Exceptional calendar calculation ability after early left hemispherectomy

An 18-year-old male subject who had had his left hemisphere removed at age eight was better than chance at calculating the day of the week upon which dates in the past and future fell. He was able to describe his method of calculation, which relied upon both visual memory and serial calculations. The use of a serial calculation method was supported by evidence that both response time and accuracy were related to the distance in years from the current year. The use of both visual and verbal "working" memory was supported by interference effects from calendar calculations and delayed visual and verbal memory tasks. The case is discussed in terms of theories regarding similar calculation skills in idiot savants.     

The development of calendrical skills

Calendrical calculation is the unusual ability to name days of the week for dates in the past and sometimes the future. Previous investigations of this skill have concerned savants, people with pervasive developmental disorders or general intellectual impairment. This research has yielded a hypothesis about how calendrical skills develop but no direct evidence. This study attempts to learn about the development of savant skills by investigating the development of calendrical skills in two boys (aged 5 and 6 years) along with more general cognitive and social assessments. Consistent with the hypothesis, they initially demonstrated knowledge of regularities but limited range and accuracy in answering date questions and they were slower than many adult savants. At follow up, neither had improved their calendrical skills and they were less willing to answer date questions. Possibly this is because, unlike savants, they had developed interests more commonly shared by their peers and they now received praise for more conventional achievements.     

Using a calendar in event dating

Three experiments examined Thompson's reconstructive account for estimating the temporal location of an event. Thompson's day‐of‐week (DOW) model suggests that people know the DOW because diary studies have consistently produced dating errors at 7‐day intervals (e.g. 0, 7, 14, 21, etc.). This study determined whether this DOW effect was produced by a calendar. It also examined whether time estimations were primarily reconstructed. A calendar improved both date and DOW estimates, but neither estimate depended on the use of a calendar. In addition, both date and DOW estimates were primarily reconstructed, but a large portion of DOW estimates were reproduced. Therefore, the argument was made that theories explaining memory for temporal location should account for both reproductive and reconstructive processes. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Calendrical savants: exceptionality and practice

The exceptionality of the skills of calendrical savants and the role of practice were investigated. Experiment 1 compared four autistic calendrical savants to Professor Conway, a distinguished mathematician with calendrical skills. Professor Conway answered questions over a greater range of years but some savants knew more calendrical regularities. Experiment 2 studied the development of a calendrical savant's ability to answer date questions for very remote future years. He started by making written calculations and progressed to mental calculation. His variation in response time for remote dates was similar to that for near dates. The findings are consistent with the view that calendrical savants develop their skills through practice.     

How using a paper versus mobile calendar influences everyday planning and plan fulfillment

This research examines how using a paper versus mobile calendar influences everyday planning and plan fulfillment behavior. Consumers are rapidly moving from paper to mobile calendars for convenience, but this research shows that doing so may lead individuals to be less successful in effectively developing and implementing their plans. In three studies, we demonstrate that compared with mobile calendar users, paper calendar users develop higher-quality plans and are more successful in plan fulfillment. We provide evidence that this happens because paper calendar users take a broader, big-picture perspective during planning, which also leads to higher-quality plan development and a greater likelihood of plan fulfillment. When mobile calendar users use a mode that also provides a broader perspective, their plan quality increases.     

Calendar and reverse calendar effects: time peaks in memory as a function of temporal cues

Prior research on autobiographical memory revealed that students typically report more memories from semester boundaries than from other times. Explanations for these calendar effects were examined in two experiments. In Experiment 1, temporal cues were eliminated from the memory cueing task, and an opposite outcome obtained: a greater amount of memories per week in the middle of semesters than at the boundaries (a reverse calendar effect). Experiment 2 replicated and extended this finding by including conditions with temporal cues at different points in the instructions: pre-retrieval or post-retrieval. In the no-cue condition, the reverse calendar effect was replicated. The calendar effect was evident in both cue conditions, but to a greater degree in the pre-retrieval group. These findings contradict encoding explanations of the calendar effect and are best explained by a combination of anchoring bias and temporal landmarks.     

