The control of fixation duration in visual search

A study is reported how fixation durations are affected as observers voluntarily use information in the visual environment to direct saccades in search of a target. In experiments with direction-coded displays, search fixation durations for correct and incorrectly directed saccades were comparable during image-driven/bottom-up search. In contrast, for knowledge-driven search, the relationship depended on peripheral preview. With ample access to peripheral preview, search fixation durations preceding correct saccades were shorter than those preceding incorrectly directed saccades. However, they were longer when preview was constrained by a gaze-contingent moving window. Fixation control was modeled as sigmoid functions.     

Spiritual Beliefs and Barriers Among Managed Care Practitioners

Purpose: Ninety percent of American adults believe in God and 82% pray weekly. A majority wants their physicians to address spirituality during their health care visit. However, clinicians incorporate spiritual discussion in less than 20% of visits. Our objectives were to measure clinician beliefs and identify perceived barriers to integrating spirituality into patient care in a statewide, primary care, managed care group. Methods: Practitioners completed a 30-item survey including demographics and religious involvement (DUREL), spirituality in patient care (SPC), and barriers (BAR). We analyzed data using frequencies, means, standard deviations, and ANOVA. Findings: Clinicians had a range of religious denominations (67% Christian, 14% Jewish, 11% Muslim, Hindu or Buddhist, 8% agnostic), were 57% female and 24% had training in spirituality. Sixty-six percent reported experiencing the divine. Ninety-five percent felt that a patients spiritual outlook was important to handling health difficulties and 68% percent agreed that addressing spirituality was part of the physicians role. Ninety-five percent of our managed care group noted 8lack of time as an important barrier, lack of training was indicated by 69%, and 21% cited fear of response from administration. Conclusions: Managed care practitioners in a time constrained setting were spiritual themselves and believed this to be important to patients. Respondents indicated barriers of time and training to implementing these beliefs. Comparing responses from our group to those in other published surveys on clinician spirituality, we find similar concerns. Clinician education may overcome these barriers and improve ability to more fully meet their patients expressed needs regarding spirituality and beliefs.*This material has previously been presented as an abstract at the Culture and End of Life Conference, Association of Medical Colleges Spirituality, Kansas City, MO, September 12–14, 2002.Project supported by the Foundation for Spirituality in Medicine, Baltimore, MD     

Awareness of the continuously visible: information acquisition during preview

What can we learn about a scene while we stare at it, but before we know what we will be looking for? Three experiments were performed to investigate whether previewing a search array prior to knowing the target allows search to operate more quickly (lower reaction time [RT]), more efficiently (reduced set size slope), and/or by consulting abstract mental representations. Experiment 1 compared RTs for previewed and nonpreviewed arrays, some of which were highly degraded with visual noise. Preview reduced RTs for the noisy displays but did not affect search efficiency. Limited interactions of visual quality and preview suggested that prior exposure allowed the extraction and maintenance of about three abstract identities. If the target was one of those items, the observer responded without searching; if not, the observer searched the remaining items as if there had been no preview. Experiment 2 replicated these findings with less extreme noise. In Experiment 3, subjects previewed 0-6 items of a 12-item display. RTs decreased linearly as the number of previewed items increased from 0 to 3 and then reached a plateau, confirming that the capacity of the representation was about 3 items. Implications for visual awareness are discussed.     

