Perceptual grouping boosts visual working memory capacity and reduces effort during retention

Consistent, robust boosts to visual working memory capacity are observed when colour–location arrays contain duplicate colours. The prevailing explanation suggests that duplicated colours are encoded as one perceptual group. If so, then we should observe not only higher working memory capacity overall for displays containing duplicates, but specifically an improved ability to remember unique colours from displays including duplicates compared with displays comprising all uniquely coloured items. Furthermore, less effort should be required to retain displays as colour redundancy increases. I recorded gaze position and pupil sizes during a visual change detection task including displays of 4–6 items with either all unique colours, two items with a common colour, or three items with a common colour in samples of young and healthy elderly adults. Increased redundancy was indeed associated with higher estimated working memory capacity, both for tests of duplicates and uniquely coloured items. Redundancy was also associated with decreased pupil size during retention, especially in young adults. While elderly adults also benefited from colour redundancy, spillover to unique items was less obvious with low redundancy than in young adults. This experiment confirms previous findings and presents complementary novel evidence linking perceptual grouping via colour redundancy with decreased mental effort.     

On Identification and Non-normal Simulation in Ordinal Covariance and Item Response Models

Psychometrika - A standard approach for handling ordinal data in covariance analysis such as structural equation modeling is to assume that the data were produced by discretizing a multivariate...     

Constraining (mathematical) imagination by experience: Nieuwentijt and van Musschenbroek on the abuses of mathematics

Synthese - Like many of their contemporaries Bernard Nieuwentijt (1654–1718) and Pieter van Musschenbroek (1692–1761) were baffled by the heterodox conclusions which Baruch Spinoza...     

“License to Fail”: Goal definition,leader group prototypicality,and perceptions of leadership effectiveness after leader failure

Leaders who fail to achieve group or organizational goals risk losing follower endorsement. We propose a model in which leader characteristics (leader group prototypicality—the leader’s representativeness of group identity) and goal definition (a maximal goal that ideally would be reached vs. a minimal goal that ought to be reached) interact to affect leadership perceptions after failure. Group prototypical (vs. non-prototypical) leaders are proposed to receive more trust in leadership and, therefore, to be evaluated as more effective by their followers after failing to achieve a maximal goal, but not after failing to achieve a minimal goal. This model was supported in a series of four studies including experimental, field, and scenario paradigms. In addition, we showed that this model holds only after failure and not after success, and more for followers who identify strongly (vs. weakly) with their group.     

Hindsight bias doesn't always come easy: causal models, cognitive effort, and creeping determinism

Creeping determinism, a form of hindsight bias, refers to people's hindsight perceptions of events as being determined or inevitable. This article proposes, on the basis of a causal-model theory of creeping determinism, that the underlying processes are effortful, and hence creeping determinism should disappear when individuals lack the cognitive resources to make sense of an outcome. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants were asked to read a scenario while they were under either low or high processing load. Participants who had the cognitive resources to make sense of the outcome perceived it as more probable and necessary than did participants under high processing load or participants who did not receive outcome information. Experiment 3 was designed to separate 2 postulated subprocesses and showed that the attenuating effect of processing load on hindsight bias is not due to a disruption of the retrieval of potential causal antecedents but to a disruption of their evaluation. Together the 3 experiments show that the processes underlying creeping determinism are effortful, and they highlight the crucial role of causal reasoning in the perception of past events.     

Change in posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms: do clinicians and patients agree?

