Fernandes, T., Leite, I., & Kolinsky, R. (2016, in press). Into the looking glass: Literacy acquisition and mirror invariance in preschool and first-grade children. Child Development. At what point in reading development does literacy impact object recognition and orientation processing? Is it specific to mirror images? To answer these questions, forty-six 5-7-year-old preschoolers and first graders performed two same-different tasks differing in the matching criterion - orientation-based vs. shape-based (orientation-independent) - on geometric shapes and letters. On orientation-based judgments, first graders outperformed preschoolers who had the strongest difficulty with mirrored pairs. On shape-based judgments, first graders were slower for mirrored than identical pairs, and even slower than preschoolers. This mirror cost emerged with letter knowledge. Only first graders presented worse shape-based judgments for mirrored and rotated pairs of reversible (e.g., b-d; b-q) than non-reversible (e.g., e-ә) letters, indicating readers’ difficulty in ignoring orientation-contrasts relevant to letters.
Demoulin, C., & Kolinsky, R. (2016, in press). Does learning to read shape verbal working memory? Psychonomic Bulletin & Review . DOI 10.3758/s13423-015-0956-7. Many experimental studies have investigated the relationship between the acquisition of reading and working memory in a unidirectional way, attempting to determine to what extent individual differences in working memory can predict reading achievement. In contrast, very little attention has been dedicated to the converse possibility that learning to read shapes the development of verbal memory processes. In this paper, we present available evidence that advocates a more prominent role for reading acquisition on verbal working memory and then discuss the potential mechanisms of such literacy effects. First, the early decoding activities might bolster the development of subvocal rehearsal, which, in turn, would enhance serial order performance in immediate memory tasks. In addition, learning to read and write in an alphabetical system allows the emergence of phonemic awareness and finely tuned phonological representations, as well as of orthographic representations. This could improve the quality, strength, and precision of lexical representations, and hence offer better support for the temporary encoding of memory items and/or for their retrieval.
Doyen, S., Klein, O., Simons, D., & Cleeremans, A. (2014). On the other side of the mirror: Priming in cognitive and social psychology. Social Cognition, 32 (Supplement: Understanding priming effects in social psychology), 12-32.
Abstract:
Over the past several years, two largely separate traditions have collided, leading to controversy over claims about priming. We describe and contrast the main accounts of priming effects in cognitive and social psychology, focusing especially on the role of awareness. In so doing, we consider one of the core points of contention, claims about the effects of subliminal priming. Whereas cognitive psychologists often are interested in exploring how priming operates with and without awareness, social psychologists more commonly assume subliminality in order to bolster claims about the automaticity of priming. We discuss the criteria necessary to claim that a stimulus was processed entirely without awareness, noting the challenges in meeting those criteria. Finally, we identify three sources of conflict between the fields: awareness, replicability, and the nature of the underlying processes. We close by proposing resolutions for each of them. "
Gaillard, V., Cleeremans, A., & Destrebecqz, A. (2014). Dissociating conscious and unconscious learning with objective and subjective measures. Clinical EEG and Neuroscience, 45(1), 50-56.
Abstract:
According to functionalist theories, consciousness can be defined by the functions that it serves and by the way it contributes to cognition. For example, when trying to establish dissociations between conscious and unconscious knowledge, conscious representations would be identified by the fact that they allow cognitive control or successful identification or recollection, assessed by verbal reports or forced-choice tasks. Even though the functionalist approach has brought about important dissociation results concerning conscious and unconscious cognition, critics emphasize that it does not account for the qualitative properties of conscious experience. Phenomenal theories are precisely based on the notion that conscious representations are such that it feels like something to have these representations. Thus, one way to assess conscious knowledge is to ask people, after they have produced a forced-choice response, to identify their mental states through the use of subjective confidence ratings, in which they discriminate between a complete guess and a response based on some feeling of knowing. However, these 2 approaches are not mutually exclusive. In this article, we review a series of studies showing that the joint use of objective judgments about some external stimuli and about one’s own subjective knowledge concerning these stimuli, provides new insights into the putative dissociation between conscious and unconscious knowledge in learning.
Atas, A., & Cleeremans, A. (2015). The temporal dynamic of automatic inhibition of irrelevant actions. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 41(2), 289-305.
