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Voluntary motor actions aim at and are thus governed by predictable action effects. Therefore, representations of an action's effects normally must become activated prior to the action itself. In 5 psychological refractory period experiments the authors investigated whether the activation of such effect representations coincides with the response selection stage of information-processing theories. Participants performed 2 choice reaction tasks, separated by variable stimulus onset asynchronies. The authors varied the compatibility between responses and forthcoming sensorial effects (Experiments 1, 2, 3, and 5) or between responses and effect-resembling stimuli (Experiments 4 and 5) in one of the tasks. They observed that compatibility influences from forthcoming (anticipated) response effects were located within the response selection bottleneck, whereas compatibility influences from action-preceding (perceived) effects were due to processes before the bottleneck. These results point to a crucial role of the endogenous activation of action-effect representations for the selection of voluntary motor responses.

It is widely acknowledged that visual input is processed along two anatomically and functionally distinct pathways--a ventral pathway for conscious perception and a dorsal pathway for action control. The present study investigated whether the apparent direct and unmediated processing in the dorsal stream is subject to capacity limitations. Specifically, we tested whether a simple dorsal task of grasping an object is affected by the psychological refractory period (PRP), a well-known indication of capacity limitations. Subjects performed an auditory choice reaction task and then, following varying delays, had to judge an object's width (ventral task) or grasp an object across its width (dorsal task). Although these tasks were differentially affected by irrelevant variation of the objects' length, they were subject to comparable dual-task interference. These results show that despite important differences between ventral and dorsal information processing, both modes of processing are constrained by limited capacities.

Human information processing is influenced by the affective quality of pleasant and unpleasant stimuli. A widely known example is the emotional variant of the colour-naming Stroop task. Although participants are not instructed to attend to valence, it nevertheless influences response times. We studied how persons differ in ignoring the irrelevant valence of stimuli and how such differences are related to personality traits. In two emotional Stroop tasks using a vocal response mode, participants were instructed to name the colour of unpleasant and pleasant words presented in different physical colours. In Study 2, we introduced a second task to increase the cognitive load. Across both studies, extraversion and approach temperament were associated with higher interferences by pleasant words. Neuroticism and avoidance temperament, however, were associated with higher interferences by unpleasant words only when cognitive load increased because of a task switch. This finding suggests that highly neurotic individuals can mitigate influences of emotional stimuli on information processing under conditions of low cognitive load.

The personality construct "psychopathy" is of utmost importance in legal prognosis. In the last 20 years, a multitude of empirical research proved the predictive validity of this concept concerning the degree of dangerousness represented by an offender. In the present study, a representative, nonselected sample of 416 offenders was examined using the Screening Version of the Psychopathy Checklist (PCL:SV). The data were analysed both categorically and dimensionally according to the three-factor model proposed by Cooke and Michie. In comparison to North American Studies the prevalence of high scorers was significantly lower, implicating intercultural differences. Analyses of the effects of gender yielded higher scores on each of the three factors in male offenders. Concerning different age cohorts, it turned out that the arrogant and deceitful interpersonal style and deficient affective experience remained stable, whereas the impulsive and irresponsible behavioral style decreased with increasing age. Therefore, our results point out intercultural differences already shown in the prevalence of "psychopathy" and confirm the effects of gender and age concerning this construct.

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Conflict between response tendencies is ubiquitous in every day performance. Capabilities that resolve such conflicts are therefore mandatory for successful goal achievement. The present study investigates the potential of evaluative and motivational inner speech to help conflict resolution. In our study we assessed six tasks commonly used to measure conflict resolution capabilities and cognitive flexibility in 163 participants. Participants additionally answered questionnaires concerned with their habitual usage of inner speech such as silently rehearsing task instructions and evaluating performance. We found reduced conflict effects in tasks using symbolic, non-verbal stimuli for participants with higher self-reported use of evaluative and motivational inner speech. Overall, our findings suggest that silent self-talk and performance monitoring are beneficial for conflict resolution over and above constructs such as intelligence and working memory capacity that account for mean RT differences among participants.

We studied personality influences on accessibility of pleasant and unpleasant stimuli in a sample of 129 students. Self‐reports and reports by knowledgeable informants on extraversion, neuroticism, approach temperament and avoidance temperament were combined with a go/no‐go lexical decision task that included pleasant, unpleasant and neutral words, and two response modes, manual and vocal. The data were analysed using multilevel modelling. Extraversion and approach temperament predicted faster identification of pleasant words than of neutral and of unpleasant words. Vocal responses took longer than manual responses, but mode of response did not interact with the valence of the words. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.