Mechanisms of what-where-when memory in black-capped chickadees (Poecile atricapillus): do chickadees remember "when"?

Integrated what-where-when memory, sometimes called 'episodic-like' memory, has been shown to occur in a number of animals, including food-storing birds and rodents. It is not always clear in these studies, however, what aspect of "when" is remembered. We examined memory for what, where, and when in black-capped chickadees Poecile atricapillus in a procedure designed to dissociate memory for elapsed time (how long ago) from memory for a point in time, the sense of "when" implied in most discussions of episodic or episodic-like memory. Chickadees searched for food in multiple trials that each involved a two-phase procedure. In Phase 1, birds found preferred mealworms in half the sites on one side of an aviary and less preferred sunflower seeds in half the sites on the other side of the aviary. In Phase 2, following a retention interval, birds searched in the aviary with fresh sunflower seeds placed in the sites that held seeds in Phase 1 but either fresh or degraded mealworms in the sites that held mealworms in Phase 1. Whether a site held fresh or degraded worms depended on either when during the day Phase 1 had occurred (Group When), how long ago Phase 1 had occurred (Group HLA), or both (Group When + HLA). Chickadees in all three groups were able to discriminate where and when palatable worms were to be found, but there were temporal limitations on the use of HLA and When + HLA cues that were not found for the use of When cues.     

Visual attention and word recognition in stroop color naming: is word recognition "automatic"?

In Stroop color naming, color targets were accompanied by a color word or a color word plus a neutral word that reduces or "dilutes" the Stroop effect. Abrupt-onset cues called the focus of attention to one stimulus or another. Cuing influenced the size of the Stroop effect but never eliminated it. Unlike the Stroop effect itself, Stroop dilution from the neutral word could be eliminated, by cuing the color word. Focusing visual attention on the color word protected it from Stroop dilution; focusing visual attention on the neutral word did not prevent Stroop interference. Thus, spatial attention is a modulator, protecting visual data from crosstalk, but a word need not be the focus of visual attention to be recognized.     

Telomeres in a Life-Span Perspective: A New "Psychobiomarker"?

ABSTRACT— In order to more fully understand associations between psychological stress and health, it is helpful for researchers to identify "psychobiomarkers," or biological measures that are regulated in part by psychological function and that predict longevity. Telomere length appears to be such a measure. Telomeres, the protective caps at the tips of chromosomes, shorten with age, and this shortening predicts disease and longevity. Leukocyte telomere length may be best viewed through a life-span approach, as it reflects in part the cumulative number of cell divisions that have occurred and the long-term biochemical environment. Recently, a critical mass of studies demonstrated that telomeres appear to shorten with chronic stress, although the mechanisms are unknown. This paper reviews what appear to be malleable determinants of rate of telomere attrition, focusing on early life chronic stressors and metabolic adversity (poor nutrition during development, and obesity). The next generation of research will benefit from experimental and longitudinal models integrating genetic variation, social environments, life experience, and health behaviors.     

Automaticity and cognitive anatomy: is word recognition "automatic"?

Recent progress in neural imaging technologies such as positron emission tomography and dense-array recording of event-related potentials has greatly increased the capacity for in vivo measurement of cognitively relevant processing activity within the human brain. Data from these neural imaging technologies can be combined with behavioral data from standard chronometric techniques to enhance computational modeling of human cognition. Applications of neural data to issues of attention and automaticity are illustrated in the domain of visual word recognition, addressing the question "Is word recognition automatic?"     

Deafness and immediate memory for pictures: dissociations between "inner speech" and the "inner ear"?

Born-deaf, orally trained youngsters were examined on two tasks of immediate memory for pictures of objects. The aim was to investigate the extent of speech coding for pictures in immediate memory in a developmental context. The deaf, unlike young hearing children, did not use picture-name rhyme spontaneously as a cue to recall in a paired association task. Nevertheless, they were just as sensitive as reading age-matched hearing controls to spoken word length in recalling pictures by name. This might mean that the deaf use articulatory rehearsal in some immediate memory tasks, but this leads to a paradoxical conclusion. What could "inner speech" in the deaf be for, if it fails to affect their "inner ear" by inducing rhyme sensitivity in the paired associate task? This paradox is discussed in relation to distinctions between covert and overt use of memory cues in the paired recall task and to possible sources of the word length effect in young hearing (8-9 years old) and deaf subjects.     

