Are Fast Complex Movements Unimaginable? Pupillometric Studies of Motor Imagery in Expert Piano Playing

Motor imagery (MI; mental simulation of actions) shares certain mental representations and processes with executed movement (ME). This neurocognitive overlap between MI and ME may explain why the systematic use of MI improves skilled performance in numerous domains. Unfortunately, the attentional mechanisms underlying MI remain unresolved. Therefore, the present studies investigated the role of attentional effort (as measured by pupil dilation) in MI. We evaluated the effects of movement complexity and speed on expert pianists' pupil dilation as they physically executed and used MI to perform easy/complex and slow/fast music phrases. Results revealed that easy movements required similar levels of attentional effort during MI and ME. However, during complex movements performed at a fast speed, the correspondence between execution and imagery of movement was disrupted.     

Initial perceptions in negotiations: evaluation and response to ‘logrolling’ offers

In negotiations, where several issues are under consideration and parties have different priorities among these issues, integrative agreements can be reached through ‘logrolling’: concessions on low priority issues in exchange for gains on higher priority issues. The present research focuses on the potential role of initial offers in the development of integrative agreements. We show first, that in a simulated competitive market the specific composition of initial offers influences the final agreements, beyond the effect predicted by their overall value. In order to obtain some insight into the judgmental processes that might play a role, we explore the way in which inexperienced negotiators presented with a hypothetical negotiation context evaluate and respond to logrolling versus distributive initial offers. Three hypotheses were tested: logrolling offers convey an implicit message of cooperation, logrolling offers promote understanding of the mutual interest structure of the task, and, finally, logrolling offers establish within‐issue anchors. Results do not support the first two hypotheses: logrolling offers were not necessarily judged more attractive than distributive ones, and they did not seem to affect the deeply rooted fixed‐pie assumption. However, initial offers did establish within‐issue anchors: counter‐offers were affected by the specific composition of the initial offers beyond the effect of their overall value. This anchoring process resulted in logrolling offers yielding a higher profit for their initiator, as well as higher combined profits for both parties. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Teachers' Conservatism, Openness to Change, Transcendence and Self-Enhancement in Daily Life and in School Situations

In the present study we examined conservatism, openness to change, transcendence and self-enhancement as reflected in the relationships among teachers' values, attitudes and behaviors that presumably share common motivations, in daily life as well as in school situations. It is assumed that values cannot be fully understood and meaningfully measured without reference to the attitudes and behaviors which express them. In this study we hypothesized that the relationships among values as expressed in Schwartz's theory (e.g., 1992), also guide relationships among the respective attitudes and behaviors. We expected more consistency among values, attitudes and behaviors in daily-life as compared to school situations. Participants were 130 Israeli female teachers. Findings revealed compatibility between values and attitudes sharing common motivations and partial but nevertheless lawful relationships between values, attitudes and behaviors. We found that teachers' conservative behavior in daily life and their openness to change and transcendence in school situations were explained both by values and attitudes. However, attitudes were mediators between values and behaviors only with regard to conservatism in daily life and openness to change in school situations. We also found that across the motivational themes, values explained behaviors in daily life situations whereas attitudes explained behaviors in school situations.     

To go or not to go? Pupillometry elucidates inhibitory mechanisms in motor imagery

Motor imagery (MI) involves consciously performing an action in our minds without engaging in overt physical movement. Although inhibition is crucial to MI, few studies have explored the nature of inhibitory mechanisms underlying this construct. Therefore, little progress has been made in elucidating how or when inhibition is implemented during MI. The present study addressed this unresolved issue by measuring participants’ pupil dilation (an index of attentional effort) as they performed an inhibitory-control (Go/NoGo) procedure in a modified task-switching paradigm. The results showed that inhibitory mechanisms in MI may be implemented via various routes. When MI was the only movement mode used, minimal attentional effort was invested during the Go/NoGo responses, suggesting an early implemented, proactive inhibitory strategy. Conversely, when imagery was preceded by physical movement responses, inhibition required greater attentional effort and it appears as though more active and attention-demanding inhibitory processes must be employed.     

