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There is a great deal of research describing the close association that exists between numerical and spatial representations, illustrating the SNARC (Spatial-Numerical Association of Response Code) effect. This effect signals the spatial mental representation of small numbers to the left and larger numbers to the right, coinciding with the direction of reading and writing. Subsequent research has found a similar spatial representation for other stimuli (e.g., size of objects and animals, and words associated with time). Some of these spatially represented stimuli are social in nature, even suggesting a spatial mental organization of stimuli based on gender (e.g., the upper part of a vertical axis for males and the lower part for females). The aim of the present study was threefold (1) to replicate and extend results on the existence of a mental gender line (as a function of response hand: female-left hand and male-right hand) when responding simply to gender of stimuli; (2) to explore the influence of inhibitory control; and, (3) to determine whether gender-space associations depend on the explicit or implicit nature of a gender task. Three experiments were designed to pursue these objectives. In Experiment 1, female, male and neutral faces and names were displayed, and the participants were asked to identify their gender. Experiment 2, which also included a Stroop task, followed the same procedure as Experiment 1, but displayed objects that could be designated as female or male and others not related to any gender. Finally, in Experiment 3, in which participants were asked to respond to the direction of an arrow, object gender was not relevant to the task. Consistent with previous research and confirming our hypotheses, the results showed a spatial mental representation of the stimuli based on gender in all three experiments, regardless of whether the stimulus was consciously perceived. Moreover, inhibitory ability showed a relationship with the gender-space line effect. The contributions and implications of this study are discussed, as are possible limitations and future lines of research.

El análisis de este poema de Justo Alejo nos da pie para reflexionar sobre la poesía experimental, y el arte en general, en la segunda mitad del siglo XX; las aportaciones estéticas y filosóficas muestran un cambio profundo en la manera de concebir el arte y la vida en su conjunto pero, sobre todo, dan cuenta de un modo particular de entender la realidad. El más pequeño detalle de la vida cotidiana sirve al poeta como excusa para realizar una dura crítica social y un aviso a navegantes; utiliza recursos propios de la publicidad y de la literatura de vanguardia para construir un discurso donde la palabra y la imagen entran en relación, se alimentan mutuamente y juntas construyen horizontes nuevos. En el régimen estético del arte el montaje resulta esencial porque instala un nuevo concepto de temporalidad, cuyo elemento básico es la simultaneidad; introduce una operación que quiebra la lógica basada en la supremacía del texto sobre la imagen e instaura otro tipo de relación que define como interfaz, donde se produce una vinculación constante en una doble comunidad entre los signos y nosotros. Cuando se cumplen cuarenta y dos años de la muerte del autor, sirva este pequeñp homenaje en el que se pone de manifiesto la profunda vigencia de su pensamiento y la modernidad de su poesía.

Objective To estimate the incidence of falls and to know their characteristics in terms of location, temporality and injuries produced, and to analyse the sociodemographic and clinical characteristics of the patients who suffer falls. Methodology A retrospective observational cohort study was carried out in a level 2 hospital of the Madrid Health Service. Falls in hospitalized patients between July 1, 2018 and June 30, 2019 were studied. The incidence rate of falls per 1000 days of stay was estimated considering a Poisson distribution. The characteristics of the falls are described: temporality, injuries produced, location of the injuries and prescribed drugs. Sociodemographic and clinical characteristics of patients who suffered a fall were registered. A univariate analysis was performed to compare the results by gender. All data were obtained from the electronic medical record. Results One hundred and thirty-two falls were studied, which represent a rate of 1.61 falls per 1,000 days of stay. Men, older age, and admission to a medical specialty showed a significantly higher fall rate. The patients who suffered a fall had a mean age of 77.5 years (SD: 11.7), and had a median of 12.5 drugs prescribed (IQR: 9.25-15). Of the falls, 63.6% did not present any injury. Difference in gender was only found in the situation in which the fall occurred. Conclusions Our data report an incidence of falls similar to other institutions in our environment. The profile of the patient who suffers a fall is an older man, admitted under the charge of a medical specialty, with longer hospital stay, with associated comorbidity and polymedicated, without an obvious temporal feature.

