Anisomycin impairs long-term working memory in a delayed alternation task

A long-term temporal component of working memory of rats trained on the radial maze has been shown to be susceptible to disruption by the protein synthesis inhibitor, anisomycin. It is not clear whether protein synthesis played a role in working memory because accurate performance on the radial maze required the storage of a large amount of information, or because the information was to be held in store for relatively long periods of time. This experiment tested these hypotheses by assessing the effect of anisomycin on choice accuracy in a comparatively simple spatial delayed alternation task. Results indicate that under the present training conditions, protein involvement in working memory is related more to the length of the retention interval than to the amount of information retained.     

Modification of Type A behavior through aerobic exercise

This psychophysiological evaluation of an aerobic exercise program examined specifically whether aerobic training modified Pattern A for those individuals at behavioral risk for developing coronary heart disease, i.e., young Type A individuals. At pretest and posttest of this secondary prevention study, Type A and Type B subjects were assessed in three conditions: aerobic exercise program, nonaerobic activity (Aikido, a martial art) control, and notreatment control. After 10 weeks, Type A but not Type B subjects exhibited lower Pattern A behavior in the aerobic program than in control conditions. Average workout pulse rates and differentially reliable increases in aerobic capacity indicated that aerobic training was indeed aerobic, whereas aikido activity was not. Even though selected nonaerobic factors, such as locus of control and group participation, did not mediate the Pattern A decrease for Type A's when comparing aikido and aerobic conditions, changes in aerobic capacity may have been the mediator. Generalizability of the results and implications for theoretical development and clinical intervention are discussed.     

Long-term memory formation in chicks is blocked by 2-deoxygalactose, a fucose analog

When day-old chicks are trained on a passive avoidance task there is enhanced synthesis of glycoproteins. Bilateral intracerebral injections of 20 mumole of 2-deoxygalactose (2-D-gal), administered just before and just after training on the task, produce amnesia for the avoidance. Amnesia develops slowly over the first hour and persists for at least 24 h subsequently. If 2-D-gal injections are administered 4 h prior to the training or delayed for 3 h after training, no amnesia occurs. Apart from a brief initial suppression of pecking following injection there are no effects of 2-D-gal on other observed behaviors of the birds. Within the first hour this dose of 2-D-gal inhibits [3H]fucose incorporation into acid-insoluble material by 26% (or 68%, calculated relative to free pool fucose). The amnestic effect of 2-D-gal is not shown by galactose, glucose, fucose, or 2-D-glucose. Injecting 40 mumole of galactose simultaneously with the 2-D-gal abolishes the 2-D-gal-induced amnesia; 40 mumole of fucose, however, does not abolish the amnesia. The utility of 2-D-gal as an agent for analyzing the role of glycoproteins in memory formation is discussed.     

Eyeheight-scaled information about affordances: a study of sitting and stair climbing

Previous work has shown that both the perceived and actual critical (maximum) heights of surfaces that afford "sitting on " and "climbing on" can be expressed as constant proportions of each actor's leg length. The current study provides evidence that these judgments of critical action boundaries are based on an existing source of size and distance information that is already scaled with reference to the actor's eyeheight. In Experiment 1 changes in judgments of "perceived eyeheight" (an index of the intrinsic scalar) as a function of viewing distance were shown to be highly correlated with changes in the maximum height that was perceived to afford sitting on or climbing on. In Experiments 2 and 3 observers wore 10-cm blocks and made judgments about whether the heights of various surfaces afforded sitting or climbing. The use of eyeheight-scaled information as the basis for their estimates predicted the obtained pattern of errors in these judgments. With a modicum of experience wearing the blocks, however, observers were able to retune accurately their critical action boundary to a degree that would not have been predicted from their consistent overestimation of the height of the block on which they were standing. These results have implications for understanding how observers obtain information about their specific action boundary.     