The paradox of decrease and dependent parts

This paper is concerned with the paradox of decrease. Its aim is to defend the answer to this puzzle that was propounded by its originator, namely, the Stoic philosopher Chrysippus. The main trouble with this answer to the paradox is that it has the seemingly problematic implication that a material thing could perish due merely to extrinsic change. (For, intuitively, it is not possible for a mere extrinsic change to cause a material thing to cease to be.) It follows that in order to defend Chrysippus’ answer to the paradox, one has to explain how it could be that Theon is destroyed by the amputation without changing intrinsically. In this paper, I shall answer this challenge by appealing to the broadly Aristotelian idea that at least some of the proper parts of a material substance are ontologically dependent on that substance. I will also appeal to this idea in order to offer a new solution to the structurally similar paradox of increase. In this way, we will end up with a unified solution to two structurally similar paradoxes.     

Meaning in learning: Contextual cueing relies on objects’ visual features and not on objects’ meaning

People easily learn regularities embedded in the environment and utilize them to facilitate visual search. Using images of real-world objects, it has been recently shown that this learning, termed contextual cueing (CC), occurs even in complex, heterogeneous environments, but only when the same distractors are repeated at the same locations. Yet it is not clear what exactly is being learned under these conditions: the visual features of the objects or their meaning. In this study, Experiment 1 demonstrated that meaning is not necessary for this type of learning, as a similar pattern of results was found even when the objects’ meaning was largely removed. Experiments 2 and 3 showed that after learning meaningful objects, CC was not diminished by a manipulation that distorted the objects’ meaning but preserved most of their visual properties. By contrast, CC was eliminated when the learned objects were replaced with different category exemplars that preserved the objects’ meaning but altered their visual properties. Together, these data strongly suggest that the acquired context that facilitates real-world objects search relies primarily on the visual properties and the spatial locations of the objects, but not on their meaning.     

The Thrill of Creative Effort at Work: An Empirical Study on Work,Creative Effort and Well-Being

The connections between creative effort at work and four measures of subjective well-being are studied using data on a sample of 922 Jewish Israeli adults who are salaried employees. The paper finds that self-reported creative effort aimed at making work more enjoyable is positively associated with global evaluation of life; with purpose and meaning in life, and with positive emotions. No significant link with negative emotions was found. This study also finds significant associations with three additional intrinsic features of work-creative tasks; independence at work and intellectual work-and various measures of subjective well-being, even when controlling for age, gender, marital status, having children, education, time worked, financial satisfaction, subjective health and religiosity. The robustness of the links between intrinsic features of work and subjective well-being demonstrate that work serves not only as a means to material ends, but also as a direct source of personal happiness, meaning and satisfaction.     

Functional connectivity dynamics during film viewing reveal common networks for different emotional experiences

Recent theoretical and empirical work has highlighted the role of domain-general, large-scale brain networks in generating emotional experiences. These networks are hypothesized to process aspects of emotional experiences that are not unique to a specific emotional category (e.g., “sadness,” “happiness”), but rather that generalize across categories. In this article, we examined the dynamic interactions (i.e., changing cohesiveness) between specific domain-general networks across time while participants experienced various instances of sadness, fear, and anger. We used a novel method for probing the network connectivity dynamics between two salience networks and three amygdala-based networks. We hypothesized, and found, that the functional connectivity between these networks covaried with the intensity of different emotional experiences. Stronger connectivity between the dorsal salience network and the medial amygdala network was associated with more intense ratings of emotional experience across six different instances of the three emotion categories examined. Also, stronger connectivity between the dorsal salience network and the ventrolateral amygdala network was associated with more intense ratings of emotional experience across five out of the six different instances. Our findings demonstrate that a variety of emotional experiences are associated with dynamic interactions of domain-general neural systems.