Looking to relate: teacher gaze and culture in student-rated teacher interpersonal behaviour

Mobile eye-tracking was used to investigate the link between teacher gaze and student-rated teacher interpersonal behaviour. Teacher gaze was recorded for 10 min during a teacher-centred part...     

Attention Demands in Balance Recovery following Lower Limb Amputation

The attention demands in balance control after damage to the peripheral sensorimotor system were studied in 12 persons with a recent lower limb amputation. The interference of an arithmetic task with two postural tasks of different complexity (quiet standing and active weight shifting) was examined several times during their rehabilitation while the subjects stood on a force platform. Control data were obtained from healthy subjects. For both postural tasks, persons with amputation performed worse than controls. Quiet standing, a relatively simple task, revealed clear dual-task interference only in the amputation group. Evidence was found for a reduction in dual-task interference as rehabilitation progressed. In contrast, voluntary (feedback-controlled) weight shifting, a more complex task, revealed an equal amount of dual-task interference in persons with amputation and in controls, without changes in interference over the period of rehabilitation. The results indicate that attentional mechanisms may be involved in postural control, depending on both the novelty and complexity of the task. Moreover, a reduction in attention demands of quiet standing may reflect a central adaptation of the postural organization to the peripheral sensorimotor impairments caused by lower limb amputation.     

Retrospective Denial as A Coping Method

Worldwide, gastric cancer is one of the most common and fatal cancers. The majority of patients present with an advanced stage of disease. Even with use of palliative chemotherapy most patients die within 1?year after diagnosis. Medical psychological attention after a diagnosis of incurable cancer is focused on end of life support. This paper presents the care of a patient treated with palliative intent with chemotherapy for an irresectable histologically confirmed gastric cancer. When, unexpectedly prolonged symptom free survival followed, the reaction of the patient came as a surprise to the attending medical team. In this case history we urge those who care for incurable cancer patients, that the rare patient who survives against all odds may require special psychological care.     

Reward, punishment, and cooperation: a meta-analysis

How effective are rewards (for cooperation) and punishment (for noncooperation) as tools to promote cooperation in social dilemmas or situations when immediate self-interest and longer term collective interest conflict? What variables can promote the impact of these incentives? Although such questions have been examined, social and behavioral scientists provide different answers. To date, there is no theoretical and/or quantitative review of rewards and punishments as incentives for cooperation in social dilemmas. Using a novel interdependence-theoretic framework, we propose that rewards and punishments should both promote cooperation, and we identify 2 variables—cost of incentives and source of incentives—that are predicted to magnify the effectiveness of these incentives in promoting cooperation.A meta-analysis involving 187 effect sizes revealed that rewards and punishments exhibited a statistically equivalent positive effect on cooperation (d =0.51 and 0.70, respectively). The effectiveness of incentives was stronger when the incentives were costly to administer, compared to free. Centralization of incentives did not moderate the effect size. Punishments were also more effective during iterated dilemmas when participants continued to interact in the same group, compared to both (a) iterated dilemmas with reassignment to a new group after each trial and (b) one-shot dilemmas. We also examine several other potential moderators, such as iterations, partner matching, group size, country, and participant payment. We discuss broad conclusions, consider implications for theory, and suggest directions for future research on rewards and punishment in social dilemmas.     

The central domains of personality pathology in psychiatric patients

There is general agreement that the classification of personality disorders in DSM-IV is unsatisfactory. We systematically reviewed all studies that have analyzed patterns of personality disorder symptoms and signs in psychiatric patients; twenty-two papers were included in the final synthesis. There is reasonable consistency over the number and type of personality pathology traits reported despite differing samples, varying assessment methods, and different statistical manipulations. There are three or four high order traits; an externalizing factor incorporating borderline, narcissistic, histrionic, and antisocial traits (the latter is sometimes recorded as a separate trait); an internalizing factor incorporating avoidant and dependent traits; a schizoid factor; and often a compulsive factor. Using these domains of personality pathology would simplify classification, have higher clinical utility, and allow relatively easy translation of current research.     

