Song learning and cognitive ability are not consistently related in a songbird

Learned aspects of song have been hypothesized to signal cognitive ability in songbirds. We tested this hypothesis in hand-reared song sparrows (Melospiza melodia) that were tutored with playback of adult songs during the critical period for song learning. The songs developed by the 19 male subjects were compared to the model songs to produce two measures of song learning: the proportion of notes copied from models and the average spectrogram cross-correlation between copied notes and model notes. Song repertoire size, which reflects song complexity, was also measured. At 1 year of age, subjects were given a battery of five cognitive tests that measured speed of learning in the context of a novel foraging task, color association, color reversal, detour-reaching, and spatial learning. Bivariate correlations between the three song measures and the five cognitive measures revealed no significant associations. As in other studies of avian cognition, different cognitive measures were for the most part not correlated with each other, and this result remained true when 22 hand-reared female song sparrows were added to the analysis. General linear mixed models controlling for effects of neophobia and nest of origin indicated that all three song measures were associated with better performance on color reversal and spatial learning but were associated with worse performance on novel foraging and detour-reaching. Overall, the results do not support the hypothesis that learned aspects of song signal cognitive ability.     

Emotional correlates of the different dimensions of schizotypal personality disorder

Two studies explored which different dimensions of schizotypal personality disorder (SPD) were associated with negative affect, attention to emotions, clarity of emotions, and emotional intensity/instability. Study 1 included 247 college students, and questionnaires were used to measure SPD. Study 2 included 225 community residents, oversampling for individuals with elevated levels of SPD, and semistructured diagnostic interviews were used to measure SPD. In both studies (a) higher levels of negative affect were associated with higher levels of both cognitive-perceptual and interpersonal symptoms, (b) cognitive-perceptual disturbances were associated with greater attention to emotion, whereas interpersonal disturbances were associated with less attention to emotion, and (c) lower levels of emotional clarity were associated with higher levels of suspiciousness.     

The crossed-hands deficit in tactile temporal-order judgments: the effect of training

Several recent studies have shown that judgments of temporal order for tactile stimuli presented to the two hands are greatly affected by crossing the hands. The size of the threshold for judging temporal order may be up to four times larger with the hands crossed as compared to the hands uncrossed. The results from these recent studies suggest that with crossed hands, contrary to many situations involving the integration of tactile and proprioceptive information, subjects have difficulty in adjusting their perception of tactile inputs to correspond with the spatial positions of the hands. In the present study we examined the effect of training in judging temporal order on the size of this crossed-hands deficit--the difference in the thresholds for temporal-order judgments when the hands are crossed and uncrossed. All training procedures produced significant declines in the size of the deficit. With training, the difference between crossed-hands and uncrossed-hands temporal-order thresholds dropped from several hundred milliseconds to as little as 19 ms. A group of percussionists with experience in playing with crossed hands showed the same crossed-hands effects as non-musicians. The results were consistent in showing that the crossed-hands deficit was never completely eliminated but was greatly reduced with training. The implication is that subjects are able to adjust to the crossed-hands posture with modest amounts of training. The results are discussed in terms of the explanations that have been offered for the crossed-hands deficit.     

A review of research on the effects of religion on adolescent tobacco use published between 1990 and 2003

An electronic search of Medline and PsycInfo produced 29 studies that specifically investigated the effects of religion on adolescent tobacco use. Independent (religion) and dependent (tobacco use) variables and variables controlled for in statistical analyses were categorized. Twenty-two of the 29 studies reported at least one significant effect of religion on tobacco use, with 31 of 43 separate analyses of religious variables yielding significant negative correlations between religion and tobacco use. Religion was inversely related to all measures of tobacco use (lifetime, occasional, and regular use), but the findings suggest religion's primary effect is its prohibitive influence against ever using tobacco.     

