Guillermo Campitelli

Professions such as military, aviation, submarine operation, and emergency response require individuals to navigate complex environments characterized by limited information, stringent time constraints, and significant pressures. Effective decision making under pressure is crucial in safety–critical professions, yet measuring this expertise remains challenging. Inspired by the military context, this article introduces the virtual reality decision-making expertise (VR-DMX) environment, designed to evaluate decision-making expertise under time constraints within a virtual reality scenario. VR-DMX simulates an amusement arcade where users must decide how to allocate time across various games to maximize ticket earnings. Through two validation studies (N = 60 and N = 76), we examined two metrics: Total Tickets (measuring overall performance) and DMX score (isolating decision-making quality). Both metrics demonstrated symmetrical distributions without floor or ceiling effects, with coefficients of variation comparable to established individual difference measures (32.4–37.4% for Total Tickets; 20.8–27.6% for DMX score). The moderate correlation between metrics (meta-analysis r = 0.771, 95% CI [0.599, 0.943]) indicates they measure related but distinct constructs. Our findings indicate that VR-DMX effectively differentiates individual performance levels and captures a distinct decision-making component that is separate from general cognitive abilities. Comparing decision-making expertise between professionals in safety–critical fields with those without such experience would be a sensible next step to help validate the potential for selection and training applications. VR-DMX was designed to measure decision-making expertise in safety–critical contexts, and initial validation data demonstrating effective differentiation of individual performance levels suggest that continued development could fulfill this design intention for applications in selection, training, and performance prediction.

When individuals are asked to keep in mind arbitrary sequences of items such as words, letters, numbers or images, they spatialize them in working memory forming a horizontal mental line. This study is the first meta-analysis of this phenomenon known as SPoARC (Spatial Positional Response Codes) effect or OPE (Ordinal Position Effect). For this purpose, we had access to the raw data of 21 of the 24 behavioral studies ever published on this topic. A multilevel meta-analysis was performed with participants nested within experiments, both used as levels. After confirming the existence of the SPoARC effect, we analyzed it as a function of four features: the size and nature of the memoranda, the pace of presentation of the memoranda and the type of classification of the probes. Results showed that (a) the SPoARC effect varied as a function of the nature of the memoranda, which we suggest highlights the importance of phonological processes in WM spatialization, (b) the SPoARC effect was the largest when the presentation pace was around 3 s per item or above and (c) the SPoARC effect increased when participants were asked to pay attention to the ordinal structure of the memoranda (whenever a temporal classification task is used), confirming the link between order information and WM spatialization.

Background
Negative emotions and stress are theorised to play a role in the onset and maintenance of voice-hearing experiences. However, previous research has not explored these temporal relationships in daily life using differentiated psychological constructs.

Aim
Using ecological momentary assessment, this study examined the moment-to-moment relationships between negative and positive emotion valence and intensity, stressful and pleasurable events, and voice-hearing onset.

Materials & Methods
Forty voice-hearers completed seven days of smartphone-based surveys, rating their emotions and their intensity, perceived stress and pleasure of life events, and presence of voice-hearing.

Results
Multilevel modelling showed that stressful events, but not pleasurable events, were significantly predictive of voice-hearing, both concurrently and in the next time point. Neither negative nor positive emotion intensity predicted voice-hearing, nor did they moderate the relationship between voice-hearing onset and stressful or pleasurable events, respectively.

Discussion
These findings suggest that factors which differentiate perception of stressful events from self-reported negative emotions may be useful intervention targets, such as mitigating prolonged external stressors, reducing sensitivity to external stressors and targeting negative perceptions or resistance to these stressors.

Conclusion
Clinically, our findings underscore the relevance of stress and a negative perception of externally oriented events, with further research needed to explore useful interventions for targeting these mechanisms.

This study investigates the cognitive processes underlying chess expertise by examining planning, cognitive reflection, inter-temporal choice, and risky choice in chess players. The study involves 25 chess players and 25 non-chess players, comparing their performance on the Tower of London (TOL) task, Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT), inter-temporal choice (ITC), and risky choice tasks. Results indicate that chess players outperform non-chess players in TOL and CRT, showing superior planning and cognitive reflection abilities. Chess players also prefer future rewards over immediate ones in ITC, suggesting a higher propensity for future more rewarding options. In risky choice tasks, chess players made more decisions based on expected value than non-chess players, but the evidence in favour of differences between groups is very weak. Despite this study not being able to establish causality, the findings highlight the cognitive advantages associated with chess expertise and suggest potential areas for further research on the transfer of cognitive skills from chess to other domains and differences in general abilities between experts and novices.

