An electrophysiological investigation of the effects of coreference on word repetition and synonymy

In two experiments the effects of word repetition, synonymy, and coreference on event-related brain potentials during text processing were studied. Participants read one (Experiment 1) or two sentence (Experiment 2) texts in which critical nouns were preceded by the definite (the) or indefinite (a) articles. Experiment 1 was run as a control to verify that differences in article processing in the second sentences of Experiment 2 would not contaminate the ERPs to critical noun items. They did not. In Experiment 2, an initial sentence was used to set up a context and contained either a first presentation or synonym of the critical word from the second sentence. N400 (but not Late Positive Component; LPC) priming effects were found for repetitions and synonyms (larger for repetitions) in second sentences. This extends observations of priming in word lists and single sentences to two-sentence texts. There was also a greater left anterior negativity or "LAN" for coreferential critical nouns (those following the article "The") compared to non-coreferential critical nouns (those following the article "A") suggesting that ERPs are sensitive to working memory processes engaged during referential assignment. In response to the articles themselves, there was a greater N400-700 elicited by the article "A" vs. "The." Finally, there was a greater N400-like negativity to the final words of non-coreferential sentences implying that the meanings of these sentences were difficult to integrate with the discourse level representation established by the prior sentence.     

Learning to achieve perfect timesharing: architectural implications of Hazeltine, Teague, and Ivry (2002)

E. Hazeltine, D. Teague, and R. B. Ivry have presented data that have been interpreted as evidence against a central bottleneck. This article describes simulations of their Experiments 1 and 4 in the ACT-R cognitive architecture, which does possess a central bottleneck in production execution. The simulation model is capable of accounting for the emergence of near-perfect timesharing in Experiment 1 and the detailed data on the distribution of response times from Experiment 4. With practice, the central bottleneck in ACT-R will be reduced to a maximum of 50 ms (1 production cycle) and can often be much less, depending on timing of stages and variability in their times. The authors also show, with a mathematical analysis of E. Hazeltine et al.'s Experiment 2, that the expected dual costs for these kinds of highly practiced tasks will be small in many circumstances, often under 10 ms.     

Early Traumatic Stress Responses in Parents Following a Serious Illness in Their Child: A Systematic Review

A systematic review of the literature investigating the early traumatic stress responses in parents of children diagnosed with a serious illness/injury. A literature review was conducted (September 2013) using Medline, PsycINFO, and CINAHL databases. Twenty-four studies related to parents of children hospitalized due to diagnosis of cancer, type 1 diabetes, meningococcal disease, trauma or serious injury, preterm birth and other serious illnesses requiring admission to intensive care were included. Parents were assessed for early traumatic stress symptoms within 3 months of their child’s diagnosis/hospitalization. Prevalence rates of acute stress disorder in parents ranged from 12 to 63 %. Prevalence of posttraumatic stress disorder ranged from 8 to 68 %. Variability was related to methodological factors including differences in study design, timing of assessments, measurement tools, and scoring protocols. Psychosocial factors rather than medical factors predicted parent distress. This review integrates and compares early traumatic reactions in parents with children suffering a range of serious illnesses. Findings suggest a high prevalence of acute and posttraumatic stress symptoms in parents. Methodological inconsistencies made comparison of early traumatic stress prevalence rates difficult. Risk factors associated with traumatic stress symptoms were identified.     

The effects of print exposure on sentence processing and memory in older adults: Evidence for efficiency and reserve

The present study was an examination of how exposure to print affects sentence processing and memory in older readers. A sample of older adults (N = 139; Mean age = 72) completed a battery of cognitive and linguistic tests and read a series of sentences for recall. Word-by-word reading times were recorded and generalized linear mixed effects models were used to estimate components representing attentional allocation to word-level and textbase-level processes. Older adults with higher levels of print exposure showed greater efficiency in word-level processing and in the immediate instantiation of new concepts, but allocated more time to semantic integration at clause boundaries. While lower levels of working memory were associated with smaller wrap-up effects, individuals with higher levels of print exposure showed a reduced effect of working memory on sentence wrap-up. Importantly, print exposure was not only positively associated with sentence memory, but was also found to buffer the effects of working memory on sentence recall. These findings suggest that the increased efficiency of component reading processes that come with life-long habits of literacy buffer the effects of working memory decline on comprehension and contribute to maintaining skilled reading among older adults.     

