Differential activation patterns of occipital and prefrontal cortices during motion processing: Evidence from normal and schizophrenic brains

Visual motion perception is normally mediated by neural processing in the posterior cortex. Focal damage to the middle temporal area (MT), a posterior extrastriate region, induces motion perception impairment. It is unclear, however, how more broadly distributed cortical dysfunction affects this visual behavior and its neural substrates. Schizophrenia manifests itself in a variety of behavioral and perceptual abnormalities that have proved difficult to understand through a dysfunction of any single brain system. One of these perceptual abnormalities involves impaired motion perception. Motion processing provides an opportunity to clarify the roles of multiple cortical networks in both healthy and schizophrenic brains. Using fMRI, we measured cortical activation while participants performed two visual motion tasks (direction discrimination and speed discrimination) and one nonmotion task (contrast discrimination). Normal controls showed robust cortical activation (BOLD signal changes) in MT during the direction and speed discrimination tasks, documenting primary processing of sensory input in this posterior region. In patients with schizophrenia, cortical activation was significantly reduced in MT and significantly increased in the inferior convexity of the prefrontal cortex, an area that is normally involved in higher level cognitive processing. This shift in cortical responses from posterior to prefrontal regions suggests that motion perception in schizophrenia is associated with both deficient sensory processing and compensatory cognitive processing. Furthermore, this result provides evidence that in the context of broadly distributed cortical dysfunction, the usual functional specificity of the cortex becomes modified, even across the domains of sensory and cognitive processing.     

Strategies in landmark use by children, adults, and marmoset monkeys

Common marmosets (Callithrix jacchus jacchus), human children, and human adults learned to find a goal that was located in the center of a square array of four identical landmarks. The location of the landmark array and corresponding goal varied across trials, so the task could not be solved without using the landmark array. In Experiment 1, a matrix of discrete goal locations was presented and the landmarks surrounded and were adjacent to the correct location during training. After training, an expansion test was given in which the distance between landmarks was increased. Marmosets, children (ages 5–9), and adults all readily learned to use the landmarks to search accurately during training. On the expansion test, adults uniformly searched in the center of the array. Monkeys and children concentrated their searching near the landmarks rather than in the center. The monkeys, but not the children, searched more often on the directionally appropriate side of the landmarks than on other sides of the landmarks. In Experiment 2, children (ages 3–5) were trained with a continuous search space and with the goal farther from the landmarks so that a beaconing strategy rule could not be used. Several of the children failed to acquire the training task. Of those who learned to find the goal, three searched in the middle on expansion tests but most searched nearer to the landmarks. The “middle rule” strategy that is uniformly used by adult humans does not appear to be a preferred strategy for children or non-human primates.     

Let's Not Do Responsibility Skepticism

I argue for three conclusions. First, responsibility skeptics are committed to the position that the criminal justice system should adopt a universal nonresponsibility excuse. Second, a universal nonresponsibility excuse would diminish some of our most deeply held values, further dehumanize criminals, exacerbate mass incarceration, and cause an even greater number of innocent people (nonwrongdoers) to be punished. Third, while Saul Smilansky's ‘illusionist’ response to responsibility skeptics – that even if responsibility skepticism is correct, society should maintain a responsibility-realist/retributivist criminal justice system – is generally compelling, it would not work if a majority of society were to convert, theoretically and psychologically, to responsibility skepticism. In this (highly improbable) scenario, and only in this (highly improbable) scenario, the criminal justice system would need to be reformed in such a way that it aligned with the majority's responsibility-skeptical beliefs and attitudes.     

Assessing analytic applicants using an adapted version of the Australian schema for candidate competence

The author proposes an approach to the assessment of analytic applicants that is based on a schema relating to candidate competence. The protocol relies on the central notion that knowing what competencies we would be expecting of well‐functioning analysts leaves us well placed to know what capacities, and more importantly what potential capacities, we would be looking for in our aspiring applicants. The author is concerned that the traditional interview methods used have been rather individualistic, lacking in comprehensiveness and therefore not easy to teach. He makes a case for the described protocol having distinct advantages as an assessment tool over the traditional one, in that that it has clear, consistent, and comprehensive criteria, as well as a workable methodology. The author notes, as a particular advantage, the protocol's flexibility in being able to move fluidly from functioning as an instrument for selection, to an instrument for candidate evaluation. This allows, in situations of doubt, for particular competencies in a candidate to be further evaluated and tracked in an ongoing way whilst ‘in the field’.     

Sexist attitudes and authoritarian personality characteristics among Australian adolescents

This paper examines the suggestion that sexism is a central feature of authoritarianism among young people. One hundred seventeen Australian adolescent schoolchildren completed questionnaires containing Phillips' (1979a, Child Study Journal, 9, 21–35) measure of classical authoritarianism for children and balanced measures of two other aspects of authoritarianism, namely, directiveness, modified from Ray (1976, Human Relations, 29, 307–325) and attitude to authority, modified from Rigby and Rump (1981, Journal of Psychology, 109, 109–118). Factor analyses of the results for classical authoritarianism replicated Phillips' earlier finding with younger schoolchildren that eight items identified as reflecting a sexist attitude loaded substantially on a first varimax rotated factor. These eight items constituted a reliable sexism scale (α = .80), which correlated significantly with the remainder of the classical authoritarianism scale, after controlling for the contribution of age (partial r = .30). However, the partial correlations with balanced measures of directiveness and attitude to authority were not significant. These results suggest that sexism may be one aspect of authoritarianism, rather than a central feature.     

Amodal representation of occluded surfaces: role of invisible stimuli in apparent motion correspondence

A series of demonstrations were created where the perceived depth of targets was controlled by stereoscopic disparity. A closer object (a cloud) was made to jump back and forth horizontally, partially occluding a farther object (a full moon). The more distant moon appeared stationary even though the unoccluded portion of it, a crescent, changed position. Reversal of the relative depth of the moon and cloud gave a totally different percept: the crescent appeared to flip back and forth in the front depth plane. Thus, the otherwise-robust apparent motion of the moon crescents was completely abolished in the cloud-closer case alone. This motion-blocking effect is attributed to the 'amodal presence' of the occluded surface continuing behind the occluding surface. To measure the effect of this occluded 'invisible' surface quantitatively, a bistable apparent motion display was used (Ramachandran and Anstis 1983a): two small rectangular-shaped targets changed their positions back and forth between two frames, and the disparity of a large centrally positioned rectangle was varied. When the perceived depths supported the possibility of amodal completion behind the large rectangle, increased vertical motion of the targets was found, suggesting that the amodal presence of the targets behind the occluder had effectively changed the center position of the moving targets for purposes of motion correspondence. Amodal contours are literally 'invisible', yet it is hypothesized that they have a neural representation at sufficiently early stages of visual processing to alter the correspondence solving process for apparent motion.     

Melancholia and the Violent Regulation of Gender Variance: Reply to Commentaries

In this reply to James Herzog and Gayle Salamon, the “in”/“out” boundary of gender and the psychotherapeutic address of gender is considered. Particular emphasis is paid to the ways in which gender is constituted through aggressive and often violent forms of social regulation. Matters of social justice are considered as psychoanalysts and mental health workers take up normative violence in the form of policy speech. Clinical dilemmas with respect to gender melancholia, trauma, and shame are also considered.     

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.