A PET meta‐analysis of object and spatial mental imagery

Neuroimaging studies have described the functional neuroanatomy of mental imagery. Taken separately, specific studies vary in the nature of the task used and are limited by statistical power and sensitivity. We took advantage of a multistudy PET database of 54 subjects acquired in our laboratory to reveal the neural bases of spatial versus object mental imagery tasks. Our first goal was to evaluate to what extent the activated foci elicited by both object and spatial studies overlap. A second aim was to compare activations elicited by spatial imagery tasks to those elicited by object imagery tasks. We also explored applying regression analyses to the relationships between the scores on the Mental Rotations Test (MRT) and changes in regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) during spatial and object imagery tasks. This meta‐analysis yielded the following observations: (1) both spatial and object imagery tasks shared a common neural network composed of occipitotemporal (ventral pathway) and occipitoparietal (dorsal pathway) regions and also by a set of frontal regions (related to memory); (2) the superior parietal cortex was more strongly implicated during spatial imagery; (3) object imagery specifically engaged the anterior part of the ventral pathway, including the fusiform, parahippocampal, and hippocampal gyrus; (4) object imagery activated the early visual cortex, whereas spatial imagery induced a deactivation of the early visual cortex; (5) blood flow values in some of the regions noted above were positively correlated with scores on the MRT: the higher the subjects performed on the MRT, the more pronounced the rCBF was in these regions. These results may reconcile some of the apparent discrepancies among previous studies concerning the activation of early visual cortex in mental imagery. They also contribute to a better knowledge of the neural bases of object and spatial mental imagery.     

Nucleation of recrystallization in fine-grained materials: an extension of the Bailey–Hirsch criterion

Abstract

A new criterion for nucleation in the case of dynamic recrystallization is proposed in order to include the contribution of the grain boundary energy stored in the microstructure in the energy balance. Due to the nucleation events, the total surface area of pre-existing grain boundaries decreases, leading to a nucleus size smaller than expected by conventional nucleation criteria. The new model provides a better prediction of the nucleus size during recrystallization of pure copper compared with the conventional nucleation criterion.     

Age-Correlated Incremental Consideration of Velocity Information in Relative Time-to-Arrival Judgments

One hundred fifty-one children and 43 adults judged which of 2 cartoon birds would be the first to arrive at a common finish line. Objects moved unidirectionally along parallel trajectories, either at the same or different speeds, and disappeared at different distances from the goal. Overall, 9–10-year-old children performed as well as adults, but 4–5- and 6–8-year-olds erred significantly more often. On trials for which distance to goal at disappearance was a valid cue, 4–5-year-olds scored 80% correct, and no differences were seen between 6–10-year-olds and adults. On the opposite type of trials, where the trailing bird would win the race, only adults retained their level of performance, and all age groups differed markedly. Findings suggest a gradual developmental transition from a distance-based to a time-based understanding of the task.     

Living in a multicultural world: Intergroup ideologies and the societal context of intergroup relations

In a relatively short time span, issues of ethnic, cultural, and religious diversity have become central topics of discussion in various nations. As a result, the role of broad ideologies that frame and structure relations between groups has received increasing attention by social psychologists. Of particular concern has been the role of these intergroup ideologies in promoting intergroup harmony and reducing prejudice. In this article, we appraise the evidence related to three main intergroup ideologies, assimilation, colourblindness, and multiculturalism. We argue that research in this area has paid insufficient attention to the social and political context. Intergroup ideologies have been studied and conceptualised as being located solely within individual minds. We suggest that the potentially vital aspect of these ideologies is that they are sometimes widely shared by members of a social group. Integrating sociological and political analyses, we discuss the fact that intergroup ideologies are institutionalised as policies and that, as such, they often vary across countries and across time. We present a series of studies to illustrate the theoretical implications of studying the shared nature of these intergroup ideologies, providing insights into the question of when and why national policies can shape individuals’ intergroup attitudes and beliefs and improve intergroup relations.     

Étude qualitative de l’évolution des stratégies de faire face chez les parents d’adolescents atteints de troubles autistiques

Since their child has been diagnosed as having an autistic spectrum disorder (ASD), parents are confronted with important and chronic stress in their everyday life. To face it, they use coping strategies. Using qualitative analyse, this article exposes preliminary results on changes in coping strategies of ASD families and presents how parents manage to adjust their coping.     

