 0.232 1.000
(7) Switching costs -0.101 -0.229 -0.223 -0.141 -0.167 -0.096 1.000
(8) Predisposing factors 0.777 0.888 0.584 0.810 0.510 0.302 -0.223 1.000
(9) Precipitating factors 0.547 0.360 0.180 0.567 0.956 0.507 -0.177 0.534 1.000
(10) Intention to exit 0.395 0.371 0.146 0.401 0.437 0.361 -0.172 0.443 0.496 1.000
Variance extracted 0.867 0.768 0.829 0.648 0.907 - 0.751 0.476 0.644 0.661
 Table 4. Correlation matriz (Venezuela)

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10)
(1) Poor outcomes quality 1.000
(2) Poor interaction quality 0.796 1.000
(3) Poor physical quality 0.734 0.764 1.000
(4) Low perceived commitment 0.576 0.720 0.523 1.000
(5) Price unfairness 0.734 0.642 0.558 0.611 1.000
(6) Anger incident 0.281 0.293 0.221 0.383 0.367 1.000
(7) Switching costs -0.408 -0.473 -0.267 -0.418 -0.414 -0.110 1.000
(8) Predisposing factors 0.865 0.957 0.824 0.834 0.721 0.344 -0.466 1.000
(9) Precipitating factors 0.697 0.627 0.533 0.634 0.945 0.651 -0.377 0.709 1.000
(10) Intention to exit 0.535 0.579 0.402 0.599 0.514 0.517 -0.287 0.620 0.601 1.000
Variance extracted 0.922 0.816 0.809 0.658 0.914 - 0.737 0.609 0.683 0.859

Table 5. Multicollinearity diagnosis

Total Spain Venezuela

Tolerance VIF CI Tolerance VIF CI Tolerance VIF CI
Predisposing Factors
Poor outcomes quality 0.475 2.104 0.575 1.740 0.326 3.071 4.380
Poor interaction quality 0.386 2.592 0.534 1.873 0.221 4.529
Poor physical quality 0.630 1.587 0.782 1.278 0.369 2.709
Low perceived commitment 0.581 1.720 3.125 0.622 1.609 2.520 0.479 2.087
Precipitating Factors
Price unfairness 0.921 1.086 0.946 1.057 0.866 1.155 1.469
Anger incident 0.921 1.086 1.335 0.946 1.057 1.267 0.866 1.155
 Table 6. Path coefficients

Total Spain Venezuela Test of

means
MODEL I Coefficient t-statistic Coefficient t-statistic Coefficient t-statistic t-statistic
Poor outcome quality  0.23 37.27 0.24 25.68 0.22 27.32 2,233
Predisposing factors
Poor interaction quality  0.45 50.78 0.48 34.68 0.43 51.39 2,957
Predisposing factors
Poor physical e. quality  0.17 33.16 0.16 20.31 0.17 25.68 -0,991
Predisposing factors
Low commitment  0.33 37.97 0.37 29.12 0.31 25.82 2,989
Predisposing factors
Price unfairness  0.86 64.77 0.86 56.22 0.81 39.08 2,824
Precipitating factors
Anger incident  0.33 32.26 0.30 27.78 0.35 22.71 -2,698
Precipitating factors
Predisposing factors  Intent 0.30 5.26 0.24 3.04 0.39 3.58 -1,166
to exit
Precipitating factors  Intent 0.32 5.47 0.37 5.42 0.32 3.03 0,380
to exit
R2 0.31 0.291 0.438
MODEL II Coefficient t-statistic Coefficient t-statistic t-statistic
Poor outcome quality  0.23 37.04 0.24 26.15 0.22 27.21 2,252
Predisposing factors
Poor interaction quality  0.45 51.70 0.48 34.45 0.43 51.38 2,942
Predisposing factors
 Total Spain Venezuela Test of
means
MODEL II Coefficient t-statistic Coefficient t-statistic t-statistic
Poor physical e. quality  0.17 31.40 0.16 22.23 0.17 27.26 -1,071
Predisposing factors
Low commitment  0.33 36.52 0.36 30.44 0.31 25.15 3,016
Predisposing factors
Price unfairness  0.86 64.88 0.88 53.35 0.81 36.39 2,647
Precipitating factors
Anger incident  0.33 34.09 0.30 27.73 0.35 22.06 -2,644
Precipitating factors
Predisposing factors  Intent 0.29 4.59 0.22 3.09 0.41 3.83 -1,513
to exit
Precipitating factors  Intent 0.32 5.70 0.37 5.82 0.32 2.90 0,436
to exit
Switching costs  Intent to -0.01 0.26 -0.06 1.23 0.01 0.20 -0,952
exit
Predisposing factors × -0.06 1.50 -0.08 1.68 0.04 0.64 -1,716
Switching costs  Intent to
exit
R2 0.318 0.31 0.439
MODEL III Coefficient t-statistic Coefficient t-statistic t-statistic
Poor outcome quality  0.23 36.71 0.24 27.28 0.22 26.38 2,275
Predisposing factors
Poor interaction quality  0.45 50.18 0.48 37.27 0.43 49.51 3,078
Predisposing factors
 Table 6. (Continued)

Total Spain Venezuela Test of

means
MODEL III Coefficient t-statistic Coefficient t-statistic t-statistic
Poor physical e. quality  0.17 31.16 0.16 21.00 0.17 27.16 -1,034
Predisposing factors
Low commitment  0.33 36.58 0.36 29.86 0.31 25.62 3,016
Predisposing factors
Price unfairness  0.86 64.97 0.88 53.05 0.81 36.45 2,645
Precipitating factors
Anger incident  0.33 32.76 0.30 27.04 0.35 23.21 -2,712
Precipitating factors
Predisposing factors  Intent 0.30 5.06 0.23 2.38 0.39 3.61 -1,262
to exit
Precipitating factors  Intent 0.32 5.47 0.37 5.91 0.33 3.14 0,348
to exit
Switching costs  Intent to -0.01 0.23 0.06 3.46 0.02 0.27 -0,994
exit
Precipitating factors × -0.09 2.24 -0.02 0.32 -0.10 1.79 1,022
Switching costs  Intent to
exit
R2 0.322 0.294 0.450
 The Moderating Effect of Switching Costs in Consumers Relationship Dissolution 481

Deficiencies Deficiencies Deficiencies in Perception of

in outcomes in interaction physical low
quality quality environment quality commitment

Predisposing
factors Predisposing factors
×
Switching costs
+

Switching
Intent to
costs exit
-

Precipitating factors
+ ×
Switching costs
Precipitating
factors

Price Anger
unfairness incident

Figure 1. Structural model.

PLS (Chin, 1998; Chin and Newsted, 1999) allows us to estimate second order measurement
models comprising a reflective measurement level with a formative measurement level, as is
our case.
This approach also allows us to work with variables not normally distributed and is
robust for small-to-moderate sample sizes. The model was estimated using Smart PLS for
both samples (Spain and Venezuela). The level of statistical significance of the coefficients of
both the measurement and the structural models was determined through a bootstrap re-
sampling procedure (500 sub-samples were randomly generated). Structural models
evaluation is conducted by examining the size and significance of the path coefficients and
the R2 value of the dependent variable.
As pointed out by Diamantopoulos and Winklhofer (2001), a formative measure is
essentially a multiple regression with the construct representing the dependent variable and
the indicators as the predictors. Therefore correlation among the indicators results in
multicollinearity which can lead to instability in coefficients. High collinearity is an
undesirable property in formative models as it causes estimation difficulties (Albers and
Hildebrandt, 2006) As a result, Diamantopoulos and Winklhofer (2001) suggest using normal
regression diagnostics in order to assess formative index validity.
In the Table 5 it appears the tolerance values, the variance inflation factor (VIF) and the
condition index (CI). These values, as well as correlation between indicators, demonstrate
that multicollinearity is not a problem to the construction of the second-order formative
indexes.
482 Carmen Anton Martin and Carmen Camarero Izquierdo

In order to form the interactions between the variables, it is not possible to follow the
process used for reflective indicators, that is, the multiplication of the constructs’ indicators.
One approach for formative indicators would be to follow a two step construct score
procedure. The first step would entail using the formative indicators in conjunction with PLS
to create underlying construct scores for the predictor and moderator variables. Step two
would then consist of taking those single composite scores to create a single interaction term
(Chin et al, 1996). Following this procedure, we have estimated three models: Model I, Model
II and Model III. Model I only considers the effect of predisposing and precipitating factor
son dissolution; this model will be the base for comparison. Next, we have introduced the
direct effect of switching costs and the interaction of switching costs with the predisposing
(Model II) and the precipitating factors (Model III). Each model has been estimated for the
total sample, for the Spanish sample, and for the Venezuelan sample. The results of
estimations appear on Table 6 (standardized path coefficients and t-statistics).
Having estimated the model for each sample, and since current PLS software does not yet
permit multisample analysis, we compared the models by means of measurement contrast for
each coefficient (Chin, 2005). Table 6 shows the results of the measurement tests. The test is
conducted using a unilateral contrast, since the hypotheses have been formulated in a single
direction.
As can be seen from the results in Table 6, for the total simple, the switching costs have
not a significant effect in the dissolution and only moderate the effect of precipitating factors
on the intent to break. Therefore, we confirm the hypothesis H2, but we have to reject H1.
When we estimate the three models individually for the Spanish and the Venezuelan
samples, we observe both, that the process of dissolution is better explained in the case of
Venezuela (higher R2 value) and that switching costs have not a significant direct effect in
any country. Further, the results indicate that the index of the predisposing and the
precipitating variables is not formed the same way in Spain as it is in Venezuela. For
Venezuelan consumers, failures in the quality of results and the quality of interaction and the
lack of commitment by the firm are far less important in the overall predisposing factors than
for Spanish consumers. In the case of precipitating factors, we observe that an unfair price has
less effect in Venezuela than in Spain, whereas it just occurs the contrary for the anger
incident. Then, an anger incident is more relevant for the Venezuelan consumers, while an
unfair price has a higher loading on precipitating factors for Spanish consumers.
As regards the interaction between the switching costs and the predisposing factors, its
impact seems to be significant in the case of Spain, whereas for Venezuela its impact on the
intention to dissolve is not significant. Since the differences between the two countries are
significant, the hypothesis H3a is confirmed, positing a minor moderating effect of switching
costs in predisposing factors when the legislation is more stringent.
Finally, as it refers to the moderating effect of switching costs in precipitating factors,
there are not significant differences between Spain and Venezuela. Then, we reject the
hypothesis H3b. Nevertheless, the results indicate that the switching costs soften significantly
the impact of precipitating factors on the intent to break in Venezuela, but not in Spain. In this
case, and contrary to our expectations, the switching costs reduce the effect of precipitating
factors (unfair price and anger incident) in Venezuela, where the law is more permissive, but
not in Spain, where the consumers feel the legal obligation.
 The Moderating Effect of Switching Costs in Consumers Relationship Dissolution 483

Discussion

By adopting a cross-cultural approach, the current study aims to explore the process by
which a consumer dissolves a relationship with a service provider. Focusing on the area of car
insurance as a service, the existence of contrasting legislation, which may be more or less
lenient and applied with a differing degree of severity, leads individuals to adopt contrasting
attitudes or perceptions regarding the obligation to take out this kind of insurance. The fact
that in certain countries individuals are fully aware of the obligation to acquire car insurance,
whereas in others they feel free or more inclined to break the law, becomes one aspect of a
country’s commercial culture which may determine the degree to which consumers are
sensitive towards certain variables impacting the intention to dissolve the relation.
We have differentiated two determinant factors of consumer switching intention: factors
predisposing towards dissolution (deficiencies in service quality and company commitment
towards the consumer) and factors precipitating dissolution (unfair pricing and anger
incidents). Moreover, we have analyzed the moderating effect of switching costs.
The study we present evidences, first, that the switching costs do not reduce the effect of
predisposing factors in the intent to break a relationship, but do soften the effect of the
precipitating factors; and second, that this moderating effect, even if weak, is different in
different legal contexts. The effect of the predisposing factors is reduced in Spain when the
consumer perceives switching costs, but not in Venezuela. As we have proposed, when the
legislation is more stringent and less permissive, the individuals feel that their options are
more limited, as far as they need to take out new insurance in case of dissolution. This
situation provokes that the inhibitors, i.e. switching costs, become more relevant. It does not
occur when the consumers can decide without restraint if they take out insurance or not. In
this situation, the switching costs are not a real impediment for the dissolution because the
change of supplier is not urgent, and the consumer can postpone it.
On the other hand, even if the difference between countries is weak as it concerns to the
moderating effect of switching costs in the precipitating factors, the results obtained are
interesting. In general, the switching costs moderate the intent to break as a consequence of
an unfair price or an anger incident, however, the legal context (more or less permissive law),
has not a significant role in this process.
Another interesting result, which was not part of our hypotheses, refers to the different
impact of predisposing and precipitating factors on the intent to break in each legal context.
Although the differences between countries are not significant, the results show that the
precipitating factors are relatively more important than the predisposing factors in Spain,
whereas in Venezuela the situation is inverse. The greater contribution of the unfair price and
the anger incidents on the relationship dissolution in Spain can be justified because the
consumers are conscious of the existence of a compulsory law and their behaviour is
conditioned by this imposition. The sacrifice done because of obligation acquires a greater
importance than the obtained benefices, and the consumer will not act with the acquiescence
of a consumer that have made a free decision. When the decision is not compulsory, it is said
that he that would have the fruit must climb the tree. In other words, the monetary sacrifice
for something not wanted will be perceived as excessive. Since in Venezuela the consumers
are not conscious of the obligation to take out insurance, the importance of price or anger
incidents is lower because their commitment with the firm is voluntary, freely decided.
484 Carmen Anton Martin and Carmen Camarero Izquierdo

As it concerns to the managerial implications, we reinforce the idea of the weak

moderating effect of switching costs. It seems that the direct effect of predisposing and
precipitating factors in the intent to break is so strong that the barriers of the switching costs
are hardly perceptible. Once the predisposing and the precipitating factors achieve a
threshold, the perceived switching costs, even if they are high, are not an obstacle to dissolve
a relationship, because the costs of maintaining it is greater than the breaking and switching
costs. Therefore, we suggest, that the commercial policies that “trap” the consumer with
switching barriers are really inefficient when the dissolution process starts. Even it these
policies are efficient in order to maintain a loyal consumer when the relationship is beneficial
to both parties, its effect is null when the consumer perceives serious problems in the service
and decides to break the relationship. Similarly, some authors such as Patterson and Smith
(2003) indicate that switching costs can have a boomerang effect for the firm. If customers
are unable to easily defect (because of the switching barriers) they may restrict their spending
with a focal service provider (Coyles and Gokey, 2002).
Moreover, we suggest that the firms should know the cultural and legal context of each
country as far as it has an influence on the consumer’s perception of the firm’s activities.
When the legal context allows the consumer to be free when making decisions, the positive
factors, that is, the benefices he/she receives such as the quality and the firm’s commitment,
have greater importance in he/she decision than when the consumer is bound by the
legislation. On the contrary, the negative factors, that is, the compensation he/she gives, such
as the price and the incidents, are more relevant for those consumers who perceive the
transaction as a legal obligation.
One of the limitations of this work is the use of transversal data. Longitudinal data should
have been considered in order to explore the impact of the different factors on dissolution
over time. These data would enable us to examine the real consumer exit and switch
behaviour and determine when the switching costs act as an attenuating factor on exit
behaviour.
The work has not explored which other cultural features of a country may impact
behaviour and intention, beyond mere law enforcement. Although the link between this area
and some of a country’s cultural dimensions proposed by Hofstede has already been posited,
it would no doubt prove enlightening to include in future work other cultural and commercial
aspects along the lines put forward by Zhang et al (2007), such as the relationship forged
between client and provider or consumer habits as regards making complaints to firms.
Finally, in this work, we have analyzed the perception of legal obligation, but we have
not considered the perception of moral obligation. This distinction could justify why some of
the differences between the two contexts are lower than we have expected.

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Chapter 16

TRIPARTITE CONCEPTS OF MIND AND BRAIN, WITH

SPECIAL EMPHASIS ON THE NEUROEVOLUTIONARY
POSTULATES OF CHRISTFRIED JAKOB
AND PAUL MACLEAN

Lazaros C. Triarhou
Economo–Koskinas Wing for Integrative and Evolutionary Neuroscience,
University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki, Greece

ABSTRACT
The ‘triune brain’, conceived by Paul D. MacLean (1913–2007) in the late 1960s,
has witnessed more attention and controversy than any other evolutionary model of brain
and behavior in modern neuroscience. Decades earlier, in his book Elements of
Neurobiology published in 1923 in La Plata, Argentina, neurobiologist Christfried
(Christofredo) Jakob (1866–1956) had formulated a ‘tripsychic’ brain system, based on
his deep understanding of biological and neural phylogeny. In a historical context, 1923
was also the year of publication of Sigmund Freud’s The Ego and the Id, whereby the
founder of psychoanalysis solidified his tripartite model of the mental apparatus.
Tripartite systems of the human mind have been surmised since Plato and Aristotle; they
continue to our era, an example being Robert J. Sternberg’s triarchic theory of human
intelligence. In view of the fact that both Jakob and MacLean invested a considerable part
of their long and distinguished careers studying comparative, and particularly reptilian
neurobiology, the present article revisits their neuroevolutionary models, underlining the
convergence of their anatomical-functional propositions, in spite of a time distance of
almost half a century.

E-mail address: [email protected], phone +30 2310 891-387, fax +30 2310 891-388
490 Lazaros C. Triarhou

INTRODUCTION
In the words of neurologist William E. DeMyer [1], “to understand the brain–thought–
behavior triumvirate is the Holy Grail of neuroanatomy, as compelling to the researcher as a
cyclonic vortex.” Models to explain the mechanisms of operation of the human mental
apparatus have been formulated since the era of classical Greece. The preponderance of such
models appear to be ‘tripartite,’ without necessarily entailing that e.g. unipartite, bipartite or
quintopartite models would be less meaningful.

Figure 1. Left: Portrait of Paul D. MacLean (1913–2007), taken in 2001 by Kelly G. Lambert [81] ©
2003 Elsevier Inc., reproduced with permission; signature from the author’s private archive. Right:
Portrait of Christofredo Jakob (1866–1956), from Orlando’s book cover [15]; signature from Jakob’s
1924 notes of pathological anatomy and physiology (full reference in [17]), courtesy of Staatsbibliothek
Berlin.

The ‘triune brain’, conceived by neurobiologist-psychiatrist Paul D. MacLean (1913–

2007) (Fig. 1), has been popularized way beyond the neurosciences. This becomes evident in
the treatments by Arthur Koestler in chapter 16 (‘The three brains’) of his Ghosts in the
Machine [2] – the concluding sequel of the trilogy which includes the 1959 Sleepwalkers: A
History of Man’s Changing Vision of the Universe and the 1964 Act of Creation –, and by
Carl Sagan in chapter 3 (‘The brain and the chariot’) of his evolutionary saga The Dragons of
Eden [3]. Further, the triune brain featured in a documentary produced by the National Film
Board of Canada [4]. In recent years, the triune modular brain concept has been
accommodated by the social sciences: Cory [5] suggested an extended dynamic model of
neural social architecture, the ‘conflict systems neurobehavioral’ (CSN) model, placing more
emphasis on behavioral than on neurological terms.
Concerning neuroanatomical terminology, Elliot Smith [6] coined the term neopallium in
1901 to denote a cortical organ that had the ability, based on progressive evolution, to learn
with experience through a mechanism of sensory perception, associative memory,
consciousness and response (Figure 2). Elliot Smith [7 (pp. 31–38)] regarded the neopallium
as fulfilling all the conditions of the Aristotelian sensorium commune.
 Tripartite Concepts of Mind and Brain… 491

Figure 2. Left column: The first original idea of 1908, credited to Edinger, suggesting the evolutionary
distinction of the brain into an ‘old’ (gray) and a ‘new’ part (black). The drawing depicts, top to bottom,
the brains of a shark, an amphibian, a reptile and a mammal. The palaeëncephalon exists from insects
to man, and remains virtually unchanged from shark to elephant. The neëncephalon made its first
appearance in fish and progressed all the way to humans, filling the entire skull. From figure 8 in
Edinger [11 (p. 17)]. Upper right: Sir Grafton Elliot Smith introduced the term neopallium in 1901. The
diagram shows the lateral aspect of the left cerebral hemisphere of a primitive mammal, the jumping
shrew (Macroscelides), and the relatively enormous extent of the primitive olfactory territories and
small neopallium with its receptive areas for tactile, visual and auditory impressions. The anterior
segment of the tactile area (from M back to the dotted line) represents the so-called ‘motor area’. F
represents the frontal area rudiment. From figure 7 in Elliot Smith [7 (p. 33)]. Lower right: Schematic
representation of the theorized hierarchical organization in the triune brain concept of MacLean [73,
75]. The three basic components, in an ascending evolutionary order, are the reptilian complex, the
limbic system (paleomammalian brain), and the neocortex (neomammalian brain), roughly subserving
instincts, emotions, and intellect, respectively.

The designations ‘paleo-’, ‘archi-’ and ‘neo-’ for the cortex (pallium) on grounds of their
sequential evolutionary appearance were introduced with a 1909 paper of Ariëns Kappers
[8],1 which subsequently led to similar designations for diverse brain regions, including the
striatum, thalamus and cerebellum [10]. Kappers’ mentor, Frankfurt anatomist Ludwig
Edinger [11] had provided the fundamental intellectual stimulus the previous year, 1908, by
systematizing the brain into palaeëncephalon, the highly conserved midbrain and hindbrain,
and neëncephalon, the forebrain, which varies substantially among vertebrates, appearing for
the first time in fish and increasing in size and complexity along the phylogenetic scale
(Figure 2).

1
In a footnote, Jakob [9 (p. 12)] argues that, to avoid confusion by various authors, the correct chronological order
of the three terms on etymological grounds should be archi-, paleo- and neo-, since ἀρχὴ means origin or
beginning, and should therefore precede παλαιός, which means old or ancient.
492 Lazaros C. Triarhou

Figure 3. Sagittal schematic views of reflex and central nervous pathways in the brain of a reptile (top),
a fish or ‘lower vertebrate’ (middle) and a mammal or ‘higher vertebrate’ (bottom). The atlases of
comparative neuroanatomy by Jakob and Onelli [21, 22] are rare treasures of evolutionary information.
In them, the anatomical properties and connections patterns of cortical (monostratified to
polystratified), striatal, hypothalamic and mesencephalic structures, among others, are related from fish
through reptiles to primates, as are the underlying functional correlations. Sources: top frame is from
figure 7 on p. 8 in [21], also appearing on p. 13 in [22]; middle and bottom frames are from figure 1 on
p. 6 in [21], also appearing on p. 11 in [22] and in figure 13 on p. 32 in [66]. Note that in the top frame
the olfactory bulb is oriented to the right side; in the middle and bottom frames to the left.

Edinger’s core proposition, i.e. that the forebrain has evolved through a sequential
addition of parts, is most likely the original idea from which MacLean’s ‘triune brain’
concept derives [12 (p. 31)]. Tilney [13] used the term archikinetic to connote balance
functions subserved by the medial group of the deep cerebellar nuclei (globose and fastigial),
and neokinetic for the skilled movements of the face and limbs subserved by the lateral group
 Tripartite Concepts of Mind and Brain… 493

(emboliform and dentate nucleus) in conjunction with the neopallium and the pyramidal
system. According to Tilney [14], neokinesis is an extensive group of reactions comprising
the externalized expression of the elaborate evolved coordination of eyes, head and hands.

Figure 4. Phylogenetic evolution of the cerebral cortex from monostratified to polystratified. From left
to right, amphibian, reptilian, avian, mammalian, and higher mammalian cortical layer structure.
Source: from figure 32 on p. 23 in [21], also appearing on p. 16 in [22].

Some of the most pertinent contributions to a neuroevolutionary approach of behavior

have come from Christfried (Christofredo) Jakob (1866–1956) (Fig. 1), a German-born
neuropathologist who spent most of his professional life in Argentina. Having studied under
Friedrich Albert von Zenker (1825–1898) and Adolf von Strümpell (1853–1925) at Erlangen,
Jakob subsequently became affiliated with the National Universities of La Plata and of
Buenos Aires, where he established one of the most important neuropathological laboratories
in South America. He is considered the father of Argentinian neurobiology and forensic
histopathology and has left an invaluable legacy of 200 articles and 30 monographs in
German and Spanish [15–17]. Jakob reached international renown through his early
successful handbooks of clinical medicine [18] and neurology [19], as well as his atlases of
human [20] and comparative neuroanatomy [21, 22] (Figures 3 and 4).
494 Lazaros C. Triarhou

Figure 5. (A) A young alligator used for studies on temperature regulation and reproductive behavior at
MacLean’s Laboratory of Brain Evolution and Behavior at the National Institute of Mental Health [97].
(B) The yacaré (Caiman latirostris) displaying the innate ‘terrorizing’ reflex posture, an ‘archineuronal
brainstem reaction’ [53 (p. 143)]. (C) Brain and spinal cord of a young yacaré (‘alligator of Chaco’)
dissected in situ. One can discern the cerebral hemispheres, optic tectum, small cerebellum, and the
dorsal medulla and spinal cord. From plate 37a in [9 (p. 97)]. (D, E) Onset and termination of a
stereotypic ‘head-nodding’ behavior displayed by a male Iguana iguana lizard from South America;
this type of fixed social signal may have evolved 150 million years ago. From work by MacLean’s
alumnus Detlev Ploog [100]. (F) Dorsal view of the iguana brain. The Ammonic zone or medial cortical
(cm) and lateral cortical (cl) portion of the cerebral hemispheres can be seen, separated by the dorsal
longitudinal lateral sulcus, which is the precursor of the hippocampal sulcus. Abbreviations: bol,
olfactory bulb; tol, olfactory tubercle; ep, epiphysis (pineal); co, optic tectum; cb, cerebellum; X, vagus;
bl, medulla oblongata; mc, spinal cord. From figure 86 in [9 (p. 136)]. (G) Coronal section of the
anterior cerebrum of Iguana iguana, at the level of the basal commissure (cb) and its continuation
towards the hypothalamus. Between the fascia dentata and Ammon’s zone, the lateral sulcal depression
is found. From figure 87 in [9 (p. 138)]. (H) The midbrain of Iguana iguana. Entry of the optic nerve
(II) in the zonal layer (stz); superior (cs) and inferior (ci) mesencephalic commissure in the tectum; at
the bottom is the hypothalamic commissure (cht). Weigert stain, ×50. From figure 94 in [9 (p. 150)]. (I)
Coronal section through the midbrain of Iguana iguana, showing the three layers of the optic body, the
zonal (sz), the intermediate, and the deep (stp), as well as its commissure (cc). Laterally the optic
bundle (II) enters into the zonal layer. From the deep layer derives the bulbar quadrigeminal descending
fasciculus (fcb) also called by various authors tectospinal. In the ventral half one can distinguish the
posterior longitudinal fasciculus (fl), the reticular formation and the basal (striodiencephalobulbar)
fasciculus. Weigert stain, ×90. From plate XXXVIIa in [9 (p. 95)].
 Tripartite Concepts of Mind and Brain… 495

Figure 6. Upper: Median facies of the brain of a squirrel monkey to show the approximate location of
light-responsive areas. Abbreviations: H, posterior hippocampal gyrus; L, parahippoampal portion of
lingual gyrus; R, retrosplenial cortex; F, fusiform gyrus. Arrow shows the caudal extreme of rhinal
sulcus at the caudal limit of the entorhinal area. From figure 5 in [75 (p. 343)]. Lower: Macroscopic
brain specimen of a cebus monkey from Paraguay. From plate LXII in [22].

He later produced landmark works on evolutionary neurobiology, studying in detail

dozens of species of the autochthonus Patagonian fauna, including the broad-snouted ‘yacaré’
(or Caiman latirostris), a reptile of the Alligatoridae family [23], and the ‘pichiciego’ (fairy
armadillo or Chlamyphorus truncatus), a mammal of the Dasypodidae family [24].
The aim of the present article is first, to revitalize an interest in the evolutionary concepts
of Christofredo Jakob, a foremost neuroanatomist of the 20th century and perhaps one of the
earliest pioneers in neurophilosophy; and second, to pinpoint the confluences between the
anatomical-functional conceptions of Jakob and MacLean regarding their tripartite models of
the human mind based on evolutionary criteria, despite a time distance of almost half a
century. For a broader perspective, certain other tripartite models of the human mind from the
classical antiquity through present are mentioned.
Both Jakob and MacLean invested a considerable part of their long and distinguished
careers studying comparative neurobiology from reptiles (Fig. 5) to primates (Fig. 6), and
both left their mark on scientific advances regarding the visceral and olfactory brain and the
limbic system (Figure 7). As a matter of fact, there is a whole line of evidence indicating that
Jakob described the anatomical elements of the visceral brain some 30 years before the
widely known ‘circuit of Papez’ came into being [25–31]. On the other hand, MacLean’s
496 Lazaros C. Triarhou

contributions have been instrumental in both defining the limbic system and in sorting out
some of its key emotional functions in normality and psychopathology [32–38].

Figure. 7. Drawings of the limbic system and the rhinencephalon (olfactory brain) by MacLean [75] and
Jakob [20]. Upper: Limbic cortex and its connections with brainstem structures. Abbreviations: A.T.,
anterior thalamic nuclei; HYP, hypothalamus; M.F.B., median forebrain bundle; OLF, olfactory [75
(figure 4 on p. 341)]. Lower: The rhinencephalon and the olfactory radiation, with the anatomical
connections of the olfactory bulb, septum, anterior commissure and uncus hippocampi [20 (figure 15 on
p. 19)].

PHILOSOPHICAL TRIPARTITE MODELS OF THE PSYCHE

Plato of Athens developed a tripartite concept of the human psyche in Phaedrus (370
B.C.) and in the Republic (360 B.C.). For him, the cerebrospinal marrow is the organic seat of
the ‘rational’ or ‘intelligent’ (λογιστικόν), the ‘temperamental’ or ‘courageous’ (θυμοειδές),
and the passionate or appetitive (ἐπιθυμητικόν), respectively occupying the cerebral, thoracic,
and abdominal portion [39 (pp. 270–271), 40, 41]. Atomic philosopher Democritus of Abdera
 Tripartite Concepts of Mind and Brain… 497

(c. 460–370 B.C.) may have anticipated Plato’s tripartite division of the psyche [39 (pp. 254–
255)], naming the brain the ‘guard of the mind’ (φύλαξ διανοίης), the heart the ‘control of
passion’ (ὀργῆς τιθηνός), and the liver the ‘cause of desire’ (ἐπιθυμίης αἴτιον).
Burnet [42 (p. 149)] argues that the doctrine of the tripartite psyche was in reality
Pythagorean. Among existing suggestions at the time, Plato adopted in Timaeus (360 B.C.)
the landmark discovery made by Alcmaeon of Croton (500 B.C.) that the brain is the faculty
of the mind [43]. Based on that thesis, Socrates speculates in Phaedo that the brain provides
sensations (αἰσθήσεις); from these arise memory (μνήμη) and opinion (δόξα); and when
stabilized, these become knowledge (ἐπιστήμη) [39 (p. 269)].
Cohen [44] surmises that, because the Bible makes God tripartite with the three persons
of the Trinity and teaches that man is made in God’s image, theologians have looked for a
Biblical tripartite nomenclature for man: a unified totality, comprising the components of
‘spirit’ (πνεῦμα), ‘psyche’ (ψυχή), and ‘body’ (σῶμα), the only Biblical support for a
doctrine of human tripartiteness found in the First Epistle to the Thessalonians (ε´ 23).
A noteworthy association from the domain of classical drama – not far from neuroscience
in an essential way2 – is a metaphorical tripartite model of the human psyche discerned in the
Karamazov brothers of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s 1880 crowning success, Dmitri representing
‘passion’, Ivan ‘intellect’, and Alyosha ‘contemplation’ [46].

THE TRIPSYCHIC BRAIN SYSTEM OF JAKOB

In his 1923 Elements of Neurobiology, Jakob establishes three categories of
‘neurodynamic’ functions [47 (pp. 197–209)]:

(1) plasmopsychisms or plasmodynamisms (tropism, taxism, and pulsatile rhythms);

(2) phylopsychisms or neurodynamisms (simple serial or organized reflexes, otherwise
instincts); and
(3) ontopsychisms or psychodynamisms (‘gnosias’, ‘praxias’ and ‘symbolias’).

Jakob [48] viewed motor and sensory elements and their connections as constituting a
unit and a fundamental functional cortical arc that forms the basis of psychological
phenomena. In the phylogenetic scale, plasmopsychic or plasmodynamic activities precede all
other nervous functions [9].
The above three neurodynamic graduations are all primarily ‘biophylactic’, i.e. they serve
to preserve life, respectively, at its fundamental, the species, and the organism levels [47].
They are found in varying distribution and combination among actual living beings: in the
world of plants, as well as in protozoans and sponges one finds only plasmopsychisms; in
metazoans with ganglionic nervous systems (e.g. hydropolyps, worms, molluscs and
arthropods) through the inferior vertebrates (cyclostomes and fish) exist both
plasmopsychisms and phylopsychisms; insects, having a cerebral ganglion, and fish, with their
mesencephalon, might potentially exercise elemental ontopsychic functions; in amphibians
498 Lazaros C. Triarhou

through the higher vertebrates, including humans, one finds all three categories amalgamated
and combined, with a predominance of the ontopsychic dynamism, which in humans has
culminated into the symbolic psychisms (the elements of the intellectual world, of aesthetics
and ethics), without though diminishing the concomitant existence of the more elemental
levels.

Figure 8. Upper row: Schematic drawing of the phylogeny of archineuronal, paleoneuronal and
neoneuronal olfactory systems in a reptile (left), a marsupial (center) and a primate (right). From figure
110 in El Yacaré [23 (p. 100)]. Lower group: Schematic drawing of primordial neural (A), archineural
(B), paleoneural (C) and neoneural (D) systems. From The Neoencephalon, its Organization and
Dynamism [96 (plate 2)].

2
As highlighted by Steven Pinker [45], Dostoyevsky was not foreign to the nervous underpinnings of behavior. In
his prison cell, prompted by a visit by the academician Rakitin, Dmitri Karamazov mulls over the fact that
thinking results from quivering nerve tails and the chemistry inside the brain, rather than an immaterial soul.
 Tripartite Concepts of Mind and Brain… 499

There are three underlying structural-functional hierarchical levels of the nervous system,
designated as (a) archineuronal, (b) paleoneuronal and (c) neoneuronal (Fig. 8).
Archineuronal and paleoneuronal levels are inherited3 and constitute the substrate of
phylopsychic or neurodynamic processes; the neoneuronal level subserves ontopsychic or
psychodynamic processes, where individual experience becomes possible, and where the will
resides [47, 50, 51 (pp. 18–30)].
The archineuronal system has a reflex function similar to the invertebrates, comprising
simple visceral and somatic reflex arcs (‘archikinesias’) (Fig. 9, 10A). The paleoneuronal
system hosts instinctive-automated reactions (‘paleokinesias’) and it becomes able to prolong
the effects of stimuli over time, thus instigating a chronotropic ability (Fig. 9). Examples of
paleokinetic systems [50, 52] can be found in the cerebellum and the corpus striatum (Fig.
10B, C).

Figure 9. Diagrammatic scheme of archikinesias (I), paleokinesias (II) and neokinesias (III) according
to Jakob [50 (p. 116)]. Abbreviations: a, s, sensory afferent system; e, m, motor efferent system; i,
intercalated system; ci, intercalated microdynamism; fA, fB, cortical foci A and B; cif, focal intercalated
microdynamism; cia, associative intercalated circuit; col, motor collateral.

The higher neoneuronal system subserves conscious acts, individuality and

consciousness (‘neokinesias’) (Fig. 9, 11); it comprises two sectors, the limbic cortex
(‘introyente’ or endogenous sphere) and the lateral cortex (‘ambiente’ or external

3
In his 1969 Hincks Memorial Lecture at Queen’s University in Ontario, MacLean [49] begins his tripartite diatribe
with ‘Man’s reptilian and limbic inheritance’ (my italics).
500 Lazaros C. Triarhou

environment). Time responses vary approximately from 20–30 msec for the ‘archikinesias’
and from 200–300 msec for the ‘neokinesias’ [53 (pp. 35–37)];4 in the latter instance, the
major distance can be established through a central or volitional neokinetic transformation in
a reaction time of 110–120 msec (the “fourth dimension of thought”).

Figure 10. Histological organization of intercalated systems in (A) archikinesias, (B) cerebellar
paleokinesias, and (C) striatal paleokinesias according to Jakob [50 (p. 119)]. Abbreviations: a,
afferent; e, efferent; m, motor; s, sensory; a1, mossy fiber; a2, climbing fiber; P, Purkinje cells; gr,
granule cells; str, stellate cells; i, intercalated element (interneuron).

Within the framework of the dynamic workings of the human cerebral cortex, the
‘neokinesias’ include (i) ‘gnosias’ (cognitive processes related to conscious orientation in
one’s environment), (ii) ‘praxias’ (individual active intervention) and (iii) ‘symbolias’
(ideative abstraction to facilitate interindividual communication, such as the sociogenetic
processes on which human culture is based) [47, 50, 53 (pp. 41–66), 60; cf. also 29, 61, 62
(pp. 297–303), 63–65]. Jakob [66 (p. 16)] later elaborated on these three concepts in his
Documenta Biofilosófica, commenting that ‘gnosia’ (attentive orientation), ‘praxia’ (active or
passive intervention) and ‘symbolia’ (communicative verbal formulation) represent three
intimately linked sensory-motor phases that together form the true psychogenetic trinity (‘la
verdadera trinidad psicocreadora’), from which “experience and thought are revealed as
amalgamated neurodynamic realities.”
Jakob treated the theme of the phylogeny of the archicortex, paleocortex and neocortex
in greater detail in the second part of his 1945 monograph on the yacaré [23 (pp. 99–109)].

4
These are remarkable calculations for having been written in the 1940s, if one considers that current views hold
that consciousness arises from neurons in about 500 msec – the ‘neural time factor’ [54] – or less [55]; in other
words, it takes a fraction of a second between the occurrence of a physiological stimulus in the parietal cortex
and a subject becoming conscious of it [56], with the mind compensating for real time through a ‘backward
referral’ experience [57]. On the efferent side, brain potentials fire a little over 300 msec before one has the
conscious intention to act [58] and cerebral potentials may precede finger movement by up to 1 sec [59].
 Tripartite Concepts of Mind and Brain… 501

Figure. 11. Topographic depiction of the systems of archipsychism (I), paleopsychism (II) and
neopsychism (III) according to Jakob [50 (p. 127)].

THE TRIPARTITE MENTAL APPARATUS OF PSYCHOANALYSIS

Freud formally introduced the full scope of his infamous three-fold model of the mental
apparatus – comprising the id (‘das Es’), the ego (‘das Ich’), and the super-ego or ego ideal
(‘das Über-Ich’ oder ‘Ich-Ideal’) – in his 1923 book Das Ich und das Es [67], which was
translated into English as The Ego and the Id [68]. Freud revisited and supplemented the
theme a decade later (1933) in his New Introductory Lectures [69].
Jacobson [70] argues that Freud’s contributions to the neuron doctrine may have been
overestimated as part of “the blatant hero worship,” which led to a reverberation of
psychoanalytic thought in the new field of neuroscience. The theory of MacLean [71] on the
502 Lazaros C. Triarhou

processing of emotions by a network of deep brain structures seems to have found a general
acceptance in the 1950s because of its conceptual correspondence to psychoanalytic theory
[72]. As a matter of fact, MacLean [71] makes the point that “considered in the light of
Freudian psychology, the visceral brain would have many of the attributes of the unconscious
id.” Regarding the assumed phylogenetic components of the ‘triune brain,’ MacLean [49, 73]
does mention a correspondence to Freud’s id, ego, and super-ego [74].
Sagan [3 (p. 79)] describes MacLean’s triune brain model as being only in weak accord
with the tripartite mind of psychoanalytic theory and stresses that, owing to the
neuroanatomical connections between its three component parts, the triune brain must be
useful, just like the metaphor for the human psyche found in Plato’s Phaedrus. In that
dialogue, Socrates likens the human soul to a chariot drawn by two horses, a black and a
white, pulling in different directions and weakly controlled by the charioteer. Freud also
described the ego as the rider of an unruly horse. Sagan [3] argues that an even better
metaphor could be Freud’s diνision of the mind into conscious, preconscious and
unconscious.5 A remarkable similarity can be seen between the metaphor of Plato’s chariot
and MacLean’s neural substrates, the reptilian and paleomammalian brains corresponding to
the two horses, and the neomammalian brain to the charioteer.
Freud’s and Jakob’s books, describing their respective landmark models of the tripartite
mind and the tripsychic brain, were both published in the year 1923. Both investigators
attribute a special emphasis to the body’s projection pattern on the cerebral cortex: having a
sound background and an early successful career in neuroanatomy, Freud [68] describes the
ego as being “first and foremost a bodily ego, not merely a surface entity, but itself the
projection of a surface.”
According to Freud, a neurological analogy for the ego is its identification with the
“cortical homunculus of the anatomists.” In a footnote first appearing in the authorized
English translation of 1927 (absent from the German edition), this is further explained as the
ego being “ultimately derived from bodily sensations, chiefly those springing from the
surface of the body;” thus, it can be regarded as “a mental projection of the surface of the
body, besides representing the superficies of the mental apparatus.”
In his atlases of comparative and human neuroanatomy, Jakob [20–22] stresses in more
detail the topographic dissociation of the body’s projection pathways onto the lateral and
medial surfaces of the cerebral hemispheres, depending on the perception of exogenous or
endogenous signals, and introduces his pioneering concepts of the formation of sectors and
pre-gyri, as well as the concept of a visceral brain with an anatomical correlate in the
cingulate gyrus (reviewed in [31]).

