Testing probability matching and episodic retrieval accounts of response repetition effects in task switching

This study takes inventory of available evidence on response repetition (RR) effects in task switching, in particular the evidence for RR cost when the task switches. The review reveals that relatively few task-switching studies in which RR effects were addressed have shown statistical support for RR cost, and that almost all are affected by 1 of 2 potential artifacts, either a response bias caused by disallowing stimulus repetitions or the effect of including stimulus repetitions in data analysis. New results with these factors controlled support an episodic retrieval model in which features of the retrieved trace, including the stimulus but also the task, task cue, and response, facilitate or interfere with performance depending on whether they match or mismatch the current processing context.     

The Ways of Criticism

This paper attempts to systematically characterize critical reactions in argumentative discourse, such as objections, critical questions, rebuttals, refutations, counterarguments, and fallacy charges, in order to contribute to the dialogical approach to argumentation. We shall make use of four parameters to characterize distinct types of critical reaction. First, a critical reaction has a focus, for example on the standpoint, or on another part of an argument. Second, critical reactions appeal to some kind of norm, argumentative or other. Third, they each have a particular illocutionary force, which may include that of giving strategic advice to the other. Fourth, a critical reaction occurs at a particular level of dialogue (the ground level or some meta-level). The concepts here developed shall be applied to discussions of critical reactions by Aristotle and by some contemporary authors.     

C-reactive protein polymorphisms are associated with the cortisol awakening response in basal conditions in human subjects

Cortisol affects the acute-phase response, but it is unknown whether C-reactive protein (CRP), an acute-phase reactant, also affects hypothalamus?pituitary?adrenal axis activity. In the present study, associations were explored between CRP haplotypes with plasma CRP concentrations and basal salivary cortisol level. We included 266 physically healthy Caucasian subjects (103 females and 163 males) aged between 18 and 65 years of whom 94 had a psychiatric disorder in a genetic association study. Six tag single-nucleotide polymorphisms capturing the common genetic variation of the CRP gene were genotyped (i.e. rs2808628, rs2808630, rs1205, rs1800947, rs1417938, and rs3091244) to yield common CRP haplotypes. Plasma CRP concentrations, the salivary cortisol awakening response (CAR) (0, 30, 45, and 60?min after awakening), and the diurnal cortisol decline (11:00, 15:00, 19:00, and 23:00 h) were assessed for 2 days. rs2808628, rs1205, rs1417938, and rs3091244 showed expected associations not only with CRP concentrations, but also with salivary cortisol levels during the CAR. Five well-characterized CRP haplotypes were arranged in ascending order according to increasing CRP levels. There was an inverse linear association between CRP haplotypes and cortisol levels during the CAR, but no association with the diurnal cortisol decline. Hence, genetic variants in the CRP gene that are associated with lifetime plasma CRP levels were also associated with salivary cortisol levels after awakening, in basal, non-inflammatory conditions.     

Nonclinical use of online social networking sites: new and old challenges to medical professionalism

The AMA Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs (CEJA) has written a position paper on how social medical use challenges medical professionalism. The report offers persuasive ethical and practical guidelines for nonclinical internet use, specifically for social networking. This commentary provides a framework from which to apply these guidelines, but adds that there may be important situations in which physicians are not able to act in accordance. The guidelines call for professional reporting of questionable online portrayals or behaviors, but this commentary argues that this may be not only cumbersome to implement, but may violate aspects of constitutional rights. While online social networking may in many ways be a new application of old challenges, there may be other aspects that require novel approaches to medical professionalism.     

Toddlers with Autism Spectrum Disorder are more successful at visual search than typically developing toddlers

Plaisted, O'Riordan and colleagues (Plaisted, O'Riordan & Baron-Cohen, 1998; O'Riordan, 2004) showed that school-age children and adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) are faster at finding targets in certain types of visual search tasks than typical controls. Currently though, there is very little known about the visual search skills of very young children (1-3-year-olds) - either typically developing or with ASD. We used an eye-tracker to measure looking behavior, providing fine-grained measures of visual search in 2.5-year-old toddlers with and without ASD (this representing the age by which many children may first receive a diagnosis of ASD). Importantly, our paradigm required no verbal instructions or feedback, making the task appropriate for toddlers who are pre- or nonverbal. We found that toddlers with ASD were more successful at finding the target than typically developing, age-matched controls. Further, our paradigm allowed us to estimate the number of items scrutinized per trial, revealing that for large set size conjunctive search, toddlers with ASD scrutinized as many as twice the number of items as typically developing toddlers, in the same amount of time.     