Ethnic variations in the initial phase of mental health treatment: a study of Sami and non-Sami clients and therapists in northern Norway

Several studies indicate that mental health and mental health service vary with ethnicity. Ethnically linked social differences affect these results. We examined the multiethnic population in northern Norway where social inequalities between the Sami and the non-Sami population are not prominent. Clients (N=347) and therapists (N=32) in outpatient treatments reported demographics, ethnicity and the therapeutic alliance. Clients also reported pretreatment psychosocial status, service utilization and the type of help requested. Therapist recorded clinical and diagnostic assessments and treatment plans. The Sami and non-Sami client groups were similar in demographics and pretreatment psychosocial characteristics. However, the therapists prescribed more sessions and more socially focused interventions when clients were Sami. Verbal therapy was more often used by the non-Sami therapists. Alliance ratings were positively correlated only between Sami therapists and their clients, and Sami therapists rated the largest initial clinical improvement. Clinics located in the high Sami density areas offered their clients more therapy sessions, than in clinics in the high non-Sami density areas. Ethnic similarity between client and therapist were associated with more frequent use of medication and less frequent use of verbal therapy.     

Attention and the processing of emotional words and names: not so special after all

Abstract— Previous research has suggested that a person's own name or emotionally charged stimuli automatically "grab" attention, potentially challenging limited-capacity theories of perceptual processing. In this study, subjects were shown two digits surrounding a word and asked to make a speeded judgment about whether the parity of the two digits matched. When the subject's own name was presented on a few scattered trials, responses were markedly slowed (replicating a previous study). However, in a subsequent block of trials in which half the words were the subject's name, the slowing did not occur. The same slowing occurred (but even more fleetingly) when an emotionally charged word was presented between the digits. When the name was embedded among multiple distractor words, it ceased to slow reaction times. The results suggest that perceptual analysis of high-priority stimuli is subject to the usual capacity limitations of other stimuli, but when enough capacity is available for a high-priority stimulus to be perceived, a transient surprise reaction may interrupt ongoing processing.     

Winnicott, Balint, and the Independent Tradition

This article compares and contrasts two main aspects of the work of Winnicott and Balint: their theories of infantile development and their theoretical and clinical work on the use of regression as a therapeutic agent. The relationship of their thinking to aspects of the British Independent Group's theories and clinical work is noted vis-à-vis the basic acceptance of classical theory and technique, acknowledgment and use of some of Klein's contributions, the influence of trauma and the external environment on psychic development and psychopathology, the importance of holding and the setting, and the reintegration of previously split off and lost parts of the self.     

Concurrent task effects on memory retrieval

Previous studies combining continuous free recall with a concurrent task have generally shown that concurrent tasks impose fairly negligible effects on memory retrieval. By contrast, dual-task studies employing either cued recall or semantic retrieval reveal gross memory impairment and suggest that retrieval is delayed by the centrally demanding phase of the concurrent tasks (i.e., response selection). To explore this conflict, subjects performed continuous free recall while carrying out a serial-choice#x2014; response time (RT) task, as in the previous free recall studies. Unlike these previous studies, however, the choice#x2014;RT task utilized arbitrary stimulus#x2014;response mappings in order to increase the proportion of time devoted to the centrally demanding response selection phase. Recall total was reduced significantly, and recall latency was slowed substantially.     

New developments in electroconvulsive therapy and magnetic seizure therapy

New findings regarding the mechanisms of action of electro-convulsive therapy (ECT) have led to novel developments in treatment technique to further improve this highly effective treatment for major depression. These new approaches include novel placements, optimization of electrical stimulus parameters, and new methods for inducing more targeted seizures(eg, magnetic seizure therapy [MST]). MST is the use of transcranial magnetic stimulation to induce a seizure. Magnetic fields pass through tissue unimpeded, providing more control over the site and extent of stimulation than can be achieved with ECT. This enhanced control represents a means of focusing the treatment on target cortical structures thought to be essential to antidepressant response and reducing spread to medial temporal regions implicated in the cognitive side effects of ECT. MST is at an early stage of development. Preliminary results suggest that MST may have some advantages over ECT in terms of subjective side effects and acute cognitive functioning. Studies designed to address the antidepressant efficacy of MST are underway. As with all attempts to improve convulsive therapy technique, the clinical value of MST will need to be established through controlled clinical trials. This article reviews the experience to date with MST, and places this work in the broader context of other means of optimizing convulsive therapy in the treatment of depression.