Josefa N. S. Pandeirada

University of Aveiro | UA · Department of Education and Psychology

From an evolutionary perspective, remembering better animates/living beings (vs. inanimates/nonliving things) would be adaptive due to their fitness-relevance (e.g., they could be predators, prey, etc.). Such an advantage-the animacy effect-is established in retrospective and prospective memory [PM] in young adults (i.e., retrieving information fro...

Access here: https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/89ZP9EQWDNYVJGHFRA9D/full?target=10.1080/09658211.2024.2362755

The Behavioral Immune System (BIS), which prompts responses to prevent sickness, can be activated by sounds (e.g., hearing cough), visual stimuli (e.g., seeing someone coughing), or their combination (e.g., seeing and hearing someone cough). Memory might play a key role in the BIS: studies have been reporting a memory tuning for potential sources o...

The animacy effect reflets the memory advantage for animate/living over inanimate/nonliving items. According to Evolutionary Psychology, it would be adaptive to remember better animates (vs. inanimates), as they could represent predators, prey, etc. (all influencing humans’ chances of survival and reproduction). This effect has been mostly studied...

Studies using retrospective memory tasks have revealed that animates/living beings are better remembered than are inanimates/nonliving things (the animacy effect). However, considering that memory is foremost future oriented, we hypothesized that the animacy effect would also occur in prospective memory (i.e., memory for future intentions). Using s...

Unlike most infectious diseases, COVID‐19 is characterised by an absence of facial disease‐signalling cues. Yet, it is still unclear whether it has influenced face perception. Understanding this may help clarify if and how our motivation toward social interactions is conditional on situational pathogen threats. The present study investigated if pri...

Animate/living stimuli, as compared to inanimate/nonliving objects, hold an advantage in many cognitive processes (e.g., memory, attention and language). For instance, animates are processed faster and are better recalled than inanimates. Despite the increased recognition of the importance of this variable, it is not yet widely controlled for in re...

According to Evolutionary Psychology, fitness-relevant information is processed preferentially by humans. These include emotion-evoking (e.g., threatening and disgusting) and animate stimuli, among others. Research on word processing with deep and shallow orthographies reveals that affective (dimensional and discrete emotions) and semantic variable...

An adaptive feature of human memory is its future-orientation, which allows one to retrieve information to anticipate future contingencies. Adopting a functionalist perspective, one could ask if memory for future intentions (prospective memory; PM) is sensitive to fitness-related variables, in this case animacy. In a series of studies, we expl...

Animacy plays an important role in cognition (e.g., memory and language). Across languages, a processing advantage for animate words (representing living beings), comparatively to inanimate words (i.e., non-living things), has been found mostly in young adults. Evidence in older adults, though, is still unclear, possibly due to the use of stimuli n...

https://doi.org/10.48528/6dz9-dxxx

Check: https://www.ua.pt/en/researchsummit/proceedingsen, p. 841-842 Evolutionary Psychology posits that human cognitive systems, including memory, evolved to enhance our odds of survival and/or reproduction. Therefore, memory is hypothesized to be tuned to the adaptive challenges faced throughout evolution. One example of this is the animacy effe...

Introduction/Aims: The Brief Peer Conflict Scale (Brief PCS) measures aggressive behavior as a multidimensional construct associated with diverse forms (i.e., overt and relational) and functions (i.e., reactive and proactive). Its psychometric properties have been assessed in adolescent and young adult samples, but these groups have not been compar...

Animate/living stimuli play a crucial role in several cognitive systems (e.g., memory, attention, language), comparatively to inanimate/non-living items. For example, animates are better remembered (the mnemonic animacy effect) and are processed more automatically (animate monitoring hypothesis) than inanimates. Despite the growing literature repor...

The adaptive value of disgust has been associated with situations of threat to our survival. This study explored this topic using eye-tracking, which provides an objective measurement of attention, while solving previous methodological issues (e.g., not considering discrete emotions and comparing across perceptually-different stimuli). We used the...

Biologically, humans have evolved to adapt against pathogens but, since fighting them can be costly, a set of mechanisms have emerged to avoid contact, called the Behavioral Immune System (BIS). Experimental Psychology studies the BIS, for instance, by conducting experiments where a participant is exposed to several objects some of which are presen...

