Background Narrative texts can support science comprehension. Yet, it remains unclear under which conditions they are beneficial. Aims We compared the comprehension benefits of science narrative versus expository texts across comprehension levels and retention intervals and identified reader and activity characteristics predicting science comprehension. Sample A sample of 125 university students with low prior knowledge of the content of the texts volunteered to participate. Methods Participants read both a narrative and an expository text and then completed comprehension questions targeting different levels of comprehension. The contents were related to math or chemistry. Participants completed the comprehension items on that session, and one week after reading the texts. We also assessed participants' pre-reading perceived prior knowledge of the science topics and their post-reading perceptions of the texts’ difficulty and interest. Results Comprehension scores were higher for the narrative than for the expository text only with the chemistry topic, at all comprehension levels. Scores were higher in immediate comprehension assessments than in delayed assessments. Exploratory analyses suggest that narrative texts support comprehension in part by increasing perceived interest and lowering perceived difficulty. Conclusion The narrative advantage was specific to the less familiar content, boosting comprehension across all levels of representation, partly by reducing perceived difficulty and increasing interest — underscoring the importance of aligning text type with learners' prior knowledge and task demands.

Inconsistent information can be hard to understand, but in cases like fiction readers can integrate it with little to no difficulties. The present study aimed at examining if perspective switching can take place when only a minimal fictional description is provided (fictional world condition), as compared with general world knowledge (real world condition). Participants read sentences where food items had animated or inanimate features while EEG was recorded and performed a sentence completion task to evaluate recall. In the real-world condition, the N400 was significantly larger for sentences incongruent, rather than congruent, with general world knowledge. In the fictional world condition, the N400 elicited by congruent and incongruent sentences did not differ, confirming that the minimal description impacted online information processing. Information consistent with general knowledge was better recalled in both conditions. The current results highlight how contextual information is integrated during sentence comprehension.

Leading hypotheses of oxytocin’s (OT) role in human cognition posit that it enhances salience attribution. However, whether OT exerts its effects predominantly in social (vs non-social) contexts remains debatable, and the time-course of intranasal OT’s effects’ on salience attribution processing is still unknown. We used the social Salience Attribution Task modified (sSAT) in a double-blind, placebo-controlled intranasal OT (inOT) administration, between-subjects design, with 54 male participants, to test existing theories of OT’s role in cognition. Namely, we aimed to test whether inOT would differently affect salience attribution processing of social stimuli (expressing fearfulness) and non-social stimuli (fruits) made relevant via monetary reinforcement, and its neural processing time-course. During electroencephalography (EEG) recording, participants made speeded responses to emotional social (fearful faces) and non-emotional non-social (fruits) stimuli - which were matched for task-relevant motivational salience through their (color-dependent) probability of monetary reinforcement. InOT affected early (rather than late, P3b and LPP) EEG components, increasing N170 amplitude (p = .041) and P2b latency (p .001; albeit not of P1), regardless of stimuli’s (emotional) socialness or reinforcement probability. Fear-related socialness affected salience attribution processing EEG (p .05) across time (N170, P2b and P3b), being later modulated by reinforcement probability (LPP). Our data suggest that OT’s effects on neural activity during early perception, may exist irrespective of fear-related social- or reward-contexts. This partially supports the tri-phasic model of OT (which posits OT enhances salience attribution in an early perception stage regardless of socialness), and not the social salience nor the general approach-withdrawal hypotheses of OT, for early salience processing event-related potentials.

Narrative texts have been advocated as tools to tackle science learning challenges, and there is even the proposal of a "narrative effect " on learning. We believe it is necessary to examine previous evidence on this effect, as well as to characterize the process of learning through science narrative texts more broadly. In this article, we offer a theoretical review drawing on three frameworks, namely on pedagogical aspects of text learning, linguistic features of texts, and cognitive aspects of text comprehension. Based on that, we analyzed two complementary questions. First, we reviewed 36 studies to ask if science narrative texts can benefit learning and memory outcomes at different educational levels (i.e., the "If " question). We found encouraging evidence for the use of science narrative texts at various educational levels, especially in delayed assessments and longer-lasting interventions. Second, we gathered and linked ideas, hints, and evidence on how the process of learning with science narrative texts takes place, namely on conditions and underlying processes (i.e., the "How " question). There are many features from conditions (texts, learners, activities, wider context) and underlying processes (integration with prior knowledge, affective dispositions, and cognitive abilities) that can help to account for variability in outcomes; yet, ideas and evidence are not always tightly connected. We suggest that education and research should focus on specific narrative effects, that specify with what (texts), with whom (learners), when and where (activities and wider context) these effects occur, as well as "why " (underlying processes). We believe the proposed framing can help both make sense of previous evidence and inform future educational practices and research and provide some recommendations in this regard.

