From the Terrible Loneliness to the Wonderful Agreement of Human Beings

What would be the “terrible loneliness” and what would be the “wonderful agreement” in the present paper? The “terrible loneliness” is the only reality that a person perceives and/or thinks during the now going on. For the person, an enormous quantity of occurrences is in the present moment absent. A very small quantity of occurrences is present. The person is the only being in having this. And, this is only during a little moment. The person never thinks about his loneliness in this moment. On the contrary, he thinks he is plenty of people and full of occurrences. But, if he were thinking about reality, he would live in a terrible loneliness. How does he escape himself from this loneliness? He thinks that the probable occurrences are real occurrences. He may be right in a plenty of times. Going through what I call opening hypotheses—basic hypotheses and non-basic but important hypotheses—and going through what I call simply hypotheses he is able to sanction a wonderful agreement of human beings about the known parts of the Universe. However, they are hypotheses, not absolute realities.     

Revisiting the effect of quality of graphics on distance judgments in virtual environments: A comparison of verbal reports and blind walking

In immersive virtual environments, judgments of perceived egocentric distance are significantly underestimated, as compared with accurate performance in the real world. Two experiments assessed the influence of graphics quality on two distinct estimates of distance, a visually directed walking task and verbal reports. Experiment 1 demonstrated a similar underestimation of distances walked to previously viewed targets in both low- and high-quality virtual classrooms. In Experiment 2, participants’ verbal judgments underestimated target distances in both graphics quality environments but were more accurate in the high-quality environment, consistent with the subjective impression that high-quality environments seem larger. Contrary to previous results, we suggest that quality of graphics does influence judgments of distance, but only for verbal reports. This behavioral dissociation has implications beyond the context of virtual environments and may reflect a differential use of cues and context for verbal reports and visually directed walking.     

Full versus divided attention and implicit memory performance

Effects of full and divided attention during study on explicit and implicit memory performance were investigated in two experiments. Study time was manipulated in a third experiment. Experiment 1 showed that both similar and dissociative effects can be found in the two kinds of memory test, depending on the difficulty of the concurrent tasks used in the divided-attention condition. In this experiment, however, standard implicit memory tests were used and contamination by explicit memory influences cannot be ruled out. Therefore, in Experiments 2 and 3 the process dissociation procedure was applied. Manipulations of attention during study and of study time clearly affected the controlled (explicit) memory component, but had no effect on the automatic (implicit) memory component. Theoretical implications of these findings are discussed.     

Auditory temporal information processing in preschool children at family risk for dyslexia: relations with phonological abilities and developing literacy skills

In this project, the hypothesis of an auditory temporal processing deficit in dyslexia was tested by examining auditory processing in relation to phonological skills in two contrasting groups of five-year-old preschool children, a familial high risk and a familial low risk group. Participants were individually matched for gender, age, non-verbal IQ, school environment, and parental educational level. Psychophysical thresholds were estimated for gap-detection, frequency modulation detection, and tone-in-noise detection using a three-interval forced-choice adaptive staircase paradigm embedded within a computer game. Phonological skills were measured by tasks assessing phonological awareness, rapid serial naming, and verbal short-term memory. Significant group differences were found for phonological awareness and letter knowledge. In contrast, none of the auditory tasks differentiated significantly between both groups. However, both frequency modulation and tone-in-noise detection were significantly related to phonological awareness. This relation with phonological skills was not present for gap-detection.     

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Anmerkung der Bearbeiter:A = Artikel;D = Diskussion     

The influences and outcomes of phonological awareness: a study of MA,PA and auditory processing in pre‐readers with a family risk of dyslexia

The direct influence of phonological awareness (PA) on reading outcomes has been widely demonstrated, yet PA may also exert indirect influence on reading outcomes through other cognitive variables such as morphological awareness (MA). However, PA's own development is dependent and influenced by many extraneous variables such as auditory processing, which could ultimately impact reading outcomes. In a group of pre‐reading children with a family risk of dyslexia and low‐risk controls, this study sets out to answer questions surrounding PA's relationship at various grain sizes (syllable, onset/rime and phoneme) with measures of auditory processing (frequency modulation (FM) and an amplitude rise‐time task (RT)) and MA, independent of reading experience. Group analysis revealed significant differences between high‐ and low‐risk children on measures of MA, and PA at all grain sizes, while a trend for lower RT thresholds of high‐risk children was found compared with controls. Correlational analysis demonstrated that MA is related to the composite PA score and syllable awareness. Group differences on MA and PA were re‐examined including PA and MA, respectively, as control variables. Results exposed PA as a relevant component of MA, independent of reading experience.     

How age affects memory task performance in clinically normal hearing persons

The main objective of this study is to investigate memory task performance in different age groups, irrespective of hearing status. Data are collected on a short-term memory task (WAIS-III Digit Span forward) and two working memory tasks (WAIS-III Digit Span backward and the Reading Span Test). The tasks are administered to young (20–30 years, n = 56), middle-aged (50–60 years, n = 47), and older participants (70–80 years, n = 16) with normal hearing thresholds. All participants have passed a cognitive screening task (Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA)). Young participants perform significantly better than middle-aged participants, while middle-aged and older participants perform similarly on the three memory tasks. Our data show that older clinically normal hearing persons perform equally well on the memory tasks as middle-aged persons. However, even under optimal conditions of preserved sensory processing, changes in memory performance occur. Based on our data, these changes set in before middle age.