Process overlap theory (POT) is a new theoretical framework designed to account for the general factor of intelligence ("g"). According to POT, g does not reflect a general cognitive ability. Instead, "g" is the result of multiple domain-general executive attention processes and multiple domain-specific processes that are…

This study measured the emotional responses of students to common service learning activities. Two hypotheses focused on (1) expected changes in the mean emotion scores and (2) expected differences in individual responses. Results showed significant increases in Surprise, Anxiety and Distress and individual differences in Contempt, Disgust and…

Previous research has demonstrated that, presumably as a way to protect one's current romantic relationship, individuals involved in a heterosexual romantic relationship tend to give lower attractiveness ratings to attractive opposite-sex others as compared to uninvolved individuals (i.e., the "derogation effect"). The present study importantly…

Researchers frequently attempt to identify the specific neurocognitive processes that might be responsible for differences in performance associated with neurological status or other individual difference characteristics by administering two or more conditions of an experimental task to different groups of participants, and focusing on the…

Executive function (EF) skills are the attention-regulation skills that make it possible to sustain attention, keep goals and information in mind, refrain from responding immediately, resist distraction, tolerate frustration, consider the consequences of different behaviors, reflect on past experiences, and plan for the future. As EF research…

This article analyzes latent variable models from a cognitive psychology perspective. We start by discussing work by Tuerlinckx and De Boeck (2005), who proved that a diffusion model for 2-choice response processes entails a 2-parameter logistic item response theory (IRT) model for individual differences in the response data. Following this line…

The implementation of higher-order conditional motor behavior was investigated in the present fMRI study with the objective of answering three questions: (a) what happens in situations where one stimulus dimension alone does not sufficiently determine the correct response?; (b) does the implementation of second-order stimulus-response (S-R) rules…

Inattentional blindness refers to the finding that people do not always see what appears in their gaze. Though inattentional blindness affects large percentages of people, it is unclear if there are individual differences in susceptibility. The present study addressed whether individual differences in attentional control, as reflected by…

This study demonstrates the merits of evaluating a newly developed battery of executive function tasks, designed for use in early childhood, from the perspective of item response theory (IRT). The battery was included in the 48-month assessment of the Family Life Project, a prospective longitudinal study of 1292 children oversampled from…

Moss and Albery (2009) presented a dual-process model of the alcohol-behavior link, integrating alcohol expectancy and alcohol myopia theory. Their integrative theory rests on a number of assumptions including, first, that alcohol expectancies are associations that can be activated automatically by an alcohol-relevant context, and second, that…

Atypical attention, while not a diagnostic feature, is common in individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). The study of these atypicalities has recently gained in both quantity and quality, due in part to an increased focus on attentional atypicalities as one of the earliest signs of ASD in infancy. A range of attentional processes and…

This study consists of a comparative analysis of patterns of de-escalation between ages 17-18 and 32, based on data from two well-known prospective longitudinal studies, the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development (a study of 411 working-class males in London) and the Montreal Two Samples Longitudinal Study (a sample of 470 adjudicated…

The present study investigates the relation between spatial ability and visuo-spatial and verbal working memory in spatial text processing. In two experiments, participants listened to a spatial text (Experiments 1 and 2) and a non-spatial text (Experiment 1), at the same time performing a spatial or a verbal concurrent task, or no secondary task.…

Impairments in executive abilities such as cognitive flexibility have been identified in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). It remains unclear, however, whether such individuals also experience impairments in another executive ability: inhibitory control. In the present study, we administered three inhibitory tasks to 18 children…

A development study involving 498 supervisors and a series of validity studies involving 531 adults identified primary dimensions, psychometric characteristics, and construct validation evidence for internal ability, internal propensity, and external propensity as domain-specific measures of feedback. Theoretical and practical extensions of the…