The real relationship between short-term memory and working memory

Storage-oriented memory span tasks with no explicit concurrent processing are usually referred as short-term memory (STM) tasks, whereas tasks involving storage plus concurrent processing requirements are designated as working memory (WM) tasks. The present study explores a question that remains unsolved: Do STM and WM tasks clearly tap distinguishable theoretical constructs? For that purpose, a large sample of 403 participants was tested through 12 diverse memory span tasks. Half of those tasks are widely accepted as measures of STM, whereas the other half measure WM. The results show that STM and WM share largely overlapping underlying capacity limitations, suggesting that all memory span tasks tap essentially the same construct. Some implications are discussed.     

Bodily Thought and the Corpse Problem

Abstract: A key consideration in favour of animalism—the thesis that persons like you and me are identical to the animals we walk around with—is that it avoids a too many thinkers problem that arises for non‐animalist positions. The problem is that it seems that any person‐constituting animal would itself be able to think, but if wherever there is a thinking person there is a thinking animal distinct from it then there are at least two thinkers wherever there is a thinking person. Most find this result unacceptable, and some think it provides an excellent reason for accepting animalism. It has been argued, however, that animalists face an analogous problem of too many thinkers, the so‐called corpse problem, as they must accept both 1) that we are distinct from our bodies, as our bodies can and we cannot persist through death as corpses and 2) that our bodies can think. I argue that the best reasons animalists have for accepting the two claims that generate the distinctness part of the problem double up as reasons to reject the claim that our bodies can think, and vice versa. I argue further that Lockeans cannot similarly get around their problem of too many thinkers.     

Assessing Mission-Related Learning Outcomes at Zoos and Aquaria: Prevalence,Barriers, and Needs

ABSTRACT

The authors investigated the current practices for assessing mission-related learning outcomes at institutions that belong to the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) in North America. A survey instrument was sent to 207 education directors in order to examine each institution's efforts in conducting audience research and evaluating the impact of their mission. Survey results from 97 institutions revealed that a large proportion of zoos and aquaria conduct visitor research; however, most only collect measures related to operational performance and not measures concerning mission-related learning outcomes such as knowledge gains, affective reactions to animals, or intended conservation actions. Large institutions tended to collect more information than smaller institutions. Most responding institutions also indicated a need for additional data to evaluate their mission performance. Not surprisingly, the most prevalent barriers for conducting visitor research were found to be inadequate staffing capacity and budgets. Most institutions clearly understand the need for additional mission-related research efforts. Because most institutions already conduct some audience research, incremental efforts, such as pooling resources or common measuring standards could yield deeper understanding of the mission performance in zoos and aquaria.     

Processing of distractors inside and outside the attentional focus in a priming procedure

A priming procedure was used to study the processing of distractors located either inside (between the location of two targets) or outside (peripherally to the locations of the targets) the focus of attention. The stimuli were five-letter arrays, and participants had to decide whether two marked target letters were the same or different. In Experiments 1 and 2, positive priming was obtained both when targets and in-distractors in primes repeated as targets in probes; negative priming was found when out-distractor primes repeated as targets in probes. In Experiment 3, we also manipulated the match in letter case from primes to probes. In-distractors produced reliable positive priming, irrespective of whether the letters matched in case. In contrast out-distractors produced negative priming but only when the letters had the same case in primes and probes. These results are attributed to a spatial attention process operating (in this case) on low-level visual features, and an object-based selection process that enables more abstract information to be processed for selected stimuli.     

Using inattentional blindness as an operational definition of unattended: The case of surface completion

Studying inattentional processing is made difficult by the fact that measuring it often results in observers attending to the stimuli in question. Here it is suggested that inattentional blindness—the lack of awareness of stimuli that appear in unattended regions of the visual field—be used as an operational definition of unattended. Separate online measures, taken while the stimuli are still present, can then be used to probe specific aspects of processing. Applying this method to the perceptual completion of partial surfaces, an online measure of modal and amodal completion was developed, and then used within an experiment in which inattentional blindness to the surfaces was assessed. The results indicated that surface completion can be engaged by unattended stimuli. More generally, the study illustrates the usefulness of this approach for probing what processing does and does not occur for stimuli that appear in unattended regions of the visual field.     

