The physician and the pharmaceutical detail man: An ethical analysis

The relationship between the physician and the pharmaceutical detail man is discussed. Specific emphasis is given to an analysis of the ethical implications that this relationship has for patient care.     

Same-different categorization in rats

Same-different categorization is a fundamental feat of human cognition. Although birds and nonhuman primates readily learn same-different discriminations and successfully transfer them to novel stimuli, no such demonstration exists for rats. Using a spatial discrimination learning task, we show that rats can both learn to discriminate arrays of visual stimuli containing all same from all different items and transfer this discrimination to arrays composed of novel visual items. These results are consistent with rats' engaging in same-different categorization. As such, they pave the way for investigations into the perceptual, cognitive, and neurobiological substrates of abstract categorization behavior.     

Listening to the Claims of Experience: Psychology and the Question of Transcendence

The question of transcendence remains a problematic one for psychology, not least because it entails the possible existence of what William James (1902/1982) referred to as “higher energies” outside the perimeter of the self. As such, it also entails the possibility that naturalism may be inadequate as a foundational principle for the discipline. Acknowledging the difficulties posed by seeking to include the idea of transcendence within the province of psychology, compelling evidence may be found within experience itself for holding open the idea at hand. Seen from one angle, holding open the idea of transcendence may be seen as undermining the project of psychological science. Seen from another, however, it may be seen as serving this very project, albeit it in expanded form. Listening to the claims of experience may thus pave the way toward a more inclusive, capacious, and adequate psychology.     

On the interactive influence of facial appearance and explicit knowledge in social categorization

Although people form impressions of others with ease, sometimes one's initial perceptions of individuals conflict with what one knows about them. Here, we aimed to investigate the process by which explicit knowledge about people interacts with initial perceptions on the basis of cues from facial appearance. Participants memorized the sexual orientations of men's faces wherein half of the targets were encoded with a sexual orientation opposite to their actual orientation. Subsequent categorization showed that perceivers favored appearance‐based information when temporally constrained but favored explicit knowledge about group membership with increased viewing time. Additionally, real‐time measures of participants' categorizations showed greater vacillation between appearance‐based cues and explicit knowledge as viewing time increased. These findings suggest that explicit knowledge does not simply overrule appearance‐based cues past a particular threshold but that the two may interact recurrently with top‐down knowledge directing attention and perception at later processing. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

MouseTracker: Software for studying real-time mental processing using a computer mouse-tracking method

In the present article, we present a software package, MouseTracker, that allows researchers to use a computer mouse-tracking method for assessing real-time processing in psychological tasks. By recording the streaming x-, y-coordinates of the computer mouse while participants move the mouse into one of multiple response alternatives, motor dynamics of the hand can reveal the time course of mental processes. MouseTracker provides researchers with fine-grained information about the real-time evolution of participant responses by sampling 60–75 times/sec the online competition between multiple response alternatives. MouseTracker allows researchers to develop and run experiments and subsequently analyze mouse trajectories in a user-interactive, graphics-based environment. Experiments may incorporate images, letter strings, and sounds. Mouse trajectories can be processed, averaged, visualized, and explored, and measures of spatial attraction/curvature, complexity, velocity, and acceleration can be computed. We describe the software and the method, and we provide details on mouse trajectory analysis. We validate the software by demonstrating the accuracy and reliability of its trajectory and reaction time data. The latest version of MouseTracker is freely available at http://mousetracker.jbfreeman.net.     

Aging and the Accessibility of Performed and To-Be-Performed Actions

In young adults information designated for future enactment is more readily accessible from memory than information not intended for enactment (e.g. Goschke & Kuhl, 1993). We examined whether this advantage for to-be-enacted material is reduced in older adults and thus whether attenuated action accessibility could underlie age-associated declines in prospective remembering. Young and older adults showed an equivalent increase in accessibility (faster recognition latencies) for to-be-enacted items over items intended for verbal report. Both age groups also showed increased accessibility for actions performed at encoding compared with verbally encoded items. Moreover, these effects were non-additive, suggesting similarities in the representation of completed and to-be-completed actions.     

Factores familiares en la recaída de pacientes esquizofrénicos

Resumen

Nuestro estudio de la atmósfera emocional de los hogares de los pacientes esquizofrénicos en California del Sur ha replicado los descubrimientos británicos en relación con la influencia del ambiente familiar sobre el curso de la esquizofrenia. Como en los estudios británicos, las críticas y la implicación emocional excesiva de un familiar clave para el paciente en el momento de su ingreso constituyen el mejor predictor aislado de recaída sintomática en los nueve meses posteriores al alta hospitalaria. Al igual que en los resultados británicos, la asociación entre la emoción expresada de los familiares y la recaída fue independiente de todas las demas variables investigadas. Los resultados transculturales sobre los efectos preventivos de la medicación sugieren que los clínicos deben considerar la atmósfera emocional del hogar, a la hora de explicar los fracasos de la medicación.     

REMEDIATION OF ALEXIA: A CASE STUDY

This article describes the results of a remedial program provided to a subject who had incurred aphasia and alexia as a result of a series of strokes. The subject was pretested individually on a battery of tests and provided a specific type of remediation by a trained tutor. Posttests were administered to determine the effects of the instructional methods. Substantial gains were noted in language and auditory comprehension with a lesser gain in word recognition. Scores on other tests remained unchanged and the subject continued to make errors indicative of alexia. The results suggest that further research of the remedial methods over a longer period of time is needed.