Divided attention modulates semantic activation: Evidence from a nonletter-level prime task

Research has recently shown that semantic activation is modulated in proportion to the amount of attention required for letter-level processing of the prime (the attention modulation hypothesis; Smith, Bentin, & Spalek, 2001). In this study, we examined this hypothesis with an auditory divided-attention task. Participants were asked to decide whether the pitch of a probe tone presented with the prime word was higher or lower than the basic tone presented with the fixation cross. Their target task was lexical decision to the target word. Experiment 1 showed that semantic priming was modulated by the amount of attentional resources. Moreover, in Experiment 2, this modulation was also found in a situation that eliminated the possibility of participants' response strategies. Yet, Experiment 3 showed repetition priming to be unaffected. These results support an amended attention modulation hypothesis in which modulation is not limited to letter-level processing.     

Feature binding in visual working memory evaluated by type identification paradigm

Memory for feature binding comprises a key ingredient in coherent object representations. Previous studies have been equivocal about human capacity for objects in the visual working memory. To evaluate memory for feature binding, a type identification paradigm was devised and used with a multiple-object permanence tracking task. Using objects defined by shape and color, observers identified types of changes in feature combinations across an occlusion event, and the effects of object motion and number of switches were investigated. With only one switch, task performance was impaired even under stationary conditions, suggesting highly limited capacity of binding memory. Second switch improved performance only in the stationary condition, suggesting that object motion strongly disrupts feature binding. Further analyses and experiments suggest that improvement by the second switch reflects transition of binding memory by selective attention.     

Personality Correlates with Frequency of Being Targeted for Unexpected Advances by Strangers1

Female Japanese students answered questionnaires about personality (Sociosexual Orientation Inventory and the Big Five) and the frequency of having been targeted for unexpected advances by strangers. Women who reported having been frequently targeted for being “picked up” with sexual intentions had unrestricted sociosexuality (r = .38, p < .0001; n = 145) and had personalities that suggested unrestricted sociosexuality (extraversion and openness). The frequency of being targeted for inappropriate touching was not associated consistently with personality traits. Women who reported having been frequently targeted for nonsexual advances were likely to rate themselves high in agreeableness. The ecological significance of the ability to choose a stranger with whom to interact, based on person perceptions through brief observation, is discussed.     

Assessing the multidimensional and hierarchical structure of SERVQUAL

Parasuraman, Zeithaml, and Berry introduced SERVQUAL in 1998 as a scale to measure service quality. Since then, researchers have proposed several variations. This study examines the development of the tool. Marketing researchers have first challenged the conceptualization of a perceptions-expectations gap and have concluded that the performance-based measures are adequate to capture consumers' perception of service quality. Some researchers have argued that the five dimensions of the SERVQUAL scale only focus on the process of service delivery and have extended the SERVQUAL scale into six dimensions by including the service outcome dimension. Others have proposed that service quality is a multilevel construct and should be measured accordingly. From a sample of 467 undergraduate students data on service quality toward up-scale restaurants were collected. Using the structural equation approach, two measurement models of service quality were compared, the extended SERVQUAL model and the restructured multilevel SERVQUAL model. Analysis suggested that the latter model fits the data better than the extended one.     

Computer‐based teaching of word construction and reading in two students with developmental disabilities

Students with developmental disabilities often have difficulty in learning the systematic relations between syllables (auditory stimuli) and characters (visual stimuli) required for reading. Two students with developmental disabilities participated in the present study which used computer‐based teaching applied in the home. We examined whether the students could read individual Japanese Hiragana characters after training with a constructional MTS procedure with differential outcome (DO) that was designed to teach word‐construction for pictured sample stimuli. The DO procedure provided the differential stimulus (in this case spoken syllables) after response selection. The results showed that the students not only acquired appropriate word‐construction responses through this task, they also learned to read Hiragana characters without direct training of this skill. The results are discussed in terms of the effect of the constructional MTS procedure with DO on the acquisition and transfer of reading characters and the applicability of computer‐based home teaching. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

空间行为关系类比匹配中客体相似性的作用

客体相似性在类比匹配中的作用,是一直存在着争论的问题。该研究通过交叉匹配结合与分离的材料设计,控制类比源和类比目标之间不同相似性,探讨了客体相似性在儿童和成人空间行为关系类比匹配中的作用。实验一通过让儿童和成人完成单目标匹配任务,检验客体相似性对儿童和成人类比匹配影响的不同。实验二采用眼动技术对客体相似性在成人类比匹配过程中的作用进行分区域探讨。结果发现,客体相似性影响儿童空间行为关系类比匹配的成绩,但不影响成人的成绩。成人类比匹配的过程受到结合在关系结构之内的客体相似性的影响。我们提出优先-限制调整观点解释客体相似性在类比匹配中的作用。     