The effect of feature discriminability on the intertrial inhibition of focused attention

Identifying the shape of a colour oddball is faster when the distractor colour is viewed in the preceding target-absent trial and slower when the target colour is previewed, an intertrial effect known as the distractor previewing effect (DPE). We tested the effect of feature discriminability on the DPE. In Experiment 1, we determined the interitem discriminability of two colour pairs and two shape pairs. In Experiments 2 and 3, we measured DPEs with these set of target–distractor discriminability pairs. Our results showed that when the defining features allow for efficient parallel search, the a priori degree of interitem discriminability did not modulate the DPE. The results suggest the DPE does not arise as a strictly bottom-up modulation of saliency of the search-relevant features but reflects an attentional bias aimed at preventing attention from revisiting recently rejected “search features”. The underlying mechanism of this attentional bias is discussed.     

A meta‐mood model of rumination and depression: Preliminary test in a non‐clinical population

Depressive rumination and trait meta‐mood (emotional attention, emotional clarity and emotional repair) have been suggested as vulnerability factors leading to depression, but less is known about the associations among them. In this study, we examined the relationships between trait meta‐mood, rumination and depressive symptomatology. Using structural equation analysis in a large sample of a non‐clinical population we found a preliminary test of the role of trait meta‐mood dimensions in rumination and depressive symptomatology. Results indicated that attention to feelings has two pathways in its relation with rumination and depressive mood. On the one hand, emotional attention was associated with emotional clarity, and emotional clarity with emotional repair, which was related to lower depressive symptomatology, in part, by reducing rumination. On the other hand, emotional attention was directly associated with ruminative thoughts which, in turn, were related to higher depressive mood. Findings are discussed in terms of the implications of beliefs about emotions in the treatment of depression.     

Der verborgene Gott in der Theologie Werner Elerts

The re-formulation of conflicts, it has been claimed, is an important step towards reaching reconciliation in countries torn by conflicts. In this article I shall discuss reconciliation on the basis of my analysis of the nationalist theology of Sr. Pinochet and the alternative theological canons of people living in poverty in post-dictatorial Chile.1 1. Lene Sj?rup, Pinochets gud – og de fattiges teologiske modstand (K?benhavn: Museum Tusculanum, 2008); Lene Sj?rup, “Pinochets stedfortrædende lidelse og forsoning,” in Vendepunkter: Religion mellem konflikt og forsoning (ed. Lene Sj?rup; Odense: Syddansk Universitetsforlag, 2007); Lene Sj?rup, ”Pinochet as protector of and martyr for Christianity in Chile,” Nordic Journal of Religion and Society 19/2 (2006), 43-55. Reconciliation in the classical theological sense, my analysis indicates, is in itself part of these canons and therefore also of national conflicts. Religion does, however, play a major global, national, local and individual role in conflict resolution. This, I argue, indicates that there is more to conflict resolution than different canons of reconciliation. Conflicts are perceived as not only rupturing horizontal relationships between humans, but also vertical relationships with the divine. Conflict resolution, therefore, also involves the reparation of this relation. This paper discusses, using Chile as an example, the theological importance of memory work, the redefinition of space, and ritual as a means of repairing horizontal, as well as vertical, relations.     

Hippocampal structure and human cognition: Key role of spatial processing and evidence supporting the efficiency hypothesis in females

Here we apply a method for automated segmentation of the hippocampus in 3D high-resolution structural brain MRI scans. One hundred and four healthy young adults completed twenty one tasks measuring abstract, verbal, and spatial intelligence, along with working memory, executive control, attention, and processing speed. After permutation tests corrected for multiple comparisons across vertices (p < .05), significant relationships were found for spatial intelligence, spatial working memory, and spatial executive control. Interactions with sex revealed significant relationships with the general factor of intelligence (g), along with abstract and spatial intelligence. These correlations were mainly positive for males but negative for females, which might support the efficiency hypothesis in women. Verbal intelligence, attention, and processing speed were not related to hippocampal structural differences.