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Background: We have previously presented two educational interventions aimed to diminish causal illusions and promote critical thinking. In both cases, these interventions reduced causal illusions developed in response to active contingency learning tasks, in which participants were able to decide whether to introduce the potential cause in each of the learning trials. The reduction of causal judgments appeared to be influenced by differences in the frequency with which the participants decided to apply the potential cause, hence indicating that the intervention affected their information sampling strategies. Objective: In the present study, we investigated whether one of these interventions also reduces causal illusions when covariation information is acquired passively. Method: Forty-one psychology undergraduates received our debiasing intervention, while 31 students were assigned to a control condition. All participants completed a passive contingency learning task. Results: We found weaker causal illusions in students that participated in the debiasing intervention, compared to the control group. Conclusion: The intervention affects not only the way the participants look for new evidence, but also the way they interpret given information. Teaching implications: Our data extending previous results regarding evidence-based educational interventions aimed to promote critical thinking to situations in which we act as mere observers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the "reduced emotionality hypothesis", we are less emotionally driven when reasoning in a foreign language (FL) than in a native language (NL). We examined whether this foreign language effect (FLe) extends to the way we perceive motivational quotes (i.e., encouraging slogans conveying a profound and inspirational message): we expected FL participants to rate motivational quotes as less profound than NL participants. Strikingly, we observed the opposite: FL participants found motivational quotes more profound than NL participants, even after controlling for potential confounders (e.g., IQ, reasoning style). Both FL and NL participants gave similarly low profundity ratings to pseudo-profound bullshit sentences (i.e., meaningless sentences sounding profound), indicating that the message must be meaningful for the FLe to arise. We propose that, like space or time, language could promote psychological distance. This favours a focus on the background of a message to indicate profoundness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies have proposed that low evidential criteria or proneness to jump to conclusions influences the formation of paranormal beliefs. We investigated whether the low evidential criteria hypothesis for paranormal beliefs extends to a conceptually distinct type of unwarranted beliefs: those related to pseudoscience. We presented individuals varying in their endorsement of pseudoscientific beliefs with two hypothesis testing tasks. In the beads task, the participants were asked to decide from which of two jars containing different proportions of colored beads they were collecting samples. In the mouse trap task, they were asked to guess which rule determined whether a participant-controlled mouse obtained a piece of cheese or was trapped. In both cases, the volunteers were free to decide when to stop collecting evidence before completing the tasks. Our results indicate that, compared to skeptics, individuals presenting stronger endorsement of pseudoscientific beliefs tend to require less evidence before coming to a conclusion in hypothesis testing situations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Positive implications of schizotypal personality have been discussed in the literature in the last few years, higher creativity being one of them. Specifically, positive and negative schizotypy dimensions have been respectively related to higher and lower creativity levels. However, a considerable amount of null associations between these two constructs have also been reported. This heterogeneity could be due to the multidimensionality of both constructs. The aim of this study is to go deeper into the general relationship between creativity and schizotypy, disentangling the associations between specific dimensions of these two constructs. We assessed schizotypy in a sample of 154 volunteers. They also filled out creative personality and creative products questionnaires. Regression analyses showed no effect of scores in the positive dimension of schizotypy over either of the two creativity measures. Interestingly, lower scores in the negative dimension were associated with more creative products, whereas lower scores in the disorganized dimension were associated with a more creative personality. Our results point toward the need to use assessment tools tapping into the different aspects of creativity and to take into account the multidimensional nature of schizotypal personality in order to clarify the relationship between these two complex constructs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Promoting a better understanding of statistical data is becoming increasingly important for improving risk comprehension and decision-making. In this regard, previous studies on Bayesian problem solving have shown that iconic representations help infer frequencies in sets and subsets. Nevertheless, the mechanisms by which icons enhance performance remain unclear. Here, we tested the hypothesis that the benefit offered by icon arrays lies in a better alignment