虚拟现实技术应用于神经心理评估的研究概述

传统神经心理评估的实验控制和生态效度的平衡问题日益受到研究人员的关注,而新兴的虚拟现实(Virtual Reality,VR)技术为问题的改善带来了希望,它不仅可以模拟现实环境并支持被试的直接交互,而且能对传统测试进行再现和扩展。它所形成的评估系统能对刺激的内容和表象、任务的复杂度和被试的响应进行灵活控制,所获取的信息更丰富、准确。在初步评估注意过程(注意、单侧空间忽略)、记忆(前瞻记忆、情景记忆、空间记忆、地形定向)和执行功能方面已获得了令人满意的效果。然而目前VR评估的应用仍存在技术和设备方面的不足,以及对评估者和被试不同操作要求的局限,因此今后除了要规范化现有VR评估系统,还应该进一步发展基础条件来推动系统的广泛应用。     

Eye movements reduce vividness and emotionality of “flashforwards”

Earlier studies have shown that eye movements during retrieval of disturbing images about past events reduce their vividness and emotionality, which may be due to both tasks competing for working memory resources. This study examined whether eye movements reduce vividness and emotionality of visual distressing images about feared future events: “flashforwards”. A non-clinical sample was asked to select two images of feared future events, which were self-rated for vividness and emotionality. These images were retrieved while making eye movements or without a concurrent secondary task, and then vividness and emotionality were rated again. Relative to the no-dual task condition, eye movements while thinking of future-oriented images resulted in decreased ratings of image vividness and emotional intensity. Apparently, eye movements reduce vividness and emotionality of visual images about past and future feared events. This is in line with a working memory account of the beneficial effects of eye movements, which predicts that any task that taxes working memory during retrieval of disturbing mental images will be beneficial.     

Creating analysts, creating analytic patients

This paper applies a contemporary, 'two-track'- transformational as well as archaeological - perspective on psychoanalytic process to clinical issues in the creation of analytic patients: case finding, recommending analysis, and recommending and negotiating the intensification of frequency of sessions in analytic psychotherapy. Central importance is assigned to the role of the mind and analytic identity of the analyst, including the analyst's capacity to maintain an internal analytic frame and analyzing attitude from the very first contact with the patient and throughout the treatment, the analyst's confidence in and conviction about the usefulness of analysis for a given analytic dyad and the role of the analyst's theory, which must be broad and consistent enough to allow the analyst to feel that he or she is operating analytically when addressing non-neurotic (unrepresented and weakly represented mental states) as well as neurotic structures.     

From Poisson shot noise to the integrated Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process: Neurally principled models of information accumulation in decision-making and response time

In the diffusion model of decision-making, evidence is accumulated by a Wiener diffusion process. A neurally motivated account of diffusive evidence accumulation is given, in which diffusive accumulation arises from an interaction between neural integration processes operating on short and long time scales. The short time scale process is modeled as a Poisson shot noise process with exponential decay. Stimulus information is coded by excitatory-inhibitory shot noise pairs. The long time scale process is modeled as algebraic integration, possibly implemented as a first-order autoregressive process realized by recurrent connections within a population of neurons. At high intensities, an excitatory-inhibitory shot noise pair converges weakly to an Ornstein-Uhlenbeck (OU) velocity process. The integrated OU process, or OU displacement process, obtained by integrating the velocity process over time, is indistinguishable at long times from the Wiener process. Diffusive information accumulation may therefore be characterized as an integrated OU process whose properties mimic those of the Wiener process.     

测验效应的内部机制——基于情景背景理论的视角

"测验效应"指提取比同等时间的重复学习,在随后的记忆测验中有更好的成绩。多数理论从提取角度解释该现象。近些年,精细提取理论得到诸多研究支持,但2014年,Karpicke等人提出的情景背景理论,对测验激活语义关联信息的解释提出质疑,认为被试在提取模式中对先前时间背景信息的复原是测验效应形成的关键。本文比较了测验效应研究的最新理论,结合提取加工的研究方法和成果,从提取模式、提取方向的角度解释了测验效应的内在机制。     

The effect of introspection on judgment and decision making is dependent on the quality of conscious thinking

That introspection may impair certain judgments and result in fabrication has been attributed to a distracting shift from more adaptive intuitive processing to more analytic and conscious processing. This phenomenon was studied in an experiment where participants made multidimensional visual choices. It was found that the effect of this shift on decision-making performance was dependent on the quality of the explanations during introspection, while the performance in silent conditions was not. Therefore, it appears that the effect of introspection on judgments is not only influenced by the thinking mode per se, but also by the individual’s ability to approach the decision problem analytically.     

