Search

Hypothesis. We intend to explore whether presenting information in a foreign language (as opposed to the native language) can help people to better distinguish between metaphorical an literal meanings of sentences. We also would like to explore if presenting information in a foreign language, as opposed to the native language, can make people less prone to adhere to theories of superstition and conspiracy. Goal of research: - to investigate the effects of the foreign language on Core Knowledge Confusion, Superstition and Conspiracy through the administration of an online questionnaire, following an experimental manipulation. - to investigate whether reading statements in the native language (Ita) or in the foreign language (Eng) may have an impact on Core Knowledge Confusion. - to investigate whether the use of a second language (English) affects being influenced by Superstition and Conspiracy of some scenarios. Expected results. We hypothesize that, reading the adapted version of Lindeman’s Core Knowledge Confusion test in the participants first and second language, could lead to different interpretations and different results. Participants who read the test in their first language will probably be more intuitive and prone to say that the sentences are literally true. Participants that read the test in their second language will be more rational and analytical and they will be more likely to see the real meaning of the sentences and answer that the sentences are not literally true, but only metaphorically true. As to the scenarios related to theories of Superstition and Conspiracy, we expect participants who read the statements in their second language to be less prone to believe an influence of the superstitious or conspiracy event. Method. Questionnaire with Likert scale, between-subject design Manipulation: the administration of a questionnaire in Italian or in English. Participants are invited to independently fill in an online questionnaire and are randomly assigned to a group (Ita/Eng).

The current project consists in a follow-up study. In a previous unpublished study (Vasta, Treccani, Mulatti, in progress) we argued whether a "control preparation" triggered by congruency cues (i.e., cues that predict the congruency level of the following stimulus) was specific to tasks that require conflict resolution, or could generalize to tasks that involve an increase/decrease in difficulty. In the current follow-up study, we will try to test this by reproducing the previous experimental design: we will preserve the same experimental structure, however we will add a condition of greater/minor difficulty, instead of greater/minor conflict.

Recent literature proposed that practice during a novel task allows the development of new strategies or cognitive routines, which are defined as “structured specifications of the coordinated sequence of processes that must be implemented to accomplish a mental activity” (Gathercole, Dunning, Holmes, & Norris, 2019, p.21). A transfer of these Cognitive Control routines can occur to a different task, but only if this new task shares similar characteristics with the first task (Gathercole, et al., 2019). Transfer of cognitive abilities following practice has been widely described with regard to Working Memory tasks (e.g., Shipstead, Redick, & Engle, 2012), whereas little has been said about Cognitive Control tasks, which are those tasks that are supposed to measure the ability to maintain a goal and suppress irrelevant stimuli, such as the Flanker task (Diamond, & Ling, 2016). Thus, it seems worth exploring whether a transfer of abilities could occur between two variants of the widely known Flanker task (Eriksen & Eriksen, 1974). Some authors have discovered that participants are able to strategically use cues that are predictive of the congruency of the incoming trial to respond faster and more accurately to congruent and incongruent trials in Flanker tasks (e.g., Correa, Rao, & Nobre, 2009; Ghinescu, Schachtman, Stadler, Fabiani, & Gratton, 2010). From the perspective of the present project, such improvement in performance could be explained by the fact that cues could activate or not activate a mechanism of proactive control that biases attention toward the task goal (see Braver, 2012 for the Dual Mechanism of Cognitive control framework, DMC). Our aim is to employ congruency cues to operationalize a Cognitive Control routine and to use these cues to investigate whether a strategic contingency learning of cues’ value in one Flanker variant can be transferred to a second Flanker variant. Therefore, the study aims to accomplish two goals: (1) to investigate whether it is possible to transfer cued Cognitive Control routines between two tasks that are believed to measure inhibitory control (two Flanker variants) and (2) to provide a method that can facilitate this transfer of abilities.

Jiménez, Abrahamse, Méndez and Braem (2019) showed that participants can learn to use sequential color-color contingencies in a Stroop-task in order to respond faster and more accurately, but they failed to find the same learning pattern with sequential color-congruency contingencies, thus suggesting that people are unable to reliably learn these contingencies. In the current study, we will try to further explore sequential stimulus-response associations: we will attempt to test whether the previous Jiménez, et al. (2019) null-finding was due to people’s inability to learn links between stimuli and control demands across trials, or prepare for next trial’s congruency conditions (e.g., Jiménez, Méndez, Abrahamse, & Braem, 2020). Hence, we will employ a Stroop task where congruency levels predict the color of the next trial (thus, the opposite of Jiménez, et al., 2019, where colors predicted congruency levels). This experiment will allow us to understand whether people are completely incapable to learn contingencies between stimuli and control demands across trials, or, instead, whether they struggle to prepare for congruency conditions, but can use the congruency level of a previous stimulus to gain an advantage in the next one. This gain should be particularly evident during incongruent trials, where the task-relevant dimension (color) and the task-irrelevant dimension (word) overlap, thus generating a conflict. Extended works on cognitive control suggested that internally generated conflict could serve as a cue to upregulate control (Botvinick, Braver, Barch, Carter, & Cohen, 2001), thus biasing participants behavior towards goal-relevant features, for example increasing attentional focus (Verguts & Notebaert, 2008). Hence, we expect conflict trials, in which control is increased, to be better cue predictors than congruent trials, in which control is expected to decrease.

Hypothesis We intend to explore whether presenting information in a foreign language (as opposed to the native language) makes people more tolerant to ambiguity. Goal of research - to investigate the effects of the foreign language on tolerance of ambiguity, through the administration of an online questionnaire, following an experimental manipulation. - to investigate whether reading statements and a scenario in the native language (Ita) or in the foreign language (Eng) may have an impact on tolerance to ambiguity. - to investigate whether the use of a second language (English) affects the tolerance to the ambiguity of some scenarios. Expected results We expect Italian participants who answer the questionnaire in English (L2) to be more tolerant compared to the Italian participants who answer the questionnaire in Italian (L1). Method Questionnaire with Likert scale Between-subject design Manipulation: the administration of a questionnaire in Italian or in English. Participants are invited to independently fill in an online questionnaire and are randomly assigned to a group (Ita/Eng).

Transfer of cognitive abilities has often been described in regard to Working Memory, while little has been said about Cognitive Control. Recent studies have proposed that congruency cues can be used to investigate learning-guided cognitive control adaptations in a trial-by-trial fashion during conflict tasks. In the present study, we employed congruency cues within an inducer/diagnostic paradigm to (1) induce a control learning between cue and string congruency in a Flanker task variant and (2) test whether this learning could transfer to a different Flanker variant. Results provided evidence that participants can learn to strategically employ congruency cues to adapt their cognitive control and that these learned control strategies/routines can be transferred to a very similar task variant (near transfer). Further experiments will be performed to explore the extent of this transfer.