Resumen Objetivo Estimar la incidencia de caidas y conocer sus caracteristicas en cuanto a localizacion, temporalidad y lesiones producidas, y analizar las caracteristicas sociodemograficas y clinicas de los pacientes que sufren caidas. Metodo Se llevo a cabo un estudio observacional de cohortes retrospectivo, en un hospital de nivel 2 del Servicio Madrileno de Salud. Se estudiaron las caidas de pacientes hospitalizados entre el 1 de julio de 2018 y el 30 de junio de 2019. Se estimo la tasa de incidencia de caidas por 1.000 dias de estancia considerando una distribucion de Poisson. Se describen las caracteristicas de las caidas: temporalidad, lesiones producidas, localizacion de las lesiones y pauta de farmacos. Se registraron caracteristicas sociodemograficas y clinicas de los pacientes que sufrieron una caida. Se realizo un analisis univariante para comparar los resultados por sexos. Todos los datos se han obtenido de registros de la historia clinica electronica. Resultados Se estudiaron 132 caidas, que suponen una tasa de 1,61 caidas por 1.000 dias de estancia. Hombres, edad avanzada e ingreso a cargo de una especialidad medica presentaron una tasa de caida significativamente mayor. Los pacientes que sufrieron una caida tienen una edad media de 77,5 anos (DE 11,7), y tuvieron pautados una mediana de 12,5 farmacos (RIC 9,25-15). El 63,6% de las caidas no presentan lesion alguna. Solo se encontro diferencia en cuanto al genero en la situacion en la que se produce la caida. Conclusiones Nuestros datos notifican una incidencia de caidas similar a la de centros de nuestro entorno. El perfil del paciente que sufre una caida es el de un hombre mayor, ingresado a cargo de una especialidad medica, con estancias hospitalarias mas largas, con alguna comorbilidad y polimedicado, sin una asociacion temporal evidente.

Introduction Hospital-wide SARS-CoV-2 seroprevalence is rarely explored and can identify areas of unexpected risk. We determined the seroprevalence against SARS-CoV-2 in all health care workers (HCW) at a hospital. Methods Cross-sectional study (14-27/04/2020). We determined SARS-CoV-2 IgG by ELISA in all HCW including external workers of a teaching hospital in Madrid. They were classified by professional category, working area, and risk for SARS-CoV-2 exposure. Results Among 2919 HCW, 2590 (88,7%) were evaluated. The mean age was 43.8 years (SD 11.1), and 73.9% were females. Globally, 818 (31.6%) workers were IgG positive with no differences for age, sex or previous diseases. Of these, 48.5% did not report previous symptoms. Seropositivity was more frequent in high- (33.1%) and medium- (33.8%) than in low-risk areas (25.8%, p = 0.007), but not for hospitalization areas attending COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 patients (35.5 vs 38.3% p > 0.05). HWC with a previous SARS-CoV2 PCR-positive test were IgG seropositive in 90.8%. By multivariate logistic regression analysis seropositivity was significantly associated with being physicians (OR 2.37, CI95% 1.61–3.49), nurses (OR 1.67, CI95% 1.14–2.46), nurse assistants (OR 1.84, CI95% 1.24–2.73), HCW working at COVID-19 hospitalization areas (OR 1.71, CI95% 1.22–2.40), non-COVID-19 hospitalization areas (OR 1.88, CI95% 1.30–2.73), and at the Emergency Room (OR 1.51, CI95% 1.01–2.27). Conclusions Seroprevalence uncovered a high rate of infection previously unnoticed among HCW. Patients not suspected of having COVID-19 as well as asymptomatic HCW may be a relevant source for nosocomial SARS-CoV-2 transmission.

The aim of this study is to examine the link between working memory capacity and the ability to exert cognitive control. Here, participants with either high or low working memory capacity (WMC) performed a semantic negative priming (NP) task as a measure of cognitive control. They were required to ignore a single prime word followed by a pattern mask appearing immediately or after a delay. The prime could be semantically related or unrelated to an upcoming target word where a forced-choice categorization was required. Each type of mask (immediate vs. delayed) appeared randomly from trial to trial. Results demonstrated that, when the ignored prime was immediately followed by the mask, neither of the groups (high or low WMC) showed reliable NP. In clear contrast, when the mask onset was delayed responses latencies were reliably slower for semantically related trials than for unrelated trials (semantic NP), but only for the high WMC group. The present results clearly demonstrate that semantic NP from single ignored primes depends on both the masking pattern that follows the prime (immediate vs. delayed mask), and on working memory capacity.