Deciding whether others’ emotions are genuine is essential for successful communication and social relationships. While previous fMRI studies suggested that differentiation between authentic and acted emotional expressions involves higher-order brain areas, the time course of authenticity discrimination is still unknown. To address this gap, we tested the impact of authenticity discrimination on event-related potentials (ERPs) related to emotion, motivational salience, and higher-order cognitive processing (N100, P200 and late positive complex, the LPC), using vocalised non-verbal expressions of sadness (crying) and happiness (laughter) in a 32-participant, within-subject study. Using a repeated measures 2-factor (authenticity, emotion) ANOVA, we show that N100’s amplitude was larger in response to authentic than acted vocalisations, particularly in cries, while P200’s was larger in response to acted vocalisations, particularly in laughs. We suggest these results point to two different mechanisms: (1) a larger N100 in response to authentic vocalisations is consistent with its link to emotional content and arousal (putatively larger amplitude for genuine emotional expressions); (2) a larger P200 in response to acted ones is in line with evidence relating it to motivational salience (putatively larger for ambiguous emotional expressions). Complementarily, a significant main effect of emotion was found on P200 and LPC amplitudes, in that the two were larger for laughs than cries, regardless of authenticity. Overall, we provide the first electroencephalographic examination of authenticity discrimination and propose that authenticity processing of others’ vocalisations is initiated early, along that of their emotional content or category, attesting for its evolutionary relevance for trust and bond formation.

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is characterized by social cognition deficits, including difficulties inferring the intentions of others. Although deficits in attribution of intentions (AI) have been consistently replicated in ASD, their exact nature remains unexplored. Here we registered the electrophysiological correlates of a nonverbal social cognition task to investigate AI in autistic adults. Twenty-one male autistic adults and 30 male neurotypical volunteers performed a comic strips task depicting either intentional action (AI) or physical causality with or without human characters, while their electroencephalographic signal was recorded. Compared to neurotypical volunteers, autistic participants were significantly less accurate in correctly identifying congruence in the AI condition, but not in the physical causality conditions. In the AI condition a bilateral posterior positive event-related potential (ERP) occurred 200-400 ms post-stimulus (the ERP intention effect) in both groups. This waveform comprised a P200 and a P300 component, with the P200 component being larger for the AI condition in neurotypical volunteers but not in autistic individuals, who also showed a longer latency for this waveform. Group differences in amplitude of the ERP intention effect only became evident when we compared autistic participants to a subgroup of similarly performing neurotypical participants, suggesting that the atypical ERP waveform in ASD is an effect of group, rather than a marker of low-task performance. Together, these results suggest that the lower accuracy of the ASD group in the AI task may result from impaired early attentional processing and contextual integration of socially relevant cues. Lay Summary To understand why autistic people have difficulties in inferring others' intentions, we asked participants to judge the congruence of the endings of comic strips depicting either intentional actions (e.g., fetching a chair to reach for something) or situations solely following physical rules (e.g., an apple falling on someone's head), while their electrical brain activity was recorded. Autistic individuals had more difficulties in inferring intentions than neurotypical controls, which may reflect impaired attention and contextual integration of social cues.

Introducao – O desenvolvimento tecnologico levou a necessidade de aquisicao de novos metodos de aprendizagem complementares aos tradicionais. Assim, surge o mobile learning como um metodo de educacao a distância em que se usam dispositivos moveis para ensinar e aprender. Na area disciplinar de Ortoptica ainda nao existem conteudos visuais crediveis em portugues nas plataformas digitais. Objetivos: Facultar aos estudantes da licenciatura em Ortoptica e Ciencias da Visao videos da execucao pratica de diversos exames de avaliacao clinica, facilitadores do processo de aprendizagem na pratica clinica da avaliacao da motilidade ocular e da visao binocular. Metodo – Estudo de paradigma quantitativo, descritivo observacional com uma amostra de 108 estudantes ( n =108). Foram gravados 13 videos da pratica de avaliacao clinica de ortoptica e publicados no YouTube. Para avaliar a percecao dos estudantes na visualizacao de videos como contributo facilitador do processo de aprendizagem pratica aplicou-se um questionario previamente validado aos estudantes da licenciatura em Ortoptica e Ciencias da Visao da Escola Superior de Tecnologia da Saude de Lisboa. Resultados e Discussao – A maioria da amostra e do genero feminino ( n =108; 80,56%) e a idade variou entre os 18 e 37 anos, com media de 21,12±2,96. Obtiveram-se 29 respostas do 1o ano (26,85%), 26 do 2o ano (24,07%), 18 do 3o ano (16,67%) e 35 do 4o ano (32,41%). Toda a amostra considera os videos uma forma complementar de estudo ao ensino tradicional; 98,14% ( n =106) afirmam que os videos estimulam o interesse pela area abordada; 96,30% ( n =104) referem adquirir mais rapidamente os conhecimentos atraves dos videos; 92,59% ( n =100) pensam utiliza-los no seu estudo. Conclusao – Os videos sao considerados uma forma complementar proficua ao estudo individual, existindo interesse na expansao do canal do YouTube a outras areas das ciencias da visao e na realizacao de videos de avaliacao clinica de ortoptica de individuos com diferentes patologias da motilidade ocular e da visao binocular.

