Spatial behavior in male and female crayfish (Orconectes rusticus): learning strategies and memory duration

Previous studies have demonstrated that animals use multiple strategies to solve spatial tasks. We used a T-maze to examine spatial behavior in crayfish, using visual and tactile stimuli as place cues and a food-scented escape tank as reinforcement to leave the maze. In trials on a single day and across multiple days, crayfish learned to exit the maze with significantly reduced latency and with fewer turns. In addition, we examined place memory in 40-min periods with the maze closed and found that crayfish spent longer in the vicinity of a previously open exit compared to a closed exit. Probe tests were conducted using a forced-choice procedure to determine whether crayfish remembered the route out of the maze using primarily place cues or response learning. We found that approximately equal numbers of animals used each strategy, and individuals were able to switch from one strategy to the other on different test days. Males and females did not differ significantly in their performance in the place memory test, maze exit task, or probe tests. Both sexes displayed place memory for the exit location and reduced latency to exit during trials 24 h, 48 h, 72 h, and 1 week after initial training trials, suggesting that spatial memories in crayfish are relatively enduring.     

Switching strategies: a dolphin’s use of passive and active acoustics to imitate motor actions

Scientists have long debated the extent to which animals can imitate. Observations of bottlenose dolphins suggest a sophisticated capacity for social imitation, but little is known about the nature of these abilities. Here, we explore the behavioral mechanisms underlying a dolphin’s ability to copy motor actions while blindfolded (i.e., wearing eyecups). When a dolphin was asked to imitate a dolphin, a human, and then another dolphin blindfolded, his accuracy remained relatively consistent across models. However, his blindfolded echolocation dramatically increased when copying a human as compared to other dolphins, suggesting he actively switched between strategies: recognizing behaviors via characteristic sounds when possible, but via echolocation for the more novel sounding behaviors of the human. Such flexibility in changing perceptual routes demonstrates that the dolphin’s imitation was not automatically elicited, but rather results from an intentional, problem-solving approach to imitation.     

When do spatial abilities support student comprehension of STEM visualizations?

Spatial visualization abilities are positively related to performance on science, technology, engineering, and math tasks, but this relationship is influenced by task demands and learner strategies. In two studies, we illustrate these interactions by demonstrating situations in which greater spatial ability leads to problematic performance. In Study 1, chemistry students observed and explained sets of simultaneously presented displays depicting chemical phenomena at macroscopic and particulate levels of representation. Prior to viewing, the students were asked to make predictions at the macroscopic level. Eye movement analyses revealed that greater spatial ability was associated with greater focus on the prediction-relevant macroscopic level. Unfortunately, that restricted focus was also associated with lower-quality explanations of the phenomena. In Study 2, we presented the same displays but manipulated whether participants were asked to make predictions prior to viewing. Spatial ability was again associated with restricted focus, but only for students who completed the prediction task. Eliminating the prediction task encouraged attempts to integrate the displays that related positively to performance, especially for participants with high spatial ability. Spatial abilities can be recruited in effective or ineffective ways depending on alignments between the demands of a task and the approaches individuals adopt for completing that task.     

Tracking the first two seconds: three stages of visual information processing?

We compared visual priming and comparison tasks to assess information processing of a stimulus during the first 2 s after its onset. In both tasks, a 13-ms prime was followed at varying SOAs by a 40-ms probe. In the priming task, observers identified the probe as rapidly and accurately as possible; in the comparison task, observers determined as rapidly and accurately as possible whether or not the probe and prime were identical. Priming effects attained a maximum at an SOA of 133 ms and then declined monotonically to zero by 700 ms, indicating reliance on relatively brief visuosensory (iconic) memory. In contrast, the comparison effects yielded a multiphasic function, showing a maximum at 0 ms followed by a minimum at 133 ms, followed in turn by a maximum at 240 ms and another minimum at 720 ms, and finally a third maximum at 1,200 ms before declining thereafter. The results indicate three stages of prime processing that we take to correspond to iconic visible persistence, iconic informational persistence, and visual working memory, with the first two used in the priming task and all three in the comparison task. These stages are related to stages presumed to underlie stimulus processing in other tasks, such as those giving rise to the attentional blink.     