THE TRIUNE BRAIN CONCEPT OF MACLEAN

Paul MacLean’s conception of a ‘triune’ pattern and organization of the human brain
includes three fundamental brain types or subsystems – each with its own subjectivity,
intelligence, spacetime sense, memory, motor and other functions – intermeshing as one.

5
In his paper on the phylogeny of the kinesias, Jakob [50] mentions a correspondence of plasmopsychic through
archipsychic functions with the unconscious, of paleopsychic functions with the preconscious (which
 Tripartite Concepts of Mind and Brain… 503

Going phylogenetically and hierarchically from older to newer, over the past 200 million
years, these are [49, 73, 75–78]:

(1) The reptilian brain at the base, the most ancient heritage, first evolved in primeval
reptiles and the great lizards, forms the matrix of the upper brainstem and comprises
most of the reticular formation, the midbrain, the hypothalamus, the basal ganglia
(archipallium), and the cerebellum; it mediates biological and endocrine equilibrium,
via stereotypic behaviors and vital functions, such as survival and self-preservation,
sleep-wakefulness regulation, drinking and feeding, mating, territorial possession,
imitation, aggression, flight and ritualized combat, and the establishment of social
hierarchies. It assures an immediate response in the present and it is privileged
concerning olfaction.
(2) The paleomammalian brain, the intermediate type that is distinguished by the
presence of a primitive cortex, the limbic cortex; the limbic system is central in
mediating feelings, emotions and affect – which necessitates a long-term memory
and the motivation associated with it –, play, the sense of reality of oneself and the
environment, the conviction of what is true or important, the recognition of offspring
and parental care. It makes its appearance in the early mammals and it is based on the
importance of vocalization and audition.
(3) The neomammalian brain, which ‘mushroomed’ late in evolution and is
characterized by the more highly differentiated form of the neocortex (neopallium); it
forms the basis of interpersonal communication via spoken and written language,
arithmetic, rationality, creative abilities, and the intellect. Typical of humans, the
neomammalian brain with its evolved frontal lobes, subserves (rather than
‘understands’, cf. [79]) reason and symbolic language; it is ‘privileged’ with regards
to vision, abstraction, association, imagination and future anticipation.

According to the triune brain theory, the integrated human brain is a synthesis of the three
successively evolved ‘component’ brains, which, while operating as a whole, retain their
original attributes and functions. Limbic regions (e.g. anterior cingulate, medial frontal and
insular), phylogenetically conserved to a higher degree than the neocortical regions which
mediate cognitive capacities, are associated with emotional responses and their intrinsic
affective attributes [73, 80]. The types of mental function for which the reptilian, limbic and
neomammalian brain are responsible, are respectively assigned by MacLean [73] as
‘protomentation’, ‘emotional mentation’ and ‘rational mentation’. In the relatively rapid
human evolution, the three brain subsystems are imperfectly integrated, influencing
individual and social behaviors that are under the commands of each individual or collective
act.
MacLean chose the term ‘triune’ for his evolutionary brain theory because of the literal
meaning of the word (three-in-one); the fact that his father was a Presbyterian minister may
have something to do with such a choice, although MacLean reportedly regretted it [81], due
to the potential confounding with the Christian doctrine.

genetically precedes conscious phenomena, and thus is differentiated from the subconscious, which he
considers part of the conscious), and of neopsychic functions with the conscious (Fig. 10).
504 Lazaros C. Triarhou

FURTHER TRIPARTITE MODELS OF THE HUMAN MIND

In a temporal confluence, Knopp [82], studying patients with Gilles de la Tourette
disease and acute schizophrenia, proposed – in the same year as MacLean [75] formally
introduced the triune brain concept – a tripartite brain concept as well, whereby a balanced
and continuous reconciliation among three components or at least two levels of central
integration constitutes the ‘rational brain’. According to Knopp’s proposition, the limbic lobe,
the hypothalamic network and the autonomic nervous system neurophysiologically subserve
visceral experience, the nigrostriatal system and the limbic lobe (conscious) emotional
experience, and the neocortex social experience (effectuation).
In considering tripartite models of the mind, the synthetic neurophilosophical construct of
Popper and Eccles [83] comes to mind, accounting for brain-mind interaction by means of
their World 1 (liaison brain), World 2 (outer and inner sense and the self), and World 3
(cultural heritage).
In the cybernetic view, the nervous system operates as a tripartite system that involves
input (sensory receptor), integrating, and output (muscle contraction) components [84]; this is
based on a 19th century notion of anatomists and physiologists, and an ubiquitous principle of
physiological psychology in the 20th century, of grouping brain structure and function into
sensory, association, and motor systems [85]. Such properties accrete from the most
fundamental properties of the nerve cell as a receiving, conducting, and transmitting
functional unit, and the principle of dynamic polarization of neurons [86], which is at the core
of neurobiology.
The triarchic model of the human mind propounded by Sternberg [87, 88] consists in
analytical, practical, and creative sides of intelligence. Tigner and Tigner [89] argue that
such a model may reflect the triptych developed by Aristotle of Stageira in his Nicomachean
Ethics (350 B.C.). The Greek philosopher proposed a system of human intelligence
comprising three virtues: ‘theoretical’ (διανόησις), ‘practical’ (φρόνησις), and
‘productive’ (ποίησις). The parallel conclusions of temporally disjoined inquiries by
investigators working under disparate historical circumstances does not seem to be unusual in
the historical evolution of psychological thought [89].
At the level of mind organization, Fodor [90] proposed a tripartite division of cognitive
mechanisms, involving physical energy→symbol transducers, which record stimuli from the
outside world and convert them into neural code, specialized modular input systems, which
process raw data derived from the transducers, and a central processor, the site of higher
cognitive processes that receives the outcome of input systems [91].
An established philosophical taxonomy, providing a tripartite structure of consciousness,
divides it into phenomenal, reflective, and access consciousness [92, 93]. Phenomenal
consciousness subserves the subjective feeling of mental content [94]; reflective
consciousness is defined as the direct availability of the process of mental activities for access
that allows one to access the steps of the reasoning process, whereas access consiousness is
the direct availability of mental content that allows one to access the outcome of a reasoning
process [93].
 Tripartite Concepts of Mind and Brain… 505

DISCUSSION
Based on the ideas exposed above, it becomes apparent that tripartite models abound in
the attempt to shed light into the workings of the human brain and mind; they span over a
spectrum from the philosophical to the biological. To attempt to draw parallels or pinpoint
differences among various components in such a pleiad of systems forms a daunting task.
Nonetheless, in considering the particular models in the evolutionary domain, Jakob’s
proposition of three hierarchically appearing ‘psychisms’ in the nervous system [47] seems to
anticipate, by several decades, the ‘triune brain’ concept of MacLean [49, 75].
During his upbringing in Germany, Jakob acquired a strong background in philosophy
[15] and throughout his career, Jakob [66, 95] maintained a philosophical perspective on
biology in general and on neurobiology in particular (Figure 12); he realized some of the
earliest interpretations of the limbic or ‘internal’ brain as a viscero-emotional mechanism and
the bidirectional communication between the internal organs and the splenial cortex, and the
external environment and the lateral cortex [21, 22]. Although Jakob kept a distance from
peripatetic metaphysics, he nevertheless adopted, in strictly biological terms, the Aristotelian
notion of the psychic character (or ‘psychism’): “That neurobiophylactic [neural life-
protecting] complex of neuroenergetic reception, assimilation and reaction, which regulates
the organism’s vital necessities against variable factors in the external and inner environment,
I call psychism” [96 (p. 8)]. In Jakob’s synthesis, one can trace the influence of the precepts of
his mentor von Strümpell, as well as of Italian positivism, particularly the views of
philosopher Giovanni Marchesini (1868–1931) [30 (pp. 115–116)].
MacLean, on the other hand, planned to study philosophy before ending up studying
medicine; he eventually proposed the creation of a new branch of knowledge (“epistemics”)
to look at things “from the inside out”, combining neuroscience and psychology in an attempt
to explain the subjective self and its relationship to the external and internal environment
[97].
Jakob [47] attributed a life-preserving role (‘biophylaxis’) to phylopsychism – at the
species – and ontopsychism – at the individual – level. MacLean highlighted the importance
of the reptilian complex for integrating behaviors involved in self-preservation and in the
preservation of the species [97].
Jakob [60] named ‘praxias’ the active individual intervention processes within the
framework of the dynamic workings of the cerebral cortex, and treated ‘tropism’ within the
spectrum of fundamental neurodynamic functions [47]; he further presented his ideas on life
and mental experience relative to time at the basal, phylogenetic and ontogenetic levels in a
paper under the encompassing title ‘From tropism to the general theory of relativity’ [98].
MacLean coined terms such as ‘isopraxic’ – to denote behaviors in which multiple members
of a group perform the same thing – and ‘tropistic’ – to connote a behavior responding to
partial representations of things, such as the marking on a prey [97].
In the 1990s, MacLean [99] placed special emphasis on the three cortical types that
evolved in the forebrain of mammals, from mammalian-like reptiles (therapsids) through
humans, to describe the idea of how resonance may contribute to the dynamic excitability of
neural circuits by representing possible algorithms in the nervous system at the macroscopic,
microscopic, molecular, and atomic level that underscore mental states and solutions for
immediate or eventual actions.
506 Lazaros C. Triarhou

Figure 12. Upper: MacLean’s [75 (p. 338)] scheme for viewing the world of affects, subjectively
qualified into either agreeable or disagreeable. MacLean maintains that affects cannot be neutral,
because “emotionally speaking, it is impossible to feel unemotional.” He further subdivides affects into
basic (informative about basic bodily needs), general (pertinent to situations, individuals or groups and
the preservation of self or the species) and specific (occurring with activation of specific sensory
systems). Lower: Jakob’s [95] scheme of the empirical sphere with the four quadrants of the sciences: I.
Cosmos (κόσμος), II. Life (βίος), III. Psyche (ψυχή) and IV. Order (νόμος). The sphere of the infinite
environment is invaded by that of progressive knowledge, delimited by the curve of evolution.
 Tripartite Concepts of Mind and Brain… 507

He suggested that the forebrain is particularly important as a ‘central processor’ for

mental experience, including sensation, perception, drive, affect, thought, and the precise
facts of science, and concluded that a refined picture of the structure and chemistry of the
brain’s circuitry accounting is needed, especially because of the central question of whether
one may ever rely on the brain with its viscoelastic properties to reliably measure time and
space and the general nature of things [99].
Over six decades earlier, in his classical exposé on the phylogeny of the kinesias, Jakob
[50] employed the time spread of ‘corollary discharge’ – a mechanism proposed by
Helmholtz, allowing a receiving system to either take into account or ignore self-generated
sensory input during the monitoring of self-generated movements – in attempting to substitute
semovience (the mind’s capacity to generate new causal actions through experienced inner
life). Jakob explained such a substitution with the mediation of axon collaterals, which upload
neural activity into focal intercalated microcircuits, and an acquired ‘associative system’ [30
(pp. 121, 144)].
The ideas and propositions independently formulated by Jakob and by MacLean, despite
their time distance and different environments, reflect a substantial convergence in their
reasoning. Thus, studies attempting to penetrate human behavior by means of evolutionary
hints, might benefit by taking a closer look at Jakob’s contributions, which have largely
remained unheeded in the English scientific literature and which contain information
potentially pertinent to current problems in psychobiology.

CONCLUDING REMARKS
Born an ocean and five decades apart, Christofredo Jakob and Paul MacLean left their
marks of productivity as interdisciplinary neuropsychiatrists, with special emphasis on
comparative neurobiology and brain evolution. It is worth noting that the two investigators
also died half a century apart, and published their tripartite models in 1923 and in 1970,
respectively, when they both were 57 years of age. The fact that they never met, but
formulated convergent propositions, can only lead one to recall the motto, “great minds think
alike.”
The extent to which the two neuroevolutionary constructs are empirically supported
remains a controversial issue even today. Considering the recurring triune theories on the
underpinnings of the mind, witnessed over twenty-five centuries of human inquiry, one may
ponder over a putative tendency of the human brain itself to construct or understand tripartite
models of reality. Perhaps the hypothesis of an evolutionary trend to develop tripartite models
of existence could some day be put to rigorous experimental testing.

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508 Lazaros C. Triarhou

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In: Encyclopedia of Cognitive Psychology (2 Volume Set) ISBN: 978-1-61324-546-0
Editor: Carla E. Wilhelm, pp. 515-535 © 2012 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 17

CATEGORY-SPECIFIC SEMANTICS IN
ALZHEIMER’S DEMENTIA AND NORMAL AGING?

Keith R. Laws 1, Tim M Gale1,2,3, F. Javier Moreno-Martínez4,

Rebecca L. Adlington1, Karen Irvine1 and Sunil Sthanakiya1
1
School of Psychology, University of Hertfordshire, UK
2
Department of Psychiatry, QEII Hospital, Welwyn Garden City, UK
3
School of Computer Science, University of Hertfordshire, UK
4
Departamento de Psicología Básica I, U.N.E.D. Madrid, Spain

ABSTRACT
Category-specific deficits represent the archetypal illustration of domain-specific
cognitive processes. These deficits describe individuals who, following certain types of
neurological damage show dissociations in their ability to recognise and name exemplars
from within specific domains e.g. living or nonliving things. Cases described over the
past 25 years have formed a pivotal foundation for the development of models describing
the structure and organisation of lexical-semantic memory. In this chapter, we review the
evidence on whether category deficits in AD are consistent with the loss of isolated
categorical information, an artefact of confounding psycholinguistic variables (e.g. age of
acquisition, word frequency, and familiarity) or an exaggeration of some pre-existing
normal cognitive difference.
Finally, we present emerging evidence that female AD patients show worse semantic
memory impairment than male patients. In this context, we discuss a possible role for the
apolipoprotein E (APOE) 4 allele, which is associated with a greater probability for
developing AD in women and impacts more on the cognitive performance of healthy
women than men.

Keywords: Alzheimer’s disease. Category-specificity. APOE. Semantic memory. Healthy

aging

University of Hertfordshire College LaneHatfield, Hertfordshire AL10 9AB, UK.

516 Keith R. Laws, Tim M. Gale, F. Javier Moreno-Martínez et al.

SEMANTIC MEMORY
How many legs does an octopus have? What is the capital of Peru? What is the meaning
of the word ‘Justice’? The answers to such questions reside within our semantic memory.
Since the seminal work by Tulving (1972), one of the most important distinctions in human
memory is arguably that between episodic and semantic memory. While episodic memory is
autobiographical and varies between individuals thus reflecting their differing personal
experience, semantic memory is more invariant across individuals and incorporates more
culturally shared knowledge. Broadly speaking, semantic memory comprises a
decontextualised knowledge base- ‘an organized body of knowledge involving words,
concepts, their meanings, their associations, and the rules for manipulating these symbols and
concepts’ (Nebes, 1989: p. 377). Although semantic and episodic memory are often discussed
as isolable entities, their interaction should not be overlooked: while stored semantic
knowledge must influence our comprehension of day-to-day experiences, the reverse is also
undoubtedly true, with much evidence suggesting that semantic memory is constantly updated
and modified by personal experience (McCarthy & Warrington, 1992; Snowden, Griffiths &
Neary, 1994).
Semantic memory plays a crucial role in object recognition and naming: contemporary
models of object recognition posit that information flows from perceptual to semantic and to
phonological representations when naming a visually presented item (e.g. Humphreys,
Riddoch & Quinlan, 1988). Disorders of semantic memory have been described in the
neuropsychological literature following a variety of pathologies including traumatic head
injury (Funnell & Sheridan, 1992), herpes simplex encephalitis (Laws & Sartori, 2005),
semantic dementia (Snowden Goulden & Neary, 1989) and Alzheimer’s disease (Chertkow &
Bub, 1990).

Semantic Memory Impairment in Alzheimer’s Disease

Current estimates are that someone in the USA will be diagnosed with Alzheimer’s
disease (AD) every 72 seconds (Alzheimer’s Association, 2007). Given this high prevalence,
Alzheimer’s disease is one of the most extensively studied conditions in the context of
semantic memory impairment and has a well-established association with a marked
impairment in semantic memory (Bayles & Tomoeda, 1983; Bayles, Tomoeda, & Trosset,
1990; Chertkow & Bub, 1990; Done & Gale, 1997; Hodges, Salmon, & Butters, 1991; Martin
& Fedio, 1983; Salmon, Butters, & Chan, 1999). Semantic dysfunction has been described
across an extensive range of tasks including: picture naming (Silveri, Daniele, Giustolisi, &
Gainotti, 1991); word to picture matching (Garrard, Lambon Ralph, Watson, Powis,
Patterson, & Hodges, 2001); object decision (Daum, Riesch, Sartori & Birbaumer, 1996);
semantic association (Mauri, Daum, Sartori, Riesch & Birbaumer, 1994); probe questioning
(Done & Gale, 1997); and naming to definition (Mondini & Semenza, 2006).
Patients with AD have well-documented progressive word-finding difficulties. Indeed,
AD patients tend to produce semantically-related naming errors (e.g. ‘tiger’ for leopard;
‘celery’ for asparagus); a strong item-to-item consistency across different tasks that tap
semantic representations (Chertkow & Bub, 1990); and a strong relationship between naming
 Category-Specific Semantics in Alzheimer’s Dementia and Normal Aging? 517

ability, attribute knowledge (Harley & Grant, 2004), and their ability to provide object
descriptions (Lambon Ralph, Patterson & Hodges, 1997). Such findings strongly support the
view that semantic disruption underpins the anomia in AD patients and, furthermore, it has
been suggested that semantic memory impairment emerges early in the course of AD, being
evident even in Mild Cognitive Impairment cases i.e. pre-AD neuropathology (Joubert,
Felician, Barbeau, Didic, Poncet, Ceccaldi, 2008; Vogel, Gade, Stokolm, & Waldemar,
2005). Indeed, estimates concerning the incidence of semantic memory deficits in mild AD
suggest it may be as high as 50% (Hodges, Salmon & Butters, 1992).

Category-Specific Semantic Impairments

One issue that has received increasing attention is whether the anomia seen in AD is
category-specific i.e. do individuals with AD show a selective or differential loss of semantic
knowledge for some categories over others? In the neuropsychological literature, category-
specificity is most often discussed in terms of a functional or neuroanatomical distinction
between knowledge of living and non-living things, with a relative sparing of the latter being
the more frequently reported profile (for recent reviews see Capitani, Laiacona, Mahon, &
Caramazza, 2003; Laws, 2005). Category-specific deficits represent the archetypal illustration
of domain-specific cognitive processes. These deficits describe individuals who, following
certain types of neurological damage, show differences in their ability to recognize and name
exemplars from different categories or semantic domains: living (e.g. animals, fruits or
vegetables) and nonliving (e.g. tools, vehicles or furniture). The search for category-deficits
i.e. dissociations between selectively preserved and lost cognitive domains of function is
central to the idea that the human mind has a modular structure (Fodor, 1983); and has been
pivotal in the development of models that describe the structure, organization and
deterioration of semantic memory, as well as in models of object recognition more generally.
Detailed descriptions of category specific cases have accumulated over the past 25 years,
following the seminal report by Warrington and Shallice (1984) of four patients with herpes
simplex encephalitis, each of whom demonstrated a selective impairment in their ability to
name living relative to nonliving things. Finding such impairment in several patients with the
same condition suggests that the cognitive profile is strongly associated with a specific neuro-
anatomical substrate affected by brain pathology, rather than being a sporadic phenomenon
arising from the random impact of neurological impairment (Gainotti, 2000). This non-
randomness is reinforced by the fact that living and nonliving deficits do not occur in equal
numbers (the ratio being approximately 5:1 for living: nonliving deficits reported, see Laws &
Gale 2002). Indeed, the vast majority of single cases reported with living thing deficits have
suffered lesions to the anterior temporal lobe (Gainotti, 2005) and this is perhaps exemplified
by the association of temporal lobe pathology in herpes simplex encephalitis and the presence
of category effects (e.g. Laws & Sartori, 2005). Moreover, a specific role has been proposed
for the medial temporal structures (hippocampus and amygdala) in the greater biological
significance of living than nonliving things for humans, while frontal regions may be more
important for the latter category (Gainotti, 2005; Silveri et al, 1991). Temporal lobe pathology
is an early and prominent pathological feature of AD (Braak & Braak, 1991; 1996) and the
finding of semantic memory impairments early in the course of AD is consistent with the
518 Keith R. Laws, Tim M. Gale, F. Javier Moreno-Martínez et al.

pathological changes in the parahippocampal regions from early in the course of the disease
(Braak & Braak, 1991).

Category-Specificity in AD

Despite the strong association between AD and semantic impairment, the presence of
category-specific impairments in AD remains contentious: some studies report an impairment
of living things (Montanes, Goldblum, & Boller, 1995; Silveri, et al.,1991), others have found
no category effects (Hodges et al., 1992; Tippett, Grossman, & Farah, 1996) while still others
report impairments of both living and nonliving things in the same sample of patients (Laws,
Gale, Leeson, & Crawford, 2005; Moreno-Martínez, Tallón-Barranco, & Frank-García, 2007,
Tippett, Meier, Blackwood, & Diaz-Asper, 2007) – see Tables 1 and 2.
Examining data from over 500 AD patients and 500 healthy controls in 21 studies, a
recent meta-analysis reported that AD patients showed impaired naming for both living and
nonliving things when compared to controls (Laws, Adlington, Gale, Moreno-Martinez, &
Sartori, 2007). Although more studies documented living than nonliving thing deficits (13:8
respectively), no significant difference emerged in the effect sizes for naming living and
nonliving things (d=1.76 and d=1.49 respectively). This is somewhat surprising given the
emphasis on the number of studies reporting category effects for living things in this patient
group. As noted by Laws and colleagues (Laws, 2005; Laws et al., 2007; Laws, Gale, Leeson
& Crawford, 2005) the higher prevalence of living reports may partly reflect the tendency of
some researchers to make within-group rather than between-group comparisons. In other
words, some studies simply compare the absolute numbers of living and nonliving things
named within the patient group (rather than with reference to a healthy control group).
Although it may seem self-evident that patient performance be compared to that of controls,
this is less common than one might imagine. Laws (2005) provided dramatic examples to
show how absolute category advantages can even mislead about the direction of a deficit.
Figure 1 displays one hypothetical pattern (described by Laws 2005 as a paradoxical deficit)
in which absolute worse performance by patients in one category (in this example, for living
things) reverses to a nonliving deficit when compared to the performance of healthy
individuals.

Item Variables Affecting Category-Specificity: Confounding (Nuisance)

Variables

Silveri et al (1991) conducted the first study to address the issue of category-specificity in
a sample of AD patients. These authors compared 15 AD patients with 10 age- and education-
matched controls on a confrontation-naming task using coloured images of 20 living and 20
nonliving things. Overall naming accuracy in the patients was impaired relative to the
controls, but this pattern was especially marked for living things and sustained across mild
and moderate cases of the disease.
 Table 1. Studies documenting a category effect in AD patient

Study Patient n Control n Patient Control Patient Control Patient Control Stimuli n Confounds controlled
(M-F) (M-F) Age Age Education Education MMSE MMSE (LT-NLT)
(years) (years)
Silveri et al 1991 15 10 M M M M - - (20-20)C Freq, Pro
Daum et al 1996 8(2-6) 9(4-5) 66.4M 67.1M - - 13.1 30 (32-32)MC Fam, VC, NF
Gonnerman et A 15 15 75.5M 74.3M 13.7 M 15.5 M 19 29 (12-24)MC Pro
al 1997 B 15 14 76.3 M
74.1 M
13.7 M
15.5 M
18 29 (24-48)MC Freq
Garrard et al 58(27-31) 46(12-34) 68 72.9 11.6 10.42 19.9 28.9 (24-24)MC Pro, LF
1998

Grossman et al 16 14 74.1M 69.1M 15.1 M 15.4 M 21.3 29.1 (36-36)CP LF

1998

Fung et al 2001 18(7-11) 60(28-32) 80.6 76.6 11.2 12.5 22.5 - (45-45)MC NAc, LF, Fam, VC
2002
Laws et al 18(4-14) 26(14-12) 77.5 72.35 - - 18.0 - (60-60)C Fam, NF
Zannino et al 53(19-34) 30(19-11) 68.6M 68.9M 4.5M 5.5M 20.6 - (30-30)MC AoA, NF, Pro, Fam,
2002
Img, NA, VC
Laws et al 2003 18 26 77.5 72.39 - - - - Set 1(32-32)MC Fam, NF
Set 2(60-60)C
Laws et al 2005 A 9(2-7) 12(4-8) 81.1 77.9 - - 13.7 - Set 1(20-20)MC (1,2)VC
B 18(4- 22(12-10) 77.4 71.54 - - 18.0 - Set 2(32-32)MC (1,2,3)Fam, NF
14) Set 3(60-60)C
Laws & Sartori 19(4-15) 15(6-9) 77.9M 75.3M 4.7M 6.28M 19.3 27.4 (32-32)MC Freq, Fam, VC
2005

Zannino et al 20(8-12) - 72.5 - 8.8 - 18.1 - (32-32)MC LF, AoA, Fam, VC

2006

Albanese 2007 48(28-20) 40(20-20) 75.9 74.9 10 9.58 22.8 28.3 (77-78)MC LF, Pro, Fam, AoA,
NA, VC
Laws et al 2007 11(9-2) 22(10-12) 76.3 75.5 7.3 7.1 19.7 27.9 (32-32)MC Fam, VC, NF
M M M M
Zannino et al 10(5-5) 10(4-6) 76.4 75.6 9.3 10 18.3 - (32-32)MC LF, AoA, Fam, VC
2007
(32-32)CP
Gale et al in press 28(9-19) 24(13-11) 83 78 - - 22.1 - (50-50)MC LF, Fam, VC
 Table 2. Studies reporting no category effect in AD patients

Study Patient n Control n Patient Control Patient Control Patient Control Stimuli n Confounds
(M-F) (M-F) Age Age Education Education MMSE MMSE (LT-NLT) controlled
(years) (years)
Hodges et al 1992 22(13-9) 26(12-14) 69.5M 72.3M 13.7M 14.6M 20.7 29.6 (24-24)MC Pro
M M M M
Montanes et al 25(5-20) 25(12-13) 75 70.6 6 8 21 - Set 1(24-24)MC (1)VC (2)LF
1995
Set 2(22-22)C
Gainotti et al 16 11 68.3M 69.4M 6.3M 9.3M 12.8 - (20-20) C LF, VC, fam
1996

Tippett et al 1996 12(5-9) - 75.9 - 15.5 - 17.76 - Set 1(20-20)C (1,2,3)Freq, Pro
Set 2(34-34)MC (3)VC
Set 3(12-12)MC
Laiacona et al 26(11-15) 52(22-30) 70.2M M
6.1M M
- - (30-30)MC LF, Fam, Pro,
1998
NA, IA, AoA, VC
Silveri et al 2002 39 12 70.2M 71.3M 9.2M 9.2M 17.9 - (40-40)MC AoA, LF, Pro,
Fam, NA, WL
Perri et al 2003 21(6-15) 23(6-17) 70.7M 68M 9.2M 10M 21.2 - (30-30)MC LF, Pro, Fam,
NA, IA, VC
Harley et al 2004 9(4-5) 6(1-5) 85 74 - - 11 - (20-20)MC NA, Fam, VC
Tippett et al 2007 68(27-41) 59(22-37) 75.2M 73.0M 12.2M 11.6M 18.6 - Set 1(34-34)MC (1,2,4)Fam
Set 2(12-12)MC (1,2,3)LF (2)VC
Set 3(14-14)MC (3)AoA, NA
Set 4(13-13)MC (3,4)NAc
Moreno- 32(14-18) 34(17-17) 73.8M 71.7M 7.9M 9.9M 20.5 29.1 (56-56)CP AoA, Fam, NA,
Martinez et al VC, NF
2007

Moreno- 38(16-22) 30(15-15) 74.7M 71.9M 7.6M 9.7M 20.5 29.1 (49-49)CP AoA, Fam, NA,
Martinez et al VC, NF
2008

Note: superscript M, matched for that variable; MC, monochrome line drawings; C, colour stimuli; CP, colour photos; AoA, age of acquisition; Fam,
familiarity; Freq, Wall Street Journal Frequency counts; IA, image agreement; Img, imageability; LF, lexical frequency; WL, word length; NA, name
agreement; NAc, name accuracy; NF, name frequency; Pro, prototypicality; VC, visual complexity.
 Category-Specific Semantics in Alzheimer’s Dementia and Normal Aging? 521

0.9
AD
0.8 Controls

0.7
Proportion Named

0.6

0.5

0.4

0.3

0.2

0.1

0
Living Nonliving

Figure 1. Paradoxical deficit: poorer absolute performance with living ythan nonliving things, but,
performance is actually only significantly poorer for 1nonliving things.

Nevertheless, although these authors matched living and nonliving stimuli on levels of
word frequency and category typicality, they did not control for other variables such as
concept familiarity, visual complexity and age-of acquisition, and, as we will discuss, these
variables co-vary strongly with the living/nonliving distinction (Funnell & Sheridan, 1992;
Stewart, Parkin, & Hunkin, 1992). Indeed, in a later study, Tippett, Grossman, and Farah
(1996) confirmed the findings of Silveri and colleagues using an identical set of items, but
were unable to replicate the living naming impairment in the same patients on a newer set of
pictures that were matched across category on a greater number of predictor variables. Tippett
et al. (1996) verified that the disproportionate deficit with living things disappeared after
controlling across category for familiarity, lexical frequency and visual complexity (which all
favoured nonliving things); and thus, concluded that Silveri et al.’s findings resulted from a
lack of control of these “nuisance” variables.
Consequently, some have questioned the reliability of category-specific deficits in AD
patients, claiming that such effects may be an artefact of uncontrolled confounding
psycholinguistic variables. The most frequently examined of these variables are: age of
acquisition, familiarity, name agreement, visual complexity and word frequency (see Tables 1
and 2). Crucially, these variables invariably benefit the processing of nonliving over living
things, with the latter tending to have greater visual complexity, lower familiarity, lower
name frequency, and so on. This ‘artefactual’ account would predict more category-specific
cases for living things, which in fact, has been the case - estimated at 5:1 (Laws & Gale,
2002). Indeed, some earlier studies may have documented living deficits because they did not
control for these nuisance variables. This explanation is inevitably limited insofar as it cannot
522 Keith R. Laws, Tim M. Gale, F. Javier Moreno-Martinez et al.

account for the presence of nonliving deficits in patients. An additional problem for such an
account is that recent studies, which have more carefully controlled these variables across
category, have still reported the presence of living category deficits (e.g. Zannino, Perri,
Carlesimo, Pasqualetti, & Caltagirone, 2002).
The literature reveals a somewhat uneven panorama concerning which nuisance variables
have been controlled in studies (see Table 1). Nonetheless, we note that when controlling for
one variable (e.g., familiarity) the high multicollinearity between nuisance variables means
that the others are often controlled inadvertently. Indeed, a recent meta-analysis found that the
number of nuisance variables controlled in a study did not affect the size of category effects
(See Laws et al 2007).

SUBJECT VARIABLES AFFECTING CATEGORY-SPECIFICITY:

DEMENTIA SEVERITY
AD itself is an heterogeneous and, by definition, degenerative disorder and therefore
patient performance must be related to severity of dementia. Indeed, the inconsistency across
category specificity studies raises important questions about which factors moderate the
occurrence of category-specific impairments in AD patients and, whether they are living or
nonliving in nature. Unlike most accounts of category effects, those relating to dementia
severity attempt to trace both living and nonliving deficits to a single underlying variable that
reflect differences in the level of cognitive impairment (e.g. as measured by naming ability or
dementia severity). One hypothesis articulated by Gonnerman, Andersen, Devlin, Kempler,
Seidenberg (1997) is that the category-specificity in AD is determined by the overall level of
cognitive impairment. According to this idea, patients with relative preservation of semantic
memory (i.e. those in the early stages of the disease) are more prone to present nonliving
thing deficits. As level of impairment increases over time, however, the category-specific
profile reverses: patients will present nonliving thing deficits, although in the context of poor
overall naming performance (see Devlin, Gonnerman, Andersen, & Seidenberg, 1998).
Although Gonnerman and colleagues reported a pattern of performance in their AD patients
consistent with their hypothesis, most other studies have failed to replicate this profile -
notably in much larger patient cohorts on more extensive stimulus sets (Garrard, Patterson,
Watson, & Hodges, 1998; Moreno-Martínez & Laws, 2008; Zannino et al., 2002; Moreno-
Martínez et al., 2008). Despite this, Gonnerman et al’s work has emphasised the fact that
group analyses may mask important individual variability in category effects.
Table 3 displays the findings from longitudinal and cross-sectional studies of category
effects in AD. As expected, the results are varied, but most report a category effect at the
individual level and two of the group studies found a category effect at group level, both of
which reported a living thing deficit. Gonnerman et al (1997) and Garrard et al (1998, 2001)
failed to find a category effect at group level, but individual participants demonstrated both
living thing and nonliving thing deficits; the researchers concluded that the net effect was to
eliminate the category effect for the group.
In the largest and most comprehensive longitudinal analysis involving 58 AD patients,
Garrard et al. (2001) found no interaction between the degree of impairment and category,
only a greater vulnerability to the impairment of the living thing categories. Within the model
 Category-Specific Semantics in Alzheimer’s Dementia and Normal Aging? 523

of anatomical progression of AD of Braak and Braak (1991), Garrard et al. (2001) proposed
that the cerebral region affected by the disease is relevant to the type of categorical
impairment expressed. In the early stages, AD normally affects temporo-limbic regions
(Braak & Braak, 1991); and lesion data suggest that these regions could play a role in the
representation of knowledge of living things (Gainotti, 2005). A living thing deficit is
therefore more likely to occur in AD (as noted above, the incidence of category deficits is
higher, but the severity does not differ), as happens in diseases such as herpes simplex
encephalitis which also mainly affect the temporal region (Laws & Sartori, 2005).

Table 3. Longitudinal analyses of AD patients: cross-sectional and longitudinal

Effect found? Methodology Direction Longitudinal profile

Gonnerman et al, 1997 Noa

Yesb Long & CS NL and L Predicted an initial NL
Garrard et al, 1998 Noa CS deficit changing to a L
c
Yesb NL and L deficit
Category effect increases
with increasing anomia
Garrard et al, 2001 No Long & CS - Category effect increases
with increasing anomia
Zannino et al, 2002 Yes CS L Category effect increases
with increasing anomia
Whatmough et al, 2003 Yes CS L Category effect increases
with increasing anomia
Cuetos et al, 2008 No Long 2 patients - Change from a LT to a NL c

Tippett et al, 2007 Yes&No e CS L and NLf NL deficit with mild

anomia, L deficit with
Notes: a at group level, b at individual level cpredicted profile, but not greater anomia
reported, d
not significant e

depending on which variables controlled for f NL when elderly controls not performing at ceiling

‘Normal’ Category Bias?

Far less attention has focussed on category-specificity from a normative viewpoint, i.e.
addressing the question of whether a category effect emerges in normal healthy participants.
Recent studies directed to examining healthy participants themselves have started to shed
important new light upon, and circumscribe the interpretations and investigations of category
deficits. Nevertheless, the outcome of these studies has produced some contradictory data.
The majority has revealed better and faster naming of living than nonliving things (Brousseau
& Buchanan, 2004; Filliter, McMullen & Westwood, 2004; Laws 1999, 2000, 2002, 2003;
Laws, Leeson and Gale, 2002a; Laws & Neve 1999; McKenna & Parry, 1994); however,
others have reported an advantage for naming nonliving things (Gaffan & Heywood, 1993;
Humphreys, Riddoch, & Quinlan, 1988; Laws & Gale 2002). Some of these differences again
stem from the lack of matching for nuisance variables across category. Other differences
relate to the presentation conditions e.g. some have used speeded presentation, degraded and
masked images or colour versus line drawings. Nonetheless, the repeated finding of a normal
524 Keith R. Laws, Tim M. Gale, F. Javier Moreno-Martinez et al.

advantage for naming living things is important because it undermines any notion that living
deficits in patients reflect the greater difficulty of naming living things (e.g. as per nuisance
variable accounts, which invariably disadvantage the processing of living things).
That these studies show that living things are both faster and better processed by
neurologically healthy individuals, might be viewed as quite plausible according to
evolutionary explanations (Caramazza & Mahon, 2003; Caramazza & Shelton, 1998). For
example, Caramazza and co-workers have proposed that evolutionary pressures have led to
the development of specialized neural mechanisms for processing categories whose quick
identification could have survival and reproductive advantages for human beings.
Accordingly, they suggest that these categories might include animals, fruits/vegetables,
conspecifics and, possibly, tools. Laws (2000) argued that if dedicated neural subsystems
exist, then we would surely expect such systems to confer normal processing advantages for
items in those categories. In other words, the findings are precisely what we would predict at
least with regard to living things i.e. better/faster processing in healthy individuals. Future
studies need to address whether similar speed/accuracy advantages exist for tools, faces etc).
Furthermore, Laws and co-workers argued that such a system could have evolved because
living things have a stable physical appearance which may have contributed to the evolution
of a specialised processing system (Laws & Neve, 1999; Turnbull & Laws 2000). By
contrast, nonliving things have several characteristics that make the development of such a
specialised neural system almost impossible. For example, nonliving things have far less
predictable physical structures. Rather, in the case of nonliving things, the link between the
appearance and the function of the object is aesthetic (rather than necessary). Also, the sheer
pace at which technology changes means that man-made items would not maintain a
sufficiently stable physical appearance for evolution to adapt systems for their processing
(Gale, Laws, Frank, & Leeson, 2003; Laws & Neve, 1999; Turnbull & Laws, 2000).

