Is attention allocation sensitive to word informativeness?

Summary When two words are presented simultaneously, where one of them is predictable from the context and the other one is not, it is conceivable that attention is captured by the expected word (cf. Flowers, Polansky, & Kerl, 1981), or that attention is directed to where it is presumably more needed, namely to the unexpected word. To explore these possibilities we used a paradigm in which the subjects' primary task was to report either one or both of two simultaneously presented words, and attention was measured by performance on a secondary task, that is, detecting small gaps in a letter stroke. In a preliminary test, this measure of attention was found to be sensitive to the manipulation of attention by means of an arrow pointer. Word predictability was manipulated by presenting an incomplete sentence immediately before the two words. The sentence was either semantically congruent with one of the words or with neither of them. The mode of word report (partial vs. full) was manipulated between subjects. No difference was found in either mode between the gap detection scores in the expected and the unexpected words. Neither of those scores differed from the score for trials in which both words were unexpected. The results suggest that at the time of selection, or attention allocation, cues about word identity are not yet available, or are not utilized.Most of the work reported here was done as an M.A. thesis of the second author under the supervision of the first and third authors. The research was supported in part by a grant from the United States-Israel Binational Science Foundation (BSF), Jerusalem, Israel     

Learning from successful and failed experience: the moderating role of kind of after-event review

The claim that appropriate "after-event review (AER)" may increase the relative value of drawing lessons from successes, as compared with failures, was examined in the present study. The study was a laboratory experiment in which the effect of type of AER (failure-focused, success-focused, failure- and success-focused, and no AER review) on performance improvement and causal attributions was tested under conditions of earlier success and earlier failure. In general, 2 results were demonstrated: (a) Drawing lessons from successful experience is feasible, and its effectiveness is contingent upon the type of AER. More specifically, after successful events, the most effective review is that of wrong actions, whereas after failed events, any kind of event review (correct or wrong actions) is effective. (b) AERs elicit more internal (as opposed to external) and specific (as opposed to general) attributions. These 2 classifications moderate the effect of AERs on task performance.     

Skeletal structure of printed words: evidence from the stroop task

Do readers encode the sequencing of consonant (C) and vowel (V) phonemes (skeletal structure) in printed words? The authors used the Stroop task to examine readers' sensitivity to skeletal structure. In Experiment 1, CVC nonwords (e.g., pof) facilitated the naming of colors with congruent frames (e.g., red, a CVC word) but not with incongruent ones (e.g., green). In Experiment 2, the color black (a CCVC frame) was named faster with a congruent CCVC frame (e.g., grof) compared to either CCVCC (e.g., groft) or CVC (e.g., gof) incongruent controls. Finally, in Experiment 3, the color pink (a CVCC frame) was named faster with a CVCC frame (e.g., goft) compared to either CCVCC or CVC incongruent controls. In most cases, congruent frames shared no segments with the color name. These findings demonstrate that readers automatically assemble the skeletal structure of printed words.     

Historical change of suicide seasonality in the canton of zurich, Switzerland

Current research is yielding an increasingly heterogeneous picture of suicide seasonalities: They seem to depend on methods and, moreover, they seem to have smoothed in recent decades. This work examines the latter issue by comparing suicide seasonalities in the canton of Zurich, Switzerland, in the 16 th -18 th centuries, 1901-1920 and 1969-94. The results indicate shifts of peaks and lows on suicide seasonalities over the centuries, with a smoothing of seasonalities toward the 21 th century. The recent period does not show any suicide seasonality at all. The canton of Zurich seems to be ahead of the general trend found in other regions of Switzerland.     

Neuropsychological Differences Between Frontotemporal Dementia and Alzheimer's Disease: A Review

This paper surveys the similarities and differences between frontotemporal dementia (FTD) and Alzheimer's disease (AD). The review covers findings primarily from neuropsychological studies on memory, language, attention/executive function, and visuospatial abilities. However, neuropsychiatric and neuroimaging data are also briefly discussed. Distinguishing features of both FTD and AD are described in order to present a comprehensive clinical picture of these dementing diseases, which is essential for the process of differential diagnosis. The cause of specific cognitive deficits is also considered. Our comprehensive review of the empirical literature reveals that AD is characterized by early memory loss and visuospatial problems, while among the main features of FTD are behavioral abnormalities and executive dysfunctions.     