Action influences spatial perception: Neuropsychological evidence

We present neuropsychological evidence indicating that action influences spatial perception. First, we review evidence indicating that actions using a tool can modulate unilateral visual neglect and extinction, where patients are unaware of stimuli presented on one side of space. We show that, at least for some patients, modulation comes about through a combination of visual and motor cueing of attention to the affected side (Experiment 1). Subsequently, we review evidence that action‐relations between stimuli reduce visual extinction; there is less extinction when stimuli fall in the correct colocations for action relative to when they fall in the incorrect relations for action and relative to when stimuli are just associatively related. Finally, we demonstrate that action relations between stimuli can also influence the binding of objects to space, in a patient with Balint's syndrome (Experiment 2). These neuropsychological data indicate that perception–action couplings can be crucial to our conscious representation of space.     

The specific needs of foreign national prisoners and the threat to their mental health from being imprisoned in a foreign country

Foreign national prisoners represent an increasingly significant and vulnerable proportion of the prison estate in England and Wales, accounting for 13% of the population in custody (Prison Reform Trust, 2010). They are ever present in the Safer Custody statistics, accounting for nearly a quarter of self-harm incidents and self-inflicted deaths (HM Inspectorate of Prisons, 2009). Recent HM Inspectorate of Prisons, 2006, HM Inspectorate of Prisons, 2007, HM Inspectorate of Prisons, 2010 and a handful of research studies outline the lack of support facing many foreign national prisoners, in terms of language problems, social and cultural isolation, family support, immigration uncertainties and diversity issues. This paper reviews the current context of the foreign national prisoner population in England and Wales, paying particular attention to their experiences, specific needs, and potential threat to their mental health from being imprisoned in a foreign country. We then offer suggestions as to how these issues can be addressed by reviewing existing initiatives and making recommendations for future research.     

Consulting with gargoyles: applying narrative ideas and practices in counselling supervision

This article explores waysin which narrative ideas and practices might influence supervisory relationships in counselling and psychotherapy,and questions some of the taken-for-granted assumptions implicit within counselling supervision. This paper, which represents ‘work in progress’ towards further conversations, rather than an exhaustive study,is illustrated with stories from the author'sown practice as a supervisor and trainer and educator of supervisors.     

Examining the role and functions of self-development in healthcare therapy trainings: A review of the literature with a modest proposal for the use of learning agreements

Many healthcare trainings with a psychodynamic orientation encourage or require students to commit to a process of personal development, such as provided through attending individual psychotherapy and/or an experiential ‘as if therapy’ group. This paper reviews recent literature about training in psychodynamically oriented practices within counselling psychotherapy, psychiatry, the creative arts therapies and clinical psychology. The results indicate that the mandatory personal development dimension of therapy training needs urgent reassessment. Results of studies consistently call for further research about the direct benefits of personal development on students’ development of skills for therapy practice. There is minimal evidence to indicate what self-development through individual psychotherapy can specifically deliver in terms of eventual professional competence. To address some aspects of the current lacuna, this paper summarises the recommendations for training programmes available from the current research, and makes a modest proposal for the use of learning agreements, rather than only mandated hurdle requirements, to ensure that the incremental steps by which the student attains expected requirements is negotiated and agreed within regularised, and widely accepted university course procedures.     

Teaching Oppressive Texts

Scholars have identified the many stories in the Bible that are oppressive to women or other minoritized groups. It is remarkable how common it is that North American undergraduate students remain blind to the oppression that is depicted and that is too often the result of commonly accepted interpretations of these texts. Three brief essays collected here, originally presented as part of a panel at the Society of Biblical Literature annual meeting (Atlanta, 2010), present various teaching strategies for exposing the oppressive elements in the biblical text and showing how the oppression operates (an aspect of ideological criticism). What are good strategies for communicating these hard points to students in a way they can hear them and work with them? Why is this important to do?     

Strategy Use in Reasoning Training With Older Adults

The relationship between strategy use and cognitive training gains on reasoning ability is examined in a sample of 393 older participants in the Seattle Longitudinal Training Study. Pre- and posttest gains on the use of strategies specific to reasoning ability were compared for the elderly trained on reasoning versus spatial orientation ability. The present study involves an objective behavioral method of measuring strategy use on tests of inductive reasoning. Results showed that participants trained on reasoning significantly increased strategy use from pre- to posttest on two reasoning outcome measures compared to participants trained on spatial orientation. Higher strategy use by inductive reasoning trainees was also associated with greater training gain on reasoning outcome measures, suggesting strategy use as a possible mechanism of training gain. In addition, young–old participants and those with higher education, irrespective of training condition, exhibited greater pre- to posttest gain in strategy use.