Lifespan differences in cortical dynamics of auditory perception

Using electroencephalographic recordings (EEG), we assessed differences in oscillatory cortical activity during auditory‐oddball performance between children aged 9–13 years, younger adults, and older adults. From childhood to old age, phase synchronization increased within and between electrodes, whereas whole power and evoked power decreased. We conclude that the cortical dynamics of perceptual processing undergo substantial reorganization from childhood to old age, and discuss possible reasons for the inverse relation between age trends in phase synchronization and power, such as lifespan differences in neural background activity, or a lifespan shift from rate coding in children to temporal coding in adults.     

Intentionality in non-equilibrium systems? The functional aspects of self-organized pattern formation

Psychology is frequently confronted with mind-body issues—is there a way by which mentalist and physical approaches to cognition can be integrated? Can the intentional attributes of mind be understood in scientific terms? The authors propose that synergetics, the theory of non-linear complex systems, offers steps towards a possible solution to this conundrum. In particular, we maintain that an essential property of self-organized pattern formation lies within its functionality, this being the ability to optimize, respond and adapt ‘meaningfully’ to environmental constraints. Patterns become functional because they consume in a most efficient manner the gradients which cause their evolution, thereby making synergetic pattern formation appear ‘intentional’. We therefore posit that self-organization phenomena may afford basic explanations for the adaptive, intentional and purposive behavior of many complex systems, in particular of cognitive systems. This present approach elaborates on the second law of thermodynamics.     

心理治疗效果评定量表（简式）在中、德应用的心理测量学研究

419名中国和德国被试参加了本研究,并回答了若干简式心理健康量表。所选的这套量表能对心理治疗不同阶段的效果（Howard’s阶段模型：重新认识期-转变期-康复期）进行测查。本研究目的在于考察这些简式量表能否用于认知-行为治疗跨文化培训项目中的质量管理。结果显示,这些量表在中德两种文化背景下都有很高的信度和效度（聚合效度和敏感性）。尽管项目间的高相关似乎提示心理健康模型只有一个维度,但探索性因素和理论分析则更支持心理健康是一个分为8个亚维度的模型,其中每个亚维度或者与基础情绪、或者与社会性情感相连关联。本文最后就研究结果及其对心理治疗质量控制的意义进行了详细讨论     

Does impulsivity relate to perceived dependence on and actual use of the mobile phone?

Several authors have studied the risks arising from the growth in mobile phone use (e.g. large debts incurred by young people, banned or dangerous use of cellular phones). The aim of this study is to analyse whether impulsivity, which has often been related to various forms of addictive behaviours, is associated with massive use of and dependence on the mobile phone. In this study, 108 female undergraduate psychology students were screened using a questionnaire evaluating actual use of and perceived dependence on the mobile phone, and with the French adaptation of the UPPS Impulsive Behavior Scale. This scale identifies four distinct components associated with impulsive behaviour: Urgency, lack of Premeditation, lack of Perseverance, and Sensation Seeking. The results showed that a relationship can be established between the use of and perceived dependence on the cellular phone and two facets of impulsivity: Urgency and lack of Perseverance. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Children's metamemorial judgments in an event recall task

Two studies were conducted in which two different indicators of metacognitive monitoring were investigated in a complex everyday memory task. In the first phase of each experiment, 8- and 10-year-olds as well as adults were shown a short event (video) and gave judgments of learning, that is, rated their certainty that they would later be able to recall specific details correctly. In the second phase of the experiments, participants underwent a memory interview about the event and in Study 2 also gave confidence judgments, that is, rated their certainty that the provided answers to the memory questions were correct. Results revealed significant influences of memory characteristics on monitoring in that delaying judgments and monitoring judgments concerning irretrievable information affected judgments of learning. From 8 years of age onward, there were relatively appropriate metamemorial monitoring abilities in both indicators. Moderate intraindividual consistency was found across the two measures of metacognitive monitoring, with a tendency toward higher consistency in older age groups. The results are discussed in terms of the adequacy of the underlying theoretical construct.     

On the validity of Raven’s matrices test: Does spatial ability contribute to performance?