The social-encoding benefit in face recognition is generalized to other-race faces

Faces are visual stimuli that convey rich social information. Previous experiments found better recognition for faces that were evaluated based on their social traits than on their perceptual features during encoding. Here, we ask whether this social-encoding benefit in face recognition is also found for categories of faces that we have no previous social experience with, such as other-race faces. To answer this question, we first explored whether social and perceptual evaluations for other-race faces are consistent and valid. We then asked whether social evaluations during encoding improve recognition for other-race faces. Results show that social and perceptual evaluations of own- and other-race faces were valid. We also found high agreement in social and perceptual evaluations across individuals from different races. This indicates that evaluations of other-race faces are not random but meaningful. Furthermore, we found that social evaluations facilitated face recognition regardless of race, demonstrating a social-encoding benefit for both own- and other-race faces. Our findings highlight the role of social information in face recognition and show how it can be used to improve recognition of categories of faces that are hard to recognize due to lack of experience with them.     

Self-compassion and social anxiety disorder

Self-compassion refers to having an accepting and caring orientation towards oneself. Although self-compassion has been studied primarily in healthy populations, one particularly compelling clinical context in which to examine self-compassion is social anxiety disorder (SAD). SAD is characterized by high levels of negative self-criticism as well as an abiding concern about others' evaluation of one's performance. In the present study, we tested the hypotheses that: (1) people with SAD would demonstrate less self-compassion than healthy controls (HCs), (2) self-compassion would relate to severity of social anxiety and fear of evaluation among people with SAD, and (3) age would be negatively correlated with self-compassion for people with SAD, but not for HC. As expected, people with SAD reported less self-compassion than HCs on the Self-Compassion Scale and its subscales. Within the SAD group, lesser self-compassion was not generally associated with severity of social anxiety, but it was associated with greater fear of both negative and positive evaluation. Age was negatively correlated with self-compassion for people with SAD, whereas age was positively correlated with self-compassion for HC. These findings suggest that self-compassion may be a particularly important target for assessment and treatment in persons with SAD.     

Semantic encoding enhances the pictorial superiority effect in the oldest-old

ABSTRACT We examined the effect of a semantic orienting task during encoding on free recall and recognition of simple line drawings and matching words in middle-aged (44-59 years), older (60-89 years), and oldest-old (90+ years) adults. Participants studied line drawings and matching words presented in blocked order. Half of the participants were given a semantic orienting task and the other half received standard intentional learning instructions. Results confirmed that the pictorial superiority effect was greater in magnitude following semantic encoding compared to the control condition. Analyses of clustering in free recall revealed that oldest-old adults' encoding and retrieval strategies were generally similar to the two younger groups. Self-reported strategy use was less frequent among the oldest-old adults. These data strongly suggest that semantic elaboration is an effective compensatory mechanism underlying preserved episodic memory performance that persists well into the ninth decade of life.     

Patterns of visual dyslexia

This study reports two Hebrew-speaking individuals with acquired visual dyslexia. They made predominantly visual errors in reading, in all positions of the target words. Although both of them produced visual errors, their reading patterns crucially differed in three respects. KD had almost exclusively letter substitutions, and SF also made letter omissions, additions, letter position errors, and between-word migrations. KD had difficulties accessing abstract letter identity in single-letter tasks, and in letter naming, unlike SF, who named letters well. KD did not show lexical effects such as frequency and orthographic neighbourhood effects and produced nonword responses, whereas SF showed lexical effects, with a strong tendency to produce word responses. We suggest that these two patterns stem from two different deficits - KD has letter identity visual dyslexia, which results from a deficit in abstract letter identification in the orthographic-visual analysis system, yielding erroneous letter identities, whereas SF has visual-output dyslexia, which results from a deficit at a later stage, a stage that combines the outputs of the various functions of the orthographic-visual analyzer.     

Asymmetric option effects on ease of choice criticism and defense

Individuals often criticize others’ choices and seek to defend their own. In theory, the ease of criticizing a particular choice should correspond to the ease of defending it. However, we demonstrate that differences in the types of arguments put forth in choice criticism and defense result in a systematic discrepancy in the ease with which these tasks are performed. Specifically, criticism arguments tend to be based on norms or conventions, and defense arguments on idiosyncratic tastes or circumstances; accordingly, whether the chosen option is perceived as un/conventional has a significantly greater effect on the ease of choice criticism than on the ease of choice defense. Furthermore, assessing the ease of choice defense increases the choice share of unconventional options, whereas judging the ease of choice criticism has only a small impact on choice. We discuss the implications of our findings with respect to research on reason-based choice in socially-intensive environments.