What do I gain from joining crowds? Does self‐expansion help to explain the relationship between identity fusion,group efficacy and collective action?

Four studies were carried out to examine how identity fusion, self‐ and group efficacy, and collective action are related and what role self‐expansion plays in these relationships. In the pilot study, participants recalled their experience of participating in mass gatherings. The three other studies were conducted during mass gatherings organized for collective purposes: a music concert (Study 1), a bicycle activist event (Study 2), and Equality Days (Study 3). The results showed (a) a significant positive relationship between personal and group identity fusion, self‐expansion, and self‐efficacy (Study 1); (b) a significant mediating effect of self‐expansion on the relationship between personal and group identity fusion and group efficacy (Studies 1 and 2); and (c) a significant mediating effect of self‐ expansion and group efficacy on the relationship between identity fusion and collective action tendency (Studies 2 and 3).     

Extrafoveal Processing in Categorical Search for Geometric Shapes: General Tendencies and Individual Variations

The paper addresses the capabilities and limitations of extrafoveal processing during a categorical visual search. Previous research has established that a target could be identified from the very first or without any saccade, suggesting that extrafoveal perception is necessarily involved. However, the limits in complexity defining the processed information are still not clear. We performed four experiments with a gradual increase of stimuli complexity to determine the role of extrafoveal processing in searching for the categorically defined geometric shape. The series of experiments demonstrated a significant role of extrafoveal processing while searching for simple two-dimensional shapes and its gradual decrease in a condition with more complicated three-dimensional shapes. The factors of objects’ spatial orientation and distractor homogeneity significantly influenced both reaction time and the number of saccades required to identify a categorically defined target. An analysis of the individual p-value distributions revealed pronounced individual differences in using extrafoveal analysis and allowed examination of the performance of each particular participant. The condition with the forced prohibition of eye movements enabled us to investigate the efficacy of covert attention in the condition with complicated shapes. Our results indicate that both foveal and extrafoveal processing are simultaneously involved during a categorical search, and the specificity of their interaction is determined by the spatial orientation of objects, type of distractors, the prohibition to use overt attention, and individual characteristics of the participants.     

Excitotoxic lesions of the parafascicular nucleus produce deficits in a socially transmitted food preference

The parafascicular (PF) nucleus, a posterior component of the intralaminar nuclei of the thalamus, is considered to be an essential structure in the feedback circuits of basal ganglia-thalamo-cortical systems that critically participate in cognitive processes. To study the PF contribution to processing of behaviorally significant information during specific episodes of learning, we investigated the effects of damaging the PF nucleus in the acquisition of a natural form of social olfactory learning, the socially transmitted food preference (STFP) task. This task is a non-spatial paradigm that exhibits some of the characteristics of relational memory because it requires that animals use information obtained in one episode to guide later behavior in different circumstances. Adult male Wistar rats were submitted to pretraining bilateral N-methyl-D-aspartate (0.15 M, pH 7.4) lesions of the PF (0.4 microl/side, 0.2 microl/min). The behavioral effects of PF lesions were compared to vehicle- and sham-operated control groups and two retention delays were considered in separate groups: immediately (Lesion-I, Vehicle-I, and Sham-I groups) and 24h after training (Lesion-24, Vehicle-24, and Sham-24 groups). PF lesions produced delay-independent impairments in the STFP suggesting that this nucleus might modulate the acquisition of this odor-odor association task. Results are discussed in the context of medial prefrontal cortex deafferentation induced by PF damage.     

From the left to the right: How the brain compensates progressive loss of language function

In normal right-handed subjects language production usually is a function oft the left brain hemisphere. Patients with aphasia following brain damage to the left hemisphere have a considerable potential to compensate for the loss of this function. Sometimes, but not always, areas of the right hemisphere which are homologous to language areas of the left hemisphere in normal subjects are successfully employed for compensation but this integration process may need time to develop. We investigated right-handed patients with left hemisphere brain tumors as a model of continuously progressive brain damage to left hemisphere language areas using functional neuroimaging and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to identify factors which determine successful compensation of lost language function. Only patients with slowly progressing brain lesions recovered right-sided language function as detected by TMS. In patients with rapidly progressive lesions no right-sided language function was found and language performance was linearly correlated with the lateralization of language related brain activation to the left hemisphere. It can thus be concluded that time is the factor which determines successful integration of the right hemisphere into the language network for compensation of lost left hemisphere language function.     

Prevalence of and risk factors for suicide attempts versus suicide gestures: analysis of the National Comorbidity Survey

Definitions and classification schemes for suicide attempts vary widely among studies, introducing conceptual, methodological, and clinical problems. We tested the importance of the intent to die criterion by comparing self-injurers with intent to die, suicide attempters, and those who self-injured not to die but to communicate with others, suicide gesturers, using data from the National Comorbidity Survey (n = 5,877). Suicide attempters (prevalence = 2.7%) differed from suicide gesturers (prevalence = 1.9%) and were characterized by male gender, fewer years of education, residence in the southern and western United States; psychiatric diagnoses including depressive, impulsive, and aggressive symptoms; comorbidity; and history of multiple physical and sexual assaults. It is possible and useful to distinguish between self-injurers on the basis of intent to die.     

Influence of consonantal context on the reading of vowels: evidence from children

When college students pronounce nonwords, their vowel pronunciations may be affected not only by the consonant that follows the vowel, the coda, but also by the preceding consonant, the onset. We presented the nonwords used by Treiman and colleagues in their 2003 study to a total of 94 first graders, third graders, fifth graders, and high school students to determine when these context influences emerge. According to some theories of reading development, early decoding is characterized by context-free links from graphemes to phonemes. However, we found that even children reading at the first-grade level (6-year-olds) were influenced to some extent by a vowel's context. The effect of context on vowel pronunciation increased in strength up to around the fifth-grade reading level (8- and 9-year-olds), and sensitivity to coda-to-vowel associations emerged no earlier than did sensitivity to onset-to-vowel associations. A connectionist model of reading reproduced this general pattern of increasing context effects as a function of training.     

Psychiatric patient and informant reports of patient behavior

Informant reports of psychiatric patient behavior are collected routinely during intake interviews and to monitor therapeutic interventions. We investigated agreement between informant and adult psychiatric patient reports of patient behaviors (N=110). Behaviors were about substance use, physical and mental health, employment, illegal behavior, and recreational and social activities. Informant agreement with patients regarding whether or not a particular behavior occurred recently and also behavior frequency ratings were moderate overall (M r=.47 for frequency) and highly variable (rs=-.09 to .80). No informant, patient, or relationship characteristics were found consistently to moderate agreement. Thus, informants can report very accurately about the presence and frequency of some, but not all, patient behaviors. Low patient-informant agreement may be due to informants having relatively less detailed knowledge of patient behavior over time or patients not reporting accurately about certain behaviors.     

Vowels, syllables, and letter names: differences between young children's spelling in English and Portuguese

Young Portuguese-speaking children have been reported to produce more vowel- and syllable-oriented spellings than have English speakers. To investigate the extent and source of such differences, we analyzed children's vocabulary and found that Portuguese words have more vowel letter names and a higher vowel-consonant ratio than do English words. In a spelling experiment, we found that Portuguese speakers used more vowels, but did not produce more syllabic spellings, than did English speakers. The differences that we observed are attributable to quantitative differences in the languages and their writing and letter name systems. They do not support the widespread idea that speakers of Romance languages pass through an additional, syllabic, stage of development.