Emphasizing appearance versus health outcomes in exercise: The influence of the instructor and participants’ reasons for exercise

The objectifying nature of exercise environments may prevent women from reaping psychological benefits of exercise. The present experiment manipulated self-objectification through an exercise class taught by an instructor who emphasized exercise as either a means of acquiring appearance or health outcomes. The purpose of this study was to test for interactions between the class emphasis and participants’ reasons for exercise (i.e., appearance, health) predicting participants’ state self-objectification, state social physique anxiety, exercise class enjoyment, and future intentions of returning to a similar exercise class. Results, obtained via pre- and post-exercise questionnaires, revealed a significant interaction between class emphasis and health reasons for exercise predicting state self-objectification. Participants with lower health reasons for exercise reported greater state self-objectification in the appearance-focused class compared to those with higher health reasons for exercise. Adopting stronger health reasons for exercise may buffer exercise participants from the more objectifying aspects of the group exercise environment.     

No departure to "Pandora"? Using critical phenomenology to differentiate "naive" from "reflective" experience in psychiatry and psychosomatic medicine (A comment on Schwartz and Wiggins, 2010)

The mind-body problem lies at the heart of the clinical practice of both psychiatry and psychosomatic medicine. In their recent publication, Schwartz and Wiggins address the question of how to understand life as central to the mind-body problem. Drawing on their own use of the phenomenological method, we propose that the mind-body problem is not resolved by a general, evocative appeal to an all encompassing life-concept, but rather falters precisely at the insurmountable difference between "natural" and a "reflective" experience built into phenomenological method itself. Drawing on the works of phenomenologically oriented thinkers, we describe life as inherently "teleological" without collapsing life with our subjective perspective, or stepping over our epistemological limits. From the phenomenology it can be demonstrated that the hypothetical teleological qualities are a reflective reconstruction modelled on human behavioural structure.     

Perceptually walking in another’s shoes: goals and memories constrain spatial perception

Psychological Research - Perceptual variables such as perceived distance contain information about future actions. Often our goals involve the integration of another’s goals, such as lifting...     

Learning concepts and categories: is spacing the "enemy of induction"?

Inductive learning -- that is, learning a new concept or category by observing exemplars -- happens constantly, for example, when a baby learns a new word or a doctor classifies x-rays. What influence does the spacing of exemplars have on induction? Compared with massing, spacing enhances long-term recall, but we expected spacing to hamper induction by making the commonalities that define a concept or category less apparent. We asked participants to study multiple paintings by different artists, with a given artist's paintings presented consecutively (massed) or interleaved with other artists' paintings (spaced). We then tested induction by asking participants to indicate which studied artist (Experiments 1a and 1b) or whether any studied artist (Experiment 2) painted each of a series of new paintings. Surprisingly, induction profited from spacing, even though massing apparently created a sense of fluent learning: Participants rated massing as more effective than spacing, even after their own test performance had demonstrated the opposite.     

Perceived fraudulence in young adults: is there an "imposter syndrome"?

This investigation consists of two studies designed to examine perceived fraudulence, its measurement, and the personality traits associated with the experience in young adults. For Study 1, the Perceived Fraudulence Scale (PFS), a new measure constructed for this study, was administered to a sample of 50 college undergraduates, along with several other self-report measures; a semistructured interview and thought-listing exercise were added to provide convergent assessments of perceived fraudulence. Correlational patterns and regression analyses supported the investigators' conceptualization of perceived fraudulence as involving a combination of fraudulent ideation, depressive tendencies, self-criticism, social anxiety, achievement pressures, and self-monitoring skills. Study 2, in which 100 college undergraduates completed several personality questionnaires, replicated the factor structure of the PFS and provided some evidence for the discriminant validity of the construct of perceived fraudulence.     

Technical clarification to Silbert and Thomas (2013): “Decisional separability,model identification,and statistical inference in the general recognition theory framework”

We offer a minor technical correction to the published proof of part (ii) of the main theorem in Silbert and Thomas (Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 20, 1–20, 2013) that somewhat limits the scope of the equivalence observed in that work. Specifically, in order for a mean shift integrality with decisional separability to be mimicked by a perceptually separable but nondecisionally separable configuration, one needs to assume stimulus invariance. This holds when all of the covariance matrices in the stimulus configuration are equal to each other. We note that part (i) of the theorem is unaffected by this modification; an empirical finding of perceptual separability and the failure of decisional separability can be mimicked by a perceptually nonseparable, decisionally separable configuration without restricting the covariance matrices to be equal. We also note that stimulus invariance is often assumed in simple designs (e.g., Macmillan & Ornstein in Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 97, 1261–1285, 1998), due to the implausibility of different perceptual correlations being present within stimuli perched very closely in perceptual space.     

Paving the Way? Penalty and Atonement in Thomas Aquinas's Soteriology

This article explores the soteriology of Thomas Aquinas. In particular, it considers recent debates over whether Thomas altered Anselm's satisfaction theory in a way which opened the door to the later theory of penal substitution. The article argues that Thomas did indeed alter Anselm's atonement theory in this way insofar as he incorporates punishment within his concept of satisfaction; however, it further contends that his use of ‘placation’ or ‘appeasement’ language does not contribute to such an alteration.