Central progesterone induces female sexual behavior in estrogen-primed intact males rats

Progesterone induced high levels of female lordotic behavior in 10 of 17 intact, estrogen-primed male rats when it was applied directly to the medial preoptic-anterior hypothalamic area. All 17 males previously had shown lordosis when the serotonergic antagonist methysergide was applied to the same central sites. Few males responded to systemic progesterone and none to intracralial cholesterol. Intradiencephalic Metycaine, a local anesthetic, induced lordosis in eight male that previously had responded to central progesterone. These data indicate that estrogen and progesterone act synergistically to induce lordosis in male rats when progesterone is administered directly to sensitive brain sites.     

Laterality differences and practice effects under central backward masking conditions

Two experiments were conducted to examine laterality differences and practice effects under various central backward masking conditions. Critical stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) was determined for subjects on 3 consecutive days using single letters as target stimuli (TS) and a pattern masking stimulus (MS). There was a right visual field (RVF) advantage on Day 1 but no difference between the visual fields on following days. The decline in the RVF advantage appeared to be dependent upon prior experience with laterally located letters, to be independent of initial experience with a particular set of letters, and to be more pronounced for females than for males. In addition, large improvements in performance were found, particularly between the first and second testing sessions. These practice effects were discussed in terms of the possible development of strategies for enhancing TS features or attenuating MS features.     

CONSEQUENCES OF SOCIAL LIVING, LANGUAGE, AND CULTURE FOR CONFLICT AND ITS MANAGEMENT

Abstract. Human language leads to an open-ended proliferation of human goals and purposes, which make for complex social relationships combining competition and dependence. The resulting ambivalence in social relationships makes the management of frustration and its attendant emotions a central concern of human socialization. The specific loading of emotional problems varies according to how societies are organized, but problems are inevitable. As relations of power and dependence become more complex, human efforts to manage these problems are liable to increasingly explosive and destructive expressions, apparently an inevitable consequence of social and sapient existence.     

Assessing Reading Rate in the Primary Grades (1–3)

In this study we explore students' reading rates in grades 1–3. We begin with a short history of reading rate as an assessment measure in the early grades. Next, we share rate data from a recent study (N = 305) where children's contextual reading was assessed with a traditional passage-reading inventory. A comparison of our average grade-level rates with those rates reported in the DIBELS literature shows that they match closely. Finally, we introduce the concept of minimum grade-level rates, emphasizing its practical significance to teachers and researchers alike.     

Feature binding across different visual dimensions

The human brain represents different kinds of visual feature dimensions in different ways. For example, surface features exhibit some properties that are very different from contour features, and some feature dimensions may be represented more extensively in either the dorsal or the ventral visual stream. Given such differences, we investigated feature binding across different feature dimensions and whether some feature dimensions might be more easily bound together than others. In Experiment 1, we looked at cross-dimension bindings for all combinations of color, orientation, and shape dimensions, while at the same time controlling for feature discriminability. Rates of correct binding, illusory conjunctions, and feature errors were equivalent in all cases. There was no bias so that some feature dimensions were easier to combine than others. In Experiment 2, we manipulated the difficulty of feature discrimination for the key, target-defining feature and the report feature. Rates of binding errors increased with difficulty of the key feature, but not with that of the report feature. The accuracy of feature discrimination could be dissociated from the accuracy of binding the feature to an object. Across both experiments, the accuracy of feature binding was independent of specific feature dimensions or perceptibility. These findings are discussed in relation to both feature integration and multiple-stage accounts of visual feature integration.