Counter-regulation in affective attentional biases: a basic mechanism that warrants flexibility in emotion and motivation

We investigated whether anticipating positive or negative future outcomes during goal pursuit has a modulatory effect on attentional biases for affectively congruent and incongruent distractor stimuli. In two experiments using a flanker task, we found that distractor interference of stimuli signaling opportunities or dangers was stronger after inducing an outcome focus of the opposite valence. The second experiment provided additional evidence that the incongruency effect reflects a global shift in affective attentional biases and is not mediated by changes in strategies or in the perceived valence of the stimuli. It is argued that counter-regulation in affective attentional biases serves an important function for the regulation of emotion and action.     

A differentiating empirical linguistic analysis of dreamer activity in reports of EEG-controlled REM-dreams and hypnagogic hallucinations

We present Activity Analysis as a new method for the quantification of subjective reports of altered states of consciousness with regard to the indicated level of simulated motor activity. Empirical linguistic activity analysis was conducted with dream reports conceived immediately after EEG-controlled periods of hypnagogic hallucinations and REM-sleep in the sleep laboratory. Reports of REM-dreams exhibited a significantly higher level of simulated physical dreamer activity, while hypnagogic hallucinations appear to be experienced mostly from the point of passive observer. This study lays the groundwork for clinical research on the level of simulated activity in pathologically altered states of subjective experience, for example in the REM-dreams of clinically depressed patients, or in intrusions and dreams of patients diagnosed with PTSD.     

Increased cognitive load leads to impaired mobility decisions in seniors at risk for falls

Successful mobility requires appropriate decision-making. Seniors with reduced executive functioning-such as senior fallers-may be prone to poor mobility judgments, especially under dual-task conditions. We classified participants as "At-Risk" and "Not-At-Risk" for falls using a validated physiological falls-risk assessment. Dual-task performance was assessed in a virtual reality environment where participants crossed a simulated street by walking on a manual treadmill while listening to music or conversing on a phone. Those "At-Risk" experienced more collisions with oncoming cars and had longer crossing times in the Phone condition compared to controls. We conclude that poor mobility judgments during a dual-task leads to unsafe mobility for those at-risk for falls.     

A test of the effect of reverse speech on priming

J. R. Vokey and J. D. Read (1985) indicated that listeners cannot consciously recognize backward messages but that some information can be obtained from reversed speech. If reverse speech has a powerful influence on language processing, as D. J. Oates (1991) has claimed, then one should be able to measure a reliable priming effect from reversed messages. Sixty undergraduate students listened to short messages presented either backward or forward. Immediately after listening to each message, they responded in a lexical decision task to a visually presented word that had either been present or had not been present in the preceding message. No priming effect was found for backward messages, although there was significant priming for forward messages. The results are not consistent with an effect of reverse speech on word processing.     

Neural correlates of conceptual implicit memory and their contamination of putative neural correlates of explicit memory

During episodic recognition tests, meaningful stimuli such as words can engender both conscious retrieval (explicit memory) and facilitated access to meaning that is distinct from the awareness of remembering (conceptual implicit memory). Neuroimaging investigations of one type of memory are frequently subject to the confounding influence of the other type of memory, thus posing a serious impediment to theoretical advances in this area. We used minimalist visual shapes (squiggles) to attempt to overcome this problem. Subjective ratings of squiggle meaningfulness varied idiosyncratically, and behavioral indications of conceptual implicit memory were evident only for stimuli given higher ratings. These effects did not result from perceptual-based fluency or from explicit remembering. Distinct event-related brain potentials were associated with conceptual implicit memory and with explicit memory by virtue of contrasts based on meaningfulness ratings and memory judgments, respectively. Frontal potentials from 300 to 500 msec after the onset of repeated squiggles varied systematically with perceived meaningfulness. Explicit memory was held constant in this contrast, so these potentials were taken as neural correlates of conceptual implicit memory. Such potentials can contaminate putative neural correlates of explicit memory, in that they are frequently attributed to the expression of explicit memory known as familiarity. These findings provide the first neural dissociation of these two memory phenomena during recognition testing and underscore the necessity of taking both types of memory into account in order to obtain valid neural correlates of specific memory functions.     

Validating neural correlates of familiarity

Familiarity is a pervasive memory phenomenon that occurs in its most basic form when someone recognizes a repeated stimulus without recollecting other aspects of the requisite prior learning episode. Theoretical controversy currently abounds with respect to both the cognitive and neural characteristics of familiarity. Here, we show that the extant data, particularly brain-potential data, are insufficient for validating putative neural correlates of familiarity, and we outline strategies for making progress on this problem. Conceptual priming is an implicit-memory phenomenon that often occurs together with familiarity; experiments that conflate the two phenomena can be misleading. Avoiding this conflation is required to understand familiarity and to determine the extent to which the neurocognitive processes that support priming also drive familiarity.     

Mathematics and Theology: A Stroll through the Garden of Mathaphors

Mathematics has long been considered the language of science and has even been acknowledged as the universal language of the future. Yet mathematics also plays a less-recognized religious role in that metaphors drawn from mathematics (mathaphors) can influence our spiritual perspectives by helping us to entertain new religious ideas and to challenge old ones. Mathaphors are therefore useful tools in matheology (the study of mathematics and theology). This essay explores ten ways in which contemporary mathaphors affect our spiritual lives. Specifically, mathaphors are: changing our metaphors for God; challenging our human role in the universe; helping us accept ambiguity; revamping our understanding of the one and the many; revising our thoughts about free will and determinism; moving us toward pluralistic, multi-world views; pushing the envelope on what consciousness is; altering our expectations for afterlife; offering the hope of a more compassionate future; encouraging faith perspectives that are always incomplete and in process.     

Waking and dreaming: related but structurally independent. Dream reports of congenitally paraplegic and deaf-mute persons

Models of dream analysis either assume a continuum of waking and dreaming or the existence of two dissociated realities. Both approaches rely on different methodology. Whereas continuity models are based on content analysis, discontinuity models use a structural approach. In our study, we applied both methods to test specific hypotheses about continuity or discontinuity. We contrasted dream reports of congenitally deaf-mute and congenitally paraplegic individuals with those of non-handicapped controls. Continuity theory would predict that either the deficit itself or compensatory experiences would surface in the dream narrative. We found that dream form and content of sensorially limited persons was indifferent from those of non-handicapped controls. Surprisingly, perceptual representations, even of modalities not experienced during waking, were quite common in the dream reports of our handicapped subjects. Results are discussed with respect to feedforward mechanisms and protoconsciousness theory of dreaming.     

Motivational incentives modulate age differences in visual perception

This study examined whether motivational incentives modulate age-related perceptual deficits. Younger and older adults performed a perceptual discrimination task in which bicolored stimuli had to be classified according to their dominating color. The valent color was associated with either a positive or negative payoff, whereas the neutral color was not associated with a payoff. Effects of incentives on perceptual efficiency and response bias were estimated using the diffusion model (Ratcliff, 1978). Perception of neutral stimuli showed age-related decline, whereas perception of valent stimuli, both positive and negative, showed no age difference. This finding is interpreted in terms of preserved top-down control over the allocation of perceptual processing resources in healthy aging.