Triple Bottomline Many‐Objective‐Based Decision Making for a Land Use Management Problem

A land use many‐objective optimization problem for a 1500‐ha farm with 315 paddocks was formulated with 14 objectives (maximizing sawlog production, pulpwood production, milksolids, beef, sheep meat, wool, carbon sequestration, water production, income and Earnings Before Interest and Tax; and minimizing costs, nitrate leaching, phosphorus loss and sedimentation). This was solved using a modified Reference‐point‐based Non‐dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm II augmented by simulated epigenetic operations. The search space had complex variable interactions and was based on economic data and several interoperating simulation models. The solution was an approximation of a Hyperspace Pareto Frontier (HPF), where each non‐dominated trade‐off point represented a set of land‐use management actions taken within a 10‐year period and their related management options, spanning a planning period of 50 years. A trade‐off analysis was achieved using Hyper‐Radial Visualization (HRV) by collapsing the HPF into a 2‐D visualization capability through an interactive virtual reality (VR)‐based method, thereby facilitating intuitive selection of a sound compromise solution dictated by the decision makers' preferences under uncertainty conditions. Four scenarios of the HRV were considered emphasizing economic, sedimentation and nitrate leaching aspects—giving rise to a triple bottomline (i.e. the economic, environmental and social complex, where the social aspect is represented by the preferences of the various stakeholders). Highlights of the proposed approach are the development of an innovative epigenetics‐based multi‐objective optimizer, uncertainty incorporation in the search space data and decision making on a multi‐dimensional space through a VR‐simulation‐based visual steering process controlled at its core by a multi‐criterion decision making‐based process. This approach has widespread applicability to many other ‘wicked’ societal problem‐solving tasks. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Jung and Pauli

In his early theories of the structure of the psyche, psychic energy and psychodynamics, Jung was influenced by William James's understanding of the complementary insights of depth psychology and the discoveries of subatomic physics, and his concept of field in physics and the study of the subconscious. In his relationship with Freud, Jung initially struggled with a sexually-based drive theory. But he gradually came to conceive libido as a quantitative concept, a psychic analogue of physical energy. In their own languages, both C. G. Jung and Nobel physicist Wolfgang Pauli explored the evolution of scientific thought from the naive insights about process in alchemy through Newtonian causality, space-time theories of relativity to quantum mechanics. Jung had access to thirteen hundred of Pauli's dreams. The first four hundred were basis for his research into alchemical symbolism in a modern psyche. In a later collaboration, Pauli supported Jung's synchronicity principle as scientific, and Jung fostered Pauli's understanding of the archetypal and collective factors in the psyche. They each explored the interconnections between the energies of psyche and matter, and the possibilities of acausal order and synchronicity. Pauli's ground-breaking discoveries gave scientific demonstration of alchemical intuitions. Through him, alchemical and archetypal insights entered the discourse of physics. Through Jung, the apprehensions of microphysics entered our psychological language and thought.     

Effects of stress management and relaxation training on the relationship between diabetes symptoms and affect among Latinos

Objective: Stress management and relaxation (SMR) interventions can reduce symptoms of chronic disease and associated distress. However, there is little evidence that such interventions disrupt associations between symptoms and affect. This study examined whether SMR dampened the link between symptoms of hyperglycemia and proximal levels of affect. We predicted that during periods of increased hyperglycemia, individuals receiving SMR training, relative to controls, would demonstrate smaller increases in negative affect.

Design: Fifty-five adult Latinos with type 2 diabetes were randomised to either one group session of diabetes education (DE-only; N = 23) or diabetes education plus eight group sessions of SMR (DE + SMR; N = 32). After treatment, participants reported five diabetes symptoms and four affective states twice daily for seven days using a bilingual telephonic system.

Results: Mean age = 57.8 years, mean A1c = 8.4%, and ¾ was female with less than a high school education. Individuals receiving DE + SMR, compared to DE-only, showed a weaker positive within-person association between daily diabetes symptoms and nervous affect. Groups also differed on the association between symptoms and enthusiasm. Age moderated these associations in most models with older individuals showing less affect reactivity to symptoms.

Conclusions: Findings provide partial support for theorised mechanisms of SMR.