Inhibition of return and the attentional set for integrating versus differentiating information.

Cuing a location with an uninformative cue leads to a facilitatory effect at that location shortly afterward and later (about 300 ms) to a negative effect called inhibition of return (IOR). Until recently, it was argued that IOR occurs in detection and localization tasks, but not in discrimination tasks. However, the authors of several recent studies have demonstrated IOR effects in discrimination tasks, although at a later cue-to-target stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA). In this study, the authors examined why IOR occurs at a later SOA in discrimination tasks. In Experiments 1 and 2, different time courses of exogenous cuing effects in detection and discrimination tasks were established. In Experiment 3, the authors examined the role of an attentional set on the time course of exogenous cuing effects by manipulating the proportion of trials in which a distractor is presented in the location opposite the target. A new framework for understanding exogenous cuing effects and their dependence on endogenous attention is proposed.     

Nyíri,J.C., Tradition and Individuality: Philosophical Essays, “Synthese Library”; Nyíri,Kristóf,A hagyomány filozófiája (The Philosophy of Tradition); Neumer,Katalin, Gondolkodás,beszéd, írás (Thought,Language, and Writing)

Studies in East European Thought -     

Interactive learning in the paradise fish (Macropodus opercularis): an ethological interpretation of the second-order conditioning paradigm

This study was aimed at the examination of ‘mental construction’ in paradise fish by interactive learning, which is suggested as an alternative hypothesis for backward or second-order conditioning. Avoidance of goldfish was established in paradise fish by presenting a harmless goldfish (a novel stimulus) after an aversive event (mild electric shocks) in the dark compartment of a shuttle tank. It was found that this avoidance depended on context pre-exposure. Experiment 1 was designed to study the effect of mild shocks on shuttling activity in a familiar context. Experiment 2 aimed at establishing fear-conditioning to the goldfish in a higher-order conditioning paradigm. In the course of training, unpaired stimuli were presented in the dark compartment of the shuttle tank in such a manner that the presentation of mild shocks (20 mA) preceded the encounter with a harmless fish (goldfish). Experiment 3 demonstrated the role of context pre-exposure in interactive learning. Results indicate that (1) while 60 mA shocks resulted in avoidance of the dark compartment, the 20 mA mild shocks affected exploratory behaviour; (2) after pre-exposure to the training environment, paradise fish avoided the dark compartment containing goldfish provided that subjects had previously encountered mild, explorative shocks there; (3) this conditioned fear, a ‘mental construction’ of a potential danger, was proved to be transferable to another context and was consequently aimed specifically at the goldfish, a living being, rather than the training context; (4) the pre-exposure to the shuttle tank was an important part of this training procedure, that is, only subjects habituated to the shuttle tank avoided the goldfish. Results are discussed in the framework of the Interactive Learning Hypothesis, which has been developed as an ethological approach to a higher-order conditioning paradigm. Received: 15 January 1999 / Accepted after revision: 18 August 1999     

Are European and American golf players different? Reply to Engelhardt (1997)

Analysis of 1998 statistics for individual performance in the PGA European Tour yielded significant differences between some shot-making skills (drive distance, total driving, greens in regulation, and sand saves) between the top 10 and bottom 10 money winners, replicating (with partially different results) a result found for the 1995 American PGA Tour by Engelhardt.     

Training to Generate Creative Metaphors by Reviving Dormant Analogies

Most creativity techniques encourage breaking away from stored knowledge and known solutions. Counter to this approach, this study assessed the effectiveness of an intervention based on introducing minimal variations to well-established knowledge structures. Two groups were tasked with generating creative metaphorical titles for short essays. While the experimental group had been trained in extending and reinstantiating conceptual metaphors, the control group had been trained on creativity techniques unrelated to the task. Training increased the number of novel metaphorical titles derived from conceptual metaphors, and these titles were more creative than novel metaphorical titles not derived from conceptual metaphors. Finally, the titles generated via the deliberate use of the trained heuristics were as creative as those of the same type that were spontaneously produced by the control group. The implications for interventions to promote creativity are discussed.     

