Do common systems control eye movements and motion extrapolation?

People are able to judge the current position of occluded moving objects. This operation is known as motion extrapolation. It has previously been suggested that motion extrapolation is independent of the oculomotor system. Here we revisited this question by measuring eye position while participants completed two types of motion extrapolation task. In one task, a moving visual target travelled rightwards, disappeared, then reappeared further along its trajectory. Participants discriminated correct reappearance times from incorrect (too early or too late) with a two-alternative forced-choice button press. In the second task, the target travelled rightwards behind a visible, rectangular occluder, and participants pressed a button at the time when they judged it should reappear. In both tasks, performance was significantly different under fixation as compared to free eye movement conditions. When eye movements were permitted, eye movements during occlusion were related to participants' judgements. Finally, even when participants were required to fixate, small changes in eye position around fixation (<2°) were influenced by occluded target motion. These results all indicate that overlapping systems control eye movements and judgements on motion extrapolation tasks. This has implications for understanding the mechanism underlying motion extrapolation.     

How Work-Family Research Can Finally Have an Impact in Organizations

Although work-family research has mushroomed over the past several decades, an implementation gap persists in putting work-family research into practice. Because of this, work-family researchers have not made a significant impact in improving the lives of employees relative to the amount of research that has been conducted. The goal of this article is to clarify areas where implementation gaps between work-family research and practice are prevalent, discuss the importance of reducing these gaps, and make the case that both better and different research should be conducted. We recommend several alternative but complementary actions for the work-family researcher: (a) work with organizations to study their policy and practice implementation efforts, (b) focus on the impact of rapid technological advances that are blurring work-family boundaries, (c) conduct research to empower the individual to self-manage the work-family interface, and (d) engage in advocacy and collaborative policy research to change institutional contexts and break down silos. Increased partnerships between industrial-organizational (I-O) psychology practitioners and researchers from many industries and disciplines could break down silos that we see as limiting development of the field.     

An examination of the relation between traumatic event exposure and panic-relevant biological challenge responding among adolescents

The current study uniquely extended research that has linked traumatic event exposure to panic-spectrum problems among adolescents. It was hypothesized that among 127 adolescents (age range: 10 to 17 years; M = 14.63, SD = 2.24), those who endorsed a history of traumatic event exposure would evidence significantly greater anxious and fearful reactivity to a well-established 3-min voluntary hyperventilation procedure compared to nonexposed individuals. Results were consistent with hypotheses, suggesting traumatic event exposure is associated with anxious and fearful reactivity to abrupt increases in bodily arousal among adolescents. Moreover, consistent with hypotheses, anxiety sensitivity significantly mediated the relations between traumatic event exposure and both self-reported panic symptoms and panic symptoms elicited by the challenge. Future prospective research is now needed to better understand temporal relations between traumatic event exposure and indices of panic and related vulnerability.     

Elevated social anxiety among early maturing girls

Adolescence is a key period in terms of the development of anxiety psychopathology. An emerging literature suggests that early pubertal maturation is associated with enhanced vulnerability for anxiety symptomatology, although few studies have examined this association with regard to social anxiety. Accordingly, the current study was designed to further elucidate the relation between pubertal timing and social anxiety, with a focus on clarifying the role of gender. Participants were 138 adolescents (ages 12-17 years) recruited from the general community. Level of social anxiety was examined as a function of gender and within-sample pubertal timing. As expected, early maturing girls evidenced significantly higher social anxiety, compared with on-time girls and early maturing boys, and no other differences were found as a function of gender or developmental timing. Findings and future directions are discussed in terms of forwarding developmentally sensitive models of social anxiety etiology and prevention.     

Effects of general-case training, instructions, rehearsal, and feedback on the reduction of sight-reading errors by competent musicians

We used general-case training, instructions, rehearsal, and feedback to teach 3 advanced flute students to improve their sight-reading skills. Training resulted in systematic decreases in note errors, rhythm errors, repetitions, and hesitations for each participant. The procedures and outcomes were socially validated through subjective evaluation by the participants and music teachers not involved with the study.     

Vollkommene Syllogismen und reine Vernunftschlüsse: Aristoteles und Kant. Eine Stellungnahme zu Theodor Eberts Gegeneinwänden. Teil 2

