Visual implicit memory in the left hemisphere: evidence from patients with callosotomies and right occipital lobe lesions

Identification of visually presented objects and words is facilitated by implicit memory for past visual experiences with those items. Several behavioral and neuroimaging studies suggest that this form of memory is dependent on perceptual processes localized in the right occipital lobe. We tested this claim by examining implicit memory in patients with extensive right occipital lobe lesions, using lexical-decision, mirror-reading, picture-fragment, and word-fragment-completion tests, and found that these patients exhibited normal levels of priming. We also examined implicit memory in patients with complete callosotomies, using standard and divided-visual-field word-fragment-completion procedures, and found that the isolated left hemisphere exhibited normal priming effects. The results indicate that the right occipital lobe does not play a necessary role in visual implicit memory, and that the isolated left hemisphere can support normal levels of visual priming in a variety of tasks.     

Anpassung an Terror—ein Widerspruch in sich

This paper is the final product of free-floating associations during a piece of short self-analysis that was conducted as an answer to the question: How can we adapt to terror? Knowing that, due to our limitations, it is impossible to answer the question in what would be regarded as a scientific manner, I chose to see where I would be taken, using this well-known psychoanalytic tool (first used by Freud). Self-analysis took me to the Middle East where terror is almost an everyday event. Then I read two psychoanalyst’s impressions, one after September 11 (Strozier) and the other after the Holocaust (Ornstein). In both, the experience of a catastrophe in the civilized world was characterized by the dominance of the sense of smell. I then read Améry’s 1966 book and saw the parallel between torture and terror. In both, the background of safety is permanently broken. One consequence of this state of affairs is suggested: Since the exposure to terror, we have been living – in our inner world – in a state of “pristine homelessness” (Kertész).     

The predicament of masculinity: Towards understanding the male's experience of infertility treatments

Sex Roles - The commonsense notions that associate fertility and femininity are shared by the medical establishment, and have led to the concentration of research on women in the area of fertility....     

Response Time Measures as Supplementary Validity Indicators in Forced-Choice Recognition Memory Performance Validity Tests: A Systematic Review

Neuropsychology Review - Performance validity tests (PVTs) based on the forced-choice recognition memory (FCRM) paradigm are commonly used for the detection of noncredible performance....     

On the time course of accessing meaning in a second language: An electrophysiological and behavioral investigation of translation recognition

In 2 experiments, relatively proficient Chinese-English bilinguals decided whether Chinese words were the correct translations of English words. Critical trials were those on which incorrect translations were related in lexical form or meaning to the correct translation. In Experiment 1, behavioral interference was revealed for both distractor types, but event-related potentials (ERPs) revealed a different time course for the 2 conditions. Semantic distractors elicited effects primarily on the N400 and late positive component (LPC), with a smaller N400 and a smaller LPC over the posterior scalp but a larger LPC over the anterior scalp relative to unrelated controls. In contrast, translation form distractors elicited a larger P200 and a larger LPC than did unrelated controls. To determine whether the translation form effects were enabled by the relatively long, 750-ms stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) between words, a 2nd ERP experiment was conducted using a shorter, 300-ms, SOA. The behavioral results revealed interference for both types of distractors, but the ERPs again revealed different loci for the 2 effects. Taken together, the data suggest that proficient bilinguals activate 1st-language translations of words in the 2nd language after they have accessed the meaning of those words. The implications of this pattern for claims about the nature of cross-language activation when bilinguals read in 1 or both languages are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).     

The influence of lexical and conceptual constraints on reading mixed-language sentences: Evidence from eye fixations and naming times

In two experiments, we explored the degree to which sentence context effects operate at a lexical or conceptual level by examining the processing of mixed-language sentences by fluent Spanish-English bilinguals. In Experiment 1, subjects’ eye movements were monitored while they read English sentences in which sentence constraint, word frequency, and language of target word were manipulated. A frequency × constraint interaction was found when target words appeared in Spanish, but not in English. First fixation durations were longer for high-frequency Spanish words when these were embedded in high-constraint sentences than in low-constraint sentences. This result suggests that the conceptual restrictions produced by the sentence context were met, but that the lexical restrictions were not. The same result did not occur for low-frequency Spanish words, presumably because the slower access of low-frequency words provided more processing time for the resolution of this conflict. Similar results were found in Experiment 2 using rapid serial visual presentation when subjects named the target words aloud. It appears that sentence context effects are influenced by both semantic/conceptual and lexical information.     

Interactions between top-down and bottom-up attention in barn owls (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Tyto alba</Emphasis>)

Selective attention, the prioritization of behaviorally relevant stimuli for behavioral control, is commonly divided into two processes: bottom-up, stimulus-driven selection and top-down, task-driven selection. Here, we tested two barn owls in a visual search task that examines attentional capture of the top-down task by bottom-up mechanisms. We trained barn owls to search for a vertical Gabor patch embedded in a circular array of differently oriented Gabor distractors (top-down guided search). To track the point of gaze, a lightweight wireless video camera was mounted on the owl’s head. Three experiments were conducted in which the owls were tested in the following conditions: (1) five distractors; (2) nine distractors; (3) five distractors with one distractor surrounded by a red circle; or (4) five distractors with a brief sound at the initiation of the stimulus. Search times and number of head saccades to reach the target were measured and compared between the different conditions. It was found that search time and number of saccades to the target increased when the number of distractors was larger (condition 2) and when an additional irrelevant salient stimulus, auditory or visual, was added to the scene (conditions 3 and 4). These results demonstrate that in barn owls, bottom-up attention interacts with top-down attention to shape behavior in ways similar to human attentional capture. The findings suggest similar attentional principles in taxa that have been evolutionarily separated for 300 million years.