The importance of decision making in causal learning from interventions

Recent research has focused on how interventions benefit causal learning. This research suggests that the main benefit of interventions is in the temporal and conditional probability information that interventions provide a learner. But when one generates interventions, one must also decide what interventions to generate. In three experiments, we investigated the importance of these decision demands to causal learning. Experiment 1 demonstrated that learners were better at learning causal models when they observed intervention data that they had generated, as opposed to observing data generated by another learner. Experiment 2 demonstrated the same effect between self-generated interventions and interventions learners were forced to make. Experiment 3 demonstrated that when learners observed a sequence of interventions such that the decision-making process that generated those interventions was more readily available, learning was less impaired. These data suggest that decision making may be an important part of causal learning from interventions.     

Psychoneuroimmunology and male infertility: A possible link between stress,coping and male immunological infertility

Abstract

This current study investigated a link between stress and coping with some male infertility problems via psychoneuroimmunological theories. The study was carried out on 77 males who came to a fertility clinic for sperm diagnosis. Appraisal and coping with stress reaction to negative life events and to infertility were related to non-sperm cells within the seminal plasma. Those men who had felt strained from external events and from problems of infertility, and had used emotional escape coping strategies, were more prone to have an immunosuppressed reaction, indicated by bacteria within their plasma. Those using task focused control strategies were more prone to have an immunostimulatory reaction, indicated by white blood cells, including in some cases, sperm destroying phagocytes suggesting a possible auto-immunity reaction. When the analyses were done separately on patients with known male fertility problems in comparison with those with unexplained infertility, the two opposing psychoneuroimmunological processes became more pronounced.     

Social learning in Cartilaginous fish (stingrays Potamotrygon falkneri)

Social learning is considered one of the hallmarks of cognition. Observers learn from demonstrators that a particular behavior pattern leads to a specific consequence or outcome, which may be either positive or negative. In the last few years, social learning has been studied in a variety of taxa including birds and bony fish. To date, there are few studies demonstrating learning processes in cartilaginous fish. Our study shows that the cartilaginous fish freshwater stingrays (Potamotrygon falkneri) are capable of social learning and isolates the processes involved. Using a task that required animals to learn to remove a food reward from a tube, we found that observers needed significantly (P < 0.01) fewer trials to learn to extract the reward than demonstrators. Furthermore, observers immediately showed a significantly (P < 0.05) higher frequency of the most efficient “suck and undulation” strategy exhibited by the experienced demonstrators, suggesting imitation. Shedding light on social learning processes in cartilaginous fish advances the systematic comparison of cognition between aquatic and terrestrial vertebrates and helps unravel the evolutionary origins of social cognition.     

Bilinguals’ twisted tongues: Frequency lag or interference?

Though bilinguals know many more words than monolinguals, within each language bilinguals exhibit some processing disadvantages, extending to sublexical processes specifying the sound structure of words (Gollan & Goldrick, Cognition, 125(3), 491–497, 2012). This study investigated the source of this bilingual disadvantage. Spanish–English bilinguals, Mandarin–English bilinguals, and English monolinguals repeated tongue twisters composed of English nonwords. Twister materials were made up of sound sequences that are unique to the English language (nonoverlapping) or sound sequences that are highly similar—yet phonetically distinct—in the two languages for the bilingual groups (overlapping). If bilingual disadvantages in tongue-twister production result from competition between phonetic representations in their two languages, bilinguals should have more difficulty selecting an intended target when similar sounds are activated in the overlapping sound sequences. Alternatively, if bilingual disadvantages reflect the relatively reduced frequency of use of sound sequences, bilinguals should have greater difficulty in the nonoverlapping condition (as the elements of such sound sequences are limited to a single language). Consistent with the frequency-lag account, but not the competition account, both Spanish–English and Mandarin–English bilinguals were disadvantaged in tongue-twister production only when producing twisters with nonoverlapping sound sequences. Thus, the bilingual disadvantage in tongue-twister production likely reflects reduced frequency of use of sound sequences specific to each language.     

Integrating haptic-tactile feedback into a video-capture-based virtual environment for rehabilitation.

Video-capture virtual reality (VR) systems are gaining popularity as intervention tools. To date, these platforms offer visual and audio feedback but do not provide haptic feedback. We contend that adding haptic feedback may enhance the quality of intervention for various theoretical and empirical reasons. This study aims to integrate haptic-tactile feedback into a video capture system (GX VR), which is currently applied for rehabilitation. The proposed multi-modal system can deliver audio-visual as well as vibrotactile feedback. The latter is provided via small vibratory discs attached to the patient's limbs. This paper describes the system, the guidelines of its design, and the ongoing usability study.     

Selective listening and threshold for tones appearing on a relevant and on an irrelevant input channel

Threshold scores for tones appearing on shadowed and on nonshadowed messages were obtained in order to test whether input presented on an irrelevant channel is attenuated when Ss attend to another channel. Comparisons were made between threshold scores obtained for each ear, when Ss shadowed messages appearing on that ear and when Ss shadowed messages appearing on the contralateral ear. The threshold scores in the two conditions were highly similar. Data are evaluated in the context of auditory target detection, with targets identified by their verbal content vs their physical characteristics.