Atypical categorization in children with high-functioning autism spectrum disorder

Children with autism spectrum disorder process many perceptual and social events differently from typically developing children, suggesting that they may also form and recognize categories differently. We used a dot pattern categorization task and prototype comparison modeling to compare categorical processing in children with high-functioning autism spectrum disorder and matched typical controls. We were interested in whether there were differences in how children with autism use average similarity information about a category to make decisions. During testing, the group with autism spectrum disorder endorsed prototypes less and was seemingly less sensitive to differences between to-be-categorized items and the prototype. The findings suggest that individuals with high-functioning autism spectrum disorder are less likely to use overall average similarity when forming categories or making categorical decisions. Such differences in category formation and use may negatively impact processing of socially relevant information, such as facial expressions. A supplemental appendix for this article may be downloaded from http://pbr.psychonomic-journals.org/content/supplemental.     

Emotional and cognitive information processing: relations to behavioral performance and hippocampal long-term potentiation in vivo during a spatial water maze training in rats

Emotionality as well as cognitive abilities contribute to the acquisition and retrieval of memories as well as to the consolidation of long-term potentiation (LTP), a cellular model of memory formation. However, little is known about the timescale and relative contribution of these processes. Therefore, we tested the effects of weak water maze training, containing both emotional and cognitive demands, on LTP in the hippocampal dentate gyrus. The population spike amplitude (PSA)-LTP was prolonged in all rats irrespective of whether they memorized the platform position or not, whereas the field excitatory postsynaptic potential (fEPSP)-LTP was impaired in good learners and enhanced in poor learners. We then dissociated the behavioral performance of rats during the water maze task by principal component analysis and by means of stress hormone concentrations into underlying "emotional" and "cognitive" factors. PSA-LTP was associated with "emotional" and fEPSP-LTP with "cognitive" behavior. PSA-LTP was depotentiated after the blockade of corticosterone binding mineralocorticoid receptors (MRs) in trained animals, while fEPSP-LTP was unaffected. These results suggest that synaptic processing and encoding of emotional information in the hippocampal dentate gyrus is realized fast and further information transfer is detectable by the reinforcement of PSA-LTP, whereas that of cognitive memories is long lasting.     

The Materiality of the Abstraction Voice

The comment on Bertau's paper underlines the importance of the internally social character of the dialogical self, which is not trivial and can not be taken for granted. A consistent theory of this internal character demands specific theoretical means native to a tradition of Leibniz' philosophy. In consequence the concept of dialogical self is presented as a non-empirical one based in an ethos. We, and not nature, are responsible for the modes of conceptualising.     

Scham und Berührung

The problem

Are there correlations between shame and touch in healthy persons?

Methods

Data from a questionnaire survey with the Skin Satisfaction Questionnaire (HautZuf) with 140 healthy persons were validated with TAS 26, HADS and the Adult Attachment Scale.

Results

There are significant correlations in the scale shame with all other scales of the used questionnaires TAS-26, AAS and HADS. There was a negative correlation between the scale ?physical closeness“ and ?confidence“ of the AAS, but all other scales correlated positively with the shame scale.

Conclusions

More emotions of shame seem to be present with anxiety, depression and disturbances in the sense of an alexithymia concept. Also high feelings of shame correlated with decreased confidence in the personal environment and greater intolerance for personal nearness. The significant correlations between shame affects and self-touch or touch by partner point to important factors in self-perception also for the psychotherapeutic context.     

Fibromyalgie und Leistungseinschränkung

Interdisciplinary guidelines allowed for new quality standards in pain appraisal. Simultaneously, the scientific notion of fibromyalgia changed from a subjectively overvalued malaise to a central disturbance of coping with stress, which is neurobiologically determined. Therefore, in this article a psychosomatics-based guide is given for the socio-medical appraisal of fibromyalgia with reference to the new International Classification for Functioning and Disability (ICF) of the World Health Organization (WHO). As illustration a case study is presented.     

Is there a Bayesian justification of hypothetico-deductive inference?

Many philosophers have claimed that Bayesianism can provide a simple justification for hypothetico-deductive (H-D) inference, long regarded as a cornerstone of the scientific method. Following up a remark of van Fraassen (1985), we analyze a problem for the putative Bayesian justification of H-D inference in the case where what we learn from observation is logically stronger than what our theory implies. Firstly, we demonstrate that in such cases the simple Bayesian justification does not necessarily apply. Secondly, we identify a set of sufficient conditions for the mismatch in logical strength to be justifiably ignored as a “harmless idealization”. Thirdly, we argue, based upon scientific examples, that the pattern of H-D inference of which there is a ready Bayesian justification is only rarely the pattern that one actually finds at work in science. Whatever the other virtues of Bayesianism, the idea that it yields a simple justification of a pervasive pattern of scientific inference appears to have been oversold.     

Spatial navigation: Cognitive variables involved in route retracing among an elderly population

The cognitive processes involved in route retracing are not well known. This study aims to highlight them in an elderly population in which contradictory results have been obtained, certain studies showing specific difficulties for route retracing, others not. Thirty-nine elderly subjects performed a route-learning task (forward-backward) in a garden, then completed spatial knowledge tasks and standardised cognitive tests. Results show four factors that were predictive of route retracing performance: route repetition, the pointing task, and two standardised cognitive tests, one assessing spatial working memory, and another global cognitive efficiency. According to these results, route retracing involves route and survey knowledge (i.e., egocentric and allocentric strategy), and the integration of forward-backward perspectives is underpinned by the spatial working memory. Moreover, the subjects did not make more errors in route retracing than in the route repetition task, suggesting that a real environment could compensate for a failing allocentric strategy.