The paper reports on an investigation of the convergent and discriminant validity of Raven’s matrices in considering reasoning and spatial abilities. Raven’s advanced progressive matrices (APM) and four scales representing reasoning, visualization, mental rotation and closure were applied to a sample of N = 280 university students. The data were investigated by means of structural equation modeling. The results demonstrated convergent validity of APM with respect to reasoning. In contrast, in investigating discriminant validity substantial correlations of moderate size between APM and the scales representing spatial abilities were observed. However, the investigation of the structure of the prediction of APM revealed that the scales representing spatial abilities did not improve the prediction based on the reasoning scale alone at the latent level. Consequently, it is suggested that Raven’s matrices show good convergent validity and slightly impaired discriminant validity.     

The contribution of recollection and familiarity to recognition memory performance in chronic pain patients

This study examines the selective impact of chronic pain on memory functioning in a recognition task. Thirty chronic pain patients and 30 healthy control subjects performed a yes-no word recognition test. The contribution of recollection and familiarity to both groups' performance was compared by means of the Remember/Know (R/K) procedure, which distinguishes recognition based on the recollection of the encoding episode (R responses) and recognition accompanied by a feeling of familiarity (K responses). Chronic pain patients showed a decrease in recollection together with an increase in familiarity: indeed, they reported less R and more K responses than control subjects. This pattern of performance was not related to the overall recognition ability. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis of the attentional cost of chronic pain, suggesting a selective impact of chronic pain on the most attention-demanding cognitive processes, such as recollection. This study emphasises the relevance of specific procedures distinguishing the underlying components of memory functioning rather than solely global indicators.     

Temporal integration of monocular images separated in time: stereopsis, stereoacuity, and binocular luster

We evaluated stereopsis and binocular luster using electronically controlled shutter glasses with alternating monocular stimulation. In Experiment 1, we used the standard method for testing stereoacuity to obtain a gradual measure of stereopsis. Stereo thresholds decreased with increasing alternating frequency of two monocular half-images without a delay between them. Increasing delays led to increasing thresholds. In Experiment 2, we compared stereopsis resulting from two monocular half-images of a random-dot stereogram and binocular luster with respect to the minimum alternating frequency of the two half-images and the maximum interocular delay that were tolerated without a breakdown of the impression. Below 3 Hz, no stereopsis occurred. Binocular luster was observed only above 10 Hz. The mean threshold of interocular delay for detecting the global figure in a random-dot stereogram was about 51 msec, but for binocular luster it was about 20 msec. Overall, temporal integration was better for stereopsis than for binocular luster.     

The role of first- and second-order stimulus features for human overt attention

When processing complex visual input, human observers sequentially allocate their attention to different subsets of the stimulus. What are the mechanisms and strategies that guide this selection process? We investigated the influence of various stimulus features on human overt attention--that is, attention related to shifts of gaze with natural color images and modified versions thereof. Our experimental modifications, systematic changes of hue across the entire image, influenced only the global appearance of the stimuli, leaving the local features under investigation unaffected. We demonstrated that these modifications consistently reduce the subjective interpretation of a stimulus as "natural" across observers. By analyzing fixations, we found that first-order features, such as luminance contrast, saturation, and color contrast along either of the cardinal axes, correlated to overt attention in the modified images. In contrast, no such correlation was found in unmodified outdoor images. Second-order luminance contrast ("texture contrast") correlated to overt attention in all conditions. However, although none of the second-order color contrasts were correlated to overt attention in unmodified images, one of the second-order color contrasts did exhibit a significant correlation in the modified images. These findings imply, on the one hand, that higher-order bottom-up effects--namely, those of second-order luminance contrast--may partially account for human overt attention. On the other hand, these results also demonstrate that global image properties, which correlate to the subjective impression of a scene being "natural," affect the guidance of human overt attention.     

Object- and direction-specific interference between manual and mental rotation

We conducted a series of psychophysical experiments to investigate the nature and specificity of behavioral interference between mental and manual rotation. Participants were asked to mentally rotate five different types of visual stimuli--hands, faces, tools, cubes, and natural objects--either clockwise or counterclockwise while they simultaneously manually rotated a wheel in the concordant or discordant direction. Our study clearly revealed object-specific interference between manual and mental rotation. In comparison with a neutral baseline condition without any manual rotation, both manual rotation directions generally impaired the mental rotation of cubes. In contrast, the mental rotation of hands was impaired only by discordant manual rotation. This object- and direction-specific interference between manual and mental rotation proved to be independent of task difficulty. We furthermore found an angular distance effect across different stimulus types.