Expedited suppression signal in ocular go/no-go decision

When scrutinizing the visual world, complex and unexpected stimuli often lead to prolonged eye fixations to enhance cognitive processing, likely by temporarily suppressing a planned saccade. The present study examined whether the suppression signal is tightly linked to a specific planned saccade and if it conforms to the viewer's intention. A novel Go/No-go task was devised where participants made consecutive saccades to fixate a stimulus appearing across the screen horizontal meridian in 4° steps. At times, the features of the stimulus (colour and/or shape) were altered when it reappeared at a new location. Participants had to suppress the saccade that would otherwise leave the stimulus if its features matched instructed criteria. Saccade suppression was determined by the reduced probability for saccades towards and away from a target stimulus. Results show both correct suppression to saccades leaving the target and erroneous suppression to saccades towards it. The erroneous suppression was initially observed for any change in features but later lifted. The suppression shortened the length of saccades leaving a target but not those towards it. The initial suppression during previewing the target appears to be based on expedited but incomplete evaluation of visual stimulus, and is not linked to any specific saccade. These properties might reflect the stage of ocular decision based on which the suppression signal is generated. They also account for the phenomenon of “peripheral-to-foveal” effect on eye movements in reading.     

缝合复位治疗髌骨粉碎骨折效果分析

探讨缝合复位技术治疗髌骨粉碎骨折的临床疗效。自2005年3月至2011年7月应用髌骨骨折片缝合复位的方法配合内固定器械固定治疗髌骨粉碎骨折患者共24例。男13例,女11例;年龄23岁～62岁,平均42．2岁。1例为开放性髌骨粉碎骨折,其余为闭合性髌骨粉碎骨折。1例开放骨折采用横切口,其余采用纵直切口。暴露髌骨骨折后,用可吸收缝线紧密缝合骨折片,缝合的同时骨折得到复位及固定,后加用其他内固定器械加强固定。术后早期开始屈伸膝关节功能锻炼。结果24例患者术后均获得随访,随访时间8个月～24个月,平均13．4个月。8周随访均达到临床愈合,2个月～3个月（平均2．8个月）骨性愈合,无并发症发生。采用Bostman评分方法评定疗效：优21例,良3例,优良率100%。因此采用缝合复住技术治疗髌骨粉碎骨折,具有操作简便、手术时间短及关节面复位固定好等优点;配合内固定器械固定,使粉碎骨折复住后固定更稳定,术后可以早期功能锻炼,疗效确切。     

Depression impairs the ability to ignore the emotional aspects of facial expressions: Evidence from the Garner task

We assessed dysphoric and clinically distressed individuals' ability to ignore the emotional aspects of facial expressions using the Garner speeded‐classification task. Garner's paradigm tests the ability to selectively focus on a single relevant dimension while ignoring variations on other, irrelevant, ones. In the present task, the stimuli were faces of men and women expressing happy, angry, and neutral emotions. In Experiments 1 and 2, dysphoric and nondysphoric participants performed the Garner task, focusing on gender and ignoring emotion (Experiment 1) and focusing on emotion and ignoring gender (Experiment 2). Results suggest that dysphoric individuals exhibited more difficulty ignoring the emotional dimension of social stimuli even under specific instructions to do so than nondysphoric individuals. In Experiments 3 and 4, we replicated these results in clinically distressed and nondistressed individuals. The results of Experiment 3 further suggested that depression was more closely associated with the inability to selectively ignore emotion than was social anxiety. Experiment 4 confirmed that this failure of selective attention was specific to processing emotional, and not gender features. The implications of these findings for cognitive and interpersonal theories of depression are discussed.     

Discrepancy between explicit judgement of agency and implicit feeling of agency: Implications for sense of agency and its disorders

The sense of agency refers to the feeling of authorship that “I am the one who is controlling external events through my own action”. A distinction between explicit judgement of agency and implicit feeling of agency has been proposed theoretically. However, there has not been sufficient experimental evidence to support this distinction. We have assessed separate explicit and implicit agency measures in the same population and investigated their relationships. Intentional binding task was employed as an implicit measure and self-other attribution task as an explicit measure, which are known to reflect clinical symptoms of disorders in the sense of agency. The results of the implicit measure and explicit measure were not correlated, suggesting dissociation of the explicit judgement of agency and the implicit feeling of agency.     

Improving drivers’ eye fixation using accident scenes of the HazardTouch driver-training tool

This study investigated the effect of a driver-training tool that uses “HazardTouch” software and videos of actual accidents on drivers’ eye fixation through a tablet device (iPad). Drivers’ eye fixation of a video of a car passing thirteen intersections without signals was measured before and after training, using an eye-mark recorder. Three training exposures of four scenes using HazardTouch improved drivers’ eye fixation on the stimulus movie. In particular, the first fixation on the edge of the blind spot at intersections appeared significantly sooner after training. Moreover, fixation frequency for this blind spot increased significantly at post-training. These results suggest that the proposed driver-training tool effectively improves eye-fixation behavior in drivers and may prevent accidents.     

The Experience of Insight Follows Incubation in the Compound Remote Associates Task

The phenomenon of insight is frequently characterized by the experience of a sudden and certain solution. Anecdotal accounts suggest that insight frequently occurs after the problem solver has taken some time away from the problem (i.e., incubation). However, the mechanism by which incubation may facilitate insight problem‐solving remains unclear. Here, we used compound remote associates problems to explore the likely mechanisms by which incubation may facilitate problem‐solving. First, we manipulated problem fixation to explore whether forgetting can explain incubation effects. Second, leveraging previous work linking the experience of insight to unconscious semantic integration, we asked participants to report their experience of insight after each problem solution, including problems solved after a period of distracted incubation. We hypothesized that incubation was not principally important for forgetting but rather frequently causes a shift to a more unconscious semantic integration strategy. Consistent with this we found that initial problem fixation did not predict the improvement in problem‐solving after incubation and that participants were more likely to report insight on problems solved after incubation. Our findings suggest that incubation may facilitate insight problem‐solving leading to a mind‐set shift to a more unconscious problem‐solving strategy involving semantic integration.     

Electrophysiological modulations of exogenous attention by intervening events

The present study used event related potentials (ERPs) in a spatial cueing procedure to investigate the stages of processing influenced by intervening events presented between cues and targets, when they produce maximal behavioural modulations (i.e., facilitation in the absence of the intervening event, and inhibition of return – IOR, when the intervening event is presented). Our data challenge the traditional orienting–reorienting hypothesis, leading to alternative explanations of cueing effects that are beyond the orienting of attention. Peripheral cues always produced a detection cost (reflected in a reduced amplitude of the P100 component for cued as compared to uncued trials), independently on the behavioural effect that was measured. In contrast, facilitation was associated to modulations of later-stage components, such as N100, Nd, and P300. The N2pc component, usually associated to spatial selection, was the only component reflecting opposite and significant modulations associated to the behavioural effect. The present results suggest that facilitation and IOR can arise from changes at different stages of processing. We propose that the perceptual detection cost (reflected on the P100), and the hindered spatial selection (reflected on the N2pc) at the cued location determine the IOR effect at least in discrimination tasks, while the contribution of the later-stage components, beside attentional processes, determines other facilitatory effects of cueing, which altogether determine the behavioural effect that is measured.