Abstract:
Motor inhibition can occur even without conscious perception and any voluntary effort. Although it is now clear that such an inhibitory process needs time to unfold, its exact temporal dynamic remains to be elucidated. Therefore, the present study aims to examine the impact of various temporal factors on automatic motor inhibition using the masked priming task. Results shows that this process can be modulated by any factor that introduces time between the mask onset and the execution of target response, whether it stems from a purely external origin (mask-target SOA), a purely internal origin (spontaneous reaction time [RT] fluctuations), or a mix of both (RT fluctuations from the target sequence). Moreover, when the external temporal factor could not determine the direction of prime influence, the RT fluctuations had the strongest impact on the priming effect. These RT fluctuations are plausibly because of spontaneous trial-to-trial changes from more impulsive and error-prone decisions to more cautious and accurate decisions to the target. Indeed, both accuracy and speed were equally required during the task, but both requirements are impossible to achieve perfectly in every trial. This suggests that fluctuations in the level of caution in voluntary decisions can modulate unconscious and involuntary motor inhibition.
Caspar, E., Cleeremans, A., & Haggard, P. (2015). The relationship between human agency and embodiment. Consciousness & Cognition, 33, 226-236.
Abstract:
Humans regularly feel a sense of agency (SoA) over events where the causal link between action and outcome is extremely indirect. We have investigated how intermediate (here, a robotic hand) events that intervene between action and outcome may alter SoA, using intentional binding measures. The robotic hand either performed the same movement as the participant (active congruent), or performed a similar movement with another finger (active incongruent). Binding was significantly reduced in the active incongruent relative to the active congruent condition, suggesting that altered embodiment influences SoA. However, binding effects were comparable between a condition where the robot hand made a congruent movement, and conditions where no robot hand was involved, suggest- ing that intermediate and embodied events do not reduce SoA. We suggest that human sense of agency involves both statistical associations between intentions and arbitrary out- comes, and an effector-specific matching of sensorimotor means used to achieve the outcome.
Timmermans, B., & Cleeremans, A. (2015). How can we measure awareness? An overview of current methods. In M. Overgaard (Ed.), Behavioural Methods in Consciousness Research, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 21-46.
Anzulewicz, A., Asanowicz, D. , Windey, B., Paulewicz, B., Wierzchon, M. & Cleeremans, A. (2015). Does level of processing affect the transition from unconscious to conscious perception? Consciousness and Cognition, 36, 1-11.
Abstract:
Recently, Windey, Gevers, and Cleeremans (2013) proposed a level of processing (LoP) hypothesis claiming that the transition from unconscious to conscious perception is influ- enced by the level of processing imposed by task requirements. Here, we carried out two experiments to test the LoP hypothesis. In both, participants were asked to classify briefly presented pairs of letters as same or different, based either on the letters’ physical features (a low-level task), or on a semantic rule (a high-level task). Stimulus awareness was mea- sured by means of the four-point Perceptual Awareness Scale (PAS). The results showed that low or moderate stimulus visibility was reported more frequently in the low-level task than in the high-level task, suggesting that the transition from unconscious to conscious perception is more gradual in the former than in the latter. Therefore, although alternative interpretations remain possible, the results of the present study fully support the LoP hypothesis.
Maes, E., De Filippo, G., Inkster, A., Lea, S. E. G., De Houwer, J., D'Hooge, R., Beckers, T., & Wills, A. J. (in press). Feature- versus rule-based generalization in rats, pigeons and humans. Animal Cognition.
Abstract:
Humans can spontaneously create rules that allow them to efficiently generalize what they have learned to novel situations. An enduring question is whether rule-based generalization is uniquely human or whether other animals can also abstract rules and apply them to novel situations. In recent years, there have been a number of high-profile claims that animals such as rats can learn rules. Most of those claims are quite weak because it is possible to demonstrate that simple associative systems (which do not learn rules) can account for the behavior in those tasks. Using a procedure that allows us to clearly distinguish feature-based from rule-based generalization (the Shanks-Darby procedure), we demonstrate that adult humans show rule-based generalization in this task, while generalization in rats and pigeons was based on featural overlap between stimuli. In brief, when learning that a stimulus made of two components (“AB”) predicts a different outcome than its elements (“A” and “B”), people spontaneously abstract an opposites rule and apply it to new stimuli (e.g. knowing that “C” and “D” predict one outcome, they will predict that “CD” predicts the opposite outcome). Rats and pigeons show the reverse behavior – they generalize what they have learned, but on the basis of similarity (e.g. “CD” is similar to “C” and “D”, so the same outcome is predicted for the compound stimulus as for the components). Genuinely rule-based behavior is observed in humans, but not in rats and pigeons, in the current procedure.
105. Pegado, F., Comerlato, E., Ventura, F., Jobert, A., Nakamura, K., Buiatti, M., Ventura, P., Dehaene-Lambertz, G., Kolinsky, R., Morais, J., Braga, L. W., Cohen, L., & Dehaene, S. (2014). Timing the impact of literacy on visual processing. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 111(49), E5233–E5242. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1417347111.
