Sensorimotor synchronization: Motor responses to pseudoregular auditory patterns

Musically trained and untrained subjects (N=30) were asked to synchronize their finger tapping with stimuli in auditory patterns. Each pattern comprised six successive tonal stimuli of the same duration, the first of which was accented by a different frequency. The duration of interstimulus onset intervals (ISIs) gradually increased or decreased in constant steps toward the end of the patterns. Four values of such steps were used in different trials: 20, 30, 45, and 60 msec. Various time-control mechanisms are hypothesized as being simultaneously responsible for subjects’ incorrect reproduction of the internal temporal ratios of the stimulus patterns. The mechanism of assimilation (of a central tendency) led subjects to enforce a regular (isochronous) structure on the patterns. The influence of other time-control mechanisms (distinction, subjective expression of an accent, sequential transfer) was expressed mainly in differences between intertap onset intervals (ITIs) and the corresponding ISIs at the beginning of the patterns. The duration of the first two ITIs was in the majority of the trials in an inverse ratio to the ratio of the respective ISIs. The distortions resulting from the timing mechanisms concerned were more pronounced in the performance of nonmusicians than in that of musicians.     

Does the autistic child have a metarepresentational deficit?

This study examines the claim that autistic children lack a “theory of mind” because of an inability to metarepresent. We argue that if autistic children have a “metarepresentational” deficit in Leslie's (1987, 1988) sense of the term, then they should have difficulty not only with mental representations such as false beliefs, but also with external representations such as photographs. Autistic children's understanding of photographic representations was tested using Zaitchik's (1990) task. This task is modelled on the false belief task (Baron-Cohen, Leslie, & Frith, 1985: Wimmer & Perner, 1983) but involves “false” photographs where a photographic representation does not conform with the current state of the real world. Like Zaitchik (1990) we found that normal 3 and 4-year-olds found this task as difficult as the false belief task. In sharp contrast, however, the autistic children in our study passed the photograph task but failed the false belief task. As both tasks require the ability to decouple, this evidence challenges the view that autistic children lack “metarepresentational” ability in Leslie's sense. However, the results leave open the question of whether autistic children have a metarepresentational ability in the different sense of the term intended by Pylyshyn (1978), that is, representing the relationship between a representation and what it represents.     

Sensorimotor synchronization: Motor responses to regular auditory patterns

Subjects (N = 32) were asked to synchronize a motor response with tones in auditory patterns. These patterns were created from six tones and six intertone intervals of equal duration. The pitch of the first tone differed from the others. It was found that subjects used three types of timing in their motor response: (1) the first intertone interval was prolonged and the second interval was shortened, (2) the second intertone interval was prolonged and the first interval was shortened, and/or (3) the first interval and the second interval were of approximately the same length. The prolongation of the fifth interval was observed during all three types of timing. The results are explained using the concept of suprasegmental control of timing, which explains a prolongation of intervals at critical control point of the patterns. The occurrence of three different strategies of timing is discussed in connection with similar principles in musical performance.     

Der Sinn Pessimistischer Sätze

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Simulation of Preference Information in an Interactive Reference Point‐Based Method for the Bi‐Objective Inventory Routing Problem

In the research area of multiple criteria decision making, very few publications exist that explicitly design the simulation of a decision maker (DM) in an interactive approach. For this reason, we outline some methods widely used in the literature to identify common assumptions of simulating the DM's responses and the required input preference information. Our paper aims at covering the identified gap by introducing experimental concepts. Such concepts are used for theoretical analyses of a combined search‐and‐decision‐making procedure. Simulating the DM is a fruitful idea because the algorithm can be tested without integrating a human decision maker. Finally, we conduct experiments based on the proposed settings for a multiobjective inventory routing problem, which is a relevant and challenging logistic problem. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.