Dual-tasking alleviated sleep deprivation disruption in visuomotor tracking: an fMRI study

Effects of dual-responding on tracking performance after 49-h of sleep deprivation (SD) were evaluated behaviorally and with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Continuous visuomotor tracking was performed simultaneously with an intermittent color-matching visual detection task in which a pair of color-matched stimuli constituted a target and non-matches were non-targets. Tracking error means were binned time-locked to stimulus onset of the detection task in order to observe changes associated with dual-responding by comparing the error during targets and non-targets. Similar comparison was made with fMRI data. Our result showed that despite a significant increase in the overall tracking error post SD, from 20 pixels pre SD to 45 pixels post SD, error decreased to a minimum of about 25 pixels 0-6s after dual-response. Despite an overall reduced activation post SD, greater activation difference between targets and non-targets was found post SD in task-related regions, such as the left cerebellum, the left somatosensory cortex, the left extrastriate cortex, bilateral precuneus, the left middle frontal gyrus, and the left motor cortex. Our results suggest that dual-response helps to alleviate performance impairment usually associated with SD. The duration of the alleviation effect was on the order of seconds after dual-responding.     

Attention in risky choice

Previous research on the processes involved in risky decisions has rarely linked process data to choice directly. We used a simple measure based on the relative amount of attentional deployment to different components (gains/losses and their probabilities) of a risky gamble during the choice process, and we related this measure to the actual choice. In an experiment we recorded the decisions, decision times, and eye movements of 80 participants who made decisions on 11 choice problems. We used the number of eye fixations and fixation transitions to trace the deployment of attention during the choice process and obtained the following main results. First, different components of a gamble attracted different amounts of attention depending on participants' actual choice. This was reflected in both the number of fixations and the fixation transitions. Second, the last-fixated gamble but not the last-fixated reason predicted participants' choices. Third, a comparison of data obtained with eye tracking and data obtained with verbal protocols from a previous study showed a large degree of convergence regarding the process of risky choice. Together these findings tend to support dimensional decision strategies such as the priority heuristic.     

The Structure of Social Exchange in Self-help Support Groups: Development of a Measure

Self-help support groups are indigenous community resources designed to help people manage a variety of personal challenges, from alcohol abuse to xeroderma pigmentosum. The social exchanges that occur during group meetings are central to understanding how people benefit from participation. This paper examines the different types of social exchange behaviors that occur during meetings, using two studies to develop empirically distinct scales that reliably measure theoretically important types of exchange. Resource theory informed the initial measurement development efforts. Exploratory factor analyses from the first study led to revisions in the factor structure of the social exchange scales. The revised measure captured the exchange of emotional support, experiential information, humor, unwanted behaviors, and exchanges outside meetings. Confirmatory factor analyses from a follow-up study with a different sample of self-help support groups provided good model fit, suggesting the revised structure accurately represented the data. Further, the scales demonstrated good convergent and discriminant validity with related constructs. Future research can use the scales to identify aspects of social exchange that are most important in improving health outcomes among self-help support group participants. Groups can use the scales in practice to celebrate strengths and address weaknesses in their social exchange dynamics.     

Markers of Topical Discourse in Child‐Directed Speech

Although the language we encounter is typically embedded in rich discourse contexts, many existing models of processing focus largely on phenomena that occur sentence‐internally. Similarly, most work on children's language learning does not consider how information can accumulate as a discourse progresses. Research in pragmatics, however, points to ways in which each subsequent utterance provides new opportunities for listeners to infer speaker meaning. Such inferences allow the listener to build up a representation of the speakers' intended topic and more generally to identify relationships, structures, and messages that extend across multiple utterances. We address this issue by analyzing a video corpus of child–caregiver interactions. We use topic continuity as an index of discourse structure, examining how caregivers introduce and discuss objects across utterances. For the analysis, utterances are grouped into topical discourse sequences using three annotation strategies: raw annotations of speakers' referents, the output of a model that groups utterances based on those annotations, and the judgments of human coders. We analyze how the lexical, syntactic, and social properties of caregiver–child interaction change over the course of a sequence of topically related utterances. Our findings suggest that many cues used to signal topicality in adult discourse are also available in child‐directed speech.     

