Putting to a bigger hole: Golf performance relates to perceived size

When people are engaged in a skilled behavior, such as occurs in sports, their perceptions relate optical information to their performance. In the present research, we demonstrate the effects of performance on size perception in golfers. We found that golfers who played better judged the hole to be bigger than did golfers who did not play as well. In follow-up laboratory experiments, participants putted on a golf mat from a location near or far from the hole and then judged the size of the hole. Participants who putted from the near location perceived the hole to be bigger than did participants who putted from the far location. Our results demonstrate that perception is influenced by the perceiver’s current ability to act effectively in the environment.     

Impaired discrimination learning in mice lacking the NMDA receptor NR2A subunit

N-Methyl-D-aspartate receptors (NMDARs) mediate certain forms of synaptic plasticity and learning. We used a touchscreen system to assess NR2A subunit knockout mice (KO) for (1) pairwise visual discrimination and reversal learning and (2) acquisition and extinction of an instrumental response requiring no pairwise discrimination. NR2A KO mice exhibited significantly retarded discrimination learning. Performance on reversal was impaired in NR2A KO mice during the learning phase of the task; with no evidence of heightened perseverative responses. Acquisition and extinction of an instrumental behavior requiring no pairwise discrimination was normal in NR2A KO mice. The present findings demonstrate a significant and selective deficit in discrimination learning following loss of NR2A.     

Reactivation-dependent amnesia in Pavlovian approach and instrumental transfer

The theory of memory reconsolidation relates to the hypothesized restabilisation process that occurs following the reactivation of a memory through retrieval. Thus the demonstration of reactivation-dependent amnesia for a previously acquired memory is a prerequisite for showing that such a memory undergoes reconsolidation. Here we show that the appetitive Pavlovian representations that underlie Pavlovian approach and Pavlovian-instrumental transfer are destabilized following their retrieval. This reactivation-dependent amnesia demonstrates that the general motivational or incentive properties of appetitive conditioned stimuli, as well as their conditioned reinforcing properties, can be reduced by blocking memory reconsolidation.     

Depression, anhedonia, and psychomotor symptoms: the role of dopaminergic neurocircuitry

The heterogeneity of major depression suggests that multiple neurocircuits and neurochemicals are involved in its pathogenesis. Anhedonia and psychomotor symptoms are, however, particularly characteristic features of major depression and may provide insights into its underlying psychobiology. Importantly, these symptoms appear to be mediated by dopaminergic mesolimbic and mesostriatal projections, the function of which is, in turn, influenced by key gene variants and environment stressors. Indeed, there is growing evidence of the way in which the dopaminergic system is associated with cognitive-affective disturbances in depression, and provides a useful target for therapeutic interventions. At the same time, a range of other systems are likely to contribute to the psychobiology of this condition.     

Screening for eating disorders in primary care: EDE-Q versus SCOFF

OBJECTIVE AND METHODS: The comparative validity of the Eating Disorder Examination Questionnaire (EDE-Q) (22 items) and SCOFF (five items) in screening for cases of the more commonly occurring eating disorders was examined in a primary care sample of young adult women (n=257). Diagnoses were confirmed in a sub-group of interviewed participants (n=147). RESULTS: Twenty-five cases, primarily variants of bulimia nervosa (BN) not meeting formal diagnostic criteria, were identified in the interviewed sample. An EDE-Q global score of >or= 2.80 yielded the optimal trade-off between sensitivity (Se) (0.80) and specificity (Sp) (0.80) (positive predictive value (PPV)=0.44), whereas a score of two or more positive responses on the SCOFF was optimal (Se=0.72, Sp=0.73, PPV=0.35). Validity coefficients for both measures varied as a function of participants' age and body weight, although these effects were more pronounced for the SCOFF. CONCLUSIONS: Both measures performed well in terms of their ability to detect cases and to exclude non-cases of the more commonly occurring eating disorders in a primary care setting. The EDE-Q performed somewhat better than the SCOFF and was more robust to effects on validity of age and weight. These findings need to be weighed against the advantage of the SCOFF in terms of its brevity.     

