Contemporary Psychology in Spain

Abstract

thinking and reasoning and logical processes (Del Val 1977); heuristics and categorization, conceptualization, and judgment (Gonz:ilez­ Marques 1 991 ); multi-level processing in representations, decision making, and problem solving (Martinez-Arias 1 99 1 ); and syllogistic operations (Garcia-Madruga 1 983) have attracted the attention of various groups of re­ searchers. Psycholinguistic processes have been studied from the perspective of mod­ ularity, in which researchers try to analyze the computational structure sup­ porting these processes and to determine the various levels of processing in sentence production (Garcia-Albea et al 1989) and in sentence comprehension (Belinchon et aI1 992). Inner active processes in reading, metaphorical expres­ sions as a crossroads for language and thought (Mayor 1985), and the acquisi­ tion of linguistic categories have been studied by several researchers interested in applied cognitive approaches (Valle 1991). The issue of bilingualism has attracted the attention of psychologists (Sigmin 1984) because about 60% of the Spanish population live in areas where a second language has an official character and is used in everyday life. Forns & Boada (1993) have been working on referential communication both in monolingual and bilingual children. Emotion has been studied from both psychophysiological and psychosocial perspectives. Fernandez-Dols et al ( 1991 ) and Fernandez-Dols & Jim(!nez (1986) have proposed a contextual theory and a taxonomy of emotional situa­ tions based on several empirical studies on emotional expression and recogni­ tion (Iglesias et al 1 989).