I only have eyes for you: Ovulation redirects attention (but not memory) to attractive men

A number of studies have found a disjunction between women’s attention to, and memory for, handsome men. Although women pay initial attention to handsome men, they do not remember those men later. The present study examines how ovulation might differentially affect these attentional and memory processes. We found that women near ovulation increased their visual attention to attractive men. However, this increased visual attention did not translate into better memory. Discussion focuses on possible explanations, in the context of an emerging body of findings on disjunctions between attention to, and memory for, other people.     

Does logical pluralism imply,or suggest,truth pluralism,or vice versa?

The answers to the questions in the title depend on the kind of pluralism one is talking about. We will focus here on our own views. The purpose of this article is to trace out some possible connections between these kinds of pluralism. We show how each of them might bear on the other, depending on how certain open questions are resolved.

     

The Color Object Association Test (COAT): the development of a new measure of declarative memory for 18- to 36-month-old toddlers.

Few methods exist to measure declarative (explicit) memory in children during the toddler and preschool stages of development. We report the development and psychometric properties of a new measure of declarative memory for this age group, the Color Object Association Test (COAT). In pilot testing and large scale application of the test, the COAT was demonstrated to be a reliable and a valid measure of declarative memory for healthy children ages 18-36 months, living in a disadvantaged community. The test shows a linear developmental trajectory, which allows longitudinal examination of the development of declarative memory in children.     

Population-Wide Parenting Intervention Training: Initial Feasibility

A population-level approach to deliver parenting and family support is a necessary but neglected approach needed to reduce the high prevalence of emotional/behavioral problems in children, decrease inadequate and potentially abusive parenting practices, and to provide improved parenting support to all parents within a specified population. We examined the initial feasibility of a large-scale professional training regimen to prepare existing service providers to implement an evidence-based preventive intervention in the realm of parenting and family support. Data from the U.S. Triple P System Population Trial are used to illustrate how a parenting and family support intervention can be successfully disseminated to a large, multidisciplinary workforce. We discuss lessons learned from this dissemination effort as well as implications for population-based approaches to child and family well-being.     

Delivering phonological and phonics training within whole‐class teaching

Background Early, intensive phonological awareness and phonics training is widely held to be beneficial for children with poor phonological awareness. However, most studies have delivered this training separately from children's normal whole‐class reading lessons. Aims We examined whether integrating this training into whole class, mixed‐ability reading lessons could impact on children with poor phonological awareness, whilst also benefiting normally developing readers. Sample Teachers delivered the training within a broad reading programme to whole classes of children from Reception to the end of Year 1 (N = 251). A comparison group of children received standard teaching methods (N = 213). Method Children's literacy was assessed at the beginning of Reception, and then at the end of each year until 1 year post‐intervention. Results The strategy significantly impacted on reading performance for normally developing readers and those with poor phonological awareness, vastly reducing the incidence of reading difficulties from 20% in comparison schools to 5% in intervention schools. Conclusions Phonological and phonics training is highly effective for children with poor phonological awareness, even when incorporated into whole‐class teaching.     

Does failure to mask T1 cause lag-1 sparing in the attentional blink?

The attentional blink (AB) effect demonstrates that when participants are instructed to report two targets presented in a rapid visual stimuli stream, the second target (T2) is often unable to be reported correctly if presented 200-500 msec after the onset of the first target (T1). However, if T2 is presented immediately after T1, in the conventional lag-1 position (100-msec stimulus onset asynchrony; SOA), little or no performance deficit occurs. The present experiments add to the growing literature relating the "lag-1 sparing" effect to T1 masking. Using a canonical AB paradigm, our results demonstrate that T2 performance at lag 1 is significantly reduced in the presence of T1 masking. The implications of this outcome are discussed in relation to theories of the AB.     

The Guru, the Logician, and the Deflationist: Truth and Logical Consequence

The deflationary view of truth and reference as I've presented it … applies only to words and sentences that we understand. This may well seem worrisome, and it is important to ask both whether it should seem worrisome and whether it could be avoided. Field (1994, 260)     

Building bridges between body and mind: The analysis of an adolescent with paralyzing chronic pain

This paper describes the evaluation, initial psychotherapy and subsequent psychoanalysis of an adolescent who presented with a severe psychosomatic process involving total body pain and profound fatigue. The author details the complex and multifaceted nature of the psychosomatic process as it unfolded in the treatment. The psychosomatic problem was not a single entity, but rather was comprised of diverse interwoven elements such as somatization, conversion on pre-oedipal and oedipal levels, conflicts over aggression, sexuality, identity, masochism, secondary gain, anaclitic depression, internalized self-other interactions with a depressed mother and transgenerational transmission of trauma. The author uses the case material to discuss technical approaches to problems that often arise in the analytic treatment of patients with complicated chronic pain and fatigue as the primary complaints. Such approaches include respecting the mind-body split as a primary defense, speaking the language of the body along with the language of the mind and developing the verbal sphere around the non-verbal symptoms. The author emphasizes that complicated chronic pain problems are common and can be helped by psychoanalysis as long as the unique and complex features are understood and reflected in the technical approach.     

MouseTrace: A better mousetrap for catching decision processes

This paper describes MouseTrace, a computer program designed to monitor the process by which people make decisions by presenting complex choice information to subjects in the form of an alternative-by-attribute matrix. MouseTrace is a Windows-based extension of another program called MouseLab; however, MouseTrace accommodates significantly more information and allows for multiple responses, as well as multiple decision stages. It is also easier to use for both subjects and experimenters and more sophisticated in terms of its features and the data it records. These data include what information was examined, when, and in what order. This information can be used to derive a variety of cognitive process measures, including those related to search depth, sequence, and content, which in turn can be used to provide unique insights into decision-making theory, individual differences, and a variety of decision variables.     

Statistical inference of minimum rank factor analysis

For any given number of factors, Minimum Rank Factor Analysis yields optimal communalities for an observed covariance matrix in the sense that the unexplained common variance with that number of factors is minimized, subject to the constraint that both the diagonal matrix of unique variances and the observed covariance matrix minus that diagonal matrix are positive semidefinite. As a result, it becomes possible to distinguish the explained common variance from the total common variance. The percentage of explained common variance is similar in meaning to the percentage of explained observed variance in Principal Component Analysis, but typically the former is much closer to 100 than the latter. So far, no statistical theory of MRFA has been developed. The present paper is a first start. It yields closed-form expressions for the asymptotic bias of the explained common variance, or, more precisely, of the unexplained common variance, under the assumption of multivariate normality. Also, the asymptotic variance of this bias is derived, and also the asymptotic covariance matrix of the unique variances that define a MRFA solution. The presented asymptotic statistical inference is based on a recently developed perturbation theory of semidefinite programming. A numerical example is also offered to demonstrate the accuracy of the expressions.This work was supported, in part, by grant DMS-0073770 from the National Science Foundation.