The role of attention in motion extrapolation: are moving objects 'corrected' or flashed objects attentionally delayed?

Objects flashed in alignment with moving objects appear to lag behind [Nijhawan, 1994 Nature (London) 370 256-257]. Could this 'flash-lag' effect be due to attentional delays in bringing flashed items to perceptual awareness [Titchener, 1908/1973 Lectures on the Elementary Psychology of Feeling and Attention first published 1908 (New York: Macmillan); reprinted 1973 (New York: Arno Press)]? We overtly manipulated attentional allocation in three experiments to address the following questions: Is the flash-lag effect affected when attention is (a) focused on a single event in the presence of multiple events, (b) distributed over multiple events, and (c) diverted from the flashed object? To address the first two questions, five rings, moving along a circular path, were presented while observers attentively tracked one or multiple rings under four conditions: the ring in which the disk was flashed was (i) known or (ii) unknown (randomly selected from the set of five); location of the flashed disk was (i) known or (ii) unknown (randomly selected from ten locations). The third question was investigated by using two moving objects in a cost-benefit cueing paradigm. An arrow cued, with 70% or 80% validity, the position of the flashed object. Observers performed two tasks: (a) reacted as quickly as possible to flash onset; (b) reported the flash-lag effect. We obtained a significant and unaltered flash-lag effect under all the attentional conditions we employed. Furthermore, though reaction times were significantly shorter for validly cued flashes, the flash-lag effect remained uninfluenced by cue validity, indicating that quicker responses to validly cued locations may be due to the shortening of post-perceptual delays in motor responses rather than the perceptual facilitation. We conclude that the computations that give rise to the flash-lag effect are independent of attentional deployment.     

Cervical Cancer Survivors: Meaning in Life

This study endeavors to understand the meaning in life of cervical cancer survivors in India using narrative analysis. Cervical Cancer survivor participants were interviewed to obtain a holistic view of their experiences in their own words, which was followed by administration of Thematic Apperception Test. Interview data was analyzed using Narrative Analysis. The narratives indicated that the participants viewed life being predestined and guided by fate. In some cases the realization of immortality resulted in peace and satisfaction. This renewed meaning was strongly mediated by faith in God and increased religiosity which facilitated hope and resilience. Strong support systems further enhanced meaning in their lives. However, underlying factors like fatigue, fear of recurrence of the disease and perceived burden continue to be distressing factors. On the other hand, some participants who experienced a preoccupation with somatic complaints and ambivalent feelings toward God experienced a sense of meaninglessness, lack of purpose and diminished hope. The most frequently used defense mechanisms were sublimation, reaction formation, undoing, displacement and projection.     

Developmental associations between bilingual experience and inhibitory control trajectories in Head Start children

Children from lower socioeconomic (SES) backgrounds tend to be at‐risk for executive function (EF) impairments by the time they are in preschool, placing them at an early disadvantage for academic success. The present study examined the potentially protective role of bilingual experience on the development of inhibitory control (IC) in 1146 Head Start preschoolers who were followed for an 18‐month period during the transition to kindergarten as part of the longitudinal Family and Child Experiences Survey (FACES) 2009 study. Using three waves of data, we predicted individual variation in developmental trajectories of IC for three groups that differed in bilingual experience—English monolinguals, Spanish‐English bilinguals, and a group of children who transitioned from being Spanish monolingual to Spanish‐English bilinguals during the course of the study. Compared to their English monolingual peers, bilingual children from Spanish‐speaking homes showed higher IC performance at Head Start entry, as well as steeper IC growth over time. Children who were Spanish monolingual at the beginning of Head Start showed the lowest IC performance at baseline. However, their rate of IC growth exceeded that of children who remained English monolingual and did not differ from that of their peers who entered Head Start being bilingual. These results suggest that acquiring bilingualism and continued bilingual experience are associated with more rapid IC development during the transition from preschool to kindergarten in children from lower SES backgrounds.     