Gender

Reports of an interaction between the direction of category-specific effects and sex have
been associated with various pathologies, including AD (for reviews, see Gainotti 2005;
Laiacona, Barbarotto & Capitani, 2006). In a case study analysis of 26 AD patients, Laiacona,
Barbarotto, and Capitani (1998) found that eight patients (7 males) showed a deficit for the
subcategories of animals, fruits and vegetables, while 3 others (all females) showed a deficit
with the nonliving thing subcategories of tools, furniture and vehicles.
Furthermore, neurologically healthy individuals show a similar interaction between sex
and category. McKenna and Parry (1994) found that healthy females named nonliving things
less accurately. Similarly, Laws and colleagues (Laws, 1999, Laws & Neve, 1999) found that
males were faster and better at naming nonliving than living things, while females showed the
opposite. Using category fluency tasks, Capitani, Laiacona, and Barbarotto (1999) found that
healthy females outperformed males at producing the names of fruits, while men showed a
better performance with tools. Laws (2002) confirmed the latter fluency findings in a large
sample of 300 men and 300 women. Barbarotto, Laiacona, Macchi, and Capitani (2002)
report better performance of women with natural subcategories of fruits and vegetables, and a
better performance of men with nonliving thing subcategories of vehicles and furniture.
Furthermore, a recent review of case studies by Capitani, Laiacona, Mahon, and Caramazza
 Category-Specific Semantics in Alzheimer’s Dementia and Normal Aging? 525

(2003) concluded that (i) males show category dissociations more frequently than females
and, (ii) all the case studies that reported a greater impairment of fruits and vegetables relative
to animals, were male patients.
Two explanations have been proposed to account for this finding: one that emphasises
different familiarity profiles across the sexes and the other emphasises an evolutionary
account. The familiarity proposal suggests that living/nonliving asymmetries largely reflect
females being more familiar with plant categories, i.e. fruits, herbs and vegetation (e.g.
Albanese, Capitani, Barbarotto, & Laiacona 2000). Evolutionary proposals suggest the
existence of selection pressures that, throughout the generations, could have differently
affected women and men owing to their different social roles: women mostly specialised in
gathering plant type food and men in hunting animals. Consequently, speculative arguments
propose that men and women have developed different specialized brain subsystem to process
items from their respective critical categories. Currently, the evidence fails to distinguish
between these two accounts of sex-linked divergences; however, independently of the
possible origin of these asymmetries, future studies of category-specificity should use sex-
matched samples or try to control for the possible influence of this important factor.
By contrast, the recent meta-analysis of category-specific effects in AD patients by Laws
et al (2007) revealed that the proportion of female patients had a strong influence on the effect
sizes for naming living and nonliving things - with higher proportions of females leading to
worse naming in both categories. In this context, several studies in the 1990s alluded to the
fact that compared to men with equivalent AD severity; female AD patients manifest greater
deficits on tasks of semantic memory (Buckwalter, Sobel, Dunn, Diz, & Henderson, 1993;
Henderson & Buckwalter, 1994; McPherson, Back, Buckwalter, & Cummings, 1999; Ripich,
Petrill, Whitehouse, & Ziol, 1995). In particular, women show poorer confrontation naming
(Buckwalter et al., 1996; Henderson & Buckwalter, 1994; McPherson et al., 1999; Ripich et
al., 1995) and category fluency, but not letter fluency (Henderson & Buckwalter, 1994;
Ripich et al., 1995). In a recent direct analysis of this sex difference, Moreno- Martínez, Laws
and Schulz (2008) compared semantic category fluency across 7 living and 7 nonliving
categories in 61 AD patients (28 male and 33 female) and 36 (18 male, 18 female) young and
36 elderly (17 male 19 female) controls. While the healthy young controls showed no sex
differences, the healthy elderly controls showed some significant sex-stereotyped fluency
advantages e.g. females for flowers, vegetables, kitchen utensils. By contrast, after controlling
for dementia severity as rated by the Mini Mental State Examination, male AD patients
outperformed females in 13/14 fluency categories (significantly for insects, trees, animals,
vehicles, tools and musical instruments).
Importantly, the language-based sex differences in AD patients remain after controlling
for the effects of age, education, and duration of illness (Buckwalter et al., 1993, 1996;
Henderson & Buckwalter, 1994; Ripich et al., 1995). In the context, it is worth noting
research on the apolipoprotein E (APOE: 19q13.2) 4 allele, which represents an established
genetic risk factor for AD (Corder et al., 1993), and in the healthy older population, those
with the 4 allele also present with poorer cognitive performance, especially on memory tests
(Soininen & Riekkinen, 1996). Although findings remain contentious, the APOE genotype
has been associated with: a greater probability for developing AD in women than men
(Bretsky et al, 1999; Gomez et al, 1996; Payami et al, 1996); a more pronounced effect on
cognitive performance in the general population of women than men (Bartres-Faz et al, 2002;
526 Keith R. Laws, Tim M. Gale, F. Javier Moreno-Martinez et al.

Hymen et al, 1996); and may also impact on hippocampal atrophy in female AD sufferers
(Fleisher et al, 2005). These findings are consistent with a relatively greater semantic and
verbal impairment in female AD sufferers i.e. different from and beyond greater than any pre-
existing sex differences in cognition (Heun & Kockler, 2002).

Controls, Ceilings and Categories

The vast majority of studies examining category-specificity have used simple line-drawn
stimuli. Indeed, approximately 90% of the studies examining category-specific effects have
employed monochrome line drawings (typically from the Snodgrass & Vanderwart 1980
corpus: see Laws, Gale, Leeson & Crawford, 2005). Given that the majority of items featured
in this corpus are easily identifiable by healthy controls, many studies examining category
effects in AD patients have been confounded by at -or near to- ceiling in the controls (Laws,
2005; see Table 4).

Table 4. Living and nonliving naming levels for healthy controls in studies of
category-specificity in Alzheimer’s Patients

Study Living Mean (%) Nonliving Mean (%)

Silveri et al. (1991) 99.8 99.8
Mauri et al. (1994) 98 98
Montanes et al. (1995) 96 97
Gonnerman et al. (1997) Exp 1 99.4 99.4
Gonnerman et al. (1997) Exp 2 97 97.2
Garrard et al. (1998) 93 97
Grossman et al. (1998) 89.9 91.2
Garrard et al. (2001) 90.5 93.3
Fung et al. (2001) 81 81
Zannino et al. (2002) 98 98.3
Laws et al. (2003) 95.6 96.6
Perri et al. (2003) 93 95
Whatmough et al. (2003) 82.6 82.5
Laws et al. (2005) Exp 1 95.6 94.6
Laws et al. (2005) Exp 2a 95.7 95.9
Laws et al. (2005) Exp 2b 74.3 74.9
Laws et al. (in press) 92.2 91.8
Moreno-Martínez et al. (2008) 89 97
Gale et al. (in press) 95 96

Even after conducting transformations of data, typical parametric (and nonparametric)

analyses may be inappropriate for data that have heavily skewed distributions, unequal
variances across groups, and/or multiple zero errors. Four studies have attempted to minimize
ceiling effects in controls through the use of more difficult stimuli (Fung et al., 2001; Laws et
al., 2005; Tippett et al., 2007; Whatmough, Chertkow, Murtha, Templeman, Babins, &
Kelner, 2003). Laws and colleagues (Moreno-Martínez and Laws 2007, 2008; Gale, Irvine,
 Category-Specific Semantics in Alzheimer’s Dementia and Normal Aging? 527

Laws & Ferrisey, in press) proposed another strategy, which involves the use of bootstrap
statistical techniques. Bootstrap statistical methods require far fewer assumptions than
traditional parametric tests regarding data distributions; and are advisable in circumstances
where many zero data points occur (e.g. controls scoring very highly or patients very lowly:
see Delucchi & Bostrom, 2004). With bootstrap techniques, a relevant test statistic (t or F etc)
is computed for n bootstrap samples, i.e. n permutations of the original group data. When this
occurs with replacement, a data point goes back into the sampling pool potentially to be
redrawn numerous times. After many permutations (e.g. 1000) a more normal distribution of
test statistics emerges as opposed to the abnormally distributed original data points. The
value of the original statistic is then compared to the new distribution and declared significant
at, for example, the 0.05 level, if it is among the most extreme 5% of cases.
Moreno-Martínez and Laws (2007) compared naming in three conditions: without
covarying any variables, covarying of nuisance variables and covarying the healthy control
performance (in ANCOVAs). Analysis of 1000 bootstrap samples showed that even with
covarying the effects of nuisance variables, a significant category effect for living things
persisted. By contrast, analysis of 1000 bootstrap ANCOVAs covarying the normal difficulty
index (that is, the level of naming by controls on the same items), the category effect
disappeared (see Figure 2). In other words, although not explicable in terms of nuisance
variables, the category effect was no greater than would be predicted from the performance of
healthy controls. In an extension of this work, Moreno-Martínez & Laws (2008) showed that
the category effect in AD patients disappeared on several semantic tasks (picture naming,
naming to description and word-picture matching) after using 1000 bootstrap ANCOVAs to
control for the difficulty index covariate (see Figure 3). The authors interpreted these findings
to mean that while AD patients show significant semantic memory impairment, the level of
category-specificity is qualitatively similar to that found in healthy elderly individuals.

0.9
Living
0.85
NonLiving

0.8
* *
Proportion named

0.75

0.7

0.65

0.6

0.55

0.5
None Intrinsic Control difficulty
Covariate applied
Error bars represent 95%CI from 1000 bootstrap resamples.
Asterisks (*) represent significant differences.

Figure 2. Category naming performance in Alzheimer’s patients before and after covarying intrinsic
variables and level of difficulty in healthy controls.
528 Keith R. Laws, Tim M. Gale, F. Javier Moreno-Martinez et al.

*
Bars are 95% Confidence intervals.

Figure 3. Category performance in AD patients (n=38) before and after covarying naming difficulty in
neurologically healthy controls (n=30).
 Category-Specific Semantics in Alzheimer’s Dementia and Normal Aging? 529

Finally, Gale, Irvine, Laws & Ferrisey (in press) again using boostrapping, but this time
with hierarchical regression analyses. Estimating how much of the naming variance in 28 AD
patients was uniquely attributable to different variables, Gale et al reported that nuisance
variables uniquely accounted for almost 40% of the variance. After controlling for nuisance
variables, a difficulty index based on performance in 24 neurologically healthy controls
accounted for a further 36% of the variance. Finally, category accounted for less than one-
tenth of these figures - at approximately 3%. Although the later indicates that category has a
relatively small impact, it was significant, suggesting that a small amount of variance in AD
naming is uniquely attributable to category i.e. beyond that accountable by nuisance variables
or control performance.

SUMMARY
AD patients show undoubted semantic memory impairment, which probably reflects the
fact that, even in the early stages, the disease process affects the temporal lobes. Although
most studies have documented living thing category deficits, the findings are contentious. In
particular, certain item-based and subject-based variables artefactually contribute to some of
the differences. For example, the failure to control confounding nuisance variables in earlier
studies may have artificially inflated the documentation of living thing deficits; however, later
better controlled research clearly shows that category effects in AD persist after controlling
for the major nuisance variables. Critically, two recent studies have shown that the category
naming performance of healthy controls accounts for much of the variance in naming by AD
patients. In other words, category effects in AD patients are an exaggeration of the category
processing biases shown by neurologically healthy participants. This does not eradicate the
existence of category effects in semantics, since recent work estimates that a small (at least
3%), but significant amount of the variance in AD naming is arttributable to category (i.e.
above and beyond the influence of all nuisance variables and the difficulty level shown by
controls). Combined, these studies indicate that the effects in AD patients are quantitatively,
though not qualitatively, altered because of their neural degeneration. Finally, the apparent
influence of sex requires further exploration. As far as the category differences between men
and women are concerned, the roles of evolution and familiarity remain to be ascertained. In a
somewhat opposing vein is the intriguing evidence that female AD patients show overall
worse semantic memory performance than males. We speculate that this female disadvantage
may be underpinned by the apolipoprotein E (APOE) 4 allele, which is associated with a
greater probability for developing AD in women and may impact more on the cognitive
performance of healthy women than men.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
FJMM’s work was supported by a postdoctoral research award from the Spanish Ministry
of Education and Science (programa José Castillejo -JC2007-00248).
530 Keith R. Laws, Tim M. Gale, F. Javier Moreno-Martinez et al.

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In: Encyclopedia of Cognitive Psychology (2 Volume Set) ISBN: 978-1-61324-546-0
Editor: Carla E. Wilhelm, pp. 537-550 © 2012 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 18

PREVERBAL CATEGORY FORMATION:

THE ROLE OF REAL-WORLD EXPERIENCE

Birgit Träuble , Lysett Babocsai and Sabina Pauen

University of Heidelberg, Germany

ABSTRACT
Studies on categorization using the object-examination task (OET) show that infants
carry out a global-to-basic level shift in their second half of their first year of life. What
underlies performance in the OET still remains unclear, however. Following one view,
infants in an OET activate previously acquired knowledge about real-world exemplars.
This suggests that categorization performance in the OET should vary with the amount of
experience infants have with real-world exemplars displayed by the experimental
material. The present studies test this hypothesis, by comparing the categorization
performance of infants who do not have regular contact to cats or dogs (Experiment 1)
with the performance of infants who live with a cat or a dog at home (Experiment 2).
Analyses based on data from N = 80 9- and 11-month-old infants reveal that 11-months-
olds who have experience with cats or dogs make a clear categorical distinction whereas
infants without such experiences do not show any categorization response. This set of
findings suggests that experience with real-world animals influences performance of
infants participating in an OET providing a basic-level contrast within the animate
domain.

Keywords: Categorization, Concept formation, Infancy, Object-Examination-Task

This report investigates the role of previously acquired real-world knowledge for
category formation at a preverbal age. Without the ability to categorize objects or events, and
to store such categorical representations in memory we would never be able to reason about
unfamiliar material entities. By identifying a given exemplar as a member of some specific

University of Heidelberg Hauptstrasse 47-51 D-69117 Heidelberg, Germany Tel. +49 (0)6221 54-7347 Fax +49
(0)6221 54-7326 E-mail: [email protected]
538 Birgit Träuble, Lysett Babocsai and Sabina Pauen

category we apply previously acquired knowledge to make inductive inferences. But how
does this ability develop?
Even preverbal infants are able to form a wide variety of categories at different levels of
abstraction, as has been demonstrated by a fairly large body of research (e.g. Behl-Chadha,
1996; Eimas & Quinn, 1994; Mandler & McDonough, 1993, 1998a; Pauen, 2000, 2002a,
2002b; Quinn & Eimas, 1996; Quinn & Johnson, 2000; Quinn, Eimas, & Rosenkranz, 1993).
Such studies are based on different version of the general familiarity-preference-for-novelty
paradigm. In this paradigm, infants are first familiarized with a number of exemplars from
one category. At test, they receive a new exemplar from the already familiar category and one
new exemplar from the contrasting category. If infants pay comparably more attention to the
out-of-category exemplar than to the same-category exemplar at test, category discrimination
is inferred.
Two versions of this task have been used for testing infants less than one year of age: (1)
the visual-fixation tasks (VFT) in which infants look at pairs of 2-D pictures presented pair-
wise, and (2) the object-examination task (OET) in which the infant is allowed to play with 3-
D models presented in sequence. Whereas looking duration for individual exemplars serves as
the dependent measure in the former case, examination duration is used in the latter.
Examination is defined as the time, during which infants are concentrating on and inspecting
the given object (see Oakes, Madole, & Cohen, 1991; Oakes & Tellinghuisen, 1994).
Therefore, it describes a subset of looking time. Even though both tasks are based on the same
general paradigm, they have lead to discrepant findings in terms of the onset of category
discrimination:
Using the VFT, Eimas and Quinn (1994) showed that infants 3- to 4-months of age form
so called basic-level categories of cats that includes novel cats but excludes horses, birds,
dogs, and tigers. They also appear to distinguish horses from cats, giraffes, and zebras. In
addition, Behl-Chadha (1996) found basic-level category discrimination between tables,
chairs, and beds. Referring to such observations, these authors argued that infants detect
similarities between the pictures, thereby creating a perceptual representation of the given
category during the familiarization phase (Quinn & Eimas, 1996). At test, infants compare the
perceptually new within-category exemplar as well as the out-of-category exemplar to the
newly established category representation. Because the out-of-category exemplar shares
fewer perceptual attributes with the recently formed category than the same-category test
exemplar, infants show a looking preference for the former. Consistent with this interpretation
is the finding that infants seem more likely to succeed in the VFT when provided with a
homogeneous selection of familiarization stimuli than a more heterogeneous set of exemplars
during familiarization (Eimas, Quinn & Cowan, 1994; Mareshal & French, 2000; Quinn et
al., 1993; Younger & Fearing, 2000).
In apparent contrast to these findings, Quinn & Johnson (2000) report that 2-month-olds
form a global category representation for mammals that excludes furniture but still fail to
form a basic-level representation for cats that excluded elephants, rabbits, or dogs at this age
(see also Younger & Fearing, 2000). This in turn suggests the existence of a “broad-to-narrow
shift” in the formation of categories between 2 and 4 months of age. Further support for this
claim comes from simulation data of connectionist networks in which specific perceptual
features serve as input (e.g., Quinn & Johnson, 2000; Mareshal & French, 2000).
In an attempt to integrate these results, one could argue that very young infants (i.e. 2- to
3-month-olds) who still do not have developed their full visual capacities, form rather broad
 Preverbal Category Formation 539

categories (e.g. mammals vs. furniture), whereas slightly older ones (i.e. 3-4 months of age)
who already have improved vision, find it easier to form rather narrow categories at the basic
level (e.g. cats vs. dogs). In any case, it can be assumed that 2- to 4-month-olds have not yet
had enough time to acquire large amounts of real-world knowledge about the objects depicted
on colour-photos. Hence, it seems plausible to infer that the early success in the VFT
primarily bears upon perceptual features of the given experimental material (i.e. information
about the appearance of the pictures).
The OET provides a slightly different method to test infant categorization. Infants
participating in this kind of task are 6 months of age or older. They receive 3-D toy models to
play with rather than pictures to look at. Results obtained with this method have shown that 7-
to 9-month-olds can discriminate animals, vehicles, and furniture (Mandler & McDonough,
1993; 1998). At 9 to 11 months of age, categorization was also observed for other
superordinate-like categories (animals vs. plants, plants vs. vehicles, and furniture vs. kitchen
utensils; see Mandler, 2004 for an overview). Mandler & McDonough (1993) point out that
such rather abstract categories do not always match adult categories at the superordinate level.
For this reason, the authors prefer the term global categories. In addition to global categories,
OETs demonstrated discrimination of some basic level categories, such as cars and airplanes
or motorcycles within the vehicle domain at 9 to 11 months of age. At the same time, they
failed to categorize dogs and fish or dogs and rabbits within the animal domain (Mandler &
McDonough, 1993). The only animal-contrasts that elicited a clear categorization response
before 11 months of age in the OET were dogs vs. birds (Mandler & McDonough, 1998), and
humans vs. other mammals (Pauen, 2000). These results suggest that global categories are
discriminated some time earlier and with greater ease than basic-level contrasts. A small
longitudinal study conducted by Pauen (2002a) testing infants at the ages of 8 and 12 months
confirmed the assumption of a global-to-basic-level shift. Even though this general trend
seems to parallel the broad-to-narrow shift observed by Quinn and Johnson (2000), it takes
place much later (i.e. between 7 and 12 months of age). Hence, a general lack of visual
processing capacities can not explain why global categories are discriminated more easily
than basic-level categories in an OET.
Alternatively, one could speculate that performance in the OET reflects somewhat
different cognitive achievements than performance in the VFT. Mandler (2000a, 2000b,
2004) assumes that – from very early on - infants are able to discriminate objects at various
levels of abstraction within a visual task, but that this ability does not reflect how they acquire
categories in natural settings. Following her line of arguments, the participation in an OET
supports the activation and application of previously acquired real-world knowledge more so
than the participation in a VFT does. One of the earliest knowledge-based representations that
infants seem to form is the representation of animates (Gelman, 1990; Mandler, 1992a,
1992b; Premack, 1990) which, for instance, includes knowledge that animate objects engage
in self-initiated movement, whereas inanimate objects only move in the presence of an
external force. Following Mandler, the activation of corresponding knowledge may help even
very young infants to treat greatly different looking animals as the same kind of thing (i.e. the
representation of a self-moving entity). Towards the end of the first year of life when infants
have acquired more experience with real-world objects and different kinds of objects (e.g.
different kinds of animal species), preverbal categories become more differentiated, and
infants start making basic-level distinctions in the OET.
540 Birgit Träuble, Lysett Babocsai and Sabina Pauen

In sum, visual fixation tasks provide evidence for an early broad-to-narrow shift before 3
or 4 months. The object examination task on the other hand indicates a global-to-basic level
shift in the second half of the first year of life. While on-line processes of forming perceptual
abstractions during the experimental session may explain the former, the latter seem more
likely to involve the activation of previously acquired knowledge. This raises the question
whether there is any additional evidence that would support the idea that infants apply real-
world knowledge in an OET, and thus help us to clarify whether preverbal infants show
purely perception-based, or also knowledge-based category discrimination.
Pauen and colleagues designed corresponding studies. In one of these experiments, Pauen
(2002b) systematically varied the perceptual similarity between and within the global
categories of animals and furniture, while keeping the conceptual similarities and differences
associated with the presented exemplars equal. The author found that 11-month-old infants
showed highly comparable performance in both conditions. This finding is consistent with the
knowledge-based view, but not with the perception-based view. In yet another study, Träuble
and Pauen (2007) tested categorization performance, using artificial stimuli that could either
be grouped according to overall similarity or according to similarity in one functionally
relevant part. Without knowing the functional use of that specific object part, infants
categorized the objects according to overall similarity but not part similarity in an OET. After
having seen the experimenter demonstrate the functional use of the critical part, however,
infants categorized the identical set of stimuli according to part similarity. When the same
actions were performed but without producing any effect (i.e. without revealing functional
meaning), infants failed to categorize according to the critical part. This set of findings
suggests that infants extracted different properties depending on their experimentally
manipulated experience with the functional properties of the given set of stimuli.
One great advantage of such studies is that the experimental material has systematically
been designed to test the relevance of features related to either the appearance, or the
conceptual meaning of objects. One great disadvantage, however, concerns the fact that the
material is highly artificial, thus leaving the question how infants categorize objects in the
real world unanswered. Since this is what we really wanted to know, we had to find a way to
test whether participation in an OET activates previously acquired real-world knowledge (i.e.,
everyday experiences, concerning exemplars of natural categories). In an attempt to design a
corresponding study, we tested 9- and 11-month-old infants’ categorization of cats versus
dogs, this time not varying features of the experimental stimuli but rather comparing
performance between natural groups with different background knowledge concerning the
categories presented.

Experiment 1

Experiment 1 tested the categorization performance of 9- and 11-month-old infants

participating in an OET that used cats vs. dogs as categorical contrast. Based on the work of
Eimas and Quinn (1994), as well as Quinn and Eimas (1996), one would expect that category
discrimination should be clearly present in both age groups. According to previous work
using the OET, this seems unlikely, though. Mandler and McDonough (1998) reported that
dogs were not discriminated neither from fish nor rabbits until 11 months of age, and Pauen
(2002a) did not find any evidence for category discrimination of dogs from birds within the
 Preverbal Category Formation 541

first year of life. However, none of these studies did control for the amount of experiences
that participants had with either category. Hence, we do not know whether the obtained
results can be explained by differences in methods or by a-priori differences between the
samples.
In Experiment 1, we test only infants without any background knowledge of cats or dogs.
Based on existing findings obtained with the OET and on the assumption that previously
acquired real-world knowledge is relevant for category discrimination this kind of task, we
hypothesized that neither 9- nor 11-month-olds would show category discrimination.

Method

Participants
A total of N = 40 infants participated in Experiment 1. Twenty 9-month-olds (M age =
9;06, range = 9;00-9;23), and twenty 11-month-olds (M age = 11;06, range = 11;00-11;22).
Infants’ names were drawn from birth announcements. Their families were contacted via
letters and phone calls. On the basis of parental reports, we only included those infants who
had neither a cat nor a dog as pet, and who had no frequent contact with cats or dogs (e.g. in
the neighbourhood, or by regular visits to friends and relatives). Six additional infants were
originally tested but were excluded from further analyses due to fussiness (N = 3),
experimental error (N = 2), or intervention by the parent (N = 1). All infants came from a
white, middle-class socioeconomic background.

Material and Procedure

The material consisted of miniature toy replicas of five different dogs and five different
cats (see Figure 1).

Figure 1. Material used in Experiment 1 (and Experiment 2).

The general procedure followed that of a classic object-examination task, used in earlier
work (e.g. Mandler & McDonough, 1993, 1998; Pauen, 2002a, 2002b; Oakes, Madole, &
Cohen, 1991). Infants were seated in a high chair in front of a table. After a short warm-up
period, the experimenter put the first object within reaching distance of the child. The infant
was allowed to freely explore the object for 20 seconds before it was taken away and replaced
542 Birgit Träuble, Lysett Babocsai and Sabina Pauen

by the next object. Infants received four different exemplars from one category for
familiarization. The same series was presented twice (2 x 4 familiarization trials). During test
infants received a new item from the familiar category (trial 9) and one item from the
contrasting category (trial 10). Across subjects, each exemplar from a given category served
equally often as test item. During the familiarization phase, a decrease in examination times
from the first to the second presentation of the same exemplars was interpreted as a
familiarization response. In test, an increase in examination time from the last familiarization
exemplar to the new same-category test-exemplar suggests that infants recognize the
perceptual novelty of the fifth exemplar of the familiar category, whereas an increase in
examination from the first to the second test-exemplar indicates that infants recognize the
change in category. (After all, both test-exemplars were perceptually new, but only the last
belonged to a new category.) Half of the infants in each age group were familiarized with
cats; the others were familiarized with dogs.

Coding

All sessions were videotaped and analyzed off-line by two independent coders (not
involved in the process of data collection) for examination duration on each given trial.
Examination duration was defined as the time, during which infants were concentrating on
and inspecting the object (Oakes, Madole, & Cohen, 1991; Oakes & Tellinghuisen, 1994). It
is assumed to reflect focused attention and increased cognitive involvement (Ruff, 1986), and
has been shown to go along with a decrease in heart rate as compared to states of non-focused
looking (Elsner, Pauen, & Jeschonek, 2006).

Results and Discussion

Mean inter-coder reliability for examination was r = .97. For each trial, the mean score of
both coders provided the basis for further analyses.
Familiarization phase. To evaluate changes in the examination time during the
familiarization phase, the average examination duration for the first half of the familiarization
trials (phase A: trial 1 to trial 4) and for the repeated presentation of the same four objects
(phase B: trial 5 to trial 8) were compared within a 2 x 2 repeated measures mixed model
analysis of variance with age (9 months, 11 months) as between-subject factor and
familiarization phase (phase A, phase B) as within-subject factor (see also Mandler &
McDonough, 1993, 1998; Pauen, 2002a, 2002b). This analysis revealed a significant main
effect for familiarization phase, F(1, 38) = 23.25; p < .001, η2 (partial eta squared) = .38.
Mean examination times decreased from M = 5.12 s (SE = .45) for the first half of the
familiarization trials to M = 3.19 s (SE = .42) for the second half. There was also a significant
main effect for age, F(1, 38) = 7.84, p < .01, η2 = .17, with the 11-month-olds showing a
longer mean examination time (M = 5.16 s, SE = .51) compared to the 9-month-olds (M =
3.15 s, SE = .51). The interaction between both factors failed to reach the level of
significance.
Test phase. To investigate infants’ performance during the test phase, mean examination
times for the last object of the familiarization phase (trial 8), the novel object of the familiar
 Preverbal Category Formation 543

category (trial 9), and the novel-category object (trial 10) were entered in a 2 x 3 repeated
measures mixed model analysis of variance with age (9 months, 11 months) as between-
subject factor and trial (trial 8, trial, 9, trial 10) as within-subject factor. This analysis only
revealed a significant main effect for age group, F(1, 38) = 11.73; p < .01, η2 = .24 with
longer mean examination time for 11-month-olds (M = 5.47s, SE = .60) than for 9-month-olds
(M = 2.56s, SE = .60). No other main effect or interaction reached the level of significance.
Because we were specifically interested in potential developmental changes, additional
planned comparisons were run to describe the pattern of familiarization and categorization for
each age group separately (see also Mandler & McDonough, 1993). In both age groups there
were significant decreases in infants' examination times during familiarization with MPhaseA =
3.97 s, (SE = .52) and MPhaseB = 2.33 s, (SE = .58) for the 9-month-olds and MPhaseA = 6.26 s,
(SE = .66) and MPhaseB = 4.06 s, (SE = .55) for the 11-month-olds. Comparing the means of
the last three trials (trial 8, trial 9, trial 10), none of the pair-wise comparisons reached level
of significance, however. This means that examination duration did not change systematically
from the last familiarization exemplar over the first test-item (new same-category exemplar)
to the second test-item (out-off-category exemplar), neither in 9- nor in 11-months-olds. The
corresponding mean values are presented in Figure 2.

10
9 months
9
11 months
8
examination time (s)

7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
trial 8 trial 9 trial 10

Figure 2. Experiment 1. Mean examination times for the three test trials (trial 8, 9, 10) for both age
groups separately. Error bars represent 1 SE.

Discussion

In contrast to previous studies using the VFT (Eimas & Quinn, 1994; Quinn & Eimas,
1996), but in accordance with previous studies using the OET and similar basic-level
contrasts (Mandler & McDonough, 1998; Pauen, 2002a), Experiment 1 revealed that neither
9- nor 11-month-olds showed a categorization response in a cats-vs.-dogs task. During the
544 Birgit Träuble, Lysett Babocsai and Sabina Pauen

familiarization phase, examination times declined in both age-groups, suggesting that infants
recognized the individual exemplars. When the same series of exemplars was presented for a
second time, infants spent less time examining them. From the fact that no changes in mean
examination time occurred during the test-phase, one may conclude that infants of the tested
age-range still do not make more fine-grained distinctions within the animal domain – at least
not between dogs and cats, and at least not if they are not yet familiar with these animal
species. This finding provides indirect evidence supporting the idea that the OET measures
different aspects of cognitive performance than the VFT.
Interestingly, 11-month-olds showed generally longer examination times than 9-month-
olds. Considering the fact that information-processing speed increases with age, thus leading
to shorter encoding times, one may wonder why it should take longer for older infants to
process the given information. In an attempt to explain this finding, one may speculate that
older infants are cognitively more engaged when examining the given toy-models,
presumably because they already start activating information from long-term memory, but fail
to succeed in categorizing the given material at test because they still have not acquired
enough experiences with cats and dogs to clearly discriminate both species. If this
interpretation of the reported data were correct, one could speculate that infants familiar with
real-world cats and dogs may show even longer overall examination times, and/or the may
succeed in distinguishing both species at test. Experiment 2 was conducted to test these
hypotheses.

Experiment 2

Based on the assumption that categorization performances in an OET is not modulated by

perceptual information about the experimental stimuli alone, but rather reflects the application
of previously acquired knowledge about real-world exemplars, we expect 9- and/or 11-month
olds who are familiar with cats and dogs to show a categorization response in the same task
that lead to a negative finding in same-aged infants who lacked corresponding background
knowledge. If attempts to apply real-world experiences go along with more interest in the
presented toy-models, overall examination times should be longer for infants participating in
Experiment 2 than in Experiment 1. In addition, we are also interested in potential age-related
changes in familiarization and categorization patterns.

Method

A total of N = 40 infants participated in Experiment 2; twenty 9-month-olds (M age =

9;10, range = 9;00-9;24), and twenty 11-month-olds (M age = 11;08, range = 11;00-11;20).
Five additional infants were originally tested but were excluded from further analyses due to
fussiness (N = 3), experimental error (N = 1), or intervention by the parent (N = 1). All infants
came from a white, middle-class socioeconomic background. Contrary to Experiment 1, we
only tested infants who's parents indicated that they either had a cat or a dog at home, and/or
that infants often had contact to cats or dogs (for example in the neighbourhood or by regular
visits to friends and relatives). Material, procedure, and coding were exactly the same as in
 Preverbal Category Formation 545

Experiment 1. Hence, the only difference between both experiments was the familiarity of the
sample with cats and dogs.

Results and Discussion

Mean inter-coder reliability for examination was r = .94. For each trial, the mean score of
both coders provided the basis for further analyses.
Familiarization phase. To evaluate changes in the examination time during the
familiarization phase, the average examination duration for the first half of the familiarization
trials (phase A) and for the repeated presentation of the same four objects (phase B) were
compared within a 2 x 2 repeated measures mixed model analysis of variance with age (9
months, 11 months) as between-subject factor and familiarization phase (phase A, phase B) as
within-subject factor. Again, this analysis revealed a significant main effect for
familiarization phase, F(1, 38) = 48.54; p < .001, η2 = .38. Mean examination times decreased
from the first half of the familiarization trials M = 7.18 s (SE = .33) to the second half, M =
5.63 s (SE = .32). No other main effect or interaction reached the level of significance. At a
descriptive level, one could see that mean examination duration during familiarization was
much higher for infants who have frequent contact to real-world cats and dogs than for infants
who lack this experience.
Test phase. The mean examination times for the last object of the familiarization phase
(trial 8), the novel object of the familiar category (trial 9), and the novel-category object (trial
10) were entered in a 2 x 3 repeated measures mixed model analysis of variance with age (9
months, 11 months) as between-subject factor and trial (trial 8, trial, 9, trial 10) as within-
subject factor. This analysis revealed a significant main effect for trial, F(2, 76) = 5.58; p <
.01, η2 = .13. Examination times did not increase from the last familiarization trial to the first
test-trial, but increased from the new item of the familiar category (trial 9) to the out-of
category item (trial 10), t(39) = -1.97, p < .05. The increase from the last item of the
familiarization phase (trial 8) to the out-of category item (trial 10), was also significant, t(39)
= -3.65, p < .001. Corresponding mean values for the critical test trials were Mtrial8 = 5.38 s
(SE = .44), Mtrial9 = 6.35 s (SE = .65), and Mtrial10 = 7.80 s (SE = .63).
Being interested in potential developmental changes, additional planned comparisons
were run to describe the pattern of familiarization and categorization for each age group
separately. In both age groups there were significant decreases in infants' examination times
during familiarization with MPhaseA = 6.87 s, (SE = .45) and MPhaseB = 5.24 s, (SE = .47) for the
9-month-olds and MPhaseA = 7.50 s, (SE = .49) and MPhaseB = 6.01 s, (SE = .44) for the 11-
month-olds. Comparing the means of the last three trials (trial 8, trial 9, trial 10), the analyses
revealed that 9-month-olds showed only a marginally significant increase in examination
times from trial 8 to trial 10, t(19) = -1.53, p = .06. Neither changes from trial 8 to trial 9 not
from trial 9 to trial 10 reached the level of significance. Among 11-month-olds, pairwise
comparisons of mean examination duration during the test-phase (trial 8, trial 9, trial 10)
revealed a marginally significant increase from trial 8 to trial 9, t(19) = -1.64, p = .058, a
significant increase from trial 9 to trial 10, t(19) = -1.83, p < .05, as well as a significant
increase from trial 8 to trial 10, t(19) = -4.08, p < .001. Apparently, only the older infants
recognized the change in category between trial 9 (new exemplar familiar category) and trial
10 (out-off-category exemplar). Corresponding mean values are shown in Figure 3.
546 Birgit Träuble, Lysett Babocsai and Sabina Pauen

10
9 months
9
11 months
8
examination time (s) 7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
trial 8 trial 9 trial 10

Figure 3. Experiment 2. Mean examination times for the three test trials (trial 8, 9, 10) for both age
groups separately. Error bars represent 1 SE.

In sum, we found that infants who had daily experience with cats or dogs showed a
familiarization as well as a categorization response. Their categorization pattern revealed that
the new member of the familiarized category was treated as equivalent to the exemplars
presented during familiarization phase, whereas the out-of category item was treated as new.
In both age groups, it was examined significantly longer than the last familiarization item.
Even though the overall analysis did not show an impact of the factor age on infants'
examination behaviour during the test phase, a closer look within the separate age groups
indicates interesting changes between 9- and 11 months of age. Nine-month-old infants
showed only a significant increase between trial 8 and trial 10. Following Mandler and
McDonough (1993), this reflects an ambiguous categorization pattern because not both test
trials were treated as new. On a descriptive level we found an increase in examination time
between trial 9 and trial 10, but not between trials 8 and 9 (see Figure 3). This means that 9-
month-old infants treated the new item from the familiar category as equivalent to the
exemplars seem before, but responded with increased interest to the out-of category item. In
contrast, the pattern shown by 11-month-old infants, with trial 8 < trial 9, and trial 9 < trial
10, indicates that the new member of the familiar category was recognized as new, but the
exemplar from the contrasting category was treated as clearly distinct, presumably because
infants recognized the change in category membership. Mandler and McDonough (1993) call
this pattern advanced categorization because infants discriminate the new exemplar from the
familiarized category from the previous exemplars as well as from the out-of category item.

General Discussion

Two related experiments investigated the role of previously acquired real-world

knowledge for categorization performance in an Object Examination Task (OET).
Experiment 1 revealed that 9- and 11-month-old infants who did not have any daily
experiences with cats or dogs failed to differentiate between these two categories. In contrast,
 Preverbal Category Formation 547

Experiment 2 indicated that infants who did have corresponding experience clearly
distinguished between these two basic-level categories, with older infants showing a more
advanced pattern of categorization than the younger group.
The lack of a categorization response in a basic-level OET contrasting different mammal
species is in accordance with existing literature. Basic-level distinctions typically start
emerging towards the end of the first year of life while distinctions between global-level
categories (e.g., animals and furniture or vehicles) are found much earlier (Mandler &
McDonough, 1993, 1998; Pauen, 2002a, 2002b). One interpretation of this set of findings is
that 3-D models which can be explored visually as well as manually activate previously
acquired knowledge about behavioural properties of real-world objects. What type of
knowledge might that be? Knowledge about the movement behaviour is assumed to develop
early in life. More specifically, young infants are specifically interested in the causation and
the path of movement, which clearly distinguish animates from inanimate (e.g., Gelman,
Durgin, & Kaufman, 1995; Legerstee, 1994; Mandler, 1992a, 1992b, 2000a, 2000b; Molina,
Spelke, & King, 1996; Poulin-Dubois & Shultz, 1988; Premack, 1990; Premack & Premack,
1995; Spelke, Philips, & Woodward, 1995). Infants are sensitive to this type of distinction at
7 months of age (Pauen & Träuble, 2002; Träuble, Pauen, Schott & Charalampidu, 2006).
Due to the lack of experience with various animal species, it may take some more months
until infants are able to make more fine-grained distinctions within these two global domains,
hence leading to the finding of a global-to-basic level shift during the second half of the first
year of life. Consistent with this interpretation, we found that older infants participating in
Experiment 1 were cognitively more involved in the given basic-level task than the younger
age-group (as indicated by longer overall examination times), but that both age-groups still
failed to distinguish cats from dogs if they only had occasional contact with exemplars from
these animal-kinds.
Among those who were highly familiar with cats and dogs (Experiment 2), category
discrimination was likely to occur. A comparison of the categorization patterns of the 9- and
the 11-month-olds in Experiment 2 revealed that younger infants still showed the pattern of
ambiguous categorization while older infants showed the pattern of advanced categorization.
Apparently, mere exposure to real-world exemplars is not sufficient to categorize cats and
dogs in an OET. If that were the case, performance at test should have been the same for age-
groups. Rather, age made a difference in terms of how strong performance was influenced by
previously acquired knowledge: 11-month-old infants participating in Experiment 2 also
showed a tendency to examine the objects presented during familiarization for a longer time
than 9-month-olds, presumably because the older they were more strongly involved in
processes of memory activation. Hence, one could speculate that infants’ ability to encode
and to memorize differentiated experiences with real-world exemplars, and/or to activate
basic-level knowledge in an OET shows developmental progress between 9 and 11 months of
age.
In sum, the reported findings strongly suggest that the activation of real-world knowledge
plays a crucial role for explaining OET-performance, while leaving open the question what
type of knowledge infants applied. Participants of Experiment 2 had experience with only one
specific exemplar of a cat or a dog. Hence, it is all but self-evident that they have formed a
"perceptual category" based on the experience of multiple items. Of course, the experience
with one specific exemplar might have increased infants' sensitivity to features of cats or dogs
in general, thus leading infants to pay more attention to such features when encountering
548 Birgit Träuble, Lysett Babocsai and Sabina Pauen

similar exemplars outside their home. Alternatively, previous experience with one specific
exemplar might have lead to an increase in interest for toy-models with similar appearance,
thus helping the infant to form a category on-line during the experimental session. The
present data can not decide between these two alternatives.
One addition question still remaining unanswered is whether it is really necessary to have
previous experience with real-world exemplars in order to be successful in the OET. Maybe
performance would even be better if infants were pre-exposed to toy-models of dogs and cats
rather than a real cat or dog? This possibility could further be explored by allowing infants to
play with either one or multiple toy replica of a cats and/or dogs for several weeks. If they
show similar performance as those participating in Experiment 2, this would weaken the
argument that infants of the tested age-range rely on real-world experience when categorizing
toy-models in a laboratory task. If they show a lack of categorization, the same argument
would be strengthened, however.
The present study was the first to demonstrate that previously made experiences with
real-world-exemplars can influence infants' categorization behaviour in an object-
examination task. Additional investigations need to clarify what kind of experience is
necessary to show this effect.