Melody and pitch processing in five musical savants with congenital blindness

We examined absolute-pitch (AP) and short-term musical memory abilities of five musical savants with congenital blindness, seven musicians, and seven non-musicians with good vision and normal intelligence in two experiments. In the first, short-term memory for musical phrases was tested and the savants and musicians performed statistically indistinguishably, both significantly outperforming the non-musicians and remembering more material from the C major scale sequences than random trials. In the second experiment, participants learnt associations between four pitches and four objects using a non-verbal paradigm. This experiment approximates to testing AP ability. Low statistical power meant the savants were not statistically better than the musicians, although only the savants scored statistically higher than the non-musicians. The results are evidence for a musical module, separate from general intelligence; they also support the anecdotal reporting of AP in musical savants, which is thought to be necessary for the development of musical-savant skill.     

Handedness and calendar orientations in time-space synaesthesia

In one common variant of time-space synaesthesia, individuals report the consistent experience of months bound to a spatial arrangement, commonly described as a circle extending outside of the body. Whereas the layout of these calendars has previously been thought to be relatively random and to differ greatly between synaesthetes, Study 1 provides the first evidence suggesting one critical aspect of these calendars is mediated by handedness: clockwise versus counter-clockwise orientation. A study of 34 time-space synaesthetes revealed a strong association between handedness and the orientation of circular calendars. That is, left-handed time-space synaesthetes tended to report counter-clockwise arrangements and right-handed synaesthetes clockwise. Study 2 tested whether a similar bias was present in non-synaesthetes whose task was to memorize and recall the spatial configuration of a clockwise and counter-clockwise calendar. Non-synaesthetes' relative performance on these two sorts of calendars was significantly correlated with their handedness scores in a pattern similar to synaesthetes. Specifically, left-handed controls performed better on counter-clockwise calendars compared to clockwise, and right-handed controls on clockwise over counter-clockwise. We suggest that the implicit biases seen in controls are mediated by similar mechanisms as in synaesthesia, highlighting the graded nature of synaesthetic associations.     

Invention and convention: Jewish and Christian critique of the Jewish fixed calendar

The institution of the Jewish fixed calendar has provoked muchcontroversial discussion not only among Jewish, but also Christian scholars. The significant contributions to the subject by two of the great sixteenth-century polymaths, the Jew Azariah de' Rossi and the Christian Sebastian Münster, pinpoint the delicate nature of calendrical investigation. Münster's frequent use of one particular piyyut (a religious poem) to undermine the basis of the Jewish fixed calendar is intended to defend the contradictory calendrical data in the Gospels. De' Rossi implicitly attacks Muenster for his recourse to this unhistorical text. Yet de' Rossi himself is intent on proving that the Jewish fixed calendar is a late post-talmudic convention, an iconoclastic approach which was not welcome in certain rabbinic circles. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Everyday executive function in standard-risk acute lymphoblastic leukemia survivors

Although absolute pitch (AP) is a rare skill in typical development, individuals with Williams syndrome (WS) are often referred to as possessing this musical ability. However, there is paucity of research on the topic. In this article, 2 studies were conducted to evaluate AP in WS. In Study 1, seven musically trained individuals with WS, 14 musically trained typically developing controls matched for chronological age, and 2 experienced musicians with AP completed a pitch-identification task. Although the task was a classical assessment of AP, it required participants to have musical knowledge, and the availability and accessibility of musically trained individuals with WS is very low. In Study 2, a paradigm suitable for evaluating AP in individuals without musical training was used, which made it possible to evaluate a larger group of participants with WS. A pitch memory test for isolated tones was presented to 27 individuals with WS, 54 typically developing peers matched for chronological age, and the 2 musicians with AP. Both individuals with WS and their controls obtained low results in the two studies. They showed an arbitrary pattern of response, and their performance was far from that of musicians with AP. Therefore, participants with WS did not appear to possess AP. Unlike what is usually claimed, results suggest that AP is not a remarkable ability in WS and that, as in the typically developing population, this musical ability is also rare in individuals with WS.     

