The neural correlates of social attention: automatic orienting to social and nonsocial cues

Previous evidence suggests that directional social cues (e.g., eye gaze) cause automatic shifts in attention toward gaze direction. It has been proposed that automatic attentional orienting driven by social cues (social orienting) involves a different neural network from automatic orienting driven by nonsocial cues. However, previous neuroimaging studies on social orienting have only compared gaze cues to symbolic cues, which typically engage top-down mechanisms. Therefore, we directly compared the neural activity involved in social orienting to that involved in purely automatic nonsocial orienting. Twenty participants performed a spatial cueing task consisting of social (gaze) cues and automatic nonsocial (peripheral squares) cues presented at short and long stimulus (cue-to-target) onset asynchronies (SOA), while undergoing fMRI. Behaviorally, a facilitation effect was found for both cue types at the short SOA, while an inhibitory effect (inhibition of return: IOR) was found only for nonsocial cues at the long SOA. Imaging results demonstrated that social and nonsocial cues recruited a largely overlapping fronto-parietal network. In addition, social cueing evoked greater activity in occipito-temporal regions at both SOAs, while nonsocial cueing recruited greater subcortical activity, but only for the long SOA (when IOR was found). A control experiment, including central arrow cues, confirmed that the occipito-temporal activity was at least in part due to the social nature of the cue and not simply to the location of presentation (central vs. peripheral). These results suggest an evolutionary trajectory for automatic orienting, from predominantly subcortical mechanisms for nonsocial orienting to predominantly cortical mechanisms for social orienting.     

Toddlers view artifact function normatively

When children use objects like adults, are they simply tracking regularities in others’ object use, or are they demonstrating a normatively defined awareness that there are right and wrong ways to act? This study provides the first evidence for the latter possibility. Young 2- and 3-year-olds (n = 32) learned functions of 6 artifacts, both familiar and novel. A puppet subsequently used the artifacts, sometimes in atypical ways, and children's spontaneous reactions were coded. Children responded normatively to non-designed uses (e.g., protesting, tattling), although the effect was stronger among older children. Reactions were identical for novel and familiar items, underscoring how rapidly tool-function mappings are formed. Results depict toddlers as already sensitive to the uniquely human, normative nature of tool use.     

Examining the effects of memory specificity and perceptual load on susceptibility to misleading information

Our study aimed to examine the role of perceptual load in eyewitness memory and susceptibility to misinformation and establish whether trait-based memory specificity protects against misinformation. Participants (n = 264) viewed a video depicting a crime and completed a memory questionnaire immediately afterwards and 1 week later. Memory specificity was measured using the Autobiographical Memory Test (AMT). Higher AMT scores were associated with better memory accuracy. Performance was worse in the high load compared to the low load condition at immediate recall. However, this effect was not seen for every question and load did not influence eyewitness identifications. To test the possibility that load effects were not fully captured by the questionnaire in experiment 1, we conducted a second experiment (n = 120) where we systematically manipulated misinformation about central and peripheral details. We found no effects. Our findings suggest that high perceptual load enhances eyewitness suggestibility, while specific autobiographical memory protects against misinformation.     

The relationship of perceived self-efficacy to quality of life in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

From a biomedical perspective, variations in the quality of life of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) patients may be attributed to changes in pulmonary function; thus, an increase in lung function should be correlated with an increased score on a health-related quality-of-life measure. However, inconsistent results regarding correlations between various measures of pulmonary function and quality of life have been reported in the literature. The authors evaluated a social cognitive model of quality of life among persons with COPD by analyzing relationships among biomedical measures, self-efficacy measures, and quality-of-life measures in a recursive path model. Path analysis results indicated that the association of pulmonary function and symptoms with quality of life was mediated by perceived self-efficacy for functional activities.     

The relative contribution of contact and target lines in the magnitude of the Poggendorff effect

It is well known that a set of parallel lines can cause misperception of the projected path of an oblique. Most studies of this effect have emphasized either the proximal or the distal stimulus components--the line with which the oblique makes contact, or the line that serves as the target of the projection. An experiment is reported in which the relative contribution of the contact and target lines was examined. The results indicate that rotation of either line can determine the magnitude of the projection error.     

Ulrike Kistner and Philippe Van Haute: Violence,Slavery and Freedom between Hegel and Fanon,Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2020, 168 pp., ISBN 978-1-77,614-623-9, ISBN 978-1-77,614-627-7

Continental Philosophy Review - Violence, Slavery and Freedom between Hegel and Fanon is a volume of secondary literature that dispels common misconceptions about the relationship between Hegelian...     

Text manipulations influence children's understanding of class inclusion hierarchies.

Second, fourth, and sixth grade children were presented with a passage which could be represented as a four-level class inclusion hierarchy. Top-down or bottom-up presentation of material and repetition or no repetition of category labels were manipulated in a 2 x 2 design. Children were requested to construct an external representation for the passage and to respond to questions requiring them to reason about its contents. Quality of representation and performance on the question task were related to grade level and to the text manipulations. Implications of the results, particularly as related to education, are discussed.