Delivering phonological and phonics training within whole‐class teaching

Background Early, intensive phonological awareness and phonics training is widely held to be beneficial for children with poor phonological awareness. However, most studies have delivered this training separately from children's normal whole‐class reading lessons. Aims We examined whether integrating this training into whole class, mixed‐ability reading lessons could impact on children with poor phonological awareness, whilst also benefiting normally developing readers. Sample Teachers delivered the training within a broad reading programme to whole classes of children from Reception to the end of Year 1 (N = 251). A comparison group of children received standard teaching methods (N = 213). Method Children's literacy was assessed at the beginning of Reception, and then at the end of each year until 1 year post‐intervention. Results The strategy significantly impacted on reading performance for normally developing readers and those with poor phonological awareness, vastly reducing the incidence of reading difficulties from 20% in comparison schools to 5% in intervention schools. Conclusions Phonological and phonics training is highly effective for children with poor phonological awareness, even when incorporated into whole‐class teaching.     

Attentional resources in visual tracking through occlusion: the high-beams effect

A considerable amount of research has uncovered heuristics that the visual system employs to keep track of objects through periods of occlusion. Relatively little work, by comparison, has investigated the online resources that support this processing. We explored how attention is distributed when featurally identical objects become occluded during multiple object tracking. During tracking, observers had to detect small probes that appeared sporadically on targets, distracters, occluders, or empty space. Probe detection rates for these categories were taken as indexes of the distribution of attention throughout the display and revealed two novel effects. First, probe detection on an occluder’s surface was better when either a target or distractor was currently occluded in that location, compared to when no object was behind that occluder. Thus even occluded (and therefore invisible) objects recruit object-based attention. Second, and more surprising, probe detection for both targets and distractors was always better when they were occluded, compared to when they were visible. This new attentional high-beams effect indicates that the ability to track through occlusion, though seemingly effortless, in fact requires the active allocation of special attentional resources.     

Effects of prime—target spatial separation and attentional deployment on masked repetition priming

In two masked repetition priming experiments with letter stimuli, the positions of prime and target stimuli were varied horizontally from fixation. Priming effects did not interact with position when prime and target location covaried (Experiment 1A) but diminished with increasing prime eccentricity when targets were always centrally located (Experiment 1B). Two accounts of this pattern of priming effects were proposed that postulate two different mechanisms over and above effects of visual acuity. The integration account postulates degree of separation of prime and target stimuli as the critical factor, and the attentional account postulates spatial attention as the critical factor. The results of Experiment 2, in which prime and target positions were manipulated orthogonally, were in favor of the attentional account. Repetition priming did not vary as a function of whether or not primes and targets appeared at the same location, but target processing was facilitated independently of priming when targets appeared at the same location as primes, especially in the right visual field.     

Beyond reciprocity: gratitude and relationships in everyday life

The emotion of gratitude is thought to have social effects, but empirical studies of such effects have focused largely on the repaying of kind gestures. The current research focused on the relational antecedents of gratitude and its implications for relationship formation. The authors examined the role of naturally occurring gratitude in college sororities during a week of gift-giving from older members to new members. New members recorded reactions to benefits received during the week. At the end of the week and 1 month later, the new and old members rated their interactions and their relationships. Perceptions of benefactor responsiveness predicted gratitude for benefits, and gratitude during the week predicted future relationship outcomes. Gratitude may function to promote relationship formation and maintenance.     

Windows executable software for the progressive demasking task

The progressive demasking (PDM) task is a perceptual identification task using degraded stimulus presentation procedures, but with the advantage of providing response time (RT) measures on each trial. Participants simply press a response button whenever they recognize a word. In this article, we present newly developed, easy-to-use freeware for PDM. Considering the difficulty of programming such a paradigm with standard experimental software, we developed a program based on high-level C libraries to be executed on Windows XP computers. The program execution is millisecond accurate forRT measurements and generates the fewest possible display duration errors.