Calendar calculating idiots savants and the smart unconscious

The fact that there are individuals of very limited general intelligence who can perform exceptionally well in one or two isolated domains has always puzzled psychologists who must somehow account for this anomaly in their theories of human ability. It is generally agreed that understanding these idiots savants (here called mono-savants) will increase our understanding of the mind. In this paper calendar calculating over a very extensive time period is accounted for by invoking unconscious processes that act on material to which individuals are innately atrracted and predisposed, and which they study intensively. Support for this viewpoint is drawn from recent empirical evidence that finding and using redundancies, patterns, and algorithms can occur outside of conscious awareness and, to a large extent, irrespective of general intelligence.     

Beyond calendar definitions of age,time, and cohort: The general developmental model revisited

K. W Schaie's 1965 (Psychological Bulletin, 64, 91–107) general developmental model was designed to explicate research strategies that permit the separation of age, cohort, and period (time-of-measurement) effects. Because of the dependency of each one of these constructs upon the remaining two, it has been necessary to impose restrictive assumptions to permit unconfounding of sources of developmental influences. This paper examines conditions under which the parameters of cohort and period can be freed from their dependency upon calendar time. Expanded definitions, thought to have increased explanatory power, are offered for the concepts of cohort and time-of-measurement. Implications for developmental research that might employ sequential strategies are examined, and future directions for the measurement of developmental context are sketched.     

When days are numbered: calendar structure and the development of calendar processing in English and Chinese.

Unlike English, Chinese uses a numerical system for naming months and days. This study explored whether this difference in naming affects the development of simple calendar calculation. Eight- and 10-year-old children as well as undergraduates in China and the United States were asked to name the day or month that comes a specified time before or after a given day or month. In each age group Chinese speakers primarily used calculation based on calendar names to solve these tasks, while English speakers primarily resorted to reciting the names. The magnitude of these differences was substantial; on difficult tasks Chinese fourth graders performed at speeds comparable to those of English-speaking adults. Implications for models of how linguistic structure affects cognition are discussed.     

The wisdom of crowds in one mind: How individuals can simulate the knowledge of diverse societies to reach better decisions

The joint knowledge of many diverse individuals can outperform experts in estimation and decision-making problems. This wisdom of the crowd has been demonstrated in different societal areas such as internet search engines, political elections or stock markets. Recently, psychologists argued that humans may even simulate a diverse society in their own minds by drawing different answers from their brain (Vul &; Pashler, 2008). The underlying idea is that individuals can access different knowledge areas in their brain, whose joint evaluation yields better estimates than their separate consideration. This article presents a mathematical treatment of the wisdom of crowds and two potential mechanisms to quantify the wisdom of crowds in one mind. The implications of both methods are analyzed and applied to new experimental data (N=144), which contain five consecutive estimates from the same individuals. The theoretical and empirical analysis demonstrates limitations of the wisdom of crowds in one mind: Asking oneself several times is on average less powerful than asking only one other individual. This is due to the smaller diversity of estimates of similar individuals and the larger average bias to which they converge. Further, individuals cannot perform independent draws from an “internal distribution”. Hence, there may be other mechanisms at work such as talking oneself into believing initial guesses or eliciting progressively wilder ones.     

From idiots savants to Albert Einstein: A brain-algorithmic explanation of savant and everyday performance

In this journal, Spitz (New Ideas in Psychology, 13, 167–182, 1995) proposed that calendar-calculating savants achieved their astonishing performances by concentrative efforts that developed “smart” unconscious brain algorithms. In this paper I offer argument and examples that support Spitz's contentions. Within the context of a brain algorithm based position I call Neurological Positivism (NP), I argue that all problem solving performances, whether those of savants or anyone else (including Albert Einstein), are the result of common self-organizing, self-referential algorithmic dynamics that connect the powerful algorithms of the phylogenetic brain (for example, those of perception) with algorithmic retoolments developed during ontogeny. Savant performances are described as abnormal outcomes of the evolutionary-driven transformation of phylogenetic algorithms into cultural-level problems. Albert Einstein's experiential account of personal discovery, which he termed intuition, is offered as corroborative support for NP's position that cultural-level performance arises from perceptual algorithms. It is concluded that culture is driven into existence by evolutionary dynamics that are immanent in the phylogenetic brain.     