Two outstanding questions in spoken-language comprehension concern (1) the interplay of phonological grammar (legal vs. illegal sound sequences), phonotactic frequency (high- vs. low-frequency sound sequences) and lexicality (words vs. other sound sequences) in a meaningful context, and (2) how the properties of phonological sequences determine their inclusion or exclusion from lexical-semantic processing. In the present study, we used a picture-sound priming paradigm to examine the ERP responses of adult listeners to grammatically illegal sound sequences, to grammatically legal sound sequences (pseudowords) with low- vs. high-frequency, and to real words that were either congruent or incongruent to the picture context. Results showed less negative N1-P2 responses for illegal sequences and low-frequency pseudowords (with differences in topography), but not high-frequency ones. Low-frequency pseudowords also showed an increased P3 component. However, just like illegal sequences, neither low- nor high-frequency pseudowords differed from congruent words in the N400. Thus, phonotactic frequency had an impact before, but not during lexical-semantic processing. Our results also suggest that phonological grammar, phonotactic frequency and lexicality may follow each other in this order during word processing.

Background: Deficits in social cognition are well-recognized in both schizophrenia and autism spectrum disorders (ASD). However, it is less clear how social cognition deficits differ between both disorders and what distinct mechanisms may underlie such differences. We aimed at reviewing available evidence from studies directly comparing social cognitive performance between individuals with schizophrenia and ASD. Methods: We performed a systematic review of literature up to May 22, 2018 on Pubmed, Web of Science, and Scopus. Search terms included combinations of the keywords "social cognition," "theory of mind," "autism," "Asperger," "psychosis," and "schizophrenia." Two researchers independently selected and extracted data according to PRISMA guidelines. Random-effects meta-analyses were conducted for performance on social cognitive tasks evaluating: (1) emotion perception; (2) theory of mind (ToM); (3) emotional intelligence (managing emotions score of the Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test); and (4) social skills. Results: We identified 19 eligible studies for meta-analysis including a total of 1,040 patients (558 with schizophrenia and 482 with ASD). Eight studies provided data on facial emotion perception that evidenced a better performance by participants with schizophrenia compared to those with ASD (Hedges' g = 0.43; p = 0.031). No significant differences were found between groups in the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (8 studies; Hedges' g = 0.22; p = 0.351), other ToM tasks (9 studies; Hedges' g = -0.03; p = 0.903), emotional intelligence (3 studies; Hedges' g = -0.17; p = 0.490), and social skills (3 studies; Hedges' g = 0.86; p = 0.056). Participants' age was a significant moderator of effect size in emotion perception and RMET analyzes, with larger differences favoring patients with schizophrenia being observed in studies with younger participants. Conclusions: The instruments that are currently available to evaluate social cognition poorly differentiate between individuals with schizophrenia and ASD. Combining behavioral tasks with neurophysiologic assessments may better characterize the differences in social cognition between both disorders.

European Portuguese (EP) is a language with variable stress, and the main cues for stress are duration and vowel reduction. A previous behavioral study has reported a stress “deafness” effect in EP when vowel quality cues are unavailable. The present study recorded both event-related potentials (ERPs) and behavioral data to examine the stress processing by native EP speakers in the absence of the vowel quality cues. Our behavioral result was consistent with previous research, showing that when vowel reduction is absent EP speakers demonstrated a stress “deafness” effect similar to that found in speakers of languages with fixed stress or without any lexical stress marking. In the ERP task, both the trochaic and iambic conditions yielded mismatch negativity (MMN) and late negativity, suggesting that EP speakers are able to discriminate the two stress patterns without vowel reduction at the pre-attentive stage. Moreover, the ERP and behavioral data revealed compatible results regarding the pattern of stress bias in EP. In the EPR task, the MMN and late negativity components were more negative and span over a larger temporal window in the iambic condition than in the trochaic condition, indicating a higher sensitivity for the iambic stress pattern. In the behavioral task, EP speakers responded more accurately and more quickly to the iambic stress. These results match recent developmental findings in the acquisition of stress, but speak against the dominant view in EP phonological literature which assumes penultimate stress to be the regular stress pattern. In addition, both the ERP and the behavioral data showed that EP speakers’ stress processing was influenced by their working memory (WM) capacity. The participants with high WM capacity outperformed the participants with limited WM capacity in the iambic condition. In sum, our results broaden the current knowledge on stress processing by EP speakers at both the pre-attentive and attentive levels.

