Incidental memory in dogs (Canis familiaris): adaptive behavioral solution at an unexpected memory test

Memory processing in nonhuman animals has been typically tested in situations where the animals are repeatedly trained to retrieve their memory trace, such as delayed matching to sample, serial probe recognition, etc. In contrast, how they utilize incidentally formed memory traces is not well investigated except in rodents. We examined whether domestic dogs could solve an unexpected test based on a single past experience. In Experiment 1, leashed dogs were led to 4 open, baited containers and allowed to eat from 2 of them (Exposure phase). After a walk outside for more than 10?min, during which time the containers were replaced with new identical ones, the dogs were unexpectedly returned to the site and unleashed for free exploration (test phase). Eleven out of 12 dogs first visited one of the containers from which they had not eaten. In Experiment 2, two containers had food in them, one had a nonedible object, and the last one was empty. Dogs visited all 4 containers and were allowed to eat one of the food rewards in the Exposure phase. In the test phase, unleashed dogs first visited the previously baited container from which they had not eaten significantly more often than chance. These results demonstrate that in an unexpected, test dogs may retrieve “what” and “where” information about seen (now invisible) items from incidental memory formed during a single past experience.     

Induction of arginine vasopressin-enhanced green fluorescent protein expression in the locus coeruleus following kainic acid-induced seizures in rats

Seizure causes autonomic, neuroendocrine and stress responses. We examined the effects of kainic acid (KA)-induced seizures on the expression of the arginine vasopressin (AVP)-enhanced green fluorescent protein (eGFP) in the locus coeruleus (LC), an area known to contain noradrenergic cells, in AVP-eGFP transgenic male and female rats, with the rationale to identify stressors which induce AVP synthesis in the LC. Subcutaneous (s.c.) administration of KA caused a progressive development of seizure behavior within 24 h. AVP-eGFP fluorescence in the LC was detected 6, 24, and 48 h and 1 week after administration of KA (12 mg/kg). From a nearly undetectable level, it reached a maximum at 48 h after s.c. administration of KA and returned to the basal levels after 2 weeks. AVP-eGFP fluorescence in the LC after s.c. administration of KA was significantly reduced by the pretreatment with MK-801 (nonselective N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptor antagonist). In the KA-administered rats, immunohistochemistry for tyrosine hydroxylase (TH) revealed that the eGFP fluorescence was co-localized with TH-immuno-reactivity in the LC. These results suggest that the synthesis of AVP-eGFP is potentially up-regulated in noradrenergic neurons in the LC after KA-induced seizures through the activation of NMDA receptors.     

The role of the input on the development of the LC bias: A crosslinguistic comparison

Previous studies have described the existence of a phonotactic bias called the Labial–Coronal (LC) bias, corresponding to a tendency to produce more words beginning with a labial consonant followed by a coronal consonant (i.e. “bat”) than the opposite CL pattern (i.e. “tap”). This bias has initially been interpreted in terms of articulatory constraints of the human speech production system. However, more recently, it has been suggested that this presumably language-general LC bias in production might be accompanied by LC and CL biases in perception, acquired in infancy on the basis of the properties of the linguistic input. The present study investigates the origins of these perceptual biases, testing infants learning Japanese, a language that has been claimed to possess more CL than LC sequences, and comparing them with infants learning French, a language showing a clear LC bias in its lexicon. First, a corpus analysis of Japanese IDS and ADS revealed the existence of an overall LC bias, except for plosive sequences in ADS, which show a CL bias across counts. Second, speech preference experiments showed a perceptual preference for CL over LC plosive sequences (all recorded by a Japanese speaker) in 13- but not in 7- and 10-month-old Japanese-learning infants (Experiment 1), while revealing the emergence of an LC preference between 7 and 10 months in French-learning infants, using the exact same stimuli. These crosslinguistic behavioral differences, obtained with the same stimuli, thus reflect differences in processing in two populations of infants, which can be linked to differences in the properties of the lexicons of their respective native languages. These findings establish that the emergence of a CL/LC bias is related to exposure to a linguistic input.     

Cultural differences in the primacy effect for person perception

Previous work has shown there are robust differences in how North Americans and East Asians form impressions of people. The present research examines whether the tendency to weigh initial information more heavily—the primacy effect—may be another component of these cultural differences. Specifically, we tested whether Americans would be more likely to use first impressions to guide person perception, compared to Japanese participants. In this experiment, participants read a vignette that described a target person's behaviour, then rated the target's personality. Before reading the vignette, some trait information was given to create an expectation about the target's personality. The data revealed that Americans used this initial information to guide their judgments of the target, whereas the Japanese sample based their judgments on all the information more evenly. Thus, Americans showed a stronger primacy effect in their impression formation than Japanese participants, who engaged in more data‐driven processing.     

