The time course of presaccadic attention shifts

The dynamics of the allocation of attention during the preparation of saccadic eye movements was studied in a dual task paradigm. As the primary task, participants had to perform a saccade to letter-like items arranged on a clock face. The secondary task was a 2AFC discrimination task in which a discrimination target (DT) ('E' or '3') was presented among distractors, either at the saccade goal, or at a spatially separate, precued location. In the first experiment, the position of the DT was kept constant within an experimental block, while the saccade target location varied. In the second experiment, the location of the DT was varied while the saccade target remained the same within a block. The data demonstrate that attentional dynamics differs between the experiments--attention can shift to the saccade goal early or late during the saccade preparation period, depending on the task. Immediately before saccade onset, however, discrimination performance at the location of the saccade target is always superior to other locations, arguing for a strict and selective coupling between saccade preparation and attention.     

Educational Policy and Country Outcomes in International Cognitive Competence Studies

ABSTRACT— Prior studies of students' and adults' cognitive competence have shown large differences between nations, equivalent to a difference of 5 to 10 years of schooling. These differences seem to be relevant because studies using different research paradigms have demonstrated that population-level cognitive abilities are related to a number of important societal outcomes, including productivity, democratization, and health. In this overview of transnational differences, we document a number of positive predictors of international differences in student competence, including the amount of preschool education, student discipline, quantity of education, attendance at additional schools, early tracking, the use of centralized exams and high-stakes tests, and adult educational attainment. We found rather negative relationships for grade retention rates, age of school onset, and class size. Altogether, these results, when combined with the outcomes of earlier studies, demonstrate that international differences in cognitive competence can be explained in part by aspects of the respective countries' educational systems and that these differences consequently can be reduced by reform of their educational policy. This has important implications not just for closing gaps in educational achievement, but for narrowing international gaps in wealth, health, and democracy.     

Diagnosis and repair of negative polarity constructions in the light of symbolic resonance analysis

In a post hoc analysis, we investigate differences in event-related potentials of two studies (Drenhaus et al., 2004, Drenhaus et al., to appear, Saddy et al., 2004a and Saddy et al., 2004b) by using the symbolic resonance analysis (Beim Graben & Kurths, 2003). The studies under discussion, examined the failure to license a negative polarity item (NPI) in German: Saddy et al. (2004a) reported an N400 component when the NPI was not accurately licensed by negation; Drenhaus et al., 2004 and Drenhaus et al., to appear considered additionally the influence of constituency of the licensor in NPI constructions. A biphasic N400-P600 response was found for the two induced violations (the lack of licensor and the inaccessibility of negation in a relative clause). The symbolic resonance analysis (SRA) revealed an effect in the P600 time window for the data in Saddy et al., which was not found by using the averaging technique. The SRA of the ERPs in Drenhaus et al., showed that the P600 components are distinguishable concerning the amplitude and latency. It was smaller and earlier in the condition where the licensor is inaccessible, compared to the condition without negation in the string. Our findings suggest that the failure in licensing NPIs is not exclusively related to semantic integration costs (N400). The elicited P600 components reflect differences in syntactic processing. Our results confirm and replicate the effects of the traditional voltage average analysis and show that the SRA is a useful tool to reveal and pull apart ERP differences which are not evident using the traditional voltage average analysis.     

Erwiderung auf die Bemerkungen von G. Heim und W. Baur

Ohne Zusammenfassung