Consumers' strategic use of brands as a way of influencing the impressions others have about them is buttressed by research showing that brand personality traits may carry over and affect perceptions about their users or endorsers. However more often than not brand users engage in all sorts of trait-implying behaviors that may sometimes be in conflict with the brand personality. In two studies we explored how perceivers integrate these two sources of information when creating first impressions of brand users. Results indicated that when traits associated with brands and the users' trait-implying behaviors were in conflict, brand trait transferences were inhibited, whereas traits inferred from the behaviors were enhanced. These findings concerning brand trait transference inhibition and trait inference enhancement may provide new insights on how brand personality influences perceptions about their users, with distinctive consequences for marketing strategy.

Numerous studies have documented that expectancy-violating (EV) behavior (i.e., behavior that violates existing person impressions) elicits more effortful cognitive processing compared to expectancy-consistent (EC) behavior. Some studies also have shown that this effect is modulated by the valence of behavior, though this finding is inconsistent with some extant models of expectancy processes. The current research investigated whether the valence of EV information affects very rapid attentional processes thought to tag goal-relevant information for more elaborative processing at later stages. Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded while participants read depictions of behavior that either were consistent with or violated established impressions about fictitious characters. Consistent with predictions, a very early attention-related ERP component, the frontal P2, differentiated negative from positive EV behavior but was unaffected by the valence of EC behavior. This effect occurred much earlier in processing than has been demonstrated in prior reports of EV effects on neural response, suggesting that impression formation goals tune attention to information that might signal the need to modify existing impressions.

This article presents subjective rating norms for a new set of Stills And Videos of facial Expressions-the SAVE database. Twenty nonprofessional models were filmed while posing in three different facial expressions (smile, neutral, and frown). After each pose, the models completed the PANAS questionnaire, and reported more positive affect after smiling and more negative affect after frowning. From the shooting material, stills and 5 s and 10 s videos were edited (total stimulus set = 180). A different sample of 120 participants evaluated the stimuli for attractiveness, arousal, clarity, genuineness, familiarity, intensity, valence, and similarity. Overall, facial expression had a main effect in all of the evaluated dimensions, with smiling models obtaining the highest ratings. Frowning expressions were perceived as being more arousing, clearer, and more intense, but also as more negative than neutral expressions. Stimulus presentation format only influenced the ratings of attractiveness, familiarity, genuineness, and intensity. The attractiveness and familiarity ratings increased with longer exposure times, whereas genuineness decreased. The ratings in the several dimensions were correlated. The subjective norms of facial stimuli presented in this article have potential applications to the work of researchers in several research domains. From our database, researchers may choose the most adequate stimulus presentation format for a particular experiment, select and manipulate the dimensions of interest, and control for the remaining dimensions. The full stimulus set and descriptive results (means, standard deviations, and confidence intervals) for each stimulus per dimension are provided as supplementary material.

Several behavioral studies have suggested that speakers of languages with variable stress (e.g., Spanish) are better than speakers of languages with fixed stress (e.g., French) at discriminating stress contrasts. European Portuguese (EP) is a language with variable stress, and the main cues for stress are duration and vowel reduction. However, when the vowel quality cue is absent, native speakers are not able to behaviorally discriminate nonsense words that differ only in stress pattern. Using a passive oddball paradigm, the present study recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) to investigate whether native speakers of EP can unintentionally discriminate CVCV pseudo-words with trochaic and iambic stress patterns in the absence of vowel reduction. The results showed that both the trochaic and iambic conditions yielded mismatch negativity (MMN) and late negativity. Moreover, the components in the iambic condition span over a larger temporal window than in the trochaic condition. These results suggest that native speakers of EP can discriminate stress patterns without vowel quality cues at the unintentional level. Furthermore, they are more sensitive to the iambic stress pattern than the trochaic one, which is at odds with their relative frequency in the language, but matches recent developmental findings in the acquisition of stress. 2 repeated ANOVAs Stress and as factors and Group (high accurate vs. low accurate) as between-subject factors on the difference waves for the six time windows. The results yielded significant main effect of Stress in the time windows of 400-500ms [ F (1, = 10.84, p = .003] and [ F (1, 22) marginal effect in the windows of