Studies of the Startle Pattern: II. Bodily Pattern

The effects of two different faking instructions on Orientation Inventory scores were investigated in five groups of university students. The faking sets tended to produce increased scores on task orientation and decreased scores on self orientation. Changes in interaction orientation scores were inconsistent. Results were compared with those obtained earlier by Bass.     

The Startle Pattern in Infants in Response to Non-Auditory Stimuli

Abstract

Goldstein, K. Human Nature in the Light of Psychopathology. Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1940. Pp. 258 Reviewed by Frederick Wyatt. Reviewed by Frederick Wyatt

Katona, G. Organizing and Memorizing. New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1940. Pp. 318. Reviewed by Livingston Welch     

Studies of the Startle Pattern: IV. Infants

Individual versus group risk taking was examined by using a novel set of industrial product purchasing situations as stimuli. The set incorporated situations that varied along a dimension called “normative risk.” Situations represented either low-normative risk, medium-normative risk, or high-normative risk. Normative risk was defined in a decision theoretical context. The set was administered to introductory business students at a large university in the United States. The results of the study showed that groups were not invariably riskier than individuals; rather the amount of risky shift following group discussion was negatively related to the level of normative risk. This overall conclusion held true also in relation to the degree of perceived riskiness of the situations, since a positive relationship between normative risk and perceived risk was established. The theoretical implications of the results are discussed.     

Repeated Auditory Stimulation of the Startle Response in the Guinea Pig

Simulated and behavioral personal space measures and the Sensation Seeking Scale were administered to 20 males and 20 females. In the simulated measures Ss positioned male and female top profiles relative to a top profile representing themselves at each of nine equally spaced angles. For the behavioral measure Ss were approached by a male or female at each of the nine angles.

The female “swinger” had greater simulated personal space. Males who liked new and interesting experiences had greater side and diagonal simulated personal space, and females high on the same scale had a closer behavioral personal space toward males except at the sides. Males and females responded similarly to males and females approaching from various directions. However, there was no relation between front and side simulated personal space for males. Size of personal space relative to females tended to be highly correlated with size of personal space toward males. However, for male Ss there was little relation between front personal space toward males and females. For male Ss simulated personal space and behavioral personal space were highly correlated. For female Ss the two measures were almost completely unrelated.     

Auditory Distraction by Meaningless Irrelevant Speech: A Developmental Study

The irrelevant sound effect (ISE) typically refers to a disruptive effect of a to‐be‐ignored sound in serial recall tasks, where lists of visually presented items (digits and letters) must be recalled in serial order. Although extensively studied in adults, studies on developmental aspects of the ISE are scarce. The present study aims to increase our understanding of developmental changes of auditory distraction in children beyond serial recall. Two tasks (i.e., word categorization and evaluation of simple mathematical equations) were designed to test retrieval from semantic memory. Proportion correct and reaction times (adjusted for speed–accuracy tradeoff) were measured in 8–9 and 12–13‐year‐olds. Results revealed a developmental change in the susceptibility to auditory distraction. Whereas older children were not affected by background sounds, younger children showed impairment in both proportion correct and adjusted reaction times. Overall, results suggest that attention distraction and immature attention control mechanisms contribute to ISEs in young children. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Stimulus Parameters Underlying Sound-Symbolic Mapping of Auditory Pseudowords to Visual Shapes

Sound symbolism refers to non-arbitrary mappings between the sounds of words and their meanings and is often studied by pairing auditory pseudowords such as “maluma” and “takete” with rounded and pointed visual shapes, respectively. However, it is unclear what auditory properties of pseudowords contribute to their perception as rounded or pointed. Here, we compared perceptual ratings of the roundedness/pointedness of large sets of pseudowords and shapes to their acoustic and visual properties using a novel application of representational similarity analysis (RSA). Representational dissimilarity matrices (RDMs) of the auditory and visual ratings of roundedness/pointedness were significantly correlated crossmodally. The auditory perceptual RDM correlated significantly with RDMs of spectral tilt, the temporal fast Fourier transform (FFT), and the speech envelope. Conventional correlational analyses showed that ratings of pseudowords transitioned from rounded to pointed as vocal roughness (as measured by the harmonics-to-noise ratio, pulse number, fraction of unvoiced frames, mean autocorrelation, shimmer, and jitter) increased. The visual perceptual RDM correlated significantly with RDMs of global indices of visual shape (the simple matching coefficient, image silhouette, image outlines, and Jaccard distance). Crossmodally, the RDMs of the auditory spectral parameters correlated weakly but significantly with those of the global indices of visual shape. Our work establishes the utility of RSA for analysis of large stimulus sets and offers novel insights into the stimulus parameters underlying sound symbolism, showing that sound-to-shape mapping is driven by acoustic properties of pseudowords and suggesting audiovisual cross-modal correspondence as a basis for language users' sensitivity to this type of sound symbolism.     