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Quinn, P., & Johnson, M. (2000). Global-Before-Basic Object Categorization in
Connectionist Networks and 2-Month-Old Infants. Journal of the International Society
on Infant Studies, 1, 31-46.
550 Birgit Träuble, Lysett Babocsai and Sabina Pauen

Ruff, H. (1986). Components of attention during infants` manipulative exploration. Child

Development, 57, 105-114.
Spelke, E. S., Philips, A., & Woodward, A. L. (1995). Infants´ knowledge of object motion
and human action. In: D. Sperber, D. Premack, & A. J. Premack, (Eds.), Causal
Cognition - A Multidisciplinary Debate, (pp. 44-78). Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Träuble, B., & Pauen, S. (2007). The role of functional information for infant categorization.
Cognition, 105, 362-379.
Träuble, B., Pauen, S., Schott, S., & Charalampidu, A. (2006). Do 7-month-old infants pay
attention to causality in ambigue dynamic events? Poster presented at the 15th
International Conference on Infant Studies, ICIS, Kyoto, Japan.
Younger, B., & Fearing, D. (2000). A Global-to-Basic Trend in Early Categorization:
Evidence From a Dual-Category Habituation Task. Journal of the International Society
on Infant Studies, 1, 47 –58.

Author Note: This work has been funded by the German Research foundation. We are
grateful to the infants and parents who participated in this research. Thanks to our student
research assistants for running the experiments and scoring the video tapes.
In: Encyclopedia of Cognitive Psychology (2 Volume Set) ISBN: 978-1-61324-546-0
Editor: Carla E. Wilhelm, pp. 551-565 © 2012 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 19

PERIPHERAL RESPONSES ELICITED BY MOTOR

IMAGERY: A WINDOW ON CENTRAL AND
PERIPHERAL NERVOUS SYSTEM RELATIONSHIPS
THROUGH MOTOR COMMANDS INHIBITION

C. Collet and A. Guillot

1
University of Lyon, Claude Bernard University, Lyon, France

ABSTRACT
The aim of this paper was to examine the way in which motor commands addressed
to the somatic and autonomic effectors are inhibited during Motor Imagery (MI). Three
experiments are described, each referring to specific motor requirements. The first
requested the participants to lift a weighted dumbbell with their preferential hand (flexion
of the forearm), while seating in a chair. In the second task, the participants were asked to
perform 3 consecutive vertical jumps on a force plate, while the third was a coincidence
anticipation task requiring intercepting a table-tennis ball thrown by a robot, with the
inner side of the hand. All were performed under actual vs. mental practice. In the first
experiment, a subliminal muscular activity was recorded during MI, which was specific
to the type of muscle contraction. In the second experiment, MI was shown to reduce
postural sway amplitude in the standing position on both the anterior-posterior and the
lateral axes compared to the control condition (standing motionless on the force plate). In
the third experiment, the autonomic responses recorded during MI showed the same
pattern that those recorded during actual movement. While performing MI, the 3 motor
commands were thus shown to be affected differentially with reference to somatic and
autonomic inhibition.
Experiment 1 provided evidence that direct voluntary commands are not fully
inhibited during MI. Although this process remained not solved, it is supposed at
organising peripheral effectors during the preparation phase, as for the actual execution
of the movement. The incomplete inhibition of motor commands was confirmed by the
second experiment as postural adjustments were not inhibited. Accordingly, MI may thus

CRIS-EA 647 – Laboratory of Mental processes and Motor performance, 27-29 Boulevard du 11 Novembre 1918,
69622 Villeurbanne Cedex, France. [email protected] – [email protected]
552 C. Collet and A. Guillot

have a more limited effect on automatic sensori-motor processes usually associated to

voluntary motor commands. This was confirmed in the third experiment in which
autonomic nervous system regulations were preserved during MI.
These findings should be used in MI program (in sport training or clinical
rehabilitation), as incomplete inhibition may give feedback information to the central
nervous systems. Further research should nevertheless investigate the processes of
somatic motor commands inhibition.

Keywords: Motor imagery – Voluntary movement – Motor commands inhibition –

Electromyography – Autonomic nervous system activity – Postural adjustments

INTRODUCTION
Motor Imagery (MI) is the mental representation of a given movement without any
concomitant body action. MI could be performed through several modalities, each linked to a
sensorial system. With reference to motor action, the most commonly used are the visual
imagery (VI) which requires self-visualization of movement, whereas the kinaesthetic
imagery (KI) requires to “perceiving” the movement through muscle contraction intensity and
joint amplitude. Since similar mechanisms underlying movement preparation and execution
are shared with motor imagery (Decety, 1996), it has been shown that the effects of MI may
improve motor task performance (Roure et al., 1999; Mulder et al., 2004; Guillot & Collet,
2008). MI involves several cerebral operations (mental evocation and representation), which
do not elicit any behavior and, consequently, cannot be observed although cerebral scanning
with TEP or fMRI evidences cerebral changes through blood flow variations. If mental
operations of motor planning and programming are actually performed during MI, motor
commands must be inhibited to prevent any movement. The level at which the motor
command is stopped has never been clearly identified. It may be supposed that both the motor
areas and the motor tracks are involved in the process of inhibiting efferent information
addressed to muscles (Bonnet et al., 1997).
Voluntary motor commands originate from cerebral cortices, particularly from the frontal
and parietal areas which are closely linked with subcortical structures, i.e. the basal ganglia
and the lateral cerebellum. In addition, automated postural adjustments are integrated to
motor commands to anticipate any postural disturbance elicited by the movement execution
itself.
Finally, a part of the motor program, which is often overlooked, is related to the
autonomic nervous activity that provides homeostatic regulations by mobilizing the resources
of the organism in response to energetic demands of the internal milieu. By providing
information about the activity of the sympathetic branch, electrodermal data, clearly offer a
window on cortical motor areas from which information is originated. These pathways are
known to elicit increased activation, at the level of peripheral effectors, including the skin.
When sweat glands are activated, a concomitant electrodermal response is elicited. Thus,
cognitive operations of the central nervous system, such as MI, are paralleled by peripheral
electrodermal system (for review, see Guillot & Collet, 2005).
Three experimental designs will be presented in this study, each with specific motor
requirements. The first task required the participants to lift a weighted dumbbell with their
 Peripheral Responses Elicited by Motor Imagery 553

preferential hand (flexion of the forearm), while seating in a chair. The second task was
performed on a force plate on which the participants had to perform a series of 3 consecutive
vertical jumps. The third task was a Go/No-Go task, asking the participants to intercept table-
tennis balls thrown by a robot, with the inner side of their hand and by extending their arm.
All these tasks were performed under two conditions, i.e. actual vs. mental practice.
Taking into account the movement requirements, the aim of this study was to examine the
ways in which the motor commands addressed to somatic and autonomic effectors were
inhibited during MI.

First Experiment

Materials and Methods

The first experiment required the participants to lift a weight while seated, both
physically and mentally. Thirty right-handed sport students took part in this experiment.
During a preliminary session, held seven days before the experiment, all the participants were
asked to perform 2 tests: an incremental test to determine their best mark (1RM) of a
concentric contraction with a weighted dumbbell.
A strain gauge force transducer was also used to determine their maximum isometric
strength. After a specific warm-up, the experimental procedure required the participants to
seat comfortably in an experimental chair and to gradually lift dumbbells of an increasing
weight. To avoid any compensatory movements, participants were attached to the chair. The
experimenter then placed the EMG electrodes on the active arm.
Surface EMG signals were simultaneously recorded with the Flex-comp Infinity system
(Thought technology, Montreal, Canada), from the long head of the biceps brachii (LBB), the
short head of the biceps brachii (SBB), the brachioradialis (BR), the triceps brachii (TB), the
flexor carpi ulnaris (FCU), the flexor carpi radialis (FCR), the anterior deltoid (DEL), the
superior trapezius (TRA), and the major pectoralis (PEC) muscles.
A goniometric system was also attached to the active arm and forearm, to control the
initial position and check that the initial elbow angle (90°) remained constant during MI. The
participants were then asked to actually lift or to imagine lifting the weighted dumbbell. The
four conditions were i) heavy concentric contraction (80% of 1RM), ii) light concentric
contraction (50% of 1RM), iii) isometric contraction (95% of the maximal isometric strength)
with the strain gauge force transducer, and iv) eccentric contraction (120% of 1RM). Four
actual and 4 imagined conditions were counterbalanced for each contraction type. During
their actual performance, the participants were asked to lift the dumbbell as fast as possible
(concentric contractions), to slow it as much as possible (eccentric contraction), or to hold an
isometric contraction during a 5s-period (arm-forearm angle=90°).
During MI, they were instructed to imagine the movement as if they were actually
performing it, using a combination of both internal visual and kinesthetic imagery. Upon
mental initiation of the first body movement and at the end of the sequence, athletes pressed a
button with their non-dominant hand, to start and stop the timer. The experimental design is
summarized in Figure 1.
554 C. Collet and A. Guillot

Figure 1. The first experiment requested the participants to lift a dumbbell with their preferential arm
(as shown by the picture on the left). Several experimental conditions were selected to make the
muscles controlling the flexion movement working under different contraction modalities (isometric,
heavy concentric, light concentric and eccentric). Those 4 types of contractions were paralleled by
similar motor imagery activity (right picture).

RESULTS
All measurements monitored from the 9 muscles were considered under the MI
condition. The first step was to test the interaction between movement condition and the type
of muscle contraction. None of the P-values reached a significant level, although some
revealed a marginally significant P-value. Consequently, the effect of each condition was
investigated. Statistical analysis showed a significant difference between the MI and rest
conditions, the EMG muscle activity being systematically higher during MI than during the
rest period. These differences were observed in all muscles. A significant effect of the
contraction type was found in the anterior deltoid, the brachioradialis, the flexor carpi ulnaris,
and the flexor carpi radialis. Interestingly, the weakest muscle activity was found during the
eccentric MI. EMG data recorded during MI also provided a strong difference between the
two concentric conditions, powerful concentric contraction eliciting higher muscular activity
than weak concentric contraction, just as seen during the actual performance. Finally, no clear
difference emerged from the comparison of powerful concentric and isometric contractions.
These results are summarized in Figure 2 and 3.

DISCUSSION
The data provided by the EMG analysis showed a clear difference between the rest period
and the MI condition whatever the gender, the muscles and the type of contraction. A
subliminal muscular activity was thus recorded during MI, which was also specific to the type
of muscle contraction. These results may highlight the incomplete inhibition of motor
commands during MI. We also observed an effect of the weight being mentally lifted under
 Peripheral Responses Elicited by Motor Imagery 555

the concentric condition, the heavy dumbbell eliciting a higher EMG activity than when the
weak dumbbell is lifted mentally. Bakker et al. (1996) and Boschker (2001) had found that
18,00
EMG correlates of motor imagery
16,00 2,20
Mean EMG activity during motor imagery as a function of muscle
Rest Imagery contraction
2,00
14,00
1,80
12,00
EMG activity (mV)

1,60
10,00

Mean EMG (mV)

1,40
8,00
1,20

6,00
1,00

4,00 0,80

2,00 0,60

0,00 0,40
Intense Concentric Weak Concentric Isometric Eccentric
)

o)

ial
ius
id

Rd
ps

l
Ul

ra
Lg

lto
Sh

ad
ice

cto
rp
ez
(

rp
De
ps

Ca
ap

Tr

Ca
hio

Pe
ps
ce

Tr

Fl
ce

ac

Fl
Bi

Bi

Br

Figure 2. Muscular activity during motor imagery, although subliminal, was higher than that recorded
during the control condition (left figure). Furthermore, EMG activity during motor imagery was shown
as matching this observed during actual movement, the highest values being obtained during the strong
concentric condition whereas the lowest was observed during the eccentric contraction (right figure).

lifting a 9 kg dumbbell mentally resulted in a larger EMG activity than for lifting 4 kg 1/2. In
the present study, the MI of a heavy concentric contraction (80% of 1RM) resulted in a
greater pattern of EMG activity than during the MI of a light concentric condition (50% of
1RM). The intensity of the imagined contraction is thus paralleled by the magnitude of the
subliminal EMG activity, showing a close link between the central nervous system and the
periphery during MI (Guillot et al., 2007). Jeannerod (1994) and Bonnet et al. (1997)
attributed the changes in the EMG activity during MI to an incomplete inhibition of the motor
command. This hypothesis is emphasized by differential muscle activity associated with the
contraction type: the EMG activity was larger during the heavy concentric contraction than
during the eccentric condition, this latter eliciting the weakest EMG activity among the 4
contraction types. Interestingly, these results reinforce the previous findings showing that
actual eccentric contractions may elicit the weakest EMG activity, as compared to those
observed during concentric and isometric contractions (Fang et al., 2001; McHugh et al.,
2002). These results also confirm those by Komi et al. (2000) and Linnamo et al. (2006) who
reported that the pattern of activity during imagined contractions was greater during
concentric than during isometric conditions. As observed in our experiment, they also
recorded a pattern of EMG activity in all muscles involved in the physical flexion of the
forearm, i.e. the agonist muscles, but also the antagonists, synergists and muscles with a
fixation function. This observation clearly shows that MI may recruit the same movement
pattern as the actual motor command would do, although at a level of subliminal intensity,
hence involving the same neural substrate. Thus, the EMG activity recorded during MI
mirrored that observed during actual execution. Furthermore, this was not a tonic non-specific
activity as the design of EMG distinguished among the different types of contraction in the
same extent as actual execution would have done. However, two questions remain worthy to
be asked: i) the usefulness of this specific residual motor command and ii) the neural process
of partial inhibition of the motor command. As far as the first question is considered, one of
the most plausible outcomes is that the sensory afferent information provided to the central
556 C. Collet and A. Guillot

nervous system should serve as feedback in the hypothesis of a forthcoming actual

movement. Secondly, the cerebellum is known as being involved in the inhibition of
movement execution during MI (Lotze et al., 1999).
To summarize, the present results give evidence that specific EMG patterns were
recorded during MI in all muscles interested in the movement, as a function of the force to be
developed and of the contraction type. This interrelation may be summarized in Figure 3.

Cortical Cortical

Subcortical Subcortical

MI : Residual motor
Actual command?

Figure 3. A pragmatic representation of what may occur during the mental representation of a
movement, by comparison to what is actually performed by the central nervous system. The voluntary
motor command, while being inhibited as no movement could be observed during motor imagery, is
nevertheless thought as being partially inhibited, as a residual, specific and subliminal EMG activity
may be recorded at the muscle level.

Second Experiment

Materials and Methods

The second experiment was devised to evaluate the effect of MI on postural adjustments.
Postural stability was measured i) while the participants stood barefoot and motionless on a
force plate, and ii) while they imagined a series of 3 consecutive vertical jumps, by using both
visual (VI) and kinaesthetic imagery (KI), alternately. Remaining motionless on the force
plate during the same duration was considered the control task, as showed by Figure 4.

Results

By comparison to the control condition, the MI task was shown to reduce both postural
sway amplitude and path length in the standing position on the anterior-posterior and the
lateral axes. Moreover, the participants were found to be more stable during VI than during
KI, as shown by Figure 5. The current results showed that the postural adjustments were not
inhibited during MI, whereas the movement commands were. The hypothesis that cognitive
tasks enhanced standing postural stability is also reinforced. Results provided further
 Peripheral Responses Elicited by Motor Imagery 557

evidence that MI duration was longer than that recorded during the actual performance. This
overestimation was greater during KI than during VI.

Figure 4. The left figure represents the control condition during which the participants were requested
to stand motionless during a time-interval equivalent to that of the motor imagery of three consecutive
vertical jumps. The left figure may also represent a participant during the mental representation of the
task, i.e. imagining the 3 vertical jumps. The picture on the right illustrates a participant ready to
perform the task.

**
NS
14
*
12

10 ***
Ground reaction force (N)

**
8 *
6

0
VI KI Ctrl VI KI Ctrl
Anterio-posterior Lateral

Figure 5. Comparison of postural sway extracted from the ground reaction force using the double
integration method. The motor imagery sequences clearly show that comparing to the control condition,
the postural body sway decreased both along the anterior-posterior and the lateral axis. This reduction is
clearly due to the motor imagery activity through 2 main processes: i) attentional resources consuming
and ii) increased stiffness due to postural motor commands addressed to muscles from the brainstem.
558 C. Collet and A. Guillot

Discussion

As far as MI effects on postural control are considered, we observed a reduction of both

postural sway amplitude and path length on the anterior-posterior and the lateral axis. Several
types of cognitive operations have previously been shown to improve postural control (e.g.
Marsh et al., 2000; Redfern et al., 2001; Teasdale et al., 1993). Due to the nature of the
secondary task (e.g. visual stimulation vs. verbal tasks), dual-task effects on gait remained
difficult to compare one to another. However, our results are in accordance with those
reported by Riley et al. (2003), especially by avoiding the factors known as disturbing the
posture independently of cognitive processes. Interestingly, these authors had highlighted a
decrease in sway during a digit rehearsal task, and thus identified a significant relationship
between postural regulation and attentional demands. This is consistent with the emerging
view that postural control is not only under automated, non-conscious processes. As MI
consumed attentional resources, postural regulations could have been made by automatic
processes (Woollacott & Shumway-Cook, 2002; Ehrenfield et al., 2003). Releasing postural
control from attentional focus is however based on the assumption that attention is directed
toward a concurrent task, to make the postural control working in a more automatic and
probably more efficient way. Such a reduction of the postural sway may be related to the
tensing of postural muscles elicited by MI, thus resulting in increased stiffness. In the
particular case of the vertical jump, the subliminal muscle activity hypothesis has to be
demonstrated at the level of postural muscles. MI may be hypothesized as being the origin of
the increased stiffness, as experiment 1 clearly showed that MI elicited subliminal and
muscle-related responses. This tonic activity may therefore be considered an influencing
factor in increasing the postural stability, especially because the actual movement requires
anticipated postural regulation. This hypothesis, however, needs some experimental
investigation dealing with movement involving both tonic (postural) and phasic (movement)
muscle activity. Consequently, and as the sway was reduced under the MI condition, when
compared to the control condition, postural adjustments were not inhibited during MI.
Automatic sensory-motor regulations were thus preserved, despite the motor activity was
inhibited. Postural regulation could be explained by the particular requirements of the
movement. In other words, postural stability may be improved if the secondary task is
correlated with a postural regulation (Le Pellec & Maton, 2000). This purpose is attested by
Aruin et al. (2003), who reported that anticipated postural adjustments amplitude was lower
during a task in which postural muscles were not involved, by comparison to motor tasks
requiring strong postural regulations. To summarize, the decrease in postural sway may be
explained by two main factors i) attention which is mainly focused on the mental task, thus
allowing a more automatic and undoubtedly more effective postural control, and ii) a
subliminal muscle activity may have occurred during MI, as previously considered by
experiment 1. Thus, in a motor task like the vertical jump, MI brings arguments in favour of
non-inhibited postural adjustments, as represented in Figure 5.
The functional role of uninhibited postural motor commands should now be questioned.
It seems obvious that such a process may serve motor preparation just as the specific
subliminal muscle activity evidenced during experiment 1. The role of anticipated postural
adjustments is well-known since several years in the field of motor control (Lee, 1980). These
are integrated to the phasic motor command that elicits action and are aimed to serve
movement execution efficiency.
 Peripheral Responses Elicited by Motor Imagery 559

Cortical Cortical

Subcortical Subcortical

Brainstem Brainstem

Residual somatic
Somatic

Postural

Postural
Actual movement MI preserves postural motor commands.

Figure 6. Schematic representation of a somatic motor command actually addressed to muscles with an
integrated postural commands controlled by the brainstem (on the left). As the phasic motor command
is inhibited partially during motor imagery, the postural command remains effective during the mental
representation of the movement (on the right).

Third Experiment

Materials and Methods

Experiments 1 and 2 have both shown a partial inhibition of the somatic motor
commands while holding a mental representation of a movement. The aim of the third
experiment was to investigate whether the autonomic nervous system activity during MI was
preserved, and to compare the autonomic responses observed during both actual execution
and MI. Using a motor task requiring motor anticipation, 16 subjects were requested to both
physically and mentally intercept green table-tennis balls thrown by a robot, with the inner
side of their hand and by extending their arm (Figure 6).
The participants were confronted to 5 series of 10 balls. In order to preserve a high level
of motivation, the experimental constraints (distance from the robot, speed of throwing) were
divided in a way eliciting no more than 80% success, and no less than 20% failure. Subjects
were warned before each trial that projections would occur within intervals of 5s after the
warning signal.
To prevent any prediction of ball-throwing, various time delays between the warning
signal preparation and the projection were used. Thus, the participants should process actual
visual information and then program the adequate motor response. Autonomic nervous
system activity was recorded continuously through skin resistance and instantaneous heart
rate, thus being considered dependent variables. Each trial was separated from the next by a
rest-period which was never less than 40s to make the physiological variables recovering the
basal level (pre-stimulation values). As the task was unimanual, the autonomic responses
were recorded from the non-dominant hand during either of the two conditions, actual or
imagined. Autonomic responses were quantified by measuring amplitude and duration.
560 C. Collet and A. Guillot

Figure 6. Schematic representation of the experimental design in which the participants had to intercept
a table tennis ball thrown by a robot at various time intervals (to prevent habituation). From a
motionless standing position (left figure), the participants had to perform interception with a forearm
and arm extension movement. Physiological data i.e. electrodermal and cardiac activities were recorded
through sensors placed on the non dominant hand (skin resistance sensors on the second and third
phalanx) and in pre-cordial position using a thoracic auto-adhesive belt (instantaneous heart rate).

Results

Autonomic responses recorded during both movement execution and MI showed the
same pattern. Nevertheless, responses recorded under the MI condition were generally weaker
and shorter than those observed during actual execution, although the difference never
reached the significant threshold. Thus, no difference emerged between the actual execution
and the MI conditions. Interestingly, the successful trials resulted in longer autonomic
response duration in action execution than failed trials. Figure 7 summarizes the main
findings of experiment 3.

Autonomic nervous system responses elicited by actual vs imagined movement

16

14 Actual movement Motor Imagery

12

10

0
Duration Amplitude Duration

SR IHR

Figure 7. Actual execution and motor imagery showed the same autonomic response patterns. Thus,
autonomic adaptations that accompany motor execution are not inhibited during the representation of
movement. SR: Skin resistance – IHR: Instantaneous Heart Rate – bpm: beats per minute.* Skin
resistance amplitude was not processed as this index is dependent upon the initial value. Thus, the
comparison of SR responses was made on the basis of the response duration only.
 Peripheral Responses Elicited by Motor Imagery 561

Discussion

The main outcome from experiment 3 is that autonomic nervous system activity
associated with somatic motor commands was fully preserved during MI per se. The
autonomic function is designed to ensure homeostatic regulation and to supply additional
needs of energy to peripheral effectors. On the basis of electrodermal and cardiac responses,
we observed that the sympathetic branch activity remained comparable to that triggered for
actual execution, even if the movement was not actually performed. The rationale for such an
observation may probably originate from the need of the organism to be ready to act.
Autonomic regulation is closely correlated and specifically adapted to movement
requirement. To perform a voluntary movement, central operations (planning and
programming) are paralleled by autonomic nervous system processes that provide energy
resources to peripheral effectors: ANS responses or somatic muscles activation anticipate
behaviour during the preparation phase, thus representing non-conscious physiological
mechanisms of central mental processes (Collet et al., 1999; Sequeira and Ba M'hamed,
1999). After the “intention to move” operation, subjects have to process the preparation phase
even if what was intended to do is not currently performed. This may explain why autonomic
responses were recorded during MI as the autonomic function must anticipate the need for
energy. Present results confirm that movement is planned and programmed both at a somatic
and a visceral level. This co-programmation is supposed to elicit muscular contractions
(although no sufficient to provide movement), as well as autonomic responses. It is now well-
known that the autonomic nervous system is rapidly activated to respond to demands of the
internal milieu (Wallin & Fagius, 1986). Kummer (1992) and Porges (1995) have provided
evidence that these modifications are structurally and functionally task-related. Thus, the
present results confirm that the autonomic nervous system is not purely a non-cognitive and
automatic part of brain function (Hugdahl, 1996), but reflects behavioural outputs (Guillot &
Collet, 2005). Specifically, the autonomic nervous system provides resources to peripheral
effectors during motor commands preparation, whether effective or not, and offers a window
on central nervous system functioning (Figure 8).

GENERAL DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

Two different mechanisms are involved in the inhibition of a voluntary action. The first is
related to central programming processes whereas the second is responsible for central motor
command transmission from central structures to peripheral effectors (De Jong et al. 1990).
As early hypothesized by Jeannerod (1994), the neural commands for muscular contractions
may be blocked at some level of the motor system by active inhibitory mechanisms. This
purpose was, however, associated with an incomplete inhibition of the motor command that
would provide a consistent explanation for the recording of muscular activity during MI.
Despite the fact that the neural mechanisms have yet not been clearly identified, two,
hypotheses may be stated: First, the inhibitory mechanisms are effective before sending the
information, elaborated within the associate cortices, to the primary motor cortex.
Especially this inhibition may originate from the prefrontal cortical areas associated with
limbic structures and cingular cortices (the behavioural inhibition system early postulated by
562 C. Collet and A. Guillot

Gray, 1990). This behavioural system has other connections with the parietal association
cortices involved in No-Go performance (Watanabe et al., 2002). Second, inhibitory
mechanisms may also be active at different subcortical levels including the spinal cord
(Bonnet et al., 1997), the brainstem, and the cerebellum (Lotze et al., 1999).

Cortical Cortical

Subcortical Subcortical
Limbic Limbic
(hypothalamic) (hypothalamic)

Brainstem Brainstem

Residual somatic
Somatic

Autonomic

Autonomic
Postural

Postural
Actual movement MI preserves postural motor
commands.

Figure 8. Schematic representation of a somatic motor command actually addressed to muscles with
integrated i) postural commands controlled by the brainstem and ii) autonomic commands from the
limbic system associated with the hypothalamus (on the left). The phasic command is inhibited partially
during motor imagery, whereas the autonomic commands remain identical to that held by the
autonomic nervous system to ensure actual execution (on the right).

While performing MI, the tasks from our 3 experiments were found to differentially
affect somatic and autonomic motor commands. The most important result is that a specific
subliminal muscle activity was seen during MI, as it seems obvious that a cognitive operation
should have little influence on more automated regulations (postural and autonomic
regulations controlled at infra- and unconscious levels, respectively). From the intention to
act, direct voluntary commands are normally transmitted through the pyramidal tract to elicit
movement. The process of an incomplete inhibition that accompanies MI remained unsolved,
although it may be hypothesized that such a process is aimed at organising peripheral
effectors during the preparation phase of the forthcoming actual execution. Duclos et al.
(2008) have evidenced anticipatory changes in patterns of human motoneurons discharge
during motor preparation. This may also be observed during MI. Conversely, Bonnet et al.’s
(1997) view is that MI should be compared to action, rather than to motor preparation, hence
considering MI as the intention to avoid movement execution, although MI might be more
closely related to pre-executive processes of a movement than its actual execution (e.g.
Hanakawa et al. 2008). Michelon et al. (2006) underlined that the MI process does not
necessarily require a motor simulation which would integrate the mapping of the effector-
specific commands required to achieve the movement. This would be a quite different MI as
that followed by actual execution. The close relationship (temporal, structural) between MI
and actual execution is in favour of an upstream organization of inhibition, implying the
behavioural inhibition system. This would also explain why the most automated parts of
 Peripheral Responses Elicited by Motor Imagery 563

movement commands are not inhibited, as they are controlled at the subcortical level.
Nevertheless, Bonnet et al. (1997) and Jeannerod (2006) stated that the inhibitory
mechanisms may also be localised downstream of the motor cortex, e.g. at the spinal cord or
brainstem level. In addition, Lotze et al. (1999) postulated that the posterior cerebellum might
also play a crucial role in the inhibition of the motor command. There are probably several
systems and processes of motor inhibition, coordinated at different levels of the central
nervous system from the premotor cortex to the spinal cord. The question of a selective
inhibition which could explain the subliminal muscle activity and even the somatic
commands from the low levels of the central nervous system (e.g., controlling postural
regulations) remains to be asked.
Incomplete inhibition of motor commands was confirmed by data from the force plate
(experiment 2), suggesting that when a movement requires postural adjustments, these are not
inhibited during MI. These results seem more easily explainable as postural adjustments
mainly depend on sensori-motor processes. However, the cognitive processes may also have
an important role in such postural adjustments. This would shows that mental processes, like
MI, have no real effect on automatic sensori-motor processes usually associated with
voluntary motor commands. The same conclusion could be drawn with reference to the
autonomic nervous system regulation (experiment 3): motor commands which are sent to the
autonomic effectors are not inhibited during MI.
All experiments provided evidence of an incomplete inhibition of the motor commands
addressed to the different effectors. This finding should be used in mental rehearsal program.
In sport training, for example, one must preserve motor resources to prevent overtraining, and
MI is thought as being a reliable tool associated with actual practice to be integrated in
training program. In the field of clinical rehabilitation (whatever the nature of the stroke,
either peripheral or central), MI use is known to improve functional recovery (e.g. Braun et
al., 2006; Zimmermann-Schlatter et al., 2008). Further research should also investigate the
processes of somatic motor commands inhibition, since no experimental investigation has
been specifically focused on where and how motor commands might be inhibited during MI.

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In: Encyclopedia of Cognitive Psychology (2 Volume Set) ISBN: 978-1-61324-546-0
Editor: Carla E. Wilhelm, pp. 567-577 © 2012 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 20

RATIONALITY:
THE DESIRE FOR AN ABSOLUTE WITHOUT A CAUSE

Todd McElroy1, Jacob Conrad and Dominic Mascari3

1, 3
Appalachian State University, Boone, NC, US

The irrationality of a thing is no argument against its existence, rather a condition of it.
Friedrich Nietzsche
German philosopher (1844 - 1900)

Friedrich Nietzsche depicts us as creatures bound by an irrational determinism.

This ascription to irrational forces is commonplace and many, if not most, people adhere
to this belief. Such a belief is not surprising in light of how the unconscious was, for many
years, thought of as a mythical, dark place where sadistic urges and sexual perversions
resided. These terrifying forces, however, were reportedly kept at bay by a surrealistic chasm
that lies just between conscious realization and the dark abode of unbounded hedonistic
acceptance. Not a pretty picture considering that the unconscious constitutes a large part of
what it means to be human.
Taking such a position, as some do, seems troubling to those trying to further a scientific
understanding of human psychology. Practically speaking, if we are bound by such a
circumstantial existence then why strive for more? In other words; why should we place such
effort in making better decisions when the choices that we make will inevitably be tainted by
irrational concomitance with unconscious forces?
In this chapter we take a very different view, following a broad perspective that portrays
predecisional thought as one of cooperation between two forces working toward a common
outcome. Rather than ascribing our fate to the inescapable void of irrational fallibility, we
make the case that decision choice can be better understood by approaching it as a
complementary superordinate process and perhaps, at times, a contradictory process.
Nevertheless, the essence of the decision process is always an interactive product of
conscious and unconscious influences. We believe that furthering the understanding of this
568 Todd McElroy, Jacob Conrad and Dominic Mascari

dualistic pairing will allow us to achieve a better understanding of decision processing and
allow for more optimal decision making.
Why are we not rational? This question seems at first insulting and even perfunctory at
times. In fact, one can just as easily posit the question: how often is it that we actually need to
be rational? In a world that has built-in guides for many of our motivations and desires, it is
arguable that we do not really need to spend a great deal of effort on improving and trying to
understand this question. If one merely acquiesces to the forces that direct them then no
further contemplation is needed. Thankfully, many people are not satisfied with relaxing in
the flow of life's river.
In an attempt to address this question we make the assertion that much of the decision
making operation is carried out by unconscious processing. In direct contradiction to what
most people have succumbed to as reality, we propose that our view of the world is colored
by the unconscious lens through which it is viewed. In short, we are creatures making choices
to and fro but we are largely unaware of the forces that lay out direction for those choices.
And because we lack perceptual awareness of this, it is probably the case that this is an ad
hominem artifact. The most likely reason for such an arrangement is that a lack of such
awareness leaves us with the security of directing ourselves, rather than being the object of
direction.
Evidence of this can be found in the understanding that we rarely do things that are
thoroughly thought out. If a person gives this proposal due regard they will quickly realize
that, more often than not, they do things without thinking. We do not have knowledge of why
we are doing a particular act or behavior. Rather we are functioning to fulfill some goal or
motive that has been set in motion. This behavior is initiated and staged by a process that is
unbeknownst to us. Imagine how we would function if we gave thought to our every motion?
Further, imagine if we walked around in life with a full spectrum of our world. That is to
say, if we consistently walked through life with an elaborated notion of where we are and our
future intentions of what we hope to achieve. How much room would be left for any other
unexpected occurrences, or merely appreciating the many aspects of life that bring so much
joy to the experience? No, it seems more likely that we are creatures who simply rely on
feelings of direction and goals rather than thinking most acts through.
While this seems to call into question the essential assumption of autonomous human
beings, we make the case that this is not an exception to humanity but rather it is the rule.
Ironically, it is more likely that we are driven largely by aspects of our self that are not
conscious to us; by forces which allow us to function as the human beings that we are.
In fact, one could argue that what it is to be human is best described in terms of the
complimentary (or at times contradictory) interaction between the conscious and unconscious.
So how can we come to better understand this process that holds such promise of insight for
rational understanding? It is our proposition that a better understanding can be gained through
observing the choice per se as a decision process established as a means that is derived and
made within, and in light of, the larger directionality determined by the ends that we seek.
We view the "means" as largely decided by the conscious and the "end" as directed by
the unconscious. People behave with regard to the means and are predestined by unconscious
forces to seek achievement of the end. The direction of the unconscious impetus is by and
large not something that we are privy to in our conscious deliberation. It is well known in
decision making research that we often act and make decisions based upon feelings and
heuristics rather than analytic thought. Based upon this understanding it is reasonable to
 Rationality 569

propose that we very often act in accordance with a directive that is laid out for us by an
unconscious; an unconscious that has a predictable goal that is directed to achieve a desirable
end. A goal encrypted by an unconscious director. A direction not filled with trickery or
pejorative ends but one that helps us along our path and clears a way for a more achievable
end.
In sum, we are attempting to address the assumption that most people believe their
decision making is guided by conscious thinking; evaluating prospects of a given situation
and, after a thoughtful analysis, choosing the option that they most prefer. Contrary to this
belief, we propose that humans are surrounded by unconscious goals and motives that are
directing them toward a desired outcome. We make the proposal that the conscious nature of
these actions can only be understood to the extent that it exists within a particular goal setting.
In other words, the impetus for a decision choice is being directed by unconscious forces.
And while we are conscious of particular behaviors and preferences directed toward a
decision, we are not privy to the goal setting. Why is this important the reader might ask? The
importance of this understanding lies in the fact that the goal setting can have profound
influences on decisions that are based within the same parameters with only the goal differing
between them. And these choice preferences are the behavioral manifestations that we point
to as defining rationality.

OVERVIEW OF TOPICS
What constitutes a "rational" act of choice has roots as deep as those of humanity. To
make the best choice in a given situation is paramount in many, if not most, situations. It is
not surprising that so much research has been devoted to understanding the virtues of this
process. To address our current investigation we first provide an overview of how rationality
is thought of in decision making research. Next, we discuss some relevant research on the
associations and dissociations between conscious and unconscious processing, including the
automaticity of goals. Afterward we discuss prospect theory, framing effects and formulate a
general statement and hypothesis derived from current research. We then report and discuss
the implications of these findings.
The rationality of decision making. Recent research investigating rational decision
making first pointed to a means for describing rational choice. Admirable attempts by classic
decision theorists have attempted to describe decision choice objectively (Bernoulli,1954).
Taking personal values into account later theorists incorporated individual value attached to
the outcome (Von Neumann and Morgenstern, 1947), the person (Savage, 1954; Schmeidler,
1989) and more recently the interaction between the two (Kahneman and Tversky, 1979).
While these attempts have made immeasurable advancements at understanding rational
choice, it is clear that much more can be learned about the process of rational choice.
The normative and prescriptive approaches. Searching for what the best decision is has
two central approaches in psychology and decision-making research. The normative approach
refers to is more descriptive in its contents and relies on an ideal model, normally
mathematical in form, and is used as a basis for determining what the right choice is. This
approach is statistically based and has its form in expected value and expected utility models
for rational decision making. As the reader can easily surmise people do not always adhere to
570 Todd McElroy, Jacob Conrad and Dominic Mascari

such mathematical models for choosing the correct or "rational" choice. The alternative or
prescriptive approach attempts to incorporate these deviations. With a normative theory as a
comparison basis we can attempt to better see the faulty decisions that people make and seek
means for establishing a better strategy for understanding decision making and people's
deviations thereunto. In a sense, we can prescribe how the model should adapt to the
deviations.
Prescriptive approaches to decision making are less abundant in research investigating
rational decision making but when they do exist they are normally designed to help people
see their faulty decision making and to adept means for more rational choice. There are
certainly many applied advantages to this strategy such as individuals interested in clinical
and organizational settings. While attempts at improving human judgment are admirable, the
success of such work is debatable and may be limited to related contextual settings.
Nevertheless, it is important to apply the findings and knowledge of research in rational
choice and this certainly represents a viable means for doing so.

THE POWER OF UNCONSCIOUS AND CONSCIOUS PROCESSING:

WHO IS BETTER?
The question of whether the conscious or unconscious has greater ability to lead optimal
decisions is an interesting one. Yet until recently it was largely assumed that conscious
processing was superior in most respects for making decisions. Research by Dijksterhuis and
colleagues (e.g., Dijksterhuis, 2004; Dijksterhuis, Bos, Nordgren, and van Baaren, 2006;
Dijksterhuis, and van Olden, 2006; Dijksterhuis and Meurs, 2006; Dijksterhuis, Nordgren,
2006) challenged this assumption. Their studies have provided evidence that, on the surface,
seem counterintuitive for what most people would think of as the best way to make decisions.
In their studies they constructed situations so that some participants were under conditions
with limited cognitive resources (e.g., time constraint) whereas others had unconstrained
cognitive resources (e.g., no time constraint). It is largely assumed that when cognitive
resources are constrained, people will rely upon unconscious processing to make their
decisions. Across these studies what they found was that when participants had ample
opportunity to think about their decisions, they actually performed more poorly (i.e., made
less optimal decisions) as compared to those participants whose cognitive resources were
constrained.
At the heart of these studies is the proposition that unconscious processing ability
exceeds that of conscious processing in making decisions. This finding is challenging to what
most of us think of as good decision making. Specifically, we have been taught that we
should think our decisions through and not make "hasty" choices. While this finding certainly
is important for furthering the understanding of decision making, recent research has
challenged this effect. Research by Acker (2008) has suggest that this finding is limited in
scope.
Acker (2008) demonstrated through empirical investigation that the decision making
advantage of unconscious processing for attaining normative standards in decision choice
may be less than what had been previously reported. This finding provided the impetus for a
meta analysis which revealed that a superior decision making advantage for unconscious
 Rationality 571

processing did not seem to be the case. Rather there may be certain conditions under which
each may have a processing advantage.
Unconscious goal activation: are we aware of what we want? When a prime is presented
without conscious awareness research has shown that it has real and measurable effects on
later judgments (Bargh, 1984). That is, without the person being consciously aware,
subliminally presented stimuli influence a person's reaction toward a particular target that is
otherwise ambiguous target (e.g., Stapel and Koomen, 2005).
The literature investigating the conscious nature of goals indicates that goals for a
particular task are largely unconscious (Aarts, and Dijksterhuis, 2000; Bargh, Gollwitzer,
Lee-Chai, Barndollar and Trötschel, 2001; Chartrand, and Bargh, 1996; Moskowitz, Li, and
Kirk, 2004). For example, Lakin and Chartrand (2003) found that goals to affiliate with other
people lead to more mimicry of another person (Lakin Chartrand and Arkin 2006). In a
similar manner, the decision for selecting a goal in habit formation is strongly related to
unconscious goals (e.g., Aarts and Dijksterhuis, 2000; Bargh, 1990).
Across this research a theme that emerges is that when a goal is primed it activates an
adjustment to the contextual conditions which are rendered to the individual. Take for
example research by Aarts and Dijksterhuis (2003) they found that the goal that was primed
activated a particular way for individuals to behave and respond in a given social context.
Taking this line of thinking one step farther, it is reasonable to assume that, when a person is
primed with a particular goal, it will influence how they respond and interpret the context of
particular decision task that they are encountering.