In an earlier article (see J Gen Philos Sci (2010) 41: 341–355) I have compared Aristotle’s syllogistic with Kant’s theory of “pure ratiocination”. “Ratiocinia pura” („reine Vernunftschlüsse“) is Kant’s designation for assertoric syllogisms Aristotle has called ‘perfect’. In Kant’s view they differ from non-pure ratiocinia precisely in that their validity rests only on the validity of the Dictum de omni et nullo (which, however, in Kant’s view can be further reduced to more fundamental principles) whereas the validity of non-pure ratiocinia additionally presupposes the validity of inferences which Kant calls consequentiae immediatae. I have argued that Kant’s view is in some (not in all) essential features in accordance with Aristotle’s view concerning perfect syllogisms and certainly leading to a tenable and interesting logical theory. As a result I have rejected not only the interpretation of Aristotle adopted by Theodor Ebert, but also the objections he has raised against Kant’s logical theory. As far as Aristotle is concerned, Ebert has attempted to defend his position in the first part of his reply to my article published in J Gen Philos Sci (2009) 40: 357–365, and I have argued against this defence in issue 1 of the J Gen Philos Sci (2010) 41: 199–213 (cf. Ebert’s answer in the same issue pp. 215–231). In the following discussion I deal with Eberts defence of his criticism of Kant published in the second part of his reply to my article (see J Gen Philos Sci (2009) 40: 365–372). I shall argue, that Kant’s principle ‘nota notae est nota rei ipsius’ and his use of technical vocabulary stand up to the objections raised by Ebert. His attempts to prove that Kant’s logical theory is defective are based on several misinterpretations.     

“The Cancer Bond”: Exploring the Formation of Cancer Risk Perception in Families with Lynch Syndrome

This study explores the social context of hereditary cancer risk perception in three families, an African-American family, a Mexican-American family, and a Caucasian family, each with Lynch Syndrome documented by a mismatch repair gene mutation. Communication network assessments measured family communication about cancer experiences and genetic testing information among a total of 26 participants. Participant narratives were evaluated to gain insight into how family cancer experiences and genetic testing information have shaped perceptions of cancer risk. Analysis of communication networks indicated that some families discussed cancer experiences to a greater extent than genetic testing information, and vice-versa. Interviews elucidated that sharing both types of health information led participants to conceptualize linkages among a strong family history of cancer, genetic testing information, and cancer prevention strategies. Understanding how different types of family communication influence the formation of perceived hereditary disease risk may enhance efforts to tailor genetic counseling services for families.     

Fairness, Respect and the Egalitarian Ethos Revisited

This paper reconsiders some themes and arguments from my earlier paper “Fairness, Respect and the Egalitarian Ethos.” That work is often considered to be part of a cluster of papers attacking “luck egalitarianism” on the grounds that insisting on luck egalitarianism’s standards of fairness undermines relations of mutual respect among citizens. While this is an accurate reading, the earlier paper did not make its motivations clear, and the current paper attempts to explain the reasons that led me to write the earlier paper, assesses the force of its arguments, and locates it in respect to work of Richard Arneson and Elizabeth Anderson. The paper concludes by bringing out what now appears to be the main message of the earlier paper: that the attempt to implement an “ideal” theory of equality can harm the very people that the theory is designed to help.     

It's either a cook or a baker: patients with conduction aphasia get the gist but lose the trace

Patients with conduction aphasia have been characterized as having a short-term memory deficit that leads to relative difficulty on span and repetition tasks. It has also been observed that these same patients often get the gist of what is said to them, even if they are unable to repeat the information verbatim. To study this phenomenon experimentally, patients with conduction aphasia and left hemisphere-injured controls were tested on a repetition recognition task that required them to listen to a sentence and immediately point to one of three sentences that matched it. On some trials, the distractor sentences contained substituted words that were semantically-related to the target, and on other trials, the distractor sentences contained semantically-distinct words. Patients with conduction aphasia and controls performed well on the latter condition, when distractors were semantically-distinct. However, when the distractor sentences were semantically-related, the patients with conduction aphasia were impaired at identifying the target sentence, suggesting that these patients could not rely on the verbatim trace. To further understand these results, we also tested elderly controls on the same task, except that a delay was introduced between study and test. Like the patients with conduction aphasia, the elderly controls were worse at identifying target sentences when there were semantically-related distractors. Taken together, these results suggest that patients with conduction aphasia rely on non-phonologic cues, such as lexical-semantics, to support their short-term memory, just as normal participants must do in long-term memory tasks when the phonological trace is no longer present.     

Psychosocial Conditions of Women Awaiting Genetic Counseling: A Population-based Study

The decision whether to undergo genetic counseling for hereditary breast and ovarian cancer is complex. Knowledge about the psychosocial conditions of women who are awaiting counseling is sparse. We aimed to compare the psychosocial conditions of women awaiting genetic counseling with those of women in two reference groups. We included 567 women referred to genetic counseling for hereditary risk of breast or ovarian cancer (Genetic Group), 689 women referred to mammography (Mammography Group) and a random sample of 2,000 women from the general population (Population Group). One to 4 weeks before the first counseling session or mammography, data were collected by questionnaires. Both women affected with cancer and unaffected women in the Genetic Group appeared to have a somewhat higher prevalence of cancer-specific-distress than the corresponding reference groups. Further research on the effect of pre- counseling interventions appear warranted in addition with exploring a potential association between waiting time and cancer-specific distress.