Ability of dyslexic and control teenagers to sustain attention and inhibit responses

Dyslexia and attentional difficulty have often been linked, but little is known of the nature of the supposed attentional disorder. The Sustained Attention to Response Task (SART; Robertson, Manly, Andrade, Baddeley, & Yiend, 1997) was designed as a measure of sustained attention and requires the withholding of responses to rare (one in nine) targets. To investigate the nature of the attentional disorder in dyslexia, this paper reports two studies that examined the performance of teenagers with dyslexia and their age-matched controls on the SART, the squiggle SART (a modification of the SART using novel and unlabellable stimuli rather than digits) and the go-gap-stop test of response inhibition (GGST). Teenagers with dyslexia made significantly more errors than controls on the original SART, but not on the squiggle SART. There were no group differences on the GGST. After controlling for speed of reaction time in a sequential multiple regression predicting SART false alarms, false alarms on the GGST accounted for up to 22 per cent extra variance in the control groups (although less on the squiggle SART) but negligible amounts of variance in the dyslexic groups. We interpret the results as reflecting a stimulus recognition automaticity deficit in dyslexia, rather than a sustained attention deficit. Furthermore, results suggest that response inhibition is an important component of performance on the standard SART when stimuli are recognised automatically.     

Age of avatar modulates the altercentric bias in a visual perspective-taking task: ERP and behavioral evidence

Despite being able to rapidly and accurately infer their own and other peoples’ visual perspectives, healthy adults experience difficulty ignoring the irrelevant perspective when the two perspectives are in conflict; they experience egocentric and altercentric interference. We examine for the first time how the age of an observed person (adult vs. child avatar) influences adults’ visual perspective-taking, particularly the degree to which they experience interference from their own or the other person’s perspective. Participants completed the avatar visual perspective-taking task, in which they verified the number of discs in a visual scene according to either their own or an on-screen avatar’s perspective (Experiments 1 and 2) or only from their own perspective (Experiment 3), where the two perspectives could be consistent or in conflict. Age of avatar was manipulated between (Experiment 1) or within (Experiments 2 and 3) participants, and interference was assessed using behavioral (Experiments 1–3) and ERP (Experiment 1) measures. Results revealed that altercentric interference is reduced or eliminated when a child avatar was present, suggesting that adults do not automatically compute a child avatar’s perspective. We attribute this pattern to either enhanced visual processing for own-age others or an inference on reduced mental awareness in younger children. The findings argue against a purely attentional basis for the altercentric effect, and instead support an account where both mentalising and directional processes modulate automatic visual perspective-taking, and perspective-taking effects are strongly influenced by experimental context.     

Surfing for sex: Studying involuntary celibacy using the internet

The Internet offers possibilities for sexuality research that could not have been imagined even a decade ago. Although Internet users are not representative of the general population, they are easily accessible, and the openness with which they discuss sensitive topics has created a tremendous and largely untapped pool of respondents for sex research. Moreover, the web provides access to populations that are largely hidden and difficult to reach using traditional methods. In this article, we explore such issues as sampling, research design, data collection and management, and the ethics of web-based research. In doing so, we review past research, investigate the advantages and disadvantages of using the Internet in sexuality studies, draw examples from our web-based study of involuntary celibacy, and recommend guidelines for future web based inquiries.     

Gender Differences in Managers' Conceptions and Perceptions of Commitment to the Organization

This study explored the effect of gender on managers' conceptions and perceptions of those behaviors seen as demonstrating commitment to the organization. Three major findings are reported: (1) female managers and male managers with families evaluated traditional commitment behaviors as less indicative of commitment than their single male counterparts; (2) managers' conceptions of behaviors indicative of commitment conformed to the views of the majority gender within their work-group; and (3) managers' perceptions of commitment were not affected by gender-based in-group biases.     