The animacy effect is a robust memory advantage for animate/living over inanimate/nonliving items, particularly in retrospective memory tasks. Some evidence also exists for its impact in prospective memory(PM), particularly in nonfocal tasks. This study investigated the influence of animacy on a focal-PM task. Eighty-four young adults performed a l...

According to an evolutionary perspective, cognitive systems (such as memory) have evolved in order to enhance our odds of survival and reproduction (Nairne et al., 2008, Curr Dir Psychol Sci). Therefore, it is hypothesized that those systems should be particularly sensitive to the adaptive challenges faced throughout our evolution. An example of th...

Oral communication (https://appesepexmeeting.appe.pt/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Provisional-programme-20-April.pdf) The animacy effect (ANEF) refers to a memory tuning towards animates/living beings over inanimates/nonliving things and is overly established in retrospective memory [1]. In a series of studies, we explored if animate targets (vs. in...

From an evolutionary perspective, it would be adaptive to prioritize the processing of animates, due to their relevance to fitness (e.g., animates can be predators, prey, sexual mates; Nairne et al., 2017). A mnemonic advantage for animates—the animacy effect, or the finding that people remember better animates/living beings over inanimates/ nonliv...

The animacy effect–a mnemonic advantage for animates over inanimates—has been obtained mostly with young adults; studies with older adults are still scarce. These studies tend to use words representing animates or inanimates as the to-be-remembered stimuli; this calls for the need of animacy norming data from this age-group, to ensure a proper mani...

Words are widely used as stimuli in cognitive and linguistic research. As words may vary on various domains (e.g., lexicosemantic and affective), which can influence performance in many ways, it is essential to select them carefully. However, databases of European Portuguese words are still relatively scarce, and their presentation is spread in var...

Words are widely used as stimuli in cognitive and linguistic research. As words may vary on various domains (e.g., lexicosemantic and affective), which can influence performance in many ways, it is essential to select them carefully. However, databases of European Portuguese words are still relatively scarce, and their presentation is spread in var...

Our results suggest that, when the PM target is an animate, PM performance if higher than when it is an inanimate. This is one of first reports of a PM advantage when animate (vs inanimate) targets are used.

This work reports a preliminary validation of the Peer Conflict Scale (PCS) for Portuguese young adults (ages 18–30 years). This instrument assesses aggression considering two of its forms (overt and relational aggression) and its two functions (reactive and proactive aggression). The initially proposed 4-factor model provided the best fit for our...

Few studies on the free association of words exist in European Portuguese (EP). This constitutes an obstacle to understand the semantic network in this language. The main aim of this work was to provide free association norms for 100 EP words. Furthermore, based on the idea that Emotional words constitute a differentiated type of words, we explored...

Everything that surrounds us can be classified as an animate (living being; e.g. cat) or an inanimate (non-living thing; e.g. spoon). We collected animacy ratings for 224 words from a sample of elderly Portuguese people. Ratings were compared to those previously obtained from a younger Portuguese sample (Félix et al., 2020). Despite the high rating...

To face threats posed by pathogens, natural selection designed the Behavioral Immune System (BIS), which orchestrates several responses aimed to prevent contact with pathogens. Memory seems to augment this system. Using line drawings of objects, previous studies found that objects described as having been touched by sick people were better remember...

Words are frequently used as stimuli in cognitive and linguistic research. Considering that there are various psycholinguistic variables known to influence word processing (e.g., frequency, concreteness), it is important to control for those variables. Recently, it has been reported that animacy (the characteristic of being a living/animate or a no...

Human memory likely evolved to serve adaptive functions, that is, to help maximise our chances of survival and reproduction. One demonstration of such adaptiveness is the increased retention of information processed in survival contexts, the so-called Survival Processing Effect (SPE). This study examined this effect in a native (L1) and in a second...

Available at: https://www.ua.pt/file/61863 Why does our memory work the way it does? According to an evolutionary perspective, cognitive functioning (namely, memory) works in the service of survival and reproduction of our species. The animacy effect – the finding that people remember animate/living items (e.g., animals) better than inanimate/non...

