Santiago Pelegrina

Universidad de Jaén | UJAEN · Department of Psychology

The detrimental effect of math anxiety on math performance is thought to be mediated by executive functions. Previous studies have primarily focused on trait‐math anxiety rather than state‐math anxiety and have typically examined a single executive function rather than comprehensively evaluating all of them. Here, we used a structural equation mode...

Collaborative memory research has focused primarily on the effects of collaboration at recall with collaboration during encoding receiving less attention. In the present study, collaboration was investigated both at encoding and at retrieval to determine its effects and possible interactions. The aim was to clarify whether the collaborative inhibit...

Divergent and convergent creativity may rely on associative and executive control processes. We examined whether age-related differences in both types of creativity are mediated by executive functions and associative processes. A total of 427 primary, secondary school, and university students completed a battery of tasks measuring executive functio...

Background: Research exploring emotional responses to math-related words in individuals with math anxiety (MA) is scarce. Here, we examined MA participants' subjective emotional processing of math-related cues within Lang's bioinformational model of emotion to further understand the role of those cues in MA. Methods: In total, 41 high-MA and 32...

Metacognition in working memory (WM) has received less attention than episodic memory, and few studies have investigated confidence judgements while carrying out a verbal WM task. The present study investigated whether individuals are aware of their own level of performance while carrying out an ongoing verbal WM task, and whether judgments of conf...

The developmental trajectories of brain oscillations during the encoding and maintenance phases of a Working Memory (WM) task were calculated. The Delayed-Match-to-Sample Test (DMTS) was applied to 239 subjects of 6-29 years, while EEG was recorded. The Event-Related Spectral Perturbation (ERSP) was obtained in the range between 1 and 25 Hz during...

The objective of this study was to determine the contribution of retrieval and substitution components of working memory updating to reading comprehension. Difficulties in reading comprehension have been related to the inability to update information in working memory. Updating is a complex process comprising various subprocesses, such as retrievin...

Recollection, rather than familiarity, seems to play a crucial part in sustaining children’s reading comprehension. However, the roles of recollection and familiarity in both word reading and reading comprehension have yet to be fully understood. In this study, we examined estimates of recollection and familiarity in a working memory updating task...

In addition to chronic widespread pain and depression and anxiety symptoms, patients with fibromyalgia frequently experience cognitive problems. This study investigated executive functions in fibromyalgia via a Go/No-Go task. To obtain comprehensive information about performance, traditional and ex-Gaussian parameters of reaction time (RT) variabil...

The objectives were to examine the factorial structure of the Academic Procrastination Scale-Short Form (APS-S) and the measurement invariance across gender and educational levels, to determine possible differences in procrastination across gender, educational levels, and grades. The sample was formed of 1486 Spanish primary and secondary school st...

The present study aimed to investigate the factor structure and degree of measurement invariance of a Spanish adaptation of the Abbreviated Math Anxiety Scale (AMAS) in primary and secondary school students ( N = 1,504 students, 46.08% males, 7-19 years of age). The results of confirmatory factor analysis corroborated the original two-factor struct...

Possible age-related changes in different working memory (WM) subcomponents were assessed by analyzing the event-related-potentials associated with the n-back task. Two versions of the task (0- and 1-back) were administered to 168 subjects between 6 and 20 years of age. In both n-back tasks, lists of symbol-letter pairs were presented. Participants...

This study aimed to determine whether math anxiety was related to working memory (WM) updating performance and, specifically, to the retrieval and substitution components of updating. A set of WM updating (WMU) tasks that involve different retrieval and substitution requirements were administered to 114 university students. In addition, participant...

The Remote Associates Test (RAT) is a measure developed by Mednick (1962) which is used to assess the convergent thinking component of creativity. This study presents a normative database in Spanish including 102 problems based on the RAT. Three sets of problems were built according to the type of between-word associations: semantic, compound, and...

This study analyzed the mechanisms involved in possible transfer effects for two different working memory updating (WMU) training programs administered to young adults and based on two updating paradigms: n-back and arithmetical updating. The influence of practice distribution on transfer effects was also explored by including two training regimens...

Working memory updating (WMU) is a core mechanism in the human mental architecture and a good predictor of a wide range of cognitive processes. This study analyzed the benefits of two different WMU training procedures, near transfer effects on a working memory measure, and far transfer effects on nonverbal reasoning. Maintenance of any benefits a m...

Focus switching in working memory involves accessing an object in the focus of attention in order to retrieve its content. Objects in working memory can be viewed as consisting of two types of information: contents (e.g., numerical information) and contexts (e.g., cues to retrieve the contents). This study examined the extent to which content retri...

Background: Numerous studies, most of them involving adolescents and adults, have evidenced a moderate negative relationship between math anxiety and math performance. There are, however, a limited number of studies that have addressed the mechanisms underlying this relation. Aims: This study aimed to investigate the role of two possible mediati...

Math anxiety has been found to be an emotional problem that has a negative effect on students’ academic performance across different levels of education. This type of anxiety could be related to certain cogni-tive and emotional processes. A first objective was to examine the relation-ship between math anxiety and certain inhibitory abilities respon...

La memoria de trabajo es uno de los constructos cognitivos más influyentes y que más atención ha recibido en las últimas décadas. Puede definirse como la capacidad para mantener temporalmente activa la información para su utilización en diferentes actividades cognitivas como comprender o pensar. Aunque hay consenso en cuanto a su definición a nivel...

The n-back task is a frequently used measure of working memory (WM) in cognitive neuroscience research contexts, and it has become widely adopted in other areas over the last decade. This study aimed to obtain normative data for the n-back task from a large sample of children and adolescents. To this end, a computerized verbal n-back task with thre...

