Tactile--visual temporal ventriloquism: no effect of spatial disparity

Participants made visual temporal order judgments (TOJs) about which of two lights appeared first while task-irrelevant vibrotactile stimuli delivered to the index finger were presented before the first and after the second light. Temporally misaligned tactile stimuli captured the onsets of the lights, thereby improving sensitivity on the visual TOJ task, indicative of tactile-visual (TV) temporal ventriloquism (Experiment 1). The size of this effect was comparable to auditory-visual (AV) temporal ventriloquism (Experiment 2). Spatial discordance between the TV stimuli, as in the AV case, did not harm the effect (Experiments 3 and 4). TV stimuli thus behaved like AV stimuli, demonstrating that spatial co-occurrence is not a necessary constraint for intersensory pairing to occur.     

The effects of desire for control and extrinsic rewards on the illusion of control and gambling

The role of individual differences in the desire to control events in an illusion of control situation was examined. Subjects high and low in the desire for control played several trials of a gambling game under conditions either facilitating or not facilitating the perception that the subject had control over the outcome of the game. Half of the subjects were allowed to trade their winnings in on prizes at the end of the experiment. The other half played the game without extrinsic incentives. It was found that high desire-for-control subjects were more susceptible to the illusion of control, but only when the winnings could be traded in on prizes. Desire for control level and illusion of control manipulations did not appear to affect betting behavior in the absence of extrinsic rewards.     

Rescue of synaptic plasticity and spatial learning deficits in the hippocampus of Homer1 knockout mice by recombinant Adeno-associated viral gene delivery of Homer1c

Homer1 belongs to a family of scaffolding proteins that interact with various post-synaptic density proteins including group I metabotropic glutamate receptors (mGluR1/5). Previous research in our laboratory implicates the Homer1c isoform in spatial learning. Homer1 knockout mice (H1-KO) display cognitive impairments, but their synaptic plasticity properties have not been described. Here, we investigated the role of Homer1 in long-term potentiation (LTP) in the hippocampal CA1 region of H1-KO mice in vitro. We found that late-phase LTP elicited by high frequency stimulation (HFS) was impaired, and that the induction and maintenance of theta burst stimulation (TBS) LTP were reduced in H1-KO. To test the hypothesis that Homer1c was sufficient to rescue these LTP deficits, we delivered Homer1c to the hippocampus of H1-KO using recombinant adeno-associated virus (rAAV). We found that rAAV-Homer1c rescued HFS and TBS-LTP in H1-KO animals. Next, we tested whether the LTP rescue by Homer1c was occurring via mGluR1/5. A selective mGluR5 antagonist, but not an mGluR1 antagonist, blocked the Homer1c-induced recovery of late-LTP, suggesting that Homer1c mediates functional effects on plasticity via mGluR5. To investigate the role of Homer1c in spatial learning, we injected rAAV-Homer1c to the hippocampus of H1-KO. We found that rAAV-Homer1c significantly improved H1-KO performance in the Radial Arm Water Maze. These results point to a significant role for Homer1c in synaptic plasticity and learning.     

The Role of Culture and Contextual Risk for Maternal Parenting and Children’s Behavior Regulation in Chile and Germany

Journal of Child and Family Studies - Children’s behavior regulation development takes place in diverse sociocultural settings. In this study, we take a multilayer ecological perspective and...     

Juvenile domestic pigs (Sus scrofa domestica) use human-given cues in an object choice task

Research on the comprehension of human-given cues by domesticated as well as non-domesticated species has received considerable attention over the last decade. While several species seem to be capable of utilizing these cues, former work with domestic pigs (Sus scrofa domestica) has shown inconclusive results. In this study, we investigated the use of human-given cues in an object choice task by young domestic pigs (N = 17; 7 weeks of age) who had very limited human contact prior to the experiments. Subjects had to choose between two bowls of which only one was baited with a reward. Over the course of five experiments, pigs were able to use proximal and, with some constraints, also distal pointing cues presented in both a dynamic-sustained and in a momentary manner. When the experimenter was pointing from the incorrect bowl towards the correct one, most of the subjects had problems solving the task—indicating that some form of stimulus/local enhancement affected pigs’ decision making. Interestingly, pigs were able to utilize the body and head orientation of a human experimenter to locate the hidden reward but failed to co-orient when head or body orientation of the experimenter was directed into distant space with no bowls present. Control trials ruled out the possibility that other factors (e.g. odour cues) affected subjects’ choice behaviour. Learning during experiments played a minor role and only occurred in three out of twelve test conditions. We conclude that domestic pigs, even at a very young age, are skilful in utilizing various human-given cues in an object choice task—raising the question whether pigs only used stimulus/local enhancement and associative learning processes or whether they were able to comprehend the communicative nature of at least some of these cues.     

Statistical modelling in the investigation of stranger rape

A sample of stranger rape offences (n = 271) registered in the Dutch Violence Crime Linkage Analysis System database in the Netherlands between 1997 and 2007 was studied with the objective of developing statistical models, which give an indication of the probability of basic offender characteristics. Observable crime characteristics concerning the modus operandi, interaction between the offender and the victim, violence, precautionary measures, and sexual behaviours were selected in the dataset. Offender characteristics were selected based on their usefulness for the police organisation in narrowing the scope of a criminal investigation. Spatial behaviour, criminal history, and living situation of the offender were selected. From the predictive models, four out of five achieved a correct rate of over 70%, and all models predicted better than the best guess method. The proposed models for distance and prior convictions for violence seem particularly promising. Both these models show an improvement of correctly predicted offender characteristics of more than 20 percentile points compared with that which could have been estimated based on the average in the total sample. The predictive value of the models needs to be tested further with ‘new offences’, which were not used to construct the model. In general, the current study supports the finding that crime characteristics can be used to get an indication of the probability of certain offender characteristics. Nevertheless, for an understanding of the relationship between the crime characteristics and offender characteristics, a further development of a theoretical framework is urgently necessary. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Implicit and Explicit Knowledge of Linear and Exponential Growth in 5- and 9-Year-Olds

The present study examined children's implicit and explicit knowledge of linear and non-linear processes. Five- and nine-year-olds (N = 60) were asked to forecast linear and exponential growth by providing the corresponding number of beads. Implicit knowledge was assessed via the magnitudes of the forecasts; explicit knowledge was investigated through children's verbal explanations of the growth process. Five year olds demonstrated a primary understanding of both linearity and nonlinearity. These concepts were more stable and more advanced in 9 year olds. Although implicit and explicit knowledge were significantly correlated, results suggested that implicit knowledge develops prior to explicit knowledge in this domain. Furthermore, knowledge of linearity emerged earlier than knowledge of nonlinearity.     

Body height and occupational success for actors and actresses

The association of body height with occupational success has been frequently studied, with previous research mainly finding a positive effect among men and positive or null effects among women. Occupational success has almost exclusively been measured so far by short-term success variables (e.g., annual income). In the present study, the relationship of success and height was examined in a group of actors and actresses using a large online database about movies (Internet Movie Database) where heights of actors and actresses are stated. The number of roles played in movies and television series during each actor's lifetime was used as a measure of long-term occupational success. No height effect was found for male actors but a significant negative effect was found for actresses, even after controlling for possible confounding influences (age and birth year). Compared to the general population, actors and actresses were significantly taller; however, actresses who were shorter than average were more likely to achieve greater occupational success, in terms of being featured in more movies.