Effects of foveal priming and extrafoveal preview on object identification

The results of three different experiments suggested that the relation between an object in the fovea on fixation n and an object subsequently brought into the fovea on fixation n + 1 affects the time to identify the second object. In Experiment 1 we extended previous work by demonstrating that a previously seen related priming object speeded the time to name a target object even when a saccade intervened between the two objects. In Experiment 2 we replicated this result and further showed that the benefit on naming time was due to facilitation from the related object rather than inhibition from the unrelated object. In addition, naming of the target object was much slower in both experiments when there was not a peripheral preview of the target object on fixation n. However, because the effect of the foveal priming object was greater when the target was not present than when it was present, priming did not appear to make extraction of the extrafoveal information more efficient. In Experiment 3, fixation times were recorded while subjects looked at four objects in order to identify them. Fixation time on an object was shorter when a related object was fixated immediately before it, even though the four objects did not form a scene. The size of the facilitation was roughly comparable to that in several analogous experiments where scenes were used. The results suggest that the effects of a predictive scene context on object identification may be explainable in terms of an object-to-object or "intralevel" priming mechanism.     

Rigidity in cinema seen from the front row, side aisle

Pictures and cinema seen at a slant present the optics of virtual objects that are distorted and inconsistent with their real counterparts. In particular, it should not be possible for moving objects on slanted film and television screens to be seen as rigid, at least according to rules of linear perspective. Previous approaches to this problem have suggested that some process (perhaps cognitive) rectifies the optics of objects in slanted pictures to derive true shape and preserve shape constancy. The means for this rectification is usually thought to be based on recovery of true screen slant. In three experiments I show that this account is unnecessary and insufficient to explain the perception of rotating, rectangular objects in slanted cinema. I present data in favor of an alternate view, one in which the information is sufficient for perceivers to determine rigidity in an object on slanted screens, at least for parallel projections. In the human visual system, local measurements of objects are apparently made according to projective geometry; in those measurements, small amounts of certain distortions in projection are tolerated. Stimuli that appear nonrigid are ones that violate certain local principles, known as Perkins's laws, of projections of rectangular solids.     

Strategies for visual word recognition and orthographical depth: a multilingual comparison

We investigated the psychological reality of the concept of orthographical depth and its influence on visual word recognition by examining naming performance in Hebrew, English, and Serbo-Croatian. We ran three sets of experiments in which we used native speakers and identical experimental methods in each language. Experiment 1 revealed that the lexical status of the stimulus (high-frequency words, low-frequency words, and nonwords) significantly affected naming in Hebrew (the deepest of the three orthographies). This effect was only moderate in English and nonsignificant in Serbo-Croatian (the shallowest of the three orthographies). Moreover, only in Hebrew did lexical status have similar effects on naming and lexical decision performance. Experiment 2 revealed that semantic priming effects in naming were larger in Hebrew than in English and completely absent in Serbo-Croatian. Experiment 3 revealed that a large proportion of nonlexical tokens (nonwords) in the stimulus list affects naming words in Hebrew and in English, but not in Serbo-Croatian. These results were interpreted as strong support for the orthographical depth hypothesis and suggest, in general, that in shallow orthographies phonology is generated directly from print, whereas in deep orthographies phonology is derived from the internal lexicon.     

Do you really want to maintain that a flat tire can upset your stomach? Using the findings of the psychophysiology of stress to bolster the argument that people are not directly disturbed by events

The purpose of this paper is to help clients and others more fully appreciate the complex chain of events intervening between an external happening and an emotional response to that happening. It deals first with the sensory processing of physical stimulation and then presents the current state of knowledge regarding stress psychophysiology. A decision by the cortex which defines something as dangerous or threatening activates two major stress reaction pathways, the endocrine system and the autonomic nervous system, with a large number of physical consequences such as: acceleration of heart rate, increased blood pressure, reduced effectiveness of the immunological system, slowing of gastro-intestinal processes, pupil dilation, bronchial dilation and inhibition of salivation. The complexity and variety of such consequences is illustrated with a series of flow-chart diagrams, and it is suggested that these can be an additional and persuasive argument for the RET position which follows the claim of Epictetus: People are disturbed not by things, but by the views they take of them. Finally it is argued that while rapid emotional responses oftenseem to occur automatically it is because the intervening cortical processes are at times not verbalized. This is shown in the context of a diagrammatic outline of the Rational-Emotive Therapy process.Paul J. Woods, Ph.D., co-editor of this journal, is an associate fellow and an RET training supervisor of the Institute for Rational-Emotive Therapy.     

Intimate homicide: An analysis of violent social relationships

Homicide which occurs in intimate social relationships was studied using data from three Western Canadian cities. Variables which may be related to the relationship and homicide are also examined. Unstable relationships are clearly differentiated from other relationships and are more likely to result in homicide. Implications for future research are discussed.