More Life: Centrality and Marginality in Human Development

At both ends of the century, a border between the aberrant-marginal them and the ideal-central us has been constructed around and through the homosexual. I challenge the insufficiency of this characterization, so that we may learn more, not only about homosexuality, but also about the ways in which all human development is infused with an interplay between centrality and marginality. I argue that traditional developmental models are dominated by the normative logic of centrality, with limited accounting for the developmental necessity of marginality, whereas postmodern theories of subjectivity overvalue the potential of the margin and fail to account for the significance of similarity and coherence in human relations. I then use that criticism as a platform for proposing five quasi-axioms toward a new developmental model. Central to this new model, which employs constructs derived from chaos and systems theories, is the interplay of centrality and marginality in any given life.     

Distinct mechanisms for the representation of moving and static objects

The visual system has been suggested to integrate different views of an object in motion. We investigated differences in the way moving and static objects are represented by testing for priming effects to previously seen ("known") and novel object views. We showed priming effects for moving objects across image changes (e.g., mirror reversals, changes in size, and changes in polarity) but not over temporal delays. The opposite pattern of results was observed for objects presented statically; that is, static objects were primed over temporal delays but not across image changes. These results suggest that representations for moving objects are: (1) updated continuously across image changes, whereas static object representations generalize only across similar images, and (2) more short-lived than static object representations. These results suggest two distinct representational mechanisms: a static object mechanism rather spatially refined and permanent, possibly suited for visual recognition, and a motion-based object mechanism more temporary and less spatially refined, possibly suited for visual guidance of motor actions.     

Priming of popout: III. A short-term implicit memory system beneficial for rapid target selection

The priming of popout (PoP) (Maljkovic & Nakayama, 1994, 1996) increases the speed of attentional deployment to subsequent targets having the same feature characteristic and relative position, it lasts for approximately 5-8 trials, and is cumulative. Here we establish PoP as an example of short-term implicit memory by showing that it is qualitatively different from explicit memory. Using a post-cued recall procedure embedded in the stream of search task trials, we show that explicit memory is not selective as is PoP and is of much shorter duration. As such we argue that explicit memory is unlikely to account for the properties of PoP. In examining the decay of PoP, we find that: PoP is not evident after a 90sec delay, it does not show passive decay over much shorter intervals (1-3sec), and it gets decremented by attentional deployments to visually dissimilar stimuli, the size of the decrement being related to task difficulty. The results, taken together, suggest that PoP reflects a functionally beneficial memory system, specialized for the rapid and automatic selection of items for focal attention and saccadic eye movements.     

Edge-induced illusory contours and visual detection: Subthreshold summation or spatial cueing?

Findings that illusory contours can facilitate visual detection of a subthreshold real line (Dresp & Bonnet, 1995) were not replicated, when line-induced instead of edge-induced illusory contour stimuli were used (Salvano-Pardieu et al., 2006). Rather, the results of the latter study supported the importance of spatial cues. The present study was designed to investigate whether spatial cueing might also facilitate detection of targets superimposed on edge-induced illusory contours. In Experiment 1, a target line was superimposed on the illusory contour of a Kanizsa square, presented between dots with a precise or distant location to the target, or on a homogeneous field (control). Detection of the target was poorest for the control, followed by the distant-dots and Kanizsa conditions, whereas it was best for precisely cueing dots. Experiment 2 replicated the conditions in Experiment 1 (Kanizsa, precisely cueing dots, and control) with additional controls for possible luminance effects. The two new conditions matched the Kanizsa condition for overall luminance and preciseness of spatial cueing without generating illusory contours. Performance was best in the dot condition and worst in the control, but the same across the Kanizsa and matched luminance conditions. In Experiments 3 and 4, the stimuli presented were matched more closely to those used by Dresp and Bonnet, but still the results confirmed those obtained in our Experiments 1 and 2. Together, these experiments strongly suggest that detection is also facilitated by spatial cueing rather than subthreshold summation, in the case of edge-induced illusory contours.     

Spatial representations activated during real‐time comprehension of verbs

Previous research has shown that na_ve participants display a high level of agreement when asked to choose or drawschematic representations, or image schemas, of concrete and abstract verbs [Proceedings of the 23rd Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, 2001, Erlbaum, Mawhah, NJ, p. 873]. For example, participants tended to ascribe a horizontal image schema to push, and a vertical image schema to respect. This consistency in offline data is preliminary evidence that language invokes spatial forms of representation. It also provided norms that were used in the present research to investigate the activation of spatial image schemas during online language comprehension. We predicted that if comprehending a verb activates a spatial representation that is extended along a particular horizontal or vertical axis, it will affect other forms of spatial processing along that axis. Participants listened to short sentences while engaged in a visual discrimination task (Experiment 1) and a picture memory task (Experiment 2). In both cases, reaction times showed an interaction between the horizontal/vertical nature of the verb's image schema, and the horizontal/vertical position of the visual stimuli. We argue that such spatial effects of verb comprehension provide evidence for the perceptual–motor character of linguistic representations.     

Subclinical delusional ideation and a self‐reference bias in everyday reasoning

Previous studies (e.g. Moller & Husby, 2000 ; Blackwood et al., 2004 ) have revealed that delusional thinking is accompanied by an exaggerated focus upon the self and upon stimuli that are perceived to be related to the self. The objective was to examine whether those high in subclinical delusional ideation exhibit a heightened tendency for self‐reference. Using a mixed design, healthy individuals, classified into high‐ and low‐scoring groups on the Peters et al. Delusions Inventory ( Peters, Day, & Garety, 1996 ), were compared on everyday reasoning tasks across three experiments. High‐PDI scorers, in contrast to the low‐PDI group, rated self‐referent objections to everyday arguments as stronger than other‐referent objections and formulated more self‐referent assertion‐based objections to everyday arguments. The findings support the notion that subclinical delusional ideation is linked to a self‐reference bias, which is evident in the sort of everyday thinking that people engage in when forming or evaluating their beliefs and which may contribute to delusion formation.     

Numeric comparison in a visually-guided manual reaching task

Nearly all studies on perception and cognition have used discrete responses to infer internal cognitive processes. In the current study, we demonstrate that visually-guided manual reaching can provide new opportunities to access internal processes over time. In each trial, participants were required to compare a single digit Arabic number presented on the center square with the standard, 5. Participants were asked to reach and touch one of three squares on the screen with their index finger while their hand movement trajectories were recorded: the left square for 1-4, the center for 5, and the right for 6-9. Direct evidence for an analogue representation of numbers was found in early as well as in later portions of hand trajectories, showing systematic shifts in position for small differences in numerical magnitude.