Highlighting human form and motion information enhances the conspicuity of pedestrians at night

Exploring how biological motion can make pedestrians more conspicuous to drivers at night, one-hundred-and-twenty participants were driven along an open-road route at night and pressed a button whenever they recognized that a pedestrian was present. A test pedestrian wearing black clothing alone or with 302 cm2 of retroreflective markings in one of four configurations either stood still or walked in place on an unilluminated sidewalk. Participants' response distances were maximal for the full biological-motion configuration and remained surprisingly long when convenient subsets of reflective markers were positioned on the pedestrian's ankles and wrists. When the pedestrian wore a reflective vest, the responses were no better than when he wore no reflective markings. The biological-motion advantage actually results from interacting form-perception and motion-perception mechanisms. These results confirm that basic perceptual phenomena-observers' sensitivity to human form and motion can be harnessed to reduce an important problem of traffic safety.     

Schizophrenia: Disease,Syndrome, or Dimensions?

Schizophrenia has the status of a clinical syndrome and may comprise a number of specific disease entities. This construct is similar to dementia, in which several diseases have been defined within the syndrome. Alternatively, schizophrenia may be a single disease entity with quite variable manifestations across cases. Kraepelin proposed dementia praecox as a disease entity, and Bleuler proposed dissociative pathology as fundamental to each case, thus substantiating the single disease entity concept. More recently, the nuclear schizophrenia construct defined the disease entity using specific criteria proposed by Schneider and Langfeldt. This view has been challenged by a series of studies during the past three decades. These investigations are summarized in this report. Implications for clinical work with families are considered.     

Fourteen-month-olds know what others experience only in joint engagement

We investigated how 14‐month‐old infants know what others know. In two studies, an infant played with each of two objects in turn while an experimenter was present. Then the experimenter left the room, and the infant played with a third object with an assistant. The experimenter returned, faced all three objects, and said excitedly ‘Look! Can you give it to me?’ In Study 1, the experimenter experienced each of the first two toys in episodes of joint visual engagement (without manipulation) with the infant. In response to her excited request infants gave the experimenter the object she did not know, thus demonstrating that they knew which ones she knew. In Study 2, infants witnessed the experimenter jointly engage around each of the experienced toys with the assistant, from a third‐person perspective. In response to her request, infants did not give the experimenter the object she had not experienced. In combination with other studies, these results suggest that to know what others have experienced 14‐month‐old infants must do more than just perceive others perceiving something; they must engage with them actively in joint engagement.     

Effects of postural anxiety on the soleus H-reflex

Previous research has proposed that spinal reflex modulation may mediate anxiety-related changes in postural control. This study investigated how soleus H-reflex amplitude was influenced by standing at heights that induced different levels of anxiety. H-reflexes were elicited in 15 participants standing at the center and edge of a platform raised from a low to a high height (with and without vision). Increased skin conductance confirmed the anxiety effect of elevated surface heights. When standing at the edge of the platform with vision, H-reflex amplitude was attenuated in the high compared to low height condition. Changes in background muscle activity could not explain observed H-reflex changes, suggesting the potential involvement of pre-synaptic inhibition or fusimotor drive on anxiety-related changes in reflex modulation. This study reveals that healthy participants reduce spinal reflex excitability in the presence of increased postural anxiety and a postural threat imposed by standing at the edge of a raised platform. These findings have implications for understanding control of standing balance in individuals with postural instability and/or fear of falling, such as the elderly or stroke.     

Internet-based intervention for mental health and substance use problems in disaster-affected populations: a pilot feasibility study

Early interventions that reduce the societal burden of mental health problems in the aftermath of disasters and mass violence have the potential to be enormously valuable. Internet-based interventions can be delivered widely, efficiently, and at low cost and as such are of particular interest. We describe the development and feasibility analysis of an Internet-delivered intervention designed to address mental health and substance-related reactions in disaster-affected populations. Participants (n = 285) were recruited from a cohort of New York City-area residents that had been followed longitudinally in epidemiological research initiated 6 months after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The intervention consisted of 7 modules: posttraumatic stress/panic, depression, generalized anxiety, alcohol use, marijuana use, drug use, and cigarette use. Feasibility data were promising and suggest the need for further evaluation.     

