Development of rule-based eye-hand-decoupling in children and adolescents

In the present study, we characterize how the ability to decouple guiding visual information from a motor action emerges during childhood and adolescence. Sixty-two participants (age range 8–15 yrs.) completed two eye-hand coordination tasks. In a direct interaction task, vision and motor action were in alignment, and participants slid their finger along a vertical touch screen to move a cursor from a central target to one of four peripheral targets. In an eye-hand-decoupled task, eye and hand movements were made in different planes and cursor feedback was 180° reversed. We analyzed whether movement planning, timing and trajectory variables differed across age in both task conditions. There were no significant relationships between age and any movement planning, timing, or execution variables in the direct interaction task. In contrast, in the eye-hand-decoupled task, we found a relationship between age and several movement planning and timing variables. In adolescents (13–15 yrs.), movement planning and timing was significantly shorter than that of young children (8–10 yrs.). Eye-hand-decoupled maturation emerged mainly during late childhood (11–12 yrs.). Notably, we detected performance differences between young children and adolescents exclusively during the eye-hand decoupling task which required the integration of rule-based cognitive information into the motor action. Differences were not observed during the direct interaction task. Our results quantify an important milestone for eye-hand-decoupling development in late childhood, leading to improved rule-based motor performance in early adolescence. This eye-hand-decoupling development may be due to frontal lobe development linked to rule-based behavior and the strengthening of fronto-parietal networks.     

Just lying there,remembering: Improving recall of prose in amnesic patients with mild cognitive impairment by minimising interference

The hallmark of amnesia is poor explicit long‐term memory along with normal short‐term memory. It is often stated that information encountered by amnesic patients is forgotten within 1 minute of presentation. However, previous work has not distinguished between forgetting as a function of time versus the interfering material occupying that time. We show that there is a marked benefit of reduced interference in amnesic patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), a condition that is characterised by anterograde amnesia in the absence of other neuropsychological deficits and carries an increased risk for Alzheimer's disease. The result suggests that long‐term memory is encoded in these patients to a greater extent than had been realised but that their memory is highly vulnerable to interference.     

A Woman Is Being Beaten - Issues on Violence and Femininity

What kind of contributions can psychoanalysis make toward issues that concern violence and femininity, specifically the violence that women establish in the relations with the significant other and themselves? In this paper, the authors attempt to answer this question by dealing with concepts such as instinct, masochism and enjoyment. Additionally, they recognize the act of psychoanalytic listening as a genuine and valid manner of getting the unconscious to speak. This act of listening can be practiced either in the traditional psychoanalytic setting of private offices or in psychoanalysis applied to public institutions, for the principal tool is language as it permeates human relationships and proportions the structure of the unconscious mind.     

Entrevista con Julián de Ajuriaguerra

RESUMEN

En esta entrevista Julián de Ajuriaguerra describe su historia científica desde que era interno en hospitales psiquiátricos y alumno de Thomas y Lhermitte, comentando los trabajos que realizó con adultos, ancianos y dementes aunque su interés estuviese desde un principio en los niños. Responde, entre otras, a cuestiones tales como si lo biológico se complementa con lo social en el desarrollo, cómo son los vínculos de los padres con el niño, cuál es su posición respecto al psicoanálisis, si es necesaria la interdisciplinariedad para hacer psicología o qué opina del problema de los estadios. También realiza un balance del estado actual de la psicomotricidad, ejemplifica qué entiende por “diálogo tónico” y explica las diferencias entre los juegos de niños y niñas de siete, ocho y nueve años, admitiendo la distinta organización tónica de los sexos. Por último el autor se centra en el trabajo clínico, ofreciendo sugerencias para aquéllos que empiezan a llevarlo a cabo en España. Los comentarios que Ana María Pardo y Ángel Rivière realizan del autor y su obra introducen esta entrevista.     

