Partners or pawns?: The impact of elite decision-making and epistemic communities in global information policy on developing countries and transnational civil society

This paper explores the complex institutional processes that comprise the global governance of cyberinfrastructure and examines the impact of these elite regime formation processes on developing countries and transnational civil society organizations. Based on a concurrent, mixed-methods study of the United Nations-sponsored World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), we find that policy-actors from developing countries and civil society organizations have been less effective than other actors in influencing these processes. Finally, we recommend future research on the use of ICTs to strengthen the effective participation of developing countries and transnational civil society organizations in these processes. He directs the Collaboratory on Technology Enhanced Learning Communities 〈www.cotelco.net〉 and holds a Ph.D. in political science from Howard University. This study is part of a larger research program called From Pawns to Partners, supported by grants from the University of Michigan, W.K. Kellogg Foundation, Microsoft Research, and Hewlett-Packard. The author would like to thank the graduate students working in Cotelco, as well as helpful colleagues Deborah Robinson, James Jackson, Michael Traugott, Alford Young, and Michael Kennedy. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2004 ISA conference.     

Endogenous opioid peptides contribute to associative LTP in the hippocampal CA3 region

The medial and lateral perforant path projections to the hippocampal CA3 region display distinct mechanisms of long-term potentiation (LTP) induction, N-methyl-d-aspartate (NMDA) and opioid receptor dependent, respectively. However, medial and lateral perforant path projections to the CA3 region display associative LTP with coactivation, suggesting that while they differ in receptors involved in LTP induction they may share common downstream mechanisms of LTP induction. Here we address this interaction of LTP induction mechanisms by evaluating the contribution of opioid receptors to the induction of associative LTP among the medial and lateral perforant path projections to the CA3 region in vivo. Local application of the opioid receptor antagonists naloxone or Cys2-Tyr3-Orn5-Pen7-amide (CTOP) normally block induction of lateral perforant path-CA3 LTP. However, these opioid receptor antagonists failed to block associative LTP in lateral perforant path-CA3 synapses when it was induced by strong coactivation of the medial perforant pathway which displays NMDAR-dependent LTP. Thus strong activation of non-opioidergic afferents can substitute for the opioid receptor activation required for lateral perforant path LTP induction. Conversely, medial perforant path-CA3 associative LTP was blocked by opioid receptor antagonists when induced by strong coactivation of the opioidergic lateral perforant path. These data indicate endogenous opioid peptides contribute to associative LTP at coactive synapses when induced by strong coactivation of an opioidergic afferent system. These data further suggest that associative LTP induction is regulated by the receptor mechanisms of the strongly stimulated pathway. Thus, while medial and lateral perforant path synapses differ in their mechanisms of LTP induction, associative LTP at these synapses share common downstream mechanisms of induction.     

Tempting fate or inviting happiness?: unrealistic idealization prevents the decline of marital satisfaction

This article examines whether unrealistically viewing a romantic partner as resembling one's ideal partner accelerates or slows declines in marital satisfaction among newlyweds. A longitudinal study linked unrealistic idealization at the time of marriage to changes in satisfaction over the first 3 years of marriage. Overall, satisfaction declined markedly, a finding that is consistent with past research. However, seeing a less-than-ideal partner as a reflection of one's ideals predicted a certain level of protection against the corrosive effects of time: People who initially idealized their partner the most experienced no decline in satisfaction. The benefits of idealization remained in analyses that controlled separately for the positivity of partner perceptions and the possibility that better adjusted people might be in better relationships.     

Effects of distraction on visual enumeration in children and adults

Speeded enumeration of visual stimuli typically produces a bilinear function, with a shallow subitizing rate (<100 ms/item) up to 3-4 items (subitizing span) and a steeper counting rate (~300 ms/item) thereafter. FINST theory (L. M. Trick & Z. W. Pylyshyn, 1993, 1994) suggests that subitizing of targets is possible in the presence of distractors if attention is not required for target detection, but this has not been tested in children. The present study explored enumeration without distractors (Os alone) and with distractors (Os among Xs) in 35 children aged 6-11 years and 17 adults. Subitizing span increased significantly from childhood to adulthood, and counting rate increased significantly with age. Bilinear functions were significantly better than linear fits to the data for most children and adults both without distractors (97% and 100%, respectively) and with distractors (89% and 94%), consistent with their efficient visual search for a single O among multiple Xs. These findings are discussed in comparison with those from new modeling of earlier enumeration data from young and older adults, revealing striking asymmetries in subitizing with distractors between development and aging.     

