On boredom and experimentation in humans

This article discusses the ethical and methodological issues associated with boredom experienced by human participants during psychological experiments. Ways are suggested in which informed consent, briefing, and debriefing can be used to prevent or remedy boredom induced during experiments. We address methodological and ethical concerns, and we discuss the advantages of the proposed approach for experimenters' practice and training of undergraduate students. Future directions for much needed research on these topics are also emphasized.     

The depiction of car light beams in a child born completely blind

A 12-year-old child (DI) who was completely blind from birth, made a series of tactual (raised-lines) drawings of cars. Among them, there was the depiction of a 'fast car at night' in which DI drew beams of light projecting out of the car. We analyse this drawing, and the preceding ones. We argue that the way in which cars and light beams were depicted by DI cannot be fully and solely explained by graphic imprecision, executive or motor deficiencies, or by rote or verbal learning. Instead, we propose that the most plausible explanation is that DI's depiction of light in a fast car at night reflects the child's na?ve knowledge of light propagation, and that this knowledge was gained through perceiving light as radiant heat.     

Exposure to severe urban air pollution influences cognitive outcomes, brain volume and systemic inflammation in clinically healthy children

Exposure to severe air pollution produces neuroinflammation and structural brain alterations in children. We tested whether patterns of brain growth, cognitive deficits and white matter hyperintensities (WMH) are associated with exposures to severe air pollution. Baseline and 1 year follow-up measurements of global and regional brain MRI volumes, cognitive abilities (Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised, WISC-R), and serum inflammatory mediators were collected in 20 Mexico City (MC) children (10 with white matter hyperintensities, WMH⁺, and 10 without, WMH⁻) and 10 matched controls (CTL) from a low polluted city. There were significant differences in white matter volumes between CTL and MC children - both WMH⁺ and WMH⁻ - in right parietal and bilateral temporal areas. Both WMH⁻ and WMH⁺ MC children showed progressive deficits, compared to CTL children, on the WISC-R Vocabulary and Digit Span subtests. The cognitive deficits in highly exposed children match the localization of the volumetric differences detected over the 1 year follow-up, since the deficits observed are consistent with impairment of parietal and temporal lobe functions. Regardless of the presence of prefrontal WMH, Mexico City children performed more poorly across a variety of cognitive tests, compared to CTL children, thus WMH⁺ is likely only partially identifying underlying white matter pathology. Together these findings reveal that exposure to air pollution may perturb the trajectory of cerebral development and result in cognitive deficits during childhood.     

Exploring the brain with drugs

The nature and distribution of drag-induced or dragmodified responses, in health and in disease or experimental approximations of similarly disturbed function, have been investigated. From the results it appears that: 1. A sensitive substrate of drag action is the neurohumorally-determined synaptic equilibrium, which is transiently disturbed by transmission and distorted by drugs. These act through their ability to mimic or alter the duration of action of the cholinergic, excitatory, or adrenergic and serotoninergic inhibitory neurohumors. 2. Cerebral synaptic responsiveness to drugs isqualitatively identical at various cerebral sites sampled, including the cortex, subcortex and brainstem. This, therefore, is a general characteristic which, however, exhibits markedquantitative differences. 3. Because of such differential thresholds, drugs can cause disruption of normal relations or equilibrium between parts of the brain, as with LSD, or, if appropriately used, can act to promote restoration of equilibrium, as with tranquilizers and antidepressants. 4. A concept of cerebral homeostasis can be equated with mental health and its disturbance with psychosis, which is then regarded as a failure of cerebral integration. Clinical yardsticks for measuring degrees of functional integration are proposed, which make use of subclinical doses of drugs to challenge cerebral homeostasis in quantified lever-pressing and perceptual aberration-tracking situations. Exploration of the brain with drugs allows also exploration of the mind, for which it is the substrate. Drugs may be used to increase understanding of cerebral function in health and disease and to assess functional disintegration, as in brain damage, aging, mental retardation and mental disturbance. Proposed clinical yardsticks based on this could be used for diagnosis, evaluation of therapy, screening populations for individuals in need of preventive or prophylactic care, and in evaluation of new drugs.     

The idea of human science

Abstract

Difficulties in the attempt to apply the natural science approach to human beings are exemplified through the history of psychology. Then, the genuine scientific problems that gave rise to the research setting of the laboratory, the concept of causality, and the procedure of measurement are addressed freshly in light of the characteristics of human subject matter. The logical grounds of a uniquely “human” science are thereby elaborated.     

The effects of interference on recognition of haptic pictures in blindfolded sighted participants: the modality of representation of haptic information

Haptic picture recognition was tested in 36 undergraduate students to determine whether haptic representations are visual or multi-modal. Participants explored target haptic pictures and were asked to recognize the target from three alternatives. Each participant completed eight control and eight interference trials in visual, lexical and tactile recognition modalities. For interference, participants were assigned to either an articulatory suppression (repeat "the" at a constant rate) or a visual interference (watch a visual display) condition, to prevent recoding into a verbal or visual code. The results showed that accuracy was higher at control compared to interference trials and for tactile compared to lexical recognition. Additionally, lexical and tactile recognition decreased with articulatory suppression whereas only tactile recognition decreased with visual interference. These findings suggest that haptic pictures may be represented by coordinating visual and verbal codes.