Twelve- and 18-month-olds copy actions in terms of goals

In the context of an imitation game, 12- and 18-month-old infants saw an adult do such things as make a toy mouse hop across a mat (with sound effects). In one condition (House), the adult ended by placing the mouse in a toy house, whereas in another condition (No House) there was no house present at the final location. Infants at both ages usually simply put the mouse in the house (ignoring the hopping motion and sound effects) in the House condition, presumably because they interpreted the adult's action in terms of this final goal and so ignored the behavioral means. In contrast, infants copied the adult's action (both the hopping motion and the sound effects) when no house was present, presumably because here infants saw the action itself as the adult's only goal. From very early, infants' social learning is flexible: infants focus on and copy either the end or the means of an adult action as required by the context.     

Unawareness of social interaction and emotional control deficits in alzheimer's disease

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine unawareness of deficit in Alzheimer's disease (AD) in a previously unexplored functional domain: social interaction and emotional control competency. Impairment of awareness was measured by calculating the degree to which patients and their caregivers disagreed on ratings of patient functioning. to assess potential underlying mechanisms or associated features of social/emotional unawareness, a regression equation examining disease and demographic correlates was created. In addition, to provide a basis of comparison for the social/emotional domain, unawareness of deficit was also assessed in two previously examined domains of functioning (i.e., cognitive and self-care competency). Results revealed that, as compared to caregivers, AD-diagnosed patients overestimated their social/emotional competency but to a lesser extent than they overestimated cognitive and self-care competencies. Regression analysis suggested that impaired awareness of social interaction and emotional control deficits was positively correlated with dementia severity and negatively correlated with education.     

A So Di Ting Set: Conceptions of Male and Female in Jamaica and Barbados

In 1997, two hundred and twenty-five (225) Jamaican adults were asked to give their opinions of the prevailing Jamaican male and female stereotypes. Again in 2009 a further one hundred and twenty-four (124) Jamaican adults were interviewed to determine their perceptions of the current gender stereotypes. The same was done in Barbados as a means of comparing the stereotypes of two English speaking Caribbean cultures with differing degrees of exposure to similar cultural influences. Equal numbers of male and female respondents were included in both studies. A 100-adjective list of male and female attributes was compiled using a 300-item list originally created by Cattell in 1943 and subsequently used and revised by various authors. The data were analysed using SPSS to arrive at the frequencies for each adjective. Responses of 65% or more were considered to be stereotypical of males and females within each culture. The results show that overall Jamaican men were seen as: coarse, reckless, aggressive, lazy, tough, arrogant, stern, disorderly, robust, rigid, autocratic, courageous, and hard-headed, Jamaican women were seen as: complaining, fussy, sexy, emotional, worrying, affectionate, sensitive, soft hearted and sophisticated. Barbadian men and women had overall lower stereotype scores than did Jamaicans. Barbadian men differed from Jamaican men in that they were seen as: reckless; disorderly; robust and tough man who is also show-off; arrogant; aggressive; hard-headed; courageous, adventurous; lazy; inventive and rigid, while Barbadian women were seen as: emotional; fussy; affectionate; complaining, sophisticated; sensitive; worrying; warm; fault-finding; sexy; touchy; sentimental and gentle. The popular music from both countries is used as a lens for understanding the cultures within which the respondents develop their gender stereotypes. The stereotype data is then compared with the music that is popular during the 10 years from the first study in Jamaica to the second pair of studies in Jamaica and Barbados.     

Tests enhance retention and transfer of spatial learning

Many studies have reported that tests are beneficial for learning (e.g., Roediger & Karpicke, 2006a). However, the majority of studies on the testing effect have been limited to a combination of relatively simple verbal tasks and final tests that assessed memory for the same material that had originally been tested. The present study explored whether testing is beneficial for complex spatial memory and whether these benefits hold for both retention and transfer. After encoding a three-dimensional layout of objects presented in a virtual environment, participants completed a judgment-of-relative-direction (JRD) task in which they imagined standing at one object, facing a second object, and pointed to a third object from the imagined perspective. Some participants completed this task by relying on memory for the previously encoded layout (i.e., the test conditions), whereas for others the location of the third object was identified ahead of time, so that retrieval was not required (i.e., the study condition). On a final test assessing their JRD performance, the participants who learned through test outperformed those who learned through study. This was true even when corrective feedback was not provided on the initial JRD task and when the final test assessed memory from vantage points that had never been practiced during the initial JRD.