Analyzing Models of Career Decision Self-Efficacy: First-Order,Hierarchical, and Bifactor Models of the Career Decision Self-Efficacy Scale

The goal of the study was to examine the dimensionality of the Career Decision Self-Efficacy Scale Short Form (CDSES-SF, Betz et al. 1996). Integrating several previous findings from different cultures, we found that the bifactor structure of the CDSES-SF on a Hungarian sample of 649 respondents showed the best model fit. This structure includes a general CDSE factor covering 15 items and the original five specific factors (self-appraisal, occupational information, goal selection, planning, and problem solving) covering three items each. This short form of CDSES shows an acceptable model fit and appropriate reliability in terms of the Cronbach’s alpha and omega values. Regarding career decision self-efficacy, a large proportion of variance was explained by the general factor and to a smaller extent by the specific factors. These results can be considered as a first step in resolving the paradox of the dimensionality of CDSES-SF.     

Efectos de anticipación y de stroop en tareas de denominación y categorización de dibujos y de palabras

Resumen

Se llevó a cabo un experimento con vistas a estudiar el procesamiento de dibujos y de palabras en el marco de los paradigmas de Stroop y de anticipación. Las variables de tarea, modalidad y de relación semántica fueron equivalentes en ambos paradigmas. Según el intervalo temporal entre los estímulos se establecieron tres condiciones experimentales: condición previa—anticipación—, condición simultánea—Stroop—, y condición previa y simultánea—Stroop y anticipación—. Los resultados ponen de manifiesto la existencia de efectos de facilitación e interferencia de signo opuesto que se atribuyen a la interacción entre la secuencia temporal entre los estímulos componentes, las demandas de las respectivas tareas y la modalidad en la memoria activa. Los resultados se discuten en relación con el diferente procesamiento a que se someten los dibujos y las palabras y la naturaleza del formato de representación.     

Seeing behind the surface: communicative demonstration boosts category disambiguation in 12‐month‐olds

In their first years, infants acquire an incredible amount of information regarding the objects present in their environment. While often it is not clear what specific information should be prioritized in encoding from the many characteristics of an object, different types of object representations facilitate different types of generalizations. We tested the hypotheses that 1‐year‐old infants distinctively represent familiar objects as exemplars of their kind, and that ostensive communication plays a role in determining kind membership for ambiguous objects. In the training phase of our experiment, infants were exposed to movies displaying an agent sorting objects from two categories (cups and plates) into two locations (left or right). Afterwards, different groups of infants saw either an ostensive or a non‐ostensive demonstration performed by the agent, revealing that a new object that looked like a plate can be transformed into a cup. A third group of infants experienced no demonstration regarding the new object. During test, infants were presented with the ambiguous object in the plate format, and we measured generalization by coding anticipatory looks to the plate or the cup side. While infants looked equally often towards the two sides when the demonstration was non‐ostensive, and more often to the plate side when there was no demonstration, they performed more anticipatory eye movements to the cup side when the demonstration was ostensive. Thus, ostensive demonstration likely highlighted the hidden dispositional properties of the target object as kind‐relevant, guiding infants’ categorization of the foldable cup as a cup, despite it looking like a plate. These results suggest that infants likely encode familiar objects as exemplars of their kind and that ostensive communication can play a crucial role in disambiguating what kind an object belongs to, even when this requires disregarding salient surface features.     

Adapting the Unique Minds Program: Exploring the Feasibility of a Multiple Family Intervention for Children with Learning Disabilities in the Context of Spain

The Unique Minds Program (Stern, Unique Minds Program, 1999) addresses the socio‐emotional needs of children with learning disabilities (LD) and their families. Children and their parents work together in a multiple family group to learn more about LD and themselves as people with the capacity to solve problems in a collaborative way, including problems in family school relationships. This article reports the cultural adaptation of the program for use in Spain and findings from a feasibility study involving three multiple family groups and a total of 15 children and 15 mothers, using a pre‐post design. This Spanish adaptation of the program is called “Mentes Únicas”. Standardized outcome measures indicated an overall statistically significant decrease in children's self‐rated maladjustment and relationship difficulties by the end of the program. Improvements were endorsed by most mothers, although they were not always recognized by the children's teachers. The program had a high level of acceptability: Mothers and children felt safe, understood, and helped throughout the sessions. The efficacy of the adapted intervention for the context of Spain remains to be tested in a more rigorous study.