Research in the field of embodied cognition showed that incidental weight sensations influence peoples' judgments about a variety of issues and objects. Most studies found that heaviness compared to lightness increases the perception of importance, seriousness, and potency. In two experiments, we broadened this scope by investigating the impact of weight sensations on cognitive performance. In ...

We explore the feasibility of using only unsupervised means to identify non-words, i.e. typos, in a frequency list derived from a large corpus of Dutch and to distinguish between these non-words and real-words in the language. We call the system we built and evaluate in this paper CICCL, which stands for ‘Corpus-Induced Corpus Clean-up’. The algorithm on which CICCL is primarily based is the an...

Using transcranial near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) to measure changes in the redox state of cerebral cytochrome c oxidase (Δ[oxCCO]) during functional activation in healthy adults is hampered by instrumentation and algorithm issues. This study reports the Δ[oxCCO] response measured in such a setting and investigates possible confounders of this measurement. Continuous frontal lobe NIRS measur...

In estimating whether they are likely to improve on a performance task, people lean on a performance heuristic. That is, people rely on their previous performance success as a positive cue when estimating their prospects for performance improvement. Participants whose initial performance was better--either at a darts game (Study 1) or an anagram task (Study 2)-bet more money (Study 1) or estima...

Performance monitoring enables the rapid detection of mismatches between goals or intentions and actions, as well as subsequent behavioral adjustment by means of enhanced attention control. These processes are not encapsulated, but they are readily influenced by affective or motivational variables, including negative affect. Here we tested the prediction that worry, the cognitive component of a...

We report the use of a novel dual-channel hybrid near infrared optical spectrometer for the measurement of changes in oxidized cytochrome c oxidase (oxCCO) concentration and optical scattering in 11 healthy volunteers during functional activation induced by an anagram-solving task. A haemodynamic response consistent with functional activation was seen in 9 out of 11 subjects and in 13 of the to...

T hree experiments examined repetition priming of the recognition of pr inted proper names of familiar people by the prior exposure of those names in their correct form or with their letters re-ar ranged as anagrams. Experiment 1 found that, compared with response times to previously unseen names, name familiarity decisions were made more rapidly if the subject had seen and identi® ed the famou...

Performance monitoring enables the rapid detection of mismatches between goals or intentions and actions, as well as subsequent behavioral adjustment by means of enhanced attention control. These processes are not encapsulated, but they are readily influenced by affective or motivational variables, including negative affect. Here we tested the prediction that worry, the cognitive component of a...

I extract some philosophical morals from some aspects of Lagrangian mechanics. (A companion paper will present similar morals from Hamiltonian mechanics and Hamilton-Jacobi theory.) One main moral concerns methodology: Lagrangian mechanics provides a level of description of phenomena which has been largely ignored by philosophers, since it falls between their accustomed levels—“laws of nature” ...