Papers by Virginie Postal
... Virginie Postal Psychology Unit EA 4139 University Victor Segalen, Bordeaux 2, France virgini... more ... Virginie Postal Psychology Unit EA 4139 University Victor Segalen, Bordeaux 2, France virginie.postal@u-bordeaux2.fr Michèle Moessinger Renault, France michele.moessinger@renault. com ... Charlton, JL, Oxley, J., Fildes, B., Oxley, P., Newstead, S., Koppel, S., et al. (2006). ...
Perceptual and motor skills, 2004
This experiment compared several theories of expertise and exceptional performances in cognitive ... more This experiment compared several theories of expertise and exceptional performances in cognitive psychology. One current conception assumes that experts in a specific domain have developed a long-term working memory, which accounts for the difference in memory performance between experts and novices. The principal characteristics of this memory are the speed with which processes of storage and retrieval function and the existence of retrieval structures that allow a temporary activation of the knowledge store in long-term memory. Other authors such as Vicente and Wang argue this notion does not account for memory performance that is not intrinsic to the domain of expertise. We attempt to clarify the two viewpoints and to focus on this debate by testing the hypothesis of long-term working memory using soccer as the domain of expertise and by comparing the cognitive performance of participants who have different expertise (novices, supporters, players, and coaches). 35 male participan...
Neuropsychologie du vieillissement normal et pathologique, 2008
Perceptual and Motor Skills, 2012
Some studies on expertise have demonstrated that the difference between novices and experts can b... more Some studies on expertise have demonstrated that the difference between novices and experts can be partly due to a lack of knowledge about which information is relevant for a given situation. This lack of knowledge seems to be associated with the selection of correct information and with inhibitory processes. However, while the efficiency of inhibitory processes can lead to better performance in the normal population, it seems that experts in chess do not base their performance on this process but rather on an automatic and parallel encoding of information. Two experiments investigated the processes involved in a check detection task. The congruence of the information was manipulated in a Stroop situation similar to Reingold, Charness, Scheltetus, & Stampe (2001). The results showed that the experts did not benefit from cuing with a congruent cue and that they did not show any interference effect by the incongruent cue, contrary to less skilled chess players who benefited from cuing (Exp. 1). An attentional priming procedure confirmed the automatic encoding of chess relations in the more skilled chess players by showing no advantage from the prime in this group (Exp. 2). Taken together, the results indicate that the processing was serial for the less skilled chess players and that it was automatic and parallel for the more expert chess players. The inhibition of irrelevant information does not seem necessary to process information rapidly and efficiently.
Perceptual and Motor Skills, 2004
This experiment compared several theories of expertise and exceptional performances in cognitive ... more This experiment compared several theories of expertise and exceptional performances in cognitive psychology. One current conception assumes that experts in a specific domain have developed a long-term working memory, which accounts for the difference in memory performance between experts and novices. The principal characteristics of this memory are the speed with which processes of storage and retrieval function and the existence of retrieval structures that allow a temporary activation of the knowledge store in long-term memory. Other authors such as Vicente and Wang argue this notion does not account for memory performance that is not intrinsic to the domain of expertise. We attempt to clarify the two viewpoints and to focus on this debate by testing the hypothesis of long-term working memory using soccer as the domain of expertise and by comparing the cognitive performance of participants who have different expertise (novices, supporters, players, and coaches). 35 male participants were administered a new version of the Reading Span test to assess their long-term working memory according to two conditions. In the first condition (structured condition), the last word of each sentence was related to the soccer domain, and these words were related to each other in such a manner that they represented a part of the game. In the second condition (unstructured condition), the last word of each sentence was related to soccer but these words did not represent part of the game. Analysis showed that the sentence span increased as a function of expertise for the structured condition but not for the unstructured condition. The results were interpreted in the framework of the constraint attunement hypothesis proposed by Vicente in 1992 and the long-term working memory hypothesis proposed by Ericsson and Kintsch in 1995.
Archives of Gerontology and Geriatrics, 2011
Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition, 2011
The aim of this study was to examine the effect of aging on strategy selection in a paired-associ... more The aim of this study was to examine the effect of aging on strategy selection in a paired-associate word task. Twenty-eight younger adults (mean age = 20.68 years) and 28 older adults (mean age = 68.46 years) studied 39 pairs of concrete, middle and abstract words. The concreteness level was manipulated in order to modify the benefit of imagery and sentence strategies in relation to task characteristics. The results showed an age difference in strategy selection in relation to concreteness level. Older adults showed less adaptive strategy selection for the imagery strategy but not for the sentence strategy. Change in strategy selection did not seem to be explained by better efficiency of sentence than imagery, so this study suggests a partial reduction of strategy adaptivity during aging.
European Review of Applied Psychology, 1998
Revue Européenne de Psychologie Appliquée
ABSTRACT
The present study investigated how executive functions and personality traits are related with dr... more The present study investigated how executive functions and personality traits are related with driving performance among older drivers. Forty-two participants aged 60 and over were recruited to complete a battery of cognitive tests, measures of personality traits and an on-road driving test. Significant correlations were found between poor driving performances and low scores on tests assessing shifting and updating functions. In addition, extraversion had a negative relation with driving performance and made the only contribution, among the psychological factors, to the prediction of driving performance. Finally, gender and age emerged as the best predictors of on-road driving performance. Gender, personality traits and executive functions should be taken into account when studying safety among older drivers.
American Journal on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, 2015
The aim of this study was to support the growing evidence suggesting that Prader-Willi Syndrome (... more The aim of this study was to support the growing evidence suggesting that Prader-Willi Syndrome (PWS) might present with an impairment of executive functions (EFs) and to investigate whether this impairment is specific to patients with PWS or due to their intellectual disability (ID). Six tasks were administered to assess EFs (inhibition, switching, updating, cognitive estimation, and planning) to 17 patients with PWS and 17 age-matched healthy individuals. Performance was significantly impaired in the PWS group on all EFs and after controlling for IQ level, intergroup differences remained only for switching and cognitive estimation. In conclusion, PWS seems to be associated with a global impairment of EFs that appears to be closely linked with intellectual impairment but also with the PWS itself.
Revue de neuropsychologie, 2012
Archives of Gerontology and Geriatrics, 2014
The Hayling task is traditionally used to assess activation and inhibitory processes efficiency a... more The Hayling task is traditionally used to assess activation and inhibitory processes efficiency among various populations, such as elderly adults. However, the classical design of the task may also involve the influence of strategy use and efficiency of sentence processing in the possible differences between individuals. Therefore, the present study investigated activation and inhibitory processes in aging with two formats of an adapted Hayling task designed to reduce the involvement of these alternative factors. Thirty young adults (M=20.7 years) and 31 older adults (M=69.6 years) performed an adapted Hayling task including a switching block (i.e., unblocked design) in addition to the classical task (i.e., blocked design), and the selection of the response between two propositions. The results obtained with the classical blocked design showed age-related deficits in the suppression sections of the task but also in the initiation ones. These findings can be explained by a co-impairment of both inhibition and activation processes in aging. The results of the unblocked Hayling task, in which strategy use would be reduced, confirmed this age-related decline in both activation and inhibition processes. Moreover, significant correlations between the unblocked design and the Trail Making Test revealed that flexibility is equally involved in the completion of both sections of this design. Finally, the use of a forced-response choice offers a format that is easy to administer to people with normal or pathological aging. This seems particularly relevant for these populations in whom the production of an unrelated word often poses problems.
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Papers by Virginie Postal