Reading the tea leaves in an intelligent Coffee Corner: Challenges for understanding behavior

This article discusses the challenges for methodological innovation on the basis of experiences in an experimental Living Lab setting: a context-aware Coffee Corner in a research institute. A context-aware infrastructure collects sensory information on users while they move and interact. People getting coffee can use a variety of services offered in the intelligent environment at the Coffee Corner’s site; for example, a colleague-radar application allows users to see the current positions of their colleagues in the building. At the same time, it identifies and authenticates users using proximity-aware and context-aware security features. Apart from proximity and context awareness, the analysis of contextual data allows the construction of a behavioral model of users that can be used to customize the services offered at the Coffee Corner. We explain how the Living Lab allows us to measure behavior in context in an unobtrusive and trustworthy way (e.g., by respecting a user’s right to privacy).     

Olfactory discrimination between litter mates by mothers and alien adult cats: lump or split?

Animal Cognition - Mother cats can discriminate between their own and alien kittens using kittens’ body odour. Here we ask whether they can also distinguish between body odours of kittens...     

Rehearsal strategies during motor-sequence learning in old age: execution vs motor imagery

Motor imagery and action-based rehearsal were compared during motor sequence-learning by young adults (M = 25 yr., SD = 3) and aged adults (M = 63 yr., SD = 7). General accuracy of aged adults was lower than that of young adults (F(1,28) = 7.37, p =.01) even though working-memory capacity was equivalent in the two groups. Motor imagery and rehearsal by action increased accuracy in both age groups, compared with minimization of opportunity for rehearsal (F(1,28) = 30.95, p < .001), but no interaction was found with age group, which suggests that young and aged adults were equally capable of motor imagery and action-based rehearsal. It was assumed that differences in performance between young and aged participants related to the formation of mental representations of sequences and integration of new elements into these representations rather than the capacity for motor imagery or rehearsal by action per se. The current study was exploratory and involved a relatively small sample of 15 participants per age group. Caution must be taken when considering the results.     

Gender differences in the frequency of personality disorders in depressed outpatients

We examined gender differences in the frequency of DSM-III-R personality disorder diagnoses and symptomatology in a sample of 225 depressed outpatients. This research partially replicates and extends one of the first studies in this area by Golomb et al. (1995). Males were significantly more likely than females to meet diagnoses for schizotypal, paranoid, narcissistic, antisocial, obsessive compulsive, and borderline personality disorder. Compared to females, males were also significantly more likely to have schizoid, schizotypal, narcissistic, antisocial, and obsessive-compulsive personality disorder symptomatology. Females did not predominate in any personality disorder symptomatology or diagnoses. A possible explanation for these findings is discussed. The results of this study challenge traditional assumptions about gender differences in the frequency of personality disorders, and confirm the need for future studies to investigate the relation between gender and personality disorders in specific Axis I samples.     

Neural coding of reward magnitude in the orbitofrontal cortex of the rat during a five-odor olfactory discrimination task

The orbitofrontal cortex (OBFc) has been suggested to code the motivational value of environmental stimuli and to use this information for the flexible guidance of goal-directed behavior. To examine whether information regarding reward prediction is quantitatively represented in the rat OBFc, neural activity was recorded during an olfactory discrimination “go”/“no-go” task in which five different odor stimuli were predictive for various amounts of reward or an aversive reinforcer. Neural correlates related to both actual and expected reward magnitude were observed. Responses related to reward expectation occurred during the execution of the behavioral response toward the reward site and within a waiting period prior to reinforcement delivery. About one-half of these neurons demonstrated differential firing toward the different reward sizes. These data provide new and strong evidence that reward expectancy, regardless of reward magnitude, is coded by neurons of the rat OBFc, and are indicative for representation of quantitative information concerning expected reward. Moreover, neural correlates of reward expectancy appear to be distributed across both motor and nonmotor phases of the task.