A Normative Study of an Auditory Projective Technique

The purpose of this study is to provide normative data for the sound effect sequences of the Braverman-Chevigny Auditory Projective Test. The test was administered to 149 college undergraduates in a group setting, who were asked to compose stories to the seven sound sequences. Stories were coded in terms of tone, outcome, number of characters, theme, and identification of “hero.” The stories were predominantly negative in tone, with outcomes generally neutral or unsuccessful. Interscorer reliabilities were all significant beyond the .001 level.     

复合运动刺激视觉追踪的初步研究

本实验采用多目标追踪和复合刺激研究范式,将注意追踪和知觉的整体优先性两个研究领域中存在的知觉组织规律相结合,对单一和多个复合刺激进行注意追踪研究.结果表明:在单一或多个复合刺激追踪过程中,同样遵循静态知觉组织原则;不同知觉组织形式对知觉加工有不同的影响,突出的颜色变化可以促进知觉组织加工.     

The creation and validation of the Developmental Emotional Faces Stimulus Set

The Developmental Emotional Faces Stimulus Set (DEFSS) is designed to provide a standardized set of emotional stimuli that includes both child and adult faces and that has been validated by participants across a wide range of ages. This article describes the creation and validation of the DEFSS, which includes 404 validated facial photographs of people between 8 and 30 years old displaying five different emotional expressions: happy, angry, fearful, sad, and neutral. The emotions in all photographs were identified correctly by 86 % of the raters (minimum 55 %), and validity did not vary as a function of the age group of the model or of the raters, indicating that the pictures are equally appropriate for use across the entire age range. Strengths and limitations of the DEFSS are discussed.     

Alteration of Auditory Cortex Activity with a Visual Stimulus through Conditioning: A 2-Deoxyglucose Analysis

In two experiments, the 2-deoxyglucose metabolic mapping technique was used to examine the hypothesis that a stimulus of one modality (a light) will begin to activate the sensory cortex of a stimulus of another modality (a tone) with which it has been repeatedly paired. Adult gerbils received repeated presentations of either a light or the light paired with a tone known to affect 2DG labeling patterns in the auditory cortex. Intermittent footshock was included on a pseudo-random basis to maintain arousal in the subjects. One day after training, each gerbil was injected with 2DG and either received repeated presentations of the light only or was simply exposed to the training context. Analysis of the auditory cortex revealed no differences in overall metabolic activity of the auditory cortex between the groups. However, in both experiments, the light that was previously paired with the tone changed the relative activity of the cortical subfields compared to the light not previously paired with the tone. Specifically, the results indicate greater activity in the anterior auditory field (AAF—Experiments 1 and 2) and the posterior fields (DPVP—Experiment 2) relative to the primary field AI in response to the light that was previously paired with the tone during training. Gerbils either only placed in the context during the 2DG session or that received unpaired presentations of the light and tone during training did not show this shift in relative labeling between the subfields. Because no differences in overall activity of the auditory cortex were found, we conclude that the shift in relative labeling between the subfields reflects, on average, both an increase in activity of fields AAF and DPVP and a concomitant decrease in AI activity in response to the light stimulus. The results have implications for our understanding both of brain learning mechanisms in general and the potential functions of auditory cortex subfields in particular.     

Dynamic Regulation Responding to an External Stimulus: A Differential Equation Model

This study examines the dynamic regulation process responding to an external stimulus. The damped oscillator model has been used to describe this process. However, the model does not allow a nonzero steady state, even though the oscillations may continue and do not necessarily damp toward zero. This study introduces the driven damped oscillator model which has an additional parameter to identify different patterns of the steady state. Three methods, generalized local linear approximation, continuous time structural equation modeling, and analytic solutions of differential equations are provided to estimate model parameters. A simulation study indicates that parameters in the driven damped oscillator model are well recovered. The model is then illustrated using a data set on the daily reports of sales after a sale promotion. Potential applications and possible expansions of this model are also discussed.     

Giving Meaning to Movement: A Developmental Study

Recently, researchers have been investigating the effects of kinematics stimulus properties on pattern perception and recognition. However, the stimulus properties that are used to discriminate animate from inanimate objects have received relatively little attention. Earlier research has indicated that the external movement of artificially generated objects is perceived as animate by observers of all ages. In this investigation, children in Grades 1,4, and 7 and university adults were asked to describe what they saw after viewing computer-generated displays of two circular objects that exhibited variations of external and internal movement. We predicted that observers would incorporate and integrate the salient kinematic properties of the objects in a display into a coherent narrative and that their ability to achieve matches among the properties of objects in a display and the properties of objects described in the narrative would increase with age. Moreover, because of their relative insensitivity to the actual properties of objects in the display, we predicted that younger observers would make more animate attributions for nonmoving objects and fewer animate attributions for moving objects than would older observers. The result supported these predictions.     

