Perception—Action Coupling during Bimanual Coordination: The Role of Visual Perception in the Coalition of Constraints That Govern Bimanual Action

Constraints pertaining to interlimb coordination have been studied extensively in the past decades. In this debate, F. Mechsner (2004) has taken a provocative position by putting primary emphasis on perceptual principles that mediate coordinative stability. Whereas the present authors agree that the role of perceptual principles is of critical importance during coordination, they take issue with Mechsner's extreme position and with the evidence forwarded to support a purely perceptual-cognitive approach to bimanual coordination. More specifically, the authors emphasize that current knowledge about brain function argues against a dualism between perception and action, criticize the presented evidence that posture manipulations during coordination provide decisive evidence against motoric and muscular constraints, and report on potential pitfalls associated with the use of visual transformation procedures to support complex coordination patterns.     

A Direct Method of Assessing Underlying Cognitive Risk for Adolescent Depression

An enduring tendency towards negative thinking is thought to increase vulnerability for future depression. However, it has not been possible to assess this tendency in non-depressed mood states. We examined if response latency to endorse dysfunctional attitudes is associated with depressive outcomes in a longitudinal study. A sample of young people at familial risk of depression (N?=?252, aged 10–19, 56.3 % female) completed a computer-administered dysfunctional attitude scale. The main outcome measure was the difference in reaction time to agree versus disagree with dysfunctional attitudes. Cross-sectional differences between current and previous depression and no psychiatric disorder groups as well as longitudinal associations with depressive symptoms were examined. Young people with current and previous depression were quicker to agree with dysfunctional attitudes than those without disorder. In young people free from depressive disorder, faster agreements with dysfunctional attitudes were specifically associated with increased depressive symptoms over time. Self-reported dysfunctional attitudes did not differentiate the formerly depressed and no disorder groups and showed a longitudinal association with depressive symptoms for older adolescents only. Reaction time to endorse dysfunctional attitudes may indicate changes in affective processing that represent an early risk for future depression that is not indexed by self-report measures of negative thought.     

Neural circuitry of emotion regulation: Effects of appraisal,attention, and cortisol administration

Psychosocial well-being requires effective regulation of emotional responding in context of threat or stress. Neuroimaging studies have focused on instructed, volitional regulation (e.g., reappraisal or distancing), largely ignoring implicit regulation that does not involve purposeful effort to alter emotional experience. These implicit processes may or may not involve the same neural pathways as explicit regulatory strategies. We examined the neurobiology of implicit emotional regulation processes and the impact of the stress hormone cortisol on these processes. Our study task employed composite pictures of faces and places to examine neural activity during implicit emotional processing (of emotional faces), while these responses were implicitly regulated by attention shift away from the emotionally evocative stimuli, and while subjects reflectively appraised their own emotional response to them. Subjects completed the task in an fMRI scanner after random assignment to receive placebo or hydrocortisone (HCT), an orally administered version of cortisol. Implicit emotional processing activated insula/IFG, dACC/dMPFC, midbrain and amygdala. With attention shifting, we saw diminished signal in emotion generating/response regions (e.g., amygdala) and increased activations in task specific attention regions like parahippocampus. With appraisal of emotions, we observed robust activations in medial prefrontal areas, where activation is also seen in instructed reappraisal studies. We observed no main effects of HCT administration on brain, but males and females showed opposing neural effects in prefrontal areas. The data suggest that different types of emotion regulation utilize overlapping circuits, but with some strategy specific activation. Further study of the dimorphic sex response to cortisol is needed.     

Setting things straight: A comparison of measures of saccade trajectory deviation

In eye movements, saccade trajectory deviation has often been used as a physiological operationalization of visual attention, distraction, or the visual system’s prioritization of different sources of information. However, there are many ways to measure saccade trajectories and to quantify their deviation. This may lead to noncomparable results and poses the problem of choosing a method that will maximize statistical power. Using data from existing studies and from our own experiments, we used principal components analysis to carry out a systematic quantification of the relationships among eight different measures of saccade trajectory deviation and their power to detect the effects of experimental manipulations, as measured by standardized effect size. We concluded that (1) the saccade deviation measure is a good default measure of saccade trajectory deviation, because it is somewhat correlated with all other measures and shows relatively high effect sizes for two well-known experimental effects; (2) more generally, measures made relative to the position of the saccade target are more powerful; and (3) measures of deviation based on the early part of the saccade are made more stable when they are based on data from an eyetracker with a high sampling rate. Our recommendations may be of use to future eye movement researchers seeking to optimize the designs of their studies.     

