A computational account of altered error processing in older age: Dopamine and the error-related negativity

When participants commit errors or receive feedback signaling that they have made an error, a negative brain potential is elicited. According to Holroyd and Coles’s (in press) neurocomputational model of error processing, this error-related negativity (ERN) is elicited when the brain first detects that the consequences of an action are worse than expected. To study age-related changes in error processing, we obtained performance and ERN measures of younger and high-functioning older adults. Experiment 1 demonstrated reduced ERN amplitudes in older adults in the context of otherwise intact brain potentials. This result could not be attributed to uncertainty about the required response in older adults. Experiment 2 revealed impaired performance and reduced response- and feedback-related ERNs of older adults in a probabilistic learning task. These age changes could be simulated by manipulation of a single parameter of the neurocomputational model, this manipulation corresponding to weakened phasic activity of the mesencephalic dopamine system.     

Phonological sensitivity and the acquisition of new words in children

Two studies are reported which aimed to examine the relationship between phonological sensitivity and the acquisition of new words that systematically differed in the familiarity of their sound structures. In the first study measures of phonological sensitivity, phonological short-term memory, vocabulary, and nonverbal ability were administered to forty-one 5-year-old children. Phonological sensitivity was related to the paired-associate learning of phonologically unfamiliar words, but not to the learning of familiar words. In the second study a group of 14 nonreading 5-year-old children received phonological sensitivity training. A control group was trained in semantic categorization. After the training, the phonological sensitivity group did perform better on measures of letter knowledge and phonological sensitivity (rhyme and first-sound categorization) and appeared to learn phonologically unfamiliar words more easily. The findings of both studies suggest that phonological sensitivity can support the acquisition of novel words.     

A sociohistorical view of group psychotherapy in the United States: the ideology of individualism and self-liberation

A deep strain of individualism permeates American culture, rooted in the political-economic ideology of capitalism. The ideal of a self-governing individual is promoted, independent from social, historical, and cultural forces, whose thoughts and emotions are located within the construct of a masterful self, ready to be filled and expanded. This article traces the influence of self-liberatory ideology in American group psychotherapy through the religious revivalist and Mental Hygiene movements. The "progressivism" of pioneering group theorists is examined in terms of revisionist psychology and self-liberatory practice. Psychodrama and T-groups are demonstrated to be precursors to the encounter group movement in which the belief in self-liberation reached its zenith. Early group analytic approaches are seen to eschew transpersonal and group dynamic processes.     

Tamara Dembo's European years: working with Lewin and Buytendijk

In this paper early work of the American rehabilitation psychologist Tamara Dembo (1902-1993) is brought to light. She was highly influenced by the concepts of Kurt Lewin's topological psychology, and she used the framework of topological psychology to analyze her investigations on animal behavior carried out with the Dutch zoopsychologist Frederik J. J. Buytendijk. These investigations have so far been ignored and are being described for the first time making use of archival materials.     

Effects of noncontingent reinforcement on problem behavior and stimulus engagement: the role of satiation, extinction, and alternative reinforcement

This study examined the effects of noncontingent reinforcement (NCR) with and without extinction on problem behavior and stimulus engagement (consumption of reinforcement) of 4 participants. Reductions in problem behavior using NCR have frequently been attributed to both satiation of the reinforcer and extinction. In the current study, aspects of the NCR treatment effects were difficult to explain based solely on either a satiation or an extinction account. Specifically, it was found that stimulus engagement remained high throughout the NCR treatment analysis, and that problem behavior was reduced to near-zero levels during NCR without extinction. The implications of these findings are discussed with respect to the satiation and extinction hypotheses frequently described in the applied literature. Findings from basic studies examining the effects of response-independent schedules are presented, and are used as the basis for a matching theory account of NCR-related effects. It is proposed that reductions in problem behavior observed during NCR interventions may be a function of the availability of alternative sources of reinforcement.     