Behavioral Control Dynamics and Developmental Outcomes in Infants Prenatally Exposed to Cocaine

This study longitudinally examined the associations between mother–infant interactions at 15 months and behavioral and cognitive outcomes at 36 months of age in a sample of at‐risk, young children. Participants for the current study were 58 infants/toddlers prenatally exposed to cocaine and their maternal caregivers. These infants were from a low socioeconomic status background and were part of an intervention setting. When the children were 12, 15, and 36 months, they participated in research sessions with their maternal caregivers. Cognitive development at 12 months and maternal and infant behavior at 15 months were measured to predict behavioral and cognitive outcome at 36 months. Higher levels of maternal control at 15 months were marginally significant in predicting higher levels of problem behavior at 36 months whereas higher levels of infant resistance to control predicted lower levels of problem behavior. Furthermore, control‐resistant behavior displayed by infants was a unique buffer against problem behavior, even after controlling for maternal factors and cognitive abilities. These findings suggest that maternal control attempts and infant reactions to those maternal control behaviors play an important role in the development of adaptive and maladaptive behavior patterns during early childhood.     

The Robot in the Crib: A Developmental Analysis of Imitation Skills in Infants and Robots

Interesting systems, whether biological or artificial, develop. Starting from some initial conditions, they respond to environmental changes, and continuously improve their capabilities. Developmental psychologists have dedicated significant effort to studying the developmental progression of infant imitation skills, because imitation underlies the infant's ability to understand and learn from his or her social environment. In a converging intellectual endeavour, roboticists have been equipping robots with the ability to observe and imitate human actions because such abilities can lead to rapid teaching of robots to perform tasks. We provide here a comparative analysis between studies of infants imitating and learning from human demonstrators, and computational experiments aimed at equipping a robot with such abilities. We will compare the research across the following two dimensions: (a) initial conditions-what is innate in infants, and what functionality is initially given to robots, and (b) developmental mechanisms-how does the performance of infants improve over time, and what mechanisms are given to robots to achieve equivalent behaviour. Both developmental science and robotics are critically concerned with: (a) how their systems can and do go 'beyond the stimulus' given during the demonstration, and (b) how the internal models used in this process are acquired during the lifetime of the system.     

A Search for the Optimal Stimulus

How do stimulus size and item number relate to the magnitude and direction of error on center estimation and line cancellation tests? How might this relationship inform theories concerning spatial neglect? These questions were addressed by testing twenty patients with right hemisphere lesions, eleven with left hemisphere lesions and eleven normal control subjects on multiple versions of center estimation and line cancellation tests. Patients who made large errors on these tests also demonstrated an optimal or pivotal stimulus value, i.e., a particular size center estimation test or number of lines on cancellation that either minimized error magnitude relative to other size stimuli (optimal) or marked the boundary between normal and abnormal performance (pivotal). Patients with right hemisphere lesions made increasingly greater errors on the center estimation test as stimuli were both larger and smaller than the optimal value, whereas those with left hemisphere lesions made greater errors as stimuli were smaller than a pivotal value. In normal subjects, the direction of errors on center estimation stimuli shifted from the right of true center to the left as stimuli decreased in size (i.e., the crossover effect). Right hemisphere lesions exaggerated this effect, whereas left hemisphere lesions diminished and possibly reversed the direction of crossover. Error direction did not change as a function of stimulus value on cancellation tests. The demonstration of optimal and pivotal stimulus values indicates that performances on center estimation and cancellation tests in neglect are only relative to the stimuli used. In light of other studies, our findings indicate that patients with spatial neglect grossly overestimate the size of small stimuli and underestimate the size of large stimuli, that crossover represents an “apparent” shift in error direction that actually results from normally occurring errors in size perception, and that the left hemisphere is specialized for one aspect of size estimation, whereas the right performs dual roles.     

Stimulus discrimination following covert attentional orienting to an exogenous cue.

Five experiments explored exogenous covert visual-attentional orienting following a brief peripheral cue. On each trial an attentional cue was followed by a stimulus in an empty field at 1 of 8 locations on an imaginary circle centered on the fixation point. The cued area size and the cue-target spatial relation were manipulated. Accuracy and response time were affected by the exogenous cue validity. Attention was allocated to a specific location in a visual quadrant: A target at an uncued location in a quadrant was not facilitated as much as target at the cued location, and a target in a different quadrant was inhibited in relation to a neutral condition. Cuing 2 locations in a quadrant was not as facilitative for targets at the cued locations or as inhibitive for targets at other locations compared with cuing a single location in a quadrant. Results are discussed in the context of several extent models of covert visual-spatial attention.