Perceptual judgements of others' tasting experiences: are they enjoying their food?

Motivated by previous work suggesting that infants make stereotypic facial reactions to different tastes, we assessed communicative signals that might enable an adult to interpret the strength, taste, and hedonic value of a liquid flavour another adult is consuming. Four subjects (tasters) were overtly videoed consuming drinks that varied in strength (low, medium, and high concentrations), taste (sweet, sour, bitter, and salty), and hedonic value (taster-rated enjoyment). 26 observers assessed the strength, taste, and taster's enjoyment of the drink from video clips of the tasters. Observers perceived the hedonic value of the drinks to the taster and the drinks' strength based on the tasters' reactions but were generally poor at assessing the specific taste of the drink. For all tastes except the bitter ones, observers might have based their judgements of taste on how much the taster appeared to enjoy the drink. These findings are discussed in terms of communication of food's value.     

Long-term memory survives nerve injury and the subsequent regeneration process

A three-neuron network (a central pattern generator [CPG]) is both sufficient and necessary to generate aerial respiratory behavior in the pond snail, Lymnaea stagnalis. Aerial respiratory behavior is abolished following a specific nerve crush that results in axotomy to one of the three CPG neurons, RPeD1. Functional regeneration of the crushed neurite occurs within 10 days, allowing aerial respiratory behavior to be restored. Functional regeneration does not occur if the connective is cut rather than crushed. In unaxotomized snails, aerial respiratory behavior can be operantly conditioned, and following memory consolidation, long-term memory (LTM) persists for at least 2 weeks. We used the Lymnaea model system to determine (1) If in naive animals axotomy and the subsequent regeneration result in a nervous system that is competent to mediate associative learning and LTM, and (2) if LTM survives RPeD1 axotomy and the subsequent regenerative process. We show here that (1) A regenerated nervous system is competent to mediate associative memory and LTM, and (2) LTM survives axotomy and the subsequent regenerative process.     

Correlations for timing consistency among tapping and drawing tasks: evidence against a single timing process for motor control.

Three experiments were conducted to examine whether timing processes can be shared by continuous tapping and drawing tasks. In all 3 experiments, temporal precision in tapping was not related to temporal precision in continuous drawing. There were modest correlations among the tapping tasks, and there were significant correlations among the drawing tasks. In Experiment 3, the function relating timing variance to the square of the observed movement duration for tapping was different from that for drawing. The conclusions drawn were that timing is not an ability to be shared by a variety of tasks but instead that the temporal qualities of skilled movement are the result of the specific processes necessary to produce a trajectory. These results are consistent with the idea that timing is an emergent property of movement.     

Mentoring Relationship Closures in Big Brothers Big Sisters Community Mentoring Programs: Patterns and Associated Risk Factors

Previous research suggests that early mentoring relationship (MR) closures may have harmful consequences for the health and well‐being of youth participating in community‐based mentoring programs. However, knowledge of the factors that lead some MRs to close early has been slow to emerge. This study examined patterns and correlates of early versus on‐time MR closures among 569 youth participating in Big Brothers Big Sisters community mentoring programs. Thirty‐four percent of youth experienced an early MR closure prior to the end of the program's 12 month period of commitment. The probability of closure was highest at 12 months into the MR. Early closures were positively associated with youth gender (girls), behavioral difficulties, and match determination difficulties. Early and on‐time closures were associated with youth extrinsic motives for joining the program. Early MR closures were negatively associated with youth perceptions of parent emotional support, parent social support, high quality MR, weekly contact in MR, and parent support of the MR. Implications for programming are discussed.     

Aging, parafoveal preview, and semantic integration in sentence processing: Testing the cognitive workload of wrap-up

The current study investigated the degree to which semantic-integration processes ("wrap-up") during sentence understanding demand attentional resources by examining the effects of clause and sentence wrap-up on the parafoveal preview benefit (PPB) in younger and older adults. The PPB is defined as facilitation in processing word N + 1, based on information extracted while the eyes are fixated on word N, and is known to be reduced by processing difficulty at word N. Participants read passages in which word N occurred in a sentence-internal, clause-final, or sentence-final position, and a gaze-contingent boundary-change paradigm was used to manipulate the information available in parafoveal vision for word N + 1. Wrap-up effects were found on word N for both younger and older adults. Early-pass measures (first-fixation duration and single-fixation duration) of the PPB on word N + 1 were reduced by clause wrap-up and sentence wrap-up on word N, with similar effects for younger and older adults. However, for intermediate (gaze duration) and later-pass measures (regression-path duration, and selective regression-path duration), sentence wrap-up (but not clause wrap-up) on word N differentially reduced the PPB of word N + 1 for older adults. These findings suggest that wrap-up is demanding and may be less efficient with advancing age, resulting in a greater cognitive processing load for older readers. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).