between presented and requested relationships, which should facilitate the comprehension of the requested ratio beyond the represented quantities. To this end, we analyzed individual risk estimates based on data presented either in standard verbal presentations (percentages and natural frequency formats) or as icon arrays. Compared to the other formats, icons led to estimates that were more accurate, and importantly, promoted the use of equivalent expressions for the requested probability. Furthermore, whereas the accuracy of the estimates based on verbal formats depended on their alignment with the text, all the estimates based on icons were equally accurate. Therefore, these results support the proposal that icons enhance the comprehension of the ratio and its mapping onto the requested probability and point to relational misalignment as potential interference for text-based Bayesian reasoning. The present findings also argue against an intrinsic difficulty with understanding single-event probabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The influence of emotional content on language processing remains unclear. Previous research conducted in English has obtained contradictory results regarding the effects of valence on word recognition. Whereas some studies indicate that valence predicts recognition latencies such that negative words are processed more slowly than positive words, other studies indicate facilitation of responses to emotional (both positive and negative) compared to neutral words. The authors examined the influence of valence and arousal on word recognition reaction time (RT) using large-scale word naming and lexical decision data-sets in Spanish. They found that linear mixed-effects model estimates revealed a valence but not an arousal effect on reading latencies. The influence of valence was better captured by a graded (RTs to positive words < neutral < negative) than by a categorical (positive < negative) valence effect. A categorical emotional versus neutral effect was not reliably observed. In an advance on previous research, the authors' analyses showed that the valence effect is substantially more prominent in lexical decision than in pronunciation. These results mirror some of those reported previously in English, adding evidence to support their validity, and demonstrating important parallels in word recognition processes in orthographically shallow as well as deep languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients are known to present semantic memory impairments, and semantic processing plays a crucial role in the formation of false memories. We assessed 40 early stage AD patients and 35 matched healthy volunteers with an emotional version of the Deese-Roediger-McDermott paradigm, which allows the study of false memory formation. Participants were presented with three negative, three neutral and three positive lists of words, each semantically associated to a critical unpresented word. After the presentation of the lists the volunteers were asked to respond to a recognition questionnaire stating whether these critical lures, as well as other presented and unpresented words, had been previously shown or not. We replicate the pattern of decreased discriminability between list-related and -unrelated items for AD patients compared to healthy seniors observed in previous studies. Moreover, like control participants, AD patients displayed enhanced true recognition for emotional materials, both positive and negative. With regards to false recognition, our data show decreased discriminability between related and unrelated lures for positive material. These results point out differential involvement of semantic-based information during memory formation in AD patients compared to healthy seniors. Nevertheless, our data indicate that emotional content effects over semantic-based false memory formation persist in this population, at least at early stages of disease development. Highlights • Alzheimer's disease patients present semantic memory impairments. • Valence affects false memory formation in healthy adults. • Early-stage AD patients and matched controls were presented with valenced DRM lists. • AD patients presented reduced discriminability for true and false recognition. • Valence still affects semantic-based false memories in early-stage AD patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • Research associating fluency and psychosis proneness has yielded conflicting results. • Participants responded to oral and written semantic and phonological fluency tasks. • Schizotypy was not reliably associated to productivity or originality of the responses. • Results do not support an association between schizotypy and semantic disturbances. Abstract Semantic disturbances have been proposed as a possible cause of formal thought disorder in schizophrenia. Fluency tasks, in which volunteers are asked to produce as many exemplars as they can for a given category during one minute, are usually applied to the assessment of semantic processing. However, studies associating fluency and proneness to psychosis have provided conflicting results so it is not clear whether these disturbances can be identified at subclinical stages. We conducted two experiments. In the first one, 71 volunteers completed written category fluency tasks with four semantic categories (animals, fruits, clothing and vehicles). In the second experiment, 77 new participants completed oral category and phonological fluency tasks (words starting with f, t, p and c). In both experiments, we assessed schizotypal