Different interference effects in musicians and a control group

In the present study musicians and normal control subjects performed an S1-S2 pitch comparison task, which included the presentation of intervening tones during the retention interval. The time for encoding and storing the pitch of S1 was varied between 200 and 1,500 ms by changing the pause between the S1 offset and the onset of the intervening tones. Although musicians outperformed the control group with longer pauses after the S1 offset, this advantage was relatively small with shorter pauses. These results suggest that the advantage of musicians in storing auditory information is not solely due to their superior encoding of information but also to improved working memory operations.     

Temporal stability of the implicit association test-anxiety

The Implicit Association Test-Anxiety (IAT-Anxiety; Egloff & Schmukle, 2002) provides an indirect assessment of anxiety by measuring associations of self (vs. other) with anxiety-related (vs. calmness-related) words. In 3 studies (using 3 independent samples), we examined the temporal stability of the IAT-Anxiety. In Study 1, 65 participants responded twice to the IAT-Anxiety with a time lag of 1 week. The test-retest correlation was .58. In Study 2 (N = 39), we extended the time interval between test and retest to 1 month and this yielded a stability coefficient of .62. In Study 3 (N = 36), we examined the long-term stability (time lag: 1 year) of the IAT-Anxiety and this showed a correlation of .47. We discuss implications of these results for the assessment of personality dispositions with the IAT.     

Processing polarity items: contrastive licensing costs

We describe an experiment that investigated the failure to license polarity items in German using event-related brain potentials (ERPs). The results reveal distinct processing reflexes associated with failure to license positive polarity items in comparison to failure to license negative polarity items. Failure to license both negative and positive polarity items elicited an N400 component reflecting semantic integration cost. Failure to license positive polarity items, however, also elicited a P600 component. The additional P600 in the positive polarity violations may reflect higher processing complexity associated with a negative operator. This difference between the two types of violation suggests that the processing of negative and positive polarity items does not involve identical mechanisms.     

Directed attention prolongs the perceived duration of a brief stimulus

Stelmach, Herdman, and McNeil (1994) suggested recently that the perceived duration for attended stimuli is shorter than that for unattended ones. In contrast, the attenuation hypothesis (Thomas & Weaver, 1975) suggests the reverse relation between directed attention and perceived duration. We conducted six experiments to test the validity of the two contradictory hypotheses. In all the experiments, attention was directed to one of two possible stimulus sources. Experiments 1 and 2 employed stimulus durations from 70 to 270 msec. A stimulus appeared in either the visual or the auditory modality. Stimuli in the attended modality were rated as longer than stimuli in the unattended modality. Experiment 3 replicated this finding using a different psychophysical procedure. Experiments 4-6 showed that the finding applies not only to stimuli from different sensory modalities but also to stimuli appearing at different locations within the visual field. The results of all six experiments support the assumption that directed attention prolongs the perceived duration of a stimulus.     

‘Coordinative definition’ and Reichenbach''s semantic framework: A reassessment

My greatest debt is to Prof. Hilary Putnam, without whose inspiration and encouragement this paper would not have been written. Thanks are also due to Prof. Michael Friedman for detailed and helpful comments on an earlier version, and to two anonymous referees. This paper is based in part on research conducted while supported under a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship.     

Generative models for visualizing idiosyncratic impressions

In their comprehensive review of research on impressions from faces, Sutherland and Young (this issue) highlight both the remarkable progress and the many challenges facing the field. We focus on two of the challenges: the need for generative, powerful models of impressions and the idiosyncratic nature of complex impressions.     

When smiles (and frowns) speak words: Does power impact the correspondence between self-reported affect and facial expressions?

Self-reported experiences are often poor indicators of outward expressions. Here we examine social power as a variable that may impact the relationship between self-reported affect and facial expressions. Earlier studies addressing this issue were limited by focusing on a single facial expression (smiling) and by using different, less sensitive methods that yielded mostly null results. Sampling, for the first time, self-reported affect repeatedly in response to different negative, neutral and positive stimuli, and measuring concurrent facial muscle activation via electromyography, we found that high power (vs. baseline) increased the correspondence between self-reported positive affect and smiling. There was also an indication that high power (vs. baseline) bolstered the association between self-reported negative affect and frowning but the effect did not pass more stringent criteria for significance (p ≤ .005) and was therefore deemed inconclusive. The prediction that low power (vs. baseline) decreases the correspondence between self-reported affect and smiling and frowning facial expressions was not supported. Taken together, it would appear that (high) power can impact the relationship between self-reported affect and facial expressions, but it remains to be seen whether this effect extends beyond smiling facial expressions.     

Towards end-to-end likelihood-free inference with convolutional neural networks

Complex simulator-based models with non-standard sampling distributions require sophisticated design choices for reliable approximate parameter inference. We introduce a fast, end-to-end approach for approximate Bayesian computation (ABC) based on fully convolutional neural networks. The method enables users of ABC to derive simultaneously the posterior mean and variance of multidimensional posterior distributions directly from raw simulated data. Once trained on simulated data, the convolutional neural network is able to map real data samples of variable size to the first two posterior moments of the relevant parameter's distributions. Thus, in contrast to other machine learning approaches to ABC, our approach allows us to generate reusable models that can be applied by different researchers employing the same model. We verify the utility of our method on two common statistical models (i.e., a multivariate normal distribution and a multiple regression scenario), for which the posterior parameter distributions can be derived analytically. We then apply our method to recover the parameters of the leaky competing accumulator (LCA) model and we reference our results to the current state-of-the-art technique, which is the probability density estimation (PDA). Results show that our method exhibits a lower approximation error compared with other machine learning approaches to ABC. It also performs similarly to PDA in recovering the parameters of the LCA model.     

Ätiologie und Pathogenese der Migräne

Migräne ist eine weltweit sehr häufige Erkrankung, die zu einer erheblichen Beeinträchtigung der Lebensqualität Betroffener führen kann. Bereits zu Beginn der Migräneattacke konnte eine Aktivierung des Hypothalamus gezeigt werden. Ein wesentlicher Aspekt ist dann die nachfolgende Aktivierung des trigeminovaskulären Systems. Hier spielt das Neuropeptid Calcitonin Gene-Related Peptide (CGRP) eine tragende Rolle. Durch die Aktivierung nozizeptiver Fasern kommt es zur Reizweiterleitung nach zentral in den Hirnstamm und über periphere und zentrale Sensibilisierung zu den typischen migräneartigen Kopfschmerzen. Durch besseres Verständnis der Pathophysiologie der Migräne ist es zuletzt gelungen, eine medikamentöse Prophylaxe zu entwickeln, die spezifisch in die komplexe Abfolge der Migränekaskade eingreift, indem das CGRP bzw. sein Rezeptor durch spezifische monoklonale Antikörper blockiert werden.