Secure and defensive high self-esteem

Long-standing theories have suggested high self-esteem (SE) can assume qualitatively different forms that are related to defensiveness. The authors explored whether some high-SE individuals are particularly defensive because they harbor negative self-feelings at less conscious levels, indicated by low implicit SE. In Study 1, participants high in explicit SE but low in implicit SE showed the highest levels of narcissism--an indicator of defensiveness. In Studies 2 and 3, the correspondence between implicit and explicit SE predicted defensive behavior (in-group bias in Study 2 and dissonance reduction in Study 3), such that for high explicit-SE participants, those with relatively low implicit SE behaved more defensively. These results are consistent with the idea that high SE can be relatively secure or defensive.     

Bimanual interference associated with the selection of target locations

Four experiments were conducted to identify the locus of interference observed during the preparation of bimanual reaching movements. Target locations were specified by color, and the right-hand and left-hand targets could be either the same or a different color. Movements of different amplitudes (Experiment 1) or different directions (Experiment 2) to targets of the same color were initiated more quickly than symmetric movements to targets of different colors. These results indicate that costs observed during bimanual movements arise during target selection rather than during motor programming. Experiments 3 and 4 further examined the interference associated with target selection. Reaction time costs were found with unimanual movements when the target was presented among distractors associated with responses for the other hand. Interference observed during bimanual reaching appears to reflect difficulty in segregating the response rules assigned to each hand.     

Trial spacing is a determinant of cue interaction

Four conditioned lick suppression experiments with rats examined the effect of trial spacing on cue interaction. Experiments 1 and 2 found overshadowing to be eliminated with massed compound stimulus-outcome pairings and the usual trial spacing effect to be reversed with compound acquisition trials. Experiment 3 found that whether acquisition compound-outcome pairings were massed or spaced determined the effect of posttraining extinction treatment. Extinction of the overshadowing cue reduced responding following massed training and increased responding following spaced training. Extinction of the context decreased responding following massed training. Experiment 4 found the conditioning and devaluation results to be associative and stimulus specific. These results are in accord with the extended comparator hypothesis (J. C. Denniston, H. I. Savastano, & R. R. Miller, 2001).     

Abandonment, Religion, and Male Melancholia: A Psychoanalytic Study of Archpriest Avvakum's Religious Autobiography

The present study is a psychoanalytic reading of Archpriest Avvakum's autobiography and takes its cue from some observations made by Russian and Ukrainian historian Edward Keenan, who offered a tentative diagnosis of manic-depression to describe Avvakum's personality. In my view, Donald Capps's analysis of religious male melancholia supports Keenan's observations, and I argue that Avvakum carried his childhood experiences and conflicts over into his later religious life. His religious life manifested a series of transferences and displacements, with Mary the Mother of God, God the Father, and the Church functioning as his loving or positive relationships with his family; and Patriarch Nikon and his followers embodying everything he feared and resented about his own childhood—change and abandonment.     

The cognitive and neural architecture of sequence representation

The authors theorize that 2 neurocognitive sequence-learning systems can be distinguished in serial reaction time experiments, one dorsal (parietal and supplementary motor cortex) and the other ventral (temporal and lateral prefrontal cortex). Dorsal system learning is implicit and associates noncategorized stimuli within dimensional modules. Ventral system learning can be implicit or explicit It also allows associating events across dimensions and therefore is the basis of cross-task integration or interference, depending on degree of cross-task correlation of signals. Accordingly, lack of correlation rather than limited capacity is responsible for dual-task effects on learning. The theory is relevant to issues of attentional effects on learning; the representational basis of complex, sequential skills; hippocampal-versus basal ganglia-based learning; procedural versus declarative memory; and implicit versus explicit memory.     