大学生心理健康因素分析

大学生的心理健康问题与新时代社会发展有密切关系．他们的心理特点带有强烈的时代色彩。大学新生与毕业生的心理需求不同,所产生的心理障碍也不同,但通过心理咨询和心理健康教育,可以在很大程度上使学生们保持心理健康。     

Entorhinal cortical Island cells regulate temporal association learning with long trace period

Temporal association learning (TAL) allows for the linkage of distinct, nonsynchronous events across a period of time. This function is driven by neural interactions in the entorhinal cortical–hippocampal network, especially the neural input from the pyramidal cells in layer III of medial entorhinal cortex (MECIII) to hippocampal CA1 is crucial for TAL. Successful TAL depends on the strength of event stimuli and the duration of the temporal gap between events. Whereas it has been demonstrated that the neural input from pyramidal cells in layer II of MEC, referred to as Island cells, to inhibitory neurons in dorsal hippocampal CA1 controls TAL when the strength of event stimuli is weak, it remains unknown whether Island cells regulate TAL with long trace periods as well. To understand the role of Island cells in regulating the duration of the learnable trace period in TAL, we used Pavlovian trace fear conditioning (TFC) with a 60-sec long trace period (long trace fear conditioning [L-TFC]) coupled with optogenetic and chemogenetic neural activity manipulations as well as cell type-specific neural ablation. We found that ablation of Island cells in MECII partially increases L-TFC performance. Chemogenetic manipulation of Island cells causes differential effectiveness in Island cell activity and leads to a circuit imbalance that disrupts L-TFC. However, optogenetic terminal inhibition of Island cell input to dorsal hippocampal CA1 during the temporal association period allows for long trace intervals to be learned in TFC. These results demonstrate that Island cells have a critical role in regulating the duration of time bridgeable between associated events in TAL.

