Ramón García,Featured Poet: Brother Bluebeard and Other Poems

In this commentary on the “Brother Bluebeard” sequence by featured poet Ramón García, I consider the profound and terrible revelations this mythic poem gives about our own dreaded times, as well as the wisdom it brings us, patterned on the archetype of initiation—descent into an underworld. In his gender-fluid retelling of the Bluebeard legend, the narrator of the poem is a man who sleeps with men, but who over the course of the poem identifies with the women whom Bluebeard has slaughtered. This is at once a highly political sequence of poems, in which we can recognize the Bluebeard in our current national story, a Jungian series of poems that illuminates the alchemical process of mortificatio and rebirth, and a story of trauma and spiritual recovery.     

Do Student Evaluations of University Reflect Inaccurate Beliefs or Actual Experience? A Relative Rank Model

It was shown that student satisfaction ratings are influenced by context in ways that have important theoretical and practical implications. Using questions from the UK's National Student Survey, the study examined whether and how students' expressed satisfaction with issues such as feedback promptness and instructor enthusiasm depends on the context of comparison (such as possibly inaccurate beliefs about the feedback promptness or enthusiasm experienced at other universities) that is evoked. Experiment 1 found strong effects of experimentally provided comparison context—for example, satisfaction with a given feedback time depended on the time's relative position within a context. Experiment 2 used a novel distribution‐elicitation methodology to determine the prior beliefs of individual students about what happens in universities other than their own. It found that these beliefs vary widely and that students' satisfaction was predicted by how they believed their experience ranked within the distribution of others' experiences. A third study found that relative judgement principles also predicted students' intention to complain. An extended model was developed to show that purely rank‐based principles of judgement can account for findings previously attributed to range effects. It was concluded that satisfaction ratings and quality of provision are different quantities, particularly when the implicit context of comparison includes beliefs about provision at other universities. Quality and satisfaction should be assessed separately, with objective measures (such as actual times to feedback), rather than subjective ratings (such as satisfaction with feedback promptness), being used to measure quality wherever practicable. © 2014 The Authors. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.     

Reduced extinction of hippocampal-dependent memories in CPEB knockout mice

CPEB is a sequence-specific RNA binding protein that regulates translation at synapses. In neurons of CPEB knockout mice, synaptic efficacy is reduced. Here, we have performed a battery of behavioral tests and find that relative to wild-type animals, CPEB knockout mice, although similar on many baseline behaviors, have reduced extinction of memories on two hippocampal-dependent tasks. A corresponding microarray analysis reveals that about 0.14% of hippocampal genes have an altered expression in the CPEB knockout mouse. These data suggest that CPEB-dependent local protein synthesis may be an important cellular mechanism underlying extinction of hippocampal-dependent memories.     

Eye direction aftereffect

Three experiments using computer-generated human figures showed that after a prolonged observation of eyes looking to the left (or right), eyes looking directly toward the viewer appeared directed to the right (or left). Observation of an arrow pointing left or right did not induce this aftereffect on the perceived eye direction. Happy faces produced the aftereffect more effectively than surprised faces, even though the image features of the eyes were identical for both the happy and the surprised faces. These results suggest that the eye direction aftereffect may reflect the adaptation of relatively higher-level mechanisms analyzing the others eye direction.     

Serial position effects in implicit memory for multiple-digit numbers

Serial position effects in implicit and explicit memory were investigated in a short-term memory task. A study list composed of four, spatially distributed, two-digit numbers was presented, followed by an item recognition task (explicit test) and an implicit memory task in which participants were asked to verify a simple addition equation where the presented answer was either primed or not primed by one of the number pairs in the study list. Similar serial position effects were observed in explicit and implicit memory, with faster response times for correct decisions on the first than on the later list positions. The presence of a primacy effect but no recency effect is consistent with previous studies of explicit memory with visual presentation. The results suggest that similar principles of temporal information processing govern priming and episodic short-term memory.     

When do octopuses play? Effects of repeated testing, object type, age, and food deprivation on object play in Octopus vulgaris

Studying play behavior in octopuses is an important step toward understanding the phylogenetic origins and function of play as well as the cognitive abilities of invertebrates. Fourteen Octopus vulgaris (7 subadults and 7 adults) were presented 2 Lego objects and 2 different food items on 7 consecutive days under 2 different levels of food deprivation. Nine subjects showed play-like behavior with the Lego objects. There was no significant difference in play-like behavior corresponding to food deprivation, age, and sex of the octopuses. The sequence of behaviors, from exploration to play-like behavior, had a significant influence on the establishment of play-like behavior, as it occurred mostly on Days 3-6 of the 7-day experiment. The pattern of development of play-like activities after a period of exploration and habituation in this study agrees with the hypothesis that object play follows object exploration. A homologous origin of this behavioral trait in vertebrates and invertebrates is highly unlikely, as the last common ancestor might not have had the cognitive capacity to possess this trait.     

Couple Similarity and Marital Satisfaction: Are Similar Spouses Happier?

This study examined the role of couple similarity in spouses' marital satisfaction and affect. The associations between spousal similarity and relationship measures were examined in a sample of 248 married couples. As hypothesized, greater similarity between partners was associated with higher levels of marital satisfaction and lower levels of negative affect. In particular, similarity on the gendered personality and values domains was more strongly associated with relationship measures, whereas similarity on the attitudes and religiosity domains showed weaker and inconsistent patterns of associations. Finally, profile-based similarity tended to be a stronger and more consistent correlate of relationship measures than difference score-based similarity. The implications of these findings for processes underlying intimate relationships are discussed.