Strategic attention deployment for delay of gratification in working and waiting situations

Two studies examined whether the detrimental effects of attention to rewards on delay of gratification in waiting situations holds-or reverses-in working situations. In Study 1, preschoolers waited or worked for desired delayed rewards. Delay times increased when children worked in the presence of rewards but, as predicted, this increase was due to the distraction provided by the work itself. not because attention to rewards motivated children to sustain work. Analysis of spontaneous attention deployment showed that attending to rewards reduces delay time regardless of the working or waiting nature of the task. Fixing attention on rewards was a particularly detrimental strategy regardless of the type of task. Study 2 showed that when the work is not engaging, however, attention to rewards can motivate instrumental work and facilitate delay of gratification as long as attention deployment does not become fixed on the rewards.     

Dual-task attention deficits in dysphoric mood

The attentional functioning of nondysphoric, mildly dysphoric, and moderately to severely dysphoric college students was tested using the attentional blink (AB) paradigm. These groups performed equally well at reporting a single target appearing in a rapidly presented stream of stimuli. All groups showed an AB, with report sensitivity for a 2nd target being reduced when the 2 targets were presented less than 0.5 s apart. Nondysphoric and mildly dysphoric participants showed the same size ABs, but the ABs for moderately to severely dysphoric participants were larger and longer. As predicted, the results showed that moderately to severely dysphoric individuals have attentional impairments. These impairments, however, were evident only in the more demanding dual-task condition.     

The impact of cross-training on team effectiveness

The authors examined the role of cross-training in developing shared team-interaction mental models, coordination, and performance in a 2-experiment study using computer simulation methodology (for Experiment 1, N = 45 teams; for Experiment 2, N = 49 teams). Similar findings emerged across the 2 experiments. First, cross-training enhanced the development of shared team-interaction models. Second, coordination mediated the relationship between shared mental models and team performance. However, there was some inconsistency in the findings concerning the depth of cross-training necessary for improving shared mental models. Results are discussed in terms of the impact of different levels of cross-training on team effectiveness.     

The Infrequency-Posttraumatic Stress Disorder scale (Fptsd) for the MMPI-2: development and initial validation with veterans presenting with combat-related PTSD

Researchers have identified difficulties associated with the use of traditional Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (MMPI-2; Butcher, Dahlstrom, Graham, Tellegen, & Kaemmer, 1989) validity scales with survivors of traumatic events. A new scale, the Infrequency-Posttraumatic Stress Disorder scale (Fptsd), was created from MMPI-2 items that were infrequently endorsed by 940 male combat veterans presenting for treatment at the posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) clinics of 2 Veterans Affairs Medical Centers. A variety of statistical methods were implemented that preliminarily established Fptsd's validity with a validation sample of 323 additional PTSD-diagnosed combat veterans. Results indicate that, relative to previously established validity and overreporting scales (F, Fb, and Fp), Fptsd was significantly less related to psychopathology and distress and better at discriminating simulated from genuinely reported PTSD. Clinical implications are discussed concerning the use of Fptsd to assess disability-seeking veterans suspected of overreporting PTSD symptoms.     

Generalizing a neuropsychological model of visual categorization to auditory categorization of vowels

Twelve male listeners categorized 54 synthetic vowel stimuli that varied in second and third formant frequency on a Bark scale into the American English vowel categories [see text]. A neuropsychologically plausible model of categorization in the visual domain, the Striatal Pattern Classifier (SPC; Ashby & Waldron, 1999), is generalized to the auditory domain and applied separately to the data from each observer. Performance of the SPC is compared with that of the successful Normal A Posteriori Probability model (NAPP; Nearey, 1990; Nearey & Hogan, 1986) of auditory categorization. A version of the SPC that assumed piece-wise linear response region partitions provided a better account of the data than the SPC that assumed linear partitions, and was indistinguishable from a version that assumed quadratic response region partitions. A version of the NAPP model that assumed nonlinear response regions was superior to the NAPP model with linear partitions. The best fitting SPC provided a good account of each observer's data but was outperformed by the best fitting NAPP model. Implications for bridging the gap between the domains of visual and auditory categorization are discussed.     

