Relation between self‐knowledge reference and self‐monitoring of emotional state1

Abstract: We used a task facilitation paradigm to examine whether self‐knowledge reference and self‐monitoring have a functional relationship. Eighteen participants performed a series of tasks: self‐knowledge reference, evaluation, self‐monitoring, and semantic. Responses on the self‐knowledge reference task were faster when the previous task was self‐monitoring rather than semantic. However, responses on the self‐monitoring task were similar regardless of whether it was preceded by the self‐knowledge reference task or the evaluation task. Our results suggest that self‐monitoring induces self‐knowledge reference.     

Cross-cultural Protective Effects of Neighborhood Collective Efficacy on Antisocial Behaviors: Mediating Role of Social Information Processing

Studies on the prevention of antisocial behavior in neighborhoods through efficacious social control have focused on collective efficacy as the theoretical mechanism by which children at the community level can be successfully socialized to develop an aversion to antisocial behaviors. We hypothesized that the effect of collective efficacy within communities on antisocial behaviors could be mediated by social-information-processing biases and tested the generality of these mediation effects for undergraduates (N = 929) in Japan, China, South Korea, and the United States, countries with widely varying cultures and political systems. Structural equation modeling revealed that the effects of collective efficacy on antisocial behaviors were perfectly mediated by social-information-processing biases. Findings also confirmed the generality of these mediational effects in all four countries investigated.     

Emotions Evoked by Viewing Pictures may Affect Temporal Aspects of Visual Processing

We examined how impression (such as safety, pleasantness, and impact), as well as emotional arousal and valence, evoked by viewing a picture affects temporal resolution of visual processing and perceived picture duration. In the first experiment as an index of temporal resolution of visual processing, we measured the noticeable duration of a monochrome picture after presenting a color picture. In the second experiment, we measured the duration of the picture presentation, which was equivalent to the duration of the presentation of a gray rectangle that should not evoke specifically safe or pleasant impressions. We found that the minimum duration in which an observer could notice a monochrome image in viewing a dangerous picture was shorter than that in viewing safe pictures. We also found that observers overestimated the duration of the picture presentation in viewing dangerous pictures. However, there was no significant correlation between the results of the two experiments. These results suggest that the basis for improvement of the temporal resolution in visual processing differs from that for the elongation of the perceived duration.     

Fading-figure tracing in Williams syndrome

Williams syndrome (WS) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by severe impairment of visuospatial abilities. Figure-drawing abilities, which are thought to reflect visuospatial abilities, have yet to be fully investigated in WS. The purpose of the present study was to clarify whether drawing abilities differ between WS individuals and typically developing children (TD). We compared the performance of two groups of subjects (WS, mean age 16 years; TD, 5-6 years of age) using a fading-figure tracing task that requires subjects to trace a target figure that is gradually disappearing from a PC screen. Although the TD group exhibited clearly improved performance with long fading time, the WS group did not. Moreover, the TD group exhibited poor performance for figures with more than six angles, regardless of the figure type (e.g. closed or open), whereas the WS group exhibited generally poor performance for figures with more than five angles but relatively preserved performance for open figures. These findings indicate that a combination of decreased visuospatial span associated with incomplete development of visual scanning and disproportionate development of global processing may cause drawing disabilities in WS.     

The Effect of Informative and Uninformative Cueing of Attention on Feature Integration

In the present study, the authors observed the effect of informative and uninformative attentional cueing on visual search for targets that were defined by a simple feature or by conjunctions of features. Three different types of attentional cueing were tested in three experiments: peripheral informative cueing, peripheral uninformative cueing, and central informative cueing. Participants showed a greater effect of cueing in detecting a conjunction of features than in detecting unique features only when attention was oriented by either peripheral or central informative cueing. This differential cueing effect was not observed when attention was oriented by peripheral uninformative cueing. The results suggest that voluntarily oriented attention plays a more important role in feature integration than automatically oriented attention does. The results also pose limits on the generalizability of K. A. Briand's (1998) proposal regarding the role of automatically oriented attention in feature integration.     

Context-dependent olfactory learning in an insect

We studied the capability of the cricket Gryllus bimaculatus to select one of a pair of odors and to avoid the other in one context and to do the opposite in another context. One group of crickets was trained to associate one of a pair of odors (conditioned stimulus, CS1) with water reward (appetitive unconditioned stimulus, US+) and another odor (CS2) with saline solution (aversive US, US-) under illumination and to associate CS1 with US- and CS2 with US+ in the dark. Another group of crickets received training of the opposite stimulus arrangement. At 1 d after the training for 3 d, the former group significantly preferred CS1 over CS2 under illumination but preferred CS2 over CS1 in the dark, and the latter group exhibited the opposite odor preference. The results of control experiments showed that the background light condition had no significant effects on memory formation or retrieval unless it was explicitly associated with US during training. Thus, the visual context affected learning performance only when crickets were requested to use it to disambiguate the meaning of CSs and to predict USs.     

Assessment of weight-error derivative (WED) analysis

Often considered one of the more discriminating tests between normal and brain-damaged individuals, the Category Test has been described as a complex measure of new problem solving, logical analysis, concept formation, abstract reasoning, and mental efficiency. Since publication of a booklet format by DeFilippis and McCampbell in 1979, researchers have attempted to develop other versions to reduce time required for administration. The present study compared the sensitivity of the Short Category Test, Booklet Format with the Booklet Category Test. Subjects were 22 male veterans seen for comprehensive neuropsychological evaluation and were classified into a brain-damaged or a control group (ns =11) according to independent neurological or neuroradiological evidence. Comparison of performances based on T scores yielded no significant differences between the groups on either format. Analyses of performance based upon suggested raw score cut-offs for the tests, however, yielded a statistically meaningful difference, but caution is in order when using T scores derived from age- or education-based normative data to suggest the presence of brain dysfunction. Raw score cut-offs yielded valid differentiation of individual patients in both groups.     

Modification of depth and distance perception caused by long-term wearing of left-right reversing spectacles

For 35 to 39 days, four observers wore continuously left-right reversing spectacles which pseudoscopically reverse the order of binocular disparity and direction of convergence. In three tests, we investigated how the visual system copes with the transformation of depth and distance information due to the reversing spectacles. In stereogram observation, after a few days of wearing the spectacles. the observers sometimes perceived a depth order which was opposite to the depth order that they had perceived in the pre-spectacle-wearing period. Monocular depth cues contributed more to depth perception in the spectacle-wearing period than they did in the pre-spectacle-wearing period. While the perceived distance significantly decreased during the spectacle-wearing period, we found no evidence of adaptive change in distance perception. The results indicate that the visual system adapts itself to the transformed situation by not only changing the processing of disparity but also by changing the relative efficiency of each cue in determining apparent depth.     

Cross-cultural differences in processes underlying sequential cognitive activity

Abstract: Similarities and differences in the processes underlying performance on the Stroop Color-Word Test (Card A, 100 color words/black ink; Card B, 100 color patches; Card C, 100 color words/incongruous ink color) were investigated with Japanese ( N = 96) and Americans ( N = 96) with stimulus items read: (a) vertically, top to bottom; and (b) horizontally, left to right. Total time as well as errors, namely, those involved with the underlying processes of identification and sequential organization, were significantly longer or more frequent on Card C than on Cards A and B for both nationalities and spatial arrangements. Further, greater frequency of serial organization errors in females than in males was obtained for the Japanese group, and the opposite for the American group. The implications and directions for future research are discussed.