Redefining synaesthesia?

In a thought-provoking paper, Simner (2012) highlights and criticizes a number of assumptions concerning synaesthesia. She specifically takes issue with the following assumptions: (1) synaesthesia is strictly a sensory-perceptual phenomenon; (2) consistency of inducer-concurrent pairs is the gold standard for establishing the authenticity of an individual's synaesthesia; and (3) synaesthesia is not heterogeneous. In the wake of this critique, Simner advances a working definition of synaesthesia as a neurological hyper-association that aims to be more inclusive of its variants. We are very sympathetic to Simner's approach and believe that it raises important points that will advance our understanding of synaesthesia. Here we supplement, and sometimes challenge, some of these ideas.     

Cross-group recognition bias generalizes to diverse non-face representations of digital identity

We investigated the potential for cross-group recognition bias, the reliable tendency for perceivers to better recognize people who share their ethnic or social groups than people who do not share their ethnic or social groups, with diverse non-face representations of digital identity. We compared German participants' memory for people they believed to be German or French when those people were identified using non-face pictorial representations of identity (Studies 1 and 2) and verbal written representations of identity (Study 3) taken from the World Wide Web. Participants better recognized ingroup targets than outgroup targets regardless of type of identity representation. These results generalize cross-group recognition bias to an important new domain as well as to a new class of stimuli and suggest that process explanations of cross-group recognition bias that are domain specific to faces do not provide a comprehensive account of the bias.     

Modality effects in rhythm processing: Auditory encoding of visual rhythms is neither obligatory nor automatic

Modality effects in rhythm processing were examined using a tempo judgment paradigm, in which participants made speeding-up or slowing-down judgments for auditory and visual sequences. A key element of stimulus construction was that the expected pattern of tempo judgments for critical test stimuli depended on a beat-based encoding of the sequence. A model-based measure of degree of beat-based encoding computed from the pattern of tempo judgments revealed greater beat sensitivity for auditory rhythms than for visual rhythms. Visual rhythms with prior auditory exposure were more likely to show a pattern of tempo judgments similar to that for auditory rhythms than were visual rhythms without prior auditory exposure, but only for a beat period of 600 msec. Slowing down the rhythms eliminated the effect of prior auditory exposure on visual rhythm processing. Taken together, the findings in this study support the view that auditory rhythms demonstrate an advantage over visual rhythms in beat-based encoding and that the auditory encoding of visual rhythms can be facilitated with prior auditory exposure, but only within a limited temporal range. The broad conclusion from this research is that “hearing visual rhythms” is neither obligatory nor automatic, as was previously claimed by Guttman, Gilroy, and Blake (2005).     

Are personality disorders associated with social welfare burden in the United States?

This study examined the association between personality disorders and use of major social welfare services in a nationally representative sample of U.S. adults (N = 43,093). Social welfare services received and diagnoses of personality, substance use, mood, and anxiety disorders were assessed with the Alcohol Use Disorder and Associated Disabilities Interview Schedule-DSM-IV-version. Analyses quantified the association between personality disorders and forms of public assistance while controlling for numerous confounds. Logistic regression analyses revealed dependent personality disorder, paranoid personality disorder, antisocial personality disorder, and avoidant personality disorder were significantly associated with increased odds of receiving public assistance. In contrast, persons diagnosed with histrionic, schizoid, and obsessive-personality disorder were not significantly more likely to receive any public welfare service. Development of effective prevention and treatment of personality disorders would likely lead to reductions in overall social welfare burden.     

