Does changing the reference frame affect infant categorization of the spatial relation BETWEEN?

Past research has shown that variation in the target objects depicting a given spatial relation disrupts the formation of a category representation for that relation. In the current research, we asked whether changing the orientation of the referent frame depicting the spatial relation would also disrupt the formation of a category representation for that relation. Experiments 1 to 3 provided evidence that 6- and 7-month-olds formed a category representation for BETWEEN when a diamond shape was depicted in different locations between two vertical or horizontal reference bars during familiarization and in a novel location between the same orientation of bars during test. By contrast, in Experiment 4, same-age infants did not form a category representation for BETWEEN when the diamond shape was depicted between two vertical (or horizontal) bars during familiarization and between two horizontal (or vertical) bars during test. Moreover, in Experiment 5, 9- and 10-month-olds did form a category representation for BETWEEN when the orientation of the referent bars depicting the relation changed from familiarization to test. The findings suggest that the formation of category representations for spatial relations by infants is affected by changes to either target (figure) or referent (ground).     

Nodal structure and stimulus relatedness in equivalence classes: post-class formation preference tests

Three experiments used postclass formation within-class preference test performances to evaluate the effects of nodal distance on the relatedness of stimuli in equivalence classes. In Experiment 1, two 2-node four-member equivalence classes were established using the simultaneous protocol in which all of the baseline relations were trained together, after which all emergent relations probes were presented together. All training and testing was done using match-to-sample trials that contained two comparisons. After class formation, the effects of nodal distance were evaluated using within-class preference tests that contained samples and both comparisons from the same class. These tests yielded inconsistent performances for most participants. Experiment 2 replicated Experiment 1, but a third null comparison was used on all trials during class formation. Thereafter, virtually all of the within-class probes, for all participants, evoked performances that were consistent with the predicted effects of nodal distance, that is, the selection of comparisons that were nodally closer to the samples. It appears, then, that the establishment of the equivalence classes with a third null comparison induced control by nodal structure of the classes. Experiment 3 demonstrated the generality of these findings with larger classes that contained more nodal separations, that is, three-node five-member classes. Emergent-relations tests conducted immediately after the within-class tests showed the classes to be intact. Thus, the differential relatedness of stimuli in a class or their interchangeability depended on the content of a test trial: within-class probes occasioned responding indicative of differential strength among the stimuli in the class, while cross-class tests occasioned responding indicative of interchangeability of stimuli in the same class.     

Social effects on rat spatial choice in an open field task

Pairs of rats foraged in trials either together or separately in an open field apparatus for pellets hidden in discreet locations in a 5 × 5 matrix. Trial duration was either 1 or 4 min. The tendency to choose locations that had earlier been visited by another rat was examined by comparing the choices made in the presence and absence of the other rat. Rats avoided visits to locations that had earlier been visited by the other rat, but only if they had also visited the same location earlier in a short duration trial. This pattern of results is consistent with earlier findings from experiments using the radial arm maze. Furthermore, when rats did visit locations that had earlier been visited by the other rat in a long duration trial, they tended to be locations that had been visited longer ago by the other rat than would be expected. This suggests a forgetting function for social memories. These data provide evidence that the social memory reported in earlier studies using the radial-arm maze can be found in other experimental paradigms and that at least some of its properties are common in the two paradigms.     

Spatial probability cuing and right hemisphere damage

In this experiment we studied statistical learning, inter-trial priming, and visual attention. We assessed healthy controls and right brain damaged (RBD) patients with and without neglect, on a simple visual discrimination task designed to measure priming effects and probability learning. All participants showed a preserved priming effect for item color. Contrary to healthy controls and RBD participants without neglect, RBD participants with neglect did not show positional priming and both RBD groups learned the underlying spatial probability distribution of target locations to a lesser degree. To see if the latter deficiency could be improved, we tested a patient with long standing chronic spatial neglect on three separate days and observed improved identification times for left sided, high probability, targets. In summary, we found preservation of priming per se in people with spatial neglect. However, this was only clearly demonstrable for color priming and not for positional priming. Associated with this impairment was a difficulty in learning the overall statistical structure of target locations. In a patient with severe persistent neglect we were able to demonstrate that the deficit in statistical learning was not absolute, as this subject improved his identification times for targets appearing in high probability regions of the test display.     

