The Temporal Relations of PTSD Symptoms Among Treatment-Seeking Victims of Sexual Assault: A Longitudinal Study

This prospective study assessed the temporal relationships between the symptom clusters of PTSD in two nonprobability samples of treatment-seeking victims of sexual abuse: rape victims and adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse. Both groups were assessed at three time periods using self-report measures of PTSD symptomology. Findings from two cross-lagged panel analyses indicated weak temporal relationships between the symptom clusters of PTSD; however, avoidance and emotional numbing symptoms were found to exert the strongest cross-lagged effects. Avoidance and emotional numbing symptoms were also found to be the strongest predictor of subsequently meeting caseness for PTSD in both samples. Results suggest that there are minimal cross-lagged effects between the PTSD symptom clusters after three months from traumatic exposure.     

Distorting Face Representations in Newborn Brains

What role does experience play in the development of face recognition? A growing body of evidence indicates that newborn brains need slowly changing visual experiences to develop accurate visual recognition abilities. All of the work supporting this “slowness constraint” on visual development comes from studies testing basic-level object recognition. Here, we present the results of controlled-rearing experiments that provide evidence for a slowness constraint on the development of face recognition, a prototypical subordinate-level object recognition task. We found that (1) newborn chicks can rapidly develop view-invariant face recognition and (2) the development of this ability relies on experience with slowly moving faces. When chicks were reared with quickly moving faces, they built distorted face representations that largely lacked invariance to viewpoint changes, effectively “breaking” their face recognition abilities. These results provide causal evidence that slowly changing visual experiences play a critical role in the development of face recognition, akin to basic-level object recognition. Thus, face recognition is not a hardwired property of vision but is learned rapidly as the visual system adapts to the temporal structure of the animal's visual environment.     

海洛因戒断者的时间知觉特征

本研究采用时间二分任务来探讨海洛因戒断者的时间知觉特征。结果发现: (1)戒断组的长反应比例在中间时距上显著高于对照组; (2)戒断组的主观相等点低于对照组且差异显著, 韦伯比例与对照组相比差异不显著。结论: 海洛因戒断者更容易高估时间, 并且对时间的高估更多体现在中间时距上。     

Prospective emotion enables episodic prospection to shift time preference

The episodic effect suggests that episodic prospection (imagining future events) can effectively reduce time discounting, the propensity to discount the value of delayed rewards relative to immediate ones. However, less clear is how episodic prospection modulates time preference. As engagement in episodic prospection usually evokes prospective emotions, it was proposed that episodic prospection might work by inducing prospective emotions. Although one previous study has attempted to provide evidence to the emotional account of the episodic effect, shortcomings in its experimental design make its conclusion questionable. In this study, we replicated previous experimental design with improvements to further test the effects of prospective emotion on time preference. By manipulating the emotional valency associated with episodic prospection in a delay discounting task, we found that positive episodic prospection attenuated time discounting; negative episodic prospection exacerbated time discounting; and episodic prospection did not shift time preference when prospective emotion is removed. These results were essentially identical to the result of the previous study. Together, these studies suggested that the effects of episodic prospection depended on prospective emotion. Thus, one cannot ignore prospective emotion if counting on episodic prospection to combat humans’ impulsive behaviours.     

Effects of immediacy of feedback on estimations and performance

We investigated the role of anticipation of feedback in performance and estimation about own performance. We submitted 155 participants to a test of verbal aptitude, and we requested them to give estimations of their own performance and the performance of other participants. There were two treatments: immediate feedback and delayed feedback. Participants in the immediate‐feedback group were informed that they would receive feedback on their performance immediately after finishing the test, whereas participants in the delayed‐feedback group were informed that they would receive feedback a week after taking the test. The immediate‐feedback group performed better than the delayed‐feedback group. Furthermore, the former underestimated their own performance. On the other hand, participants on the delayed‐feedback group made unbiased estimations. We present a mathematical model based on construal‐level theory, decision affect theory, temporal discounting, and Moore and Healy's model of overestimation. The model suggests that the source of differences in performance and in estimations of own performance is a construal of the feedback situation that modifies the expected utility of the task.     