Measuring “intuition” in the SRT generation task

We address some concerns related to the use of post-trial attribution judgments, originally developed for artificial grammar learning (AGL), during the version of the serial reaction time (SRT) task used by Fu, Dienes, and Fu (2010). In particular, intuition attributions, which are central to Fu et al.’s arguments, seem problematic: This attribution is likely to be made when stimuli contain several competing sources of information to which subjective feelings could be attributed. The interpretation of intuition attributions in Fu et al.’s SRT generation task is problematic because the procedure involved a 2-element sequence where items varied only in position. In our view, responses categorised as intuitions might have been a variety of guess response where neither judgement knowledge nor structural knowledge were conscious. The results would then be compatible with previous findings showing that people can control the use of unconscious structural knowledge even when judgement knowledge is unconscious.     

Measuring strategic control in artificial grammar learning

In response to concerns with existing procedures for measuring strategic control over implicit knowledge in artificial grammar learning (AGL), we introduce a more stringent measurement procedure. After two separate training blocks which each consisted of letter strings derived from a different grammar, participants either judged the grammaticality of novel letter strings with respect to only one of these two grammars (pure-block condition), or had the target grammar varying randomly from trial to trial (novel mixed-block condition) which required a higher degree of conscious flexible control. Random variation in the colour and font of letters was introduced to disguise the nature of the rule and reduce explicit learning. Strategic control was observed both in the pure-block and mixed-block conditions, and even among participants who did not realise the rule was based on letter identity. This indicated detailed strategic control in the absence of explicit learning.     

Transient attention degrades perceived apparent motion

Transient spatial attention refers to the automatic selection of a location that is driven by the stimulus rather than a voluntary decision. Apparent motion is an illusory motion created by stationary stimuli that are presented successively at different locations. In this study we explored the effects of transient attention on apparent motion. The motion target presentation was preceded by either valid attentional cues that attract attention to the target location in advance (experiments 1-4), neutral cues that do not indicate a location (experiments 1, 3, and 4), or invalid cues that direct attention to a non-target location (experiment 2). Valid attentional cues usually improve performance in various tasks. Here, however, an attentional impairment was found. Observers' ability to discriminate the direction of motion diminished at the cued location. Analogous results were obtained regardless of cue type: singleton cue (experiment 1), central non-informative cue (experiment 2), or abrupt onset cue (experiment 3). Experiment 4 further demonstrated that reversed apparent motion is less likely with attention. This seemingly counterintuitive attentional degradation of perceived apparent motion is consistent with several recent findings, and together they suggest that transient attention facilitates spatial segregation and temporal integration but impairs spatial integration and temporal segregation.     

Book notes

Mana: Revue de Sociologie et d'Anthropologie Caen: Department of Sociology, University of Caen, Esplanade de la Paix, 1400 Caen, France. 242 pp, 81 FF (in France, inch postage)

Desh Pardesh: The South Asian Presence in Britain Roger Ballard, ed., 1994 London: Hurst & Co. 296 pp., £9.95 (pb) ISBN 1–85065–092–6

Religions et sécurité international Jean‐François Mayer, 1995 Bern: Office Central de la Défense Series: Études relatives à la politique de sécurité, No. 2/1995 143 pp.

Essential Teachings His Holiness the Dalai Lama London: Souvenir Press, 1995 152 pp., £9.99 (hb) ISBN 0–285–63273–6

Voices of Islam John Bowker, 1995 Oxford: Oneworld Publications 188 pp., £8.95 ISBN 1–85168–095–0

A Short History of the Bahá'i Faith Peter Smith, 1996 Oxford: Oneworld Publications 168 pp., £5.95 (pb) ISBN 1–85168–070–5

A Short History of Islam William Montgomery Watt, 1996 Oxford: Oneworld Publications 156 pp., £5.95 (pb) ISBN 1–85168–109–4

Dictionary of the Middle East Dilip Hiro, 1996 Basingstoke: Macmillan 367 pp., £14.99 (pb) ISBN 0–333–65926–0

The Hebrew Bible Dan Cohn‐Sherbok, 1996 London: Cassell 257 pp., £55.00 (hb), £13.99 (pb) ISBN 0–304–33702–1 (hb), 0–304–33703‐X (pb)

The Puzzle of God Peter Vardy, 1995 London: Fount/Harper Collins 240 pp., £7.99 ISBN 0–00–627965–1