Stimulus complexity and prospective timing: clues for a parallel process model of time perception

Whereas many studies have considered the role of attention in prospective timing, fewer have established relations between movement complexity and prospective timing. The present study aims at assessing to what extent motion complexity interferes with prospective timing and at delineating a neuropsychophysical plausible model. We have thus designed a visual paradigm presenting stimuli in sequential pairs (reference comparison interval). Stimuli are motionless or moving according to different complexities, and stimulus complexities are intermixed within each pair. To prevent a possible attention-sharing effect, no concurrent task was required. Our study suggests that movement complexity is a key component of duration perception, and that the relative judgement of durations depends on spatio-temporal features of stimuli. In particular, it shows that movement complexity can bias subjects’ perception and performance, and that subjects detect that comparison intervals are longer than reference before their end. In the discussion, we advocate that the classical internal clock model cannot easily account for our results. Consequently, we propose a model for time perception, based on a parallel processing between comparison interval perception and the reconstruction of the reference duration.     

On the role of regular phonological variation in lexical access: evidence from voice assimilation in French

The present study investigated whether lexical access is affected by a regular phonological variation in connected speech: voice assimilation in French. Two associative priming experiments were conducted to determine whether strongly assimilated, potentially ambiguous word forms activate the conceptual representation of the underlying word. Would the ambiguous word form [sud] (either assimilated soute 'hold' or soude 'soda') facilitate "bagage" 'luggage', which is semantically related to soute but not to soude? In Experiment 1, words in either canonical or strongly assimilated form were presented as primes. Both forms primed their related target to the same extent. Potential lexical ambiguity did not modulate priming effects. In Experiment 2, the primes such as assimilated soute pronounced [sud] used in Experiment 1 were replaced with primes such as soude canonically pronounced [sud]. No semantic priming effect was obtained with these primes. Therefore, the effect observed for assimilated forms in Experiment 1 cannot be due to overall phonological proximity between canonical and assimilated forms. We propose that listeners must recover the intended words behind the assimilated forms through the exploitation of the remaining traces of the underlying form, however subtle these traces may be.     

Is the influence of working memory capacity on high-level cognition mediated by complexity or resource-dependent elementary processes?

The aim of this study was to investigate the involvement of working memory (WM) in elementary activities and the nature of the mechanisms mediating the influence of WM capacity on high-level cognition. We demonstrate that even elementary activities such as reading digits, subitizing small arrays of dots, or solving simple additions like 3+1 are sensitive to individual differences in WM capacity. Moreover, we demonstrate that a complex task such as counting large arrays of dots involving these elementary activities as processing steps does not induce WM-related differences beyond what can be predicted from the concatenation of differences elicited by the task’s elementary constituents. In line with the time-based resource-sharing model, these results suggest that the influence of WM capacity on high-level cognition is mediated by the impact of a basic general-purpose resource that affects each atomic step of cognition.     

Response selection and response execution in task switching: evidence from a go-signal paradigm

The present study used a go/no-go signal delay (GSD) to explore the role of response-related processes in task switching. A go/no-go signal was presented at either 100 ms or 1,500 ms after the stimulus. Participants were encouraged to use the GSD for response selection and preparation. The data indicate that the opportunity to select and prepare a response (i.e., long GSD) resulted in a substantial reduction of task-shift costs (Experiment 1) and n-2 task-repetition costs (i.e., backward inhibition; Experiment 2) in the current trial. These results suggest that interference from the preceding trial can be resolved during response selection and preparation. Furthermore, the shift costs and the n-2 repetition costs after no-go trials with long GSD (i.e., response selection but no execution) were markedly smaller than after go trials. These findings suggest that the interference that gives rise to shift costs and n-2 repetition costs is related not solely to response selection but also to response execution. Thus, the present study demonstrates dissociable contributions of response selection and response execution to interference effects in task switching.     

How Anger Toward Absentee Fathers May Make it Difficult to Call God “Father”

Using parts of the prayer commonly known as the “Our Father,” a reflection is presented in which anger toward absentee fathers is seen as an inhibitor to relatedness to God as father. The way people behave toward and interact with their environment may be indicative of their interaction with the divine. Such attitudes make people question their religious experience and their ability to enter into intimacy with the divine. When people with skeptical attitudes toward father-like figures enter the world of pastoral counseling, ministers or counselors should help these people to explore and come to terms with the thought that God can be identified as father. It requires a willingness to approach the pain of separation. The goal of the counselor then is to help these people make substantial change in their ability to cope with anger and thus enter into relatedness with the divine. Pierre M. Balthazar is a student in the PsyD program in Clinical Psychology at the Illinois School of Professional Psychology.     

