The influence of sex versus sex-related traits on long-term memory for gist and detail from an emotional story

Recent findings demonstrate sex-related differences in the neurobiological mechanisms by which emotional arousal influences memory, and raise questions about the extent to which memory for emotional events may differ between males and females. Here we examine whether sex-related differences exist in the recall of central (gist) information and peripheral detail from an emotional story. Healthy subjects viewed a brief, narrated slide-show containing emotional elements in its middle section. One week later, they received an incidental multiple-choice recognition test for the story. Following the test, each subject completed the BEM Sex-Role Inventory, an assessment of sex-related masculine and feminine traits. The results reveal no differences in recall of either central or peripheral story information when considering the performance of actual men and women, but a significant difference when considering male and females as determined by their BEM test scores. "BEM" males (subjects with net male BEM scores) showed significantly enhanced recall of central emotional information. "BEM" females did not. Both groups showed significantly enhanced recall of peripheral emotional information, although this effect appeared larger in BEM females than in BEM males. The influences of "BEM" sex and type of information (central, peripheral) significantly interacted to influence emotional memory performance. These findings confirm the existence of sex-related influences in the recall of emotional information, and suggest that sex-related traits, rather than actual sex per se, may be a more sensitive indicator of these influences.     

A bias to detail: how hand position modulates visual learning and visual memory

In this report, we examine whether and how altered aspects of perception and attention near the hands affect one’s learning of to-be-remembered visual material. We employed the contextual cuing paradigm of visual learning in two experiments. Participants searched for a target embedded within images of fractals and other complex geometrical patterns while either holding their hands near to or far from the stimuli. When visual features and structural patterns remained constant across to-be-learned images (Exp. 1), no difference emerged between hand postures in the observed rates of learning. However, when to-be-learned scenes maintained structural pattern information but changed in color (Exp. 2), participants exhibited substantially slower rates of learning when holding their hands near the material. This finding shows that learning near the hands is impaired in situations in which common information must be abstracted from visually unique images, suggesting a bias toward detail-oriented processing near the hands.     

Space Exploration: Current Thinking on the Notion of Otherness

Space appears today as one of the major limits of human knowledge and experience. It offers a challenge for philosophy and theology to offer answers to the questions of the other, of origins, of faith, of image of God.     

On the limits of statistical learning: Intertrial contextual cueing is confined to temporally close contingencies

Since the seminal study by Chun and Jiang (Cognitive Psychology, 36, 28–71, 1998), a large body of research based on the contextual-cueing paradigm has shown that the cognitive system is capable of extracting statistical contingencies from visual environments. Most of these studies have focused on how individuals learn regularities found within an intratrial temporal window: A context predicts the target position within a given trial. However, Ono, Jiang, and Kawahara (Journal of Experimental Psychology, 31, 703–712, 2005) provided evidence of an intertrial implicit-learning effect when a distractor configuration in preceding trials N ? 1 predicted the target location in trials N. The aim of the present study was to gain further insight into this effect by examining whether it occurs when predictive relationships are impeded by interfering task-relevant noise (Experiments 2 and 3) or by a long delay (Experiments 1, 4, and 5). Our results replicated the intertrial contextual-cueing effect, which occurred in the condition of temporally close contingencies. However, there was no evidence of integration across long-range spatiotemporal contingencies, suggesting a temporal limitation of statistical learning.     

Role of Researchers in the Ethical Conduct of Research: A Discourse Analysis From Different Stakeholder Perspectives

The ethical conduct of research rests largely on researchers, and as such, an understanding of how they perceive and enact their role in research is paramount. However, the literature around ethics and research mostly focuses on researchers’ perception of Research Ethics Boards (REB; also known as Institutional Review Boards) roles and functions. To fill that gap, we analyzed the perceptions of researchers, REB members, and influential parties (n = 40) about researchers’ role in the ethical conduct of research through discourse analysis. Three discourses emerged: researchers as reflective practitioners, protectors of participants, and technicians. Understanding the commonalities and differences among the discourses may foster a shared and compelling institutional research culture.     

Latina Mothers’ Involvement in an HIV/STI and Substance Use Prevention Program for Adolescents: A Parallel Intervention Curriculum

As part of a larger HIV/STI/Substance Abuse Prevention intervention targeted to middle school students, we offered students’ parents an opportunity to participate in an adult education class. The same curricular materials were used for students enrolled in the intervention and for their parents. In the current study, mothers who had completed the adult education class participated in a focus group. The focus group explored what components of the intervention were perceived by mothers as particularly useful to them or to their child. Three core themes emerged from interpretive analyses of the focus group: (1) positive relationships with intervention staff and school personnel enticed students to participate in the intervention and facilitated parents’ involvement; (2) both students and parents felt respected and empowered by the intervention’s cornerstone values and curricular philosophy of cultural richness and pride in Hispanic/Latino heritage; and (3) mothers perceived their mastery of the course content—materially wholly dedicated to the health and wellness of their children—benefitted them in terms of both understanding the material and potentially allowing mothers to discuss health-oriented behavior with their young adolescent child.     

Categorical implicit learning in real-world scenes: evidence from contextual cueing

The present study examined the extent to which learning mechanisms are deployed on semantic-categorical regularities during a visual searching within real-world scenes. The contextual cueing paradigm was used with photographs of indoor scenes in which the semantic category did or did not predict the target position on the screen. No evidence of a facilitation effect was observed in the predictive condition compared to the nonpredictive condition when participants were merely instructed to search for a target T or L (Experiment 1). However, a rapid contextual cueing effect occurred when each display containing the search target was preceded by a preview of the scene on which participants had to make a decision regarding the scene's category (Experiment 2). A follow-up explicit memory task indicated that this benefit resulted from implicit learning. Similar implicit contextual cueing effects were also obtained when the scene to categorize was different from the subsequent search scene (Experiment 3) and when a mere preview of the search scene preceded the visual searching (Experiment 4). These results suggested that if enhancing the processing of the scene was required with the present material, such implicit semantic learning can nevertheless take place when the category is task irrelevant.     

A Sense of Proportion: Some Thoughts on Equality,Security and Justice

Res Publica - This article develops an intuitive idea of proportionality as a placeholder for a substantive conception of equality, and contrasts it with Ripstein’s ideas, as presented in an...     

The effects of attentional training on physiological stress recovery after induced social threat

Social stress has been related to both physiological and psychological responses. The recovery of stress is influenced by the way environmental information is processed, i.e., what information is attended to and how it is interpreted. The present study investigated the effect of attention modification training on physiological stress recovery following induced stress. A group of applicants preparing for a job interview were randomly allocated to an attention training condition versus a control condition. Afterwards, they were asked to give an artificial job interview to a real life jury while being videotaped. Participants in both conditions showed decreased heart rate variability during the job interview, which indicates an overall physiological stress response. However, during a 30-minute follow-up period after the training, indices of heart rate variability showed improved stress recovery only in the attention training condition. Attentional training is proposed as a promising strategy to prevent enduring stress reactions.