Musical rhythm discrimination explains individual differences in grammar skills in children

This study considered a relation between rhythm perception skills and individual differences in phonological awareness and grammar abilities, which are two language skills crucial for academic achievement. Twenty‐five typically developing 6‐year‐old children were given standardized assessments of rhythm perception, phonological awareness, morpho‐syntactic competence, and non‐verbal cognitive ability. Rhythm perception accounted for 48% of the variance in morpho‐syntactic competence after controlling for non‐verbal IQ, socioeconomic status, and prior musical activities. Children with higher phonological awareness scores were better able to discriminate complex rhythms than children with lower scores, but not after controlling for IQ. This study is the first to show a relation between rhythm perception skills and morpho‐syntactic production in children with typical language development. These findings extend the literature showing substantial overlap of neurocognitive resources for processing music and language. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at: http://youtu.be/_lO692qHDNg     

Functional principal components analysis of workload capacity functions

Workload capacity, an important concept in many areas of psychology, describes processing efficiency across changes in workload. The capacity coefficient is a function across time that provides a useful measure of this construct. Until now, most analyses of the capacity coefficient have focused on the magnitude of this function, and often only in terms of a qualitative comparison (greater than or less than one). This work explains how a functional extension of principal components analysis can capture the time-extended information of these functional data, using a small number of scalar values chosen to emphasize the variance between participants and conditions. This approach provides many possibilities for a more fine-grained study of differences in workload capacity across tasks and individuals.     

Changing categorization of self can change emotions about outgroups

Drawing on Intergroup Emotions Theory [Mackie, D. M., Maitner, A. T., & Smith, E. R. (in press). Intergroup emotions theory. In T.D. Nelson (Ed.), Handbook of Prejudice, Stereotyping, and Discrimination, New York: Erlbaum.], we propose that a perceiver’s emotional reactions toward other social groups can change in response to situationally induced shifts in self-categorization. American students were led to self-categorize as Americans or as students and reported their anger and respect towards Muslims and police. Results indicated that in reaction to Muslims, participants felt more anger and less respect when categorized as Americans than when categorized as students. In reaction to police, participants felt less anger and more respect when categorized as Americans than when categorized as students. These results support and extend IET, and suggest that in addition to prejudice reduction interventions that focus on recategorization of the target, perceiver recategorization of the self is a viable means of changing emotional reactions to social targets.     

Dissociated control as a signature of typological variability in high hypnotic suggestibility

This study tested the prediction that dissociative tendencies modulate the impact of a hypnotic induction on cognitive control in different subtypes of highly suggestible individuals. Low suggestible (LS), low dissociative highly suggestible (LDHS), and high dissociative highly suggestible (HDHS) participants completed the Stroop color-naming task in control and hypnosis conditions. The magnitude of conflict adaptation (faster response times on incongruent trials preceded by an incongruent trial than those preceded by a congruent trial) was used as a measure of cognitive control. LS and LDHS participants displayed marginally superior up-regulation of cognitive control following a hypnotic induction, whereas HDHS participants’ performance declined. These findings indicate that dissociative tendencies modulate the influence of a hypnotic induction on cognitive control in high hypnotic suggestibility and suggest that HS individuals are comprised of distinct subtypes with dissimilar cognitive profiles.     

The Rutgers Arm, a rehabilitation system in virtual reality: a pilot study.

Stroke is one of the leading causes of death and disability worldwide. Its prevalence calls for innovative rehabilitation methods. The Rutgers Arm is a novel upper extremity rehabilitation system consisting of a low-friction table, three-dimensional (3D) tracker, custom forearm support, PC workstation, library of Java 3D virtual reality (VR) exercises, clinical database module, and a tele-rehabilitation extension. The system was tested on a chronic stroke subject, under local and tele-rehabilitation conditions, over 5 weeks of training. Results show improvements in arm motor control and shoulder range of motion, corresponding to improved Fugl-Meyer test scores. Exercise duration, level of difficulty, and patient motivation were maintained under tele-rehabilitaion. A 1-week retention trial showed that gains were maintained.     

Humanist but not Radical: The Educational Philosophy of Thiruvalluvar Kural

Studies in Philosophy and Education - Humanist ideas in education have been promoted by both Western thinkers and classical wisdom texts of Asia. Exploring this connection, I examine the...