Do Smarter People Employ Better Decision Strategies? The Influence of Intelligence on Adaptive Use of the Recognition Heuristic

Within the adaptive toolbox approach, it has repeatedly been shown that, on average, people tend to adapt their decision strategies to the decision context. Building upon these results, we investigated whether individuals systematically differ in their ability to successfully adapt to the situation when applying the fast‐and‐frugal recognition heuristic (RH). In decisions between recognized and unrecognized choice objects, individuals can base their choices solely on recognition, as predicted by the RH, or they can use further knowledge retrieved from memory. Since intelligence has been conceived as the ability to successfully adapt to different situations, we expected intelligence to influence the degree of adaptive use of the RH. To test this hypothesis, we first re‐analyzed data that referred to a decision domain for which RH‐use is known to perform well. As expected, individual RH‐use increased with general intelligence. Next, we designed an experiment addressing individual RH‐use in two new decision domains, one domain for which RH‐use was less effective than knowledge‐use and another domain for which both strategies were about equally effective. In addition, we tested whether fluid or crystallized intelligence best predicts adaptive use of the RH. RH‐use was found to decrease with fluid but not crystallized intelligence when RH‐use was less effective than use of further knowledge. In contrast, there was no significant association between either type of intelligence and RH‐use when none of the two strategies was optimal. We conclude that adaptive use versus non‐use of the RH is moderated by fluid intelligence. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Latent variables underlying the memory beliefs of Chartered Clinical Psychologists,Hypnotherapists and undergraduate students

In courts in the United Kingdom, understanding of memory phenomena is often assumed to be a matter of common sense. To test this assumption 337 UK respondents, consisting of 125 Chartered Clinical Psychologists, 88 individuals who advertised their services as Hypnotherapists (HTs) in a classified directory, the Yellow Pages^TM, and 124 first year undergraduate psychology students, completed a questionnaire that assessed their knowledge of 10 memory phenomena about which there is a broad scientific consensus. HTs’ responses were the most inconsistent with the scientific consensus, scoring lowest on six of these ten items. Principal Components Analysis indicated two latent variables – reflecting beliefs about memory quality and malleability – underlying respondents’ responses. In addition, respondents were asked to rate their own knowledge of the academic memory literature in general. There was no significant relationship between participants’ self reported knowledge and their actual knowledge (as measured by their responses to the 10-item questionnaire). There was evidence of beliefs among the HTs that could give rise to some concern (e.g., that early memories from the first year of life are accurately stored and are retrievable).     

When's your birthday? The self‐reference effect in retrieval of dates

Material encoded with reference to the self is better remembered. One interpretation of this effect is that the self operates to organise retrieval of memories. We were motivated to find out whether this organisational principle extended to everyday information and for material not explicitly related to the self. Participants generated friends' birthdays from memory and then gave their own birthday. We found that participants were particularly likely to recall birthdays from on or around the date of their own birthday. Thus, memory for birthdays clusters around self‐relevant information, even when there is no specific attempt to recall self‐related material. Birthdays clustered somewhat around the time of testing, important dates in the calendar, and for a close other, but not to the extent of the participants' birthdays. We suggest this is a demonstration of the organisational structure of the self in memory. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Implicit attitudes and executive control interact to regulate interest in extra-pair relationships

Do we actively maintain monogamous relationships by force of will, or does monogamy flow automatically? During functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), male participants in a romantic relationship performed the Implicit Association Test (IAT) to evaluate implicit attitudes toward adultery and a go/no-go task to measure prefrontal activity implicated in explicit executive control. Subsequently, they were engaged in a date-rating task in which they rated how much they wanted to date unfamiliar females. We found that the individuals with higher prefrontal activity during go/no-go task could regulate the interest for dates with unattractive females; moreover, the individuals with both a stronger negative attitude toward adultery and higher prefrontal activity could regulate their interest for dates with attractive females, and such individuals tended to maintain longer romantic relationships with a particular partner. These results indicate that regulation of amorous temptation via monogamous relationship is affected by the combination of automatic and reflective processes.