Effects of body image on tactile sensitivity to a tickle:: a study of pregnancy

A group of 20 middle-class women between 20 and 40 yr. of age and in the third trimester of pregnancy was compared with a control group of 20 non-pregnant women for cutaneous sensitivity (to a tickle) and for modifications of body schema which were hypothesized to occur during pregnancy. Latency and actual duration were considered in the perception of the tickle. Body schema were studied using two of Fisher's tests, Body Prominence and Body Cathexis. Pregnancy leads to modifications in sensitivity to tickle, specifically with regard to the right half of the body and to some extent in body schema.     

A versatile cat-restraint system

A new method and apparatus for restraining the awake cat is described. The restraint system comfortably and adequately restrains virtually any cat and requires little or no adaptation. The restraint box is inexpensive to construct, lightweight, and portable. The unit requires minimal maintenance, can be easily used by one person, and may be modified for use in a variety of situations.     

The Ethical Inclusion of Children With Psychotic Disorders in Research: Recommendations for an Educative,Multimodal Assent Process

This article addresses the issue of properly assenting children with psychotic disorders to participate in clinical research. Due to the protective concerns with such a vulnerable population, additional precautions are necessary to ensure that youth with psychotic disorders assent to research with an appropriate level of understanding regarding study procedures. Current literature suggests that positive/negative symptoms and minor cognitive deficits do not interfere with the ability to comprehend study-related information for adults with psychosis if the study information is presented through an educative process. Similarly, youth benefit from repeated presentation of procedures and periodic assessment of their comprehension. An integrated educative process is proposed that emphasizes the importance of an interactive consent through repetition and participant/investigator feedback.     

The effectiveness of unitization in mitigating age-related relational learning impairments depends on existing cognitive status

Binding relations among items in the transverse patterning (TP) task is dependent on the integrity of the hippocampus and its extended network. Older adults have impaired TP learning, corresponding to age-related reductions in hippocampal volumes. Unitization is a training strategy that can mitigate TP impairments in amnesia by reducing reliance on hippocampal-dependent relational binding and increasing reliance on fused representations. Here we examined whether healthy older adults and those showing early signs of cognitive decline would also benefit from unitization. Although both groups of older adults had neuropsychological performance within the healthy range, their TP learning differed both under standard and unitized training conditions. Healthy older adults with impaired TP learning under standard training benefited from unitized training. Older adults who failed the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) showed greater impairments under standard conditions, and showed no evidence of improvement with unitization. These individuals’ failures to benefit from unitization may be a consequence of early deficits not seen in older adults who pass the MoCA.     

Quantity discrimination in parental fish: female convict cichlid discriminate fry shoals of different sizes

Numerical abilities have been found to be adaptive in different contexts, including mating, foraging, fighting assessment and antipredator strategies. In species with parental care, another potential advantage is the possibility to adjust parental behavior in relation to the numerosity of the progeny. The finding that many fish vary their parental investment in relation to brood size advocates the existence of a mechanism for appraising offspring number, an aspect that has never been directly investigated. Here we tested the ability of parental female convict cichlid (Amatitlania nigrofasciata) to discriminate between two fry groups differing in number by measuring time spent attempting to recover groups of fry experimentally displaced from the next. Females spent more time trying to recover the fry from larger groups when tested with contrasts 6 versus 12 (1:2) and 6 versus 9 fry (2:3); however, they showed no preference in the 6 versus 8 (3:4) contrast, suggesting that this task exceeds their discrimination capacity.     

Lateral specialization in unilateral spatial neglect: a cognitive robotics model

In this paper, we present the experimental results of an embodied cognitive robotic approach for modelling the human cognitive deficit known as unilateral spatial neglect (USN). To this end, we introduce an artificial neural network architecture designed and trained to control the spatial attentional focus of the iCub robotic platform. Like the human brain, the architecture is divided into two hemispheres and it incorporates bio-inspired plasticity mechanisms, which allow the development of the phenomenon of the specialization of the right hemisphere for spatial attention. In this study, we validate the model by replicating a previous experiment with human patients affected by the USN and numerical results show that the robot mimics the behaviours previously exhibited by humans. We also simulated recovery after the damage to compare the performance of each of the two hemispheres as additional validation of the model. Finally, we highlight some possible advantages of modelling cognitive dysfunctions of the human brain by means of robotic platforms, which can supplement traditional approaches for studying spatial impairments in humans.     

