How choice of mouse may affect response timing in psychological studies

Mice from the early 1990s seemed to offer a cheap and viable alternative to more expensive response boxes, with fairly consistent results being found between studies. However, has anything changed in the intervening decade? Are newer mice technologies necessarily better? Is USB a better mouse interface than the old-fashioned serial interface? With such questions in mind, we outline a method for bench-testing the timing characteristics of mice outside of a PC, in order to predict their contribution to response timing. A sample set of mice was testedunder a visual stimulus—response paradigm, using E-Prime to compare predicted performance with measured response registration. A representative range of mice technologies was tested alongside a standard keyboard and an E-Prime deluxe response box. The implications for using any response device other than a recognized response box are discussed.     

Serial dependence in the estimation of a car's arrival time

Serial dependence of a car's arrival time. We have studied the sequential structure of data in the arrival- time estimations. Forty participants estimated the arrival-time of a vehicle under two experimental conditions: real car and video-image. Various time series regression models were fit to our data, and residuals autocorrelations were computed. For each serial-dependence model, data were fit to three functions, namely, power, logarithmic, and linear. In both experimental conditions, the response magnitude (R) on a given trial in t was a function of the stimulus intensity (S) in such a trial (t) and of the S and R on t-1 and t-2. Assimilation effect to the previous responses and contrast effect to the previous stimuli has been found.     

Comparing speed estimations from a moving vehicle in different traffic scenarios: absence versus presence of traffic flow

The aim of this research was to study the performance in a speed estimation task of a passenger travelling in a real car in different scenarios: a closed track used in previous experimental studies was compared with interurban traffic environment involving a secondary road and a highway. At the same time, the effect of sex and driving experience on speed estimation was analyzed. Thirty-six participants (18 male and 18 female, half of each group being drivers and half non-drivers) estimated the speed of the car in which they travelled as passengers. The actual speed values varied in the range of 40-100 km/h for the secondary road, 70-120 km/h for the highway condition, and 40-120 km/h for the track. The results obtained for the track in previous studies (Recarte and Nunes, 1996; Recarte, Conchillo, and Nunes, 2004, 2005) were replicated in the same condition and were also verified for the secondary road scenario. However, a different pattern of errors was found for the highway. From the viewpoint of psychophysics, the participants were more accurate on the without-traffic track than in real traffic conditions, considered as a whole. The differences found between road and highway are discussed. No effect was found for between- subject variables, sex, and driving experience.     

How informed is online informed consent?

We examined participants' reading and recall of informed consent documents presented via paper or computer. Within each presentation medium, we presented the document as a continuous or paginated document to simulate common computer and paper presentation formats. Participants took slightly longer to read paginated and computer informed consent documents and recalled slightly more information from the paginated documents. We concluded that obtaining informed consent online is not substantially different than obtaining it via paper presentation. We also provide suggestions for improving informed consent--in both face-to-face and online experiments.     

Extinction and renewal of Pavlovian modulation in human sequential Feature Positive discrimination learning

Using a conditioned suppression task, we investigated extinction and renewal of Pavlovian modulation in human sequential Feature Positive (FP) discrimination learning. In Experiment 1, in context a participants were first trained on two FP discriminations, X-->A+/A- and Y-->B+/B-. Extinction treatment was administered in the acquisition context a (aaa group) or in a new context b (aba group), and comprised X-->A- extinction and Y- control trials. Discriminative X-->A/A responding was lost in both groups when tested in the extinction context, but partially recovered in the aba and not in the aaa group when tested in the acquisition context, suggesting extinction and renewal of extinguished modulation. The same was observed for the Y-->B/B control pair, however, questioning whether the loss of discriminative X-->A/A responding represented genuine extinction of modulation. In Experiment 2, including only aba groups, participants were trained in context a on two FP discriminations, X-->A+/A- and Y-->B+/B-, after which the group "Extinction" was exposed to X-->A- extinction trials in context b, whereas the group "Control" was exposed to X- control trials; concurrently, both groups received further Y-->B+/B- training. In the group Control, differential Y-->B/B and X-->A/A responding were acquired and maintained throughout the experiment. In the group Extinction, while Y-->B/B responding was also maintained throughout, differential X-->A/A responding disappeared because of X-->A- extinction treatment when tested in the extinction context b, but partially reappeared when tested in the acquisition context a. This evidences aba-renewal of extinguished modulation.     

Return of fear in a human differential conditioning paradigm caused by a return to the original acquistion context

In a differential human fear conditioning paradigm evidence for ABA-renewal was obtained manipulating the lighting in the experimental room. During acquisition in either a dark or illuminated room, one neutral slide was sometimes paired with a loud aversive noise whereas another slide was not. Subsequently, extinction took place in the opposite lighting context. When afterwards the participants were tested again in the original acquisition context, measurements revealed a recovery of the conditioned electrodermal response and an increase in the retrospective verbal US-expectancy ratings. No response recovery was obtained in an AAA-group that received acquisition, extinction and test trials in one and the same context. Several theoretical explanations for this type of return of fear as well as implications for clinical practice are discussed.     

The emerging fragile X premutation phenotype: evidence from the domain of social cognition

Fragile X syndrome is a neurodevelopmental disorder that is caused by large methylated expansions of a CGG repeat (>200) region upstream of the FMR1 gene that results in the lack of expression of the fragile X mental retardation protein (FMRP). Affected individuals display a neurobehavioral phenotype that includes a significant impairment in social cognition alongside deficits in attentional control, inhibition and working memory. In contrast, relatively little is known about the trajectory and specificity of any cognitive impairment associated with the fragile X premutation ("carrier-status") (approximately 55-200 repeats). Here, we focus on one aspect of cognition that has been well documented in the fragile X full mutation, namely social cognition. The results suggest that premutation males display a pattern of deficit similar in profile, albeit milder in presentation, to that of the full mutation. However, little evidence emerged for a correlation between CGG repeat length and severity of phenotypic outcomes. The findings are discussed in the context of functional neuroimaging and brain-behaviour-molecular correlates. We speculate that the deficiencies in social cognition are attributable to impairment of neural pathways modulated by the cerebellum.     

A Dynamic Model for Rule Induction Tasks

In this paper, a model for performance on rule induction tasks (e.g., items on intelligence tests) is developed. The model simultaneously specifies distributions for response times and response accuracies on an item-by-item basis. It is dynamic in the sense that it can be used to specify and test different ways of learning throughout a test. Three versions of the general model (i.e., with three different learning rules) are described and the fit of these versions is investigated in two datasets on solving number series. The results indicate that one of these versions (one of the learning rules) is better at accounting for the data.