Age-related changes in event-related prospective memory performance: a comparison of four prospective memory tasks

The primary purpose of the study was to identify event-based prospective-memory tasks that provide sensitive and reliable tools for assessing effects of normal aging in prospective-memory performance. Four prospective-memory tasks were selected from the literature or were newly developed, with the tasks differing on various dimensions that, for theoretical reasons or based on previous evidence, might determine task sensitivity to age effects on prospective-memory performance: perceptual saliency of prospective target events, frequency of occurrence of prospective target events, complexity of prospective-memory instructions, and provision of feedback after prospective-memory errors. Two of the four tasks yielded large and robust age effects on prospective-memory performance. Correlational analyses suggested that these age effects on prospective-memory performance were mediated, at least in part, by a reduced ability of older adults to maintain prospective intentions in a highly activated state and not by age effects on basic mental speed alone.     

Dimensionen der Gefühle

Zusammenfassung Es war das Ziel der Untersuchung, ein System der Gefühlsqualitäten zu finden, das im Unterschied zu früheren Klassifikationsversuchen nicht auf der Anwendung formaler Kategorien oder anderer, gewissermaßen von außen an den Gegenstand herangetragener Gesichtspunkte beruhte, sondern aus den Erlebnisinhalten selbst hervorging.Nach verschiedenen Methoden wurden drei Versuche unternommen, in denen die Versuchspersonen auf Grund der Vergegenwärtigung des Erlebnisses Urteile über die Ähnlichkeit und über bestimmte Eigenschaften von Gefühlsqualitäten abzugeben hatten.Aus den Ergebnissen aller drei Versuche konnten Ordnungssysteme der verwendeten Gefühlsqualitäten gebildet werden. Trotz der Verschiedenheit der angewendeten Methoden besteht zwischen den drei Systemen in den vergleichbaren Punkten eine nahezu vollkommene Übereinstimmung.Die Gesamtheit der Gefühlsqualitäten ordnet sich nach dem Resultat dieser Untersuchung in drei Dimensionen an, denen die Bezeichnungen Angenehm—Unangenehm, Unterwerfung—Überhebung und Grad der Motivierung gegeben wurden.Nach einigen Betrachtungen über die der Beurteilung von Gefühlsqualitäten zugrunde liegenden subjektiven Prozesse werden methodische Folgerungen gezogen, die besagen, daß die Voraussetzungen für die Untersuchung der Gefühle weit günstiger sind, als dies nach der vorherrschenden Meinung der Fall ist. Schließlich wird die Anwendungsmöglichkeit der Resultate auf einige Fragestellungen der Gefühlsforschung an Hand von Beispielen erörtert.     

Do chickens (Gallus gallus f. domestica) decompose visual figures?

To investigate whether learning to discriminate between visual compound stimuli depends on decomposing them into constituting features, hens were first trained to discriminate four features (red, green, horizontal, vertical) from two dimensions (colour, line orientation). After acquisition, hens were trained with compound stimuli made up from these dimensions in two ways: a separable (line on a coloured background) stimulus and an integral one (coloured line). This compound training included a reversal of reinforcement of only one of the two dimensions (half-reversal). After having achieved the compound stimulus discrimination, a second dimensional training identical to the first was performed. Finally, in the second compound training the other dimension was reversed. Two major results were found: (1) an interaction between the dimension reversed and the type of compound stimulus: in compound training with colour reversal, separable compound stimuli were discriminated worse than integral compounds and vice versa in compound training with line orientation reversed. (2) Performance in the second compound training was worse than in the first one. The first result points to a similar mode of processing for separable and integral compounds, whereas the second result shows that the whole stimulus is psychologically superior to its constituting features. Experiment 2 repeated experiment 1 using line orientation stimuli of reversed line and background brightness. Nevertheless, the results were similar to experiment 1. Results are discussed in the framework of a configural exemplar theory of discrimination that assumes the representation of the whole stimulus situation combined with transfer based on a measure of overall similarity.     