Lack of color integration in visual short-term memory binding

Bicolored objects are retained in visual short-term memory (VSTM) less efficiently than unicolored objects. This is unlike shape–color combinations, whose retention in VSTM does not differ from that observed for shapes only. It is debated whether this is due to a lack of color integration and whether this may reflect the function of separate memory mechanisms. Participants judged whether the colors of bicolored objects (each with an external and an internalcolor) were the same or different across two consecutive screens. Colors had to be remembered either individually or in combination. In Experiment 1, external colors in the combined colors condition were remembered better than the internal colors, and performance for both was worse than that in the individual colors condition. The lack of color integration observed in Experiment 1 was further supported by a reduced capacity of VSTM to retain color combinations, relative to individual colors (Experiment 2). An additional account was found in Experiment 3, which showed spared color–color binding in the presence of impaired shape–color binding in a brain-damaged patient, thus suggesting that these two memory mechanisms are different.     

Effect of age on dual-task performance in children and adults

Age effects on dual-task costs were examined in healthy adults (Exp. 1) and in typically developing children (Exp. 2). In both experiments, individual differences in performance on the single-task components were titrated so that any age differences in dual-task costs could not be attributed to differences in single-task performance. Dual-task costs were found, but there were no age-related differences in these costs in older relative to younger adults, in 7-year-old relative to 9-year-old children, or across all four age groups. The results from these experiments suggest that previously reported age differences in dual-task costs, in both healthy ageing and child development, may be due to a failure to adequately equate single-task difficulty.     

The Aβ oligomer hypothesis for synapse failure and memory loss in Alzheimer's disease

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the 3rd most costly disease and the leading cause of dementia. It can linger for many years, but ultimately is fatal, the 6th leading cause of death. Alzheimer's disease (AD) is fatal and affected individuals can sometimes linger many years. Current treatments are palliative and transient, not disease modifying. This article reviews progress in the search to identify the primary AD-causing toxins. We summarize the shift from an initial focus on amyloid plaques to the contemporary concept that AD memory failure is caused by small soluble oligomers of the Aβ peptide, toxins that target and disrupt particular synapses. Evidence is presented that links Aβ oligomers to pathogenesis in animal models and humans, with reference to seminal discoveries from cell biology and new ideas concerning pathogenic mechanisms, including relationships to diabetes and Fragile X. These findings have established the oligomer hypothesis as a new molecular basis for the cause, diagnosis, and treatment of AD.     

The use of the bared-teeth display during play fighting in Tonkean macaques (Macaca tonkeana): sometimes it is all about oneself

Play signals are viewed as important means by which animals inform each other that bites, strikes, and throws that occur during play fighting are indeed playful rather than serious. One such signal is the open mouth play face that is common in primates and many other mammals. Unfortunately, as most play fighting involves biting, it can be ambiguous as to whether any instance of opening the mouth is performed to communicate playful intent or is simply a preparation for biting. In this study, open mouths co-occurring with the bared-teeth display (teeth-baring) in Tonkean macaques were used to assess the context in which facial gestures only relevant for signaling (i.e., teeth-baring is not necessary for biting) are used during play. Two predictions arising from the hypothesis that play signals are used to facilitate playful contact were tested: that the open mouth with teeth-baring should (1) be most frequent preceding contact, and (2) that it should be performed most often when bites are directed at orientations that is visible to the recipient. The data only partially support these predictions. The open mouth with teeth-baring is also frequently used when a monkey withdraws from playful contact. Moreover, it is associated with bites to body targets, such as the rump, that offer little prospect for detection by the recipient; this supports the possibility that play signals may sometimes be emitted not to communicate with the partner but with the performer itself. Thus, play signals serve multiple functions during play fighting.     

The semantics of 'unless' conditionals: evidence from 'unless' and disjunctive inferences

We report the results of an experiment investigating conditional inferences from conditional assertions such as 'Juan won't go to León unless Nuria goes to Madrid' and 'Either Nuria goes to Madrid or Juan won't go to León'. This experiment addresses Dancygier's claims about the semantics of 'unless' by examining inferential endorsements of 'not-A unless B' and 'Either B or not-A' in the canonical order, presenting the categorical premise after the conditional assertions, and in the inverse order, presenting the categorical premise before the conditional assertions. The results of the experiment confirm that the representation of 'unless' includes two possibilities, although as Dancygier holds one of the possibilities may not be complete. The implications of the results are discussed in the context of the strategic nature of conditional reasoning and recent convergent theories of linguistic processing.