personality and vocabulary size. Schizotypal traits were not reliably associated with either productivity or originality of the responses in any experiment. In contrast, vocabulary size significantly predicted the participants' scores in all the tasks. Along with results of other recent studies, our data cast doubt on the reliability of previous observations pointing out an association between schizotypy and lexical-semantic disturbances, at least in relation to productivity and originality in fluency tests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been shown that Bayesian reasoning is affected by the believability of the data, but it is unknown which conditions could potentiate or reduce such belief effect. Here, we tested the hypothesis that the belief effect would mainly be observed in conditions fostering a gist comprehension of the data. Accordingly, we expected to observe a significant belief effect in iconic rather than in textual presentations and, in general, when nonnumerical estimates were requested. The results of three studies showed more accurate Bayesian estimates, either expressed numerically or nonnumerically, for icons than for text descriptions of natural frequencies. Moreover, in line with our expectations, nonnumerical estimates were, in general, more accurate for believable rather than for unbelievable scenarios. In contrast, the belief effect on the accuracy of the numerical estimates depended on the format and on the complexity of the calculation. The present findings also showed that single-event posterior probability estimates based on described frequencies were more accurate when expressed nonnumerically rather than numerically, opening new avenues for the development of interventions to improve Bayesian reasoning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research has studied the relationship between political ideology and cognitive biases, such as the tendency of conservatives to form stronger illusory correlations between negative infrequent behaviors and minority groups. We further explored these findings by studying the relation between illusory correlation and moral values. According to the moral foundations theory, liberals and conservatives differ in the relevance they concede to different moral dimensions: Care, Fairness, Loyalty, Authority, and Purity. Whereas liberals consistently endorse the Care and Fairness foundations more than the Loyalty, Authority and Purity foundations, conservatives tend to adhere to the five foundations alike. In the present study, a group of participants took part in a standard illusory correlation task in which they were presented with randomly ordered descriptions of either desirable or undesirable behaviors attributed to individuals belonging to numerically different majority and minority groups. Although the proportion of desirable and undesirable behaviors was the same in the two groups, participants attributed a higher frequency of undesirable behaviors to the minority group, thus showing the expected illusory correlation effect. Moreover, this effect was specifically associated to our participants’ scores in the Loyalty subscale of the Moral Foundations Questionnaire. These results emphasize the role of the Loyalty moral foundation in the formation of attitudes towards minorities among conservatives. Our study points out the moral system as a useful fine-grained framework to explore the complex interaction between basic cognitive processes and ideology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the dual coding theory, differences in the ease of retrieval between concrete and abstract words are related to the exclusive dependence of abstract semantics on linguistic information. Argument structure can be considered a measure of the complexity of the linguistic contexts that accompany a verb. If the retrieval of abstract verbs relies more on the linguistic codes they are associated to, we could expect a larger effect of argument structure for the processing of abstract verbs. In this study, sets of length- and frequency-matched verbs including 40 intransitive verbs, 40 transitive verbs taking simple complements, and 40 transitive verbs taking sentential complements were presented in separate lexical and grammatical decision tasks. Half of the verbs were concrete and half were abstract. Similar results were obtained in the two tasks, with significant effects of imageability and transitivity. However, the interaction between these two variables was not significant. These results conflict with hypotheses assuming a stronger reliance of abstract semantics on linguistic codes. In contrast, our data are in line with theories that link the ease of retrieval with availability and robustness of semantic information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Acceptance of fake news is probably modulated by an intricate interplay of social, cultural, and political factors. In this study, we investigated whether individual‐level cognitive factors related to thinking and decision making could influence the tendency to accept fake news. A group of volunteers responded to a COVID19‐related fake news discrimination scale as well as to questionnaires assessing their thinking style (reflective vs. intuitive) and thinking disposition (actively open‐mindedness). Furthermore, they completed a computerized contingency learning task aimed at measuring their tendency to develop a causal illusion, a cognitive bias leading to perceive causal connections between non‐contingent events. More actively open‐minded and more reflective individuals