Use of interactive voice response (IVR) technology in health research with children

This article reports on the feasibility of using interactive voice response (IVR) technology to obtain daily reports of attitudes toward alcohol and tobacco use among children 9–13 years of age. Two studies were conducted. The first was an investigation of the use of IVR technology to obtain daily data from a sample of primary school children over a period of 8 weeks. The second was an extension of the research to a large sample of primary and secondary school children in urban and rural areas who provided daily data over a 4-week period. Retention and compliance rates comparable to those obtained with adults were evident in both studies, supporting the feasibility of this technology with children. The results are discussed in relation to the benefits of this methodology for health research, particularly for studies of sensitive topics conducted with children and adolescents.     

Immediate spatial distortions of pointing movements induced by visual landmarks

We tested the influence of two horizontally aligned visual landmarks on pointing movements to memorized targets, to investigate whether the visuomotor system can make use of an egocentric representation unaffected by visual context. The endpoints of pointing movements were systematically distorted toward the nearest visual landmark, indicating that spatial representations included both target and nontarget information. These distortions were not due to the presence of the landmarks during the movement but, rather, to their presence in the encoding phase. Qualitatively similar distortions were present even with the shortest possible retention phase, when the target was extinguished at movement onset. Finally, we found the same pattern of distortion when participants were forced to remember the target within an allocentric frame of reference. We argue that even early memory representations for pointing movements are influenced by visual information in the surrounding visual field.     

Lying to insurance companies: the desire to deceive among physicians and the public

This study examines the public's and physicians' willingness to support deception of insurance companies in order to obtain necessary healthcare services and how this support varies based on perceptions of physicians' time pressures. Based on surveys of 700 prospective jurors and 1617 physicians, the public was more than twice as likely as physicians to sanction deception (26%versus 11%) and half as likely to believe that physicians have adequate time to appeal coverage decisions (22%versus 59%). The odds of public support for deception compared to that of physicians rose from 2.48 to 4.64 after controlling for differences in time perception. These findings highlight the ethical challenge facing physicians and patients in balancing patient advocacy with honesty in the setting of limited societal resources.     

Anomalous induction of brightness and surface qualities: a new illusion due to radial lines and chromatic rings

When a chromatic (eg light-blue) annulus surrounds the central gap of an Ehrenstein figure so as to connect the inner ends of the radial lines, a striking new lightness effect emerges: the central white disk has both a self-luminous quality (brighter than in the regular Ehrenstein figure) and a surface quality (dense, paste-like). Self-luminous and surface qualities do not ordinarily appear co-extensively: hence, the brightness induction is called anomalous. In experiment 1, subjects separately scaled self-luminous and surface properties, and in experiment 2, brightness was nulled by physically darkening the central gap. Experiments 3 and 4 were designed to evaluate the importance of chromatic versus achromatic properties of the annulus; other aspects of the annulus (width or the inclusion of a thin black ring inside or outside the chromatic annulus) were tested in experiments 5-7. In experiments 8-12, subjects rated the brightness of modified Ehrenstein figures varying the radial lines (number, length, width, contrast, arrangement). Variation of these parameters generally affected brightness enhancement in the Ehrenstein figure and anomalous brightness induction in a similar manner, but was stronger for the latter effect. On the basis of these results, anomalous brightness induction is attributed to a surface induction process triggered by an interaction between illusory brightness enhancement (due to the radial lines) and border ownership (due to the blue annulus).     

Knowledge scale effects in face recognition: An electrophysiological investigation

Although the amount or scale of biographical knowledge held in store about a person may differ widely, little is known about whether and how these differences may affect the retrieval processes triggered by the person’s face. In a learning paradigm, we manipulated the scale of biographical knowledge while controlling for a common set of minimal knowledge and perceptual experience with the faces. A few days after learning, and again after 6 months, knowledge effects were assessed in three tasks, none of which concerned the additional knowledge. Whereas the performance effects of additional knowledge were small, event-related brain potentials recorded during testing showed amplitude modulations in the time range of the N400 component—indicative of knowledge access—but also at a much earlier latency in the P100 component—reflecting early stages of visual analysis. However, no effects were found in the N170 component, which is taken to reflect structural analyses of faces. The present findings replicate knowledge scale effects in object recognition and suggest that enhanced knowledge affects both early visual processes and the later processes associated with semantic processing, even when this knowledge is not task-relevant.