This study assessed the longitudinal association between clinician and patient ratings of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms over the course of 2 different randomized clinical trials of veterans with chronic PTSD. One trial, the Department of Veterans Affairs Cooperative Study 420 (CSP 420; N = 360) compared trauma-focused and present-centered group therapies, and the 2nd trial compared cognitive processing theory and a waitlist control condition (N = 60). Linear mixed effects modeling revealed significant associations between clinician ratings (Clinician-Administered PTSD Scale; CAPS; D. D. Blake et al., 1990) and patient ratings (Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Checklist; PCL; F. W. Weathers, B. T. Litz, J. A. Herman, J. A. Huska, & T. M. Keane, 1993) in total and symptom clusters of PTSD. Contrary to hypothesis, the amount of change on the CAPS ranged from .75 to .82 standard deviations for every 1 standard deviation change on the PCL. The CAPS and PCL were more closely associated in the trauma-focused vs. present-centered treatment condition in CSP 420, and especially regarding hyperarousal symptoms. When comparing categorization of clinically significant change on the CAPS and PCL, the authors found no differences in the percentages of agreement between clinicians and patients in improvement and exacerbation. The value of multimodal assessment of PTSD treatment outcomes is discussed.     

Die Psychotherapeutenausbildung aus Sicht der Teilnehmer

Background

A survey was performed to assess the current situation in education and to identify critical issues 10 years after the inception of the German law regulating the education of psychological psychotherapists and child and adolescent psychotherapists. The study reports the results of a nationwide survey of German psychological psychotherapists and child and adolescent psychotherapists currently in training. The aim of the survey was to evaluate the individual sections of training, desired alterations and structural and financial conditions.

Methods

All trainees were contacted via the training institutes and the umbrella organizations. A total of 3,223 trainees participated and answered questions mainly using an online questionnaire.

Results

Most respondents practiced their training part-time and in most cases the trainees thought that the training would last longer than initially expected. The practical training was rated most poorly, whereas practical education and individual supervision were rated as most useful. The survey revealed deficits concerning the evaluation of the quality of several components of the training.

Conclusions

From the perspective of the trainees there is a necessity to modify the financial conditions of the training. This result has been considered in the recommendations of a research expertise on psychotherapy training and should stimulate further research.     

The basolateral amygdala modulates specific sensory memory representations in the cerebral cortex

Stress hormones released by an experience can modulate memory strength via the basolateral amygdala, which in turn acts on sites of memory storage such as the cerebral cortex [McGaugh, J. L. (2004). The amygdala modulates the consolidation of memories of emotionally arousing experiences. Annual Review of Neuroscience, 27, 1–28]. Stimuli that acquire behavioral importance gain increased representation in the cortex. For example, learning shifts the tuning of neurons in the primary auditory cortex (A1) to the frequency of a conditioned stimulus (CS), and the greater the level of CS importance, the larger the area of representational gain [Weinberger, N. M. (2007). Associative representational plasticity in the auditory cortex: A synthesis of two disciplines. Learning & Memory, 14(1–2), 1–16]. The two lines of research suggest that BLA strengthening of memory might be accomplished in part by increasing the representation of an environmental stimulus. The present study investigated whether stimulation of the BLA can affect cortical memory representations. In male Sprague–Dawley rats studied under urethane general anesthesia, frequency receptive fields were obtained from A1 before and up to 75 min after the pairing of a tone with BLA stimulation (BLAstm: 100 trials, 400 ms, 100 Hz, 400 μA [±16.54]). Tone started before and continued after BLAstm. Group BLA/1.0 (n = 16) had a 1 s CS–BLAstm interval while Group BLA/1.6 (n = 5) has a 1.6 s interval. The BLA/1.0 group did develop specific tuning shifts toward and to the CS, which could change frequency tuning by as much as two octaves. Moreover, its shifts increased over time and were enduring, lasting 75 min. However, group BLA/1.6 did not develop tuning shifts, indicating that precise CS–BLAstm timing is important in the anesthetized animal. Further, training in the BLA/1.0 paradigm but stimulating outside of the BLA did not produce tuning shifts. These findings demonstrate that the BLA is capable of exerting highly specific, enduring, learning-related modifications of stimulus representation in the cerebral cortex. These findings suggest that the ability of the BLA to alter specific cortical representations may underlie, at least in part, the modulatory influence of BLA activity on strengthening long-term memory.