Visibility pattern of Bose–Fermi mixtures in one-dimensional incommensurate lattices

Abstract

We performed numerical simulations to demonstrate localization phenomena of Bose–Fermi mixture systems on incommensurate optical lattices by changing Bose–Bose and Bose–Fermi interactions. Visibility patterns of the bosons were measured to observe bosonic coherence in various selections of the interaction parameters. We found that the coherence was enhanced with repulsive Bose–Fermi interactions. It was also enhanced with attractive Bose–Fermi interactions but only in certain conditions. The enhancement by repulsive interactions and that by attractive interactions occurred with different mechanisms.     

Language-dependent access to autobiographical memory in Japanese-English bilinguals and US monolinguals

Japanese bilinguals retrieved autobiographical memories in response to 20 English and 20 Japanese cue words. US monolinguals were cued with 40 English words. All participants reported one earliest memory. Japanese bilinguals retrieved more memories and earlier memories when cued with Japanese words. They also retrieved more memories when the cue language matched either the language of memory encoding or the language of first thought. Although English cues elicited equivalent numbers of English and Japanese memories in the more fluent speakers of English, Japanese words elicited significantly larger numbers of Japanese memories in all Japanese-English bilinguals. The average age of cued autobiographical memories was significantly earlier for US than for Japanese students but age of the earliest memory did not differ.     

Physician Migration: Experience of International Medical Graduates in the USA

The purpose of this study was to explore the experience of foreign-born international medical graduates (IMGs) in the USA. Few studies describe IMG experiences in attaining medical licensure in the USA at each step of the process. Furthermore, little is known about IMGs who choose not to become a licensed physician or were unsuccessful in doing so. In this study, 20 foreign-born IMGs, 16 practicing IMGs and 4 non-licensed physician IMGs, participated in a 1-h semi-structured face-to-face interview between September 2013 and April 2014. Participants were from North America (Canada), Latin America, South Asia, East Asia, Europe, the Middle East, or Sub-Saharan Africa. Interviews were transcribed. Two of the authors conducted initial analysis of each interview separately. Four primary themes emerged based on the data analysis: (1) barriers to physician careers include the immigration process, years since graduating from medical school, language and culture, and cost and time; (2) positive factors to support physician careers include networking and research experience; (3) factors that positively or negatively affect IMGs seeking physician careers such as the education system in a home country and family; and (4) non-physician careers. In order to develop multiple pathways to utilize IMGs in the US healthcare system, future research examining the following areas is necessary: (1) support systems for IMGs who are taking the US Medical Licensing Exam (USMLE) or applying for a residency position and (2) the experience of IMGs who are not certified physicians in the USA.     

Intuitions about situational correction in self and others

People's attributional phenomenology is likely to be characterized by effortful situational correction. Drawing on this phenomenology and on people's desire to view themselves more favorably than others, the authors hypothesized that people expect others to engage in less situational correction than themselves and to make more extreme dispositional attributions for constrained actors' behavior. In 2 studies, people expected their peers to make more extreme dispositional inferences than they did themselves for a situationally constrained actor's behavior. People's expectation that they engage in more situational correction than their peers was diminished among Japanese participants, who have less desire to view themselves as superior to their peers (Study 3), and among participants who were led to view dispositional attributions more favorably than situational attributions (Study 4).     

Perception of depth from shading in infant chimpanzees (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Pan troglodytes</Emphasis>)

We investigated the ability to perceive depth from shading, one of the pictorial depth cues, in three chimpanzee infants aged 4–10 months old, using a preferential reaching task commonly used to study pictorial depth perception in human infants. The chimpanzee infants reached significantly more to three-dimensional toys than to pictures thereof and more to the three-dimensional convex than to the concave. Furthermore, two of the three infants reached significantly more to the photographic convex than to the photographic concave. These infants also looked longer at the photographic convex than the concave. Our results suggest that chimpanzees perceive, at least as early as the latter half of the first year of life, pictorial depth defined by shading information. Photographic convexes contain richer information about pictorial depth (e.g., attached shadow, cast shadow, highlighted area, and global difference in brightness) than simple computer-graphic graded patterns. These cues together might facilitate the infants perception of depth from shading.