The Anatomy of Revolutionists

A questionnaire containing 62 items relating to the New Left and 28 items measuring anomia, authoritarianism, and Machiavellianism was given to 153 entering freshmen at Columbia in the fall of 1968. The five factors emerging from a factor analysis of responses to the items were labeled: New Left Philosophy, Revolutionary Tactics, Machiavellian Tactics, Machiavellian Cynicism, and Traditional Moralism. Students who had been politically active prior to coming to college scored higher than the rest of the group on New Left Philosophy, Revolutionary Tactics, and Machiavellian Cynicism, but scored lower on Machiavellian'Tactics and Traditional Moralism. In the spring of 1969, a revised set of items was given to students in introductory psychology classes at Columbia University and New York University. While the findings from these subjects replicated those found with the Columbia freshmen, they showed subtle differences which led to speculations about the radicalization process. Also discussed are the relationships between the nature of political participation and all of the factors, with special emphasis on the discrepancy between Machiavellian Tactics and Cynicism.     

Characteristics of Suicidality Among Adolescents

The identification of high-risk adolescent suicide attempters in a population of depressed and suicidal adolescents is of crucial importance. This retrospective study examined characteristics of suicidality (recent and lifetime, active and passive) and psychopathology (depression, aggression, impulsivity, stressful life events, SCL-90 dimensions) among four groups of depressed adolescent outpatients: (1) suicide attempters who required medical treatment (n = 84), (2) suicide attempters who did not require medical treatment (n = 57), (3) suicidal ideators who had never made a suicide attempt (n = 40), and (4) nonsuicidal patients (n = 44). Results indicate that the nonsuicidal group could be differentiated from the three suicidal groups on the basis of suicidality and psychopathology, and that the three suicidal groups could be differentiated from one another on the basis of suicidality but not psychopathology. These findings are discussed in terms of the usefulness of certain self-report measures of suicidality for identifying suicidal adolescents and for differentiating among them. Furthermore, the findings suggest that psychopathological factors do not determine which suicidal adolescents make a medically dangerous suicide attempt and which do not.     

Salience drives overt selection of two equally relevant visual targets

In the present study, we investigated whether salience determines the sequence of selection when participants search for two equally relevant visual targets. To do this, attentional selection was tracked overtly as observers inspected two items of differing physical salience: one a highly salient color singleton, and the other a less salient shape singleton. Participants were instructed to make natural eye movements in order to determine whether two line segments contained within the two singletons were oriented in the same or in different directions. Because both singleton items were task-relevant, participants had no reason to inspect one item before the other. As expected, observers fixated both targets on the majority of trials. Critically, saccades to the color singleton preceded saccades to the less salient shape singleton on the majority of trials. This demonstrates that the order of attentional object selection is largely determined by stimulus salience when task relevance is equated.     

Familiarity seekers are fast and novelty seekers are slow

Christie and Klein () demonstrated that a familiar item (word) rapidly attracts attention when presented simultaneously with an unfamiliar item (nonword). However, this finding has never been replicated. The current study is an attempt at such a replication. Participants were presented a familiar word and unfamiliar nonword in the experimental condition. At varying times after stimulus onset one of the items moved, and the participant reported the direction of the movement. A replication of Christie and Klein would be obtained if performance was better for movement discrimination of the familiar item shortly after onset but not at later intervals. The original finding was replicated in fast participants while slower participants show a different effect. A potential individual difference variable is suggested to explain this difference between the fast and slow participants.     

Visuospatial function in the beagle dog: an early marker of cognitive decline in a model of human aging and dementia

Visuospatial learning and memory impairments are an early marker for age-related cognitive decline and Alzheimer's disease. Similar to humans, aged dogs show visuospatial learning and memory deficits (). One hundred and nine beagle dogs ranging between 0.25 and 11.99 years were tested on a visuospatial delayed non-matching to position (DNMP) task to better characterize the progression of visuospatial deficits in the dog. Age predicted 48.2% of the variability in learning the DNMP, with dogs ranging from 1 to 11.99 years generally making more errors with increasing age. By contrast, puppies (<1 year) likely were showing developmental deficits, possibly due to an immature prefrontal cortex. Mild visuospatial deficits were detected by 6 years, which precedes the typical onset of amyloid-beta (Abeta) accumulation in the dog brain by two years, and can serve as an early marker for cognitive decline in the dog. These findings suggest that (1) age-related changes in visuospatial function in the dog models that seen in humans, further validating the dog as a model for human aging and dementia; and (2) other mechanisms, such as oxidative stress, soluble Abeta oligomers or cholinergic deficits, are likely contributing to the early impairment.     