Histone acetylation rescues contextual fear conditioning in nNOS KO mice and accelerates extinction of cued fear conditioning in wild type mice

Epigenetic regulation of chromatin structure is an essential molecular mechanism that contributes to the formation of synaptic plasticity and long-term memory (LTM). An important regulatory process of chromatin structure is acetylation and deacetylation of histone proteins. Inhibition of histone deacetylase (HDAC) increases acetylation of histone proteins and facilitate learning and memory. Nitric oxide (NO) signaling pathway has a role in synaptic plasticity, LTM and regulation of histone acetylation. We have previously shown that NO signaling pathway is required for contextual fear conditioning. The present study investigated the effects of systemic administration of the HDAC inhibitor sodium butyrate (NaB) on fear conditioning in neuronal nitric oxide synthase (nNOS) knockout (KO) and wild type (WT) mice. The effect of single administration of NaB on total H3 and H4 histone acetylation in hippocampus and amygdala was also investigated. A single administration of NaB prior to fear conditioning (a) rescued contextual fear conditioning of nNOS KO mice and (b) had long-term (weeks) facilitatory effect on the extinction of cued fear memory of WT mice. The facilitatory effect of NaB on extinction of cued fear memory of WT mice was confirmed in a study whereupon NaB was administered during extinction. Results suggest that (a) the rescue of contextual fear conditioning in nNOS KO mice is associated with NaB-induced increase in H3 histone acetylation and (b) the accelerated extinction of cued fear memory in WT mice is associated with NaB-induced increase in H4 histone acetylation. Hence, a single administration of HDAC inhibitor may rescue NO-dependent cognitive deficits and afford a long-term accelerating effect on extinction of fear memory of WT mice.     

Predicting Feminist Identity: Associations Between Gender-Traditional Attitudes, Feminist Stereotyping, and Ethnicity

The connection between holding gender-traditional attitudes and the reluctance to identify as a feminist is well established, yet little is known about factors that might underlie this association. One factor that may serve this function is the tendency to hold negative stereotypes about feminists. Indeed, the constructs of ambivalent sexism (Glick and Fiske 1996) and ambivalence toward men (Glick and Fiske 1999) provide a strong theoretical basis for the prediction that traditional attitudes toward women and men are related to the derogation of women who do not conform to the feminine-stereotyped gender role. Therefore, the present study utilized path analysis to test a mediational model in which traditional attitudes toward women and men predict the tendency to stereotype feminists, which in turn predicts feminist identity. The present study also examined whether the relations between the variables in the model differed for African American, European American, and Latina women. Participants consisted of 544 women from the southern United States who, despite being undergraduates, were in their mid-to-late twenties on average. As expected, participant ethnicity moderated the paths in the model. Among African American and Latina women, hostility toward men and hostile sexism predicted the tendency to stereotype feminists, which then predicted feminist identity. Support for the mediational model was not obtained among European American women; instead, the model for European American women was characterized by direct paths from traditional attitudes toward women and men to feminist identity. Discussion focuses on the importance of considering participants’ ethnic background when assessing predictors of feminist identity.     

Dissociating location-specific inhibition and attention shifts: Evidence against the disengagement account of contingent capture

The study of attentional capture has provided a rich context for assessing the relative influence of top-down and bottom-up factors in visual perception. Some have argued that attentional capture by a salient, irrelevant stimulus is contingent on top-down attentional set (e.g., Folk, Remington, & Johnston, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 18:1030?C1044, 1992). Others, however, have argued that capture is driven entirely by bottom-up salience and that top-down factors influence the postallocation speed of disengagement from the irrelevant stimulus (e.g., Theeuwes, Acta Psychologica 135:77?C99, 2010a). In support of this speed-of-disengagement hypothesis, recent findings from the modified spatial-cuing paradigm show that cues carrying a no-go target property produce reverse, or negative, cuing effects, consistent with inhibition of the cue location from which attention has been very quickly disengaged (Belopolsky, Schreij, & Theeuwes, Perception, & Psychophysics, 72, 326?C341, 2010). Across six experiments, we show that this inhibitory process can be dissociated from shifts of spatial attention and is, thus, not a reliable marker of capture. We conclude that the data are inconsistent with the predictions of the disengagement hypothesis.