How the brain responds to any: an MEG study

The word any may appear in some sentences, but not in others. For example, any is permitted in sentences that contain the word nobody, as in Nobody ate any fruit. However, in a minimally different context any seems strikingly anomalous: ^*Everybody ate any fruit. The aim of the present study was to investigate how the brain responds to the word any in such minimally different contexts - where it is permitted (licensed) and where it is not permitted (unlicensed). Brain responses were measured from adult readers using magnetoencephalography (MEG). The results showed significantly larger responses to permissible contexts in the left posterior temporal areas between 400-500 ms and 590-660 ms. These results clarify the anatomy and timing of brain processes that contribute to our judgment that a word such as any is or is not permitted in a given context.     

不同促销方式对产品购买决策的影响—— 基于解释水平理论视角的研究

赠品促销与价格促销对消费者购买决策的影响研究结果尚存在分歧。根据解释水平理论, 通过三个实验探究了赠品促销产品组合与价格促销产品组合在不同任务类型、不同时间距离条件下的促销效果差异。结果表明：(1)不同时间距离下, 消费者对促销产品决策存在差异。赠品促销方式在近期将来购物场景下的促销效果比在远期将来购物场景下的促销效果更好; 价格促销方式在远期将来购物场景下的促销效果比在近期将来购物场景下的促销效果更好。价格支付意愿任务下, 消费者对远期将来场景下促销产品的感知价值比近期将来购物场景下促销产品的感知价值高; 购买可行性任务下, 消费者对近期将来购物场景下促销产品的感知价值比远期将来购物场景下促销产品的感知价值高。(2)时间距离对促销方式与任务类型的表征水平匹配关系有增强、扩大作用。购买可行性任务下, 与远期将来时间相比, 消费者更倾向于在近期将来时间条件下选择赠品促销产品组合。价格支付意愿任务下, 与近期将来时间相比, 消费者更倾向于在远期将来时间条件下选择价格促销产品组合。     

Tiempo y enfermedad

Resumen

En los enfermos, las situaciones o estados asociados a una percepción de alargamiento del tiempo transcurrido, se pueden clasificar, de acuerdo con la siguiente taxonomía: a) Una situación presente desagradable; b) Un estado de ánimo angustiado o deprimido; y c) Los tiempos de espera. Cuanto más importante e incierta sea para el enfermo la información, la persona o el acontecimiento que espera, más probable será que se produzca sufrimiento. La percepción subjetiva del tiempo es diferente en pacientes y profesionales sanitarios. Para los primeros el tiempo se alarga; para los segundos, se acorta. Este desfase perceptivo puede dar lugar en los pacientes a un sufrimiento inútil que es necesario eliminar o paliar.     

¿Puede un antropoide generar una oración?

Resumen

Se analizaron más de 19.000 locuciones de varios signos de un chimpancé de corta edad (Nim), en busca de regularidades sintácticas y de semánticas. Las regularidades léxicas se observaron en el caso de las combinaciones de dos signos: determinados signos (por ejemplo, más) tendían a aparecer en una posición concreta. Estas regularidades no podían atribuirse a la memorización o a los hábitos de poslción, lo que hace pensar en una restricción estructural. Esta conclusión, sin embargo, se rechazó al analizar la grabación video, que mostraba cómo la mayoría de las locuciones de Nim se apoyaban en la locución anterior de su maestro, y que Nim interrumpía a sus maestros mucho más que un niño el lenguaje del adulto. Las expresiones de signos de otros antropoides (como muestran las películas) revelaban pautas similares de diálogo no humano.     

Prediction of treatment outcomes and longitudinal analysis in children with autism undergoing intensive behavioral intervention

Outcome prediction is an important component of treatment planning and prognosis. However, reliable predictors of intensive behavioral intervention (IBI) have not been clearly established. IBI is an evidence-based approach to the systematic teaching of academic, social, verbal, and daily living skills to individuals with autism spectrum disorder. Incorporating longitudinal analysis to IBI outcome studies may help to identify outcome predictors of clinical value. Twenty-four children with autism underwent on average two years of IBI and completed language, daily living skills, cognitive, and motor assessments (Early Learning Accomplishment Profile and the Learning Accomplishment Profile-Diagnostic, 3rd edition) every six months. We used multilevel analysis to identify potential longitudinal predictors including gender, age, intervention intensity, intervention duration, total intervention time, and pre-intervention functioning. Results indicated that total intervention time, pre-intervention functioning, and age caused the greatest increase in goodness-of-fit of the longitudinal multilevel models. Longitudinal analysis is a promising analytical strategy to identify reliable predictors of the clinical outcome of IBI.