Family myths in romantic fiction

Three types of myths frequently appearing in contemporary romantic fiction deal with traditional family values, spousal relationships, and love. Several myths belonging to each type are illustrated and analyzed. It is argued that by naturalizing some behaviors and idealizing others, romantic novels not only may indoctrinate their readers with a patriarchal ideology but also may inculcate upon them pathogenic family processes.     

Similarity between Petter's effect and visual phantoms

Here we draw attention to similarity between Petter's effect and the visual phantom illusion. Phantoms are visible when the spatial frequency of the inducing grating is low or the occluder is thin, whereas phantoms are invisible when the spatial frequency of the inducing grating is high or the occluder is thick. Moreover, phantoms are perceived in front of the occluder when they are visible, whereas the occluder is seen in front of the inducing gratings when phantoms are invisible. These characteristics correspond to Petter's effect, in which the thicker region tends to be perceived in front of the thinner region when two regions of the same lightness and of different sizes overlap, since 'thick' corresponds to low spatial frequency of the inducing grating or a thick occluder while 'thin' corresponds to high spatial frequency of the inducing grating or a thin occluder.     

Body attitudes and body experiences in suicidal adolescents

The relationships between cognitive and affective attitudes toward the body, body experiences (dissociation, insensitivity, and lack of control), and suicidal tendencies were examined as a derivative of the hypothesis that bodily attitudes and experiences may facilitate suicidal acting out. Three groups of adolescents (aged 14-18), including suicidal (made a suicide attempt) and nonsuicidal inpatients and controls, were compared with regard to suicidal tendencies, various body aspects, and depression and anxiety. A series of MANOVAs, discriminant analysis, Pearson correlations, and regressions were employed. The results show that the suicidal group differed from the two nonsuicidal groups in feelings toward the body, body protection, and body dissociation. Some aspects of bodily measures discriminated between suicidal and nonsuicidal subjects. In addition, various bodily measures were associated with and statistically predicted suicidal tendencies. The discussion focuses on the web of associations between body attitudes and experiences and their role in suicidal behavior.     

Learning of event sequences is based on response-effect learning: further evidence from a serial reaction task

Four experiments provide converging evidence that serial learning in a serial reaction task is based on response-effect learning, mediated by the learning of the relations between a response and the stimulus that follows it. In Experiment 1, the authors varied the stimulus sequence and the response-stimulus relations while holding the response sequence constant. Learning effects depended on the complexity of the response-stimulus relations but not on the stimulus-stimulus relations. In Experiment 2, transfer of serial learning from 1 stimulus sequence to another was only found when both sequences had identical response-stimulus relations. In Experiment 3, a variation of the stimulus sequence alone had no effect on serial learning, whereas in Experiment 4 learning effects increased when the response-stimulus relations but not the stimulus-stimulus relations were simplified. These findings suggest that serial learning is based on mechanisms of voluntary action control.     

Perceptual continuation and depth in visual phantoms can be explained by perceptual transparency

We try to explain perceptual continuation and depth in the visual-phantom illusion in terms of perceptual transparency. Perceptual continuation of inducing gratings across the occluder in stationary phantoms could be explained with unique transparency, a notion proposed by Anderson (1997 Perception 26 419-453). This view is consistent with a number of previous reports including that of McCourt (1994 Vision Research 34 1609-1617) who criticized the stationary phantom illusion from the viewpoint of his counterphase lightness induction or grating induction, which might involve invalid transparency. Here we confirm that the photopic phantom illusion (Kitaoka et al, 1999 Perception 28 825-834) really gives in-phase lightness induction and involves bistable transparency. It is thus suggested that perceptual continuation and depth in the visual-phantom illusion depend on perceptual transparency.     

