SenseCam: a wearable camera that stimulates and rehabilitates autobiographical memory

SenseCam is a wearable digital camera that captures an electronic record of the wearer's day. It does this by automatically recording a series of still images through its wide-angle lens, and simultaneously capturing a log of data from a number of built-in electronic sensors. Subsequently reviewing a sequence of images appears to provide a powerful autobiographical memory cue. A preliminary evaluation of SenseCam with a patient diagnosed with severe memory impairment was extremely positive; periodic review of images of events recorded by SenseCam resulted in significant recall of those events. Following this, a great deal of work has been undertaken to explore this phenomenon and there are early indications that SenseCam technology may be beneficial to a variety of patients with physical and mental health problems, and is valuable as a tool for investigating normal memory through behavioural and neuroimaging means. Elsewhere, it is becoming clear that judicious use of SenseCam could significantly impact the study of human behaviour. Meanwhile, research and development of the technology itself continues with the aim of providing robust hardware and software tools to meet the needs of clinicians, patients, carers, and researchers. In this paper we describe the history of SenseCam, and the design and operation of the SenseCam device and the associated viewing software, and we discuss some of the ongoing research questions being addressed with the help of SenseCam.     

SenseCam improves memory for recent events and quality of life in a patient with memory retrieval difficulties

A wearable camera that takes pictures automatically, SenseCam, was used to generate images for rehearsal, promoting consolidation and retrieval of memories for significant events in a patient with memory retrieval deficits. SenseCam images of recent events were systematically reviewed over a 2-week period. Memory for these events was assessed throughout and longer-term recall was tested up to 6 months later. A written diary control condition followed the same procedure. The SenseCam review procedure resulted in significantly more details of an event being recalled, with twice as many details recalled at 6 months follow up compared to the written diary method. Self-report measures suggested autobiographical recollection was triggered by the SenseCam condition but not by reviewing the written diary. Emotional and social wellbeing questionnaires indicated improved confidence and decreased anxiety as a result of memory rehearsal using SenseCam images. We propose that SenseCam images provide a powerful boost to autobiographical recall, with secondary benefits for quality of life.     

Eating for pleasure or profit: the effect of incentives on children's enjoyment of vegetables

Parents commonly use rewards to encourage children to eat healthfully, but this practice remains controversial because rewards are suspected of undermining children's intrinsic motivation. A cluster-randomized trial examined children's acceptance of a disliked vegetable over 12 daily taste exposures. These exposures were paired with a tangible reward, a social reward, or no reward, and the findings were compared with the results from a no-treatment control condition. Liking and intake of the vegetable were assessed in a free-choice consumption task at preintervention, postintervention, 1 month after intervention, and 3 months after intervention. Liking increased more in the three intervention conditions than in the control condition, and there were no significant differences between the intervention conditions. These effects were maintained at follow-up. Children in both reward conditions increased consumption, and these effects were maintained for 3 months; however, the effects of exposure with no reward became nonsignificant by 3 months. These results indicate that external rewards do not necessarily produce negative effects and may be useful in promoting healthful eating.     

The eyes know what you are thinking: eye movements as an objective measure of mind wandering

Paralleling the recent work by Reichle, Reineberg, and Schooler (2010), we explore the use of eye movements as an objective measure of mind wandering while participants performed a reading task. Participants were placed in a self-classified probe-caught mind wandering paradigm while their eye movements were recorded. They were randomly probed every 2–3 min and were required to indicate whether their mind had been wandering. The results show that eye movements were generally less complex when participants reported mind wandering episodes, with both duration and frequency of within-word regressions, for example, becoming significantly reduced. This is consistent with the theoretical claim that the cognitive processes that normally influence eye movements to enhance semantic processing during reading exert less control during mind wandering episodes.     

Solving for two unknowns: an extension of vector-based models of landmark-based navigation

Vectors are mathematical representations of distance and direction information that take the form of line segments where length represents distance and orientation in space represents direction. Vector-based models have proven beneficial in understanding the spatial behavior of a variety of species in tasks that require landmark-based navigation via vector addition and vector averaging to determine a location. Extant research regarding vector-based representational and computational accounts of landmark-based navigation has involved tasks that required solving for one unknown (i.e., a location). Using a novel landmark-based navigation task, we provide evidence consistent with a form of vector algebra that involves solving two simultaneous equations with two unknowns in order to determine a location in space. Results extend vector-based accounts of landmark-based navigation and provide a novel methodological approach to the testing of mobile organisms.     