Aerobic exercise is associated with changes in brain morphology and improvement of cognitive functions. Physical activity may be especially important after age 60 when cognitive decline is more pronounced. In this paper, the effect of chronic practice of aerobic sports was studied in old adults by assessing their executive and mnesic functions, supported by frontal and temporal brain structures. Two groups were formed according to their age (60–69 and 70–79 years-old) including sportsmen (n = 23) and sedentary men (n = 24). Spatial memory and efficiency of attentional networks were measured, as well as general intelligence. Results showed that sportsmen outperformed sedentary participants in many of the tests employed. Thus their alerting, orienting and executive networks worked more effectively in the ANT-I task for executive functions, and they were more accurate in the spatial memory task, displaying a better spatial orientation. Scores in other neuropsychological tasks followed the same tendency. These data support the protective effect of aerobic exercise on cognitive functions.

The present research assessed whether children with high and low scores on temperament traits differed in their ability to inhibit irrelevant task information in a lexical decision task. Children from 7 to 12 years old were classified based on temperament dimensions measured using a version of the Temperament in Middle Childhood Questionnaire. The participants were instructed to either attend to (and remember) or to ignore a masked prime word followed by a central probe target on which they made a lexical decision. The results revealed several notable outcomes. First of all, recognition memory was better for attended than ignored words, providing further evidence that attention instructions influenced the processing of the primes. Secondly, although no negative priming effect was obtained in the "ignore" condition, 43% of children showed this effect. Thirdly, children scoring high on Inhibitory Control and Impulsivity showed ignored negative priming, whereas children scoring high on Inhibitory Control and low on Impulsivity ignored facilitation. Data are discussed within the framework of negative priming as a complex phenomenon that involves the interaction of different factors such as age, type of task, and certain temperament traits.

The present study investigated whether a differential availability of cognitive control resources as a result of varying working memory (WM) load could affect the capacity for expectancy-based strategic actions. Participants performed a Stroop-priming task in which a prime word (GREEN or RED) was followed by a colored target (red vs. green) that participants had to identify. The prime was incongruent or congruent with the target color on 80 and 20% of the trials, respectively, and participants were informed about the differential proportion of congruent vs. incongruent trials. This task was interleaved with a WM task, such that the prime word was preceded by a sequence of either a same digit repeated five times (low load) or five different random digits (high load), which should be retained by participants. After two, three, or four Stroop trials, they had to decide whether or not a probe digit was a part of the memory set. The key finding was a significant interaction between prime-target congruency and WM load: Whereas a strategy dependent (reversed Stroop) effect was found under low WM load,\ud a standard Stroop interference effect was observed under high WM load. These findings demonstrate that the availability of WM is crucial for implementing expectancy-based strategic actions.

The present research examines priming effects from a centrally presented single-prime word to which participants were instructed to either attend or ignore. The prime word was followed by a single central target word to which participants made a semantic categorization (animate vs. inanimate) task. The main variables manipulated across experiments were attentional instructions (attend vs. ignore the prime word), presentation duration of the prime word (20, 50, 80 or 100 ms), prime–target stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA; 300 vs. 800 ms), and temporal presentation of instructions (before vs. after the prime word). The results showed (a) a consistent interaction between attentional instructions and repetition priming and (b) a qualitatively different ignored priming pattern as a function of prime duration: reduced positive priming (relative to the attend instruction) for prime exposures of 80 and 100 ms, and reliable negative priming for the shorter prime exposures of 20 and 50 ms. In addition (c), the differential priming pattern for attend and ignore trials was observed at a prime–target SOA of 800 ms (but not at a shorter 300-ms SOA) and only when instructions were presented before the prime word. Methodological and theoretical implications of the present findings for the extant negative priming literature are discussed.

The present research examines the influence of prime-target relationship (associative and categorical versus categorical only) on priming effects from attended and ignored parafoveal words. Participants performed a lexical-decision task on a single central target, which was preceded by two parafoveal prime words, one of which (the attended prime) was spatially precued. The results showed reliable positive and negative priming effects from attended and ignored words, respectively. However, this priming pattern was observed only for the "associative and categorical", but not for the "categorical only" relationship condition. These results suggest that the lack of semantic priming effects from words in some prior studies may be attributed to the kind of material used (i.e. weakly-associated word pairs).

The influence of spatial attention on lexical decisions to lateralized target letter-strings appearing either along with a distractor (Experiment 1) or in an otherwise empty field (Experiments 2-6) was examined. Attentional orienting was controlled by peripheral (Experiments 1, 2, 3, and 6) and central (Experiments 4-5) cuing methods. Manipulations of spatial attention, including cue validity and cue-target stimulus onset asynchrony, were combined with manipulations of word frequency in Experiments 3-6. All the attentional manipulations were effective, but they did not modify the right visual field advantage in word performance. In addition, the attentional effects did not interact with either the presence or absence of distractors or with stimulus familiarity. Implications of these results regarding the influence of spatial attention (the posterior attention system) on word processing are discussed.