This study investigated how the characteristics of the visual surrounding environment influence older- and young-adults’ cognitive performance. Sixty-four older adults and 64 young adults performed four visual cognitive tasks (attention and memory tasks) in two independent sessions while being exposed to a high-load and a low-load visual surroundin...

We present an initial validation of the State Anxiety Scale for Children (SASC) for Portuguese children and adolescents. No significant differences were found between sexes and among school cycle groups. The data revealed good psychometric properties and the ‘anxiety-absent’ and ‘anxiety-present’ factors were confirmed. Potential applications of th...

A long-standing goal shared by researchers has been to design optimal experimental procedures, including the selection of appropriate stimuli. Pictures are commonly used in different research fields. However, until recently, researchers have relied mostly on line-drawings, which can have poor ecological validity. We developed a set of high quality...

The animacy effect in memory generally refers to better retention of animates (or information processed as animate) compared to inanimates (or information processed as inanimate).

Adolescence is a developmental period characterized by a complex maturation process of various cognitive abilities. Cognitive control, which includes response inhibition and working memory, is one of them. A typical study on response inhibition to visual stimuli presents distractors and targets on the same display (e.g., the computer screen). Howev...

The animacy effect—the finding that animates are better remembered than inanimates—is proving to be a robust empirical phenomenon. Considering the adaptiveness of the animate advantage, one might expect it to remain after long retention intervals and also to be present irrespectively of an intention to learn. The present study explores these two as...

Four experiments investigated the mnemonic effects of generating survival situations. People were given target words and asked to generate survival situations involving that stimulus (e.g., DOOR: "I'm in a house that's on fire, and I can escape through the door"). No constraints were placed on the generation process, other than that it must be surv...

Assessing morningness-eveningness preferences (chronotype), an individual characteristic that is mirrored in daily mental and physiological fluctuations is crucial given their overarching influence in a variety of domains. The current work aimed to investigate the best factor structure of an instrument recently presented to asses this variable: the...

According to evolutionary psychology, animates played (and still play) an important role in our survival and chances of reproduction. Therefore, one could expect memory to remember animates particularly well. The animacy effect reflects the mnemonic advantage for animate (living) over inanimate (nonliving) items. Although it has proven to be a robu...

The behavioral immune system (BIS) is characterized by affective, cognitive and behavioral processes that work in an articulated manner to prevent the occurrence of infections. Attention and memory evolved to enhance the organism's chances of survival and have been proposed to play an important role in the BIS. The present study investigated the ef...

Our work aimed to provide a validated reduced form of the Morningness-Eveningness Questionnaire to Portuguese adolescents (ages: 12-14 years). Using the dataset from the initial validation study of the full questionnaire (19 items) to Portuguese adolescents, we derived a 10-item reduced form – aMEQ-R (Phase 1); this was the smallest set of items th...

Visual distraction is widely studied in children, particularly in visuospatial cognitive tasks. In these studies, targets and distractors are usually shown in the same display (e.g., the computer screen). However, children are constantly exposed to visually enriched environments (e.g., elementary school classrooms), and little is known about their...

This work reports the initial psychometric characterization of the Morningness-Eveningness-Stability-Scale improved (MESSi) for Portuguese young-adults (N=466). A Confirmatory Factor Analysis confirmed a three-factor model (i.e., Morning Affect, Eveningness and Distinctness) in our data, as originally proposed. Furthermore, construct validity evide...

Researchers have unraveled multiple cases in which behavior deviates from rationality principles. We propose that such deviations are valuable tools to understand the adaptive significance of the underpinning mechanisms. To illustrate, we discuss in detail an experimental protocol in which animals systematically incur substantial foraging losses by...

The State-Trait Anxiety Inventory for Children is a self-report instrument inspired on the State-Trait theory extended by Spielberger that measures a momentary state of anxiety (state) and a stable tendency to experience anxiety (trait). This study presents an exploratory adaptation of the Trait Scale and provides its psychometric properties for Eu...

Adaptive memory researchers study evolutionary influences on remembering. Our memory systems are the product of an evolutionary process, guided by natural selection, so one might reasonably assume that the footprints of nature's criterion (fitness) remain in memory's operating characteristics. In this chapter, we review relevant evidence across sev...