PROSPECT THEORY
By and large most recent attempts at understanding rational decision making have
focused on violations of normative standards (e.g., Von Neumann and Morgenstern, 1947).
However, over the last several decades the tide of research investigating rational decision
making has shifted and now many lines of research derive their bases from the tenants of
prospect theory. Prospect theory was first proposed by Kahneman and Tversky (1979) as a
means for describing and understanding how people evaluate options and make decisions.
Since that time, prospect theory has become the leading alternative for explaining rational
decision-making. Prospect theory differs from the very narrow, logical approach embraced by
earlier theories (e.g., Von Neumann and Morgenstern, 1947) by allowing for differences in
subjective value and perception of alternatives.
Prospect theory is sensitive to the psychological implications of decision-making. This is
most well defined by how the perceivers interpretation of the problems alternatives as either
gains or losses. Prospect theory proposes that gains and losses are represented differently. The
ultimate result of this difference perceived domain is that different subjective value is
assigned to the target of the decision task. These differences in personal value are what lead
individuals have to gains and losses that provide the framework for interpreting framing
effects.
According to prospect theory (Kahneman and Tversky, 1979) the process of decision-
making consists of two phases. The first phase involves editing of the alternatives and occurs
very early in the decision making process. The characteristic aspects of this phase are
572 Todd McElroy, Jacob Conrad and Dominic Mascari

simplification and reorganization of the options. And the simplification and reorganization
allows the options to be coded as gains or losses relative to a neutral reference point. The
subsequent phase involves evaluation and editing of options. In this phase the assigned values
and weighted probabilities for the options are evaluated relative to the prior editing phase. At
this point the subjective values and probabilities are then combined into a single value and are
then compared and contrasted relative to each other.
The ultimate end to this process is what has become known as "framing effects"
According to prospect theory framing effects are depicted by an S-shaped value function. The
function is concave when the alternatives focus on gains and convex for loss based
alternatives. This allows for the prediction that when the problem is framed positively, in
terms of gains people will be risk-averse whereas when the problem is framed negatively
people tend to be risk-seeking. For example, a person in the concave (gains) curve should
prefer gaining 100 dollars for certain rather than a 50/50 chance to gain 200 or gain nothing.
On the other hand, a person in the convex curve should prefer a 50/50 chance to lose 200
dollars or lose nothing rather than losing 100 dollars for certain.
The prospect theory account of rational decision making is particularly informative
because it can account for these apparent discrepancies that arise between human choice
preference and what normative theories dictate. For example, consider the same type of
framing problem from an expected utility theory approach. According to this type of
approach, options that contain the same expected utility should be treated as equivalent
regardless of the frame in which they are presented. So according to expected utility the
framing of alternatives should have no influence on a decision maker’s choice. Because there
is a great amount of research supporting the framing effect ( See Kuhberger, 1998 and Levin,
Schneider, and Gaeth, 1998 for reviews) it is widely assumed that the framing effect is the
paramount example of irrationality.
Because prospect theory and framing research holds such importance for understanding
human rationality, an area devoted to understanding how the framing effect functions has
developed. Research in this area has explored many different aspects of the framing effect
and while no encompassing theory has been proposed, much advancement in the field has
lead to a better understanding of the framing effect.
Framing research. Research in the area of framing effects has demonstrated the profound
effect that context can have on the framing effect (Takemura, 1994; LeBoeuf and Shafir,
2003; McElroy and Mascari, 2007; Sieck and Yates, 1997). Take for example research by
Bless, Betxch, and Franzen (1998), they found that when the word "statistics" as compared to
"medicine" was placed in the upper corner of the paper, this simple contextual manipulation
acted to attenuate framing effects from occurring
While context has shown to have important influences on the framing effect, that does
not cover the other aspect of the decision world; the internal aspect. Specifically, research has
revealed that individual difference factors such as need for cognition (Curseu, 2006; Smith
and Levin, 1996; Zhang and Buda, 1999; Simon, Fagley, and Halleran, 2004), intuition
(Levin, Gaeth, and Schreiber, 2002), collective identity (McElroy and Seta, 2006) and
predispositions toward analytical–deliberative thought (Bartels, 2006; LeBoeuf and Shafir,
2003, McElroy and Seta, 2003) all influence the likelihood that framing effects will occur.
The importance of individual difference factors has been growing in the last several years and
has revealed much about how individuals vary in their perception and processing of a
decision task. For example, consider research by McElroy and Seta (2007) where they
 Rationality 573

showed that high self-esteem individuals tend to be relatively unbiased in the valence that
they impose onto a decision task whereas low self-esteem individuals tend to impose negative
valence onto the decision task. Consequently, low self-esteem individuals tend to be more
risk-seeking in traditional framing scenarios.
Other researchers hoping to better understand the framing effect have focused on
processing involved in framing. Most research devoted to this topic has proposed that
different styles of thinking can lead to more or less reliance on the framing of a decision
problem. Not surprisingly, most of this research has attempted to apply a dual-processing
approach to understand the framing effect. One approach by Igou and Bless (2007) suggests
that when decision makers utilize constructive processing strategies to determine the meaning
of the problem they will seek out contextual information (e.g., the frame) and use it go “go
beyond” the information in the problem. According to this view, as task relevance increases
so to should reliance on the frame. Reyna and Brainerd (1991) have proposed that memory
retrieval occurs along a continuum, from verbatim to gist-like. Gist retrieval operates through
long-term memory and relies more on representations of personal values and preferences
whereas verbatim retrieval involves a more objective approach to the problem. In this account
when an individual is presented with a decision-task of low importance, they will rely more
upon the decision frame for making decisions as compare to when the task is high in personal
relevance. The analytic -holistic model McElroy and Seta (2003; 2004) proposes that when
the task is high in personal relevance individuals will rely more on an effortful-analytic style
of processing which will lead to greater numeric sensitivity and little or no framing influence
whereas low personal relevance leads to less effortful-holistic processing and heightened
sensitivity to contextual cues such as the decision frame.
Recent research by McElroy and Seta (2007) has revealed that the direction of the
framing effect can only be determined with respect to the person’s goal for the decision task.
Specifically, McElroy and Seta demonstrated that the goal of the decision task can determine
whether a relative gain or loss is perceived as a psychological gain or loss. According to this
research, when the goal of the task is to increase the commodity at stake, gains are perceived
as gains and losses as losses and typical framing effects are observed. However, when the
goal is to decrease the target of the task, gains are then perceived as losses and losses are
perceived as gains. And when this situation occurs the typical framing effect is reversed.
Thus, this research provides an important new piece of understanding.

AN EMERGING QUESTION
One question that emerges from the literature is whether the goal of the decision maker is
automatic (unconscious) and whether this unconscious goal will then influence choice
preference in a manner consistent with prior research (McElroy and Seta, 2007). Remember
that McElroy and Seta found that the goal of the decision maker (increase or decrease)
determined the direction of the framing effect. However, it is not clear whether the goal of the
participants is something that they are consciously aware of or whether it is something outside
of their awareness. If the goal of the decision task is something that is unconscious then this
has important implications for those seeking a more full understanding of the framing effect
such that, the perceived gain or loss of a decision task is determined by unconscious
574 Todd McElroy, Jacob Conrad and Dominic Mascari

processing. This is a novel finding and adds to the literature for those researchers
investigating the framing effect. To examine this important question we performed a study to
examine that nature of conscious and unconscious processing in a typical framing task.

METHOD
Participants and Design. One hundred and eight students volunteered to take part in the
study. Participants received course credit for their efforts. The design of our study included a
2 frame (gain, loss) x 2 primed goal (increase, decrease) between-subjects factorial design.
Procedure and materials. Participants in our study were first given a word-find task
similar to what has been used in prior research (Bargh, Chen and Burrows, 1996). The words
that participants were asked to seek focused on either increasing or decreasing. For example,
words related to increasing included; amplify, extend and multiply whereas words related to
decreasing included; abate, reduce and lower. After completing the anagram task participants
were provided with a decision task similar to that used by McElroy and Seta (2007).
However, the task was slightly modified to remove any words that indicated whether the goal
of the task was to increase, maintain or decrease. As prior research has shown (McElroy and
Seta, 2007) this task is amenable to either of the directions. Specifically, the task read as
follows:

Imagine that you are an athlete with the goal of changing your weight as much as
possible. Because of your sport, the more you change your weight the better you can perform.
At this juncture of the season you have to begin a specialized training program and you must
choose between the following two programs. Assume that the following alternatives represent
the exact estimates for each training program.

Directly afterward this information, participants were presented with the two decision
alternatives similar to other risky-choice framing tasks. They were then asked to rate their
opinion of the alternatives on a 7-point scale where 1 represented "definitely would
recommend A" and 7 represented "definitely would recommend B".

RESULTS
To determine whether the primed goal influenced participants' choice preference for the
frame, we performed an analysis of variance on the data. Primed goal (increase, decrease) and
decision frame (gain, loss) acted as our independent variables and risky-choice preference
was our dependent variable. The results of this analysis revealed a significant interaction
between these two variables F (1, 104) = 4.5, p< .05, no significant main effects occurred. As
may be seen in Table 1, when participants were primed with an "increase" goal, they
demonstrated typical framing effects, risk aversion for gains and risk seeking for losses.
However, when participants were primed with a "decreasing" goal, our findings revealed that
the effect for framing was opposite to what is typically found in the literature. The results of
this study are consistent with prior research investigating the effect of goals on framing
(McElroy and Seta, 2007). However this research extends this understanding by
 Rationality 575

demonstrating that individuals are not aware of the goals that they bring to a decision task, the
unconscious nature of goals and the subsequent effect on rational choice and framing effects
furthers the understanding of rationality.

Table 1. Average choice preference as a function of primed goal and gain/less frame

Gain frame Loss frame

N Mean N Mean
Problem goal:
Increase 28 2.3 27 2.7
Decrease 27 3.5 26 2.5

CONCLUSION
In this chapter we have provided the framework for developing a dualistic view for
decision making. At the heart of this view lies our proposal that people are guided by both
conscious thinking as well as unconscious processing. We propose that human beings are
guided by unconscious goals that direct many, if not most, of our decision choices. When we
consciously evaluate decision choices we do so in light of parameters provided to us by the
unconscious. Taken together, we suggest that understanding the decisions that we make can
only be understood if they are viewed through a lens of an unconscious goal setter that sets
the stage for the decisions that we make.

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Editor: Carla E. Wilhelm, pp. 579-593 © 2012 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 21

THE COGNITIVE EFFECTS OF ANXIETY

ON SEXUAL AROUSAL

Philippe Kempeneers1,2, Romain Pallincourt2 and Sylvie Blairy3

1
University of Liege, Unit of Clinical Psychology, Belgium
2
Alexians’ Psychiatric Hospital, Henri-Chapelle, Belgium
3
University of Liege, Unit of Cognitive-Behavioural Clinical Psychology, Belgium

ABSTRACT
Anxiety and sexual arousal have often been considered as incompatible. Since the
end of the 20th Century, however, researches have impaired theories centred on the
inhibitory effect of the stress and on peripheral explanations; they rather focus attention
on the complexity of the relations between the two states and on cognitive mechanisms.
Now sexual arousal tends to be regarded as a complex response that requires the
convergent interpretation of internal and external stimuli. Anxiety may have different
effects on this process, sometimes neutral, sometimes facilitating and sometimes
inhibitory.
On the one hand, anxiety can trigger a vegetative emotional reaction that may be
associated to a concomitant erotic stimulation. Thus, anxiety facilitates the sexual
response: this can be called a priming effect. This effect is regularly observed in labs,
mainly among women. It likely also works in certain compulsive sexual behaviours or,
more commonly, in those numerous persons that report being sexually aroused when
stressed.
On the other hand, anxiety can cause a massive irruption of non erotic cues in
working memory. Therefore, cognitive function available for treating erotic stimuli is
diminished and sexual response is impaired. This is an effect of cognitive interference. A
trait called erotophobia could be regarded as a vulnerability factor to cognitive
interference. Erotophobic subjects are characterized by a trend to focus upon danger-
related information when they are in a sexual situation and by a higher risk of sexual
dysfunction.

Anxiety is a recognised etiological factor in the domain of sexual dysfunctions. Previous

researches have reported reduced sexual responses in individual suffering from anxiety
580 Philippe Kempeneers, Romain Pallincourt and Sylvie Blairy

(Bodinger et al., 2002; Leiblum et al., 2007; Meana & Nunnick, 2006; Purdon & Holdaway,
2006; Rellini, 2008.) Whether this is caused by concerns regarding self-image, one’s physical
appearance, one’s performance as a lover or the fear of getting pregnant, or fears of being
abandoned or worries relating to everyday difficulties, or whether it is the result of a social
phobia, a panic disorder or a history of sexual abuse, all the observations converge towards
one point: anxiety and sexual stimulation are not a good match.
Among clinicians, it was widely believed, for a long time, that anxiety was an
antagonistic state of sexual responses. Many authors have theorised on this issue. The most
well known, Masters and Johnson (1970) described the now famous performance anxiety
mechanism: worried about their sexual performance, dysfunctional patients cannot indulge in
pleasure; they behave like a worried spectator, concerned about their own performance, thus
managing to inhibit the sexual responses for which they are hoping and praying. This form of
vicious circle was presented as the primary cause of chronic sexual dysfunction. In 1974,
Kaplan pointed out that other causal factors were sometimes added to the anxiety of
performance, which were more deeply rooted in the history of the subject but also related to
anxiety: the fear of intimacy, for instance, the feeling of guilt associated with sexuality or the
fear of being abandoned. The fact is that up until quite recently, clinicians tended to represent
anxiety and sexual arousal as irreconcilable states. They were more or less explicitly inspired
by the works of Wolpe (1958) on reciprocal inhibition. The principle of reciprocal inhibition
postulated an incompatibility between certain neurovegetative states. Specifically, anxiety, a
state where the activity of the sympathetic system predominates, was considered to be
incompatible with sexual arousal, whose initiation requires parasympathetic activity.
According to Wolpe (1958), anxiety and arousal states are mutually exclusive. Wolpe’s
theory attributes the inhibitory effect of one state upon the other to a direct physiological
causality effect.
In the beginning, the theory of reciprocal inhibition was very appealing to clinicians
sensitive to the almost constant presence of elements of anxiety implicit in functional
problems. However, beyond the field of sexual dysfunctions, various elements caused doubt
regarding such a simple and direct inhibitory relationship. First, several anecdotes evoked the
possibility of sexual arousal stimulated by stress. For examples, stories of lovers who were
stimulated by the fear of being caught in the act, stories of couples where sexual relations
following a “good old” argument were all the more intense, or stories of rape carried out in
the heat of anger. Clinical observations then became systematic. Since the work of Marshall,
Laws & Barbaree (1990), we now know that certain types of criminal sexual behaviour are
stimulated by stress or are the result of humiliation. It is also the case for certain cases of
paraphilia and for compulsive sexual behaviour where stress is often a trigger (Bancroft &
Vukadinovic, 2004; Kafka, 2007). Moreover, surveys carried out among the general
population also showed that anxiety and arousal can sometimes go hand in hand. For instance,
the survey published in 2003 by the Bancroft team showed that 28.3 % of the interviewed
men have reported that anxiety put a strain on their sexual interests, while 20.6 % considered
it to be stimulating. Twenty percent is fairly significant. It is highly unlikely that we are only
dealing with marginal cases of compulsive or deviant sexuality. The survey by Lykins,
Janssen and Graham carried out in 2006 on female students also showed similar results. In
this survey, 10 % of the students reported to be sexually stimulated by anxiety. Clearly,
anxiety is not only an antagonist of sexual functioning; it can also, and quite often, be an
agonist. This rapidly led to the belief that anxiety-arousal relations were probably more
 The Cognitive Effects of Anxiety on Sexual Arousal 581

complex than the reciprocal inhibition theory suggested. During the last two decades, we have
gone from a theory centred on inhibition and the peripheral physiological mechanisms to a
theory insisting more on the complexity of the relations between the two states and on the
cognitive explicators.

THE CONTRIBUTION OF PLETHYSMOGRAPHY

As mentioned above, the observations made outside the field of sexual dysfunctions have
cast doubt on the theory of reciprocal inhibition. Consequently, numerous studies have
investigated the understanding of anxiety-arousal relations. In this context, the
plethysmographic techniques were often employed. Plethysmography allows sexual arousal to
be assessed in a subject by providing a direct description of the person’s state. The level of
arousal is inferred from genital vasocongestion. In men, a sensor ring is fitted around the
penis; it is sensitive to variations in pressure, thus allowing the tumescence of the organ to be
measured. This is what is known as penile plethysmography. In women, a vaginal probe
sensitive to colour variations in the wall of the vagina allows the extent of the blood flow in
this area to be determined. This is vaginal photoplethysmography. The measurements
generally take place when the subject is exposed to erotic stimuli, either audio (recorded
material) or video (explicit films).

Initial Experiments

The first experimental arguments against the theory of reciprocal inhibition were put
forward by Hoon, Wincze and Hoon in 1977 on female subjects, and by Wolchik et al. in
1980 on male subjects. They were reproduced in 1990 by Palace and Gorzalka on a sample of
women. In these experiments, before viewing erotic images, half the subjects were exposed to
an emotional film that induces anxiety (accident scenes), and the other half of subjects were
exposed to an emotionally neutral film (the control condition.) The participants’ sexual
arousal was measured. The result showed that sexual arousal among participants firstly
exposed to anxiogenic stimulus was not inhibited compared to participants firstly exposed to
a neutral film. On the contrary, in the studies by Hoon et al. and Palace and Gorzalka, the
initial exposure to an anxiogenic stimulus even seemed to facilitate arousal. Such results did
not support the idea of an incompatibility between anxiety and arousal states. The observed
priming effect of the one on the other observed in women even tended to support the opposite
theory of psychophysiological processes common to both states.

Sympathetic Activity

Sympathetic activity was considered by Wolpe as the physiological foundation of the

anxious inhibition of sexual reactivity. The experiments of Hoon et al. and Wolchik et al. did
not completely invalidate this mode of action. Indeed, it was possible that the so-called
anxiogenic stimuli did not provoke a sufficiently intense sympathetic reaction to exercise an
582 Philippe Kempeneers, Romain Pallincourt and Sylvie Blairy

inhibitory effect on arousal. However, Lange et al. (1981) and Meston and Heiman (1998)
had directly stimulated the sympathetic system using chemicals. Lange and his team injected
male subjects with effective doses of epinephrine, a sympathicomimetic substance, just before
being exposed to erotic films. They compared their sexual arousal with subjects receiving an
injection of a placebo. No difference emerged. Their results were in line with the results of
Wolchik’s previous studies (1980). Meston and Heiman (1998), administered ephedrine,
another sympathicomimetic substance to female subjects and reported a slight increase of
arousal compared to the placebo group. Here, the results were the same as those of the initial
experiment by Hoon et al. (1977). Similar results were also obtained by Meston and Gorzalka
(1995, 1996) where the sympathetic activity of female subjects was induced through physical
exercise. In conclusion, it appears that anxiety and the accompanying sympathetic activity are
perfectly reconcilable with sexual arousal; they may even slightly encourage it: this is far
from the principle of reciprocal inhibition.

Experimental Reproduction of Performance Anxiety

Wolpe’s theory is clearly not the most pertinent theory to explain the links between
anxiety and arousal. However, anxiety is definitely almost a constant in clinical dysfunctional
tables. Therefore, it is possible that sexual anxiety has particularities that distinguish it from
other negative emotions. The inhibition of arousal could be the result of perceptual and
cognitive components specific to performance anxiety. Masters and Johnson, who considered
performance anxiety to be the main factor responsible for arousal problems, insisted on the
specific attitude caused by this type of fear: the patients became spectators of their own
performance rather than the actors. Isn’t it this particular mental state that characterises
sexual anxiety and renders it incompatible with sexual arousal?
In order to test this hypothesis of a specificity of performance anxiety, Barlow, Sakheim
and Beck attempted to reproduce the appearance conditions in an experiment in 1983. They
measured arousal in male subjects who were given erotic films to watch after they had been
threatened with electric shocks if their erectile performance did not reach an acceptable level.
Arousal in these subjects, who were supposedly made anxious regarding their sexual
performance, was compared to the arousal of subjects, on the one hand, who were also
threatened with shocks but not in relation to their erectile performance, and, on the other
hand, to subjects who had not been threatened. The purpose of the study was to compare the
respective impact of performance anxiety (first condition), anxiety not linked to performance
(second condition) and the absence of anxiety (third condition). The results were completely
opposite to what the clinical considerations of Masters and Johnson predicted. Not only was
sexual arousal greater in the threatened subjects compared with those who had not been
threatened but, what’s more, sexual arousal in the subjects threatened in relation to their
erectile performance was even greater than in the subjects who were threatened, though not in
relation to their sexual responses.
In 1990, Hale and Strassberg operationalized performance anxiety in a slightly different
way. Male subjects were exposed to erotic stimuli. The sexual anxiety was provoked by
somewhat hurtful intervention of an experimenter after an initial phase of plethysmographic
measurements: when the experimenter examined the first set of results, he pretended to be
disappointed that the level of erection achieved was lower than normal. The experiment then
 The Cognitive Effects of Anxiety on Sexual Arousal 583

continued and the arousal obtained during the second phase of the experiment by the
supposedly disconcerted subjects with respect to their sexual performance, was compared
with the control subjects; on the one hand, the subjects who were made anxious without any
link to erectile performance (threat of electric shocks independent of the levels of erection)
and, on the other hand, subjects who were not made anxious. Contrary to Barlow et al.,
(1983) Hale and Strassberg (1990) observed an inhibiting effect on sexual arousal caused by
stress. However, the mode of anxiety induction had no specific effect: the subjects who were
made anxious in relation to their erectile performance or in relation to the possibility of an
electric shock showed equivalent levels of arousal, in both cases lower than the control
subjects who suffered no pressure or threats.
In 1997, Elliot and O’Donohue carried out a similar experiment with women.
Performance anxiety was induced by making the subjects believe that the experimental
session would be filmed on video. Research assistants would watch the recordings later and
assess the subjects according to levels of “attraction”, “personality” and “body language”.
This procedure did not provoke any significant reduction in sexual arousal: it remained
equivalent to that of the control subjects.
In conclusion, the results from these three experiments do not support the hypothesis of a
particularity of performance anxiety that endows it with an actual inhibitory effect on sexual
arousal.

The Exception of Dysfunctional Subjects

In experimental conditions, anxiety does not appear as a typically inhibitor variable of

sexual responses. Further, the links to performance changes nothing. In most
plethysmographic studies, it has no impact on arousal, in fact, if anything, it encourages it
(Barlow, Sakheim & Beck, 1983; Elliot & O’Donohue, 1997; Hoon, Wincze & Hoon, 1977;
Lange et a., 1981; Meston & Gorzalka, 1996; Meston & Heiman, 1998; Palace & Gorzalka,
1990; Wolchik et al., 1980). It is only in Hale and Strassberg’s study (1990) that it seemed to
act against arousal. However, clinicians tended massively to consider anxiety as one of the
major causes of sexual dysfunction. Were clinical intuitions really so wrong? Or maybe the
inhibitory effect of anxiety is due to particularities present in clinical subjects and not in
experimental subjects?
The results from an experiment conducted in 1987 by Beck, Barlow, Sakheim and
Abrahamson on clinical subjects support this hypothesis. The authors have employed the
paradigm of the threat of shocks used by Barlow et al. in 1983. They compared
plethysmographic measurements taken on men with non-organic erectile problems with those
from men with no history in erectile dysfunction. Like Barlow et al. in 1983, they noticed that
anxiety induced by the threat of shocks in non-clinical subjects had no effect at all or even
slightly facilitated arousal; however, in dysfunctional subjects, it clearly had an inhibitory
effect.
The results from Palace and Gorzalka (1990, op. cit.) and Meston and Gorzalka (1996,
op. cit.) also support the theory of a different response to anxiety in dysfunctional subjects.
The priming effect of anxiety on arousal observed in non-clinical female subjects was not
observed as clearly in women suffering from a functional orgasm disorder.
584 Philippe Kempeneers, Romain Pallincourt and Sylvie Blairy

Overall, these results corroborate the clinical point of view of anxiety being responsible
for sexual dysfunctions: anxiety can well and truly have an antagonistic effect on sexual
responses; only, the anxiety-arousal relationship is not as simple and linear as initially
suggested. To be specific, the inhibitory effect of anxiety probably requires the intervention
of a third-party mechanism. If this mechanism is absent, as would be the case in most non-
clinical subjects in the plethysmographic experiments, then anxiety has no impact on arousal,
or even potentialises it, and if it is present, which would be the case in dysfunctional patients,
then anxiety inhibits arousal. This raises the following question: what is the third-party
mechanism without which anxiety does not inhibit anything?

Cognitive Interference

Several studies converge towards designating distraction as an agent that is directly

responsible for the inhibition of sexual responses.
In 1976, Geer and Fuhr had shown that arousal in male subjects exposed to erotic
recordings diminished when they were subjected to distracting auditory stimuli at the same
time. In 1979, an experiment by Farkas, Sine and Evans led to the same observation. In 1985,
Adams, Haynes and Brayer showed that the same was true in female subjects.
Based on a literature review carried out by Barlow’s team between 1985 and 1994,
Sbrocco and Barlow (1996) concluded that distraction brought non-clinical subjects down to
the same level of sexual arousal as clinical subjects affected by anxiety, the idea being that
the latter were already distracted by their anxious preoccupations alone. All in all, what
distinguishes functional and dysfunctional subjects for Sbrocco and Barlow, is neither the
presence of anxiety nor its intensity, or even the fact that it is related to performance – this
seems commonly experienced by non-clinical subjects without this disrupting their sexual
responses – but the fact that it has this particular power in dysfunctional subjects to divert
their attention towards non-erotic considerations (e.g. a negative self-image, their partner’s
disappointment). The cause of sexual dysfunctions is now conceived in terms of cognitive
interference. From this point of view, anxiety indirectly explains functional problems: it
encourages interference, i.e. it diverts the attention from erotic stimuli to non-erotic stimuli,
but it is neither a sufficient nor necessary condition to inhibit arousal. It is insufficient
because anxiety cannot interfere with the attention dedicated to the erotic situation; in this
case, it has no effect, and it is not necessary because stimuli and thoughts other than
anxiogenic can also create an interference, mobilising attention to the detriment of the erotic
situation.
The inhibitory role of cognitive interference was again confirmed by Elliot and
O’Donohue (1997, op. cit.). As mentioned above, the anxiety induced in this study on female
subjects had no influence on their arousal. However, the experiment also had a second aim
which was to assess the effect of distracting stimuli. While viewing erotic recordings, some
subjects had to listen to sentences and repeat them according to more or less simple or
complex instructions. Here, the effect was clearly significant: the inhibition of arousal was
directly proportional to the level of distraction.
Contrary to distraction, anxiety has therefore no specific inhibitory effect. When anxious
subjects have a reduced level of arousal, anxiety has obviously provoked the diversion of
their attention from the erotic situation. This cognitive way of thinking also provides elements
 The Cognitive Effects of Anxiety on Sexual Arousal 585

that explain the atypical results of Hale and Strassberg’s study (1990, op. cit.), one of few to
have found that anxiety induced through experimental manipulation gave rise to a reduction
in sexual responses (see above). When questioned about the thoughts they had during the
experiment, the stressed subjects’ answers were quite distinct from those of the control
subjects owing to the higher number of non-erotic preoccupations that had attracted their
attention (i.e. “Why didn’t I get an erection?”, “Will the electric shock hurt me?”)
Finally, in 2001, Koukounas and McCabe observed that sexual arousal in male subjects
exposed to erotic films strongly correlated with the impression they said they had of their
attention being fully absorbed by the film.
Finally, these studies have led to a better understanding of the nature of the anxious
inhibition of sexual responses. We now think that cognitive interference is the true modus
operandi.

TOWARDS A COGNITIVE THEORY OF THE AROUSAL-ANXIETY

RELATIONSHIP
It is now clear that anxiety can have various influences on arousal: it can have an
inhibitory effect, via the interference effect, or play the role of facilitator, known here as the
priming effect. Besides the studies that relate directly to sexual arousal, an additional series of
work and concepts have enabled us to specify the possible nature of cognitive mechanisms
involved in priming and interference effects. A cognitive theory of the arousal-anxiety
relationship has begun to take shape.

The Priming Effect

Plethysmographic studies have not merely shown that, in the absence of the interference
vector, anxiety and arousal remain perfectly compatible, they have also shown that the first
could even have an agonistic effect on the second. The increase in sexual reactivity observed
in subjects exposed to experimental conditions (Barlow et al., 1983; Hoon et al., 1977;
Meston & Gorzalka, 1995, 1996; Meston & Heiman, 1998; Palace & Gorzalka, 1990)
effectively provides objective support for the feeling reported by numerous people that stress
in fact favours arousal. All that remains is to explain this effect. Various models elaborated in
the domain of the psychology of emotion help to elucidate the issue.
It is now established that the production of emotions is a process comprised of several
stages (Damasio, 2003; LeDoux, 1996). Firstly, a rapid and mostly unconscious analysis of
the trigger situation is made. The operation mainly takes place in the amygdale; this is at the
origin of a somewhat undifferentiated primary physiological reaction, essentially comprised
of vagal modifications. Secondly, cortical connections come into play and determine a
secondary processing of the stimuli during which the emotion is adjusted, specified and led to
consciousness. At this stage, the information from the environment (signs of danger for
instance, or indications of a pleasant event) will direct the interpretation of the experience,
giving it a particular affective character (sometimes worrying, sometimes exciting). At the
same time, the information concerning the internal state (primary vagal modifications)
586 Philippe Kempeneers, Romain Pallincourt and Sylvie Blairy

confirms the emotional nature of the situation: “I can feel that it is affecting me”. Thus,
through an interactive process, the particular physiological and subjective characteristics of
the emotion are revealed. The same is probably true for sexual arousal: internal feelings and
the erotic stimuli mutually guide each other to create a specifically erotic emotion.
In numerous situations of everyday life, we can observe a coupling mechanism between
the characteristics of the trigger stimulus and the primary physiological reaction. External and
internal stimuli in some way mutually confirm each other, leading to the emotional
experience. During this process, biases can however occur: the coupling normally expected
between the primary physiological reaction and the characteristics of the trigger situation can
indeed be altered by the intrusion of information that is foreign to the initial conditions. Thus,
unexpected emotions are produced. Two experiments illustrate this bias in the sexual domain;
their results showed that the sexual emotion can be caused by elements that are completely
foreign to erotic stimuli. As such, they give us an idea of the mechanisms that probably
contribute to the element that prime arousal through anxiety.

1. Valins (1972) reports having exposed male subjects to erotic slides. During this time,
a device measured their heart rate and they were made to listen to the sound of their
own heartbeat. At least that is what they thought because, in reality, the heartbeats
they heard were manipulated by an experimenter who made the rhythm vary at
random, increasing it when certain images were shown and reducing it for others.
When they were asked to point out the photos they liked the most, the subjects
showed a tendency to select those that were associated with a pseudo-modification of
their heartbeat.
2. In an experiment conducted in 1974 by Dutton & Aron, male subjects had to cross a
footbridge that overlooked a canyon. Straight after this stressful ordeal, an interview
took place with a female researcher. During the interview, the researcher asked the
subjects to make up a story based on the drawing of a woman, then, when they had to
leave, she gave them her card. Compared with subjects who had the same interview
with the same researcher, though without having had to cross the harrowing
footbridge beforehand, a significantly higher number of the stressed subjects made
up stories with a sexual content and contacted the researcher afterwards in the hope
of seeing her again.

These two experiments showed that the sexual emotion may be encouraged by the
perception of a physiological activation whose origin is absolutely not erotic. Produced
through arbitrary manipulation by Valins or through a sensation of fear by Dutton and Aron,
the perceived physiological activation is coupled with a sexual stimulus that is foreign to its
cause but concomitant in such a way that the emotion develops or reinforces itself in a sexual
direction. This mechanism probably also plays a role in the priming elements revealed by the
plethysmographic studies: the physiological activation induced by stress is attributed to an
erotic source, with the result of encouraging the emotion and sexual responses.
Sexual arousal is an experience that results from the converging interpretation, in an
erotic sense, of a series of signals from both the internal and external environment. To be
exact, it should be noted that the genital vasocongestion reaction does not signal the end of
the arousal process. It is merely a stage in a process that is only finally expressed with the
subjective sensation of arousal. The reader will undoubtedly have noticed that, without it
 The Cognitive Effects of Anxiety on Sexual Arousal 587

being their exclusive privilege, the priming effect seems to be more widespread among
women. At the same time, the genital reaction measured by plethysmography in women is not
necessarily accompanied by a conscious impression of arousal. In men, on the other hand,
there are quite good correlations between plethysmographic measurements and subjective
feeling of arousal. This inter-gender difference can undoubtedly be explained through the
more external location of the male genital organs: this anatomical data means that in
comparison to women, men have a greater number of perceptive retroactive channels; the
physiological signs of their arousal are more accessible via the visual channel and tactile
sensations, which all allow a closer adjustment of genital and subjective responses. Probably
as a result of this, genital vasocongestion in women appears to be a less specific response of
arousal, less differentiated or less accomplished than it is in men (Chivers, 2005). Regardless
of gender difference, the relative imbalance between the genital response and the subjective
feeling bears witness to the sequential nature of the sexual arousal process. From the primary
physiological response to the subjective experience, arousal is an experience that occurs
progressively, during cognitive processes of increasing complexity and through certain
hazards such as possible attribution biases.

The Effect of Interference

Anxiogenic stimuli are not always interpreted in a pro-erotic sense. The priming effect of
arousal through anxiety is not an absolute. It clearly is not the case in numerous individuals
suffering from a functional arousal or orgasm disorder. For these people, sexual inhibition
based on anxiety remains a tiresome reality. However, the explanation of the phenomenon no
longer refers to an improbable physiological incompatibility of the two states but rather
cognitive interference.
In individuals suffering from sexual dysfunction, the anxiety that occurs in a sexual
situation seems to act as a source of distraction; it triggers an intense cognitive activity,
focused on danger, which interferes with the processing of erotic stimuli. Typical sexual
anxious preoccupations – “Is it going to work?”, “What does my partner think of me?” – or
even everyday concerns, sometimes have this ability to overwhelmingly monopolise the
subject’s attention, to the point where the remaining resources are insufficient to ensure the
normal execution of a sexual response. Therefore, it is not stress in itself that is the efficient
inhibitory factor but the degree of distraction that it causes in certain people.

Erotophobia and Emotional Stroop

Not everyone is as vulnerable to the effects of anxious interference. People who risk
suffering from sexual dysfunction seem to have a particular profile that Byrne and Schutle
(1990), and later Sbrocco and Barlow (1996), qualified as erotophobia. Erotophobia consists
of a tendency to associate sexuality with ideas of danger. There is a cognitive and emotional
structure similar to the one that can be found in numerous anxiety disorders, though in this
case, the object is sexuality. Therefore, it is a phobia linked to sexuality.
It has now been demonstrated that, in anxious individuals, the cognitive processing of a
stimulus in relation to their emotional difficulties is far more costly in terms of attention than
588 Philippe Kempeneers, Romain Pallincourt and Sylvie Blairy

the processing of the same stimulus in a person who is not anxious. This phenomenon was
objectivised using a variant of the Stroop test called emotional Stroop. Through the Stroop
test, it is possible to measure the interference of one cognitive activity over another. In its
classic form, the test consists of presenting the subject with a series of written words using
different coloured ink; the person is instructed to name the colours of the inks used and not to
read the words. The examiner takes note of how quickly the instruction is obeyed to name the
colours, knowing that this speed depends on the ease with which the subject manages to
inhibit the execution of an interfering activity, i.e. an automatic tendency to read the words
presented. The effect of interference of reading over naming the colours is measured here in
time units: the greater it is, the more time will be required to execute the instruction. Reading
has become automatic in almost every literate person who is exposed to written words, and it
is this automatic behaviour which, in the Stroop test, creates an activity that is capable of
interfering with another, less banal activity, such as naming font colours. As regards the
emotional Stroop, it introduces an additional variable, the affective connotation of the words
given to read. This Stroop variant shows that the effect of interference also depends on the
emotion – anxiety in particular – caused by the stimulus. For instance, in anxious people
suffering from social phobias, that is who are anxious in social relations, concerned about
rejection, they need more time to name the colour of ink that is used to write a critical word
such as “humiliation”, than to name the colour of an affectively neutral word such as
“geology”. However, this difference in reaction time is not found in people who do not suffer
from a social phobia (Mattia, Heimberg & Hope, 1993). In the same way, there are longer
reaction times in people with arachnophobia, with words such as “spider” or “web” (Lavy,
Van den Hout & Arntz, 1993); or with words such as “suffocate” in people who suffer from
panic disorder (McNally, Riemann & Kim,1990); with words relating to a trauma experienced
by the subject (e.g. “rape”, “Vietnam”) in the case of post-traumatic stress disorders (Kapsi,
McNally & Amir, 1995; McNally, English & Lipke, 1993); and with words such as
“accident” in people suffering from generalised anxiety (Martin, Horder & Jones, 1992). In
anxious people, the reaction times are systematically longer for words that evoke their
specific anxious concerns. The effect of interference due to the emotional load of the stimulus
leads us to believe that in people who are sensitive to it, some specific themes provoke an
automatic cognitive activity centred on the notion of danger. Absorbing a significant amount
of the subject’s mental resources, this activity hinders the achievement of another task.
To our knowledge, erotophobic subjects have never been assessed using emotional
Stroop-type tests, which would target words that evoke sexual situations. However, it would
not seem to be excessively rash to suppose that the same would be true for these people as for
other anxious subjects. Therefore, Kempeneers and Barbier (2008) suggest considering
erotophobia as a factor of cognitive interference. In a sexual situation, erotophobic subjects
would tend to develop a cognitive activity focused on the notion of danger. Encroaching upon
the resources allocated to the processing of the situation’s erotic components, this activity
would lead to an increased risk of sexual dysfunction in these subjects.

The Working Memory

The inhibitive power of distraction leads us to consider that these people are endowed
with a limited ability to process information. Above a certain quantitative threshold, the
 The Cognitive Effects of Anxiety on Sexual Arousal 589

cognitive resources required to process a second supposedly distracting stimulus (i.e. non
erotic) must be taken from those allocated to the processing of a primary stimulus (i.e. erotic).
The concept of working memory seems to be adapted to the description of the process.
According to Eyzenck (1991) and Peretti & Ferreri (2004), in people suffering from chronic
anxiety who are confronted with sensitive themes, it is as though the working memory is
saturated by information relating to the management of a source of danger, to the point where
the execution of other tasks is altered. The working memory is a concept that was proposed
and developed by Baddeley (Baddeley, 1992; Baddeley & Hitch, 1974). On a schematic level,
it can be compared with the random access memory of a computer. It is the functional entity
that allows you to momentarily keep in mind elements of information that are useful to
accomplish a task. These elements are taken from the external environment on the one hand –
an erotic stimulus for instance – and from the internal environment on the other hand –
memories of similar experiences, schemas of actions learnt, moral values evoked by the
situation, etc. Contrary to other forms of memory allocated to storing information in the long
term, the working memory functions in a transitory way. The information only spontaneously
remains for a few seconds. This goes hand in hand with its limited availability: the mass
influx of new information tends to suppress those relating to the tasks in hand. In the terms of
this model, anxiety provokes a saturation of the working memory in erotophobic subjects to
the detriment of the resources essential to the execution of sexual responses. Elements of
information relating to the management of danger come to the fore and compete with the
erotic information.

The Attentional Benefit of Anxiety

The work of Mandler (1984) on the attentional effects of emotions is also of interest.
According to Mandler, stress always has the effect of increasing vigilance. This explains why
anxiety can sometimes facilitate the execution of certain tasks. In 1908, Yerkes & Dodson
had pinned down the non-linear character of the relationship between stress and the level of
performance to tasks requiring attentional functions: stress was sometimes detrimental to
performance, and sometimes it improved it. It seemed to the authors that the optimal level of
performance resulted from moderate stress rather than the absence of stress, and that a level
of stress that was too high tended to exert a detrimental effect on performance. In reality,
Mandler specified in 1984 that the intensity of the emotion is probably not the decisive
variable concerning the evolution of the performance; instead, it is the element on which the
increased attention provoked by the stress is focused. If it is focused on the elements relating
to the task in hand, it logically produces an increase in the level of performance. If, on the
contrary, it is focused on elements that are external to the accomplishment of the task, then
the subject is distracted and his/her performance is poorer. It is easy to transpose Mandler’s
model to the area of sexual performance. When anxiety suddenly appears in a sexual
situation, there are two possible scenarios:

1. The majority of the subject’s attention may be drawn to elements of danger that are
foreign to the erotic task in hand. His/her working memory is saturated with
information of a non-erotic nature resulting in a reduction in sexual performance.
590 Philippe Kempeneers, Romain Pallincourt and Sylvie Blairy

This is a case of the interference effect which can be found in stressed erotophobic
subjects in a sexual situation.
2. In the absence of such a mechanism that shifts the cognitive resources, attention is
maintained on the information of an erotic nature. This information thus benefits
from a positive attentional balance that can result in an improvement in sexual
performance. Under these conditions, a priming effect is obtained. This tendency
would be more likely to occur in non-erotophobic subjects.

