Perceptual and Response Bias in Unilateral Neglect: Two Modified Versions of the Milner Landmark Task

Perceptual and response bias in estimating the proportion of the two segments of prebisected lines were disambiguated in a group of 121 patients suffering from left neglect by means of two variants of the Milner Landmark task (Milner et al., 1993). The first variant, LANDMARK-V, required a verbal response; the second variant, LANDMARK-M, required manual pointing. The paper reports and discusses the results obtained on each task and their correlations, as well as the relationships between either kind of bias and the intrahemispheric location of the lesion. It is argued that besides their usefulness as a diagnostic tool the proposed variants of the Milner Landmark task provide results that are worth further investigation in their own right.     

Is more choice always worse? Age differences in the overchoice effect

Current research on the overchoice effect has been mainly conducted from an adult point of view and with adult subjects. This study investigates whether children, adolescents, and seniors suffer the same negative consequences as adults when facing an overabundance of choice. Findings showed that the overchoice effect did not equally extend to all age groups. While adolescents were affected by the phenomenon in a very similar way as adults, children and seniors suffered fewer negative consequences of an overabundance of choice. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

A Genetically Informed Study of the Covariation Between Childhood Anxiety Dimensions and Social Competence

We investigated the nature of latent shared etiological elements in 398 Italian twin pairs aged 8–17, explaining covariation between high levels of anxiety symptoms and low social competence. We found significant negative correlations between Child Behaviour Checklist/6–18 Social Competence Scale and three (Panic Anxiety, Separation Anxiety, Social Anxiety) out of five Screen for Child Anxiety Related Disorders anxiety subscales. Results from causal analysis seem to exclude the hypothesis that co-occurrence between Anxiety Symptoms and Social Competence could be due to a direct phenotypic effect of one trait upon the other. Multivariate analysis suggested that both genetic and shared environmental components contribute to the phenotypic correlation between Social Competence and Anxiety Subscales, whereas unique environmental factors have a negligible influence. This means that both common genetic and shared environmental causal factors contribute simultaneously to increase risk of having low Social Competence and high Anxiety scores. In particular, covariation with Social Competence seems to be influenced by both genetic and shared environmental causal components in Separation Anxiety and Social Anxiety, whereas environmental factors have an irrelevant influence for covariation with Panic/Somatic Anxiety Subscale. Our results support the adoption of a broader view of the relationships between psychopathology and diminished social competences in childhood for both clinicians and educators.     

Rehabilitation Treatments for Adults with Behavioral and Psychosocial Disorders Following Acquired Brain Injury: A Systematic Review

This review was aimed at systematically investigating the treatment efficacy and clinical effectiveness of neurobehavioral rehabilitation programs for adults with acquired brain injury and making evidence-based recommendations for the adoption of these rehabilitation trainings. Using a variety of search procedures, 63 studies were identified and reviewed using a set of questions about research methods, treatments, results and outcomes for the 1,094 participants. The 63 studies included treatments falling into three general categories: approaches based on applied behavior analysis, interventions based on cognitive-behavior therapy (CBT), and comprehensive-holistic rehabilitation programs (CHRPs). Considerable heterogeneity exists in the reviewed literature among treatment methods and within reported sample subjects. Despite the variety of methodological concerns, results indicate that the greatest overall improvement in psychosocial functioning is achieved by CHRP that can be considered a treatment standard for adults with behavioral and psychosocial disorders following acquired brain injury. Both approaches based on applied behavior analysis and CBT can be said to be evidence-based treatment options. However, findings raise questions about the role of uncontrolled factors in determining treatment effects and suggest the need for rigorous inclusion/exclusion criteria, with greater specification of theoretical basis, design, and contents of treatments for both interdisciplinary-comprehensive approaches and single-case methodologies.     

Simple movement imitation: Are kinematic features sufficient to map perceptions into actions?

The aim of this study was to pinpoint the nature of the visual features used in the automatic mapping of perceived movements into similar executed movements, following the direct matching hypothesis. In Experiment 1 subjects imitated the lifting of one of two fingers, presented with different orientations. As predicted, stimuli which were further rotated away from the posture of the executing hand elicited slower reaction times. In Experiment 2, we verified that this orientation effect was not a purely perceptual effect by presenting the same stimuli but asking subjects to respond verbally. No orientation effect was found using a verbal response. In Experiment 3, we replaced the moving fingers by two arbitrary objects moving with the trajectories of the finger tips of Experiment 1. The same orientation effect as in Experiment 1 was observed. We conclude that in this experiment participants are using purely kinematic features to map perceived into executed movements.     

Rethinking the Ontology of Cartesian Essences

The old and recent debates on Cartesian essences have focused on the question of whether Descartes is a Platonist or a conceptualist about essences. I argue that this is a false dichotomy. An adequate account of Cartesian essences must accommodate and reconcile two central doctrines and texts in Descartes' philosophy. I will argue that recent conceptualist and Platonist interpretations neither accommodate these doctrines nor reconcile these texts. Such failures are not accidental since Descartes' doctrines of divine creation and simplicity render it impossible for Descartes to be either a conceptualist or a Platonist. Failure to notice this fact explains why there has been no progress on this exegetical issue.     

Visual Object Agnosia without Alexia or Prosopagnosia: Arguments for Separate Knowledge Stores

We review the points raised by Farah (this issue) in her discussion of the paper by Rumiati, Humphreys, Riddoch, and Bateman (1994), in which a case study was presented of a patient, Mr W., with visual object agnosia without either prosopagnosia or alexia. We reiterate the argument that Mr W. had impaired stored knowledge about the visual characteristics of objects, and that this was more severe than his deficit at a semantic level. In addition, we summarize supporting evidence from another patient (Humphreys & Rumiati, submitted), who showed the same pattern of breakdown as Mr W. We suggest that stored visual knowledge can be specific to the form of stimulus (words, objects, and faces), that these different forms of knowledge may be represented in distinct neural areas, and that agnosia can result after damage to stimulus-specific sites of knowledge representation.     

Religiosity,Marital Quality and Couple Generativity in Italian Couples Belonging to a Catholic Spiritual Association: A Quali-Quantitative Study

The current studies aimed, firstly, at exploring the relationship between the level of religiosity and marital outcomes, in terms of relationship quality and couple generativity; secondly, at gaining insight into which strategies the couples use to ensure their marital quality/couple generativity, and understanding if religious practices have a positive influence on the development of such strategies. The studies focused on a specific aspect of religiosity, that is the active involvement in a Catholic association, and compared couples with a high level of religious involvement (HRI) belonging to a Catholic international association (New Families) and couples with a low level of religious involvement (LRI). Study 1 (N = 194) adopted a quantitative approach and analyzed data from questionnaires administered in two phases. Study 2 (N = 32) adopted a qualitative approach (grounded theory) and analyzed data from semi-structured interviews. Results of Study 1 showed that HRI men scored higher in relationship quality and couple generativity than LRI men, while HRI women scored higher in couple generativity than LRI women. In Study 2, no differences were found between HRI and LRI couples with respect to the factors that ensure marital quality and generativity (care of the relationship, dialogue, sharing, maintenance of the centrality of the relationship), but HRI and LRI couples used different strategies to achieve these goals.