Brains that are out of tune but in time

It is estimated that about 4% of the general population may have amusia (or tone deafness). Congenital amusia is a lifelong disability for processing music despite normal intellectual, memory, and language skills. Here we present evidence that the disorder stems from a deficit in fine-grained pitch perception. Amusic and control adults were presented with monotonic and isochronous sequences of five tones (i.e., constant pitch and intertone interval). They were required to detect when the fourth tone was displaced in pitch or time. All amusic participants were impaired in detecting the pitch changes, and showed no sign of improvement with practice. In contrast, they detected time changes as well as control adults and exhibited similar improvements with practice. Thus, the degraded pitch perception seen in the amusic individuals cannot be ascribed to nonspecific problems with the task or to poor hearing in general. Rather, the data point to the presence of a congenital neural anomaly that selectively impairs pitch processing.     

The effect of prolonged viewing on the recognition of global and local levels of hierarchically constructed patterns

Two experiments were carried out to examine delays in the recognition of test patterns after prolonged (25 s) viewing of an adaptation pattern which was composed of either the same or different local components and global structures. In the case of geometric patterns that contained a few relatively large elements, there were significant delays of about 70 ms in the global decision task when the test and adaptation stimuli (TS and AS) were of the same pattern, or when they had the same structure but different components. In contrast, in the case of geometric patterns that were composed of many relatively small elements, such a figural relation between the AS and the TS did not affect the recognition speed of the TSs either in the global or in the local decision task. These results suggest that prolonged viewing reduces the efficiency of global processing and that such a disruptive effect occurs depending upon the number and the relative size of the elements that make up the whole pattern.     

Striving for excellence: A multi-action plan intervention model for Shooters

ObjectivesA multi-action plan (MAP) intervention model has been applied to the Italian shooting team in preparation for the London 2012 Olympics to help athletes improve, stabilise, and optimise their performances during practice and competition.DesignA longitudinal design was adopted to assess the intervention effects over two years.MethodsFifteen participants, two female and three male carbine shooters, and five female and five male pistol shooters, took part in the study. First, shooters were requested to accurately and extensively describe their usually optimal sequence of actions for the execution of a single shot from start to follow-through. Second, shooters were asked to identify a small number of the most important core components (three or four) deemed fundamental to optimal performance. Third, performers were engaged in several shooting sessions and asked to assess themselves by rating the quality of each core component. Finally, the most influential core components were further assessed under conditions of increased distress and simulated competition.ResultsCore component ratings were linked to shooting scores classified as optimal or suboptimal. The probability levels of optimal/suboptimal performance associated with the core component ratings were derived using logistical ordinal regression analysis. The full links among core component scores and the full range of shooting scores were also examined through path analysis.ConclusionsFindings highlighted the benefits of using the MAP intervention model in the preparation of elite level shooters.     

Cultural grounding of regret: regret in self and interpersonal contexts

The purpose of this study was to explore cultural similarities and differences in regret, focusing on distinctions between interpersonal and self-situations, and between action and inaction regrets. Japanese and American undergraduates were asked to describe regrets experienced in interpersonal and self-situations. We found that both situational and cultural contexts influenced the likelihood of regretting inactions over actions. Participants were more likely to recall inaction regrets in self-situations than in interpersonal situations, and that the likelihood of recalling inaction regrets was more pronounced for Americans than for Japanese. Furthermore, we examined the intensity of the regret. Whereas American students experienced regret as intense as that of Japanese students in self-situations, Japanese students experienced regret more strongly than American students in interpersonal situations. Detailed content analysis also showed that individuals experienced regret in ways consistent with cultural values. The situational and cultural grounding of regret is discussed.     

You were always on my mind: The importance of “significant others” in the attenuation of retrieval‐induced forgetting in Japan

Research on memory has demonstrated that remembering material can cause forgetting of related information, which is known as retrieval‐induced forgetting (RIF). Macrae and Roseveare identified “self” as one of the boundary conditions of this effect in the Western cultural context, showing that RIF was eliminated when material was encoded to be related to the self (known as self‐referential effect), but not to significant others. In this study, we predicted and found that significant others could be another boundary condition in Japanese cultural contexts in which self and agency are more interdependent or conjoint; RIF was observed neither under best‐friend‐related encoding nor under family‐related encoding in Japan. The effect of significant others is found uniquely in Japanese cultural contexts, suggesting that the cultural model of self has significant power in the spontaneous system of memory.     

Real Objects Can Impede Conditional Reasoning but Augmented Objects Do Not

In this study, Knauff and Johnson‐Laird's (2002) visual impedance hypothesis (i.e., mental representations with irrelevant visual detail can impede reasoning) is applied to the domain of external representations and diagrammatic reasoning. We show that the use of real objects and augmented real (AR) objects can control human interpretation and reasoning about conditionals. As participants made inferences (e.g., an invalid one from "if P then Q" to "P"), they also moved objects corresponding to premises. Participants who moved real objects made more invalid inferences than those who moved AR objects and those who did not manipulate objects (there was no significant difference between the last two groups). Our results showed that real objects impeded conditional reasoning, but AR objects did not. These findings are explained by the fact that real objects may over‐specify a single state that exists, while AR objects suggest multiple possibilities.     

The Individual Career Counseling Needs and Experiences of Female Survivors of Partner Violence

The impact of partner violence on women's employment and career development is profound. Career counselors may contribute substantially to these women's rehabilitation. This study examined employment and career counseling needs, barriers experienced, and counseling satisfaction of female survivors of partner violence (N = 71). The women participated in community‐ and research‐based individual career counseling services designed to promote their short‐ and long‐term career development. The authors conducted correlational, t‐test, and logistic regression analyses and found that barriers differed by race/ethnicity, age, number of children, and career service needs. Results provide important information about survivors' career counseling service access and needs.     

Culture and the physical environment. Holistic versus analytic perceptual affordances

Westerners' perceptions tend to focus on salient foreground objects, whereas Asians are more inclined to focus on contexts. We hypothesized that such culturally specific patterns of attention may be afforded by the perceptual environment of each culture. In order to test this hypothesis, we randomly sampled pictures of scenes from small, medium, and large cities in Japan and the United States. Using both subjective and objective measures, Study 1 demonstrated that Japanese scenes were more ambiguous and contained more elements than American scenes. Japanese scenes thus may encourage perception of the context more than American scenes. In Study 2, pictures of locations in cities were presented as primes, and participants' subsequent patterns of attention were measured. Both Japanese and American participants primed with Japanese scenes attended more to contextual information than did those primed with American scenes. These results provide evidence that culturally characteristic environments may afford distinctive patterns of perception.