The linkage of temporally discontiguous events, called temporal association learning (TAL), is an essential function for episodic memory formation; for animals, when an event took place, and in what order a series of events occurred is directly linked to adaptation to continuous changes in the environment (Eichenbaum 2000; Tulving 2002a,b; Kitamura et al. 2015a; Kitamura 2017; Pilkiw and Takehara-Nishiuchi 2018). The entorhinal cortical–hippocampal (EC-HPC) network in particular is currently considered to bridge the temporal discontinuity between events (Solomon et al. 1986; Moyer et al. 1990; Wallenstein et al. 1998; McEchron et al. 1999; Eichenbaum 2000; Huerta et al. 2000; Ryou et al. 2001; Takehara et al. 2003; Chowdhury et al. 2005; Esclassan et al. 2009; Morrissey et al. 2012; Suter et al. 2013; Sellami et al. 2017; Wilmot et al. 2019).Two major excitatory inputs to HPC arise from the superficial layers of the EC (Fig. 1A), forming the direct (monosynaptic), and indirect (trisynaptic) pathways (Amaral and Witter 1989; Amaral and Lavenex 2007; Kitamura 2017; Kitamura et al. 2017). While pyramidal cells in EC layer III (ECIII cells) project directly to CA1 (Kohara et al. 2014; Kitamura et al. 2015b), the trisynaptic pathway originates from excitatory Reelin⁺ stellate cells in EC layer II (ECII) projecting directly to DG, CA3, and CA2 (Fig. 1B; Tamamaki and Nojyo 1993; Varga et al. 2010). CalbindinD-28K⁺/Wolfram syndrome 1 (Wfs1)⁺ pyramidal cells, another excitatory neural population in EC layer II called “Island cells,” form cell clusters along the ECII/ECI border (Alonso and Klink 1993; Fujimaru and Kosaka 1996; Klink and Alonso 1997; Kawano et al. 2009; Varga et al. 2010; Kitamura et al. 2014; Ray et al. 2014) and directly project to the GABAergic interneurons of stratum lacunosum (SL-INs) in HPC CA1 and drive feedforward inhibition to HPC CA1 pyramidal cells (Fig. 1B; Kitamura et al. 2014; Surmeli et al. 2016; Kitamura 2017; Ohara et al. 2018; Yang et al. 2018; Zutshi et al. 2018).Open in a separate windowFigure 1.Circuit schematic diagram of the medial entorhinal cortex (MEC)–hippocampal (HPC) circuit. (A) Major projections in the entorhinal cortical (EC)-HPC network. ECIII neurons (green) project directly to CA1. ECII Ocean cells (ECIIo, purple) project to the dentate gyrus (DG) (light blue)/CA3 (pink) initiating the trisynaptic pathway. ECII Island cells (ECIIi, blue) project directly into CA1. (B) ECIII projections (green) excite the distal portions of CA1 pyramidal cell (yellow) dendrites in the stratum moleculare. Island cells (ECIIi, blue) excite the interneurons of stratum lacunosum (SL-INs, red), which in turn inhibit the distal dendrites of CA1 pyramidal cells in SL.Trace fear conditioning (TFC) has been established as one suitable animal model for TAL (Fendt and Fanselow 1999; Maren 2001; Kim and Jung 2006) that can be also used as a translational bridge between animal and human learning (Clark and Squire 1998; Buchel and Dolan 2000; Delgado et al. 2006). Lesion, pharmacological, molecular, and optogenetic manipulation, as well as disease models in medial entorhinal cortex (MEC), demonstrate that MEC is crucial for TFC and temporal learning (Ryou et al. 2001; Woodruff-Pak 2001; Runyan et al. 2004; Esclassan et al. 2009; Gilmartin and Helmstetter 2010; Suh et al. 2011; Morrissey et al. 2012; Shu et al. 2016; Hales et al. 2018; Yang et al. 2018; Heys et al. 2020). Specifically, MECIII inputs into the HPC CA1 pyramidal cells are essential for the formation of TFC (Yoshida et al. 2008; Suh et al. 2011; Kitamura et al. 2014; Kitamura 2017). However, the temporal association function driven by MECIII neurons must be regulated for optimal adaptive memory formation, as too strong an association of a particular pair of events may interfere with associations of other useful pairs, whereas too weak an association for a given pair of events, in terms of weaker impact of events or longer duration of temporal gap between events, would not result in an effective memory (Kitamura et al. 2015a; Marks et al. 2020). In a naturalistic context, this would mean that more distant/quieter sounds, less intense somatic sensations (e.g., pain), or increased temporal distance between any two events would signal that the events are less likely to be causally associated, therefore less relevant, and less likely to be stored and recalled. In fact, successful TFC depends on the strength of event stimuli and duration of temporal gap between events (Stiedl and Spiess 1997; Misane et al. 2005; Kitamura et al. 2014; Kitamura 2017). However, the underlying regulatory mechanism for TAL remains hidden. Previously we demonstrated that feedforward inhibition by Island cells acts as a gating controller for the MECIII inputs to the distal dendrites of HPC CA1 pyramidal cells in stratum moleculare (SM) (Kitamura et al. 2014) to control TFC when weaker (in this case diminished footshock intensity) unconditioned stimuli were delivered for TFC, indicating that Island cell activity controls the temporal association when the strength of two discontinuous events are relatively weaker. However, the way in which the EC-HPC network regulates TFC with a longer trace period still remains unknown. Because the activation of Island cells would result in a net inhibitory effect on the local network in CA1, imposing a tight and specific regulation on associations of events across the temporal gap in TAL (Crestani et al. 2002; Moore et al. 2010; Kitamura et al. 2014, 2015b), we hypothesized that the length of the temporal gap between events would also be modulated by this mechanism. In this study, we examined the role of the regulatory input to this circuit arising specifically from the Island cells in the MECII using apoptotic elimination of Island cells, chemogenetic neural inhibition, and optogenetic terminal inhibition methods within an L-TFC protocol to give a thorough and complete assessment of the circuit involvement while considering each technique''s unique features.     

工作记忆训练提升幼儿流体智力表现

目前已有许多研究证据表明, 工作记忆训练能提高成人、儿童的流体智力成绩, 然而这种训练是否能够提高幼儿的流体智力表现, 更为重要的是, 如果训练确有成效, 那么这种训练效果能否长期保持？为此, 本研究选择了幼儿园4~5岁幼儿进行工作记忆训练任务, 考察工作记忆训练对流体智力的提升及保持效应。实验中设立3个组：实验组、控制1组和控制2组。实验组采用单个空间n-back的工作记忆游戏程序进行训练, 控制1组采用“水果忍者”的游戏程序进行训练, 两组进行游戏训练的时间均为14天, 每天15 min; 控制2组不进行任何训练。结果发现, 训练后实验组幼儿被试的流体智力成绩明显优于两个控制组, 在6个月后再进行测试, 这种优势仍然保持。本研究结果表明, n-back工作记忆训练可以提高幼儿的流体智力成绩, 并且这种训练效果具有持续的稳定性。     

音乐时间加工的影响因素

音乐的时间维度在音乐艺术中具有重要的作用。已有研究表明, 对音乐时间维度的加工受制于许多方面, 一方面, 音乐构成要素的特征影响着人们对音乐时间的加工; 另一方面, 听者的年龄、注意、工作记忆、音乐训练以及对音乐的熟悉性等因素也影响着他们对音乐时间加工的深度和广度。未来的研究应进一步确定音乐时间加工的影响因素及其相对重要性, 并对音乐时间加工中基因与环境的关系以及发展的敏感期等问题进行研究。