Cognitive Testing Battery: differences among groups with dementia, Huntington's disease, and controls

This study evaluated a new test for dementia, the Cognitive Testing Battery, used for over six years in outpatient clinics for aging-related disorders. This battery was developed to be brief, easy to administer, and to provide useful feedback as a cognitive profile for clinicians, patients, and caregivers. 489 participants were tested during a 5-yr. period. Multidisicplinary teams diagnosed these patients with dementia, depression, or Huntington's Disease. A control group was also included. Groups were then compared on the 10 key subscales that subserve dementia populations. Analysis showed there were significant differences among the groups on all measures and that selected scales differentiated the groups. The total score maximally differentiated the groups, and the dementia group was most different from the other groups.     

Directional harmonic theory: a computational Gestalt model to account for illusory contour and vertex formation

Visual illusions and perceptual grouping phenomena offer an invaluable tool for probing the computational mechanism of low-level visual processing. Some illusions, like the Kanizsa figure, reveal illusory contours that form edges collinear with the inducing stimulus. This kind of illusory contour has been modeled by neural network models by way of cells equipped with elongated spatial receptive fields designed to detect and complete the collinear alignment. There are, however, other illusory groupings which are not so easy to account for in neural network terms. The Ehrenstein illusion exhibits an illusory contour that forms a contour orthogonal to the stimulus instead of collinear with it. Other perceptual grouping effects reveal illusory contours that exhibit a sharp corner or vertex, and still others take the form of vertices defined by the intersection of three, four, or more illusory contours that meet at a point. A direct extension of the collinear completion models to account for these phenomena tends towards a combinatorial explosion, because it would suggest cells with specialized receptive fields configured to perform each of those completion types, each of which would have to be replicated at every location and every orientation across the visual field. These phenomena therefore challenge the adequacy of the neural network approach to account for these diverse perceptual phenomena. I have proposed elsewhere an alternative paradigm of neurocomputation in the harmonic resonance theory (Lehar 1999, see website), whereby pattern recognition and completion are performed by spatial standing waves across the neural substrate. The standing waves perform a computational function analogous to that of the spatial receptive fields of the neural network approach, except that, unlike that paradigm, a single resonance mechanism performs a function equivalent to a whole array of spatial receptive fields of different spatial configurations and of different orientations, and thereby avoids the combinatorial explosion inherent in the older paradigm. The present paper presents the directional harmonic model, a more specific development of the harmonic resonance theory, designed to account for specific perceptual grouping phenomena. Computer simulations of the directional harmonic model show that it can account for collinear contours as observed in the Kanizsa figure, orthogonal contours as seen in the Ehrenstein illusion, and a number of illusory vertex percepts composed of two, three, or more illusory contours that meet in a variety of configurations.     

A methodology for describing and decomposing complex psychosocial and behavioral interventions

This article presents a comprehensive conceptual framework and methodology for characterizing multidimensional psychosocial and behavioral interventions for family caregivers of people with Alzheimer's disease. The methodology involved conducting a detailed task analysis of the interventions, and the application of the analytical hierarchy process. The authors were able to achieve high levels of consistency and reliability using this methodology to decompose and describe the interventions according to a complex conceptual framework comprising 3 dimensions: target domain, functional domain, and delivery system characteristics. Application of this methodology will enhance the ability to describe and measure interventions consistently, make comparisons across studies, isolate causal factors that achieve desired outcomes, and more generally elevate the science of psychosocial intervention research.     

Dissociations among attention, perception, and awareness during object-substitution masking

When a visual target object is surrounded by four dots that onset at the same time as the target but remain visible after the target terminates, the four dots dramatically impair target discrimination performance. This phenomenon is called object-substitution masking , reflecting the hypothesis that both the target and the four dots are identified, but the representation of the four dots replaces the representation of the target object before the target can be reported. The present study used the event-related potential technique to demonstrate that a target masked in this manner is identified by the visual system and triggers a shift of attention. However, by the time attention is shifted to the target, only the mask remains visible, leading to impaired behavioral detection performance. These findings support the object-substitution hypothesis and provide new evidence that perception, attention, and awareness can be dissociated.