RETRACTED ARTICLE: Unexpected events disrupt visuomotor working memory and increase guessing

When an unexpected event, such as a car horn honking, occurs in daily life, it often disrupts our train of thought. In the lab, this effect was recently modeled with a task in which verbal working memory (WM) was disrupted by unexpected auditory events (Wessel et al. in Nature Communications, 7, 11195, 2016). Here we tested whether this effect extends to a different type of WM—namely, visuomotor. We found that unexpected auditory events similarly decremented visuomotor WM. Moreover, this effect persisted for many more trials than had previously been shown for verbal WM, and the effect occurred for two different types of unexpected auditory events. Furthermore, we found that unexpected events decremented WM by decreasing the quantity, but not necessarily the quality, of items stored. These results showed an impact of unexpected events on visuomotor WM that was statistically robust and endured across time. They also showed that the effect was based on an increase in guessing, consistent with a neuroscience-inspired theory that unexpected events “wipe out” WM by stopping the ongoing maintenance of the trace. This new task paradigm is an excellent vehicle for further explorations of distractibility.     

Visual search in scenes involves selective and nonselective pathways

How does one find objects in scenes? For decades, visual search models have been built on experiments in which observers search for targets, presented among distractor items, isolated and randomly arranged on blank backgrounds. Are these models relevant to search in continuous scenes? This article argues that the mechanisms that govern artificial, laboratory search tasks do play a role in visual search in scenes. However, scene-based information is used to guide search in ways that had no place in earlier models. Search in scenes might be best explained by a dual-path model: a 'selective' path in which candidate objects must be individually selected for recognition and a 'nonselective' path in which information can be extracted from global and/or statistical information.     

Assessment and Treatment of Compulsive Sex/Love Behavior

Sex-love compulsivity or addiction involves most of the same issues as other addictive or compulsive behavior. Reasons for the increase in attention to this problem are suggested, and assessment criteria and procedures, guidelines for treatment, and case examples are provided.     

Revisiting Jung's concept of innate sensitiveness

Jung suggested that innate sensitiveness predisposes some individuals to be particularly affected by negative childhood experiences, so that later, when under pressure to adapt to some challenge, they retreat into infantile fantasies based on those experiences and become neurotic. Recent research by the author and others is reviewed to support Jung's theory of sensitiveness as a distinctly thorough conscious and unconscious reflection on experiences. Indeed, this probably innate tendency is found in about twenty percent of humans, and, in a sense, in most species, in that about this percentage will evidence a strategy of thoroughly processing information before taking action, while the majority depend on efficient, rapid motor activity. Given this thorough processing, sensitive individuals readily detect subtleties-including whatever is distressing or threatening. Hence, as Jung observed, given the same degree of stress in childhood as non-sensitive individuals, sensitive persons will develop more depression, anxiety, and shyness. Without undue stress, they evidence no more of these difficulties than the non-sensitive-or even less, being unusually aware of supportive as well as negative cues from caregivers. Given this interaction, one treatment task is to distinguish the effects of such childhood difficulties from what does not need treatment, which are the typical effects of the trait itself on an adult without a troubled developmental history.     

Single and multiple suicide attempts and associated health risk factors in New Hampshire adolescents

In this study we examined self-reported suicide attempts and their relationship to other health risk factors in a community sample of 16,644 adolescents. Fifteen percent endorsed suicide attempts (10% single; 5% multiple attempts) We hypothesized that multiple attempters would show higher prevalence of comorbid health risks than single or non-attempters. The three groups showed significant differences in ten health risk domains, on factors such as depressed mood, sexual assault, weight problems, and drug and alcohol use (ORs: 3.26-13.57). Repeated suicide attempts appear to be related to increased vulnerability and likelihood of harm in multiple domains of health risk.