Delayed sensory feedback in the learning of a novel motor task

Summary Generally the therapeutical effect of EMG feedback is viewed in terms of the immediate contiguity between response and information. According to this view any feedback delay would deteriorate the result. In this article the validity of this notion has been investigated. Three groups of normal subjects were required to perform a difficult movement under three feedback conditions: immediate EMG feedback, delayed EMG feedback, and a control (no EMG feedback) condition. The results indicated a significant difference between the EMG feedback groups and the control condition. However, no such difference was found between the immediate and delayed feedback conditions. The results suggested that the immediacy of the feedback is not the main factor in EMG feedback, but the specificity of the information.This study was supported by Grant no. 15-35-03 from the Netherlands Organization for the Advancement of Pure Research     

Use of partial stimulus information in response processing

We examined the reaction time benefit that is obtained when salient features of the stimulus set and response set correspond. Components of the event-related brain potentials were used to measure the timing of stimulus-related and response-related processes in order to determine the locus of this effect. Of particular importance was the development of a new index of selective response preparation, the corrected motor asymmetry (CMA). We found no evidence for the use of preliminary, partial stimulus information in response preparation. These results suggest that the benefit is located primarily in response selection processes and probably reflects a more efficient algorithm for stimulus-response translation. Also, we found trial-to-trial variability in the duration of response selection to be the major determinant of variability in reaction time, whereas the durations of subsequent response-related processes were relatively invariant. Implications of these results for discrete and continuous models of choice reaction performance are discussed.     

Stage analysis of the reaction process using brain-evoked potentials and reaction time

Summary Motor processes partly determine reaction time (RT) in both choice reaction time and in binary classification tasks. These latter tasks are popular in cognitive psychology because the experimenter believes that he has kept the motor component simple and constant and therefore can attribute changes in RT to perceptual or cognitive processes. In this paper we used the P3 component of the event-related potential (ERP) as a time marker indicating the duration of perceptual and cognitive processes. The latency of this component is believed to reflect stimulus evaluation time independent of response selection and organization time.Two types of tasks were used: a choice-reaction time task and a binary classification task. Signal similarity and S-R compatibility additively affected RT, but only signal similarity affected P3 latency. The number of items in the positive set and response type affected both P3 latency and RT. Relative response frequency changed the bias in the cognitive evaluation of the stimulus, reflected in the latency of the P3 component, and affected RT only if the subjects preset their motor system (indexed by the late CNV). A model was presented which proposes that motor processes may partially overlap with the perceptual and cognitive evaluation of the stimulus. Both ERPs and RT are necessary tools in the study of the relative timing of these processes.     

Mental load,heart rate and heart rate variability

Summary Several investigators have shown that diminished sinus arrhythmia can be seen as an indication of increased mental load. The present experiment deals with the influence of different levels of mental load, operationalized as the number of binary choices per minute, on the regularity of the heart rate. Also we investigated the influence of four different rest conditions on the regularity of the heart rate.The results show that sinus arrhythmia scores differentiate significantly between several levels of mental load, but heart frequency appeared to be an even better indicator.No significant differences were found between the four rest conditions. Stability over three subsequent measurement sessions was satisfactory, and reliability within the measurement periods was very high.

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Zusammenfassung Mehrere Forscher haben gezeigt, daß abnehmende Sinusarrhythmie betrachtet werden kann als ein Indikator zunehmender mentaler Belastung.In der vorliegenden Untersuchung handelt es sich um den Einfluß verschiedener Niveaus der mentalen Belastung, operationalisiert als die Zahl der binären Wahlen pro Minute, auf die Regelmäßigkeit der Herzfrequenz.Außerdem untersuchten wir den Einfluß vier verschiedener Ruhezustände auf die Regelmäßigkeit der Herzfrequenz.Die Ergebnisse zeigen, daß auf Grund Sinusarrhythmiedaten differenziert werden kann zwischen verschiedenen Niveaus mentaler Belastung, aber die Herzfrequenz erweist sich sogar als ein besserer Indikator.Man stellte keine signifikanten Unterschiede zwischen den vier verschiedenen Ruhezuständen fest.Die Stabilität während drei verschiedener Meßperioden war befriedigend, und die Zuverlässigkeit der Messungen (reliability) innerhalb der Meßperioden war sehr groß.