It should be noted that the model elaborated based on the work of Mandler is situated at
the opposite end of the scale to Wolpe’s. While the latter considered anxiety and arousal to be
natural antagonists, the former tends to consider them as naturally agonistic.

CONCLUSION
While anxiety can inhibit sexual responses, plethysmographic studies have shown that
this is not always the case. According to the circumstances, anxiety sometimes hinders
arousal and sometimes facilitates it. The anxiety-arousal relationship turns out to be more
complex than Wolpe (1958), Masters & Johnson (1970) and Kaplan (1974) originally
imagined; they considered these states as incompatible.
Finally, the decisive factor of sexual inhibition would appear to be cognitive interference,
distraction. It is only when anxiety causes a distraction from erotic stimuli that it may be
considered responsible for sexual inhibition. This is not the case for everybody; some people
are more prone than others and this tendency seems to be a characteristic of people with a
history of non-organic sexual dysfunction. Otherwise, anxiety does not have an impact on
levels of arousal; in fact, it improves it.
The results from studies using the plethysmographic tests seem to be linked to studies
carried out in related domains. Subject to empirical confirmation, we can therefore suggest
the following cognitive theory concerning the relations between anxiety and arousal: sexual
arousal can be regarded as a complex response that requires the convergent interpretation of
internal and external stimuli. Anxiety may have different effects on this process, sometimes
neutral, sometimes facilitating and sometimes inhibitory.
On the one hand, anxiety can trigger a vegetative emotional reaction that may be
associated to a concomitant erotic stimulation. Thus, anxiety facilitates the sexual response:
this can be called a priming effect. This effect is regularly observed in labs, mainly among
women. It likely also works in certain compulsive sexual behaviours or, more commonly, in
those numerous persons that report being sexually aroused when stressed.
On the other hand, anxiety can cause a massive irruption of non erotic cues in working
memory. Therefore, cognitive function available for treating erotic stimuli is diminished and
sexual response is impaired. This is an effect of cognitive interference. A trait called
erotophobia could be regarded as a vulnerability factor to cognitive interference. Erotophobic
subjects are characterized by a trend to focus upon danger-related information when they are
in a sexual situation and by a higher risk of sexual dysfunction.
Finally, anxiety often increases vigilance. The increase in attention thus obtained may
focus on erotic stimuli, therefore reinforcing the priming effect. At the opposite end of the
 The Cognitive Effects of Anxiety on Sexual Arousal 591

scale, the gain in attention may also be dedicated to danger signals of no erotic value; under
these conditions, it is the interference effect which is reinforced.

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 INDEX

AD, 273, 274, 275, 276, 277, 278, 279, 280, 281,
A
282, 283, 284, 286, 287, 288
abstraction, 7, 151, 256, 257, 356, 430, 500, 503, Adams, 300, 307, 584, 591
538, 539 adaptation, 119, 233, 281, 322
Abstraction, 415 adaptations, xii, 237, 316, 382, 405, 560
abuse, 224, 296, 309, 580, 593 addiction, 31, 183, 307, 591
abusive, 468 adjustment, 230, 237, 303, 571, 587
AC, 292 administration, 382
academic, 315, 320 adolescence, 166
academics, 377 adolescents, 187
acceleration, 101 adrenal hyperplasia, 166
access, 53, 68, 93, 94, 104, 125, 134, 136, 140, 141, adult, 10, 17, 166, 167, 169, 170, 185, 186, 192, 194,
144, 155, 283, 305, 329, 343, 345, 417, 427, 504, 401, 409, 411, 412, 420, 539
532, 589 adulthood, viii, 160, 166, 167, 170, 171, 179, 185
access consciousness, 504 adults, viii, 42, 83, 133, 151, 155, 156, 159, 164,
accessibility, 68, 170 168, 169, 170, 171, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 182,
accidents, 385, 388, 459, 471 183, 184, 185, 190, 191, 379, 382, 406, 408, 418,
acclimatization, 279 419, 420, 461, 530, 565
accountability, 348 advancement, 380, 572
accounting, 355, 504, 507 advancements, 569
accuracy, 113, 122, 131, 153, 176, 182, 183, 184, advertising, 577
191, 199, 201, 205, 219, 318, 518, 520, 524 aerobic, 284
acetylcholinesterase, 278 aerobic exercise, 284
acetylcholinesterase inhibitor, 278 aesthetic, 524
Ach, 83 aesthetics, 498
achievement, 51, 182, 267, 304, 315, 568, 588 AF, 8, 9, 11, 13, 16, 33, 36, 289
ACM, 59 affective dimension, 104
acquaintance, 286 affective states, 307, 591
acquisition of knowledge, 373 affirming, 420
activation, 18, 42, 70, 110, 132, 151, 154, 166, 190,
222, 302, 308, 309, 427, 461, 462, 506, 539, 540, agent, 6, 29, 30, 31, 35, 37, 44, 45, 46, 47, 71, 75,
547, 552, 561, 565, 571, 575, 576, 577, 586, 592, 86, 90, 300, 398, 584
593 AGFI, 390, 391
activity level, 417 aggregation, 222
actuality, 122 aggression, 194, 503
acute, 308, 504, 592 aggressiveness, 360
acute schizophrenia, 504
596 Index

aging, 134, 153, 155, 167, 168, 169, 171, 282, 289, androgen, 166, 191
515, 534 androgens, 166
agonist, 296, 555, 580 anger, 106, 285, 296, 468, 469, 470, 482, 483, 485,
aid, 263, 275, 285, 286, 292 580
air, 59, 322, 324, 358 Anglo-Saxon, 313
Air Force, 2 animal communication, 25, 53
AJ, 290 animal models, 182
AL, 291, 292 animals, xiv, 25, 27, 41, 53, 72, 83, 85, 92, 101, 161,
Albert Einstein, 228 182, 185, 406, 437, 463, 513, 517, 524, 525, 531,
alcohol, 436, 464 537, 539, 540, 547
alcoholics, 464 ANOVA, 178, 179, 180, 206, 442, 443, 445, 446,
alcoholism, 436 449, 451
alertness, 99, 100 ANS, 561
algorithm, 79, 360 antagonist, 296, 580
ALI, 15 antagonistic, 247, 296, 300, 580, 584
allele, xiii, 515, 525, 529, 531 antagonists, 306, 555, 590
alpha, xi, 76, 115, 213, 320, 376, 379, 382, 397 antecedents, 466, 485, 487, 488
alternative, 16, 38, 39, 50, 52, 83, 85, 93, 135, 136, anthropological, 313, 406
156, 234, 258, 259, 276, 282, 352, 364, 398, 399, anthropology, 312, 314, 315
434, 467, 468, 488, 570, 571 Anxiety, x, xii, xv, 295, 298, 301, 305, 306, 307,
alternative causes, 398 376, 382, 400, 401, 402, 435, 441, 442, 448, 461,
alternatives, 237, 355, 401, 454, 469, 548, 571, 572, 462, 464, 579, 582, 585, 589, 590, 591
574 anxiety disorder, 303, 378, 379, 399, 438, 442, 456,
alters, 87, 231 587
Alzheimer disease, 278, 283, 286, 288, 289, 290, AP, 290
530, 532, 534 apathy, 281, 283, 289
Alzheimer’s, 287, 288, 289, 290, 291, 292, 293 APOE, xiii, 515, 525, 529
Alzheimer’s disease, 287, 288, 290, 292, 293 Apolipoprotein E, 530, 532, 534, 535
Alzheimer’s Disease, 287, 289, 290 appendix, 319
Alzheimer's, 274, 279, 283, 286, 287, 288, 289, 290, apples, 41, 363
291, 292 application, 386, 466, 539, 544
Alzheimer's disease, 279, 283, 287, 288, 289, 290, applied mathematics, 314
291, 292 appraisals, 399
AM, 289 aptitude, 161, 189, 192
amalgam, 356, 360, 364, 366, 370 Argentina, xiii, 245, 265, 270, 271, 470, 489, 493,
Amalgam, 350, 356, 357, 364, 369 508, 509, 510, 511
ambiguity, 36, 38, 111, 202, 371, 399, 472, 577 argument, 64, 91, 95, 201, 296, 359, 407, 415, 472,
American Psychological Association, 373 548, 567, 580
amnesia, 155, 533 Aristotelian, 490, 505
amphibia, 491, 493 Aristotle, xiii, 489, 504, 510, 512
amphibians, 497 arithmetic, 503
amplitude, xiv, 279, 551, 552, 556, 558, 559, 560 Arkansas, 117
Amsterdam, 59, 62, 242, 374, 427, 430, 463, 563 Army, 114
amygdala, 517 arousal ratings, 434
AN, 289 arthropods, 497
anaesthesia, 97 articulation, 345
analysis of variance, 213, 394, 542, 543, 545, 574 artificial intelligence, 228, 254, 329, 350, 358, 365,
analysts, 319 370
analytical framework, xi, 349, 350, 362, 364, 369, artificial organs, 78
370, 486 Asia, 60
anatomy, 109, 490 Asian, 165
 Index 597

asparagus, 516 axon, 507

assault, 131, 308, 592 axonal, 434
assessment, xii, 166, 170, 186, 193, 213, 272, 287, axons, 233
290, 335, 380, 401, 402, 433, 440, 441, 442, 455,
462
B
assimilation, 505
assumptions, 64, 73, 80, 86, 87, 99, 120, 140, 148, Baars, 2, 57, 65, 67, 68, 82, 91, 95, 96, 107, 108
150, 259, 350, 353, 357, 362, 364, 365, 371, 527 babies, xii, 284, 405, 407, 410, 412, 418, 419, 428
astronomy, 314, 315 back, 6, 10, 37, 75, 106, 135, 149, 205, 229, 236,
asymmetry, 419, 463 237, 247, 282
Athens, 496, 510 background information, 317
athletes, 553 banking, 466, 468
Atlas, 59, 508, 509 barriers, 469, 484, 487
atmosphere, 286 basal ganglia, 503, 552
atomic physics, 315 base, 77, 151, 169, 222, 250, 257, 272, 278, 286,
atoms, 3, 315 291, 292, 353, 354, 355, 364, 413, 474, 482, 503,
atrophy, 526, 535 516, 525, 540
attention, 280, 282, 284 basketball, 357
attentional bias, 435, 436, 438, 448, 454, 455, 461, battery, 80, 97, 101, 186, 273, 379, 381
462, 463 BDI, 382, 393, 394, 395, 396
attentional blink, 93 Beck Depression Inventory, xii, 376, 382, 400, 402
attitudes, 2, 38, 82, 84, 168, 187, 193, 270, 456, 457, beer, 436
467, 470, 472, 483, 487 behavioral aspects, 279
attractiveness, 488 behavioral assessment, 462
attribution, 258, 303, 355, 356, 362, 366, 368, 369, behavioral manifestations, 569
370, 372, 549, 587 behavioral problems, 230, 275, 280, 292
attribution bias, 303, 587 Behaviorism, 67
atypical, 275 behaviors, 80, 280, 281, 283, 290, 292, 394, 395,
audition, 232, 234, 503 396, 398, 407, 409, 468, 488, 503, 505, 569
auditory stimuli, 77, 234, 300, 584 behaviours, x, xv, 295, 306, 411, 472, 579, 590
authorities, 262 Belgium, 295, 579
autism, 425 beliefs, xi, xii, 82, 253, 375, 376, 377, 378, 399, 400,
autobiographical memory, 152, 199, 222, 282, 289 401, 403, 456, 457
automatic processes, 558 beneficial effect, 113
automaticity, 111, 153, 569, 575 benefits, 150, 279, 306, 469, 473, 576, 590
automation, 261 Bible, 497, 510
Automobile, 243, 471 biceps brachii, 553
autonomic nervous system, xiv, 504, 552, 559, 561, binding, viii, 66, 106, 114, 117, 119, 120, 121, 122,
562, 563, 564, 565 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132,
autonomy, 72, 104, 261 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 147, 150, 151, 153,
availability, 144, 148, 150, 257, 263, 305, 455, 504, 155, 156, 322
589 binding energy, 322
averaging, 160 biochemical, 289
aversion, 574 biological processes, 97
avian, 493 biological systems, 101, 103
avoidance, 435, 436, 437, 444, 453, 454, 455, 456, bipedal, 406
461, 463, 464, 472 birds, 351, 357, 411, 427, 538, 539, 540
avoidance behavior, 437 birth, xii, 27, 44, 276, 319, 327, 331, 333, 336, 338,
awareness, xii, 69, 84, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 405, 406, 407, 410, 411, 412, 414, 415, 416, 417,
96, 111, 112, 114, 140, 141, 209, 246, 261, 264, 418, 419, 420, 423, 424, 425, 428, 429, 430, 541
267, 282, 433, 568, 571, 573 birth rate, 336
598 Index

blame, 385, 388

C
blind spot, 70
blindness, 88, 94, 111, 408 CAM, 326
blocks, 80, 120, 233, 395, 439 Canada, 223, 289, 346, 349, 401, 490, 508, 553
blood, 10, 103, 297, 415, 440, 455, 461, 532, 552, candidates, 312, 315
581 capacity, 273
blood circulation, 103 caregiver, 276, 277, 279, 281, 285, 286, 290
blood flow, 297, 532, 552, 581 caregivers, 273, 274, 281, 283, 285, 286, 288, 290
blueprint, 132, 135 Carnap, 53
body language, 299, 583 case studies, 287, 524
body schema, 240, 425 case study, 186, 188, 189, 324, 325, 348, 524
body shape, 426 cast, 297, 581
Bohr, 345 categorization, xiii, 61, 69, 81, 111, 142, 250, 348,
Bolivia, 470 373, 409, 537, 539, 540, 543, 544, 545, 546, 547,
bonds, 469 548, 549, 550
bone, 10 category a, 30, 39, 42, 264, 518, 529, 538, 546
bootstrap, 481, 527, 534 category b, 19, 545
borderline, 377 category d, xiii, 515, 522, 523, 525, 529, 530, 532,
borderline personality disorder, 377 533, 538, 540, 541, 547, 549
boredom, 280 cats, xiii, 439, 537, 538, 539, 540, 541, 542, 543,
borrowing, 133, 153 544, 545, 546, 547, 548, 565
Boston, 58, 110, 155, 223, 308, 426, 592 causal relationship, 35, 37, 46, 475
bottleneck, 77 causality, 44, 296, 398, 406, 550, 580
bottom-up, 125, 238, 240 causation, 47, 547
boundary conditions, 130 CBI, 274
boys, 24, 164, 166, 167, 168, 171, 184 CD, 291
BP, 291 CE, 291
brachioradialis, 553, 554 ceiling effect, 526
bradycardia, 455 celery, 516
brain damage, 531 cell, 55, 104, 133, 212, 233, 332, 498, 504
brain development, 166 cell size, 212
brain injury, 229 central nervous system, xiv, 100, 105, 552, 555, 556,
brain stem, 68, 508 561, 563
brain structure, 99, 502, 504 cerebellum, 491, 494, 499, 503, 552, 556, 562, 563
brainstem, 494, 496, 503, 557, 559, 562, 563 cerebral blood flow, 532
Brazil, 433, 470 cerebral cortex, 18, 68, 406, 493, 500, 502, 505
breakdown, 314, 329, 345, 466, 486, 533 cerebral hemisphere, 166, 491, 494, 502, 508
breakfast, 278 cerebrum, 494
breathing, 358 certificate, 442
brothers, 497 CFA, 390, 391, 475
Buenos Aires, 269, 270, 493, 508, 509, 510, 511, CFI, 390, 391, 475
512, 513 challenges, 232, 246, 291
buffer, 57, 94, 96, 250, 342 channels, 303, 485, 587
building blocks, 120, 233, 373 chemical, 73, 86, 347
buildings, 161 chemicals, 298, 582
bulbar, 494 Chi square, 206
burn, 10, 17 Chicago, 58, 60, 309, 347, 401, 593
burning, 17 chicks, 429
buttons, 32, 84, 285, 435 child development, 187, 194
buyer, 486 childhood, viii, 152, 154, 160, 164, 166, 170, 171,
179, 185, 188, 275, 279
 Index 599

Chile, 470 cognitive disorders, 376

chimpanzee, 53 cognitive domains, 281, 377, 379, 386, 387, 396,
chocolate, 364 399, 400, 517
cholinesterase, 275, 279, 290 cognitive effort, 120, 365, 469
cholinesterase inhibitors, 275, 290 cognitive flexibility, 190
chronobiology, 239 cognitive function, x, xv, 7, 13, 51, 57, 162, 167,
chunking, 252 187, 191, 195, 273, 274, 286, 295, 306, 313, 530,
cingulated, 99 579, 590
circadian, 232 cognitive impairment, 282, 287, 292, 522, 530, 531,
circadian oscillator, 232 532
circulation, 103 cognitive involvement, 542
citizens, 198 cognitive map, 161, 186, 191, 192, 193
City, 363, 372, 515 cognitive performance, xiii, 171, 195, 280, 282, 284,
CK, 287 515, 525, 529, 530, 544
CL, 292 cognitive perspective, 400, 461
classes, 3, 7, 56, 125, 442 cognitive process, xiii, 54, 68, 115, 119, 125, 239,
classical, 101, 164, 186, 228, 232, 240, 284, 315, 240, 249, 258, 261, 262, 263, 264, 267, 269, 303,
357, 490, 495, 497, 507 349, 354, 358, 362, 363, 364, 367, 371, 416, 420,
classical mechanics, 315 500, 504, 515, 517, 558, 563, 577, 587
classification, 28, 262, 266, 413, 427, 466 cognitive processing, 239, 240, 303, 362, 363, 364,
classroom, 246, 259, 260, 261, 269, 270 371, 577, 587
classroom practice, 246 cognitive profile, 187, 517
classrooms, 330 cognitive psychology, vii, ix, 1, 2, 7, 8, 9, 51, 52, 54,
cleaning, 354 112, 197, 198, 228, 250, 254, 263, 271, 350, 365,
clients, 289, 290, 466 370
clinical, 273, 275, 282, 284, 285 cognitive science, 8, 109, 329, 342
clinical application, 282 cognitive skills, 325
clinical assessment, 442 cognitive system, 247, 251, 253, 254, 256, 257, 263
clinical heterogeneity, 273 cognitive tasks, 251, 252, 424, 556
clothing, 131, 255, 351 cognitive theory, xii, 57, 271, 301, 306, 308, 376,
clustering, 266 377, 399, 400, 402, 585, 590, 592
clusters, 396 cognitive therapy, 309, 402, 593
Co, 109, 110, 227, 269, 372, 486, 507, 511 cognitive variables, 395
Cochrane, 279, 280, 281, 282, 283, 287, 289, 290, coherence, 72, 118, 357, 359, 360, 362, 364, 365,
291, 292 370, 373
cockroaches, 439, 455 cohesion, 148
codes, 97 cohort, 291
coding, 111, 121, 176, 248, 256, 257, 258, 262, 263, collaboration, 3, 201, 203, 204, 206, 208, 209, 211,
267, 268, 544 212, 220, 225, 275, 442
coffee, 278, 286 Collaboration, 201, 203, 208, 210, 211, 279, 282
cognitive, 273, 274, 275, 276, 278, 279, 280, 281, collateral, 499
282, 283, 284, 285, 286, 287, 288, 290, 291, 292 collusion, 339
cognitive abilities, 168, 187, 192, 254, 312, 425 Colombia, 470
cognitive ability, 61 colon, 346
cognitive activity, 303, 304, 587, 588 color, iv, 121, 122, 123, 124, 126, 127, 128, 129,
cognitive binding, 119, 130 131, 133, 134, 153, 174, 233, 363, 463
cognitive capacities, 503 colors, 82, 120, 122, 126, 128, 129, 134, 155, 421
cognitive capacity, 125, 224 combined effect, 338
cognitive deficit, 286, 533 commercial, 466, 483, 484
cognitive deficits, 286, 533 commissure, 494, 496
cognitive development, 166, 170, 183, 270 commodity, 97, 573
600 Index

common sense, 225, 345, 398 confidence intervals, 225

communication, 19, 25, 53, 79, 98, 239, 274, 279, Confidence intervals, 528
280, 281, 313, 340, 348, 349, 358, 359, 366, 442, configuration, 144
467, 487, 500, 503, 505, 513 confirmatory factor analysis, xii, 376
communication abilities, 274 conflict, 355, 357, 358, 364, 417, 464, 487, 490, 508,
communicative intent, 366 512
communities, 282, 313, 328 conflict resolution, 487
community, 281, 287, 289, 319, 328, 379, 382, 399 confrontation, 518, 525
Comparative Fit Index, 390 confusion, 313, 414, 416, 425, 436, 491, 512
comparative research, 164 congenital adrenal hyperplasia, 166
comparison task, 89 CONGRESS, iv, 377
compatibility, 90, 152, 453 congruence, 437
compensation, 102, 471, 484 conjugation, 47
competence, 81, 235, 318 connectionist, 360, 364, 365, 414, 426, 531, 538
competency, 314 connectionist models, 365, 414
competition, 60, 94 connectivity, 69
competitive advantage, 104 conscious activity, 90, 233, 234
competitors, 468 conscious awareness, xii, 89, 95, 433, 571
complementarity, 237, 238 conscious experiences, vii, 63, 70, 74, 76, 77, 82, 83,
complexity, ix, x, xv, 18, 25, 54, 59, 68, 92, 97, 227, 100, 101, 107
232, 233, 234, 235, 250, 263, 267, 295, 297, 303, conscious perception, 70, 72, 78, 80, 83, 84, 88, 91,
363, 364, 371, 410, 426, 491, 520, 521, 534, 535, 96, 106, 107
579, 581, 587 consensus, 125, 201, 222, 223
compliance, 276, 466, 470, 471 consent, 172, 174, 381, 442
components, 51, 54, 80, 95, 97, 106, 113, 122, 173, conservation, 333
187, 247, 253, 255, 256, 298, 304, 314, 352, 361, consolidation, 249, 260
380, 427, 491, 497, 502, 504, 505, 582, 588 constituents, 354, 358
composition, 6, 31, 35, 204, 349 Constitution, 198
compounds, 360, 361, 372 constraints, 97, 100, 124, 125, 129, 156, 169, 186,
comprehension, 23, 61, 112, 255, 273, 278, 349, 371, 236, 358, 359, 360, 362, 366, 370, 418, 423, 559
372, 373, 382, 516, 533 construct validity, 380
compression, 55 construction, 18, 35, 44, 45, 46, 49, 52, 86, 90, 91,
compulsion, 402 113, 164, 235, 239, 253, 255, 260, 268, 269, 354,
computer, 60, 75, 80, 101, 172, 173, 174, 175, 184, 355, 366, 482, 486
191, 221, 287, 305, 357, 364, 366, 435, 439, 441, constructive strategies, 260
462, 589 constructivism, 2
computer mouse, 441 constructivist, 118
computer simulations, 366 consulting, 224, 367
concentration, 166, 285 consumer markets, 488
conception, xii, 55, 75, 247, 405, 414, 502 consumers, xiii, 465, 466, 467, 468, 469, 470, 471,
conceptualization, 402 472, 474, 482, 483, 484, 485, 488
conceptualizations, 266 consumption, 74, 97, 98
concordance, 120, 534 contamination, 400
concrete, 3, 160, 313, 315, 324, 325, 327, 328, 332, content analysis, 223
345, 397, 415 context-dependent, 325, 356
conditioning, 170 contiguity, 126, 130
conference, 60, 401 contingency, 327, 328
confidence, 122, 123, 137, 140, 146, 147, 156, 182, continuity, 59, 83, 104, 110
201, 203, 204, 205, 206, 207, 209, 219, 220, 225, contour, 316, 346, 408, 410, 419
276, 474, 577 contractions, 553, 554, 555, 561, 565
confidence interval, 225 contradiction, 334, 351, 568
 Index 601

control condition, xiv, 278, 297, 551, 555, 556, 557, criminal justice, 220
558, 581 criminal justice system, 220
control group, 278, 281, 415, 438, 446, 448, 449, critical analysis, 246, 362, 577
450, 451, 452, 456, 518 critical variables, 195
controlled research, 529 criticism, 246, 351, 352, 376
controlled studies, 280 cross-cultural, 398, 401, 470, 483, 486, 487, 488
controlled trials, 282 cross-sectional, 472, 522, 523, 535
controversial, 8, 474, 507 crosstalk, 231
controversies, xi, 349, 350 CT, 189, 512
convention, 209, 214, 397 Cuba, 470
convergence, xiii, 489, 507 cues, x, xv, 84, 91, 112, 115, 149, 161, 163, 166,
conversations, 285, 330 170, 175, 182, 183, 185, 193, 194, 276, 277, 278,
convex, 572 295, 306, 308, 330, 411, 418, 426, 464, 485, 488,
conviction, 218, 219, 221, 377, 397, 503 549, 573, 579, 590, 592
cooking, x, 228 cultural differences, 472
cooperation, xiv, 269, 359, 567 cultural factors, viii, 160, 165
cooperative learning, 269 cultural heritage, 504
coordination, 68, 231, 251, 407, 415, 419, 420, 425, culture, 198, 202, 246, 247, 338, 347, 400, 472, 483,
493 500
copyright, iv curiosity, 106
Copyright, iv currency, 104
correlation, 20, 21, 22, 26, 28, 29, 30, 32, 38, 39, 76, curriculum, 271
192, 231, 265, 326, 386, 392, 395, 475, 481, 482 customer relations, 487, 488
correlations, xi, 21, 25, 28, 29, 36, 38, 168, 187, 274, customers, xiii, 465, 466, 467, 468, 470, 484, 485,
303, 376, 379, 393, 394, 395, 492, 587 487
cortex, 18, 68, 99, 105, 112, 150, 152, 153, 156, 406, cycles, 232, 279
411, 418, 420, 431, 491, 493, 495, 496, 499, 500, cycling, 167
502, 503, 505, 510, 561, 563
cortical, 289
D
cortical pathway, 154
cortical processing, 418 daily living, 274, 275, 277, 278, 279, 281, 285, 288,
cost, 80, 118, 153, 156, 384, 385, 388, 391, 435, 436, 289, 291
454, 458, 460, 466, 469, 471, 474, 485 Dallas, 136, 148, 152
Costa Rica, 470 damages, iv
costs, xiii, 169, 465, 466, 469, 470, 471, 473, 474, dance, 280
482, 483, 484, 488 danger, x, xv, 295, 301, 303, 304, 305, 306, 307,
cotton, 410 380, 385, 388, 397, 399, 435, 437, 455, 579, 585,
couples, 296, 580 587, 588, 589, 590, 591
coupling, 302, 586 Darwinist, 114
courts, ix, 197, 198, 199, 200, 202, 221, 471 data analysis, 312, 318
covariate, 527 data collection, 204, 265, 327, 381, 542
covering, 255, 273 data distribution, 527, 531
CP, 245, 519, 520 database, 169, 319, 335, 345
CPT, 288 dating, 247, 471
creative abilities, 503 death, 7, 221, 279, 315, 318, 319, 324, 327, 328,
creativity, 371, 576 331, 333, 336, 337, 338, 339, 340, 341, 342, 343,
credibility, 199, 200, 203, 205, 206, 211, 212, 213, 435
216, 217, 218, 219, 220, 224 death rate, 315, 318, 324, 327, 328, 331, 333, 336,
credit, 171, 203, 212, 574 337, 338, 339, 340, 341, 342, 343
crime, 131, 199, 203, 204, 211, 213, 219 decay, 135, 148, 324
crimes, 204 decision makers, 573
602 Index

decision making, ix, xv, 119, 160, 197, 198, 200, determinism, xiv, 567
201, 202, 211, 212, 217, 218, 219, 222, 223, 225, developmental change, 543, 545
568, 569, 570, 571, 572, 575, 576, 577 developmental factors, 169
decision task, 571, 572, 573, 574, 575 developmental process, 170
decisions, ix, xiv, 98, 197, 198, 201, 202, 203, 205, developmental psychology, 166, 168
218, 219, 220, 221, 222, 223, 235, 240, 344, 373, deviation, 449, 453
378, 380, 385, 386, 387, 388, 398, 399, 459, 469, DG, 287
484, 567, 568, 569, 570, 571, 573, 575, 576 diagnostic criteria, 274, 442
declarative knowledge, 254, 255, 256, 267 Diamond, 193
declarative memory, 151 differential psychology, 160
decoding, 161 differentiation, 66, 72, 80, 86, 164, 165, 171, 184,
deep learning, 260 195, 258, 392, 406, 549
defendants, 198, 199, 221 diffusion, 2, 93, 185, 269
defense, 202, 205, 217, 218, 219, 221, 437, 455, 456, dignity, 285
464 dimorphism, 164, 192
deficiencies, xiii, 312, 438, 465, 467, 468, 483 directionality, 338, 417, 568
deficit, 102, 134, 168, 283, 425, 426, 518, 521, 522, disability, 269, 273, 274, 280, 282, 289
523, 524, 532, 533, 535 disappointment, 300, 584
deficits, xiii, 134, 283, 285, 286, 425, 515, 517, 518, disaster, 383, 389, 459, 461
521, 522, 523, 525, 529, 530, 531, 532, 533, 534, discharges, 231
535 discipline, 165, 202, 261, 320, 336, 342, 344
definition, 14, 26, 27, 28, 30, 32, 37, 45, 72, 80, 86, discomfort, 237, 365, 469
90, 247, 261, 264, 322, 356, 374, 467, 516, 522 discounts, 469
degrees of freedom, 100, 146, 442 discourse, 222
delivery, 332, 462 discrete emotions, 488
deltoid, 553, 554 discreteness, 59, 110
demand characteristic, 153 discrimination, 68, 92, 114, 408, 409, 411, 420, 425,
demand curve, 337 426, 427, 429, 430, 538, 539, 540, 541, 547, 549
dementia, 155, 156, 273, 274, 275, 276, 277, 278, discriminatory, 410
279, 280, 281, 282, 283, 286, 287, 288, 289, 290, diseases, 90, 280, 283, 523
291, 292, 516, 522, 525, 530, 531, 532, 533, 534, disenchantment, 468
535 disequilibrium, 74, 100
demographic factors, 487 dishabituation, xii, 405, 409, 410, 416, 423
demonstrations, 278 disorder, xi, 95, 186, 296, 299, 303, 304, 308, 375,
Denmark, 377 376, 379, 398, 399, 400, 401, 402, 403, 408, 438,
density, 315, 324, 327, 342 442, 456, 522, 580, 583, 587, 588, 592
dependent personality disorder, 377 displacement, 187, 324, 423
dependent variable, 176, 177, 182, 395, 441, 481, disputes, 92
559, 574 dissatisfaction, 467, 468, 469, 485, 488
depressed, 284, 292, 399, 401 dissociation, 90, 98, 134, 143, 144, 150, 152, 502,
depression, xi, 74, 274, 283, 285, 286, 287, 292, 376, 530, 533
379, 380, 382, 394, 395, 399, 401, 402, 436, 494 distortions, 55, 122, 175
depressive symptoms, 274 distraction, 300, 303, 304, 306, 307, 308, 584, 587,
depth, 3, 6, 18, 52, 54, 172, 202, 258, 259, 267, 380, 588, 590, 591, 592
421, 427 distress, 379, 380, 381, 395, 398, 399
derivatives, 15, 324 distribution, 315, 316, 320, 322, 323, 324, 326, 327,
destruction, 224 331, 344, 345, 485, 497, 527
detachment, 35 divergence, 233
detectable, 161, 320, 399 diversity, 2, 68, 269, 351, 371
detection, 88, 92, 93, 94, 99, 108, 111, 146, 180, division, 497, 504
408, 410, 423, 424, 425, 429, 437 DNA, 79, 131
 Index 603

dogs, xiii, 5, 15, 351, 353, 439, 455, 537, 538, 539, egg, 10, 417
540, 541, 542, 543, 544, 545, 546, 547, 548 ego, 501, 502
dominance, 224, 406, 441, 443, 456, 576 El Salvador, 470
Dominican Republic, 470 elaboration, 27, 76, 263, 353, 355, 440, 577
doors, 28 elderly, 133, 134, 166, 168, 170, 175, 184, 191, 194,
draft, 108 279, 280, 282, 284, 287, 288, 289, 291, 523, 525,
drawing, 118, 133, 148, 188, 189, 261, 302, 327, 527, 532
345, 491, 498, 586 elderly population, 170, 532
drinking, 286, 503 electrodes, 553
drug treatment, 288 electroencephalogram, 60
DSM, 291, 442 electromagnetic, 54, 55
DSM-IV, 442 electromagnetic wave, 55
dual task, 112, 193 electromagnetic waves, 55
dualism, 36 electron, 316, 327, 344
Duality, 512 electron charge, 316
duration, 8, 9, 76, 78, 84, 87, 103, 109, 111, 228, electronic, 277, 278, 292
234, 274, 279, 284, 319, 409, 415, 425, 427, 428, electrons, 23
439, 525, 538, 542, 543, 545, 548, 556, 557, 559, elephant, 365, 367, 368, 491
560 elephants, 538
dust, 10 EM, 289
dynamical system, 315 EMG, 553, 554, 555, 556, 564
dynamism, 498 emission, 55
dysphoria, 436, 462 emotion, xii, 91, 109, 279, 280, 288, 301, 302, 304,
305, 308, 433, 434, 437, 461, 462, 463, 469, 485,
511, 512, 564, 585, 586, 588, 589, 592
E
emotional disorder, 400, 463
earnings, 466 emotional distress, 395
earth, 10 emotional experience, 302, 504, 586
eating, 53, 274 emotional information, xii, 308, 433, 434, 437, 443,
EB, 292 456, 592
echoic memory, 249 emotional problems, 280
ecological, 162, 202, 273, 285, 312, 348 emotional reactions, 205
ecologists, 312, 315, 320, 321, 338, 343 emotional responses, 434, 503
ecology, xi, 311, 312, 313, 315, 316, 319, 320, 323, emotional stimuli, 199, 200, 212, 434, 435, 453
329, 330, 336, 337, 342, 344, 347 emotional valence, 200
economics, 342 emotions, 58, 96, 106, 222, 298, 301, 302, 305, 434,
Ecuador, 470 437, 469, 488, 491, 502, 503, 585, 586, 589
Eden, 490, 508 empathy, 282, 467
editors, 162 empirical methods, 371
education, x, 245, 246, 247, 260, 268, 271, 279, 381, Empiricism, 134, 152
518, 525 employees, 473
Education, x, 192, 268, 269, 270, 348, 519, 520 employment, 175, 186, 253, 315
educational institutions, 269 encapsulated, 191
educational opportunities, 184 encephalitis, 516, 517, 523, 533
educational programs, 261 encoding, 132, 136, 150, 155, 160, 162, 164, 185,
educational psychology, 271 199, 212, 246, 248, 250, 252, 254, 255, 256, 257,
educational research, 246, 261 258, 262, 264, 265, 271, 411, 421, 425, 428, 544
educational settings, 271 enculturation, 194
educators, 314 endocrine, 503
EEG, 54, 59, 60, 110, 463
effortful processing, 288
604 Index

energy, vii, 63, 64, 73, 74, 76, 78, 80, 85, 86, 87, 96, examinations, 251
97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 106, 107, exchange relationship, 467
118, 322, 328, 331, 352, 414, 504, 561 excitability, 505, 563
energy constraint, 97 excitation, 308, 592
energy consumption, 97 exclusion, 143, 147, 316, 381, 392
energy input, 101 execution, xiv, 230, 248, 251, 252, 263, 303, 304,
energy supply, 97, 101 305, 551, 552, 555, 558, 559, 560, 561, 562, 564,
enforcement, 133, 266, 466, 471, 472, 484 587, 588, 589
engagement, 88, 99, 282, 435, 436, 444, 454 executive processes, 562
engineering, 107, 240, 313, 381 exercise, 80, 265, 283, 284, 286, 292, 297, 308, 385,
England, 113, 115, 191, 222, 347 389, 459, 497, 581, 592
entropy, 101, 313 experimental condition, 174, 176, 179, 184, 186,
environmental, 278, 283, 288, 289 299, 301, 330, 337, 554, 583, 585
environmental conditions, 247, 316 experimental design, 170, 552, 553, 560
environmental factors, 164, 165, 168, 184, 188 expertise, xi, 311, 312, 313, 329, 338, 342, 344, 345,
environmental influences, 194 347
environmental variables, 169 explicit knowledge, 240
epidemiology, 274 explicit memory, 249, 277
epigenetic, 427 exploitation, 147
epinephrine, 298, 582 exposure, ix, 125, 151, 167, 189, 197, 198, 199, 203,
epiphysis, 494 205, 206, 208, 209, 212, 214, 216, 217, 219, 220,
episodic memory, 119, 156, 190, 248, 253, 270, 516 221, 297, 456, 547, 581
epistemological, 272 Exposure, 210, 215, 216, 219, 462
epistemology, 239 external environment, 302, 305, 500, 505, 586, 589
equality, 43, 475 extinction, 102
equilibrium, 74, 76, 100, 315, 316, 320, 322, 327, eye, 5, 10, 54, 60, 70, 71, 115, 172, 173, 229, 233,
328, 337, 342, 343, 503, 565 282
equilibrium price, 342 eye movement, 70, 229, 233
equipment, 351 eyeball, 55
erectile dysfunction, 299, 583 eyes, xii, 17, 31, 70, 74, 131, 137, 174, 229, 330,
ergonomics, 239 405, 407, 412, 413, 414, 415, 418, 419, 420, 430,
essential oils, 282 435, 493
esthetics, 373
estimating, 78, 110, 142, 144, 152, 162, 365
F
estimators, 475
estradiol, 195 face validity, 367
ethics, 498 facies, 495
ethology, 189 factor analysis, xi, xii, 376, 379, 383, 386, 390, 397,
etiology, xi, 375 398, 401
EU, 471 factorial, 270, 379, 383, 397, 438, 442, 449, 475, 574
Europe, 254 failure, 91, 198, 287, 360, 376, 384, 387, 397, 398,
European Union, 456 529, 559
event-related potential, 463 fairness, 487
event-related potentials, 463 false alarms, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 141, 148, 149
everyday life, xi, 274, 277, 302, 311, 327, 345, 347, false memory, 131, 132, 135, 150, 155
586 familial, 291, 534
evoked potential, 233 families, 169, 275, 283, 285, 286, 531, 541
evolution, 13, 15, 47, 97, 102, 171, 274, 305, 322, family, 15, 168, 169, 187, 269, 273, 274, 275, 277,
406, 411, 426, 490, 493, 503, 504, 506, 507, 508, 280, 281, 285, 288, 312, 327, 495
509, 524, 529, 533, 589 family members, 274
exaggeration, xiii, 515, 529 family relationships, 281
 Index 605