敬畏对跨期选择的影响：时间洞察力和时距敏感度的作用

本研究考察了情绪(敬畏、愉悦和中性)对跨期选择的影响机制,以及时距敏感度和时间洞察力在其中的作用。结果显示：(1)相比中性,敬畏情绪下个体的折扣率更大;(2)相比中性,敬畏情绪下折扣率降幅更大;(3)对于未来取向者,敬畏情绪下折扣率比中性条件下更大;(4)对于现在取向者,敬畏情绪下折扣率降幅比中性条件下更大。结果表明,敬畏情绪通过未来时距的敏感度影响跨期选择偏好,使个体更加偏好延迟奖赏,同时,个体的时间取向在其中起调节作用。     

The bilingual effects of linguistic distances on episodic memory and verbal fluency

The impact of linguistic distance or the relatedness between two languages, on bilinguals’ episodic memory performance and verbal fluency is an understudied area. Thus, the purpose of this study was to determine if differences in linguistic distances have differential effects on these abilities. Measures of episodic recognition, categorical fluency, and global cognitive functioning were also considered in the analyses. Two matched samples with participants living and educated in Sweden were drawn from the Betula Prospective Cohort Study. Results showed that bilinguals who speak linguistically similar languages (Swedish and English), performed significantly better than monolinguals on both episodic memory recall and letter fluency, while bilinguals who speak two languages that are more distant (Swedish and Finnish), showed no advantages compared to their monolingual counterparts. For both tasks, however, a linear trend was observed indicative of better performance for the Swedish-English group compared to the Finnish-Swedish group, and for the Swedish-Finnish group compared to the monolinguals group. As expected, no differences between groups were found in any of the other cognitive tasks. Overall, results suggest that the impact of linguistic distances should be explored in more detail in the future.     

Effects of irrelevant object structure on early attention deployment

Event-related potential (ERP) studies have suggested that Gestalt principles or grouping factors in a visual scene modulate attention deployment in early visual processing. The present study examined the effects of an extrinsic grouping factor, region commonality, on early ERP spatial attention. Effects of sex were also explored, since the processing of task-irrelvant objects may differ between the sexes. Twenty-four participants were required to discriminate one side of rapidly-presented bilateral letters, and attention effects were indexed by hemispheric lateralization accroding to attended visual fields. In results, an early P1 attention effect (70–110 ms) increased when the letters were surrounded by an object, compared to the control stimulus without a complete object, and this result was more prominent in women than in men. The present study demonstrates that visual object and sex differences play a novel role at very early cortical stages of processing in attention deployment to a task-irrelevant visual structure.     

Serial murderers' spatial decisions: factors that influence crime location choice

The outcome of German serial murderer spatial decision making was measured as the straight‐line distance (km) between murderer home locations and each crime location (i.e. body recovery location). Geographic and series development data, as well as information on age, intelligence, motive, marital status, employment status, and mode of transportation of 53 German serial murderers was collected from police and prosecution service files and judicial verdict records. Potential effects of the aforementioned factors on spatial decisions were assessed. Results showed that 63% of the murderers lived within 10 km of their crime locations. Home‐to‐crime distance was negatively correlated with murderer age and positively correlated with murderer IQ score. Results also showed that the mode of transportation used by murderers had an effect on their spatial decisions. Results are discussed in terms of understanding serial murderer spatial decision‐making and implications for police investigations. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A unity of the self or a multiplicity of locations? How the graphesthesia task sheds light on the role of spatial perspectives in bodily self-consciousness

Integrating multisensory stimuli from a self-centred perspective is crucial for the unity of the self. On the other hand, understanding external space and communicating spatial knowledge with others necessitate the adoption of decentred perspectives. How do we juggle these two requirements? In this article, we review those studies that have used the graphesthesia task in order to investigate the perspectives that people adopt when interpreting ambiguous tactile symbols (e.g., b, d, p, and q). With such ambiguous symbols, self-centred and decentred perspectives conflict with one another. The results reviewed here reveal that the perspectives adopted vary significantly with spatial, personal, and interpersonal factors. Such findings suggest that the self can adopt a multiplicity of spatial locations. However, the unity of the self can partly be explained by the predominance of a head-centred perspective. On the other hand, perspective-taking abilities contribute to the distinction between self and others, reinforcing self-consciousness.     

Reconstructing maps from text

Previous research has demonstrated that Distributional Semantic Models (DSMs) are capable of reconstructing maps from news corpora (Louwerse & Zwaan, 2009) and novels (Louwerse & Benesh, 2012). The capacity for reproducing maps is surprising since DSMs notoriously lack perceptual grounding. In this paper we investigate the statistical sources required in language to infer maps, and the resulting constraints placed on mechanisms of semantic representation. Study 1 brings word co-occurrence under experimental control to demonstrate that standard DSMs cannot reproduce maps when word co-occurrence is uniform. Specifically, standard DSMs require that direct co-occurrences between city names in a corpus mirror the proximity between the city locations in the map in order to successfully reconstruct the spatial map. Study 2 presents an instance-based DSM that is capable of reconstructing maps independent of the frequency of co-occurrence of city names.