Biphasic ERK1/2 activation in both the hippocampus and amygdala may reveal a system consolidation of contextual fear memory

There is accumulating evidences to suggest that memory consolidation in some conditions involves two waves of neuronal plastic change. Using two fear conditioning procedures in male C57BL/6J mice, we have recently shown that consolidation of the foreground contextual fear memory required two waves of ERK1/2 activation in hippocampal CA1, while consolidation of cue conditioning was only associated with the early phase of activation. The present experiment further showed that this bi-phasic pattern of ERK1/2 activation was not restricted to hippocampal CA1, but could also be observed in other fear memory-related brain areas. The unpaired conditioning procedure (context in foreground) induced two waves of ERK1/2 activation in hippocampal CA1 and CA3, as well as in the LA and BLA nuclei of the amygdala. In contrast, the paired conditioning procedure (context in background) led to a transient early phase only in hippocampal CA1 and LA. In addition, ERK1/2 phosphorylation in the hippocampus was found to correlate with that in the amygdala nuclei specifically after the unpaired procedure. Taken together, our data suggest that the observed biphasic pattern of neuronal plastic events may reflect the interplay between hippocampal and amygdala activity-dependent plasticity critical for the system consolidation of contextual fear memory.     

Heuristic and analytic processes in mental models for conditionals: An integrative developmental theory

This article presents a developmental dual-process theory of the understanding of conditionals that integrates Evans’ heuristic–analytic theory within the revised mental model theory of conditional proposed by Barrouillet, Gauffroy, and Lecas (2008). According to this theory, the interpretation of a conditional sentence is driven by unconscious and implicit heuristic processes that provide individuals with an initial representation that captures its meaning by representing the cases that make it true. This initial model can be enriched with additional models (a process named fleshing out within the mental model theory) through the intervention of conscious and demanding analytic processes. Being optional, these processes construct representations of cases that are only compatible with the conditional, leaving its truth-value indeterminate when they occur. Because heuristic processes are relatively immune to developmental changes, while analytic processes strongly develop with age, the initial model remains stable through development whereas the number of additional models that can be constructed increases steadily. Thus, the dual-process mental model theory predicts in which cases conditionals will be deemed true, indeterminate, or false and how these cases evolve with age. These predictions were verified in children, adolescents and adults who were asked to evaluate the truth value and the probability of several types of conditionals. The results reveal a variety of developmental trajectories in the way different conditionals are interpreted, which can all be accounted for by our revised mental model theory.     

Experiences and Decisions that Motivate Women at Increased Risk of Breast Cancer to Participate in an Experimental Screening Program

Although the discovery of mutations on BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes associated with high breast cancer risk has given rise to screening and surveillance initiatives, there is little documentation on why high-risk women choose to enter screening programs. The objective of this qualitative study was to develop a detailed understanding of the experiences and decisions that motivate women with increased risk of hereditary breast cancer to participate in the multicentered Quebec experimental breast screening program. Our study involved 21 participants who were either BRCA carriers or at risk and untested. These women were interviewed while participating in the screening program. Our study demonstrates that intensive screening programs may provide valuable reassurance for women with increased familial risk of hereditary breast cancer, who count on early detection and rapid response from professionals if and when a problem arises. Health professionals must take these and others concerns into account to ensure their interventions are most consistent with women’s needs.     

The dedifferentiation problem

This article demonstrates that our more sophisticated theories of law lead us to a point where we are no longer able to distinguish law from culture, or society, or the market, or politics or anything of the sort. Not only are the various terms inextricably intertwined (something that other thinkers have observed) but we are no longer in a position to articulate any relations between these various terms at all. It is with this latter realization that the dedifferentiation problem kicks in. Because the various terms cannot be disentangled, we find ourselves in the odd position where there is nothing of any positive character to be said about their relations. Each is already the other and, thus, they can have no relation. This is rather bad news for the ways in which we have traditionally conceived theories of law—indeed any theory that gets off the ground by distinguishing law from a discrete something else (which, on first glance, would seem to include all legal theory).