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Was I dreaming or did it really happen? A comparison between real and artificial dream reports
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ANALISI DELLA STRUTTURA E DELL'EVOLUZIONE DEI CONSUMI "PERSONALI" DELLE FAMIGLIE ITALIANE
No full textDoes the ATOM (a theory of magnitude) model represent the advance in psychological research?
No full textTime, space and quantity are important aspects of human and animal lives. When analysing the studies, an interaction among these three aspects arises. The relationship between number and space is represented by the so-called SNARC (Spatial-Numerical Association of Response Codes) effect. This effect reflects the association between small numbers (i.e., 1) and the left side of space while large numbers (i.e., 9) are placed in the right side of space. The SNARC effect proves that humans represent numbers along a mental number line with a left-to-right orientation (in Western culture). It has been found that time is linked with spatial representation, showing an experiential relativity of perceived time in humans according to the environmental scale. This finding suggests that time and space can influence each other strongly. Classical models suggest using multiple switches and accumulators so that an organism can quantify time and number simultaneously. More recently these models have been revised to postulate an integration between number and time, lying in the same neural circuits. All these findings are unified in a theory (ATOM model) stating that time, space and quantity are part of a generalized
magnitude system in the primates’ brains, where specific cortical areas process these elements of the environment. There is relatively little in the literature on how spatial, numerical and temporal dimensions interact in the cognitive system and on the parallel or hierarchical nature of such interaction. We describe the nature of the ATOM model, analysing how each dimension is associated with other ones. Then we review the studies that have tested the interaction among the three representations. Finally, we suggest some future directions in this research field
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
A more accurate assessment of circadian typology is achieved by asking persons to indicate their preferred times rather than comparing themselves with most people
Full text linkThe aim of the present work was to compare two circadian questionnaires: the Preference Scale (PS) and the reduced version of the Morningness-Eveningness Questionnaire (rMEQ). A sample of 849 (35.10% men) university students, 421 of whom were Spanish (27.55% men; mean age 21.07 + 2.31) and 428 Italian (42.52% men; mean age 23.26 + 3.01), were administered both questionnaires. Gender (higher morningness in women) and nationality (higher eveningness in Spaniards) differences were replicated with rMEQ but not with PS, in which an inverse association between nationality and circadian preference was observed (i.e. higher morningness in Spaniards). Taking into account that the formulation of the rMEQ items, with its specific times, makes the answers less influenced by socio-cultural bias, we conclude that rMEQ is preferable to PS when evaluating circadian preference in young adults
Cognitive efficiency and circadian typologies: A diurnal study
No full textThe aim was to investigate differences between morning and evening types in the performance variations during the day of four different tasks: visual search, logic reasoning, spatial reasoning, mathematical reasoning. Twelve morning-, 24 intermediate-, and 12 evening-types took part in six consecutive experimental sessions from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. at intervals of 3 h, during which they had to carry out the four types of tasks, give an evaluation of their own cognitive efficiency and subjective alertness, and record body temperature. Significantly different circadian trends between morning and evening types emerged only in the visual search task. In the reasoning tasks no significant differences were observed in the whole day, as if tasks requiring a high operational load involved a cognitive and motivational engagement which can compensate, in normal day-night conditions, the efficiency decrease due to alertness changes. The results obtained on self-evaluation efficiency suggest an efficacy intervention of metacognitive processes of performance monitoring for complex tasks only. Different diurnal activation of the left-hemisphere between morning and evening types was posited
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