What does visual agnosia tell us about perceptual organization and its relationship to object perception?

The authors studied 2 patients, S.M. and R.N., to examine perceptual organization and its relationship to object recognition. Both patients had normal, low-level vision and performed simple grouping operations normally but were unable to apprehend a multielement stimulus as a whole. R.N. failed to derive global structure even under optimal stimulus conditions, was less sensitive to grouping by closure, and was more impaired in object recognition than S.M. These findings suggest that perceptual organization involves a multiplicity of processes, some of which are simpler and are instantiated in lower order areas of visual cortex (e.g., collinearity). Other processes are more complex and rely on higher order visual areas (e.g., closure and shape formation). The failure to exploit these latter configural processes adversely affects object recognition.     

Aging and visual search: Generalized cognitive slowing or selective deficit in attention?

Abstract

Selective attention in normal aging was investigated using simple and conjoined feature visual search tasks. the effects of varying the location of the target (central vs. peripheral, left vs. right hemifield) and the complement of distractors, together with variability in task performance across subject groups, were also examined. the findings indicated that the feature extraction stage of visual search was preserved in older aged subjects. However, there was a differential age-related impairment in the feature integration stage of visual processing in the two older groups (66-75 years, 76-85 years). This was greater than the magnitude of decline predicted on the basis of generalized cognitive slowing. There was no evidence of a speed-accuracy trade-off in the performance of either search task. the findings of this study contribute towards the delineation of age-dependent and -independent processes subserving visual selective attention. the performance of older individuals may be relatively well preserved on more automatic, less demanding tasks such as simple feature search. By contrast, there may be differential age-related impairments on visual search tasks such as conjoined feature search, which may require more effortful or controlled attentional processing.     

Using a Theory of Change to Drive Human Resource Development for Wraparound

Achieving coherence and integration across staff professional development activities is facilitated when training, coaching and staff evaluation are guided by a clearly articulated program theory or “theory of change” that describes how skillful practice promotes desired outcomes. We focus on a theory of change for wraparound, a widely implemented approach to providing community-based care for children with high levels of mental health and related needs. Training, coaching and staff evaluation efforts within wraparound programs have typically been linked only very loosely to theory. We argue that wraparound’s unique history allowed it to evolve with limited theoretical grounding, and we then describe a theory of change for wraparound, focusing on the major causal routes that are hypothesized to lead to outcomes. Finally, we provide an extended illustration of how the theory can provide the basis for a coherent and integrated approach to developing the skills and capacities of staff members playing key roles in wraparound implementation.     

Performance on phonological and grammatical awareness metalinguistic tasks by children who stutter and their fluent peers

This study was undertaken to examine the performance of 23 children who stutter (CWS) and 23 children who do not stutter (CWNS) on three metalinguistic tasks. These included two phonological awareness assessment procedures (The Lindamood Auditory Conceptualization Test (LAC) and a Phoneme Reversal Task) and one modified Grammar Judgments Task where syntactic and semantic appropriateness of sentences was evaluated. Differences between groups were significant for the grammar judgment task, where CWNS outperformed CWS in judging syntactically and semantically anomalous sentences. Group differences were not significant for the phonological awareness tasks. The results underscore the importance of examining metalinguistic abilities of CWS through a variety of tasks. EDUCATIONAL OBJECTIVES: The reader will learn about and be able to: (1) recognize the relevance of examining metalinguistic abilities within the context of research on language-stuttering dynamics; and (2) identify measures of metalinguistic abilities that can be used to compare the performances of CWS and CWNS.     

Dysfunctional body investment versus body dissatisfaction: Relations with well-being and controlled motivations for obesity treatment

In this study, we investigated the associations between body image and psychological well-being, exploring the mediating role of controlled regulation for entering obesity treatment. In addition, we analyzed whether investment body image was more strongly associated with controlled regulation (and subsequent well-being) compared to evaluative body image. These analyses were performed controlling for baseline BMI effects. Participants were 139 overweight women (age: 38.0 ± 6.7 year; BMI: 32.0 ± 4.1 kg/m²) entering treatment. Evaluative and investment body image, controlled regulation, and psychological well-being were assessed. Body image investment was positively associated with controlled regulation; evaluative body image was not. Controlled regulation was negatively associated with self-esteem and psychological functioning. Controlled regulation partially mediated the effects of body image investment on self-esteem, but did not mediate its effects on psychological functioning. Results suggest that dysfunctional body image investment might undermine well-being within overweight women, partly by increasing controlled regulation for entering obesity treatment. Discussion focuses on the importance of enhancing body image and autonomy during treatment to improve well-being and weight outcomes.     

Space-, object-, and feature-based attention interact to organize visual scenes

Biased-competition accounts of attentional processing propose that attention arises from distributed interactions within and among different types of perceptual representations (e.g., spatial, featural, and object-based). Although considerable research has examined the facilitation in processing afforded by attending selectively to spatial locations, or to features, or to objects, surprisingly little research has addressed a key prediction of the biased-competition account: that attending to any stimulus should give rise to simultaneous interactions across all the types of perceptual representations encompassed by that stimulus. Here we show that, when an object in a visual display is cued, space-, feature-, and object-based forms of attention interact to enhance processing of that object and to create a scene-wide pattern of attentional facilitation. These results provide evidence to support the biased-competition framework and suggest that attention might be thought of as a mechanism by which multiple, disparate bottom-up, and even top-down, visual perceptual representations are coordinated and preferentially enhanced.