Levels of sensorimotor representation

Problems of planning coordinated sensorimotor actions are examined within a cohesive framework based on seven levels of movement representation (conceptual, environmental spatial, effector, body spatial, joint motion, joint torque, and muscle) and the relationships existing among these levels. Emphasis is placed on discussions of the spatial motion, joint motion, and joint torque levels in the context of mathematical treatments of the degrees of freedom problem in motor control and the incorporation of environmentally supplied forces into movement planning procedures. Implications of this approach for understanding the nature of skilled actions are discussed, and applications of the mathematical treatments for simulation and experimental studies of coordinated movement are suggested.     

The maze task: Measuring forced incremental sentence processing time

The maze task is an online measure of sentence processing time that provides an alternative to the standard moving window version of self-paced reading. Rather than each word of the sentence being presented in succession, two words are presented at the same time, and the participant must choose which word is a grammatical continuation of the sentence. This procedure forces the reader into an incremental mode of processing in which each word must be fully integrated with the preceding context before the next word can be considered. Previous research with this technique has not considered whether it is sufficiently sensitive to syntactic complexity effects or to garden path effects. Four experiments are reported demonstrating that reliable differences in processing time for subject relatives and object relatives can be obtained, and that this technique generates garden path effects that correspond closely with the data from eyetracking experiments, but without the spillover effects that are sometimes obtained with eyetracking. It is also shown that the task is sensitive to word frequency effects, producing estimates well in excess of those found with eyetracking.     

We’re Not in Kansas Anymore,or How I Learned to Embrace My Inner Minecraft

This article briefly describes the history of the use of toys in child psychotherapy, from its early years with Anna Freud and Melanie Klein through modern electronic devices. The function and purpose of the use of toys is discussed with an eye toward what is the same as the field’s early pioneers and what might be different. Ultimately, the author contends that it is how the players use the toys and games in their relationship that is primary, echoing sentiments voiced by Anna Freud many years ago before the advent of Minecraft, GoPro, and smartphones.     

Temperament and self‐based correlates of cooperative,competitive and individualistic learning preferences

People vary in the extent to which they prefer cooperative, competitive or individualistic achievement tasks. In this research, we conducted two studies designed to investigate correlates and possible roots of these social interdependence orientations, namely approach and avoidance temperament, general self‐efficacy, implicit theories of intelligence, and contingencies of self‐worth based in others' approval, competition and academic competence. The results indicated that approach temperament, general self‐efficacy and incremental theory were positively related, and entity theory was negatively related to cooperative preferences (|r| range from .11 to .41); approach temperament, general self‐efficacy, competition contingencies and academic competence contingencies were positively related to competitive preferences (|r| range from .16 to .46); and avoidance temperament, entity theory, competitive contingencies and academic competence contingencies were positively related, and incremental theory was negatively related to individualistic preferences (|r| range from .09 to .15). The findings are discussed with regard to the meaning of each of the three social interdependence orientations, cultural differences among the observed relations and implications for practitioners.     

Romantic red: red enhances men's attraction to women

In many nonhuman primates, the color red enhances males' attraction to females. In 5 experiments, the authors demonstrate a parallel effect in humans: Red, relative to other achromatic and chromatic colors, leads men to view women as more attractive and more sexually desirable. Men seem unaware of this red effect, and red does not influence women's perceptions of the attractiveness of other women, nor men's perceptions of women's overall likeability, kindness, or intelligence. The findings have clear practical implications for men and women in the mating game and, perhaps, for fashion consultants, product designers, and marketers. Furthermore, the findings document the value of extending research on signal coloration to humans and of considering color as something of a common language, both within and across species.     

Is there a special association between self judgements and conscious recollection?

Dual‐process models of recognition memory posit a rapid retrieval process that produces a general sense of familiarity and a slower retrieval process that produces conscious recollections of prior experience. The Remember–Know paradigm has been used to study the subjective correlates of these two processes with Remember judgements assumed to index conscious recollection and Know judgements assumed to index familiarity. In this paper we examine Conway and Dewhurst's recent finding that judgements of self during encoding produce more Remember responses than alternative semantic judgements. While one might interpret this result to suggest a special association between self judgement and conscious recollection, we consider the possibility that it occurs because of greater discriminability in this condition. The results of four experiments demonstrate that a self judgement condition produces more, fewer, or an equal number of Remember responses relative to a control condition depending on whether overall discriminability in the self judgement condition is greater than, less than, or equal to that in the control condition. The implications of these results for conceptions of self judgement and the use of the Remember–Know paradigm are detailed. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.