Age effects in perception of time

Despite the widespread belief that the subjective speed of the passage of time increases with age, empirical results are controversial. In this study, a combination of questionnaires was employed to assess subjective time perception by 499 subjects, ages 14 to 94 years. Pearson correlations and nonlinear regression analyses on a variety of questionnaires and the age of the participants show that the momentary perception of the passage of time and the retrospective judgment of past periods of time are a function of chronological age; however, small-to-moderate effects accounted for at most 10% of the variance. Results generally support the widespread perception that the passage of time speeds up with age. These results are discussed in the context of models of prospective and retrospective time judgment, but interpretations have to be treated with caution given methodological limitations.     

Attentional strategic control over nonlexical and lexical processing in written spelling to dictation in adults

We conducted four experiments to investigate whether adults can exert attentional strategic control over nonlexical and lexical processing in written spelling to dictation. In Experiment 1, regular and irregular words were produced either in a nonword context (regular and irregular nonwords) or in a word context (high-frequency regular and irregular words), whereas in Experiment 2, the same set of words was produced either in a regular nonword or in an irregular low-frequency word context. Experiment 3 was a replication of Experiment 2 but with increased manipulation of the context. In Experiment 4, participants had to produce either under time pressure or in response to standard written spelling instructions. Regularity effects were found in all the experiments, but their size was not reliably affected by manipulations intended to increase or decrease reliance on nonlexical processing. More particularly, the results from Experiment 4 show that adults can speed up the initialization of their writing responses to a substantial degree without altering regularity effects on either latencies or spelling errors. Our findings suggest that, although adults are able to generate an internal deadline criterion of when to initialize the writing responses, nonlexical processing is a mandatory process that is not subject to attentional strategic control in written spelling to dictation.     

Liberalism and the Privatised Family: The Legacy of Rousseau

This article argues that the intellectual legacy of Rousseau is at the root of the failure of 20th century egalitarian theorists such as Rawls and Dworkin to engage intellectually with feminist theorists working within the liberal tradition. Through an extended critique of Rousseau’s delineation of the relationship between liberal citizenship and the private family, it argues that the failure of such liberal theorists to take gender hierarchy seriously is a consequence of their attempt to place the private family outside the sphere not only of politics, but also of justice.     

Spatial learning in rats is impaired by microinfusions of protein kinase C-gamma antisense oligodeoxynucleotide within the nucleus accumbens

The nucleus accumbens (NAcc) has been shown to play a role in motor and spatial learning. Protein kinase C (PKC) has been implicated in the mechanisms of initiation and maintenance of long-term potentiation that is thought to be involved in the storage of long-term memory. In the present study, the importance of de novo synthesis of PKC-gamma within the NAcc in the acquisition and retention of spatial discrimination learning was assessed using an antisense knockdown approach. Separate groups of Long-Evans rats were exposed to acute microinfusions (6microg/microl) of PKC-gamma antisense oligodeoxynucleotide (AS-ODN), control oligodeoxynucleotide (C-ODN) or vehicle into the NAcc at 24 and 3h before each training session. Behavioral findings showed that the blockade of NAcc-PKC-gamma translation caused impairments in the early phase of learning and retention of spatial information. Biochemical experiments showed that PKC-gamma expression was reduced and Ca(2+)/phospholipid-dependent protein kinase C (PKC) activity was blocked significantly in the AS-ODN-treated rats in comparison with control rats. The present findings suggest that NAcc-PKC-gamma plays a role during the early acquisition of spatial learning. Also, retention test results suggest that NAcc-PKC-gamma may be working as an intermediate factor involved in the onset of molecular mechanisms necessary for spatial memory consolidation within the NAcc.     

Allophonic mode of speech perception in dyslexia

Perceptual discrimination between speech sounds belonging to different phoneme categories is better than that between sounds falling within the same category. This property, known as "categorical perception," is weaker in children affected by dyslexia. Categorical perception develops from the predispositions of newborns for discriminating all potential phoneme categories in the world's languages. Predispositions that are not relevant for phoneme perception in the ambient language are usually deactivated during early childhood. However, the current study shows that dyslexic children maintain a higher sensitivity to phonemic distinctions irrelevant in their linguistic environment. This suggests that dyslexic children use an allophonic mode of speech perception that, although without straightforward consequences for oral communication, has obvious implications for the acquisition of alphabetic writing. Allophonic perception specifically affects the mapping between graphemes and phonemes, contrary to other manifestations of dyslexia, and may be a core deficit.     

Changes in the structure of children's isometric force variability with practice

This study examined the effect of age and practice on the structure of children's force variability to test the information processing hypothesis that a reduction of sensorimotor system noise accounts in large part for age-related reductions in perceptual-motor performance variability. In the study, 6-year-olds, 10-year-olds, and young adults practiced on 5 consecutive days (15 trials/day), maintaining for 15-s trials a constant level of force (5 or 25% of maximum voluntary contraction) against an object using a pinch grip (thumb and index finger). With increasing age, the amount of force error and variability decreased, but the sequential structure of variability increased in irregularity. With practice, children reduced the amount of variability by changing the structure of the force output so as to be more similar to that of their older counterparts. The findings provide further evidence that practice-driven changes in the structure of force output, rather than a decline in the amount of white noise, largely account for age-related reductions in the amount of force variability.     

Beyond the individual: the impact of ethnic context and classroom behavioral norms on victims' adjustment

With a sample of 1,630 sixth-grade students from 77 classrooms, the authors used hierarchical linear modeling to examine how ethnicity within context and classroom social disorder influenced the association between peer victimization and social-psychological adjustment (loneliness and social anxiety). Victimized students in classrooms where many classmates shared their ethnicity reported feeling the most loneliness and social anxiety. Additionally, classroom-level social disorder served as a moderator such that the association between victimization and anxiety was stronger in classrooms with low social disorder. Both findings were interpreted as evidence that problem behavior deviating from what is perceived as normative in a particular context heightens maladjustment. The authors discuss implications for studying ethnicity and classroom behavioral norms as context variables in peer relations.     

The octave illusion revisited again

The octave illusion (D. Deutsch, 1974) occurs when 2 tones separated by an octave are alternated repeatedly, such that when the right ear receives the high tone, the left ear receives the low tone, and vice versa. Most subjects in the original study reported hearing a single tone that alternated from ear to ear, whose pitch also alternated from octave to octave, and D. Deutsch (1975a) proposed an explanation in terms of separate what and where auditory pathways. C. D. Chambers, J. B. Mattingley, and S. A. Moss (2002) argued that the perceived pitch difference generally corresponds more to a semitone and proposed an alternative explanation in terms of diplacusis. This article argues that Chambers et al. used problematic procedures and reports a new experiment on the octave illusion. The findings confirm that an octave difference is generally perceived, and they agree with the model of Deutsch (1975a) but are at variance with the diplacusis hypothesis.