fascia, 494 fluctuations, 201

fast food, 255 fMRI, 54, 97, 420, 552, 565
fat, 10 focusing, 8, 12, 15, 16, 19, 31, 48, 49, 100, 105, 161,
fatigue, 239 246, 258, 276, 277, 314, 334, 350, 382
fauna, 495 foils, 132, 136
fax, 375, 489 folding, 45, 160
fear, 10, 12, 35, 106, 131, 296, 298, 302, 433, 437, food, 53, 102, 255, 280, 357, 525
438, 442, 454, 462, 463, 580, 582, 586 food intake, 102
fears, 296, 438, 449, 456, 580 foodstuffs, 533
feedback, xiv, 96, 102, 103, 237, 238, 276, 329, 337, force, xiv, 19, 96, 105, 315, 322, 324, 328, 471, 539,
339, 340, 342, 552, 556 551, 553, 556, 557, 563, 565
feed-back, 228 Ford, 171, 190
feed-back, 237 forebrain, 491, 492, 496, 505, 507
feed-back, 238 forensic, 493
feeding, 406, 503 forgetfulness, 261
feelings, 73, 74, 80, 100, 104, 106, 282, 285, 302, forgetting, 250, 251
380, 503, 568, 586 formal education, 271
females, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 179, 180, formal language, 314
181, 182, 183, 184, 185, 188, 192, 194, 212, 381, formation, x, 9, 51, 66, 67, 68, 75, 79, 80, 81, 120,
394, 396, 524, 525 121, 122, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 138, 139,
fever, 36 147, 148, 154, 191, 250, 252, 255, 257, 268, 309,
fiber, 500 371, 494, 502, 503, 537, 538, 548, 549, 571, 576,
fidelity, 195 577, 593
fillers, 353, 370 formula, 286, 397
film, 297, 301, 581, 585 foundations, 278, 577
films, 297, 298, 301, 581, 582, 585 Fox, 186, 191, 437, 462, 512
filters, 249 fragmentation, 25, 26, 249
financial, 274, 275, 469, 474 fragments, 253
financial resources, 469 framing, 115, 569, 571, 572, 573, 574, 576, 577
fire, 3, 5, 10, 17, 18, 59, 500 France, 58, 64, 110, 159, 405, 428, 487, 551
firms, xiii, 465, 466, 484 fraud, 223
First Amendment, 198 free energy, 101, 102, 104
first-time, 319 free radical, 139, 148, 150
fish, 10, 351, 357, 365, 367, 368, 491, 492, 497, 539, free radicals, 139, 148, 150
540 free recall, 135, 138
FISH, 357, 358 freedom, 64, 82, 100, 104, 107, 146, 442
fitness, 284, 286 freezing, 437, 455, 461
fixation, 87, 126, 127, 435, 439, 538, 540, 555 Freud, xiii, 489, 501, 502, 511
FL, 463 Friday, 212
flexibility, 104, 170, 190, 283, 284 frontal cortex, 99, 105
flexor, 553, 554 frontal lobe, 185, 503
flexor carpi radialis, 553, 554 frontal lobes, 185, 503
flexor carpi ulnaris, 553, 554 fruits, 14, 517, 524, 525
flight, 229, 357, 437, 455, 503 frustration, 80
float, 10, 124, 126 fuel, 97, 101
floating, 124, 125, 139, 147, 149 fulfillment, 467, 468
flow, ix, 10, 73, 74, 75, 76, 80, 87, 98, 101, 102, 103, functional approach, 401
104, 227, 237, 240, 297, 344, 415, 532, 552, 568, functional changes, 274
581 functional imaging, 114
flowers, 38, 54, 525 functional MRI, 233, 564
FLSA, 274 functional separation, 418
606 Index

functionalism, 112 Gibbs, 170, 190, 381, 401

funds, 204 gift, 171
furniture, 45, 367, 517, 524, 538, 539, 540, 547 girls, 164, 166, 167, 168, 171, 184
fusiform, 152, 495 glass, 9, 28, 31, 32
fusion, 377, 378, 380, 387, 397, 402 glutamate, 70
fuzzy set theory, 351, 352, 358, 362, 367, 370 goal setting, 569
Fuzzy set theory, 351 goal-directed, ix, 227, 232, 235, 237, 366
fuzzy sets, 351, 372, 374 goals, 72, 79, 81, 83, 85, 96, 98, 160, 246, 261, 267,
Fuzzy sets, 374 273, 359, 363, 488, 568, 569, 571, 574, 575, 576,
577
God, 36, 497
G
gonad, 195
gait, 558, 565 Goodness of Fit, 390
games, 164, 175, 280 goose, 285
ganglia, 503, 552 grades, 266
ganglion, 497 grading, 275
gas, 316, 323 graduate students, 165
gases, 327 grants, 312, 320, 456
gauge, 553 granule cells, 500
gender, viii, 23, 92, 114, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, graph, xi, 146, 147, 311, 312, 313, 314, 315, 316,
164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 176, 177, 317, 318, 320, 321, 322, 323, 324, 325, 326, 327,
179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185, 187, 188, 189, 328, 329, 330, 332, 333, 334, 335, 336, 337, 339,
191, 193, 194, 303, 396, 486, 530, 531, 532, 554, 340, 341, 342, 343, 344, 345, 348, 446
587 grass, 4, 10, 463
gender balance, 170 gravitational field, 316
gender differences, viii, 159, 162, 163, 164, 165, gravitational force, 315
166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 176, 185, 188, 189, 194, gravity, 19, 378
486 Greece, 252, 489, 490
gender effects, 530 Greenhouse, 442
gender role, 169, 188 group activities, 280
gene, 169 group polarization, 202, 222
general anesthesia, 233 group size, 162
general knowledge, xi, 23, 36, 311, 366 group therapy, 279
generalization, 185, 230, 266, 277 grouping, 76, 129, 148, 151, 251, 252, 504
generalized anxiety disorder, 379, 399 growth, 319, 332, 338
generation, 53, 148, 151, 187, 231, 262, 271 growth rate, 319, 338
genotype, 525, 530 Guatemala, 470
genus, 21, 32 guessing, 124, 125, 132, 138, 139, 142, 143, 209,
geography, 191 216
geology, 304, 588 guessing parameter, 125
geometry, 166, 184, 190 guidance, 161
geriatric, 286, 288, 290, 292 guidelines, 280, 288
Germany, 227, 229, 247, 505, 508, 537 guilt, ix, 197, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 207, 208,
gestalt, 121, 126, 133, 161 211, 212, 213, 214, 217, 218, 219, 220, 296, 580
Gestalt, 76, 120, 153, 360, 365, 372, 421, 425 guilty, 31, 201, 203, 204, 206, 207, 208, 211, 212,
Gestalt psychology, 153, 360 213, 218
Gestalt theory, 365, 372, 425 guns, 221
gestation, 166 gyri, 502
gestures, 80, 317, 406, 428 gyrus, 495, 502
GFI, 390, 391
Ghost, 507
 Index 607

higher education, 246

H
high-level, 91, 255
H1, 482 highways, 272
H2, 482 hippocampal, 151, 494, 495, 526, 531
habitat, 363 hippocampus, 152, 185, 517
habituation, xii, 405, 409, 410, 411, 415, 416, 421, histopathology, 493
422, 423, 425, 430, 560 history, 37, 55, 61, 75, 247, 280, 296, 299, 306, 309,
hair, 10, 49, 131, 137 347, 431, 580, 583, 590, 593
Haiti, 470 holistic, 122, 126, 255, 434, 573, 577
handedness, 169, 187, 189, 194, 406, 415, 426, 430 Holland, 242, 374
handling, 412 home activities, 285
hands, xii, 46, 53, 335, 405, 406, 407, 408, 409, 410, homeostasis, 79, 232
411, 412, 413, 418, 419, 420, 421, 423, 424, 425, homes, 280, 291
493 homogeneity, 442
hanging, 523 Honda, 227
happiness, 74, 106, 109 Honduras, 470
haptic, xii, 249, 405, 406, 407, 408, 410, 411, 413, honesty, 205
415, 417, 419, 420, 421, 422, 423, 424, 425, 426, horizon, 17, 233
427, 428, 431 hormone, 168
hardness, 409 hormones, 166, 167, 184, 187, 189, 191, 195
harm, xi, xii, 349, 360, 362, 364, 365, 370, 375, 376, horse, 502
377, 383, 384, 385, 386, 387, 388, 389, 391, 392, horses, 502, 538
393, 394, 395, 396, 397, 398, 399, 403, 458, 459, hospital, 275, 285
460, 512 hospitalization, 274
harmony, xi, 349, 360, 362, 364, 365, 370, 512 House, 508
Harvard, 60, 61, 111, 114, 194, 224, 242, 347, 348, household, 367
372, 373 housing, 176
hate, 363 hue, 121, 125, 129
hazards, 303, 587 human animal, 167, 185
head injury, 516 human behavior, ix, 72, 80, 227, 228, 231, 232, 507
health, 34, 280, 282, 283, 291 human body, 565
health care, 282 human brain, 58, 59, 110, 113, 415, 417, 420, 427,
hearing, 9, 282, 330, 414, 423, 428 429, 502, 503, 505, 507
heart, 10, 148, 150, 302, 497, 542, 559, 560, 565, human cerebral cortex, 500
570, 575, 586 human cognition, 97, 359, 365, 370
Heart, 243, 548, 560 human information processing, 115
heart rate, 302, 542, 559, 560, 565, 586 human psychology, xiv, 567
heartbeat, 302, 586 humanity, 247, 568, 569
heat, 3, 17, 102, 296, 580 humans, 25, 53, 161, 169, 170, 183, 185, 186, 188,
heat loss, 102 189, 190, 192, 200, 239, 350, 411, 437, 455, 491,
hedonic, 102, 104 498, 503, 505, 517, 539, 563, 569
height, 31, 131, 172, 173, 339 humiliation, 296, 304, 580, 588
hemisphere, 166, 169, 192, 420, 434, 443, 453, 491, hunting, 165, 525
508 husband, 10
herbs, 525 hybrid, 156, 354, 358
herpes, 516, 517, 523, 533 hybridization, 354, 358
herpes simplex, 516, 517, 523, 533 hyperplasia, 166
heterogeneity, 162, 273, 328, 399, 400 hypertension, 171, 187
heterogeneous, 169, 423, 522, 538 Hypertension, 190
heuristic, 202, 326, 330 hypertensive, 187, 190
high strength, 361 hyperthermia, 102
608 Index

hypothalamic, 492, 494, 504 independent living, 290

hypothalamus, 494, 496, 503, 509, 562 independent variable, 120, 394, 574
hypothermia, 102 indexing, 343
hypothesis, x, xiii, 8, 11, 34, 36, 49, 54, 68, 70, 76, indication, 170
77, 78, 83, 91, 151, 154, 167, 171, 180, 184, 185, indicators, 379, 474, 475, 481, 482, 486
200, 202, 245, 262, 267, 298, 299, 312, 319, 406, indices, 390, 391, 395, 401, 449
414, 415, 416, 418, 419, 420, 425, 434, 435, 436, indirect effect, 211, 217, 218, 225
444, 453, 454, 482, 483, 507, 522, 537, 555, 556, individual differences, 160, 161, 168, 170, 185, 186,
558, 569,뫰582, 583 188, 195, 425, 436, 442, 454, 576, 577
individual personality, 285
individuality, 499
I individuation, 99, 100
induction, 149, 299, 583
ice, 10, 49 industries, 485
ICE, 272 ineffectiveness, 70, 199
iconic memory, 93, 94, 108, 249 infancy, 405, 406, 407, 408, 411, 412, 414, 419, 420,
id, 379, 411, 501, 502, 543 424, 425, 427, 428, 429, 430, 431, 462, 548, 549
ideal, 316, 323, 327, 501, 569 Infants, 409, 410, 411, 412, 417, 421, 422, 423, 425,
identification, 27, 88, 94, 98, 151, 156, 320, 327, 430, 539, 541, 547, 549, 550
358, 408, 409, 427, 502, 524, 532 inferences, 55, 152, 254, 257, 266, 316, 317, 342,
identity, 169, 348, 469, 572 343, 360, 538
idiosyncratic, xi, 311 inferential processing, 118
illusion, 94 infinite, 27, 47, 101, 506
illusions, 110, 119, 120, 123, 131, 138, 150, 153, 155 inflation, 482
image, 9, 172, 252, 296, 300, 319, 342, 377, 383, information processing, ix, 90, 114, 115, 160, 170,
384, 389, 439, 441, 443, 444, 445, 446, 447, 448, 224, 227, 238, 240, 248, 254, 258, 259, 267, 411,
450, 451, 452, 453, 454, 458, 473, 497, 520, 534, 412, 420, 426, 435, 436, 444, 456, 462
535, 580, 584 information retrieval, 246, 248, 271
imageability, 520 Information System, 485
imagery, 153, 191, 430, 533, 552, 553, 554, 555, informed consent, 442
556, 557, 559, 560, 562, 563, 564, 565 inheritance, 499
imagination, 503 inherited, 104, 358, 499
imaging, 42, 60, 114, 233, 252, 563 inhibition, xiv, 91, 296, 297, 298, 300, 301, 303,
imitation, 164, 407, 415, 428, 503 306, 308, 309, 435, 551, 552, 554, 555, 559, 561,
impairments, 517, 518, 522, 535 562, 563, 580, 581, 582, 584, 585, 587, 590, 592,
implementation, 55, 56, 189, 231, 239, 248, 251, 593
260, 262, 264, 266, 271, 358 inhibitor, 299, 583
implicit memory, 275, 276, 277 inhibitors, 275, 278, 279, 290, 483
improvements, 279, 382 inhibitory, x, xv, 295, 296, 298, 299, 300, 301, 303,
impulses, 229, 377, 378, 384, 389, 394, 458 306, 308, 462, 561, 563, 579, 580, 582, 583, 584,
impulsiveness, 277 585, 587, 590, 592
impulsivity, 307, 591 inhibitory effect, x, xv, 295, 296, 298, 299, 300, 301,
in situ, 17, 88, 102, 133, 329, 339, 411, 494 579, 580, 582, 583, 584, 585
inactive, 263 initiation, 237, 240, 296, 511, 553, 577, 580
inadmissible, 201, 202, 224 injection, 298, 582
inattention, 88 injections, 440
incidence, 517, 523, 534 injure, 429
inclusion, 141, 143, 146, 147, 442 injury, iv, 229, 471, 516
incompatibility, 296, 297, 303, 453, 580, 581, 587 innocence, 131
incompressible, 316, 323, 327 insects, 491, 497, 525
independence, 278, 279, 280, 282, 392, 576 insertion, 395
 Index 609

insight, 234, 239, 568 intervention, 89, 91, 100, 186, 275, 276, 278, 281,
inspection, 176 284, 287, 288, 289, 290, 291, 298, 300, 500, 505,
instability, 229, 481 541, 544, 582, 584
instinct, 79 interview, xi, 302, 311, 317, 318, 325, 327, 438, 442,
institutionalization, 279, 280 586
instruction, 72, 79, 107, 143, 144, 146, 147, 269, interviews, 314, 315, 317, 348
270, 304, 320, 333, 334, 588 intimacy, 296, 580
instructors, 334, 342 intonation, 331, 332, 338
instruments, 164, 186, 288, 380, 525 intrinsic, 44, 46, 362, 363, 503, 527
insurance, xiii, 465, 466, 470, 471, 472, 473, 483, intrusions, 377
484, 485 intuition, 49, 572
integration, ix, 113, 120, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, invariants, 411, 416, 419, 424
156, 161, 183, 188, 193, 227, 233, 234, 235, 238, inversion, 22, 30
240, 251, 252, 257, 354, 410, 411, 416, 419, 420, invertebrates, 499
425, 426, 427, 430, 434, 504, 557, 565 ionization, 316, 322
integrity, 355 ionization energy, 322
intellect, 491, 497, 503 ions, 55
intellectual development, 282, 406 IP, 383, 384, 385, 388, 389, 390
intelligence, xiii, 53, 56, 228, 231, 254, 329, 350, IR, 290, 441
358, 363, 365, 370, 406, 489, 502, 504, 512 irrationality, 567, 572
intentionality, 549 irritability, 276
intentions, 72, 73, 82, 83, 259, 261, 268, 472, 487, IRs, 435, 443, 444, 445, 447, 448, 449, 452, 454
568 IS, 274, 291
interaction effect, 182, 445, 446, 448, 485 isolation, 32, 280, 282, 408, 423, 424
interaction effects, 182, 446, 448, 485 Israel, 161
interactions, 65, 68, 69, 106, 282, 319, 325, 326, issues, 78, 84, 162, 246, 308, 317, 350, 362, 365,
327, 355, 407, 409, 411, 442, 443, 446, 449, 462, 373, 407, 429, 453, 468, 592
468, 482, 549 Italian Operational School, 2
interdependence, 486, 487 Italian population, 380, 383, 386
interdisciplinary, 347, 507 Italy, 1, 2, 34, 59, 63, 159, 171, 273, 375, 381, 382,
interference, x, xv, 77, 175, 251, 253, 295, 300, 301, 403
303, 304, 306, 307, 434, 435, 444, 453, 454, 579,
584, 585, 587, 588, 590, 591
J
interference theory, 251
internal consistency, xi, 375, 379, 380, 382, 392, JAMA, 292
397, 399 Japan, 241, 242, 243, 550
internal environment, 305, 505, 589 Japanese, 44, 45, 110, 241, 242, 243
international, 291 Java, 141, 152
internet, 278, 472 Jefferson, 331, 347
Internet, 439 jobs, 321
interneuron, 500 Jordan, 319, 327, 347, 348
interpersonal communication, 503 joystick, 172, 174, 175
interpersonal factors, 222 JT, 292
interpretability, 386 judge, 87, 185
interpretive problem, 324 judgment, ix, 142, 154, 169, 227, 228, 403, 570
interrelationships, 265 jumping, 331, 491
interval, 76, 93, 175, 234, 235, 276, 379, 392, 436, Jun, 286, 291
439, 447, 456, 557 juries, 199, 200, 201, 202, 204, 206, 218, 220, 222,
Intervals, 276 223
610 Index

juror, ix, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203, 204, learning process, x, 245, 246, 247, 248, 251, 253,
205, 206, 211, 212, 213, 217, 218, 219, 220, 223, 254, 256, 258, 260, 261, 262, 263, 264, 267, 268,
224, 225 277, 278
jurors, ix, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203, 204, learning skills, 270
205, 206, 207, 208, 209, 210, 211, 212, 213, 214, learning styles, 271
215, 216, 217, 218, 219, 220, 221, 222, 223, 224 learning task, 247, 258, 259, 267
jury, ix, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205, left hemisphere, 166, 434, 453
206, 208, 211, 212, 218, 219, 220, 221, 222, 223, left visual field, 434, 439, 443, 453
224 left-hemisphere, 168
jury trial, 212 leg, 10
justice, 351 legend, 324
legislation, xiii, 465, 466, 470, 471, 472, 482, 483,
484
K
legs, 83, 356, 516
Kant, 2, 7 Leibniz, 7
kill, 10, 192 leisure, 280
kinesthetic, 407, 553 lens, 75, 110, 568, 575
King, 547, 549 Lesion, 531
KL, 186 lesions, 186, 517
knee, 10 LH, 287
knowledge acquisition, 269 liability insurance, 466, 471, 472
Kobe, 199, 221 liberation, 202
life experiences, xi, 253, 311
life span, 167, 171, 192
L light, xii, xiv, 3, 10, 17, 37, 55, 84, 174, 177, 178,
179, 181, 408, 411, 417, 418, 433, 495, 502, 505,
LA, 187, 194, 270, 287, 290
523, 553, 554, 555, 567, 568, 575
labeling, 118
likelihood, 138, 213, 357, 378, 383, 386, 487, 572,
labor, 78
577
lack of control, 521
Likert scale, 204, 205, 472
lambda, 475
limbic system, 491, 495, 496, 503, 509, 562
language development, 59
limitation, 36, 74, 162, 250, 281
language processing, 277
limitations, 127, 250, 280, 356, 364, 370, 371, 399,
language skills, 284
456, 484
languages, vii, 1, 3, 4, 6, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15, 19, 20,
Lincoln, 152, 372
21, 23, 26, 27, 29, 30, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38,
line graph, xi, 311
40, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 53, 57, 59
linear, 19, 22, 23, 24, 187, 213, 300, 305, 324, 333,
large-scale, 429
356, 395, 396, 399, 584, 589
latency, 435
linear regression, 395, 396, 399
lateral motion, 408
lingual, 495
laterality, 438, 456
linguistic, vii, 1, 5, 6, 7, 8, 11, 13, 15, 16, 19, 20, 21,
Latin-American countries, 470
24, 28, 29, 30, 37, 53, 54, 56, 57, 58, 61, 66, 81,
law, 36, 46, 133, 219, 225, 466, 470, 471, 472, 483,
95, 129, 151, 155, 314, 318, 345, 361, 366, 370,
484
371
law enforcement, 133, 466, 472, 484
linguistic information, 61
laws, 70, 343, 406, 470, 472
linguistic representation, 129
lead, 92, 93, 94, 95, 124, 140, 166, 199, 202, 256,
linguistics, vii, 1, 2, 5, 6, 7, 13, 25, 27, 28, 30, 31,
259, 260, 267, 304, 312, 314, 320, 326, 343, 351,
36, 45, 52, 60, 61, 350, 360, 370
376, 392, 411, 416, 421, 468, 470, 481, 507, 538,
links, xii, 12, 21, 298, 299, 405, 418, 420, 469, 582,
544, 548, 570, 571, 572, 573, 588
583
learning environment, 173, 174, 175, 178, 264, 312
liquid phase, 316
 Index 611

liquids, 327 majority, 4, 5, 6, 27, 40, 148, 199, 201, 202, 205,
liquor, 436 219, 220, 305, 370, 470, 472, 517, 523, 526, 589
listening, 83, 89, 93, 110, 115, 282 males, 164, 166, 167, 168, 170, 171, 179, 180, 181,
literature, 279, 280, 283, 284, 288, 291 183, 184, 192, 212, 382, 394, 396, 524, 529
liver, 10, 165, 497 mammal, 491, 492, 495, 547
localised, 563 mammalian brain, 509
localization, 18 mammals, 170, 406, 411, 503, 505, 538, 539
location, 88, 92, 93, 94, 95, 126, 127, 128, 130, 133, man, 5, 10, 16, 17, 23, 30, 31, 32, 49, 53, 111, 131,
134, 135, 161, 162, 164, 169, 176, 183, 185, 191, 204, 240, 282, 373, 429, 491, 497, 510, 524, 534,
193, 195, 255, 279, 303, 324, 340, 412, 415, 435, 563, 565
439, 441, 445, 495, 531, 587 management, 264, 280, 283, 285, 292, 305, 466, 486,
location information, 130, 134 589
loci, 252 manipulation, 162, 165, 194, 301, 302, 314, 406,
locomotion, 185, 406 411, 429, 456, 572, 585, 586
locomotor, 161 man-made, 524, 534
locus, 99, 531 manners, 41
locus coeruleus, 99 mapping, 60, 192, 193, 355, 562
London, 59, 60, 61, 108, 110, 202, 223, 224, 307, market, 485
309, 329, 372, 429, 430, 463, 486, 507, 508, 510, market segment, 485
511, 512, 535, 591, 593 marketing, 465, 467, 474, 485, 486, 487, 488
long distance, 182 markets, 466, 488
long period, 17 marriage, 279
longevity, 135 marrow, 496
longitudinal study, 531, 534, 539, 549 Marxism, 348
long-term memory, 26, 64, 71, 247, 248, 249, 255, mask, 160, 522
259, 503, 544, 573 masking, 89, 110, 112, 170, 533
loss of consciousness, 97 Maslach Burnout Inventory, 401
losses, 571, 572, 573, 574 mass, 305, 589
love, 36, 43, 106, 279, 363 Massachusetts, 111, 113, 240
lover, 296, 580 material resources, 314, 323, 325, 345
low-level, 90, 91, 289 materials, 78, 125, 127, 128, 131, 133, 134, 149,
loyalty, 467, 469, 474, 487, 488 259, 263, 285, 315, 318, 324, 574
lying, 415 mathematicians, 350
mathematics, 42, 188, 314, 347
matrix, 365, 386, 392, 475, 503
M
matter, iv, 10, 11, 35, 43, 59, 91, 101, 176, 334, 384,
M.O., 426 387, 461, 487, 495, 502, 577
Macedonia, 489 MCI, 278, 290, 292
Mach, E., 112, 241 MCP, 250, 251, 252, 253, 263, 266
machine translation, vii, 1, 2, 55, 56, 58, 59, 60 meanings, vii, 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 8, 11, 13, 15, 17, 20, 22,
machinery, 231, 232, 234, 238, 239 23, 25, 28, 30, 35, 36, 40, 43, 44, 47, 49, 51, 54,
machines, 112, 367, 368 57, 66, 71, 82, 83, 149, 263, 268, 313, 361, 367,
magazines, 21, 22, 24 370, 372, 516
magnet, 315 measurement, 43, 154, 189, 401, 471, 472, 474, 475,
magnetic, 315, 316 481, 482, 487, 488, 576
magnets, 315 measurements, 297, 298, 299, 303, 474, 475, 554,
magnitude, 42, 77, 165, 167, 324, 555 581, 582, 583, 587
maintenance, xi, 258, 285, 290, 375, 456 meat, 10
Maintenance, 285 media, 198, 202, 224, 225, 248, 267, 401
major issues, 353, 362, 370 median, 315, 441, 496
mediation, 211, 217, 218, 219, 507
612 Index

mediators, 217, 218, 307, 324, 591 metric, 162, 163, 164, 347, 475
medical, 274, 281, 283, 308, 466, 592 Mexico, 269, 270, 271, 470
medical care, 281, 283 mice, 167, 189
medicine, 254, 493, 505, 512, 572 microeconomics, 343
medulla, 494 microelectrode, 565
medulla oblongata, 494 microstructure, 428
MEG, 54 microtubules, 67, 70
membership, 77, 138, 351, 357, 364, 470, 546 midbrain, 68, 491, 494, 503
memorizing, 105, 252, 261, 420 Middle Ages, 28
memory capacity, 26, 58, 61 middle-aged, 274, 275, 280, 284, 286
memory deficits, 517 migration, 154
memory function, 247, 305, 589 mild cognitive impairment, 287, 292, 530, 531
memory loss, 531 mild cognitive impairment (MCI), 292
memory performance, 133, 138, 144, 150, 183, 199, military, 261
223, 529 mimicry, 571, 576
memory processes, 139, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, miniature, 541
147, 164, 256, 409 Ministry of Education, 529
memory retrieval, 573 mirror, 221, 397
men, xiii, 31, 162, 163, 164, 166, 167, 171, 184, 187, misinterpretation, xi, 375
188, 189, 191, 193, 194, 195, 203, 296, 297, 299, misleading, 89, 160
303, 307, 308, 309, 438, 515, 524, 525, 529, 532, missions, 401
580, 581, 583, 587, 591, 592, 593 MIT, 58, 61, 110, 112, 113, 114, 152, 154, 190, 191,
mental activity, 91, 93, 96, 98, 113, 360 223, 240, 241, 242, 372, 425, 426, 427, 428, 430,
mental image, 9, 69, 92, 153, 342, 378, 380 512, 531
mental imagery, 153 mixing, 414
mental life, 10, 100, 378 ML, 290
mental model, 190, 255 MMSE, 278, 279, 284, 519, 520
mental operations, vii, 1, 2, 7, 8, 10, 18, 36, 54, 57, mobility, 283
234, 552 modalities, xii, 66, 76, 77, 83, 88, 92, 105, 106, 232,
mental processes, 75, 561, 563 249, 405, 408, 411, 412, 414, 415, 416, 417, 418,
mental representation, 16, 43, 118, 163, 170, 175, 419, 420, 423, 424, 425, 426, 429, 533, 552, 554
182, 183, 194, 352, 409, 552, 556, 557, 559 modality, xii, 17, 41, 42, 43, 76, 77, 105, 106, 112,
mental state, 279, 298, 505, 582 221, 233, 405, 406, 407, 411, 412, 414, 415, 416,
mental states, 505 417, 418, 420, 422, 426
mentor, 491, 505 modeling, 146, 231, 313, 316, 329, 485, 486
mergers, 250 moderators, 223, 469, 488
Merleau-Ponty, 95 modifications, 14, 23, 30, 55, 106, 185, 301, 382,
mesencephalon, 497 561, 565, 585
messages, 577 modulation, 76, 95, 99, 104, 109, 114, 332, 443, 454,
meta analysis, 570 456, 462
meta-analysis, 155, 162, 187, 193, 195, 518, 522, modules, 83, 96, 105, 107, 233
525, 575, 576 modus operandi, 301, 585
metabolic, 97 momentum, 328
metacognition, 261, 263, 264 money, 46, 49, 221, 280, 468, 470, 473, 474
metacognitive knowledge, 264, 267, 268 monkeys, 42, 411, 426, 427, 428
metaphor, 54, 68, 97, 502 Monroe, 486
metaphors, 75, 97 Monte Carlo, 485
metazoans, 497 Monticello, 375
meteorological, 44 mood, xi, 3, 29, 48, 51, 52, 276, 280, 283, 285, 286,
methodological procedures, 381 291, 292, 307, 308, 376, 436, 455, 591, 592
methodology, xii, 58, 108, 148, 225, 264, 405, 411 mood disorder, 376
 Index 613

morality, 398 National Institute of Mental Health, 494

morning, 24 National Research Council, 2
morphemes, vii, 1, 4, 5, 7, 11, 13, 16, 28, 56 natural, 5, 28, 44, 48, 92, 111, 184, 228, 306, 312,
morphological, 26, 29, 48 313, 318, 348, 370, 372, 437, 453, 508, 524, 534,
morphology, vii, 1, 4, 23, 26, 51, 55, 57 539, 540, 549, 590
motion, 233, 408, 418, 421, 422, 427, 431, 548, 549, natural science, 312
550, 568 natural sciences, 312
motivation, 57, 98, 104, 261, 264, 307, 372, 437, navigation system, 235
462, 503, 559, 591 Nebraska, 152, 372
motives, 325, 335, 474, 569, 575 neck, 10, 12, 426
motor actions, 437, 563 negative affectivity, 436, 438
motor activity, 280, 558 negative consequences, 379, 385, 387, 398, 459
motor area, 99, 491, 552, 565 negative emotions, 298, 434, 582
motor behavior, 394, 395, 396, 398 negative mood, 308, 436, 592
motor control, ix, 227, 415, 558 negative priming, 90, 115
motor coordination, 231 negative valence, 444, 455, 456, 573
motor skills, 253 negativity, 200, 212, 213, 217, 218, 219, 224, 463
motor system, 233, 420, 504, 561 neglect, 185, 253, 488
motor task, 552, 558, 559 neocortex, 231, 491, 500, 503, 504, 508
motorcycles, 539 neon, 155
mouth, 10, 53, 406, 407, 414, 425, 426 neonatal, 166, 407, 414
MRI, 233, 564 neonate, 412, 431
MS, 60, 287, 292 neonates, 409, 412, 417, 425, 428
multidimensional, 68, 164, 273, 290 nerve, 494, 498, 504
multimedia, 278, 292 nervous system, xiv, 97, 100, 105, 232, 233, 308,
multiple interpretations, 359 411, 497, 499, 504, 505, 552, 556, 559, 561, 562,
multiple regression, 481 563, 564, 565, 592
multiplication, 482 Netherlands, 348, 428
multivariate, 403 network, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 27, 28, 29, 39, 45, 70,
multivariate statistics, 403 96, 99, 114, 231, 360, 364, 365, 502, 504
murder, 31, 203, 204, 435 neural function, 97
muscle, xiv, 504, 551, 552, 554, 556, 558, 562, 564 neural mechanisms, 68, 430, 524, 561
muscle contraction, xiv, 504, 551, 552, 554, 564 neural network, 70, 96, 114, 190
muscles, 552, 553, 554, 555, 556, 557, 558, 559, neural networks, 190
561, 562, 564 neural systems, 463
musculoskeletal, 76, 78 neuroanatomy, 490, 492, 493, 502
musculoskeletal system, 76, 78 neurobehavioral, 490, 508
music, 93, 119, 253, 280, 281, 282, 289, 291, 292, neurobiological, 54, 83, 512
414 neurobiology, xiii, 2, 489, 493, 495, 504, 505, 507
music therapy, 281 neurodegenerative, 283
mutilation, 461 neurodegenerative disease, 283
neurodegenerative diseases, 283
neuroimaging, 418
N
neurolinguistics, 2, 52
NA, 208, 519, 520 neurologist, 490
NAc, 519, 520 neuronal systems, 236
naming, 304, 308, 463, 464, 497, 516, 518, 521, 522, neurons, 18, 42, 54, 65, 68, 70, 78, 185, 230, 233,
523, 524, 525, 526, 527, 528, 529, 530, 531, 532, 365, 500, 504
533, 534, 535, 588, 592 neuropathological, 493
National Academy of Sciences, 110, 111, 113, 114, neuropathology, 517, 530
151, 156, 429 neurophysiology, 228
614 Index

Neuropsychiatric Inventory, 274, 287

O
neuropsychological assessment, 193
neuropsychological tests, 273, 275 obedience, 246
neuropsychology, 108, 113, 193 object recognition, 189, 427, 516, 517, 533
neuroscience, xiii, 54, 61, 113, 155, 425, 489, 497, objectivity, 205
501, 505, 508, 509, 511, 512 obligation, xiii, 201, 465, 466, 470, 471, 483, 484
neutral, x, xv, 199, 219, 223, 295, 297, 304, 306, observations, 33, 41, 69, 122, 233, 234, 239, 296,
322, 434, 435, 436, 438, 439, 441, 443, 444, 453, 297, 357, 367, 538, 580, 581
456, 506, 572, 579, 581, 588, 590 obsessive-compulsive, xi, 375, 379, 399, 401, 402,
neutrons, 23 403
New England, 191 obsessive-compulsive disorder, xi, 375, 379, 399,
New Jersey, 577 401, 402
New Orleans, 187, 194 obstacles, 163, 246, 469
newspapers, 223, 284 occipital lobe, 133
Nicaragua, 470 occlusion, 421
Nietzsche, xiv, 567 occupational, 275, 281, 288
nigrostriatal, 504 occupational therapy, 281, 288
NO, 565 OCD, xi, xii, 375, 376, 377, 378, 379, 380, 381, 382,
noise, 46, 419 393, 394, 395, 396, 398, 399, 400, 401
non-biological, 97 octopus, 356, 516
non-clinical, xi, 299, 300, 375, 378, 379, 381, 382, oculomotor, 99, 231, 238
398, 399, 401, 402, 463, 583, 584 offenders, 308, 592
non-clinical population, 382 officials, 133
nonconscious, 576 Ohio, 485
non-human, 167 oils, 282
nonparametric, 526 old age, viii, 160, 167, 170, 171, 179, 185
non-pharmacological, 281, 282 older adults, 151, 156, 530, 565
non-pharmacological treatments, 281 older people, 287, 289
non-random, 517 olfaction, 503
non-randomness, 517 olfactory, 491, 492, 494, 495, 496, 498
normal, xi, xiii, 10, 90, 102, 131, 134, 166, 171, 229, olfactory bulb, 492, 494, 496
239, 298, 303, 330, 332, 346, 375, 379, 380, 399, omission, xii, 376, 378, 387, 391, 392, 393, 394,
402, 408, 425, 429, 461, 482, 515, 523, 524, 527, 395, 396, 397, 398, 399, 401
533, 534, 582, 587 one dimension, 353
normal aging, 134, 534 online, 270, 355, 363, 364, 371, 485, 487
normal distribution, 527 on-line, 124, 176
norms, 440, 530, 534, 535 on-line, 540
nose, 5, 10, 36, 137 on-line, 548
novel stimuli, 462 open space, 189, 190
novelty, 105, 106, 189, 410, 428, 538, 542 open spaces, 189
NS, 381, 396 openness, 238
nuclei, 492, 496, 508 operating range, 234
nucleus, 327, 345, 493 operating system, 75, 253
nuisance, 521, 522, 523, 527, 529 operational semantics, 2
null, 194, 208, 484 Operational Semantics (OS), vii, 1, 2
nurses, 401 operator, 232, 370
nursing, 274, 280, 283, 290, 291, 292 opportunities, 83, 280, 284, 468
nursing home, 274, 280, 283, 291, 292 opposition, 12, 167
nutrient, 327 optic nerve, 494
OR, 249, 346
oral, 278, 407, 412, 424
 Index 615

organ, viii, 19, 63, 64, 68, 71, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, Paris, 58, 108, 113, 115, 159, 265, 309, 347, 405,
80, 84, 87, 95, 98, 99, 100, 103, 104, 106, 107, 426, 427, 428, 512, 593
231, 254, 260, 297, 490, 581 parity, 165
organic, 98, 299, 306, 496, 583, 590 PART, 246, 264
organism, vii, 63, 64, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 78, 79, Partial Least Squares, 481
80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 91, 101, 102, 107, 230, particles, 23, 37
420, 437, 497, 505, 552, 561 partnership, 247, 487
organizational development, 251, 252, 267 partnerships, 259
organize, 246, 247, 248, 250, 254, 255, 261, 362, passive, 26, 32, 35, 44, 45, 47, 48, 75, 91, 194, 259,
548 260, 267, 280, 408, 422, 455, 500
organs, 64, 71, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 82, 84, 87, 95, pathology, 131, 517
97, 98, 104, 228, 229, 231, 303, 406, 407, 505, pathways, 69, 154, 420, 492, 502, 552, 563
587 pattern recognition, 258
orgasm, 299, 303, 583, 587 PD, 290
orientation, xi, 108, 151, 161, 169, 170, 175, 176, peace, 383, 389, 457
182, 184, 186, 187, 188, 189, 192, 274, 279, 282, pearls, 417
287, 290, 291, 292, 327, 329, 332, 333, 334, 335, pedagogical, 271
349, 358, 360, 362, 366, 369, 370, 430, 474, 500 peer, 317, 346
oscillation, 233 peer review, 346
oscillations, 67, 70, 104, 115, 233 peers, 168, 319, 329
oscillatory activity, 233 penalties, 470
outpatients, 291, 379 penalty, 175
overlap, 23, 99, 124, 136, 148, 149, 247, 316, 317, pendulum, 315, 316
334, 379, 381, 399 penetrability, 565
overlay, 335, 336, 341 penis, 297, 581
overload, 77 Pennsylvania, 349
overtraining, 186, 563 percentile, 394
ownership, 96 perceptions, ix, 25, 72, 80, 82, 83, 84, 118, 121, 123,
124, 132, 150, 197, 217, 219, 224, 239, 343, 399,
408, 414, 483, 487, 488
P
perceptual component, 120
PA, 60, 274, 290, 349 perceptual learning, 152, 426
Pacific, 109 perceptual processing, 77, 98, 119, 122, 123, 125
packets, 204, 205 perfectionism, 378, 379, 380, 385, 386, 397, 399,
pain, 45, 55, 64, 74, 80, 102, 104, 105, 106, 487 400
pairing, xv, 366, 414, 568 performance, 274, 284, 289, 290, 291
Panama, 470 Peripheral, 551
panic disorder, 296, 304, 308, 580, 588, 592 permission, iv, 169, 490
paradoxical, 518, 533 permit, 90, 482, 549
Paraguay, 470, 495 personal, 276, 277, 279, 286
parallel, 69, 77, 101, 120, 121, 128, 151, 231, 237, personal communication, 79, 98, 442
339, 341, 360, 364, 408, 504, 539 personal computers, 175
parallel processing, 151, 408 personal life, 260
parameter, 125, 146, 324 personal relations, 466, 469, 486
parameter estimates, 146 personal relationship, 466, 469, 486
paraphilia, 296, 580 personal relevance, 573
parasympathetic, 296, 580 personal responsibility, 377
parasympathetic activity, 296, 580 personal values, 569, 573
parental care, 503 personality, 222, 280, 285, 299, 307, 377, 401, 576,
parents, 169, 172, 221, 544, 550 583, 591
parietal cortex, 99, 150, 500 personality disorder, 377, 401
616 Index