Resolving the debate over birth order, family size, and intelligence

Hundreds of research articles have addressed the relationship between birth order and intelligence. Virtually all have used cross-sectional data, which are fundamentally flawed in the assessment of within-family (including birth order) processes. Although within-family models have been based on patterns in cross-sectional data, a number of equally plausible between-family explanations also exist. Within-family (preferably intact-family) data are prerequisite for separating within- and between-family causal processes. This observation reframes an old issue in a way that can be easily addressed by studying graphical patterns. Sibling data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth are evaluated, and the results are compared with those from other studies using within-family data. It appears that although low-IQ parents have been making large families, large families do not make low-IQ children in modern U.S. society. The apparent relation between birth order and intelligence has been a methodological illusion.     

Counterconditioning in the treatment of spider phobia: effects on disgust, fear and valence

From the perspective that disgust is a core feature of spider phobia, we investigated whether the treatment efficacy could be improved by adding a counterconditioning procedure. Women with a clinically diagnosed spider phobia (N = 34) were randomly assigned to the regular one-session exposure condition (EXP) or to the exposure with counterconditioning condition (CC). In the CC-condition tasty food-items were used during the regular exposure exercises and the participants' favourite music was played. Both treatment conditions appeared very effective in reducing avoidance behaviour and self-reported fear of spiders, strongly attenuated the disgusting properties of spiders and altered the affective evaluations in a positive direction. CC was not more effective in altering the affective valence of spiders than EXP and was not superior with respect to the long term treatment efficacy at 1 year follow up. Apparently, regular exposure treatment is already quite effective in altering the affective-evaluative component of spider phobia and it remains to be seen whether it is possible to further improve treatment outcome by means of procedures which are specifically designed to reduce the spiders' negative affective valence.     

From image segmentation to anti-textons

We apply the 'patchwork engine' (PE; van Tonder and Ejima, 2000 Neural Networks forthcoming) to encode spaces between textons in an attempt to find a suitable feature representation of anti-textons [Williams and Julesz, 1991, in Neural Networks for Perception volume 1: Human and Machine Perception Ed. H Wechsler (San Diego, CA: Academic Press); 1992, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA 89 6531-6534]. With computed anti-textons it is possible to show that tessellation and distribution of anti-textons can differ from that of textons depending on the ratio of texton size to anti-texton size. From this we hypothesise that variability of anti-textons can enhance texture segregation, and test our hypothesis in two psychophysical experiments. Texture segregation asymmetry is the topic of the first test. We found that targets on backgrounds with regular anti-textons segregate more strongly than on backgrounds with highly variable anti-textons. This neatly complements other explanations for texture segregation asymmetry (e.g. Rubenstein and Sagi, 1990 Journal of the Optical Society of America A 7 1632-1643). Second the relative significance of textons and anti-textons in human texture segregation is investigated for a limited set of texture patterns. Subjects consistently judged a combination of texton and anti-texton gradients as more conspicuous than texton-only gradients, and judged texton-only gradients as being more conspicuous than anti-texton-only gradients. In the absence of strong texton gradients the regularity versus irregularity of anti-textons agrees with perceived texture segregation. Using PE outputs as anti-texton features thus enabled the conception of various useful tests on texture segregation. The PE is originally intended as a general image segmentation method based on symmetry axes. With this paper we therefore hope to relate anti-textons with visual processing in a wider sense.     

Differential recall of central and peripheral details of emotional slides is not a stable phenomenon

A number of studies have reported that central information of an emotional scene is well retained, whereas peripheral details of such a scene are poorly recalled. Experiment 1 tested the hypothesis that attentional narrowing is responsible for this phenomenon. In addition, an attempt was made to increase the ecological validity of the experiment by giving extensive self-relevant instructions. Results showed that, although an emotional slide elicited eye-movements consistent with attentional narrowing, the corresponding recall patterns were absent. Experiments 2 and 3 explored some of the variables that might be responsible for the latter result. Experiment 2, relying on the original design of Christianson and E.F. Loftus (1991), found enhanced recall of central information of an emotional scene. Experiment 3 systematically varied stimulus exposure and interstimulus interval durations. However, the results of this experiment were rather complex and did not fully support the predicted differential recall patterns. Possible explanations for these findings are discussed. It is suggested that other methods (e.g. increasing levels of emotion rather than involvement) may be more suitable for testing the attentional narrowing hypothesis of emotional memory.