Transfer of avoidance responding to a sensory preconditioned cue: Evidence for the role of S-S and R-S knowledge in avoidance learning

In avoidance learning studies, a warning signal (Sd) is directly paired with an aversive unconditioned stimulus (US) unless a particular response is performed. Research by Augustson and Dougher (1997) demonstrated that not only warning signals but also stimuli that are indirectly paired with the aversive event are capable of affecting the avoidance response. In the present study, we extended these results by incorporating a sensory preconditioning paradigm in an avoidance learning procedure. Sensory preconditioning training influenced the selection of avoidance responses in the presence of warning signals that were never paired directly with the aversive events. Moreover, results suggest that the selection of the avoidance responses was based on an integration of knowledge about the relation between the Sd and the US (S-S knowledge) and knowledge about the relation between the avoidance response and the US (R-S knowledge). As the expectancy-based theory of Lovibond (2006) is the only theory of avoidance that incorporates both knowledge structures, the results provide unique support for this theory.     

Sensory Over-Responsivity in Elementary School: Prevalence and Social-Emotional Correlates

Sensory over-responsivity (SOR) towards tactile and auditory input can impact children’s participation in academic and social activities; however the prevalence of SOR behaviors and their relation to social-emotional problems and competence has not been rigorously studied. This study investigated SOR in a representative sample of elementary school-aged children (n = 925, 50% boys, ages 7–11 years) who were followed from infancy. Sixteen percent of parents reported that at least four tactile or auditory sensations bothered their children. Being bothered by certain sensations was common while others were relatively rare. Parents of children with versus without elevated SOR in school-age reported higher frequencies of early and co-occurring internalizing, externalizing, and dysregulation problems, and lower levels of concurrent adaptive social behaviors. Early identification of elevated SOR and assessment of concurrent social-emotional status are important to minimize their impact on social adaptive behaviors at school age.     

Brain mechanisms associated with background monitoring of the environment for potentially significant sensory events

Background monitoring is a necessary prerequisite to detect unexpected changes in the environment, while being involved in a primary task. Here, we used fMRI to investigate the neural mechanisms that underlie adaptive goal-directed behavior in a cued task switching paradigm during real response conflict or, more generally, when expectations on the repetitive features of the environment were violated. Unexpected changes in sensory stimulus attributes in the currently unattended stimulus dimension thereby led to activations in a bilateral network comprising inferior lateral frontal, intraparietal, and posterior medial frontal brain regions, independent of whether these attributes elicited a factual response conflict or not. This fronto-parietal network may thus play an important role in adaptive responding to potentially significant events outside the current focus of attention.     

Perception of Happening: How the Brain Deals with the No-History Problem

In physics, the temporal dimension has units of infinitesimally brief duration. Given this, how is it possible to perceive things, such as motion, music, and vibrotactile stimulation, that involve extension across many units of time? To address this problem, it is proposed that there is what is termed an “information construct of happening” (ICOH), a simultaneous representation of recent, temporally differentiated perceptual information on the millisecond time scale. The main features of the ICOH are (i) time marking, semantic labeling of all information in the ICOH with ordinal temporal information and distance from what is informationally identified as the present moment, (ii) vector informational features that specify kind, direction, and rate of change for every feature in a percept, and (iii) connectives, information relating vector informational features at adjacent temporal locations in the ICOH. The ICOH integrates products of perceptual processing with recent historical information in sensory memory on the subsecond time scale. Perceptual information about happening in informational sensory memory is encoded in semantic form that preserves connected semantic trails of vector and timing information. The basic properties of the ICOH must be supported by a general and widespread timing mechanism that generates ordinal and interval timing information and it is suggested that state-dependent networks may suffice for that purpose. Happening, therefore, is perceived at a moment and is constituted by an information structure of connected recent historical information.     

The spatial specificity of sensory attenuation for self-touch

Self-touch is sensed less intense as touch produced by another person. According to the standard explanation, if predicted and actual sensations match, the intensity of the touch will be reduced. Here, we asked whether sensory attenuation is spatially specific. To this end, participants laid their left hand under a metal arc on which a force sensor was mounted. Pressing the sensor caused one of two motors to rotate a lever that either touched the index or the ring finger. We took care that no cues would reveal in advance which of the motors would move in order to leave participants uninformed about the finger that will be stimulated. Any reduction in felt intensity of the touch could therefore be induced only by the efference copy of the touching movement. We found strong spatial specificity of sensory attenuation of self-touch, selecting between two fingers of the same hand.     

Crossmodal object-based attention: auditory objects affect visual processing

According to the object-based view, visual attention can be deployed to "objects" or perceptual units, regardless of spatial locations. Recently, however, the notion of object has also been extended to the auditory domain, with some authors suggesting possible interactions between visual and auditory objects. Here we show that task-irrelevant auditory objects may affect the deployment of visual attention, providing evidence that crossmodal links can also occur at an object-based level. Hence, in addition to the well documented control of visual objects over what we hear, our findings demonstrate that, in some cases, auditory objects can affect visual processing.     

The rubber hand illusion in a mirror

In the rubber hand illusion (RHI) one’s hand is hidden, and a fake hand is visible. We explored the situation in which visual information was available indirectly in a mirror. In the mirror condition, compared to the standard condition (fake hand visible directly), we found no reduction of the RHI following synchronised stimulation, as measured by crossmanual pointing and by a questionnaire. We replicated the finding with a smaller mirror that prevented visibility of the face. The RHI was eliminated when a wooden block replaced the fake hand, or when the hand belonged to another person or mannequin. We conclude that awareness of the reflection is the critical variable, despite the distant visual localisation of the hand in a mirror and the third-person perspective. Stimuli seen in a mirror activate the same response as stimuli seen in peripersonal space, through knowledge that they are near one’s body.     

Duration perception in crossmodally-defined intervals

How humans perform duration judgments with multisensory stimuli is an ongoing debate. Here, we investigated how sub-second duration judgments are achieved by asking participants to compare the duration of a continuous sound to the duration of an empty interval in which onset and offset were marked by signals of different modalities using all combinations of visual, auditory and tactile stimuli. The pattern of perceived durations across five stimulus durations (ranging from 100 ms to 900 ms) follows the Vierordt Law. Furthermore, intervals with a sound as onset (audio-visual, audio-tactile) are perceived longer than intervals with a sound as offset. No modality ordering effect is found for visualtactile intervals. To infer whether a single modality-independent or multiple modality-dependent time-keeping mechanisms exist we tested whether perceived duration follows a summative or a multiplicative distortion pattern by fitting a model to all modality combinations and durations. The results confirm that perceived duration depends on sensory latency (summative distortion). Instead, we did not find evidence for multiplicative distortions. The results of the model and the behavioural data support the concept of a single time-keeping mechanism that allows for judgments of durations marked by multisensory stimuli.     

Properties of the size–weight illusion as shown by lines of subjective equality

We studied the size–weight illusion through comparative judgments. The experiment had two direct aims: to verify whether the relative contribution of size to apparent heaviness can differ for different stimulus sets, and to verify whether that contribution can differ for different methods of comparing two objects (consecutive vs. simultaneous weighing). Thirty university students participated. Results show that the relative contribution of size depends on stimulus set, but is independent of the method used for comparing objects. The first finding implies that a linear model cannot describe the integration of size and weight information in the illusion; the second finding is evidence for the low-level character of the integration process.