Pigeons' memory for number of events: Effects of intertrial interval and delay interval illumination

In Experiment 1, pigeons were trained at a 0-s baseline delay to discriminate sequences of light flashes (illumination of the feeder) that varied in number but not time (2f/4s and 8f/4s). During training, the intertrial interval was illuminated by the houselight for Group Light, but it was dark for Group Dark. Testing conducted with dark delay intervals produced a strong choose-small bias in both groups. All birds then received baseline training with a 5-s dark delay and were subsequently tested at shorter and longer dark delays. A choose-small bias was again observed at delays longer than the training delay, while a choose-large bias occurred at delays shorter than the training delay. Differentiating the ambient chamber illumination during the intertrial interval and the delay interval did not attenuate choose-small or choose-large effects. In Experiment 2, all birds received baseline training with a 5-s illuminated delay and were subsequently tested at shorter and longer illuminated delays. A choose-large bias was observed at delays longer than the training delay, while a choose-small bias occurred at delays shorter than the training delay. In Experiment 3, on intermittent test trials, when the duration of the second flash on small-sample trials was equal to the total flash duration on large-sample trials (i.e., 1600 ms), accuracy fell to approximately chance. These results suggest that pigeons discriminated the sequences of light flashes that varied in number but not in total duration of the sequence by relying on other temporal properties of the sequence rather than by using an event switch to count flashes.     

Global/local processing of hierarchical visual stimuli in a conflict–choice task by capuchin monkeys (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Sapajus</Emphasis> spp.)

In the last two decades, comparative research has addressed the issue of how the global and local levels of structure of visual stimuli are processed by different species, using Navon-type hierarchical figures, i.e. smaller local elements that form larger global configurations. Determining whether or not the variety of procedures adopted to test different species with hierarchical figures are equivalent is of crucial importance to ensure comparability of results. Among non-human species, global/local processing has been extensively studied in tufted capuchin monkeys using matching-to-sample tasks with hierarchical patterns. Local dominance has emerged consistently in these New World primates. In the present study, we assessed capuchins’ processing of hierarchical stimuli with a method frequently adopted in studies of global/local processing in non-primate species: the conflict–choice task. Different from the matching-to-sample procedure, this task involved processing local and global information retained in long-term memory. Capuchins were trained to discriminate between consistent hierarchical stimuli (similar global and local shape) and then tested with inconsistent hierarchical stimuli (different global and local shapes). We found that capuchins preferred the hierarchical stimuli featuring the correct local elements rather than those with the correct global configuration. This finding confirms that capuchins’ local dominance, typically observed using matching-to-sample procedures, is also expressed as a local preference in the conflict–choice task. Our study adds to the growing body of comparative studies on visual grouping functions by demonstrating that the methods most frequently used in the literature on global/local processing produce analogous results irrespective of extent of the involvement of memory processes.     

Spontaneous number representation in mosquitofish

While there is convincing evidence that preverbal human infants and non-human primates can spontaneously represent number, considerable debate surrounds the possibility that such capacity is also present in other animals. Fish show a remarkable ability to discriminate between different numbers of social companions. Previous work has demonstrated that in fish the same set of signature limits that characterize non-verbal numerical systems in primates is present but yet to provide any demonstration that fish can really represent number rather than basing their discrimination on continuous attributes that co-vary with number. In the present work, using the method of ‘item by item’ presentation, we provide the first evidence that fish are capable of selecting the larger group of social companions relying exclusively on numerical information. In our tests subjects could choose between one large and one small group of companions when permitted to see only one fish at a time. Fish were successful when both small (3 vs. 2) and large numbers (8 vs. 4) were involved and their performance was not affected by the density of the fish or by the overall space occupied by the group.