O ciclo de palestras UnderInvestigation tem por objetivo introduzir aos estudantes do primeiro ciclo as diferentes temáticas de investigação exploradas no nosso Departamento estimulando a sua curiosidade para as mesmas e criando oportunidade para que os mesmos se possam tornar atores ativos nesses mesmos trabalhos de investigação. Adicionalmente pr...

According to the adaptive memory perspective, memory should function more efficiently in fitness-relevant domains. The current work explored whether there is a mnemonic tuning in a fundamental domain for human evolution: reproduction. In two experiments, female participants assessed how desirable potential male candidates (represented by a face and...

Our work aimed to investigate how the presence of visual elements in the surrounding environment influences cognitive performance measured by four cognitive tasks in elderly and in young-adults.

OUR AIM: To contribute to the understanding of the relation between chronotype, sleep and sports performance in elite football players.

Our aim was to study the influence of the load of the external environment (high vs. low-load external environment) in two cognitive tasks performed by a group of young-adults, and to explore if the position in which tasks are performed influences this effect.

Humans likely evolved an adaptive disease avoidance system, the Behavioral Immune System, to mitigate the fitness costs posed by pathogens. This system is specially attuned to cues connoting infection risk: When perceived, these cues drive affective, cognitive, and behavioral responses, which work in an articulated way to enhance the organisms' cha...

A few seconds of survival processing, during which people assess the relevance of information to a survival situation, produces particularly good retention. One interpretation of this benefit is that our memory systems are optimized to process and retain fitness-relevant information. Such a “tuning” may exist, in part, because our memory systems we...

AIM: To investigate the influence of the visual external environment in specific cognitive tasks in children.

AIM: To propose a validated reduced version of the Morningness-Eveningness Questionnaire for European Portuguese adolescents aged 12-14 years.

Animate stimuli are better remembered than matched inanimate stimuli in free recall. Three experiments tested the hypothesis that animacy advantages are due to a more efficient use of a categorical retrieval cue. Experiment 1 developed an "embedded list" procedure that was designed to disrupt participants' ability to perceive category structure at...

Throughout development individuals vary in their circadian preferences. One of the most notable changes occurs during adolescence when individuals tend to become progressively more evening-oriented. This is a critical age period to be studied given that eveningness preferences seem to relate with physical, psychological and social problems, whereas...

This work investigated the effect of a distracting environment in the performance of visuospatial attentional and memory tasks in 56 elderly. Overall, the results revealed better performance in the cognitive tasks when these were done in the non-distracting environment, as compared to when they were done in the distracting environment.

The retrieval-practice paradigm has demonstrated that the act of selectively recovering some of the previously studied items from a category impairs the retrieval of the remaining items from that category, as compared to the retrieval of information from non-practiced categories (retrieval-induced forgetting); the practiced items are also better re...

O crecente envelhecimento populacional, nomeadamente em Portugal, exige dos psicólogos uma atenção particular a esta população que carece de cuidados acrescidos. Os idosos apresentam habitualmente declínios cognitivos, nomeadamente ao nível atencional e mnésico, e urge perceber que outros elementos podem debilitar o seu funcionamento nestes domínio...

The present work investigated the effect of a distracting environment in the performance of attentional and working memory (WM) tasks in elderly participants. To this end, forty elderly performed two attentional tasks (simple reaction time and go/no-go tasks), and three WM tasks (arithmetic, memory for digits and sequences of letters and numbers)....

Three experiments investigated the mnemonic effects of source-constrained retrieval in the survival-processing paradigm. Participants were asked to make survival-based or control decisions (pleasantness or moving judgments) about items prior to a source identification test. The source test was followed by a surprise free recall test for all items p...

Recent evidence suggests that animate stimuli are remembered better than matched inanimate stimuli. Two experiments tested whether this animacy effect persists in paired-associate learning of foreign words. Experiment 1 randomly paired Swahili words with matched animate and inanimate English words. Participants were told simply to learn the English...

As queixas mnésicas são muito frequentes na população, particularmente nos idosos. Contudo, a sua significância clínica não é consensual. Este trabalho apresenta dados comparativos de idosos e adultos relativos a um método objetivo de avaliação mnésica e a um método subjetivo. Para tal, 30 idosos e 30 adultos preencheram o Questionário de Lapsos de...