Neural correlates of autobiographical memory retrieval in children and adults

Autobiographical memory (AM) is a critically important form of memory for life events that undergoes substantial developmental changes from childhood to adulthood. Relatively little is known regarding the functional neural correlates of AM retrieval in children as assessed with fMRI, and how they may differ from adults. We investigated this question with 14 children ages 8–11 years and 14 adults ages 19–30 years, contrasting AM retrieval with semantic memory (SM) retrieval. During scanning, participants were cued by verbal prompts to retrieve previously selected recent AMs or to verify semantic properties of words. As predicted, both groups showed AM retrieval-related increased activation in regions implicated in prior studies, including bilateral hippocampus, and prefrontal, posterior cingulate, and parietal cortices. Adults showed greater activation in the hippocampal/parahippocampal region as well as prefrontal and parietal cortex, relative to children; age-related differences were most prominent in the first 8?sec versus the second 8?sec of AM retrieval and when AM retrieval was contrasted with semantic retrieval. This study is the first to characterise similarities and differences during AM retrieval in children and adults using fMRI.     

The role of input–output modality compatibility in task switching

Input–output (I–O) modality compatibility refers to the similarity of stimulus modality and modality of response-related sensory consequences. A previous study found higher switch costs in task switching in I–O modality incompatible tasks (auditory-manual and visual-vocal) than in I–O modality compatible tasks (auditory-vocal and visual-manual). However, these tasks had spatially compatible S–R mappings, which implied dimensional overlap (DO). DO may have led to automatic activation of the corresponding compatible responses in the incorrect response modality, thus increasing interference effects. The present study was aimed to examine the influence of DO on I–O modality compatibility effects. In two experiments, we found that I–O modality compatibility affects task switching even in tasks without DO, which even tended to result in further increased modality influences. This finding suggests that I–O modality mappings affect response selection by affecting between-task cross-talk not on the level of specific response codes but on the level of modality-specific processing pathways.     

Humility and constraints on <Emphasis Type="Italic">O</Emphasis>-language

In “Ramseyan Humility,” David Lewis argues that we cannot know what the fundamental properties in our world are. His arguments invoke the possibility of permutations and replacements of fundamental properties. Most responses focus on Lewis’s view on the relationship between properties and roles, and on the assumptions about knowledge that he makes. I argue that no matter how the debates about knowledge and about the metaphysics of properties turn out, Lewis’s arguments are unconvincing since they rely on a highly implausible assumption about the expressive power of our language.     

Explicit warnings reduce but do not eliminate the continued influence of misinformation

Information that initially is presumed to be correct, but that is later retracted or corrected, often continues to influence memory and reasoning. This occurs even if the retraction itself is well remembered. The present study investigated whether the continued influence of misinformation can be reduced by explicitly warning people at the outset that they may be misled. A specific warning— giving detailed information about the continued influence effect (CIE)—succeeded in reducing the continued reliance on outdated information but did not eliminate it. A more general warning—reminding people that facts are not always properly checked before information is disseminated—was even less effective. In an additional experiment, a specific warning was combined with the provision of a plausible alternative explanation for the retracted information. This combined manipulation further reduced the CIE but still failed to eliminate it altogether.     

Health of entrepreneurs versus employees in a national representative sample

Prior research has found entrepreneurs to experience significantly higher job control and job demands compared with employees. This suggests that entrepreneurs have so‐called active jobs and thus may benefit from positive health consequences. The present research compared entrepreneurs' health with employees' health in a national representative sample with regard to the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems, 10th revision (ICD‐10) diagnoses of somatic diseases, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th edition (DSM‐IV) diagnoses of mental disorders, blood pressure, well‐being (life‐satisfaction) as well as behavioural health indicators (sick days, physician visits). Entrepreneurs showed significantly lower overall somatic and mental morbidity, lower blood pressure, lower prevalence rates of hypertension, and somatoform disorders, as well as higher well‐being and more favourable behavioural health indicators. The results are discussed with regard to the active job hypothesis and recommendations for future research are provided.     

Development of a new Clarity of Auditory Imagery Scale

In the psychological study of auditory imagery, instruments for measuring vividness or clarity have existed for some time. The present article argues that existing scales are ambiguous, in that clarity and vividness of auditory imagery are addressed simultaneously, and that empirical validations of those scales suffer from inadequate methods. The aim of the present study was to develop a new psychometric scale, the Clarity of Auditory Imagery Scale, measuring individual differences in clarity of auditory imagery. Drawing on previous literature, 16 items were generated, forming an initial item pool that was presented to 212 respondents. The hypothesized single dimensionality inherent in the data was confirmed using Velicer’s (1976) minimum average partial test and parallel analysis. Also, data were factor analyzed, extracting a stable one-factor solution including all 16 items. The internal consistency of the final scale was satisfactory (coefficient alpha = .88). Other properties of the questionnaire, such as test-retest reliability, remain to be established.