Studies investigating serial order in working memory have shown that participants from Western cultures are faster at responding to items presented at the beginning of a sequence using their left hand and faster at responding to items at the end with their right hand. This is known as the spatial positional association of response codes (SPoARC) effect. The SPoARC effect provides evidence that recently presented information is spatially organised in the cognitive system along a horizontal axis. This study investigated the flexibility of spatialisation by testing the effect that distance between items presented on a screen has on the magnitude of the SPoARC effect. It was hypothesised that by increasing the distance between items on a screen a larger SPoARC effect would be found. We used three conditions: central, narrow, and wide. In central, four random letters were presented sequentially at the centre of the screen, in narrow the letters were presented from left to right on the screen, wide was the same as narrow but the separation between the letters was larger. Participants consisted of 64 adults aged 18-55 years old. Participants were presented with four random letters, followed by single probe letter, participants had to indicate, by pressing a key on a normal keyboard, if the probe had been in the sequence. We analysed the data with multilevel modelling. We found evidence for the SPoARC effect in all three conditions. But no evidence that the effect varied between conditions.

Objectives Disrupted emotion processes are commonly linked to the onset and maintenance of auditory verbal hallucinations. However, a comprehensive approach using an extended emotion model has not previously been applied to voice‐hearers to distinguish impairments in emotion processes from non‐clinical populations. The present study hypothesised voice‐hearers, as compared to controls, would have (1) higher reactivity to negative emotions and lower reactivity to positive emotions, (2) more difficulties regulating negative and positive emotions, (3) more maladaptive strategy use, and (4) higher alexithymia. Method T‐tests tested these hypotheses, comparing self‐report measures of emotional reactivity, emotion regulation and alexithymia in voice‐hearers ( n = 50) to controls ( n = 53). Results There were no group differences in emotional reactivity to positive or negative emotions. Compared to controls, voice‐hearers showed difficulties in both positive and negative emotion regulation, were more likely to use expressive suppression, and were more likely to be alexithymic. Conclusions These findings may help researchers and clinicians identify difficulties in voice‐hearers' emotion processing, providing better direction for case formulation and treatment.

Two proposals have been put forward to account conjointly for the spatial–numerical association of response codes (SNARC) effect and the spatial–positional association of response codes (SPoARC) effect: the working memory account and the dual account. Here, on the basis of experimental and theoretical knowledge acquired in the field of expert memory, we propose an alternative account—named the expertise account—that explains both effects through the acquisition and use of knowledge structures (a generalization of “chunks,” “retrieval structures,” and “templates”), which have been used extensively in expert memory theory. These knowledge structures can be of two types: nonslotted or slotted schemas. We suggest that the SNARC effect can be explained via the use of nonslotted schemas, and the SPoARC effect via slotted schemas. We conclude our article by presenting the broader implications of our framework for working memory in general, when considering knowledge structures.

The Perth Emotional Reactivity Scale (PERS) is a newly developed 30-item self-report measure of emotional reactivity (affective style). The PERS measures the typical ease of activation, intensity, and duration of one’s emotional responses, and importantly does so for negative and positive emotions separately. We examined the psychometric properties of the PERS in an adult community sample (N = 183). Confirmatory and exploratory factor analyses supported the capacity of the PERS to measure separate negative and positive reactivity factors, and to distinguish between the activation, intensity, and duration aspects of reactivity. All items of the PERS had strong loadings on their intended factor. Concurrent validity was supported via congruent correlations with other emotion measures, and internal reliability was good to excellent for all PERS scales and subscales. Overall, the PERS appears to have good psychometric properties, and thus has promising utility for research and clinical settings.

Two proposals have been put forward to account conjointly for the spatial–numerical association of response codes (SNARC) effect and the spatial–positional association of response codes (SPoARC) effect: the working memory account and the dual account. Here, on the basis of experimental and theoretical knowledge acquired in the field of expert memory, we propose an alternative account—named the expertise account—that explains both effects through the acquisition and use of knowledge structures (a generalization of “chunks,” “retrieval structures,” and “templates”), which have been used extensively in expert memory theory. These knowledge structures can be of two types: nonslotted or slotted schemas. We suggest that the SNARC effect can be explained via the use of nonslotted schemas, and the SPoARC effect via slotted schemas. We conclude our article by presenting the broader implications of our framework for working memory in general, when considering knowledge structures.