Affective recognition memory processing and event-related brain potentials

Recognition memory was examined for visual affective stimuli using behavioral and event-related brain potential (ERP) measures. Images from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS) that varied systematically in arousal level (low, high) and valence direction (unpleasant, pleasant) were first viewed passively. Then, during a response phase, the original images were intermixed with an equal number of new images and presented, and participants were instructed to press a button to indicate whether each stimulus picture was previously viewed (target) or new (foil). Participants were more sensitive to unpleasant- than to pleasant-valence stimuli and were biased to respond to high-arousal unpleasant stimuli as targets, whether the stimuli were previously viewed or new. Response times (RTs) to target stimuli were systematically affected by valence, whereas RTs to foil stimuli were influenced by arousal level. ERP component amplitudes were generally larger for high than for low arousal levels. The P300 (late positive component) amplitude was largest for high-arousal unpleasant target images. These and other amplitude effects suggest that high-arousal unpleasant stimuli engage a privileged memory-processing route during stimulus processing. Theoretical relationships between affective and memory processes are discussed.     

Predicting academic success with the Big 5 rated from different points of view: Self‐rated,other rated and faked

Self‐ratings of personality predict academic success above general intelligence. The present study replicated these findings and investigated the increment of other‐ratings or intentionally distorted self‐ratings. Participants (N = 145) had to compile a personality questionnaire twice. First they were given neutral instructions. The second time they were asked to imagine a specific applicant setting. Furthermore, two peers rated each participant. Additionally, verbal, numerical and figural reasoning scores were obtained. Grades on a statistics exam obtained 2 months later served as the criterion. Results replicated prior findings and showed incremental validity for self‐ and other‐rated personality, which was stable after controlling for intelligence. Faking had no impact on the domain‐score level, but results on the facet‐score level were less encouraging. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Effects of Happiness on All-Cause Mortality During 15 Years of Follow-Up: The Arnhem Elderly Study

Positive psychological characteristics may be beneficial for physical health. However, prospective data on the effects of happiness on survival is scarce. In a population-based cohort study, the Arnhem Elderly Study, happiness was measured by two items, being: “I have many moments of happiness” and “I often laugh happily”. In Cox proportional hazard models, happiness was analyzed as a predictor of 15 year all-cause mortality for 861 (85%) of 1,012 elderly subjects aged 65–85 years. Results showed that happiness was inversely associated with mortality (age- and sex-adjusted hazard ratio of 0.78 for happy subjects versus unhappy subjects; 95% confidence interval 0.64–0.95, P = 0.01 for trend), but that this relationship was no longer statistically significant after adjustment for physical activity and prevalent morbidity. Thus, happiness predicts for lower mortality, which may partly be mediated by more physical activity and lower morbidity.     

Immediate and delayed effects of word frequency and word length on eye movements in reading: a reversed delayed effect of word length

Three experiments examined the effects in sentence reading of varying the frequency and length of an adjective on (a) fixations on the adjective and (b) fixations on the following noun. The gaze duration on the adjective was longer for low frequency than for high frequency adjectives and longer for long adjectives than for short adjectives. This contrasted with the spillover effects: Gaze durations on the noun were longer when adjectives were low frequency but were actually shorter when the adjectives were long. The latter effect, which seems anomalous, can be explained by three mechanisms: (a) Fixations on the noun are less optimal after short adjectives because of less optimal targeting; (b) shorter adjectives are more difficult to process because they have more neighbors; and (c) prior fixations before skips are less advantageous places to extract parafoveal information. The viability of these hypotheses as explanations of this reverse length effect on the noun was examined in simulations using an updated version of the E-Z Reader model (A. Pollatsek, K. Reichle, & E. D. Rayner, 2006c; E. D. Reichle, A. Pollatsek, D. L. Fisher, & K. Rayner, 1998).     

When is motion 'motion'?

Examples of visual motion have become more and more abstract over the years, leading up to 'third-order' stimuli where direction is actually determined by the observer through top - down attention. But how far can this be pushed--are there motion stimuli that are yet more arbitrary and abstract? Actually, there is a broad class of 'conceptual motion' stimuli--things like a moving grating of faces, or a shifting pattern of words--that are perfect analogs to traditional 'perceptual motion' stimuli, solvable by the same motion computation and for which observers can readily make direction-of-motion judgments. Interestingly though, these do not produce a sensation of motion (among other automatic consequences of motion detection). Here we compare a luminance-based perceptual motion stimulus to a semantic-based conceptual motion stimulus to contrast the psychophysical hallmarks of these motion categories.