Human performance on visually presented Traveling Salesman problems

Little research has been carried out on human performance in optimization problems, such as the Traveling Salesman problem (TSP). Studies by Polivanova (1974, Voprosy Psikhologii, 4, 41–51) and by MacGregor and Ormerod (1996, Perception & Psychophysics, 58, 527–539) suggest that: (1) the complexity of solutions to visually presented TSPs depends on the number of points on the convex hull; and (2) the perception of optimal structure is an innate tendency of the visual system, not subject to individual differences. Results are reported from two experiments. In the first, measures of the total length and completion speed of pathways, and a measure of path uncertainty were compared with optimal solutions produced by an elastic net algorithm and by several heuristic methods. Performance was also compared under instructions to draw the shortest or the most attractive pathway. In the second, various measures of performance were compared with scores on Raven's advanced progressive matrices (APM). The number of points on the convex hull did not determine the relative optimality of solutions, although both this factor and the total number of points influenced solution speed and path uncertainty. Subjects' solutions showed appreciable individual differences, which had a strong correlation with APM scores. The relation between perceptual organization and the process of solving visually presented TSPs is briefly discussed, as is the potential of optimization for providing a conceptual framework for the study of intelligence. Received: 28 December 1998 / Accepted: 20 January 2000     

Effects of dividing attention on the memory-block effect

S. M. Smith and D. R. Tindell (1997) reported that prior study of words that are orthographically similar to the solutions of test word fragments (e.g., studying ANALOGY and completing the fragment A_L _ _GY, whose solution is ALLERGY) reduced the fragment completion rate relative to a baseline condition in which unrelated words were studied. They called this effect the memory-block effect. In the present experiment, the authors replicated this effect using a larger set of materials than that used by S. M. Smith and D. R. Tindell. The authors also found that dividing attention at study eliminated the memory-block effect. This pattern mimicked the effect of dividing attention on recognition memory but differed from the effect on repetition priming effects. The authors suggest that the memory-block effect is driven by a mechanism different from that responsible for producing repetition priming effects in an implicit fragment completion test.     

Rowed to recovery: the use of phonological and orthographic information in reading Chinese and English

To examine how readers of Chinese and English take advantage of orthographic and phonological features in reading, the authors investigated the effects of spelling errors on reading text in Chinese and English using the error disruption paradigm of M. Daneman and E. Reingold (1993). Skilled readers in China and the United States read passages in their native language that contained occasional spelling errors. Results showed that under some circumstances very early phonological activation can be identified in English, but no evidence for early phonology was found in Chinese. In both languages, homophone errors showed a benefit in measures of later processing, suggesting that phonology helps readers recover from the disruptive effects of errors. These results suggest that skilled readers take advantage of the special features of particular orthographies but that these orthographic effects may be most pronounced in the early stages of lexical access.     

Context learning and the effect of context on memory retrieval in Lymnaea

Aerial respiratory behavior in Lymnaea was operantly conditioned so that the animals perform aerial respiration significantly less often. Using the standard training procedure (pond water made hypoxic by bubbling N₂ through it) both food-deprived and fed animals learned and exhibited long-term memory (LTM). However, food-deprived animals exhibited neither learning nor memory when trained under a condition in which the hypoxic pond water also contained a food odorant (carrot, the food-odorant procedure). Fed animals, however, learned and exhibited LTM with the food-odorant procedure. Thus, the presence of the food odorant per se did not prevent learning or the establishment of LTM. Further experimentation, however, revealed that the ability of the snails to have recall (i.e., memory) for the learned behavior was dependent on the context in which memory was tested. That is, if animals were trained with the food-odorant procedure they could only exhibit recall if tested in the food-odorant context and vice versa with the standard training procedure. Thus, although fed animals could learn and show LTM with either training and testing procedure, LTM could only be seen when they were tested in the context in which they were trained.     

Regulation of distinct attractive and aversive mechanisms mediating benzaldehyde chemotaxis in Caenorhabditis elegans

Olfactory-mediated chemotaxis in nematodes provides a relatively simple system to study biological mechanisms of information processing. Analysis of the kinetics of chemotaxis in response to 100% benzaldehyde revealed an initial attractive response that is followed by a strong aversion to the odorant. We show that this behavior is mediated by two genetically separable attraction- and aversion-mediating response pathways. The attraction initially dominates behavior but with prolonged exposure habituation leads to a behavioral change, such that the odorant becomes repulsive. This olfactory habituation is susceptible to dishabituation, thereby re-establishing the attractive response to the odorant. Re-examination of the putative olfactory adaptation mutant adp-1(ky20) revealed that the phenotype observed in this line is due to a supersensitivity to a dishabituating stimulus, rather than a defect in the adaptation to odorants per se. A modified benzaldehyde chemotaxis assay was developed and used for the isolation of a mutant with a specific defect in habituation kinetics, expressed as a persistence of the attractive response.