Learning to read requires the acquisition of an efficient visual procedure for quickly recognizing fine print. Thus, reading practice could induce a perceptual learning effect in early vision. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in literate and illiterate adults, we previously demonstrated an impact of reading acquisition on both high- and low-level occipitotemporal visual areas, but could not resolve the time course of these effects. To clarify whether literacy affects early vs. late stages of visual processing, we measured event-related potentials to various categories of visual stimuli in healthy adults with variable levels of literacy, including completely illiterate subjects, early-schooled literate subjects, and subjects who learned to read in adulthood (ex-illiterates). The stimuli included written letter strings forming pseudowords, on which literacy is expected to have a major impact, as well as faces, houses, tools, checkerboards, and false fonts. To evaluate the precision with which these stimuli were encoded, we studied repetition effects by presenting the stimuli in pairs composed of repeated, mirrored, or unrelated pictures from the same category. The results indicate that reading ability is correlated with a broad enhancement of early visual processing, including increased repetition suppression, suggesting better exemplar discrimination, and increased mirror discrimination, as early as ∼100–150 ms in the left occipitotemporal region. These effects were found with letter strings and false fonts, but also were partially generalized to other visual categories. Thus, learning to read affects the magnitude, precision, and invariance of early visual processing.
Dehaene, S., Cohen, L., Morais, J., & Kolinsky, R. (2015). Illiterate to literate: Behavioural and cerebral changes induced by reading acquisition. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 16, 234-244. The acquisition of literacy transforms the human brain. By reviewing studies of illiterate subjects, we propose specific hypotheses on how the functions of core brain systems are partially reoriented or ‘recycled’ when learning to read. Literacy acquisition improves early visual processing and reorganizes the ventral occipito-temporal pathway: responses to written characters are increased in the left occipito-temporal sulcus, whereas responses to faces shift towards the right hemisphere. Literacy also modifies phonological coding and strengthens the functional and anatomical link between phonemic and graphemic representations. Literacy acquisition therefore provides a remarkable example of how the brain reorganizes to accommodate a novel cultural skill.
Van Lier J., Vervliet B., Boddez Y., Raes F. (2014). “Why is everyone always angry with me?!”: When thinking ‘why’ leads to generalization. Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry, 47, 34-41.
Raes, A. K., De Houwer, J., De Schryver, M., Brass, M., & Kalisch, R. (2014). Do CS-US pairings actually matter? A within-subject comparison of instructed fear conditioning with and without actual CS-US pairings. PLoS ONE 9(1): e84888. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0084888
Previous research showed that instructions about CS-US pairings can lead to fear of the CS even when the pairings are never presented.In the present study, we examined whether the experience of CS-US pairings adds to the effect of instructions by comparing instructed conditioning with and without actual CS-US pairings in a within-subject design. Thirty-two participants saw three fractals as CSs (CS+1, CS+2, CS-) and received electric shocks as USs. Before the start of a so-called training phase, participants were instructed that both CS+1 and CS+2 would be followed by the US, but only CS+1 was actually paired with the US. The absence of the US after CS+2 was explained in such a way that participants would not doubt the instructions about the CS+2-US relation. After the training phase, a test phase was carried out. In this phase, participants expected the US after both CS+s but none of the CS+s was actually paired with the US. During test, self-reported fear was initially higher for CS+1 than for CS+2, which indicates that the experience of actual CS-US pairings adds to instructions about these pairings. On the other hand, the CS+s elicited similar skin conductance responses and US expectancies. Theoretical and clinical implications are discussed.
De Houwer, J. (2014). A Propositional Model of Implicit Evaluation. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 8, 342-353.
Implicit evaluation can be defined as the automatic effect of stimuli on evaluative responses. A major advantage of this definition is that it is neutral with regard to the mental processes and representations that mediate implicit evaluation. Whereas many existing models postulate that implicit evaluation is mediated by the automatic spreading of activation along associations in memory, it is also possible to entertain the idea that implicit evaluation is due to the automatic formation or activation of propositions. In line with such a propositional model of implicit evaluation, evidence suggests that implicit evaluation (a) can be based on instructions and inferences, (b) is sensitive to information about how stimuli are related, and (c) can reflect several propositions that differ only with regard to how stimuli are related. Although it might be difficult to differentiate between propositional models on the one hand and association-activation or dual-process models on the other hand, merely considering the idea that implicit evaluation might be mediated by propositions offers a new perspective on existing findings and leads to novel predictions about the conditions under which implicit evaluation occurs.