Youth-parent consistencies on ratings of difficulties and prosocial behavior: exploration of an at-risk sample

Low informant agreement is of particular concern in clinical settings, since diagnoses and interventions are largely based on reports from parents and/or youths. This study explores youth-parent consistencies in an at-risk sample of youths (n = 42), several from immigrant and refugee families, all with stressful background experiences. Data from a community sample (n = 165) was used to contrast the clinical results. Results showed that correlations between clinical youths and parents were within the same range as those in the community sample. Consistencies concerning absolute level of behavior were higher in the clinical sample. However, interesting differences in informant consistencies were found on difficulties and resources between the two samples. This study adds to the picture that there is no simple relationship between severity of behavior deviance and informant agreement. Asking about behavioral resources as well as difficulties may provide valuable additional information regarding differences in the perspectives of at-risk youths and parents.     

Does attention cause illusory line motion?

Illusory line motion (ILM) has been shown to occur when a line is presented with one end next to a previously stimulated location. The line appears to be drawn away from the site of stimulation. It has been suggested that this is because of the allocation of attention to the stimulated site. Using an endogenous attentional manipulation (a central arrow cue) with no differences in the display between the two ends of the line at the time of line presentation or immediately prior, no ILM was detected, though there was a small effect in the opposite direction. Those who have found endogenously induced ILM have used an endogenous cue based on a property of a location marker that indicated the cued location. Changing the method of cuing to one based on a property of a peripheral marker instead of a central arrow produced a small but significant report of ILM. The small magnitude of the effect, participant self-reports, and the absence of the effect in the purely endogenous condition, suggest that this was merely a bias. ILM is not generated by endogenous attention shifts.     

Effects of repetition and response deadline on associative recognition in young and older adults

The present study examined the joint effects of repetition and response deadline on associative recognition in older adults. Young and older adults studied lists of unrelated word pairs, half presented once (weak pairs) and half presented four times (strong pairs). Test lists contained old (intact) pairs, pairs consisting of old words that had been studied with other partners (rearranged lures), and unstudied pairs (new lures), and participants were asked to respond "old" only to intact pairs. In Experiment 1, participants were tested with both short and long deadlines. In Experiment 2, the tests were unpaced. In both experiments, repetition increased hit rates for young and older adults. Young adults tested with a long deadline showed reduced (Experiment 1) or invariant (Experiment 2) false alarms to rearranged lures when word pairs were studied more often. Young adults tested with a short deadline and older adults tested under all conditions had increased false alarm rates forstrong rearranged pairs. Implications of these results for theories of associative recognition and cognitive aging are explored.     

Demonstration of nondeclarative sequence learning in mice: development of an animal analog of the human serial reaction time task

In this paper, we demonstrate nondeclarative sequence learning in mice using an animal analog of the human serial reaction time task (SRT) that uses a within-group comparison of behavior in response to a repeating sequence versus a random sequence. Ten female B6CBA mice performed eleven 96-trial sessions containing 24 repetitions of a 4-trial sequence. During the 12th session, the repeating sequence was replaced with the random sequence halfway through the session. Reaction time (RT) to respond to an illuminated nose-poke was recorded, and performance was compared at the halfway point in each session to test for any change in behavior. For learning effect, RTs decreased over the no-switch repeating-sequence sessions. For interference effect, behavior did not change appreciably at the halfway point during the last repeating-sequence session. However, RTs deteriorated significantly after the switch from repeating to random sequences halfway through session 12. The mice demonstrated a robust interference effect when switched from repeating to random sequences. This pattern of behavior in humans performing the SRT is interpreted as evidence of nondeclarative sequence learning. The similarity between the human and mouse SRTs will enable more direct comparisons of mouse-human nondeclarative memory behavior and will provide a useful behavioral end-point in mouse-models of basal ganglia dysfunction.