Tactile "capture" of audition

Previous research has demonstrated that the localization of auditory or tactile stimuli can be biased by the simultaneous presentation of a visual stimulus from a different spatial position. We investigated whether auditory localization judgments could also be affected by the presentation of spatially displaced tactile stimuli, using a procedure designed to reveal perceptual interactions across modalities. Participants made left-right discrimination responses regarding the perceived location of sounds, which were presented either in isolation or together with tactile stimulation to the fingertips. The results demonstrate that the apparent location of a sound can be biased toward tactile stimulation when it is synchronous, but not when it is asynchronous, with the auditory event. Directing attention to the tactile modality did not increase the bias of sound localization toward synchronous tactile stimulation. These results provide the first demonstration of the tactile capture of audition.     

The priming of face recognition after metric transformations

Four experiments were performed to test whether the perceptual priming of face recognition would show invariance to changes in size, position, reflectional orientation (mirror reversal), and picture-plane rotation. In all experiments, subjects recognized faces in two blocks of trials; in the second block, some of the faces were identical to those in the first, and others had undergone metric transformations. The results show that subjects were equally fast to recognize faces whether or not the faces had changed in size, position, or reflectional orientation between the first and second presentations of the faces. In contrast, subjects were slower to recognize both faces and objects when they were planar-rotated between the first and second presentations. The results suggest that the same metric invariances are shown by both face recognition and basic-level object recognition.     

Polysynaptic potentiation at different levels of rat olfactory pathways following learning

This study was aimed at investigating the consequences of learning on late polysynaptic components of evoked field potential signals recorded in parallel at different levels of the olfactory pathways. For this, evoked field potentials induced by electrical stimulation of the olfactory bulb were recorded simultaneously in the anterior piriform cortex, the posterior piriform cortex, the lateral entorhinal cortex, and the dentate gyrus. The different parameters of late components were measured in each site before and after completion of associative learning in anesthetized rats. In the learning task, rats were trained to associate electrical stimulation of one olfactory bulb electrode with the delivery of sucrose (positive reward) and stimulation of a second olfactory bulb electrode with the delivery of quinine (negative reward). In this way, stimulation of the same olfactory bulb electrodes used for inducing field potentials served as a discriminative cue in the learning paradigm. The data confirmed previous observation that learning was associated with a lowering in late-component-1 intensity of induction in the posterior piriform cortex. The use of simultaneous recording allowed us to further specify the consequences of learning on late-component distribution in the studied network. Indeed the data showed that whereas before learning, late component 1 was rather uniformly distributed among the recorded sites; following learning, its expression was facilitated preferentially in the posterior piriform cortex and lateral entorhinal cortex. Furthermore, learning was accompanied by the emergence of a new late component (late component 2), which occurred simultaneously in the four recording sites. The possible involvement of potentiation of polysynaptic components in recognition and/or consolidation processes will be discussed.     

A crossmodal attentional blink between vision and touch

There is currently a great deal of interest regarding the possible existence of a crossmodal attentional blink (AB) between audition and vision. The majority of evidence now suggests that no such crossmodal deficit exists unless a task switch is introduced. We report two experiments designed to investigate the existence of a crossmodal AB between vision and touch. Two masked targets were presented successively at variable interstimulus intervals. Participants had to respond either to both targets (experimental condition) or to just the second target (control condition). In Experiment 1, the order of target modality was blocked, and an AB was demonstrated when visual targets preceded tactile targets, but not when tactile targets preceded visual targets. In Experiment 2, target modality was mixed randomly, and a significant crossmodal AB was demonstrated in both directions between vision and touch. The contrast between our visuotactile results and those of previous audiovisual studies is discussed, as are the implications for current theories of the AB.