A pox on the mind: Disjunction of attention and memory in the processing of physical disfigurement

The unfavorable treatment of people with physical disfigurements is well-documented, yet little is known about basic perceptual and cognitive responses to disfigurement. Here, we identify a specialized pattern of cognitive processing consistent with the hypothesis that disfigurements act as heuristic cues to contagious disease. Disfigurements are often invariant across time and difficult to conceal, and thus observers can detect the presence of such cues without necessarily remembering the particular individuals bearing these cues. Indeed, despite the fact that disfigured faces were especially likely to hold disease-sensitive perceivers’ attention (Study 1), disfigured individuals were often confused with one another and thus not well remembered later (Study 2), revealing a disjunction of the typical relationship between elevated attention and elevated memory. We discuss the implications of our results for stigmatization of people with and without physical abnormalities and suggest the possibility that cognitive mechanisms for processing social information may be functionally tuned to the variant nature of important cues.     

An event-related brain potential investigation of PTSD and PTSD symptoms in abused children

We tested 186 children ranging in age from 6 years, 10 months to 13 years, 7 months; 174 suffered either physical and/or sexual abuse, and 12 were nonabused children. Abused subjects were grouped in four different ways. The primary grouping was based on whether subjects satisfied the DSM III-R criteria for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Secondary groupings were based upon the three symptom clusters used to make the PTSD diagnosis (arousal, avaidance, and reexperiencing). In each of these groupings three separate subgroups were formed with approximately 25 percent in the high and low symptom count subgroups and the remaining 50 percent in the middle symptom count subgroup. Subjects listened to four different intensity levels (65, 80, 95, and 102 dB) of a 1 KHz tone, pseudo-randomly ordered, while event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded. Two separate blocks were used, one with short intervals (4±1 sec) between tones and the other with longer intervals (17±2 sec). PTSD subjects presented a greater P2-N2 ERP intensity gradient (i.e., a larger increase in the P2-N2 ERP component as tone intensity increased) than did abused subjects without PTSD. Abused subjects with the highest number of reexperiencing symptoms showed a similar P2-N2 augmenting effect when compared to those with the lowest number of reexperiencing symptoms. Subjects with the highest number of arousal symptoms showed a shallower intensity gradient for the N1-P2 ERP component than did those with fewer arousal symptoms. The results are discussed in relation to previous results reported on adults with PTSD and in terms of CNS processing of stimulus intensity information.     

SELF-MONITORING AND WORK PRODUCTIVITY WITH MENTALLY RETARDED ADULTS

We examined the use of self-monitoring to increase the productivity of five mentally retarded adults in a sheltered workshop. Data were collected daily during a 30-minute intervention and 30-minute generalization period. Following baseline, verbal praise, prompts, and physical encouragement were administered contingent on productive behavior on a specific task during the intervention period. In the next phase, self-monitoring was trained during the intervention period. During both phases, baseline conditions prevailed in the generalization periods. In the final phase, self-monitoring was extended across the intervention and generalization periods. Results showed that increased productivity levels, evident when praise and prompting were being administered, maintained with self-monitoring alone. Minimal generalization across time was observed until self-monitoring was begun in the generalization period.     

The effects of storage and processing complexity on comprehension repair in children and adults

In four experiments, the ability of young children (6 to 10 years of age) and college adults to repair a comprehension problem in situations varying repair difficulty was examined. The subjects were read short stories describing a consistent or inconsistent adult response to a child's action, and repair information that resolved or failed to resolve the inconsistency. The subjects were asked questions after each story to determine if they had detected and resolved the inconsistency. The repair information was manipulated as a means of varying the storage and prosessing complexity of integrating problem and repair information. The information was separated from or adjacent to the inconsistent response, before or after the response, and the relevancy of the repair information was obvious or only inferentially available. The results showed that even first graders can repair a comprehension problem in situations of minimal information processing complexity, and that increments in complexity affect the repair performance of younger more than older subjects.     

The effects of contrastive encoding of semantic information on children's memory for words

The effect of context-sensitive contrastive encoding of semantic item information at input on children's memory for words is examined. In two experiments, second and fifth graders and college adults were presented with word triplets varying in categorical relatedness. Each triplet contained a target item (eg., canary) that was highly related (hawk, eagle, canary), moderately related (goose, swan, canary), or unrelated (river, lake, canary) to the other triplet members. Subjects were required to either isolate and remember the odd target word (oddity encoding) or simply read and remember the word identified by the experimenter (read encoding). Both recall and recognition were tested. The results showed that recall and recognition varied as a function of decision difficulty in isolating the target members. Developmental differences in both absolute retention levels and the patterns associated with decision difficulty were maximized in the read and minimized in the oddity encoding condition. This suggests that children differ from adults in the degree to which they perform distinctive contrastive encoding of item specific information at input, and that retention varies as a result.     

Studies of nervous system sensitivity in children with learning and attention disorders

Clinically referred children, diagnosed as having learning or attention disorders, with or without hyperactivity, were found to vary widely on a measure of nervous system sensitivity recommended by the Pavlovian investigator Vasilev. That is, the children were contrasted on their mean press and release reaction times (RTs) to four tones, ranging from soft (55 db) to very loud (100 db), with the expectation that some would be able to maintain a parallel separation of press and release RT gradients across all intensity levels (strength), whereas others would show convergence or overlap of the gradients at higher intensities (weakness). Contrary to expectation, girls did not have weaker or more sensitive nervous systems than boys, although the girls rated themselves as less tolerant of intense stimuli. Significantly more of the children diagnosed as hyperactive had weaker nervous systems. The boys also participated in a blind crossover study contrasting placebo and methylphenidate effects; the prescribing physician, who was not informed of the child’s nervous system classification, adjusted the dosage levels so that subjects with weaker nervous systems were titrated at higher dosage levels than those with stronger nervous systems. Gray (1964) suggested an explanation of this paradox, i.e., that the weak nervous system requires a more intense stimulus than the strong to reach the threshold of concentration (or focused attention), whereas for other thresholds the strong requires a more intense stimulus than the weak. Gray’s theory was further supported by the finding that children typed as weak (unmedicated) did not show as great facilitation in RT with reward (moderate stimulus) as did those typed as strong.     

Autonomic responsivity during visual search of hyperactive and reading-disabled children

Heart rate and skin conductance measures, recorded during a visual search task, were compared for hyperactive, reading-disabled, hyperactive reading-disabled, and control elementary school boys. As shown in past work, basal autonomic levels did not statistically differentiate groups. In all groups, heart rate levels increased with task complexity, but more so on reward than on nonreward trials. In the intertriai interval, heart rate decelerated consistently when subjects were anticipating stimuli associated with reward, but when reward was uncertain, heart rate accelerated slightly or stayed the same. Control subjects exhibited anticipatory heart rate deceleration more consistently than did clinical subjects, especially the solely hyperactive ones. Skin conductance levels first decreased, then rose as task complexity increased, but the groups did not differ on this measure. A conditioning model is outlined to explain directional changes in heart rate.