Pattern identification of pure tones and frequency glides by untrained listeners

Six subjects identified the order of four-event sequences. Contiguous pure tones (713, 1,031, 1,209, and 1,514 Hz in permuted orders) were presented by earphones at 40 dB SL, with individual events Itones) from 20, to 40, 60, and 300 msec in duration. Again, silent intervals of 20 or 60 msec were inserted among tones of 20 or 40 msec duration. Finally, the pure tones of 713 and 1,209 Hz were combined, in any four-event sequence, with two glissandi chosen from 466 to 714 Hz, from 714 to 1,208 Hz, and their mirror reversals. The temporal and frequency continuity both of tonal and of glissando-plus-tonal sequences affected the identification of sequential order. Degraded performance in the glissando-plus-tonal condition was attributed partially to a subjective experience of pitch blurring. The inclusion of silent intervals in the sequences of the shorter pure-tone durations improved identification performance to that of contiguous sequences of equal overall duration, i.e., adding silent processing time was as efficacious as increasing by the same amount the duration of the individual frequency event.     

Gender Differences in Anti-Gay Prejudice: Evidence for Stability and Change

Sex Roles - In recent years, there has been remarkable change in societal acceptance of lesbians and gay men. This meta-analysis explored whether this positive shift has reduced the gender...     

A Theoretical Framework for Analysing the Notion of Relative Importance of Criteria

Multiple-criteria decision aid almost always requires the use of weights, importance coefficients or even a hierarchy of criteria, veto thresholds, etc. These are importance parameters that are used to differentiate the role devoted to each criterion in the construction of comprehensive preferences. Many researchers have studied the problem of how to assign values to such parameters, but few of them have tried to analyse in detail what underlies the notion of importance of criteria and to give a clear formal definition of it. In this paper our purpose is to define a theoretical framework so as to analyse the notion of the importance of criteria under very general conditions. Within this framework it clearly appears that the importance of criteria is taken into account in very different ways in various aggregation procedures. This framework also allows us to shed new light on fundamental questions such as: Under what conditions is it possible to state that one criterion is more important than another? Are importance parameters of the various aggregation procedures dependent on or independent of the encoding of criteria? What are the links between the two concepts of the importance of criteria and the compensatoriness of preferences? This theoretical framework seems to us sufficiently general to ground further research in order to define theoretically valid elicitation methods for importance parameters.     

The role of midfrontal theta oscillations across the development of cognitive control in preschoolers and school‐age children

The development of cognitive control enables children to better resist acting based on distracting information that interferes with the current action. Cognitive control improvement serves different functions that differ in part by the type of interference to resolve. Indeed, resisting to interference at the task‐set level or at the response‐preparation level is, respectively, associated with cognitive flexibility and inhibition. It is, however, unknown whether the same neural mechanism underlies these two functions across development. Studies in adults have revealed the contribution of midfrontal theta (MFT) oscillations in interference resolution. This study investigated whether MFT is involved in the resolution of different types of interference in two age groups identified as corresponding to different latent structures of executive functions. Preschool (4–6 years) and school children (6–8 years) were tested with a task involving interference at the response level and/or the task‐set level while (electroencephalogram) EEG was recorded. Behaviorally, response time and accuracy were affected by task‐set. Both age groups were less accurate when the interference occurred at the task‐set level and only the younger group showed decreased accuracy when interference was presented at the response‐preparation level. Furthermore, MFT power was increased, relative to the baseline, during the resolution of both types of interference and in both age groups. These findings suggest that MFT is involved in immature cognitive control (i.e., preschool and school‐ages), by orchestrating its different cognitive processes, irrespective of the interference to resolve and of the level of cognitive control development (i.e., the degree of differentiation of executive functions).