Who takes driving licence point recovery courses in France? Comparison between course-takers and ordinary drivers

A self-administered questionnaire was answered by 2014 drivers, 853 of whom were taking a course. The data were analyzed aiming to identify the factors that are linked to taking the course, i.e. to recurrent reoffending.The course-takers, of whom 89% were male, admitted committing more violations than the control group. They had more accidents. More male course-takers than controls reported not being happy, and they more frequently had high extroversion scores.The multivariate analysis showed that, among men, taking the course was associated with the mileage, the feeling of being almost certain to be charged for an offence and having a high risk of losing one’s licence, in addition to being young, having a large number of brothers and sisters, higher socio-occupational category and smoking. Among women, in spite of the small number of them on the course, the mileage, the feeling of having a high risk of losing one’s licence, driving alone, the mental representation of their own vehicle as an extension of their office, and defining themselves as liking to take risks during leisure activities were significantly linked to taking a points recovery course.Those taking the course were not therefore doing so by chance; they differed from the general population of drivers, which was also precisely described with regard to driving habits and representations.Recommendations are then made in order to redirect the content of courses more towards introspection than technical matters.     

The richness of ordinary life: Religious justification among Chile's business elite

Based on the analysis of 75 in‐depth interviews with managers and businessmen of Chile's main economic conglomerates, this article is concerned with the justification, on religious and moral grounds, of the establishment of a neo‐liberal economic model during Augusto Pinochet's regime (1973–1989) and, most importantly, with the representation of business as a religious vocation. The value granted to wealth creation as a path to salvation, as formulated by the conservative religious movements Opus Dei and the Legionaries of Christ, is one possible response to the Church's call in Vatican II for the greater involvement of the laity in their cultures and societies. In the context of an increase in pluralism during the 1960s and 1970s, the perceived shift of the Catholic Church to the Left, and the threat that the political project of Salvador Allende's socialist government (1970–1973) posed to the elite's centenary lifestyle, the practice of more conservative forms of Catholicism has allowed for a restoration of the historical bond between the elite and its religious tradition. The case of Chile's elite can be seen as an example of an increase in pluralism which does not lead to a weakening of religious belief and practice, but to their strengthening.     

Incidental emotions associated with uncertainty appraisals impair decisions in the Iowa Gambling Task

With the Appraisal Tendency Framework, it has been established that (un)certainty appraisals associated with incidental emotions trigger the kind of information processing to cope with situation. We tested the impact of (un)certainty-associated emotions on a sequential task, the Iowa Gambling Task. In this task, intuitive processing is necessary to lead participants to rely on emotional cues arising from previous decisions and to making advantageous decisions. We predicted that certainty-associated emotions would engage participants in intuitive processing, whereas uncertainty-associated emotions would engage them in deliberative processing and lead them to make disadvantageous decisions. As expected, we observed in two distinct experiments, that participants induced to feel uncertainty (fear, sadness) were found to decide less advantageously than participants induced to feel certainty (anger, happiness, disgust).     

On the role of visual afferent information for the control of aiming movements toward targets of different sizes

The authors investigated (a). whether the specificity of practice hypothesis is mediated by the importance of visual afferent information for the control of manual aiming movements and (b). how movement planning and online correction processes to the movement initial impulse are affected by the withdrawal of visual information in transfer. In acquisition, participants (N = 40) aimed at targets of different sizes in a full-vision or in a target-only condition before being transferred to a target-only condition without knowledge of results. The results supported the hypothesis that learning is specific to the source or sources of afferent information that are more likely to ensure optimal performance. The results also suggested that individuals will not always use visual afferent information more extensively when aiming at a small rather than at a large target. Instead, in a temporally constrained task, the relative efficiency of visually based corrections appears to mediate how exclusively an individual will rely on online visual afferent information for movement control. Finally, the detailed kinematic analysis performed in the present study clearly indicated that online modifications to the movement primary impulse are possible, arguing for a continuous or pseudo-continuous control of relatively slow aiming movements on the basis of visual afferent input.