Generalizing attentional control across dimensions and tasks: Evidence from transfer of proportion-congruent effects

Three experiments investigated transfer of list-wide proportion congruent (LWPC) effects from a set of congruent and incongruent items with different frequency (inducer task) to a set of congruent and incongruent items with equal frequency (diagnostic task). Experiments 1 and 2 mixed items from horizontal and vertical Simon tasks. Tasks always involved different stimuli that varied on the same dimension (colour) in Experiment 1 and on different dimensions (colour, shape) in Experiment 2. Experiment 3 mixed trials from a manual Simon task with trials from a vocal Stroop task, with colour being the relevant stimulus in both tasks. There were two major results. First, we observed transfer of LWPC effects in Experiments 1 and 3, when tasks shared the relevant dimension, but not in Experiment 2. Second, sequential modulations of congruency effects transferred in Experiment 1 only. Hence, the different transfer patterns suggest that LWPC effects and sequential modulations arise from different mechanisms. Moreover, the observation of transfer supports an account of LWPC effects in terms of list-wide cognitive control, while being at odds with accounts in terms of stimulus–response (contingency) learning and item-specific control.     

List-level transfer effects in temporal learning: Further complications for the list-level proportion congruent effect

Congruency effects are larger when most trials are congruent relative to incongruent. According to the conflict adaptation account, this proportion congruent effect is due to the decreased attention to words when most of the trials are conflicting. This paper extends on previous work arguing that list-level (contingency-unbiased) proportion congruent effects might be explainable by temporal learning biases. That is, congruency effects are larger in an easier task (i.e., mostly congruent) due to the faster pace of the task. Two non-conflict analogues of the proportion congruent effect are presented, one with a contrast manipulation and another with a contingency manipulation. Critically, both experiments control for potential item-specific temporal learning biases by intermixing biased context and unbiased transfer items. Results show a proportion congruent-like interaction for both item types, supporting the notion of task-wide temporal learning as an explanation for list-level proportion congruency effects. Distributional analyses lend further credence to the temporal learning account by showing that proportion congruent and proportion congruent-like effects are localised in the fastest and intermediate responses.     

Predicting Successful Employment in the Community for People with a History of Chronic Mental Illness

Much work has been done to prepare people with a history of chronic mental illness for vocational placement. Evaluation tools can select some who are likely to be successful in competitive or sheltered work. Many whose psychiatric disability is so severe it interferes seriously with their capacity for work have need for more pre-vocational or vocational skills training. A literature survey shows many programs designed to help this population but little specific outcome data. Other articles state the need for empirical research. With limited funds and a large underserved population, further research is important.     

An Occupational Therapist's Interdisciplinary Approach to a Geriatric Psychiatry Activity Group: A Case Study

Occupational therapy has long recognized the usefulness of activity groups to promote functional outcomes for clients in mental-health settings. An occupational therapist used an interdisciplinary approach (working with a psychiatric nurse practitioner and a manual arts therapist) to conduct a biweekly geriatric psychiatry activity group. A case study is presented to demonstrate the success and longevity of the interdisciplinary activity group. Each clinician contributed unique skills to provide occupation which provided positive outcomes for the clients. Practically, the employing of different disciplines allowed group coverage for each other in times of cost-containment and limited resources.     

Motor Learning Without Knowledge of Results Through the Development of a Response Recognition Mechanism

Four experiments were conducted to investigate the ability of a response recognition mechanism, developed by presenting the sensory consequences associated with the criterion movement in the absence of actual movement recall, to produce motor learning in the absence of knowledge of results (KR). In Experiments 1 and 2, a rapid linear timing task was used (10.16 cm in 100 msec), and reduction of movement error resulted over no-KR practice trials. Experiments 3 and 4 employed a slow movement-time task (750 and 1250 msec) and a linear positioning task, respectively, and no reduction of movement error occurred over the no-KR practice trials in either experiment. The ability of the response recognition mechanism to produce motor learning in the absence of KR depended upon the extent to which feedback could be used during response production.     

Christian Perspectives on Spiritual Needs of a Human Being

SUMMARY

Each human being, independent of culture, time, and age has three fundamental needs. A need for biophysical exchanges, a need for psychosocial exchanges, and a need for spiritual-integrated exchanges. Spiritual needs are not separated from biological, social, psychological, and material aspects of life. Christian spirituality today is oriented toward responding to life, to its beauty and injustices, to the universe, and is responsive and responsible to the poor. Some specific tasks for older people today are commitment to the great causes of justice, peace, and environmental protection, and a deeper bond of love for God and fellow man.     

Workers,groups and gangs: consultation to residential adolescent teams

This paper discusses how the internal worlds of adolescents who are looked after in residential care homes impact upon workers and generate complex dynamics within teams. This is especially so regarding internal parental objects and couplings, which inevitably include those of abandoning, abusive and ambivalent parental figures. Versions of these are projected and enacted between adolescents and workers, workers and managers, team and consultant. Conceptual thinking about groups and gangs is drawn upon to help illuminate the emotional phenomena encountered in team consultation meetings as described in the paper. Clinical material is given of working in the transference as consultant to the team, in order to illustrate processes of containment and the opportunity for thinking to take place. In this, there is movement between different states of mind within the team. The paper seeks to demonstrate a way of consulting to residential teams working with looked after adolescents and to show how this can mediate some of the enactments by workers and teams of projected states and transferential phenomena. Associated with this, there can be a deepening of the team's understanding of the emotional experience of the adolescents in their care.     

Organizational Tenure Diversity as Predictors of Combat Performance in ROK Army

Drawing on the upper-echelons theory and diversity issues, this study examines the relationships between top management team (TMT) organizational tenure, tenure diversity, and combat performance. The study is based on of Korea Combat Training Center (KCTC) that is designed for training and evaluation of the battalion combat power. Findings indicate that battalions with higher levels of TMT tenure have a positive effect on combat performance. Tenure diversity of TMT has a negative effect on combat performance. In addition, results showed that the negative relationships between tenure diversity of TMT and combat performance are attenuated by commander’s shared experience with other TMT members.     

Face aftereffects suggest interdependent processing of expression and sex and of expression and race

Bruce and Young (1986) proposed that functionally different aspects of faces (e.g., sex, identity, and expression) are processed independently. Although interdependent processing of identity and expression and of identity and sex have been demonstrated previously, evidence for interdependent processing of sex and expression is equivocal. Using a visual adaptation paradigm, we show that expression aftereffects can be simultaneously induced in different directions along anger–fear continua for male and female faces (Experiment 1) and for East Asian and Black African faces (Experiment 2). These findings for sex- and race-contingent expression aftereffects suggest that processing of expression is interdependent with processing of sex and race and are therefore problematic for models of face perception that have emphasized independent processing of functionally different aspects of faces. By contrast, our findings are consistent with models of face processing that propose that invariant physical aspects of faces and changeable social cues can be processed interdependently.     

Identity specific adaptation with composite faces

A composite face, made from the top half of a celebrity face and the bottom half of an unfamiliar face, appears to be a single, “new” face (e.g., Young, Hellawell, & Hay, 1987). Composite faces were used within the face identity aftereffect (FIAE) paradigm, in which prolonged exposure to a face reduces sensitivity to it (adaptation). Adaptation occurred both with an intact face and with composites containing its upper half, but only when composites were explicitly recognized during the adaptation phase. Unrecognized composites produced no adaptation. These findings imply that the FIAE is a relatively high-level perceptual effect, given that identical stimuli either did or did not produce adaptation depending on whether or not they were recognized. They also suggest a perceptual locus for the “composite face effect”.