The effect of test schedules on the formation of linked perceptual classes

After training conditional discriminations among selected stimuli from two perceptual classes, the emergence of novel relations involving other members of both classes was assessed using cross-class probes. The cross-class probes were presented using one of four different testing schedules. In the 2/9 test, nine different probes were presented in each of two test blocks. In the 6/3 test, three different probes were presented in each of six test blocks. In the 18/1-RND test, each of the 18 cross-class probes was presented in separate test blocks. In the 2/9 and 6/3 tests, the cross-class probes were presented in a randomized order within test block. In the 18/1-RND test, the cross-class probes were presented in a randomized sequence. In the 18/1-PRGM test, however, the cross-class probes were presented in a programmed order (i.e., the values of the stimuli in each cross-class probe were changed systematically in the succession of probe presentations). About 55% of the linked perceptual classes emerged during the 2/9, 6/3, and 18/1-RND tests. Thus the number of different probes in a test block did not influence the emergence of classes as long as the probes were presented in a random order. Virtually all classes emerged during the 18/1-PRGM test. Thus at least one ordered introduction of different cross probes resulted in the reliable emergence of linked perceptual classes. Mechanisms responsible for linked perceptual class formation are discussed along with the relation of these classes to other complex categories.     

“They Give Reason a Responsibility Which It Simply Can't Bear”: Ethics, Care of the Self, and Caring Knowledge

We explore briefly Foucault's ideas about the care of the self, creating ourselves and what he meant by ethics. We then examine the work of five artists–Mark Rothko, Cindy Sherman, Helena Hietanen, Samuel Beckett, and Betty Goodwin–to help us begin to think very differently about illness and human suffering. Taking our lead from Beckett, we regard reason as being given too much responsibility for the work of a caring knowledge, and that it is through the arts that new ideas about bioethics can emerge.     

Ostracism Reduces Reliance on Poor Advice from Others during Decision Making

Decision making is rarely context‐free, and often, both social information and non‐social information are weighed into one's decisions. Incorporating information into a decision can be influenced by previous experiences. Ostracism has extensive effects, including taxing cognitive resources and increasing social monitoring. In decision making situations, individuals are often faced with both objective and social information and must choose which information to include or filter out. How will ostracism affect the reliance on objective and social information during decision making? Participants (N = 245) in Experiment 1 were randomly assigned to be included or ostracized in a standardized, group task. They then performed a dynamic decision making task that involved the presentation of either non‐social (i.e. biased reward feedback) or social (i.e., poor advice from a previous participant) misleading information. In Experiment 2, participants (N = 105) completed either the ostracism non‐social condition or social misleading information condition with explicit instructions stating that the advice given was from an individual who did not partake in the group task. Ostracized individuals relied more on non‐social misleading information and performed worse than included individuals. However, ostracized individuals discounted misleading social information and outperformed included individuals. Results of Experiment 2 replicated the findings of Experiment 1. Across two experiments, ostracized individuals were more critical of advice from others, both individuals who may have ostracized them and unrelated individuals. In other words, compared with included individuals, ostracized individuals underweighted advice from another individual but overweighed non‐social information during decision making. We conclude that when deceptive objective information is present, ostracism results in disadvantageous decision making. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Altering sensorimotor feedback disrupts visual discrimination of facial expressions

Looking at another person’s facial expression of emotion can trigger the same neural processes involved in producing the expression, and such responses play a functional role in emotion recognition. Disrupting individuals’ facial action, for example, interferes with verbal emotion recognition tasks. We tested the hypothesis that facial responses also play a functional role in the perceptual processing of emotional expressions. We altered the facial action of participants with a gel facemask while they performed a task that involved distinguishing target expressions from highly similar distractors. Relative to control participants, participants in the facemask condition demonstrated inferior perceptual discrimination of facial expressions, but not of nonface stimuli. The findings suggest that somatosensory/motor processes involving the face contribute to the visual perceptual—and not just conceptual—processing of facial expressions. More broadly, our study contributes to growing evidence for the fundamentally interactive nature of the perceptual inputs from different sensory modalities.     

Evaluating the role of anxiety sensitivity in barriers to cessation and reasons for quitting among smokers with asthma

The aim of the present study was to examine the unique predictive ability of anxiety sensitivity (AS) in terms of perceived barriers to cessation and smoking cessation motives among daily smokers with asthma (n = 125, 54% male, M_age = 37.7 years, SD = 12.1). As hypothesized, after controlling for the effects of race, asthma control, negative affect, and smoking rate, AS significantly predicted greater barriers to cessation, and reasons for quitting related to health concerns and self-control. Contrary to hypotheses, AS did not significantly predict external reasons for quitting. These findings suggest that smokers with asthma who are fearful of physiological arousal may be a particularly ‘at-risk’ population for smoking cessation difficulties due, in part, to greater perceived barriers to cessation. Interventions focused on enhancing intrinsic motivation for quitting and reducing AS may be most effective for this population.