presented higher fake news discrimination scores. In addition, those who developed weaker causal illusions in the contingency learning task were also more accurate at differentiating between fake and legitimate news. Actively open‐minded thinking was the main contributor in a regression model predicting fake news discrimination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The prevalence of pseudoscientific beliefs in our societies negatively influences relevant areas such as health or education. Causal illusions have been proposed as a possible cognitive basis for the development of such beliefs. The aim of our study was to further investigate the specific nature of the association between causal illusion and endorsement of pseudoscientific beliefs through an active contingency detection task. In this task, volunteers are given the opportunity to manipulate the presence or absence of a potential cause in order to explore its possible influence over the outcome. Responses provided are assumed to reflect both the participants' information interpretation strategies as well as their information search strategies. Following a previous study investigating the association between causal illusion and the presence of paranormal beliefs, we expected that the association between causal illusion and pseudoscientific beliefs would disappear when controlling for the information search strategy (i.e., the proportion of trials in which the participants decided to present the potential cause). Volunteers with higher pseudoscientific beliefs also developed stronger causal illusions in active contingency detection tasks. This association appeared irrespective of the participants with more pseudoscientific beliefs showing (Experiment 2) or not (Experiment 1) differential search strategies. Our results suggest that both information interpretation and search strategies could be significantly associated to the development of pseudoscientific (and paranormal) beliefs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Las pseudoterapias son un desafío y un peligro importante para la salud pública. Muchos individuos desarrollan creencias en su favor a pesar de la falta de evidencia científica. En nuestro estudio experimental, investigamos cómo las personas desarrollan estas creencias y descubrimos que la información a favor de las pseudoterapias proveniente de expertos tiene un mayor impacto en la formación de opiniones que la información en contra. Este sesgo no fue observado cuando las opiniones provenían de otras fuentes. Sugerimos que es necesario un entrenamiento exhaustivo y actualizado para los profesionales de la salud en este tema crítico. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Causal illusions have been postulated as cognitive mediators of pseudoscientific beliefs, which, in turn, might lead to the use of pseudomedicines. However, while the laboratory tasks aimed to explore causal illusions typically present participants with information regarding the consequences of administering a fictitious treatment versus not administering any treatment, real-life decisions frequently involve choosing between several alternative treatments. In order to mimic these realistic conditions, participants in two experiments received information regarding the rate of recovery when each of two different fictitious remedies were administered. The fictitious remedy that was more frequently administered was given higher effectiveness ratings than the low-frequency one, independent of the absence or presence of information about the spontaneous recovery rate. Crucially, we also introduced a novel dependent variable that involved imagining new occasions in which the ailment was present and asking participants to decide which treatment they would opt for. The inclusion of information about the base rate of recovery significantly influenced participants' choices. These results imply that the mere prevalence of popular treatments might make them seem particularly effective. It also suggests that effectiveness ratings should be interpreted with caution as they might not accurately reflect real treatment choices. Materials and datasets are available at the Open Science Framework [https://osf.io/fctjs/]. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Causal illusion has been proposed as a cognitive mediator of pseudoscientific beliefs. However, previous studies have only tested the association between this cognitive bias and a closely related but different type of unwarranted beliefs, those related to superstition and paranormal phenomena. Participants (n = 225) responded to a novel questionnaire of pseudoscientific beliefs designed for this study. They also completed a contingency learning task in which a possible cause, infusion intake, and a desired effect, headache remission, were actually non‐contingent. Volunteers with higher scores on the questionnaire also presented stronger causal illusion effects. These results support the hypothesis that causal illusions might play a fundamental role in the endorsement of pseudoscientific beliefs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research has stated that early oral language acquisition difficulties are related to reading and writing difficulties. Children with developmental language disorder (DLD) experience difficulties with several dimensions of language. In this study we focus on the specific difficulties of children with DLD in spelling. We examine the impact of lexicality and length in written production of Spanish‐speaking children with DLD. A total of 18 children