Visual selective attention and the effects of monetary rewards

Outcomes of actions, in the form of rewards and punishments, are known to shape behavior. For example, an action followed by reward will be more readily elicited on subsequent encounters with the same stimuli and context -- a phenomenon known as the law of effect. These consequences of rewards (and punishments) are important because they reinforce adaptive behaviors at the expense of competing ones, thus increasing fitness of the organism in its environment. However, it is unknown whether similar influences regulate covert mental processes, such as visual selective attention. Visual selective attention allows privileged processing of task-relevant information, while inhibiting distracting contextual elements. Using variable monetary rewards as arbitrary feedback on performance, we tested whether acts of attentional selection, and in particular the resulting aftereffects, can be modulated by their consequences. Results show that the efficacy of visual selective attention can be sensibly adjusted by external feedback. Specifically, although lingering inhibition of distractors is robust after highly rewarded selections, it is eliminated after poorly rewarded selections. This powerful feature of visual selective attention provides attentive processes with both flexibility and self-regulation properties.     

Psychological impact of coronavirus-related social isolation in Colombia after a year of lockdown

Several repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic and its subsequent isolation period have been reported worldwide. In this paper, we analyze the behavioral and emotional effects of 1 year of coronavirus-related lockdown in Colombia. A cross-sectional correlational design was used on a sample of 1853 participants from different regions, and with different levels of education, income, and employment situations. We applied the fear of coronavirus scale, the use of preventive behaviors scale, and a scale to measure pleasant and unpleasant emotions based on the circumplex model of affect. Our data shows that women, participants who were unemployed during the lockdown, and participants that study or work in legal, computational, or related fields, have been more affected in terms of unpleasant emotions. In addition, we observed a trend towards a relation between higher income and educational levels with lower degrees of fear, higher degrees of pleasant emotions, and a greater use of preventive behaviors related to the pandemic.     

Partners’ representations of diabetes as mediators between patients’ representations and adherence to self-care behaviors,in type 2 diabetes

The purpose of this study was to analyze partners’ representations of diabetes as mediators between patients’ illness representations and adherence to all self-care behaviors, in recently diagnosed type 2 diabetes (T2DM) patients. The sample included 340 patients and their respective partners. The instruments used were: Revised Summary of Diabetes Self-Care Activities (RSDSCA); Medication Adherence Report Scale (MARS); and the Brief Illness Perception Questionnaire (Brief-IPQ). A mediational effect of partners’ representation of diabetes consequences was found between the same patients’ representations and exercise, foot care, and self-monitoring of blood glucose. Partners’ representations of personal and treatment control, were mediators between the same partners’ representations and self-monitoring of blood glucose. No partners’ representations mediated patients’ representation and adherence to medication or diet . This study emphasized partners’ representations on patient’s adherence to exercise, foot care and monitoring of blood glucose, in recent diagnosed T2DM patients. Interventions to promote adherence in T2DM should promote convergence between patients and partners’ diabetes representations. This study provides some evidence for the need to treat T2DM within the dyad to improve adherence, starting after the diagnosis.     

The discrimination of relative frequency by pigeons.

Five experiments addressed the issue of how pigeons learn to discriminate the relative frequency of stimuli. During a sampling period, three different stimuli (keylights) were presented serially, in mixed order, and with different frequencies. During a choice period, the stimuli were presented simultaneously, and reinforcement was arranged for choosing the stimulus that was presented the least number of times during the sample. The results showed that (a) the overall proportion of correct choices was always above chance levels; (b) the likelihood of a correct choice decreased with the serial position of the correct stimulus, a negative recency effect; (c) when the last three stimuli of the sample were constrained to be one of each kind, the negative recency effect decreased but errors became more likely when the correct stimulus occurred early in the sample, a negative primacy effect; (d) accurate performance generalized to new and larger samples; and (e) under some conditions the probability of a correct choice was independent of the serial position of the correct stimulus. The serial position curves suggest that in a least frequent discrimination task, two processes determine how the least frequent stimulus controls behavior: a passive decay process (the stimulus loses its effectiveness with time since its last occurrence), and a residual salience process (when the stimulus occurs in the first position it may decay to a higher asymptote than when it occurs in later positions.     