Not to be and then to be: visual representation of ignored unfamiliar faces

Negative priming, the increase in response time and/or errors to targets previously encountered as distractors, is explained by inhibitory mechanisms that block the access of distractor representations to response systems. The processing of unfamiliar human faces was investigated using negative priming. Observers viewed a row of faces to decide whether 2 target faces were the same or different. Response latencies were longer when 1 or both targets had appeared as distractors on the immediately preceding trial--evidence that never-before seen faces are represented and require inhibition. Response latencies were shorter when face targets had appeared as distractors, either corrupted with high-frequency noise or contrast inverted--evidence that representations are facilitated. Finally, response latencies remained unaltered when face targets had appeared as upside-down distractors--evidence that not all distractor representations afford response priming. The visual system indeed represents ignored unfamiliar faces, but blocks these representations only if they vie with targets for the control of action.     

Compensation of neural delays in visual‐motor behaviour: No evidence for shorter afferent delays for visual motion

Abstract

Faces and other objects that share a configuration present a special problem to the visual system. Two components of the visual system's solution to this homogeneity problem have been identified. Inversion studies have identified the use of relational features (Diamond &; Carey, 1986; Rhodes, Brake, &; Atkinson, 1993), and caricature studies have identified norm-based coding (Carey, Rhodes, Diamond, &; Hamilton, in preparation; Rhodes, Brennan, &; Carey, 1987; Rhodes &; McLean, 1990). Here we explore a possible link between these two components, asking whether caricature effects depend selectively on exaggeration of relational features. If so, then inversion, which makes relational features particularly difficult to code (compared with isolated features), should reduce caricature effects. In three experiments we found a caricature equivalence effect (caricatures identified as accurately as undistorted images and both better than anticaricatures) that was unaffected by orientation, suggesting that relational feature coding is not necessary for caricatures to be effective. Therefore, caricature and inversion effects reflect distinct components of face recognition. Caricature level and orientation also interacted differently with other factors, as would be expected if their effects depend upon different underlying processes. For one set of faces there was a caricature advantage in accuracy (Experiments 1 and 3). This superportrait effect occurred even for subjects who were unfamiliar with the faces prior to the experiment (Experiment 3), a result with important forensic implications. Furthermore, the effect was restricted to upright faces. Therefm, although caricatures can be recognized as well as undistorted images whatever features are exaggerated, exaggeration of relational features may be needed for a superportrait effect.     

Informed Consent at Gunpoint: When Psychiatry Affects Gun Ownership

As states take more steps to connect patients’ gun ownership to their mental health, psychiatrists are being asked to provide mental health information after clinical interviews as well as after confiscation. This move into the patient–physician relationship raises new questions about how psychiatrists should obtain informed consent when interviews may result in reports to legal authorities. Consent warnings are already practiced more in the breach than in the observance and informed consent is imperfect at its best. In communities torn by controversies surrounding gun control, vehement political views will further influence these established themes to result in unprecedented pressures on patient confidentiality. This analysis draws on new movements in ethical theory and behavioral medicine that go beyond balancing principles to question the use of psychiatry in firearm reporting, and support a vigorous practice of informed consent to protect both individuals and the communities they live in. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Temporal order of strokes primes letter recognition

Does the perception of objects that are the result of human actions reflect the underlying temporal structure of the actions that gave rise to them? We tested whether the temporal order of letter strokes influences letter recognition. In three experiments, participants were asked to identify letters that temporally unfolded as an additive sequence of letter strokes, either consistent or inconsistent with common writing action. Participants were significantly faster to identify letters from consistent temporal sequences, indicating that the initial part of the sequence contained sufficient information to prime letter recognition. We suggest that letter perception reflects the temporal structure of letter production; in other words, Simon sees as Simon does.     

Perceptual organization of moving stimuli modulates the flash-lag effect

When a visual stimulus is flashed at a given location the moment a second moving stimulus arrives at the same location, observers report the flashed stimulus as spatially lagging behind the moving stimulus (the flash-lag effect). The authors investigated whether the global configuration (perceptual organization) of the moving stimulus influences the magnitude of the flash-lag effect. The results indicate that a flash presented near the leading portion of a moving stimulus lags significantly more than a flash presented near the trailing portion. This result also holds for objects consisting of several elements that group to form a unitary percept of an object in motion. The present study demonstrates a novel interaction between the global configuration of moving objects and the representation of their spatial position and may provide a new and useful tool for the study of perceptual organization.