Contributions of elicitation to measures of self-control

Pigeons' not pecking or pecking constituted choice between a delayed, large reinforcer and an immediate, small reinforcer (self-control) and at other times between a delayed reinforcer and no reinforcer (omission). Both a tone and a keylight were tested as choice signals, and the delayed reinforcer was either response independent or response dependent. Pigeons pecked during the choice signals on over 95% of the trials in the self-control procedure, and pecked during the choice signals on over 75% of the trials in the omission procedure. Consistent pecking was observed with either the tone or the keylight as a choice signal, with the exception that a tone paired with a response-independent delayed reinforcer did not maintain pecking in the omission procedure. Pigeons pecked during more choice signals when delayed reinforcers were response dependent than when the delayed reinforcers were response independent. These results indicate that Pavlovian conditioning influences self-control experiments, especially in single-key procedures.     

动词语义和句子语法对代词加工的影响

考察了动词语义和句子语法对代词加工的影响．结果表明,动词语义是影响代词理解的一个因素;相同语法功能假设尚需进一步验证,研究者还提出代词理解受社会文化因素影响的假设。     

Effects of training students to identify the semantic base of prose materials

Feedback and feedback plus points toward a course grade were applied to the attentional behaviors (defined as the ability to identify the semantic base of text passages) of 30 undergraduate students participating in a reading comprehension development program. Correct underlining was increased, extraneous underlining was decreased, and postreading comprehension test scores improved as a result of the procedures. Scores on a standardized test of reading comprehension also increased significantly.     

Do medical decision analyses' largest gains grow from the smallest trees?

Some decision analysts recommend reserving their models for careful, complete study of complex problems. Others believe simple problem analyses provide the greatest gains. To clarify these issues, I tested: (1) whether simple published analyses compared to complex ones, produced results as non-intuitive; and (2) whether non-intuitiveness represented analytic gain (or equivalently, intuitive loss). Very limited data also examined (3) the gain from adding model intricacy for a given problem vs. selecting more complex problems for analysis. To assess two non-intuitiveness measures, 75 subjects (33 physicians and 42) non-physicians stated their intuitive preferences in 40 (22 published and 18 unpublished) medical dilemmas. For both physicians and non-physicians, simpler models (those with lees than 30 terminal branches in the decision tree) had about one third the non-intuitiveness of more complex ones. Three tests also supported the premise that analyses outperform intuition, therefore that on average the formers' non-intuitiveness reflects less analytic gain. In addition, for different models of the same problem, tree complexity did not correlate with gain. Thus, simpler trees may not generally gain less because they inadequately describe problems. Instead, simpler analyses may represent simpler problems, with more similar intuitive and formal solutions. If so, these findings may help us avoid some costly but unnecessary simple analyses.     

Akt与心肌保护的研究进展及临床启示

心肌保护是心脏疾病治疗的研究热点之一。多种生长因子对心脏有保护作用,使其免受局部缺血及其他损伤带来的损害。虽然这些心肌保护因子下游的转导通路很复杂,但在很多情况下,Akt的激活是一个共同的特征。它在调节各种生长因子和其他胞外刺激诱导的心肌细胞存活、生长、增殖、保持功能和营养物质代谢上发挥了重要作用。通过追踪最近的研究进展以更好地理解Akt在心肌保护中发挥的作用,讨论这些研究的临床启示。关键词:Akt,心肌保护,信号转导通路     

经验、材料性质及加工水平对虚假记忆的影响

本实验采用DRM研究范式,考察经验、材料性质和加工水平三个方面对虚假记忆的影响。实验首次采用句子的方式呈现,给被试提供符合经验和不符合经验的句子进行学习和再认。实验结果显示,三个因素对虚假记忆的影响都是显著的,其中,经验是导致虚假记忆产生的主导因素,加工深度同经验之间以及材料性质同经验之间的交互作用均存在显著的交互作用。     

Reactive and proactive aggression: Similarities and differences

The purpose of the current study was to elaborate the nomological net surrounding the constructs of reactive (RA) and proactive aggression (PA). Typically examined in the context of children, the current study utilized a sample of 211 young adults to examine the relations between reactive and proactive aggression and measures of general personality and social information processing, as well as maladaptive behavioral correlates such as crime, substance use, and riskier sex. Both raw and residualized scores were examined. Using raw scores, the primary differences between RA and PA were related to Neuroticism (i.e., RA more strongly related) and externalizing behaviors (i.e., PA more strongly). The authors comment on the similarity of findings when using raw scores and the divergence of findings using residualized scores and argue for a cautious interpretation of differences based on residualized scores. The authors conclude that the role of Neuroticism warrants further exploration as a means for understanding the heterogeneity of aggressive behavior.     

The Nature and Time Course of Pragmatic Plausibility Effects

The experiments reported in this article used a delayed same/different sentence matching task with concurrent measurement of eye movements to investigate the nature of the plausibility effect. The results clearly show that plausibility effects are not due to low level lexical associative processes, but arise as a consequence of the processing of the earliest or most basic form of sentential meaning. In fact, when sentential implausibility and lexical association are varied simultaneously, it is only sentential implausibility that exerts an effect. Effects of implausibility occur rapidly—sometimes parafoveally—and are localised in the regions of the sentence where the implausibility occurs, suggesting an incremental interpretive process progressing on a roughly word-by-word basis. It is suggested that plausibility effects result from the operation of a heuristically-driven process of sentential interpretation. This appears to behave in a ‘modular’ fashion, despite being influenced by real world knowledge and probabilities.Particular thanks are due to Ken Forster for kindling the ideas which led to much of this work and to Merrill Garrett for posing impossible challenges, which, probably to everyone’s surprise, could in fact be met. I am also much indebted to Claire Boissiere, Emma Clayes, Clare Dobbin, Alan Kennedy, Julie-Ann Marshall, Ashley Murray, and Murray Rowan for their collaboration in this research.     

Experiencing the Cross-Sensory Error Signal During Movement Leads to Proprioceptive Recalibration

Abstract

Reaching to targets in a virtual reality environment with misaligned visual feedback of the hand results in changes in movements (visuomotor adaptation) and sense of felt hand position (proprioceptive recalibration). We asked if proprioceptive recalibration arises even when the misalignment between visual and proprioceptive estimates of hand position is only experienced during movement. Participants performed a “shooting task” through the targets with a cursor that was rotated 30° clockwise relative to hand motion. Results revealed that, following training on the shooting task, participants adapted their reaches to all targets by approximately 16° and recalibrated their sense of felt hand position by 8°. Thus, experiencing a sensory misalignment between visual and proprioceptive estimates of hand position during movement leads to proprioceptive recalibration.     

Parkinsonian Patients Reduce Their Stroke Size with Increased Processing Demands

Parkinson's disease (PD) patients often show reductions in writing size (micrographia) as the length of the text they produce increases. The cause for these reductions in stroke size are not well understood. Reductions in stroke size could be associated with either concurrent processing demands that result from the coordination and control of fingers, wrist, and arm during writing and the processing of future words or increased extension of the wrist joint as the execution of the writing progresses to the right across the page, resulting in increased stiffness in the pen-limb system. Parkinson's patients and elderly controls wrote phrases of different lengths with target patterns in various serial positions. When the number of words to be written increased, PD patients reduced their stroke size of the initial target pattern, while the elderly controls did not reduce their stroke size. There was no systematic change in stroke size of the second pattern as function of serial position. This result suggests that PD patients reduce the size of their handwriting strokes when concurrent processing load increases.