Cue competition effects in the planarian

The learning abilities of planarian worms (Dugesia tigrina) were assessed by using a number of Pavlovian conditioning paradigms. Experiment 1 showed that planaria were susceptible to basic conditioning in that they readily developed a conditioned response to a change in ambient luminance when it was consistently paired with an electric shock over a number of trials. In Experiment 2, the change in luminance was presented in a compound with a vibration stimulus during conditioning. Subsequent tests revealed poor conditioning of the elements compared with control groups in which the animals were conditioned in the presence of the elements alone, an instance of overshadowing. In Experiment 3, pre-training of one of the elements before compound conditioning resulted in blocking of learning about the other element. These results add to other studies that have reported cue competition effects in animal species belonging to different phyla (chordate, mollusk, arthropod), suggesting that learning in these phyla could be ruled by similar principles. The results are discussed adopting an evolutionary-comparative approach.     

Putting the ‘heart’ back into community psychology: some South African examples

In this paper we explore the impact of emotional dynamics in the field of community psychology and the value of psychodynamic concepts in making sense of this. Emotional processes have often not been very well acknowledged or conceptualized in writing in the area of community psychology practice. This neglect is understandable given the individualizing, pathologizing and medicalizing assumptions underlying many psychological theories of emotion. Psychodynamic ideas may, however, make a useful contribution to understanding central concerns in community psychology in so far as they are able to shed light on emotional processes in groups, the political determinants of emotional response and the emotional dynamics of power, which are all central to the thinking of community psychologists. Using examples drawn from a long-term programme of consultation to community-based services in South Africa, we explore the potential of psychoanalytic understandings of emotional processes in illuminating some of the complexities and challenges faced in developing effective community partnerships and working towards the empowerment of communities.     

Going the distance: Extra-symbolic contributions to the symbolic control of spatial attention

Over the past 30 years, researchers have used symbolic cues such as spatial words and arrows to direct observers' attention to the location of target objects that appear at a single, fixed distance in simple visual environments; however, they have done so by using symbolic cues that provide only partial—directional—information about the spatial location of target objects. Thus, it remains unclear whether observers can only shift their attention broadly in the cued direction in response to these cues or whether they can shift their attention to the specific location of the target by combining an expectation about direction (derived from apprehension of the directional cue) with an expectation about distance (derived from some extra-symbolic cue). The results of two experiments showed that observers do shift their attention to relatively coarse spatial locations by combining expectancies about direction and distance, and that the extent to which observers do so is modulated by the presence of visible markers and the expected distance of the target. These findings are important because they provide the first evidence that extra-symbolic information about distance contributes to the symbolic control of spatial attention.