Schizotypy is a psychological construct related to schizophrenia. The exact relationship between both entities is not clear. In recent years, schizophrenia has been associated with hippocampal abnormalities and spatial memory problems. The aim of this study was to determine possible links between high schizotypy (HS) and low schizotypy (LS) and spatial abilities, using virtual reality tasks. We hypothesised that the HS group would exhibit a lower performance in spatial memory tasks than the LS group.Two groups of female students were formed according to their score on the ESQUIZO-Q-A questionnaire. HS and LS subjects were tested on two different tasks: the Boxes Room task, a spatial memory task sensitive to hippocampal alterations and a spatial recognition task.Data showed that both groups mastered both tasks. Groups differed in personality features but not in spatial performance. These results provide valuable information about the schizotypy-schizophrenia connections.Schizotypal subjects are not impaired on spatial cognition and, accordingly, the schizotypy-schizophrenia relationship is not straightforward.

The present research examines the semantic priming effects of a centrally presented single prime word to which participants were instructed to either "attend and remember" or "ignore". The prime word was followed by a central probe target on which the participants made a lexical decision task. The main variables manipulated across experiments were prime duration (50 or 100 ms), the presence or absence of a mask following the prime, and the presence (or absence) and type of distractor stimulus (random set of consonants or pseudowords) on the probe display. There was a consistent interaction between the instructions and the semantic priming effects. Relative to the "attend and remember" instruction, an "ignore" instruction produced reduced positive priming from single primes presented for 100 ms, irrespective of the presence or absence of a prime mask, and regardless of whether the probe target was presented with or without distractors. Additionally, reliable negative priming was found from ignored primes presented for briefer durations (50 ms) and immediately followed by a mask. Methodological and theoretical implications of the present findings for the extant negative priming literature are discussed.

El presente estudio investiga si la obtención de priming semántico negativo ante una única palabra ignorada depende del nivel de conciencia de dicha palabra. En cada ensayo aparecía brevemente una palabra previa seguida inmediatamente o tras un intervalo de demora, por una máscara de patrón. A continuación aparecía una palabra objetivo ante la que los participantes debían realizar una tarea de categorización semántica o una tarea de identificación de elección forzada. Se instruyó a los sujetos a que atendieran la palabra objetivo e ignoraran la palabra previa, considerándola como un distractor. Las palabras previa y objetivo pertenecían a la misma categoría semántica en la mitad de los ensayos, y a distintas categorías en los ensayos restantes. Los resultados mostraron un patrón diferencial de efectos de priming semántico en función del tipo de enmascaramiento: Priming negativo con la máscara demorada, y facilitación con la máscara inmediata. Estos resultados demuestran que el tipo de enmascaramiento, que supuestamente afecta a la percepción consciente vs. no consciente de la palabra previa, constituiría una variable crítica para obtener priming semántico negativo ante una única palabra. También son consistentes con la idea de que la percepción con y sin conciencia produce consecuencias comportamentales cualitativamente diferentes, que reflejan la contribución de procesos controlados y automáticos, respectivamente.

El presente trabajo pretende replicar y extender los resultados de algunos estudios previos que demuestran que la percepción consciente vs. noconsciente de palabras puede producir efectos comportamentales diferentes. Los participantes realizaban una tarea de categorización semántica sobre una palabra objetivo que era precedida por una palabra previa que podía pertenecer o a la misma categoría (20% de los ensayos) o a una categoría semántica diferente (80%). La palabra previa se presentaba brevemente y era seguida inmediatamente o tras una demora por una máscara visual. A diferencia de trabajos previos, el tipo de máscara variaba de forma aleatoria de ensayo a ensayo. En los ensayos con la máscara inmediata se encontró un efecto facilitatorio de priming semántico. Con la máscara demorada (que permitía la identificación consciente de la palabra previa) se encontró un efecto opuesto (negativo) de priming. Estos resultados proporcionan pruebas adicionales de que la percepción con y sin conciencia produce consecuencias comportamentales cualitativamente diferentes, las cuales reflejan la contribución de procesos controlados (estratégicos) y automáticos, respectivamente.