The memorability of names and the divergent effects of prior experience

Pre-experimental familiarity can have paradoxical effects on episodic memory. Knowledge of the stimulus domain usually enhances memory, but word frequency—a presumed correlate of prior experience—is negatively related to recognition accuracy. The present study examined episodic recognition of names and its relation to two measures of pre-experimental knowledge, name frequency, and fame. Frequency was operationalised as the number of hits in a national telephone directory, and fame as hits on national mass media websites. Recognition accuracy was increased by fame, but diminished by frequency. Four experiments confirmed the findings, using yes/no recognition, ROC curves, and remember-know paradigms. Hit rates were consistently more strongly influenced by fame than by frequency, whereas the reverse was true for false alarm rates. These dissociations suggest that two different forms of semantic memory, specific and nonspecific knowledge, interact with episodic memory in separate ways.     

Extra‐powerful on the visuo‐perceptual space,but variable on the number space: Different effects of optokinetic stimulation in neglect patients

We studied the effects of optokinetic stimulation (OKS; leftward, rightward, control) on the visuo‐perceptual and number space, in the same sample, during line bisection and mental number interval bisection tasks. To this end, we tested six patients with right‐hemisphere damage and neglect, six patients with right‐hemisphere damage but without neglect, and six neurologically healthy participants. In patients with neglect, we found a strong effect of leftward OKS on line bisection, but not on mental number interval bisection. We suggest that OKS influences the number space only under specific conditions.     

INSIGHTFULNESS AND LATER INFANT ATTACHMENT IN CLINICALLY DEPRESSED AND NONCLINICAL MOTHERS

The aim of this pilot study was to investigate the relationship between maternal insightfulness and sensitivity and subsequent infant attachment security and disorganization in clinically depressed and nonclinical mother–infant groups. Nineteen depressed mothers with infants ages 3 to 11 months participated in this study. Twenty nonclinical mother–infant dyads were matched to the clinical sample according to infant sex and age. Maternal depression was assessed using the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fourth edition (American Psychiatric Association, 1994), insightfulness using the Insightfulness Assessment (IA), and sensitivity using the Maternal Sensitivity Scales (M.D.S. Ainsworth, 1969). IA classifications and subscales were considered separately. Later infant attachment was assessed by the Strange Situation Procedure (M.D.S. Ainsworth, M.C. Blehar, E. Waters, & S. Wall, 1978). Depressed mothers tended to have less securely attached children than did nonclinical mothers. Within the clinical sample, the insightfulness categories correlated slightly moderately with attachment security, but were not related to attachment disorganization. Within the nonclinical sample, the IA categories were slightly moderately associated with attachment security and with disorganization. On IA subscales, relationship patterns differed in clinically depressed and nonclinical mother–infant dyads. These findings provide the first evidence of the predictive power of the IA categorization and subscales on subsequent infant attachment. They also may allow the development of different foci of intervention for enhancing insightful caregiving.     

Seelische Gesundheitsvorsorge f��r Kinder krebskranker Eltern

Children of cancer patients are increasingly being paid attention to as target group for family-based mental health prevention concepts in psychosocial oncology. Based on the long-term experiences with the concept Children of Somatically Ill Parents (COSIP) for child-centred medical family counselling, which was developed at the counselling service COSIP at the Hamburg University Medical Centre, a specialized manual was developed for the context of psychosocial care in oncology, which is currently being tested in a multi-center approach. In this article the theoretical framework and the practical steps of this manualized concept in caring for families with a parent having cancer are summarized. Characteristic elements are the flexible handling of the three system levels parents, family and child in the counselling setting as well as focussing on previously defined intervention goals which are expected to strengthen the coping resources in the family and the children. Perspectives for clinical practice and research are discussed.     

技术的两面性与责任的类型

一、技术的两面性难题所有的技术均有可能成为好的技术或坏的技术,这一点和人类行为的其他方面并无二致。尽管如此,技术的两面性难题在当前尤其引发了人们的关注,大家都想得到一个关于它的正确理解。我的问题是:技术的两面性有哪些具体的方面?面对技术的两面性,如何界定我们的责任?1.技术的两面性先让我们来看一下对技术与使用简单工具的一个类比:无论两者的效用是正面的还是负面的,它     

At the crossroads: Attention,contingency awareness,and evaluative conditioning

Evaluative conditioning (EC) refers to changes in the evaluation of a conditioned stimulus (CS) due to its repeated pairing with an unconditioned stimulus (US). One of the most debated topics in EC research is whether or not EC is dependent on contingency awareness. In this study, we go beyond this debate by examining whether contingency awareness mediates the impact of attentional resources and goal-directed attention on EC. Attentional resources were manipulated by presenting CSs and USs either within the same modality or in different modalities. Goal-directed attention was manipulated by asking participants to respond to the CSs or to the USs. Results indicate that the effect of goal-directed attention on EC is mediated by contingency awareness, whereas the effect of attentional resources on EC is not.     

Immanuel Kant's mind and the brain's resting state

The early philosopher Immanuel Kant suggested that the mind’s intrinsic features are intimately linked to the extrinsic stimuli of the environment it processes. Currently, the field faces an analogous problem with regard to the brain. Kant’s ideas may provide novel insights into how the brain’s intrinsic features must be so that they can be linked to the neural processing of extrinsic stimuli to enable the latter’s association with consciousness and self.     

Emotional pictures predominate in binocular rivalry

This study used binocular rivalry to examine whether emotionally relevant pictures are processed preferentially in the visual system. Binocular rivalry occurs when two incompatible pictures are presented to both eyes. If the pictures cannot be merged to a single unambiguous percept, binocular rivalry results in an alternation of the two percepts. However, it has been controversial whether emotional picture content can influence a picture's relative predominance. Twenty pairs of emotional and neutral pictures from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS) were presented to 45 healthy participants. As hypothesised, emotional pictures significantly predominated over neutral pictures, both with respect to the first percept and the total viewing time across each trial. We conclude that the relative predominance of emotional pictures in binocular rivalry provides further support for the preferential processing of emotional stimuli in the visual system.     

Automatic behavioural responses to valence: Evidence that facial action is facilitated by evaluative processing

Are motor schemata of facial action spontaneously activated upon the processing of evaluative information? In this case, the processing of positive evaluative information should immediately trigger the motor schema of smiling, and the processing of negative information should trigger frowning. This hypothesis was tested in two experiments in which participants were required to respond to positive and negative words by either smiling or frowning. Electromyogram (EMG) activity was recorded over the brow muscle region (corrugator supercilii) and over the cheek muscle region (zygomaticus major) in order to quantify the latency of muscular response as a dependent measure. In Experiment 1 we found that participants were faster at contracting their zygomaticus muscle (which is involved in smiling) when evaluating positive words, and faster at contracting their corrugator muscle (which is involved in frowning) when evaluating negative words. In Experiment 2, participants were required to respond with the contraction of one of the two muscles whenever a word appeared on the computer screen. Again, we found that responses were faster to congruent response valence combinations than to incongruent response valence combinations. These findings support the hypothesis that evaluative processing is directly linked to motor schemata of facial muscles.