Working memory updating (WMU) tasks require different elements in working memory (WM) to be maintained simultaneously, accessing one of these elements, and substituting its content. This study examined possible developmental changes from childhood to adulthood both in focus switching and substituting information in WM. In addition, possible age-rel...

There is growing evidence supporting the importance of executive functions, and specifically working memory updating (WMU), for children’s academic achievement. This study aimed to assess the specific contribution of updating to the prediction of academic performance. Two updating tasks, which included different updating components, were administer...

The present study investigates the process of updating representations in working memory (WM) and how similarity between the information involved influences this process. In WM updating tasks, the similarity in terms of numerical distance between the number to be substituted and the new one facilitates the updating process. We aimed to disentangle...

It has been argued that children with learning disabilities (LD) encounter severe problems in working memory (WM) tasks, especially when they need to update information stored in their WM. It is not clear, however, to what extent this is due to a generally poor updating ability or to a difficulty specific to the domain to be processed. To examine t...

The main aim of this research was to study whether memory dynamics influence older people’s choices to the same extent as younger’s ones. To do so, we adapted the retrieval-practice paradigm to produce variations in memory accessibility of information on which decisions were made later. Based on previous results, we expected to observe retrieval-in...

Similarity among representations held simultaneously in working memory (WM) is a factor which increases interference and hinders performance. The aim of the current study was to investigate age-related differences between younger and older adults in a working memory numerical updating task, in which the similarity between information held in WM was...

Two experiments examined the role of numerical distance in updating numerical information in working memory. In the first experiment, participants had to memorize a new number only when it was smaller than a previously memorized number. In the second experiment, updating was based on an external signal, which removed the need to perform any numeric...

Difficulties in inhibitory processes have been shown to characterize the performance of poor comprehenders. However, the inhibitory inefficiency of poor comprehenders is most often assessed by their resistance to proactive interference, that is, the ability to suppress off-goal task information from working memory (WM). In two studies tasks assessi...

Inhibition is considered to have an important role in memory retrieval. However, many experimental results suggest that its efficiency declines with aging. In this study, the authors tested this hypothesis by using the retrieval-practice task. The retrieval-induced forgetting (RIF) observed with this paradigm is normally explained in terms of inhib...

Updating information in working memory is a critical process which makes possible to have available, at every moment, the information most relevant for mind operations. However, the specific mechanisms underlying the updating process have rarely been analysed. This paper examines the importance of two of the mechanisms implicated in a numerical upd...

En: La memoria es un proceso cognitivo encargado de almacenar, mantener y recuperar la información, es importante considerar que la información no funciona de forma aislada sino que actúa interconectadamente con otros procesos cognitivos y así participa en la construcción de significados y subyace a prácticamente todos los procesos cognitivos compl...

Some contemporary approaches suggest that inhibitory mechanisms play an important role in cognitive development. In addition, several authors distinguish between intentional and unintentional inhibitory processes in cognition. We report two experiments aimed at exploring possible developmental changes in these two types of inhibitory mechanisms. In...

In three experiments, we assessed the effects of type of relation and memory test on retrieval-induced forgetting of facts. In Experiments 1 and 2, eight sets of four shared-subject sentences were presented for study. They were constructed so that half were thematically related and half were unrelated. A retrieval practice phase required participan...

This study examined family factors reported by parents and their children in relation to children's academic competence. Adolescents and their parents (N=323) reported about the same family characteristics: parental acceptance and involvement in the children's education. Measures related to children's academic competence were: academic competence r...

The main aim of this study was to determine the pattern of errors in Spanish spelling. Specifically, we were interested in discovering if all Spanish words have similar levels of spelling difficulty or whether there are types of words that cause a high percentage of spelling errors. 972 children aged between 8 to 10 years were requested to write a...

Resumen El objetivo de este estudio es analizar la relación existente entre los estilos educativos de los padres (democráticos, permisivos, autoritarios e indiferentes) y distintas áreas vinculadas con el rendimiento académico de los hijos. Participaron 372 chicos y chicas de entre 11 y 15 años de edad que evaluaron a sus padres en función del afec...

Examined the relationship between parenting styles and 372 adolescents' (aged 11-15 yrs) psychosocial competence. Parents were classified according to the adolescent's perception in 4 groups: permissive, authoritative, authoritarian and neglectful. Several aspects related to the adolescents' psychosocial competence were assessed through self-report...

This study examined the relationship between parenting styles and adolescents' psychosocial competence. Parents of 372 students between 11 and 15 years old were classified according to the student perception in four groups: permissive, authoritative, authoritarian and neglectful. Several aspects related to the students' psychosocial competence were...

Este estudio analiza las relaciones entre 10s estilos educativos de 10s padres y algunas variables relacionadas con la competencia psicoso-cial de los adolescentes. Para ello se clasificó a 10s padres de 372 estu-diantes de 11 a 15 años en cuatro grupos: perrnisivos, democráticos, au-toritarios e indiferentes. Los estudiantes cumplirnentaron autoin...

The results of many experiments have shown that although people distribute their study time depending on the perceived difficulty of the materials, they do not succeed in compensating for this difficulty (e.g., Mazzoni & Cornoldi, 1993). The purpose of this paper was to explore possible ways to induce compensation. The objective difficulty of the i...

Nelson & Narens (1990) proposed that the allocation of study time in self-paced memory tasks depends on the comparison between the norm of study (established before studying) and the level of learning reached. We explored the role of practice, instructions, and individual differences in determining the norm of study and optimizing performance. In S...

El principal objetivo de este trabajo fue estudiar tanto el rendimiento objetivo en tareas de memoria como las percepciones que los ancianos tienen de su memoria (metamemoria), así como la posible relación que pudiera haber entre ellas. Como medida objetiva de memoria cotidiana se utilizó un listado de tareas seleccionadas de la literatura sobre es...