Integration of visuospatial information encoded from different viewpoints

Two experiments investigated whether separate sets of objects viewed in the same environment but from different views were encoded as a single integrated representation or maintained as distinct representations. Participants viewed two circular layouts of objects that were placed around them in a round (Experiment 1) or a square (Experiment 2) room and were later tested on perspective-taking trials requiring retrieval of either one layout (within-layout trials) or both layouts (between-layout trials). Results from Experiment 1 indicated that participants did not integrate the two layouts into a single representation. Imagined perspective taking was more efficient on within- than on between-layout trials. Furthermore, performance for within-layout trials was best from the perspective that each layout was studied. Results from Experiment 2 indicated that the stable environmental reference frame provided by the square room caused many, but not all, participants to integrate all locations within a common representation. Participants who integrated performed equally well for within-layout and between-layout judgments and also represented both layouts using a common reference frame. Overall, these findings highlight the flexibility of organizing information in spatial memory.     

How memory mechanisms are a key component in the guidance of our eye movements: Evidence from the global effect

Investigating eye movements has been a promising approach to uncover the role of visual working memory in early attentional processes. Prior research has already demonstrated that eye movements in search tasks are more easily drawn toward stimuli that show similarities to working memory content, as compared with neutral stimuli. Previous saccade tasks, however, have always required a selection process, thereby automatically recruiting working memory. The present study was an attempt to confirm the role of working memory in oculomotor selection in an unbiased saccade task that rendered memory mechanisms irrelevant. Participants executed a saccade in a display with two elements, without any instruction to aim for one particular element. The results show that when two objects appear simultaneously, a working memory match attracts the first saccade more profoundly than do mismatch objects, an effect that was present throughout the saccade latency distribution. These findings demonstrate that memory plays a fundamental biasing role in the earliest competitive processes in the selection of visual objects, even when working memory is not recruited during selection.     

Dirty Hands and Moral Conflict – Lessons from the Philosophy of Evil

Philosophia - According to one understanding of the problem of dirty hands, every case of dirty hands is an instance of moral conflict, but not every instance of moral conflict is a case of dirty...     

Longitudinal Associations Between Trauma Exposure and Executive Functions in Children: Findings from a Dutch Birth Cohort Study

Research on Child and Adolescent Psychopathology - This study is the first to distinguish two possible predictive directions between trauma exposure and executive functioning in children in a...     

A Qualitative Study on Children’s Digital Media Use and Parents’ Self-interest

Journal of Child and Family Studies - This qualitative study provides insight into the role of parents’ self-interest in digital media use of children in different age groups. We conducted 31...     

All units are equal in humpback whale songs,but some are more equal than others

Animal Cognition - Flexible production and perception of vocalizations is linked to an impressive array of cognitive capacities including language acquisition by humans, song learning by birds,...     

Bold and bright: shy and supple? The effect of habitat type on personality–cognition covariance in the Aegean wall lizard (Podarcis erhardii)

Animal Cognition - Animals exhibit considerable and consistent among-individual variation in cognitive abilities, even within a population. Recent studies have attempted to address this variation...     

Estimation of the predictive power of the model in mixed‐effects meta‐regression: A simulation study

Several methods are available to estimate the total and residual amount of heterogeneity in meta‐analysis, leading to different alternatives when estimating the predictive power in mixed‐effects meta‐regression models using the formula proposed by Raudenbush (1994, 2009). In this paper, a simulation study was conducted to compare the performance of seven estimators of these parameters under various realistic scenarios in psychology and related fields. Our results suggest that the number of studies (k) exerts the most important influence on the accuracy of the results, and that precise estimates of the heterogeneity variances and the model predictive power can only be expected with at least 20 and 40 studies, respectively. Increases in the average within‐study sample size () also improved the results for all estimators. Some differences among the accuracy of the estimators were observed, especially under adverse (small k and ) conditions, while the results for the different methods tended to convergence for more optimal scenarios.     

Perceiving by proxy: Effect-based action control with unperceivable effects

Anticipations of future sensory events have the potential of priming motor actions that would typically cause these events. Such effect anticipations are generally assumed to rely on previous physical experiences of the contingency of own actions and their ensuing effects. Here we propose that merely imagined action effects may influence behaviour similarly as physically experienced action effects do. Three experiments in the response–effect compatibility paradigm show that the mere knowledge of action–effect contingencies is indeed sufficient to incorporate these effects into action control even if the effects are never experienced as causally linked to own actions. The experiments further highlight constraints for this mechanism which seems to be rather effortful and to depend on explicit intentions.