with language difficulties (Mage = 8;4) were compared with age‐matched children (Mage = 8;2). Participants completed a spelling‐to‐dictation task of words and pseudo‐words, where length was manipulated. A digital tablet was used to collect data and obtain measures of accuracy, latencies and total writing durations. Results showed that children with DLD produced more errors, longer latencies and longer writing durations than age‐matched children. Regarding accuracy, analysis of the errors shows that children in the control group produce few errors, most being substitutions, while children with DLD made more errors and of more varied categories. Moreover, they were more affected by length on writing accuracy than the control group. WHAT THIS PAPER ADDS: What is already known on this subject: Children with language difficulties are more likely to present reading difficulties. There are fewer studies analysing the impact of oral language difficulties in writing skills. What this paper adds to existing knowledge: The study suggests that children with oral language difficulties also have impairments in spelling, impacting on accuracy, duration and reaction time, possibly related to poor phonological working memory. What are the potential or actual clinical implications of this work?: This study highlights the need to emphasize early oral intervention and language‐related processing skills to help prevent written language difficulties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Children with a diagnosis of specific language impairment (SLI) present impaired oral comprehension. According to the simple view of reading, general amodal linguistic capacity accounts for both oral and reading comprehension. Considering this, we should expect SLI children to display a reading comprehension deficit. However, previous research regarding the association between reading disorders and SLI has yielded inconsistent results. Aims: To study the influence of prior oral comprehension competence over reading comprehension during the first years of reading acquisition of bilingual Catalan-Spanish children with SLI (ages 7-8). Methods & Procedures: We assessed groups of bilingual Catalan-Spanish SLI and matched control children at ages 7 and 8 with standardized reading comprehension tasks including grammatical structures, sentence and text comprehension. Early oral competence and prior non-verbal intelligence were also measured and introduced into regression analyses with the participants' reading results in order to state the relation between the comprehension of oral and written material. Outcomes & Results: Although we found no significant differences between the scores of our two participant groups in the reading tasks, data regarding their early oral competence, but not non-verbal intelligence measures, significantly influence their reading outcome. Conclusions & Implications: The results extend our knowledge regarding the course of literacy acquisition of children with SLI and provide evidence in support of the theories that assume common linguistic processes to be responsible for both oral and reading comprehension. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study assessed the reading skills of 19 Spanish-Catalan children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) and 16 age-matched control children. Children with SLI have difficulties with oral language comprehension, which may affect later reading acquisition. We conducted a longitudinal study examining reading acquisition in these children between 8 and 12 years old and we relate this data with early oral language acquisition at 6 years old. Compared to the control group, the SLI group presented impaired decoding and comprehension skills at age 8, as evidenced by poor scores in all the assessed tasks. Nevertheless, only text comprehension abilities appeared to be impaired at age 12. Individual analyses confirmed the presence of comprehension deficits in most of the SLI children. Furthermore, early semantic verbal fluency at age 6 appeared to significantly predict the reading comprehension capacity of SLI participants at age 12. Our results emphasize the importance of semantic capacity at early stages of oral language development over the consolidation of reading acquisition at later stages. Learning Outcomes: Readers will recognize the relevance of prior oral language impairment, especially semantic capacity, in children with a history of SLI as a risk factor for the development of later reading difficulties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cognitive biases such as causal illusions have been related to paranormal and pseudoscientific beliefs and, thus, pose a real threat to the development of adequate critical thinking abilities. We aimed to reduce causal illusions in undergraduates by means of an educational intervention combining training-in-bias and training-in-rules techniques. First, participants directly experienced situations that tend to induce the Barnum effect and the confirmation bias. Thereafter, these effects were explained and examples of their influence over everyday life were provided. Compared to a control group, participants who received the intervention showed diminished causal illusions in a contingency learning task and a decrease in the precognition dimension of a paranormal belief scale. Overall, results suggest that evidence-based educational interventions like the one presented here could be used to significantly improve critical thinking skills in our students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]