Eye movements during spoken word recognition in Russian children

This study explores incremental processing in spoken word recognition in Russian 5- and 6-year-olds and adults using free-viewing eye-tracking. Participants viewed scenes containing pictures of four familiar objects and clicked on a target embedded in a spoken instruction. In the cohort condition, two object names shared identical three-phoneme onsets. In the noncohort condition, all object names had unique onsets. Coarse-grain analyses of eye movements indicated that adults produced looks to the competitor on significantly more cohort trials than on noncohort trials, whereas children surprisingly failed to demonstrate cohort competition due to widespread exploratory eye movements across conditions. Fine-grain analyses, in contrast, showed a similar time course of eye movements across children and adults, but with cohort competition lingering more than 1s longer in children. The dissociation between coarse-grain and fine-grain eye movements indicates a need to consider multiple behavioral measures in making developmental comparisons in language processing.     

Inconsistent handedness is linked to more successful foreign language vocabulary learning

The study examined correlations between incidental learning of foreign words and interhemispheric connectivity, operationalized as consistency of hand preference, using pooled data of five experiments on adult foreign language learning (N=242). Inconsistent hand preference was found to be positively correlated with vocabulary learning even after effects of cognitive variables (verbal working memory capacity and nonverbal IQ), identified previously as predictive of successful foreign-language vocabulary learning, were partialled out. This observed relationship between handedness consistency and vocabulary learning persisted when left-handed and right-handed individuals were analyzed separately, and there was no overall difference in performance between left- and right-handers. The findings confirm an association between degree of handedness and verbal episodic memory.     

Multiple perceptual strategies used by macaque monkeys for face recognition

Successful integration of individuals in macaque societies suggests that monkeys use fast and efficient perceptual mechanisms to discriminate between conspecifics. Humans and great apes use primarily holistic and configural, but also feature-based, processing for face recognition. The relative contribution of these processes to face recognition in monkeys is not known. We measured face recognition in three monkeys performing a visual paired comparison task. Monkey and humans faces were (1) axially rotated, (2) inverted, (3) high-pass filtered, and (4) low-pass filtered to isolate different face processing strategies. The amount of time spent looking at the eyes, mouth, and other facial features was compared across monkey and human faces for each type of stimulus manipulation. For all monkeys, face recognition, expressed as novelty preference, was intact for monkey faces that were axially rotated or spatially filtered and was supported in general by preferential looking at the eyes, but was impaired for inverted faces in two of the three monkeys. Axially rotated, upright human faces with a full range of spatial frequencies were also recognized, however, the distribution of time spent exploring each facial feature was significantly different compared to monkey faces. No novelty preference, and hence no inferred recognition, was observed for inverted or low-pass filtered human faces. High-pass filtered human faces were recognized, however, the looking pattern on facial features deviated from the pattern observed for monkey faces. Taken together these results indicate large differences in recognition success and in perceptual strategies used by monkeys to recognize humans versus conspecifics. Monkeys use both second-order configural and feature-based processing to recognize the faces of conspecifics, but they use primarily feature-based strategies to recognize human faces.     

Diversion of attention in everyday concept learning: Identification in the service of use

Many people tend to believe that natural categories have perfectly predictive defining features. They do not easily accept the family resemblance view that the features characteristic of a category are not individually sufficient to predict the category. However, common category-learning tasks do not produce this simpler-than-it-is belief. If there is no simple classification principle in a task, the participants know that fact and can report it. We argue that most category-learning tasks in which family resemblance categories are used fail to produce the everyday simpler-than-it-is belief because they encourage analysis of identification criteria during training. To simulate the learning occurring in many natural circumstances, we developed a procedure in which participants' analytic activity is diverted from the way in which the stimuli are identified to the use to which the stimuli will be put. Finally, we discuss the prevalence of this diverted analysis in everyday categorization.     

The faculty psychology of Thomas Reid

Contradictory versions of Reid's faculty psychology have been presented. A reexamination of Reid's writings suggests that the term, faculty, was used not as a classificatory device but rather to refer to innate, universal, and active mental powers. Being active, the faculties are one of the basic causes of observable psychological phenomena. The relation of the faculties to other mental powers is considered. A new listing and classification of such powers is compared with that presented in 1936 by H. D. Spoerl which has been used as the basis for much of the subsequent analysis of Reid's faculty psychology.     

Gender and family factors as predictors of late adolescent emotional expressiveness and adjustment: A longitudinal study

This study examined the longterm effects of the socialization of emotion in a sample of European American families. Late adolescents, whose families had been more emotionally expressive and accepting of emotions when they were in fifth grade, were more likely to report showing emotions not traditionally associated with their gender roles—specifically, males reported a greater propensity for crying, and females reported a greater tendency to express anger. In addition, in late adolescence, greater frequency of showing fear and showing warmth or affection were associated with higher levels of social and psychological adjustment—whereas crying was associated with better adjustment for males and poorer adjustment for females. Overall, adolescent females tended to report a higher level of emotional expressiveness and a higher level of family support of emotions than did adolescent males.     

The Effects of Selective Cholinergic Basal Forebrain Lesions and Aging upon Expectancy in the Rat

The effects of selective cholinergic cell loss within the basal forebrain (BF) were determined using a task that requires shifting of attention between two visual stimuli. Discriminability between two stimuli and response bias were determined in young and old F-344 rats given BF injections of IgG-192 saporin (100 ng). The lesion reduced ChAT activity in the frontal and parietal cortices, hippocampus, and olfactory bulbs. The lesion did not significantly alter Na⁺/K⁺-ATPase activity in cortex, hippocampus, or olfactory bulbs, or endogenous levels of neuropeptide Y and neurokinin B within the BF. The BF lesions impaired both stimulus discriminability and response bias in young and old rats. The BF lesions had a significantly greater effect upon stimulus discriminability and response bias in aged rats, compared to young rats, only when the stimulus duration was very brief, i.e., when the task was most difficult to solve. At longer stimulus durations, aging and lesions showed no interaction. The results suggest that the selective loss of cholinergic cells in the BF, but not normal aging, impairs the ability to discriminate between independent sensory stimuli. The loss of these cells confers a response bias in simple operant tasks involving motor responses to reward-related visual stimuli.     

The Beck Depression Inventory: item order and the impact of response sets

The lack of subtle content in the item groups of the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) and the consistency in the ordering of the items from least to most pathological make this instrument unduly susceptible to either defensive or malingering response sets. Two experimental forms were developed for the BDI: a backwards version (a simple reversal of the order of items within each group) and a random-order version. These forms, together with the original item order, were given to college undergraduate women along with the Depression scale from the MMPI and the Burks-Martin Questionnaire covering recent life changes and current stressful situations. The random order BDI results in a significantly higher depression score than did either the original or backwards version. Correlations with the other instruments were comparable for all three forms. The random order of items within each set appears to break up a response set to endorse either the first or last item and is, therefore, recommended.