斑点追踪技术定量评价慢性肺源性心脏病患者右心室功能

应用斑点追踪技术（STE）定量评价慢性肺源性心脏病患者右心室功能的改变。在我院明确诊断为慢性肺源性心脏病患者39例作为病例组,健康体检人员30例作为对照组。应用STE测量右心室收缩期峰值应变率（SRs）、舒张早期峰值应变率（SRe）、舒张晚期峰值应变率（SRa）,计算舒张早期峰值应变率与舒张晚期峰值应变率的比值（SRe/SRa）;测量三尖瓣环游离壁舒张早期运动速度峰值（Ea）、舒张晚期运动速度峰值（Aa）并计算其比值（Ea/Aa）;计算右心室面积变化率（RVFAC）。病例组RVFAC、Ea/Aa、SRs、SRe、SRa、SRe/SRa均低于对照组（P〈0.05）。SRs与RVFAC呈显著正相关（r=0.725,P〈0.001）。SRs、RVFAC与PASP呈显著负相关（r1=-0.695,r2=-0.664,P〈0.001）。SRe/SRa与Ea/Aa呈显著正相关（r=0.701,P〈0.001）。慢性肺源性心脏病患者右心室收缩和舒张功能减低。STE可以定量评价慢性肺源性心脏病患者右心室功能的改变。     

Directing gaze: The effect of disclaimer labels on women's visual attention to fashion magazine advertisements

In an effort to combat the known negative effects of exposure to unrealistic thin ideal images, there is increasing worldwide pressure on fashion, media and advertising industries to disclose when images have been digitally altered. The current study used eye tracking technology to investigate experimentally how digital alteration disclaimer labels impact women's visual attention to fashion magazine advertisements. Participants were 60 female undergraduate students who viewed four thin ideal advertisements with either no disclaimer, a generic disclaimer, or a specific more detailed disclaimer. It was established that women did attend to the disclaimers. The nature of the disclaimer had no effect on time spent looking at particular body parts, but did affect the direction of gaze following reading of the disclaimer. This latter effect was found to be greater for women high on trait appearance comparison. Further research is paramount in guiding effective policy around the use of disclaimer labels.     

Looking at the eyes of happiness: Positive emotions mediate the influence of life satisfaction on attention to happy faces

Despite significant advancements in the research of subjective well-being (SWB), little is known about its connection with basic cognitive processes. The present study explores the association between selective attention to emotional stimuli (i.e. emotional faces) and both the emotional and cognitive components of SWB (i.e. emotional well-being and satisfaction in life, respectively). Participants (N?=?83) were asked to freely watch a series of 84 pairs of emotional (happy, angry, or sad) and neutral faces from the Karolinska Directed Emotional Faces database. Eye-tracking methodology measured first fixations, number of fixations, and the time spent looking at emotional faces. Results showed that both the emotional and cognitive components of SWB were related to a general bias to attend to happy faces and avoid sad faces. Yet, bootstrapping analyses showed that positive emotions, rather than life satisfaction, were responsible for the positive information-processing bias. We discuss the potential functionality of these biases and their implications for research on positive emotions.     

The influence of motivational priority on younger and older adults’ positive gaze preferences

ABSTRACT

The present study investigated whether manipulating emotional goal priority within a series of divided attention tasks influenced the presence or absence of age-related positive gaze preferences. Across two experiments, participants viewed image pairs while performing an auditory version of a 3-back n-back task. In Experiment 1, four conditions were presented: full attention viewing, emotion regulation priority, n-back task priority, and equal priority. The same conditions were included for Experiment 2, with the addition of a “no priority” divided attention condition and full attention n-back condition. Both age groups demonstrated greater positive relative to negative preferences when emotion regulation goals were prioritized, in spite of the challenge presented by a secondary task in divided attention. The present findings are discussed in terms of how positive emotional processing preferences may emerge despite cognitive control constraints in old age. Implications for the role of explicit motivations for older adults’ positivity preferences are discussed.     

Development of the Couples Resource Map Scales

Abstract

This article describes the initial phases of development of the Couples Resource Map Scales (CRMS). These scales are designed to assess the degree of support couples receive from various personal, relationship, and contextual resources. The first phase involved the initial item development and an expert review of an extended list of potential items. The second phase involved a survey of university seniors (n = 397) involved in monogamous, intimate relationships to test the psychometric properties of the instrument. The third phase involved an analysis of variance in CRMS scores based on participants' self-reported level of satisfaction with their relationship. The results provide preliminary support for the reliability and validity of the CRMS.     

Exploring the forgetting mechanisms in working memory: Evidence from a reasoning span test

In working memory (WM) span tests participants have to maintain to-be-remembered information while processing other, potentially distracting, information. Previous studies have shown that WM span scores are greater when span lists start with a long processing task and end with a short processing task than when these processing tasks are presented in the reverse order (e.g., Towse, Hitch, & Hutton, 2000). In Experiment 1, we obtained a similar stimulus order effect in a reasoning span test, using reasoning sentences that were equated for length in terms of the number of constituent words, but which differed in processing complexity; span scores were greater when lists began with a complex sentence and ended with a simple sentence than when this stimulus order was reversed. In Experiment 2, the stimulus order effect was not found when processing duration was held constant while sentence complexity was varied using a computer-paced moving window presentation paradigm. These results suggest that duration-based constraints can affect degree of forgetting independently of the load generated during processing phases in WM span performance and therefore imply that time-related forgetting can occur in WM span tests, particularly when the difficulty of the processing component blocks active maintenance of to-be-remembered material.