Exploring task-set reconfiguration with random task sequences

Switching between two different tasks normally results in an impairment in people's performance known as a switch cost, typically measured as an increase in reaction time (RT) and errors compared to a situation in which no task switch is required. Researchers in task switching have suggested that this switch cost is the behavioural manifestation of the task set reconfiguration processes that are necessary to perform the upcoming task. However, an examination of the literature in task switching reveals apparently contradictory results about the nature of task set reconfiguration processes. In Experiment 1, we addressed this issue by comparing participants' performance in two different experimental conditions: predictable task switching and random task switching. In the predictable switch condition the switch cost completely vanished after the first repetition of the new task. However, in the random switch condition, while the difference between switch and repetition trials was not significant, we observed a significant reduction in RT between the first and second repetition of the new task. In Experiment 2, we further investigated the pattern of task set reconfiguration in the random switch situation. The results showed a progressive reduction of participants' response latencies across repetitions of the same task. The present study demonstrates that, whereas the results in predictable switching conditions are compatible with an exogenous-reconfiguration hypothesis, random task switching produces a more gradual, decay-like switch cost reduction with task repetition.     

Pathological gambling and personality disorders: an exploratory study with the IPDE

This article describes the most frequent personality disorders related to pathological gambling. Participants included 50 pathological gamblers assessed with the IPDE, and 50 normative subjects from the general population with the same demographic features (age, sex, and socioeconomic level). Thirty-two percent of the clinical sample (vs. the 8% of the normative sample) showed at least one personality disorder. The most prevalent disorders were Borderline (16%), followed by Antisocial, Paranoid, Narcissistic, and Non-specified (8% each). Gamblers with personality disorders presented an average of 1.5 disorders and they reported higher gambling severity and more severe symptoms of anxiety, depression and alcohol abuse. The implications of this study for clinical practice and research are discussed.     

Could Balint Have Done More for Ferenczi?

After Ferenczi's death of pernicious anemia in 1933 at the age of 59, Michael Balint became the greatest advocate of his late analyst, teacher, colleague, and friend. He was faced with widespread avoidance, a conspiracy of silence against Ferenczi in the psychoanalytic movement. Ernest Jones, in particular, an analysand of Ferenczi and fellow member of the Secret Committee founded by Freud before World War I, seriously attacked Ferenczi. In the third volume of the Freud biography, Jones alleged that in the last years of his life Ferenczi suffered mental deterioration caused by the pernicious anemia, and that this mental decline was the real cause of Ferenczi's technical experimentations, thereby belittling the importance of Ferenczi's independent work in the last phase of his life. This article answers whether Michael Balint, who later became the literary executor of Ferenczi, was devoted enough in countering the charges that lead to a fifty-year silence on Ferenczi's eminent place in psychoanalysis. Correspondence between Balint and Jones is cited, as are reports of Ferenczi's contemporaries; Balint's efforts are placed within the context of the psychoanalytic rivalries after Freud's death.     

Processing of temporal information: Evidence from eye movements

In two experiments, we recorded eye movements to study how readers monitor temporal order information contained in narrative texts. Participants read short texts containing critical temporal information in the sixth sentence, which could be either consistent or inconsistent with temporal order information given in the second sentence. In Experiment 1, inconsistent sentences yielded more regressions to the second sentence and longer refixations of it. In Experiment 2, this pattern of eye movements was shown only by readers who noticed the inconsistency and were able to report it. Theoretical and methodological implications of the results for research on text comprehension are discussed.     

Orienting in space and time: Joint contributions to exogenous spatial cuing effects

We examined whether the time course of exogenous spatial-cuing effects is sensitive to the allocation of attention in time. Expectation for a target within a particular time window following the cue was manipulated by varying the proportion of trials that appeared at each of three stimulus onset asynchronies in both a detection task and a two-alternative forced-choice discrimination task. The time course of spatial-cuing effects was sensitive to the temporal expectation manipulation only in the discrimination task. The results are discussed with reference to the role of attentional set in exogenous spatialcuing paradigms.     

Thinking of you: nonconscious pursuit of interpersonal goals associated with relationship partners

The mere psychological presence of relationship partners was hypothesized to trigger interpersonal goals that are then pursued nonconsciously. Qualitative data suggested that people tend to pursue different interpersonal goals within different types of relationships (e.g., mother, best friend, coworker). In several studies, priming participants' relationship representations produced goal-directed behavior (achievement, helping, understanding) in line with the previously assessed goal content of those representations. These findings support the hypothesis that interpersonal goals are component features of relationship representations and that mere activation of those representations, even in the partner's physical absence, causes the goals to become active and to guide behavior nonconsciously within the current situation.     

Visual context integration is not fully developed in 4-year-old children

Long-range horizontal interactions supporting contour integration were found to be weaker in children than in adults (Kovács et al, 1999 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA 96 12204-12209). In the present study, integration on a larger scale, between a target and its context was investigated. Contextual modulation of the percept of a local target can be directly measured in the case of geometric illusions. We compared the magnitude of a size contrast illusion (Ebbinghaus illusion or Titchener circles) in children and adults. 4-year-old children and adults performed 2AFC size comparisons between two target disks in the classical Ebbinghaus illusion display and in two other modified versions. We found that the magnitude of the illusion effect was significantly smaller in children than in adults. Our interpretation is that context integration is not fully developed in 4-year-old children. Closer-to-veridical-size estimations by children demonstrate that the perception of the local target is less affected by stimulus context in their case. We suggest that immature cortical connectivity is behind the reduced contextual sensitivity in children.     

Universal sex differences in the desire for sexual variety: tests from 52 nations, 6 continents,and 13 islands

Evolutionary psychologists have hypothesized that men and women possess both long-term and short-term mating strategies, with men's short-term strategy differentially rooted in the desire for sexual variety. In this article, findings from a cross-cultural survey of 16,288 people across 10 major world regions (including North America, South America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Southern Europe, Middle East, Africa, Oceania, South/Southeast Asia, and East Asia) demonstrate that sex differences in the desire for sexual variety are culturally universal throughout these world regions. Sex differences were evident regardless of whether mean, median, distributional, or categorical indexes of sexual differentiation were evaluated. Sex differences were evident regardless of the measures used to evaluate them. Among contemporary theories of human mating, pluralistic approaches that hypothesize sex differences in the evolved design of short-term mating provide the most compelling account of these robust empirical findings.     

Non-ligand activation of estrous behavior in rodents: cross-talk at the progesterone receptor

Estrous behavior in rodents is triggered by the binding of progesterone (P) to its intracellular receptor (PR). Non-steroidal agents (i.e., gonadotropin-releasing hormone, noradrenaline, dopamine and others), acting at the membrane, can facilitate estrous behavior in estrogen-primed rats. This action is mediated through the generation of second messengers (cyclic AMP, cyclic GMP, calcium) which, in turn, phosphorylate through diverse kinase systems (protein kinases A, G or C) either the PR or associated effector proteins linking the PR to the trans-activation machinery. P or its metabolites also activate cyclic AMP-signaling pathways by acting directly on the membrane or by modulating neurotransmitter release. Molecular processes resulting from second messenger signaling pathways and those from the progesterone-RP interaction synergize to elicit a full behavioral response.