Interactive braille output for blind computer users

Blind readers were tested using two methods of reading text displayed by an Apple microcomputer. The first method employed an Optacon system, a device that displays tactile representations of single characters, and the second used an interactive single electronic braille cell that displayed grade 1 braille characters. The results demonstrated no difference in accuracy or reading speed between these two methods. Thus, the serial presentation of braille characters at a single position appears to be a viable method of information transfer between computers and braille readers.     

Synchrony effects in automatic and controlled retrieval

Using a speeded retrieval procedure, we investigated time-of-day effects in automatic and controlled retrieval. Morning-type adults were tested at either peak (early morning) or off-peak (late afternoon) times on a speeded implicit (Experiment 1) or explicit (Experiment 2) stem completion task. In Experiment 1, retrieval strategies were identified by changes in response speed between a practice phase with rapid retrieval and an implicit memory test phase. Performance based on controlled retrieval (shown by slowdown participants) showed more priming at peak than at off-peak times of day, a finding confirmed in Experiment 2, in which the participants were given intentional retrieval instructions when the materials switched. In contrast, performance based on automatic retrieval (shown by nonslowdown participants) did not differ across peak and off-peak times. The finding suggests a robust synchrony effect in controlled retrieval, but not in automatic retrieval, which does not appear to vary across the day.     

Touch screen assays of behavioural flexibility and error characteristics in Eastern grey squirrels (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Sciurus carolinensis</Emphasis>)

Behavioural flexibility allows animals to adjust their behaviours according to changing environmental demands. Such flexibility is frequently assessed by the discrimination–reversal learning task. We examined grey squirrels’ behavioural flexibility, using a simultaneous colour discrimination–reversal learning task on a touch screen. Squirrels were trained to select their non-preferred colour in the discrimination phase, and their preferred colour was rewarded in a subsequent reversal phase. We used error rates to divide learning in each phase into three stages (perseveration, chance level and ‘learned’) and examined response inhibition and head-switching during each stage. We found consistent behavioural patterns were associated with each learning stage: in the perseveration stage, at the beginning of each training phase, squirrels showed comparable response latencies to correct and incorrect stimuli, along with a low level of head-switching. They quickly overcame perseveration, typically in one to three training blocks. In the chance-level stage, response latencies to both stimuli were low, but during initial discrimination squirrels showed more head-switches than in the previous stage. This suggests that squirrels were learning the current reward contingency by responding rapidly to a stimulus, but with increased attention to both stimuli. In the learned stage, response latencies to the correct stimulus and the number of head-switches were at their highest, whereas incorrect response latencies were at their lowest, and differed significantly from correct response latencies. These results suggest increased response inhibition and attention allowed the squirrels to minimise errors. They also suggest that errors in the ‘learned’ stage were related to impulsive emission of the pre-potent or previously learned responses.     

Emotional context at learning systematically biases memory for facial information

Emotion influences memory in many ways. For example, when a mood-dependent processing shift is operative, happy moods promote global processing and sad moods direct attention to local features of complex visual stimuli. We hypothesized that an emotional context associated with to-be-learned facial stimuli could preferentially promote global or local processing. At learning, faces with neutral expressions were paired with a narrative providing either a happy or a sad context. At test, faces were presented in an upright or inverted orientation, emphasizing configural or analytical processing, respectively. A recognition advantage was found for upright faces learned in happy contexts relative to those in sad contexts, whereas recognition was better for inverted faces learned in sad contexts than for those in happy contexts. We thus infer that a positive emotional context prompted more effective storage of holistic, configural, or global facial information, whereas a negative emotional context prompted relatively more effective storage of local or feature-based facial information     

Final Thoughts on the Case of Pamela and Commentaries

Much gratitude is offered to Drs. Bach and Bromberg for their rich discussions of the case. Some reflections and final thoughts are gathered. The value of the single case study is underlined. The emphases by Bach and Bromberg on the centrality of trauma, failures in recognition, and the healing fostered by acceptance, consistency, and care in the treatment are highlighted. Bach points to the patient's need to regress and to “float in her own subjectivity” in the treatment, to not be impinged on by another “I” in the room. Bromberg's focus is on the need to accept all of the patient's different self states, including the guardian of the weak vulnerable self. Bach highlights the unbalancing of the analyst's narcissistic equilibrium in enactment and Bromberg emphasizes the importance of real and spontaneous engagement. Both point to how such enactments involve a crucial unthought living through of the central trauma itself in the treatment of such patients. The analyst is both in the enactment and a witness to it, allowing for the transformation of traumatic affect and bodily memory. The issue of regression and the concept of the false self are highlighted as topics for further discussion.     

Presentism and the Notion of Existence

The aim of this paper is to make presentism a dynamic view of reality by basing it on a notion of dynamic existence, that is, on a notion of existence which has a dynamic character. The paper shows that both of the notions of existence which are used in metaphysical theories of time (in presentism and eternalism) have a static character and, while such a notion is useful for eternalists, it is useless for presentists if they want to make their view able to remain in agreement with our everyday experience and self-consistent. It is demonstrated that both empirical and theoretical arguments indicate that the presentist should replace the notion of this static existence with the notion of a dynamic existence and that this maneuver allows the presentist to treat his/her existential thesis as equivalent to the thesis that time flows. Not only does this strategy allow us to express presentism in a simple, homogenous way which remains in agreement with our experience, but also permits us to solve some of the difficult problems which presentism faces, such as, for example, the objection of triviality and the question about the rate of time passage. Moreover, such an approach to presentism allows us to solve fundamental metaphysical problems concerning time such as the problem of the openness of the future and the fixity of the past, direction of causation, and relations between presentism and persistence through time by endurance.     

Enhanced preference for a flavour following reversed flavour—glucose pairing

In two experiments hungry rats showed enhanced preference for a flavour as a result of a procedure whereby the flavour followed presentation of 10% glucose—i.e. the reverse of the usual sequence. This provides the first example of excitatory conditioning resulting from reversed pairing involving an appetitive reinforcer. Experiment 1 compared a Cinnamon group, for which ingestion of glucose was followed after 3 min by cinnamon and on other days water was followed by wintergreen, with a Wintergreen group in which wintergreen followed glucose and cinnamon followed water. In a final 2-bottle test relative preference for cinnamon was greater in the Cinnamon than in the Wintergreen group. This effect was replicated in Experiment 2, which compared an Immediate group, for which, as above, drinking glucose was followed 3 min later by access to cinnamon, with a Delay group, for which there was a delay of 1 hr between glucose and subsequent access to cinnamon. Enhanced preference for cinnamon was found only in the Immediate group and appeared after only four glucose-cinnamon pairings. An important finding came from a choice test between glucose and saccharin in which the Immediate group showed a weaker preference for glucose than the Delay group. This indicated that a novel flavour may overshadow the association between the flavour of glucose and its consequences, which normally serves to enhance preference for glucose.