Personality disorder diagnostic thresholds correspond to different levels of latent pathology

To meet a diagnosis for a particular personality disorder (PD), among other requirements, a person must exhibit a specified minimum number of the features outlined for that PD, otherwise referred to as the diagnostic threshold. Despite many years of research on the DSM PDs, there is little empirical basis for the chosen thresholds. The present study used mechanisms of item response theory (IRT) to link the diagnostic thresholds of six PDs to their corresponding level of latent PD pathology. Consistent with our hypothesis, analyses of the data from 41,227 participants revealed that PD diagnostic thresholds corresponded to a wide range of latent pathology. For example, the diagnostic threshold for schizoid PD corresponded to 1.54 SDs of pathology whereas the threshold for dependent PD corresponded to 2.72 SDs of pathology. The current analyses have demonstrated for the first time that the latent pathology associated with each PD threshold varies widely, and thus has quantified what others accurately have speculated. Implications and considerations for the future directions of PD classification are discussed.     

The contribution of short-term memory for serial order to early reading acquisition: evidence from a longitudinal study

Early reading acquisition skills have been linked to verbal short-term memory (STM) capacity. However, the nature of this relationship remains controversial because verbal STM, like reading acquisition, depends on the complexity of underlying phonological processing skills. This longitudinal study addressed the relation between STM and reading decoding acquisition by distinguishing between STM for item information and STM for order information based on recent studies showing that STM for item information, but not STM for order information, recruits underlying phonological representations. If there is a specific link between STM and reading decoding acquisition, STM for order information should be an independent predictor of reading decoding acquisition. Tasks maximizing STM for serial order or item information, measures of phonological abilities, and reading tests were administered to children followed from kindergarten through first grade. We observed that order STM capacity, but not item STM capacity, predicted independent variance in reading decoding abilities 1 year later. These results highlight the specific role of STM for order in reading decoding acquisition and argue for a causal role of order STM capacity in reading acquisition. Mechanisms relating STM for order information and reading acquisition are discussed.     

A prototypicality validation of the Comprehensive Assessment of Psychopathic Personality model (CAPP)

Cooke and colleagues recently developed the lexically based model of psychopathy named the Comprehensive Assessment of Psychopathic Personality (CAPP, Cooke, Hart, Logan, & Michie, 2004). The current study was the first to evaluate aspects of the validity of a translated version of the CAPP model, which comprises 33 symptoms from six domains of personality functioning. Prototypicality ratings from 796 Norwegian community residents, forensic mental health professionals, and corrections professionals were obtained. Most CAPP symptoms were evaluated as highly prototypical of psychopathy by all three groups. Symptoms from the Self, Dominance, and Attachment domains were perceived as more prototypical than those from the Behavioral domain. Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) indicated that two CAPP domains were unidimensional whereas evidence of unidimensionality was somewhat weaker for the other domains, but improved substantially after removal of problematic symptoms. Overall, the findings support the content validity of the CAPP model. This may have relevance to the current considerations regarding reformulation of the criteria for Antisocial Personality Disorder in DSM-V.     

The Art of Being Human: A Project for General Philosophy of Science

Throughout the medieval and modern periods, in various sacred and secular guises, the unification of all forms of knowledge under the rubric of ??science?? has been taken as the prerogative of humanity as a species. However, as our sense of species privilege has been called increasingly into question, so too has the very salience of ??humanity?? and ??science?? as general categories, let alone ones that might bear some essential relationship to each other. After showing how the ascendant Stanford School in the philosophy of science has contributed to this joint demystification of ??humanity?? and ??science??, I proceed on a more positive note to a conceptual framework for making sense of science as the art of being human. My understanding of ??science?? is indebted to the red thread that runs from Christian theology through the Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment to the Humboldtian revival of the university as the site for the synthesis of knowledge as the culmination of self-development. Especially salient to this idea is science??s epistemic capacity to manage modality (i.e. to determine the conditions under which possibilities can be actualised) and its political capacity to organize humanity into projects of universal concern. However, the challenge facing such an ideal in the twentyfirst century is that the predicate ??human?? may be projected in three quite distinct ways, governed by what I call ??ecological??, ??biomedical?? and ??cybernetic?? interests. Which one of these future humanities would claim today??s humans as proper ancestors and could these futures co-habit the same world thus become two important questions that general philosophy of science will need to address in the coming years.