Serial attention mechanisms in visual search: A critical look at the evidence

Until a few years ago, visual search tasks were of exclusive pertinence to psychophysicists and cognitive psychologists trying to understand the operating principles and computational constraints of visual perception and visual selective attention. In recent years, cognitive neuroscience, with its powerful tools, has started to explore more directly the neuronal mechanisms underlying search performance in humans and macaques, aiming at the same general goals. New observations from a number of cognitive neuroscience approaches are promising a near future of great excitement in this field of research. This article offers a critical review of some of these recent contributions and highlights some of the interpretational problems that they pose. Received: 20 January 1998 / Accepted: 25 September 1998     

Dynamic conception of vocational guidance

The author maintains that V.G. must be the result of a clinical examination carried out deeply, and that, therefore, an orientation diagnosis can be made only by taking into consideration the deeper inclinations of the subject, rather than his aptitudes, interests or character traits; satisfactory adjustment to work being, in fact, the consequence of an harmonious concord between the individual's professional activity and the deep inclinations of the personality while a situation of maladjustment is the consequence of a chronic frustration of a fundamental emotional need.     

Executive Functions in School‐age Children: Influence of Age,Gender, School Type and Parental Education

Summary: This study aimed to evaluate whether age, gender, type of school and parental education could predict executive performance in school‐age children. Unconstrained, phonemic and semantic verbal fluency tasks (n = 402), as well as the Hayling Sentence Completion Test (n = 275) and the Random Number Generation task (n = 274) were administered to typically developing 6‐to‐12‐year‐old children. A hierarchical regression analysis was performed (p ≤ 0.05). The most significant explanatory models involved child age and parental education, as well as these two variables in addition to the type of school attended by the child. The main individual predictors of executive performance were age and school type. These results may be related to structural and functional alterations in the brain, an increased repertoire of cognitive strategies, the effects of education and the intensity of environmental cognitive stimulation. These findings may contribute to the development of stimulation and intervention programs for EF in clinical and educational settings.Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

CaMeRa: A Computational Model of Multiple Representations

This research aims to clarify, by constructing and testing a computer simulation, the use of multiple representations in problem solving, focusing on their role in visual reasoning. The model is motivated by extensive experimental evidence in the literature for the features it incorporates, but this article focuses on the system's structure. We illustrate the model's behavior by simulating the cognitive and perceptual processes of an economics expert as he teaches some well-learned economics principles while drawing a graph on a blackboard. Data in the experimental literature and concurrent verbal protocols were used to guide construction of a linked production system and parallel network, CaMeRa (Computation with Multiple Representations), that employs a "Mind's Eye" representation for pictorial information, consisting of a bitmap and associated node-link structures. Propositional list structures are used to represent verbal information and reasoning. Small individual pieces from the different representations are linked on a sequential and temporary basis to form a reasoning and inferencing chain, using visually encoded information recalled to the Mind's Eye from long-term memory and from cues recognized on an external display. CaMeRa, like the expert, uses the diagrammatic and verbal representations to complement one another, thus exploiting the unique advantages of each.     

Motor Improvement Using Motion Sensing Game Devices for Cerebral Palsy Rehabilitation

The authors aimed to investigate the effects of an intervention based on interactive game set with the movement sensor Kinect on children with cerebral palsy (CP). Twenty-eight participants were recruited. Their age was between 3 and 12 years old, and rated as level I, II, or III on the Gross Motor Function Classification System. They played two games from the Xbox 360 Kinect system and were evaluated using the Gross Motor Function Measure (GMFM) after a period of 8 weeks. The intervention led to significant motor function improvement as increase of the global scores on the GMFM (p < .001). Rehabilitation interventions using the Xbox 360 Kinect interactive games may represent useful tools for children with CP.