Personality disorders, 377 physiological psychology, 504

persuasion, 224 physiological regulation, 239
perturbation, 102, 186, 563 physiologists, 228, 504
perturbations, 97, 102, 156 physiology, 97, 99, 490
Peru, 470, 516 piano, 331, 332, 346
PET, 54, 97, 191, 357, 358, 365, 419 pilot study, 278, 288, 290, 292
petrographic, 344 pineal, 494
petroleum, 344, 347 pitch, 318, 331, 332, 346
Petroleum, 347 placebo, 281, 298, 582
pets, 351 planning, 89, 221, 261, 266, 552, 561, 564
phalanx, 560 plant type, 525
pharmacological, 281, 282, 308, 438, 592 plants, 322, 326, 497, 531, 539
pharmacological treatment, 281, 282 plasticity, 289, 564
phenomenal consciousness, 55, 106 platform, 234, 235, 318
phenomenology, 108, 118, 120, 122, 141, 153 Plato, xiii, 489, 496, 497, 502, 510
Philadelphia, 59, 62 plausibility, 64, 74, 103, 154, 355, 358, 359, 362,
philosophers, 64 366, 369
philosophical, 2, 36, 356, 412, 414, 504, 505 play, vii, 1, 7, 10, 34, 36, 72, 83, 122, 140, 164, 168,
philosophy, 2, 7, 51, 348, 350, 370, 428, 505 169, 239, 248, 258, 263, 301, 355, 362, 371, 503,
phobia, 296, 303, 304, 307, 308, 376, 436, 442, 454, 523, 538, 539, 548, 563, 585
461, 462, 580, 587, 588, 591, 592 playing, 34, 221, 231, 407
phobic stimulus, 438, 446, 447 pleasure, 43, 64, 80, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 284,
phone, 250, 489, 541 296, 580
phonemes, 346 plethysmography, 297, 303, 581, 587
phonological, 156, 258, 259, 516 PLS, 481, 482, 486
phonology, 148 PM, 287
photosynthetic, 322 PN, 288
phylogenesis, 508 polarization, 202, 222, 504
phylogenetic, 491, 497, 502, 505 police, 26, 48, 222, 225
phylogeny, xiii, 489, 498, 500, 502, 507 policy, 471, 474, 508
physical activity, 283, 289 politics, 239, 261
physical characteristics, 259 poor, 8, 165, 169, 189, 277, 360, 467, 469, 471, 474,
physical chemistry, 314, 326, 327 522
physical environment, 53, 161, 186, 467, 474 population density, 324
physical exercise, 298, 582 population size, 315, 322, 324, 328, 331, 333, 334,
physical fitness, 283 335
physical health, 283 Positive and Negative Affect Schedule, 441
physical laws, 406 positive mood, 286, 436
physical properties, 420 positivism, 505
physical structure, 100, 524 post-stroke, 565
physical world, 7, 55, 65, 420 posttraumatic stress, 308, 592
physicists, x, 311, 312, 314, 315, 317, 320, 321, 322, post-traumatic stress, 304
323, 324, 325, 328, 329, 338, 343, 344, 345, 348 post-traumatic stress, 588
physics, xi, 311, 312, 313, 314, 315, 316, 318, 319, posttraumatic stress disorder, 308, 592
320, 321, 322, 323, 324, 327, 328, 329, 338, 342, post-traumatic stress disorder, 304
344, 345 post-traumatic stress disorder, 588
physiological, 96, 102, 103, 106, 239, 296, 297, 301, postural control, 558, 565
302, 303, 308, 309, 382, 434, 500, 504, 559, 561, posture, 461, 494, 558, 565
580, 581, 585, 586, 587, 592, 593 potassium, 55
Physiological, 60, 242, 243, 548, 560 potato, 360
physiological mechanisms, 297, 561, 581
 Index 617

power, 50, 78, 80, 87, 101, 300, 304, 356, 378, 379, procedural memory, 24, 25, 248, 275, 278, 281, 285,
385, 389, 396, 459, 464, 564, 576, 584, 588 293
pragmatic, xi, 349, 358, 359, 362, 366, 367, 370, 556 procedural rule, 356, 357
predicate, 26, 48, 253, 366 procedures, 276, 277, 283, 288
predictability, 118, 386 processing biases, 462, 529
prediction, 96, 121, 203, 222, 231, 232, 327, 559, processing stages, 77
572 procreation, 437
predictive validity, 291 production, 24, 25, 54, 73, 81, 83, 87, 97, 98, 99,
predictor variables, 521 100, 101, 102, 273, 301, 314, 331, 332, 339, 340,
predictors, xii, 376, 399, 481 342, 371, 533, 585
predisposing factors, 466, 467, 481, 482, 483 productivity, 507
pre-existing, xiii, 363, 515, 526 professionalism, 473
preference, xii, 275, 357, 405, 413, 414, 415, 416, prognosis, 288
428, 430, 538, 572, 573, 574, 575, 576 program, xiv, 11, 55, 56, 176, 221, 234, 237, 273,
pregnant, 168, 296, 580 275, 278, 279, 281, 283, 285, 286, 287, 291, 292,
premotor cortex, 420, 563 314, 315, 316, 318, 330, 347, 488, 552, 559, 563,
preparation, iv, xiv, 99, 250, 257, 262, 263, 268, 455, 574
551, 552, 558, 559, 561, 562, 564 programming, 441, 552, 561
preparedness, 454 progressive, 273
preschool, 166 project, 2, 55, 271, 289, 320, 342, 456
preschoolers, 192, 284 propagation, 364
preservation, 80, 247, 503, 505, 506, 522, 531, 535 property, 352, 353, 354, 355, 356, 362, 366, 368,
press, 221 369, 370, 372, 407, 408, 415, 416, 417, 418, 428,
pressure, 297, 299, 317, 417, 565, 581, 583 482
pretrial, 198, 214, 220, 221, 222, 223, 224, 225 proposition, 15, 492, 504, 505, 568, 570
prevention, 378, 391, 397 propulsion, 565
prices, 468, 577 prosecutor, 217, 218
primacy, 183 prospect theory, 569, 571, 572
primary data, 66 prospective memory, 276, 278
primary school, 6, 182, 183, 192, 194 prosthesis, 283
primary senses, 282 protection, 209
primary visual cortex, 153 protocol, 281, 286, 329, 335, 339
primate, 431, 498 protocols, 314, 318, 325
primates, 406, 411, 492, 495, 508 prototype, 5, 352, 357, 358, 362, 364, 365, 366, 367,
priming, x, xv, 89, 90, 113, 115, 295, 297, 299, 301, 369, 370, 372, 373, 374
302, 303, 306, 372, 576, 579, 581, 583, 585, 586, prototypes, 139, 357, 373
587, 590 PRP, 77, 98
primitives, 6, 7, 10, 11, 41, 59, 61, 62, 548 PSA, 373
principles, 60, 72, 76, 78, 79, 81, 122, 126, 129, 130, pseudo, 168, 174, 302, 586
147, 148, 150, 266, 283, 358, 359, 366, 548 PSI, 456
prior knowledge, 246, 247, 251, 257, 263, 266, 267 psyche, 51, 108, 109, 113, 114, 496, 497, 502
privacy, 283 psychiatrist, 490
private, 471, 472, 490 psychiatry, 51, 231, 288, 401, 509
probability, xiii, 91, 124, 140, 143, 145, 146, 148, psychic energy, 97, 98
327, 442, 455, 515, 525, 529, 577 psychoanalysis, xiii, 489
probe, 112, 123, 297, 462, 463, 516, 581 Psychoanalysis, 501
problem behavior, 281, 290 psychobehavioural, 273, 274
problem behaviors, 290 psychobiology, 507
problem solving, 169, 253, 261, 271, 283, 312, 357 psycholinguistics, vii, 1, 2, 25, 52, 53, 54, 332
problem-solving, 347 psychological distress, 395
procedural knowledge, 254, 255, 256, 344 psychological phenomena, 87, 497
618 Index

psychological processes, 97, 255, 266, 348

R
psychological variables, 289
psychologist, 247, 281, 318, 319, 340, 381 R&D, 227
psychometric approach, 160 RA, 287, 553
psychometric properties, xii, 376, 379, 396, 402, race, x, 134, 148, 245
442, 474 radiation, 55, 496
psychopathology, 287, 400, 402, 496 radicals, 139, 148, 150
psychophysiology, 463 radius, 172, 173, 174, 345
psychosocial, 284, 286, 289, 292 rain, 10, 44
psychosocial factors, 165 random, x, 3, 4, 174, 245, 302, 305, 439, 441, 517,
psychosomatic, 512 586, 589
Psychosomatic, 511 random access, 305, 589
psychotherapeutic, 400 range, 6, 43, 64, 160, 205, 212, 221, 234, 239, 246,
psychotherapy, 280, 281 265, 268, 274, 322, 354, 371, 381, 392, 394, 441,
PT, 288 516, 541, 544, 548
PTSD, 308, 592 rape, 296, 304, 580, 588
puberty, 166, 168 rash, 304, 588
public, 2, 198, 199, 221, 312, 321, 323, 332, 466 rat, 425, 430
public opinion, 221 rating scale, 401
public sector, 312, 321, 323 ratings, 203, 204, 205, 206, 207, 208, 209, 211, 212,
public service, 466 213, 216, 217, 218, 219, 220, 365, 441, 452, 457,
publishing, 269 463
pulse, 72, 107 rationality, 503, 569, 572, 575, 576
pupils, 182, 183, 266, 268, 269 rats, 166, 167, 189, 194, 195, 327, 411, 455
Purkinje, 500 raw material, 72, 79, 81
Purkinje cells, 500 RC, 286
P-value, 554 reaction time, 90, 233, 239, 304, 435, 437, 438, 453,
pyramidal, 493, 562 454, 500, 588
reactions, 66, 104, 105, 106, 107, 205, 222, 309, 407,
Q 437, 455, 456, 461, 487, 493, 499, 593
reactivity, 297, 301, 581, 585
quadriceps, 565 reading, 28, 111, 155, 175, 205, 246, 304, 320, 326,
Qualia, 64, 114 327, 330, 332, 333, 334, 336, 339, 342, 344, 345,
qualifications, x, 245 373, 382, 588
qualitative differences, 258 reading comprehension, 373
qualitative research, 315 real time, 330, 500
quality of life, 273, 281, 288 reality, 50, 51, 52, 154, 175, 186, 187, 193, 223, 239,
Quality of life, 279 247, 248, 254, 256, 279, 282, 302, 303, 305, 325,
quality research, 281 497, 503, 507, 530, 568, 586, 587, 589
quantitative research, 264 reasoning, 200, 223, 231, 318, 322, 341, 348, 420,
quantum, 70, 316 425, 429, 504, 507
quantum mechanics, 316 recall, 10, 24, 131, 132, 133, 135, 138, 139, 145,
query, 335, 338, 339, 340 151, 154, 155, 162, 199, 200, 205, 212, 222, 223,
questioning, 345, 516 225, 247, 251, 253, 258, 261, 276, 279, 282, 287,
questionnaire, xi, 141, 175, 185, 203, 205, 213, 375, 507
378, 381, 382, 400, 402 recall information, 258
questionnaires, 379 recalling, 133, 161, 219
reception, 408, 505
receptors, 230, 406, 416, 420
recession, 31
reciprocal cross, 419
 Index 619

reciprocal relationships, 27 religion, 280

recognition test, 140, 141, 143, 144, 198, 415 religiosity, 400
recollection, 120, 135, 136, 137, 139, 140, 141, 142, renaissance, 347
143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, rent, 354, 363
153, 154, 156, 157, 161 repetitions, 13, 342
recombination, 25 replication, 252, 398, 402
recommendations, iv, 194, 225, 281 representativeness, 356, 380, 532
reconcile, 65, 356 repressed memories, 154
reconciliation, 504 reproduction, 234
reconstruction, 23, 255, 264, 408 reptile, 491, 492, 495, 498
recovery, x, 245, 248, 250, 252, 254, 256, 257, 262, reptiles, 492, 495, 503, 505, 511
263, 264, 267, 268, 421, 487, 535, 563 requirements, x, xiv, 113, 245, 253, 260, 263, 434,
recovery process, 252, 256, 263 470, 471, 551, 552, 553, 558
recreation, 280, 288 researchers, 63, 76, 97, 99, 119, 124, 126, 127, 128,
recreational, 275, 280, 281, 284, 286, 288 129, 131, 133, 134, 135, 138, 139, 143, 146, 148,
rectilinear, 410 183, 200, 204, 221, 261, 264, 319, 327, 330, 346,
reduction, 277, 281, 282 353, 368, 370, 377, 406, 407, 467, 518, 522, 573,
refining, 121, 123 574
reflection, 46, 246, 263, 267, 268, 360, 380 reserve capacity, 273
reflexes, 407, 409, 497 reservoir, 347
reform, 270 residential, 290
refractory, 98 resistance, 103, 284, 317, 559, 560
regional, 97, 532 resolution, 191, 440, 487
Registry, 284 response time, 136
regression, xii, 66, 67, 74, 107, 211, 218, 376, 380, responsibility for learning, 261
395, 396, 399, 482, 529 responsiveness, 467
regression analysis, xii, 376, 395, 396 restaurant, 134, 254
regression equation, 211, 218 restoration, 74
regression model, 399 restructuring, 76
regular, xiii, 228, 232, 234, 276, 537, 541, 544 retention, 153, 183, 186, 250, 251, 252, 253, 257,
regulation, 72, 101, 102, 472, 494, 503, 558, 561, 266, 270, 276, 429, 486
563 retention interval, 153, 183, 186, 276
regulations, xiv, 239, 552, 558, 562 retina, 233
rehabilitate, 280 retirement, 282
rehabilitation, xiv, 186, 273, 274, 275, 276, 278, 284, retrograde amnesia, 533
285, 286, 287, 288, 292, 552, 563, 564, 565 returns, ix, 227, 256, 327, 332, 335
rehabilitation program, 273, 275, 278, 286, 287, 292 RF, 289
reinforcement, 164 Rho, 129, 155
rejection, 105, 140, 142, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, rhythm, 115, 239, 302, 586
149, 153, 154, 304, 376, 588 rhythms, 76, 497
relationship marketing, 465, 467, 474, 487 rice, 469
relative size, 183 right hemisphere, 166, 168, 192, 420, 434, 443, 453
relatives, 169, 275, 276, 285, 286, 541, 544 right hemisphere hypothesis, 434, 453
relativity, 505 right visual field, 443, 453
relaxation, 291 right-handers, 169
relevance, xii, 257, 307, 335, 356, 359, 367, 376, rights, iv, 198
380, 434, 454, 456, 540, 573, 591 rigidity, 380
reliability, xi, 186, 274, 319, 376, 379, 380, 382, rings, 410, 422
392, 397, 425, 467, 473, 474, 521, 542, 545 risk, x, xv, 160, 169, 232, 239, 295, 303, 304, 306,
Reliability, 392, 401 383, 384, 388, 389, 427, 457, 469, 525, 531, 534,
relief, 455 572, 573, 574, 576, 577, 579, 587, 588, 590
620 Index

risk aversion, 574 Schizophrenia, 241

risks, 470 schizophrenic patients, 231, 280
rivers, 470, 472 scholarship, 347
RMSEA, 390, 391, 475 scholarships, 312
Roads, 242 school, 2, 6, 182, 183, 192, 194, 269, 270, 271, 330,
robotics, 240 381
Robotics, 113 school failure, 269
rodents, 406 schooling, 381
romantic involvements, 488 science, ix, x, 55, 59, 60, 61, 70, 165, 202, 227, 311,
Rome, 31, 33, 35 312, 313, 315, 320, 329, 330, 335, 342, 344, 507
root, 10, 15, 40, 44, 47, 56, 130 scientific knowledge, 269
roots, 569 scientific understanding, xiv, 567
Roses, 531 scope, xi, 349, 352, 355, 362, 367, 368, 369, 370,
rotations, 422 471, 501, 570
roughness, 429 scores, 169, 188, 209, 214, 246, 265, 365, 380, 381,
routes, 235 394, 395, 396, 399, 438, 449, 453, 482
routines, 261 scripts, 153, 255, 533
Royal Society, 463 SD, 171, 205, 209, 210, 214, 217, 314, 320, 321,
RP, 170 381, 393, 438, 449, 473
rubber, 407 SDS, 223
rules, vii, 63, 64, 71, 72, 79, 80, 81, 82, 95, 107, 125, SE, 173, 542, 543, 545, 546
346, 356, 357, 358, 360, 472, 516 search, 52, 58, 59, 62, 77, 121, 123, 133, 151, 152,
Russian, 27, 55, 60 153, 156, 168, 176, 182, 190, 193, 239, 260, 262,
264, 266, 267, 517, 564
searches, viii, 121, 159, 177, 179, 180, 182, 243
S
searching, 52, 88, 121, 170, 173, 176, 180, 183, 185,
saccades, 70 246, 469
sadness, 106 security, 283, 472, 568
safeguard, 471, 474 seed, 10
safety, 31, 241, 282, 472 segmentation, 77, 103, 234, 485
salt, 10 segregation, 120, 121, 411
sample, x, xii, 3, 160, 167, 169, 170, 171, 218, 219, selecting, 13, 18, 52, 77, 100, 143, 354, 356, 363,
245, 265, 266, 270, 274, 284, 297, 307, 312, 376, 368, 571
381, 382, 390, 393, 398, 402, 403, 471, 472, 475, selective attention, 54, 88, 111, 113, 164, 307, 435,
481, 482, 518, 524, 545, 581, 591 436, 591
sampling, 481, 527 Self, 63, 79, 85, 86, 114, 162, 192, 261, 274, 440,
sanctions, 471, 472 441, 452, 461, 512
sand, 10 self monitoring, 237
SAS, 309, 593 self-awareness, 69, 92
SAT scores, 188 self-concept, 68
satisfaction, 275, 284, 309, 359, 360, 469, 485, 487, self-consciousness, 64, 65, 82, 83, 85, 86, 108
488, 576, 593 self-esteem, 264, 278, 282, 285, 286, 573
saturation, 305, 589 self-image, 296, 300, 580, 584
savings, 468, 576 self-monitoring, 74, 308, 592
schema, vii, 63, 64, 71, 72, 73, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, self-regulation, 72
87, 95, 98, 107, 134, 187, 240, 254, 255, 257, self-report, xi, 291, 375, 380, 381, 382, 442
353, 354, 355, 357, 362, 363, 364, 369, 371, 376, seller, 486
400, 425 SEM, 486
schemas, 64, 71, 135, 139, 256, 305, 376, 589 semantic association, 516
schemata, xi, 80, 81, 349, 353, 362, 370 semantic information, 148, 253
schizophrenia, 504
 Index 621

semantic memory, xiii, 253, 273, 278, 373, 515, 516, sexual dysfunctions, 295, 296, 297, 300, 579, 580,
517, 522, 525, 527, 529, 530, 532, 534, 535 581, 584
semantics, 2, 5, 6, 10, 13, 57, 60, 61, 83, 108, 154, sexual orientation, 191
350, 366, 372, 374, 529 sexual problems, 309, 593
senescence, 167, 185 sexuality, 193, 296, 303, 307, 308, 309, 580, 587,
senile, 274, 287, 291 591, 592, 593
senile dementia, 274, 287, 291 SH, 291
sensation, 18, 43, 55, 74, 76, 78, 84, 98, 100, 102, shame, 453
103, 109, 302, 507, 510, 586 shape, 18, 78, 86, 118, 121, 170, 174, 182, 186, 195,
sensations, 55, 74, 76, 77, 78, 80, 81, 82, 102, 105, 301, 340, 341, 352, 363, 364, 406, 408, 409, 410,
106, 107, 112, 303, 414, 497, 502, 587 411, 412, 413, 414, 415, 416, 417, 418, 419, 420,
sense organs, 75, 76, 78, 97, 229, 231 424, 425, 428, 429, 430, 585
senses, xii, 51, 161, 239, 249, 250, 262, 282, 366, shaping, 195
405, 407, 412, 414, 415, 416, 418, 420, 425, 426, shares, xii, 405, 538
430 sharing, 98
sensitivity, 423, 470, 547, 573 shock, 299, 301, 583, 585
sensorimotor system, 231 shocks, 298, 299, 582, 583
sensors, 104, 106, 107, 560 short period, 249, 435, 454
sensory experience, 510 short term memory, 249
sensory memory, 93, 248, 249, 259 shortages, 221
sensory modalities, xii, 77, 249, 405, 408, 411, 412, short-term, vii, 1, 9, 24, 58, 83, 94, 114, 234, 236,
414, 416, 418, 420, 423, 424, 425, 429 240, 247, 248, 249, 250, 259, 291, 425, 565
sensory modality, 77, 419, 426 short-term memory, 9, 24, 58, 234, 247, 248, 249,
sensory systems, 506 250, 259, 565
sentences, 4, 18, 22, 24, 25, 26, 37, 39, 53, 56, 82, shoulder, 411
89, 138, 213, 219, 300, 584 showing, 44, 162, 168, 172, 176, 186, 220, 278, 284,
separation, xii, 10, 30, 40, 405, 418 339, 343, 345, 434, 435, 444, 454, 494, 542, 547,
septum, 496 555
series, 13, 16, 20, 33, 41, 48, 92, 118, 122, 124, 126, side effects, 78
133, 165, 174, 263, 301, 302, 304, 377, 396, 409, sign, xi, 91, 230, 313, 319, 325, 332, 343, 346, 375,
410, 422, 423, 435, 468, 474, 542, 544, 553, 556, 384, 389, 392, 425, 457
559, 585, 586, 588 signaling, 231, 487
service industries, 487 signalling, 69
service provider, 467, 474, 483, 484, 485, 487 signals, 68, 69, 77, 97, 100, 101, 104, 105, 230, 302,
service quality, 467, 469, 474, 475, 483, 485, 486, 307, 435, 436, 455, 456, 502, 553, 586, 591
487, 488 significance level, 394
services, iv, xiii, 292, 465, 466, 467, 468, 470, 485, signs, 5, 91, 239, 279, 301, 303, 313, 339, 425, 585,
486, 487, 488 587
set theory, 351, 352, 358, 362, 367, 370 similarity, 7, 49, 120, 129, 130, 138, 148, 149, 150,
severity, 282, 382, 483, 522, 523, 525, 535 151, 152, 327, 348, 355, 358, 416, 421, 502, 532,
sex, 161, 164, 165, 166, 167, 187, 188, 189, 190, 533, 540
191, 192, 194, 195, 224, 307, 308, 524, 525, 529, simulation, 167, 365, 366, 485, 538, 562, 563
533, 534, 591, 592 simulations, 366
sex differences, 164, 165, 166, 167, 187, 190, 192, Singapore, 60
194, 195, 307, 525, 533, 591 singular, 10, 13, 23, 29, 43, 325
sex hormones, 167, 191 Sixth Amendment, 198
sex steroid, 167 skeleton, 54
sexual abuse, 296, 309, 580, 593 skills, 160, 164, 166, 169, 186, 187, 189, 253, 270,
sexual assault, 308, 592 274, 280, 284, 290, 312, 320, 325, 329, 342, 344,
sexual behaviour, x, xv, 295, 296, 306, 579, 580, 590 345, 407, 419, 467
sexual dimorphism, 164, 192 skin, 10, 408, 416, 417, 552, 559, 560
622 Index

sleep, 10, 92, 97, 98, 171, 194, 503 spatial ability, 160, 164, 165, 166, 168, 169, 185,
sleep disorders, 171 187, 188, 192, 193, 229
smoke, 10, 34 spatial information, viii, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163,
smoking, 34 170, 177, 183, 185, 420
snakes, 439, 455 spatial learning, 182, 192
snoezelen, 282 spatial location, 126, 127, 164, 185, 445
social anxiety, 436, 463 spatial memory, 164, 166, 168, 170, 185, 188, 190,
social behavior, 289, 503, 575 192, 193, 195
social behaviour, 160 spatial processing, 194
social class, 160 spatial representations, 190, 194
social cognition, 575 spatiotemporal, 233
social context, 189, 313, 571 specialization, 194, 257, 353, 354, 355, 357, 362,
social development, 246 364, 366, 367, 368, 369, 370, 406, 434
social environment, 232 species, 5, 25, 79, 185, 333, 406, 421, 495, 497, 505,
social evaluation, 332 506, 539, 544, 547, 549
social factors, 53 specific knowledge, 256, 322, 531
social interactions, 549 specificity, xii, 55, 76, 163, 186, 298, 307, 376, 379,
social isolation, 280, 282 399, 400, 515, 517, 518, 522, 523, 525, 526, 527,
social phobia, 296, 304, 307, 376, 436, 461, 580, 532, 533, 534, 564, 582, 591
588, 591 spectrum, 275, 331, 408, 505, 531, 564, 568
social policy, 508 speech, 4, 7, 15, 16, 20, 22, 23, 24, 27, 28, 30, 31,
social psychology, 150, 224, 462, 576, 577 33, 56, 57, 60, 81, 82, 83, 84, 107, 198, 224, 234,
social relations, 304, 588 317, 318, 330, 331, 332, 334, 339, 346, 370, 371,
social roles, 285, 525 406, 414, 426, 428, 429
social sciences, 329, 490 speech perception, 429
social support, 273 speech sounds, 414
socialization, 168, 188, 276, 280, 283, 284 speed, 78, 96, 101, 102, 113, 130, 174, 194, 233,
society, 168, 187, 246, 313, 340, 348 235, 236, 284, 304, 471, 524, 544, 559, 588
sociocultural, 168 spelling, 346
socioeconomic, 472, 541, 544 spending, 484
socioeconomic background, 541, 544 spheres, 56, 472
socio-emotional, 264 spiders, 439, 455
sociological, 313, 347, 348 spinal cord, 494, 562, 563
Socrates, 497, 502 sponges, 497
software, 56, 172, 175, 314, 315, 317, 441, 482 sporadic, 468, 517
SOI, 2, 3 sports, 164, 232
solid phase, 316 spouse, 275
solution, xi, 7, 28, 50, 52, 70, 229, 320, 376, 378, Spring, 486
383, 386, 387 SPSS, 442
somatosensory, 64, 71, 73, 74, 78, 82, 84, 87, 95, 98, SR, 289, 560
429, 510 S-shaped, 572
sorting, 312, 496 stability, xii, 15, 70, 205, 229, 230, 322, 327, 365,
sounds, 23, 25, 55, 82, 83, 233, 331, 346, 414, 423 376, 379, 392, 397, 556, 558
South America, 493, 494 stabilization, 275, 284
SPA, 473 stages, 77, 90, 170, 247, 249, 258, 267, 279, 282,
space environment, 253 286, 301, 323, 390, 435, 436, 444, 454, 522, 523,
spacetime, 502 529, 585
space-time, 279 STAI, 441, 442, 445, 448, 449
Spain, 60, 399, 433, 464, 465, 466, 471, 472, 473, standard deviation, 394, 396, 449, 453
475, 477, 478, 481, 482, 483, 515 standard error, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181
standards, 259, 384, 387, 397, 457, 570, 571
 Index 623

statistical analysis, 84 substrate, 73, 87, 99, 190, 499, 517, 555, 564
statistical inference, 534 substrates, 192, 428, 502
statistics, 403, 473, 475, 482, 527, 572, 577 subtraction, 31, 318, 338, 423
steady state, 101, 322 success rate, 312, 323
stellate cells, 500 succession, 68, 83
stereotype, 575 suffering, 280, 288, 295, 299, 303, 304, 305, 579,
stereotypes, 360 583, 587, 588, 589
stereotypical, 164 suicide, 80, 363
steroids, 166 summer, 24
stiffness, 557, 558 Sun, 512
Stimuli, 88, 204, 519, 520 superiority, 420
stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA), 84 superstitious, 399
STM, 248, 249, 250, 251, 252, 253, 263, 266 supplementation, 188
stock, 250 supplier, 466, 468, 469, 474, 483, 487, 488
storage, 58, 111, 194, 247, 248, 249, 250, 252, 254, suppliers, 466, 468, 469, 470, 472
258, 260, 261, 262, 264, 267 supply, 72, 78, 80, 97, 101, 337, 342, 343, 561
stoves, 3 surplus, 343
strain, 296, 553, 580 surprise, 239, 240, 318
strategy use, 188 survival, 72, 79, 81, 82, 84, 105, 108, 274, 282, 433,
stream of consciousness, vii, 6, 63, 64, 72, 83, 84, 437, 503, 524
85, 95, 107 survival value, 433
streams, 156, 160 susceptibility, 576
strength, 35, 202, 282, 283, 284, 309, 324, 361, 395, sweat, 552
397, 553, 593 Sweden, 292
strength training, 283 switching, xiii, 155, 465, 466, 468, 469, 470, 471,
stress, x, xv, 5, 128, 134, 139, 228, 238, 282, 295, 472, 474, 482, 483, 484, 485, 486, 487
296, 299, 301, 302, 303, 304, 305, 308, 318, 579, symbolic, 498, 503
580, 583, 585, 586, 587, 588, 589, 592 symbols, 33, 75, 120, 516
striatum, 491, 499 symmetry, 365, 400
stroke, 563, 564, 565 sympathetic, 296, 297, 308, 309, 552, 561, 565, 580,
structural equation model, 225, 486 581, 592, 593
structural equation modeling, 486 sympathetic nervous system, 565
Structural Equation Modeling, 401 symptom, xi, 376, 379, 396
structuring, 330, 332, 333, 349 symptomology, 395
students, x, xii, 165, 182, 203, 212, 222, 245, 246, symptoms, xi, xii, 274, 281, 289, 376, 379, 380, 381,
247, 251, 252, 256, 258, 259, 260, 261, 265, 266, 382, 394, 395, 396, 398, 399, 400, 402, 403
267, 268, 270, 283, 296, 312, 314, 342, 344, 347, synchronization, 83, 234
348, 376, 379, 381, 393, 438, 553, 574, 580 synchronize, 234
style, viii, 159, 176, 183, 192, 224, 280, 573 syntactic, 53, 59, 257, 367, 370
subcortical structures, 231, 552 syntax, 53
subdomains, 378 synthesis, xi, 96, 231, 349, 350, 371, 408, 410, 416,
subgroups, 187 503, 505
subjective, ix, 18, 32, 36, 43, 54, 55, 64, 69, 71, 75, systems, xiii, 407, 408, 426, 427, 437, 462, 463, 489,
84, 91, 105, 106, 119, 142, 227, 234, 235, 237, 490, 498, 499, 500, 501, 504, 505, 508, 524, 531,
240, 302, 307, 308, 440, 441, 442, 445, 455, 504, 563, 564
505, 513, 571, 572, 586, 591, 592
subjective experience, 71, 91, 119, 303, 513, 587
T
subjectivity, 240, 502
subliminal perception, 84 tachycardia, 455
substances, 171 tactics, 240, 266
substitution, 49, 507 tangible, 284
624 Index

TAR, 144 theoretical, 278

target population, 456 theoretical approaches, 246
target stimuli, 92, 435 theoretical support, 261
targets, 77, 131, 132, 136, 137, 139, 140, 143, 144, therapeutic, 274, 276, 283, 287
146, 147, 148, 149, 436 therapeutic interventions, 287
task demands, 98, 109 therapist, 280, 281, 282, 285, 286
task difficulty, 188 therapists, 133, 276
task load, 88, 97 therapy, 279, 280, 281, 282, 286, 287, 288, 289, 290,
task performance, 552, 564 291, 292, 307, 308, 309, 400, 401, 402, 456, 591,
taste, 105, 106, 282, 285 592, 593
taxonomy, 7, 109, 361, 504 thermodynamic, 97, 102
TE, 355, 383, 384, 385, 388, 389, 390 thermodynamics, 313, 316
teachers, 268, 269, 270, 271, 329 Thessaloniki, 489
teaching, 246, 250, 252, 253, 255, 268, 270, 277, thinking, 9, 59, 77, 98, 99, 101, 134, 228, 239, 246,
283, 313, 314, 315, 316, 320, 321, 329, 345 254, 264, 266, 271, 300, 317, 357, 359, 363, 372,
team sports, 164 383, 386, 389, 423, 458, 498, 568, 569, 571, 573,
techniques, 54, 125, 133, 141, 142, 144, 150, 250, 575, 576, 584
252, 261, 262, 263, 267, 275, 276, 277, 279, 281, third dimension, 19, 326, 366
283, 285, 288, 297, 487, 527, 581 thoracic, 496, 560
technology, 56, 113, 233, 269, 524, 553 threat, xi, xii, 185, 299, 307, 308, 375, 376, 377, 378,
teens, 275 379, 385, 386, 387, 391, 397, 398, 434, 435, 437,
telecommunications, 466 455, 461, 462, 463, 583, 591, 592
telephone, 245, 277, 352, 472 threatened, 298, 472, 582
telephone numbers, 277 threatening, 433, 435, 436, 454, 455, 456, 462, 464
television, 224, 352, 364 threats, 183, 299, 583
temperature, 43, 49, 313, 409, 424, 494 three-dimensional, 19, 170, 174, 191, 327
tempo, 43, 115 threshold, 77, 80, 84, 91, 102, 233, 304, 471, 484,
temporal lobe, 133, 517, 529, 533 510, 560, 588
temporal window, ix, 227, 234 threshold level, 510
tenants, 571 thresholds, 201
tension, 328, 365 throws, xii, 433
territorial, 503 tiger, 516
test items, 136, 141, 143, 144, 146 time periods, 88
test scores, 188 time-frame, 356
test statistic, 527 timing, 222, 318, 510
testimony, 154, 205, 212, 224, 225 tip-of-the-tongue, 151
testing, viii, 71, 120, 125, 130, 141, 142, 146, 159, title, 150, 505
160, 170, 172, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177, 182, 184, toddlers, 182, 191
189, 200, 266, 320, 392, 415, 417, 474, 507, 538, Tokyo, 60
539 tolerance, 194, 471, 472, 482
testosterone, 166, 167, 188, 195 tones, 98
Testosterone, 188 tonic, 455, 555, 558
testosterone levels, 168, 195 tooth, 10
test-retest reliability, xi, 376, 379, 392 top-down, 92, 93, 95, 118, 120, 122, 124, 125, 156,
Texas, 117, 316, 347 238, 240
textbook, 315, 316 topographic, 502
textbooks, x, 311, 312, 315, 316, 317, 320 topological, 410, 424
texture, 120, 121, 352, 363, 408, 409, 412, 414, 415, toys, 164, 166, 169
417, 418, 420, 422, 424, 428, 429 tracking, 54, 98
thalamocortical system, 68 tracks, 552
thalamus, 68, 84, 99, 126, 491 trade, 104
 Index 625

trade-off, 104 uncertainty, xi, xii, 37, 246, 329, 342, 375, 376, 378,
tradition, 2, 365 379, 380, 385, 386, 387, 390, 391, 397, 398, 399,
traffic, 17, 97, 232, 235, 236, 237, 241, 471 472
training, xiv, 92, 165, 170, 175, 184, 186, 245, 246, unconscious influence, xv, 567
271, 273, 274, 275, 278, 280, 281, 283, 284, 286, unconscious perception, 88, 112
288, 292, 552, 563, 574 undergraduate, xii, 165, 283, 312, 314, 315, 321,
training programs, 186, 288 322, 339, 344, 376, 379
trait anxiety, 434, 436 undergraduates, 344, 382
trajectory, 315 unemployment, 471
trans, 35 unemployment rate, 471
transcript, 317, 318, 319, 332, 339, 340, 342 UNESCO, 246, 272
transcription, 317, 319, 346 unfolded, 328
transcripts, 314, 317, 318, 323 uniform, 5, 19, 97
transducer, 553 uninsured, 470, 471, 472
transduction, 232 United, 110, 111, 113, 114, 198
transfer, xii, 249, 251, 252, 266, 313, 344, 355, 405, United States, 110, 111, 113, 114, 198
407, 408, 411, 412, 414, 415, 416, 417, 418, 419, universal grammar, 53
420, 424, 425, 427, 428, 429, 430 universality, 474
transformation, 76, 100, 406, 500 university students, 212, 268, 270, 379
transformations, 312, 526 unresolved conflict, 279
transition, 111, 316, 323 unwanted thoughts, 383, 389, 457, 460
transitions, 175 updating, 82, 107, 188, 195
translation, vii, 1, 2, 3, 49, 53, 55, 56, 58, 59, 60, upload, 507
115, 380, 382, 420, 421, 427, 502 urine, 102
transmission, 233, 246, 249, 408, 561 Uruguay, 470
transport, 249, 262 USA, 2, 53, 60, 117, 197, 349, 378, 380, 464, 516
transportation, 235, 262, 274
transpose, 305, 589
V
trapezius, 553
trauma, 304, 588 vagina, 297, 581
travel, 161, 188, 233, 575 vagus, 494
treatment, 3, 171, 186, 187, 188, 194, 259, 260, 264, Valdez, 187
274, 275, 278, 279, 280, 281, 282, 284, 285, 286, valence, 199, 200, 224, 434, 441, 444, 453, 454, 455,
288, 292, 308, 309, 358, 367, 402, 438, 456, 462, 456, 462, 573
467, 592, 593 valence hypothesis, 434
trees, 4, 525 valenced information, 199
trend, 282 validation, xi, xii, 282, 288, 292, 311, 376, 378, 381,
triceps, 553 402, 464, 471
triggers, 26, 253, 303, 587 validity, xii, 56, 202, 249, 291, 355, 357, 367, 373,
tropism, 497, 505 376, 379, 380, 382, 394, 395, 401, 473, 474, 482
trust, 487 valuation, 154, 273, 347
tuberculosis, 31 values, 2, 66, 68, 97, 215, 234, 253, 283, 305, 319,
turf cutter, 118 322, 331, 337, 353, 356, 362, 363, 364, 379, 390,
tutoring, 339 392, 394, 395, 397, 442, 475, 482, 531, 543, 545,
two-dimensional, 19, 170, 190, 315, 316, 325 554, 555, 559, 569, 572, 573, 589
two-way, 365 van der Waals, 316
typology, 58, 577 variability, 99, 234, 356, 522, 534, 565, 576
variable, 274
U variable factor, 505
variance, 213, 215, 234, 379, 386, 394, 395, 419,
UK, 109, 110, 115, 150, 152, 156, 347, 463, 515 442, 475, 482, 529, 542, 543, 545, 574
626 Index

variation, viii, 19, 45, 63, 64, 74, 80, 100, 101, 106, voice, 330, 331, 332, 334, 485, 488
107, 168, 202, 383 voice mail, 485
variations, 77, 80, 106, 283, 297, 315, 323, 324, 331, voiding, 435
345, 474, 552, 581 volunteer work, 283
varieties, 88, 91, 92 vortex, 490
varimax rotation, 383, 386 vote, 206, 208, 213, 218
vascular dementia, 530 vulnerability, x, xv, 295, 306, 399, 522, 579, 590
VC, 519, 520 Vygotsky, 313, 325, 348
vector, 301, 585
vegetables, 27, 517, 524, 525
W
vegetation, 525
vegetative state, 282 waking, 101
vehicles, 92, 367, 368, 466, 471, 472, 517, 524, 525, walking, 174, 235, 283, 406
539, 547 Wall Street Journal, 520
vein, 529 war, 261, 315
Venezuela, 270, 466, 470, 471, 472, 473, 475, 477, warrants, 248, 400
478, 481, 482, 483 Washington, 243, 271, 347, 373, 485
ventilation, 103 water, 5, 10, 31, 43, 44, 102, 167, 187, 190, 195,
venue, 198, 224 440, 455
verbal fluency, 188 water maze, 195
vertebrates, 491, 497 weakness, 327
vestibular system, 230 wealth, 406
victims, 286, 471 web, 204, 304, 360, 588
Victoria, 311 web-based, 204
Vietnam, 304, 588 Weinberg, 290
vigilante, 463 well-being, 285, 467
Viking, 512 wellness, 74
violence, 269 Western culture, 165
violent, 383, 389 William James, 134
virtual reality, 175, 186, 187, 193 wind, 10
viscoelastic properties, 507 windows, ix, 28, 227, 235, 236
visible, xi, 75, 173, 261, 311, 313, 332, 421 wine, 6, 21, 32
vision, xii, 60, 70, 110, 113, 154, 156, 171, 232, 234, winter, 3
405, 408, 410, 411, 412, 413, 416, 417, 418, 419, withdrawal, 105
420, 421, 424, 425, 427, 428, 430, 503, 539 wood, 3, 17
visual acuity, 413 word frequency, xiii, 515, 521
visual attention, 99, 110, 111, 113, 421, 435, 462 word meanings, 372
visual environment, 126 word perception, 154
visual field, 25, 115, 121, 123, 124, 125, 189, 409, word processing, 175
434, 435, 439, 443, 453, 454, 456, 464, 564 word recognition, 112
visual images, 160, 414 workers, 473, 524
visual memory, 114 working memory, x, xv, 22, 24, 25, 57, 61, 64, 71,
visual modality, xii, 233, 405, 411, 412, 416, 422 73, 74, 76, 78, 84, 87, 93, 95, 96, 98, 108, 155,
visual perception, 154, 407, 422 187, 188, 193, 194, 266, 295, 305, 306, 408, 410,
visual processing, 539 579, 589, 590
visual stimuli, 77, 441, 456 workplace, 232
visual stimulus, 234, 415, 419 worm, 10
visual system, 230, 232 worms, 359, 455, 497
visualization, 165, 167, 185, 552 worry, xi, 376, 379, 399
visuospatial, 189, 194, 273, 284 writing, 12, 24, 205, 246, 286, 314, 319
vocabulary, 4, 42, 344
 Index 627

young adults, viii, 159, 171, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181,
X
182, 183, 184, 185
X-axis, 146 young people, 185

Y Z

Y-axis, 146, 147 zero-risk, 232

yield, 68, 146, 162, 286 Zn, 230