Fractionating the preview benefit in search: dual-task decomposition of visual marking by timing and modality

Providing participants with a preview of half the distractors in a visual search task facilitates performance. The present study examined the effects of secondary tasks on the preview benefit in search. Participants had to attend to a visual or an auditory stream of digits that began either (a) at the onset of the preview or (b) after the preview. Secondary tasks that onset with the preview disrupted the preview benefit irrespective of their modality. Only visual secondary tasks disrupted the benefit in the delayed condition. These selective interference effects suggest that the preview benefit can be fractionated into 2 components: an initialization component that involves modality-independent resources and a maintenance component that depends on visual resources. Results are discussed in relation to theoretical accounts of the preview benefit in search.     

Does state self-control depletion predict relationship functioning and partner aggression? An ecological momentary assessment study of community couples

Intimate relationship functioning depends upon the ability to accommodate one's partner and to inhibit retaliatory and aggressive impulses when disagreements arise. However, accommodation and inhibition may be difficult when self-control strength is weak or depleted by prior exertion of self-control. The present study considered whether state self-control depletion prospectively predicts male and female self-reports of anger with partner and arguing with partner. Consistent with the I³ Model (Finkel, 2014, Adv Exp Soc Psychol, 49, 1–104), we also considered whether the association between elevated anger and arguing (i.e., instigation) and partner aggression was stronger when state self-control (i.e., inhibition) was depleted or among people high in negative urgency. In this ecological momentary assessment (EMA) study, heavy drinking married and cohabiting heterosexual couples (N = 191) responded to three randomly signaled reports each day for 30 days. Depletion predicted anger and arguing with partners both cross-sectionally and prospectively for men and women. However, after controlling for prior levels of anger and arguing, these effects were diminished, and supplemental analyses revealed that anger and arguing with partner predicted subsequent depletion. Anger and arguing were strongly associated with concurrent reports of partner aggression perpetration and victimization (verbal and/or physical). However, neither state self-control depletion nor negative urgency moderated these effects. Overall, results suggest a modest impact of depletion on daily couple functioning as well as a potential cyclical effect of arguing on depletion.     

Parieto-occipital areas involved in efficient filtering in search: A time course analysis of visual marking using behavioural and functional imaging procedures

Search for a colour-form conjunction target can be facilitated by presenting one set of distractors prior to the second set of distractors and the target: the preview benefit (Watson & Humphreys, 1997). The early presentation of one set of distractors enables them to be efficiently filtered from search. We report two studies investigating the time course of the preview benefit. In Experiment 1 we use a standard reaction time analysis to show that the benefit has a relatively slow time course; old items need to precede the new set by 600 ms or more in order to be fully filtered from search. Furthermore, the reductions in reaction time across time in the preview condition varied nonlinearly with the display size, suggesting that old items were discounted from search in parallel. In Experiment 2 we examined the neural locus of this filtering effect over time, using positron emission tomography (PET). We show that regions of parieto-occipital cortex are selectively activated in a preview search condition relative to a detection baseline. These regions also increase in activation as the preview interval increases (and search then becomes easier), consistent with them modulating the parallel filtering of distractors from targets in spatial search. Interestingly, the same areas as those activated in preview search were also active in conjunction search relative to its own detection baseline. Thus these regions either modulate parallel filtering in conjunction search too, or they modulate different behavioural functions according to task constraints.     

Effects of color heterogeneity on subitization

Small numbers of items can be enumerated rapidly and accurately via a process termedsubitizing. In two experiments, we examined the effect of target color heterogeneity on subitizing efficiency. In contrast to the findings of Puts and de Weert (1997), we found that observers were no less efficient at subitizing displays containing red and green items than they were at subitizing displays of a single color. We propose that these findings are consistent with subitization operating on items represented within a location master map that codes where objects are but not what they are. The data are discussed in relation to recent findings concerning the detection of single-feature targets and the functional architecture of early visual processing.