Working memory capacity and the antisaccade task: individual differences in voluntary saccade control

Performance on antisaccade trials requires the inhibition of a prepotent response (i.e., don't look at the flashing cue) and the generation and execution of a correct saccade in the opposite direction. The authors attempted to further specify the role of working memory (WM) span differences in the antisaccade task. They tested high- and low-span individuals on variants of prosaccade and antisaccade trials in which an eye movement is the sole requirement. In 3 experiments, they demonstrated the importance of WM span differences in both suppression of a reflexive saccade and generation of a volitional eye movement. The results support the contention that individual differences in WM span are not exclusively due to differences in inhibition but also reflect differences in directing the focus of attention.     

Dissociating size representation for action and for conscious judgment: Grasping visual illusions without apparent obstacles

Visual illusions provide important evidence for the co-existence of unconscious and conscious representations. Objects surrounded by other figures (e.g., a disc surrounded by smaller or larger rings, Ebbinghaus/Titchener illusion) are consciously perceived as different in size, while the visuo-motor system supposedly uses an unconscious representation of the discs' true size for grip size scaling. Recent evidence suggests other factors than represented size, e.g., surrounding rings conceived as obstacles, affect grip size. Use of the diagonal illusion avoids visual obstacles in the path of the reaching hand. Results support the dual representation theory. Grip size scaling follows actual size independent of illusory effects, which clearly bias conscious perception in direct comparisons of lengths (Experiment 1) and in finger-thumb span indications of perceived length (Experiment 2).     

Changes in ambulance departures for assault calls during COVID-19 pandemic restrictions

Restrictions related to COVID-19 changed the daily behavior of people, including the expression of violence. Although an increased incidence of violent behavior, especially domestic violence, was expected during the pandemic, retrospective analyses have yielded mixed results. Records of ambulance departures to address injuries caused by assaults in the Pilsen region, Czech Republic, during the restrictive measures during the national state of emergency were compared to data from 3 previous years using general linear models. The number and severity of assaults were analyzed for the whole sample and separately for patients of either sex, for residential or nonresidential locations, and for domestic violence. Controlling for the seasonal effects, the number of assaults decreased by 39% during the pandemic restrictions compared to the 3 previous years. No difference was found between the effects of restrictions on assaults resulting in an injury of a male or female patient. The decrease was specifically pronounced in the sample of assaults in nonresidential locations, while no effect of restrictions was observed in assaults in residential locations and domestic assaults. Pandemic restrictions were associated with a decreased incidence of violent assaults that required ambulance services. Although the incidence decreased especially in those assaulted outside of their homes, we found no support for an increase in domestic violence or violence against women. Pandemic restrictions may have served as a protective rather than a risk factor for assaults severe enough to warrant a call for ambulance services.     

Misinformation and unexpected change: Testing the development of epistemic-state attribution

Summary Children's ability to infer a person's ignorance and false belief was tested in two stories which differed as to the relative ease for making these inferences. In the Unexpected Change story ignorance could be directly inferred from the emphasized fact that the target character had not witnessed the change, while false belief required the additional inference that the character would assume that things would stay as they had been initially. In the Misinformation Story false belief was made directly accessible by the content of a false message, while ignorance was not directly indicated by absence of information. It needed to be inferred from the fact that the available information was misleading. Results from 3- and 4-year-old Austrian and English children showed that manipulation of inferential difficulty did not affect their ability to make epistemic state attribution. In both stories children found it easier to attribute ignorance than false belief. To integrate this finding in the larger developmental context we suggest that children younger than 4 years find it difficult to distinguish between knowledge and ignorance because they do not understand the role of informational access in the formation of knowledge and they fail in false-belief attribution because they do not understand that incompatible truth values can be assigned to propositions.     

Early pavlovian studies on the effects of starvation

This communication is based on the pioneering studies performed by I. P. Pavlov’s associates, Yu. P. Frolov (in 1918) and I. S. Rozental’ (in 1918/1919) at the Institute of Experimental Medicine, in Petrograd. The changes in the “independent variable”—the dogs’ diet—were not planned but were the consequences of severe shortages of food for man and beast. The principal generalization concerns the order in which different forms of “complex nervous activity” were impaired: the order is opposite to the order in which they emerge in the process of ontogenesis. First to suffer was “internal inhibition,” as documented by the failure of stimulus differentiation. This was followed by the decrease in the magnitude of well-established conditional responses (CRs). As a result of a more severe impairment of the excitatory processes, it became difficult or impossible to establish new CRs. In time, previously established CRs to artificial stimuli, visual and acoustic, disappeared totally. The CRs to natural conditional stimuli (CSs) were maintained fairly well but, eventually, they too decreased markedly. In the terminal phase of starvation, the unconditional salivary reflexes continued to function, although their magnitude was depressed.     

Intracerebroventricular Administration of Mineralocorticoid Receptor Antisense Oligonucleotides Attenuates Salt Appetite in the Rat

The anterior ventral third ventricle (AV3V) region of the brain contains high concentrations of mineralocorticoid receptors (MR) and glucocorticoid receptors (GR) that are important in the maintenance of body fluid and electrolyte balance as well as other physiological processes. Daily intracerebroventricular pulse injections of MR antisense oligonucleotides significantly suppressed deoxycorticosterone acetate (DOCA) induced salt appetite in a dose-related manner. Similar administration of GR antisense or scrambled/sense oligonucleotide into the third ventricle failed to inhibit salt appetite. Salt appetite aroused after adrenalectomy was not suppressed by MR antisense oligonucleotide treatments but was suppressed by an antisense oligonucleotide directed against the angiotensin II AT1 receptor subtype. Receptor binding analysis demonstrated that MR and GR oligonucleotide treatments each reduced their respective receptor subtypes. Finally, although GR antisense oligonucleotide treatment was ineffective in suppressing DOCA-induced salt appetite, this treatment did increase stress induced corticosterone release as well as delayed the recovery of corticosterone to basal levels after stress.     

Abstracting Psychological Literature,Especially Non-English,in the 1990s

The cessation of non-English materials in Psychological Abstracts in 1988 resulted in a crisis, yet to be resolved, in the international exchange of information. As a long-term solution we favour founding International Psychological Abstracts, with the responsibility for preparation of the abstracts to be shared by the international psychological community. It is hoped that the compact-disc versions of the databases will become affordable to institutions around the world. In this communication, in addition to the abstract system of the American Psychological Association, attention will be given to other abstract journals in English as well as in French, German, and Russian.     

Some independence results in interpretability logic

A Kripke-style semantics developed by de Jongh and Veltman is used to investigate relations between several extensions of interpretability logic, IL.