Time-courses of Fos expression in rat hippocampus and neocortex following acquisition and recall of a socially transmitted food preference

The present study examined expression of the immediate-early gene, c-Fos, following acquisition, 48-h (recent) recall, and 1-week (remote) recall of a socially transmitted food preference (STFP) in multiple brain regions implicated in learning and memory. In comparisons with controls, trained Long-Evans rats had increased Fos immunoreactivity in the ventral hippocampus following acquisition and recent recall. In the parahippocampal cortices, Fos was increased in the lateral entorhinal cortex after acquisition. In the orbitofrontal cortex, increased Fos immunoreactivity was observed in the lateral orbital cortex following both recent and remote recall and in the ventral orbital cortex following remote recall, indicating a role for the orbitofrontal cortex in the remote recall of STFP memory. In contrast, in the medial prefrontal cortex, increased Fos-ir was found following acquisition in the prelimbic cortex and following recent recall in the prelimbic and infralimbic cortices. No differences in Fos expression were found between trained rats and controls in the dorsal hippocampus, posterior parietal cortex, or amygdala. The present findings support a time-limited role of the hippocampus in the acquisition and recall of STFP memory and implicate neocortical regions involved in STFP acquisition, recent, and remote recall.     

INCREASING SEAT BELT USE ON A COLLEGE CAMPUS: AN EVALUATION OF TWO PROMPTING PROCEDURES

Seat belt use is an important factor in the prevention of automobile accidents involving injuries and fatalities. The current study used a multielement design to compare the “Click It or Ticket” and “Please Buckle Up—I Care” procedures. Results indicate that the Click It or Ticket prompt resulted in a 20‐percentage‐point increase in seat belt use, and Please Buckle Up—I Care resulted in a 14‐percentage‐point increase.     

Habituation in songbirds

Songbirds respond to initial playback of a recorded conspecific song in numerous ways, from changes in gene expression in the brain to changes in overt physical activity. When the same song is presented repeatedly, responses have been observed to habituate at multiple levels: molecular, cellular and organismal. Core criteria of habituation have been established at each level, although in no case have all the formal parameters been rigorously measured. At the level of overt behavior, classical field studies showed that territorial birds respond to the song of a potential challenger with a variety of behaviors, and many (but not all) of these behaviors decline with repeated stimulus presentation. More recent laboratory studies have defined analogous responses to song presentation in the zebra finch (Taeniopygia guttata), the dominant species in current molecular and neurobiological research and one that does not use song for territorial defense. Studies in the zebra finch have also demonstrated activation followed by habituation of responses measured at both electrophysiological and molecular (gene expression and signal transduction) levels. In all cases, habituation is specific for a very particular stimulus – an individual song presented in a particular context. There are strong correlations between habituation measurements made at these different levels, but some dissociations have also been observed, implying that molecular, electrophysiological and behavioral habituations are not equivalent manifestations of a single core process.     

The automated cockpit: A comparison of attitudes towards human and automated pilots

Automation is being used extensively in aviation, particularly in the aircrafts themselves. The airline industry benefits from automation because it often increases efficiency and performance. To date, automation research has focused largely on operator trust and reliance, while largely ignoring the role of affect and trust in shaping the attitudes of the novice consumer. In two studies, we found that participants rated a human pilot more favorably than an auto-pilot. However, attitudes toward the automated pilot were more favorable in a high priced compared to a low priced ticket condition, indicating that participants used price to infer quality. In Study 2, inducing positive affect increased ratings of an automated pilot. Path analyses provided additional evidence that perceptions of automation are largely influenced by feelings.     

Feedforward, -backward, and neutral transparency measures for British English

Orthographic transparency metrics for opaque or deep languages, such as French and English, have tended to focus on feedforward and/or feedback directions, with claims made for the influence of both on reading. In the present study, data for five transparency metrics for southern British English, three of which are neither feedforward nor feedback, are presented, demonstrating the complex relationships between the metrics and offering an explanation for feedback effects in children’s reading accuracy. The structure of such metrics from a variety of corpus sizes and origins is investigated, and it is concluded that large corpus sizes do not make a substantial contribution to the value of such metrics, when compared with smaller samples, and that adult and child corpuses have very similar profiles. Probabilities of occurrence for the phonemes, graphemes, and sonographs in this study may be downloaded from brm.psychonomic-journals.org/content/supplemental.     

A novel technology for investigating the dynamics of infant perseverative reaching

We designed and tested a novel technology that enables us to capture the entire stream of behavior in perseverative reaching tasks. Beyond fitting the criteria of the conventional A-not-B task, the novel technology gives us better access to the core features of perseverative reaching, such as timing, behavior history, and reinforcement. The technology allows us to quantitatively manipulate reinforcement characteristics, to accurately program onsets, delays, and stimulus durations as well as locations and salience of the targets, and to automatically record the number of reaches to each target and compute timing. We did a validation study on this new technology, investigating the influence of a number of novel factors on perseverative reaching. We replicated the A-not-B phenomenon and associated developmental changes. In addition, results demonstrated that the new technology offers insights into infants' behavior beyond the first reaching action. Moreover, data collection is fully automated, yielding precise, quantitative data. Future studies using this technology will capitalize on the salient advantages of this technology to more precisely measure goal-directed actions and understand the development of reaching skill.     

Calibration algorithm for eyetracking with unrestricted head movement

This article reports a calibration procedure that enables researchers to track movements of the eye while allowing relatively unrestricted head and/or body movement. The eye—head calibration algorithm calculates fixation point based on eye-position data acquired by a head-mounted eyetracker and corresponding head-position data acquired by a 3-D motion-tracking system. In a single experiment, we show that this procedure provides robust eye-position estimates while allowing free head movement. Although several companies offer ready-made systems for this purpose, there is no literature available that makes it possible for researchers to explore the details of the calibration procedures used by these systems. By making such details available, we hope to facilitate the development of cost-effective, nonproprietary eyetracking solutions.     

The control of food-caching behavior by Western scrub-jays (Aphelocoma californica)

Western scrub-jays (Aphelocoma californica) did not show extinction when caching behavior was never rewarded and they had no choice of where to cache the food. However, when the jays had the choice of caching items in 2 different locations or during 2 successive episodes, and only 1 of each was always rewarded at recovery, they rapidly learned to cache in the rewarded location or episode. When the jays had learned during training trials that their caches were always moved to 1 of 2 locations they did not cache in, then on the test trial they cached in the location that had been previously rewarded. To test whether these jays avoided the location in which their caches had been pilfered or chose the rewarded location, the procedure was repeated to include a 3rd location that was never rewarded. The jays avoided the pilfered location but cached equally in the rewarded and nonrewarded locations.     

Maintaining One's Self-Image Vis-à-Vis Others: The Role of Self-Affirmation in the Social Evaluation of the Self

Three studies examined how people maintain their self-images when they face threat to interpersonal aspects of the self. In Studies 1 and 2, we found evidence that low self-esteem people lower their estimates of their performance when they expect immediate feedback in order to protect themselves from the interpersonal threat inherent in such feedback, and that self-affirmation reduces this tendency among low self-esteem people. In Study 3, we found that when people are self-affirmed they are more likely to engage in upward social comparisons and less likely to engage in downward social comparisons. Together these findings suggest that people can cope with threats to interpersonal aspects of the self by affirming other important aspects of the self.