There's more to colour than meets the eye

Patients with cerebral achromatopsia, a perceptual disorder caused by ventromedial occipital brain damage, can be completely unable to arrange colours in chromatic sequence and fail most conventional tests of colour blindness. A possible explanation for cerebral achromatopsia is that the colour-opponent parvocellular (P) channel has been selectively and totally destroyed at the level of visual cortex, leaving vision to be mediated by the broad-band magnocellular (M) channel. The persistence of normal occipital visually evoked potentials, and preserved sensitivity to isoluminant chromatic gratings indicates that if this hypothesis is correct the destruction must occur beyond the striate cortex. We have shown that an achromatopsic subject can detect chromatic borders and construct shape from colour, and that he can even perceive the apparent direction of motion of a phase shifted isoluminant chromatic grating where perceived direction depends on knowing the sign of the colour diffence, i.e., which colour is which in the stripes. This and other evidence suggests that perhaps only one part of the cortical P channel has been destroyed. Does the critical area involved in achromatopsia correspond to cortical area V4 of monkeys, often implicated in processing wavelength? When Visual Area 4 is totally ablated in monkeys they have only a mild colour discrimination impairment and easily solve the colour ordering and colour selection tasks that an achromatopsic patient finds impossible. However, monkeys with ventromedial damage rostral to Area V4 do perform like achromatopsic patients, suggesting that the role of V4 in the perception of colour is still unclear and that the colour area of the human brain does not correspond to area V4.     

Intraclass correlations: There's more there than meets the eye.

Methods of calculating intraclass correlations (ICC) are well established and understood in psychological research. Several issues relating to the process of determining reliability have, on the other hand, been only lightly treated. The present paper examines 2 issues regarding the use of ICCs: (a) the real vs theoretical limits of ICCs and procedures for applying significance tests when using these measures and (b) sources of unreliability in the data. The real limits of some ICCs are not 0 and +1.00 (the theoretical limits), but exceed both –2.00 and +1.00. Even when within the theoretical limits, the ICC values may not always reflect the reliability of the measure. Under certain conditions, one can obtain moderately high ICC values that are not significantly different from zero, suggesting that researchers calculate the significance of the target variance before calculating the intraclass r. Three sources of unreliability are also identified: patterns of both positive and negative correlations among judges, limited variance in the data matrix, and no correlations among judges. A method of determining the significance of the Judge?×?Target interaction and for demonstrating how that procedure can be used to aid in the identification of sources of unreliability, is detailed. (13 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

There's more to touch than meets the eye: The salience of object attributes for haptics with and without vision.

The availability and salience of object attributes under haptic exploration, with and without vision, were assessed by 2 tasks in which Ss sorted objects that varied factorially in size, shape, texture, and hardness. In the directed-discrimination task, Ss were instructed to sort along a particular dimension. Although levels on all dimensions were easily discriminated, shape was relatively less so for haptic explorers without vision, as was hardness for those using vision and haptics. Size was least discriminable for both groups. In the free-sorting task, Ss were to sort objects by similarity. Three groups used haptic exploration only; these were differentiated by the experimenters' definition of object similarity: unbiased haptics, haptically biased haptics, haptics plus visual imagery. A 4th group used vision as well as haptics, with instructions like those of the unbiased haptics group. Results support the contention that the haptic and visual systems have distinct encoding pathways, with haptics oriented toward the encoding of substance rather the shape. This may reflect a direct influence of haptic exploratory procedures. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Gene-expression screens in vertebrate embryos: more than meets the eye

The health control of the travellers and medical assistance for them and their families is one of the oldest and most fundamental missions of the "Office des migrations internationales" (OMI) as defined by the reglementary treaties of November 1945 and June 1946. More recent reglementations have broadened the competence of the OMI to include certain categories of foreigners who had been exempt from all controls. Finally, the ministerial order of November the 7th 1994 specifies means of the health screening. Medical examinations are carried in various French and foreign institutions. It nowadays has become a consultation aiming at prevention and orientation. The medical examination has three principal objectives: the detection of little known abnormalities; the contact between the medical service of the OMI and regional services in charge of the first check-up; the health education of the examined persons. The clinical and paraclinical results are communicated to the patient who is also informed of the most serious health questions, as well as ways of gaining access to medical care in France; this is done by taking into account all medical parameters and health conditions prevailing in the patient's native country. All detected abnormalities are brought to the attention of the head physician of the OMI who in turn informs the medical inspector of the "Direction départementale des affires sanitaires et sociales" (DDASS) in charge of making sure that the migrant benefits from health and social assistance and receives medical treatment. All pathological results are given to the examined persons in form of a written and confidential report, enabling them to visit a doctor of their choice. A network has thus been built up throughout the various departments involved in the first medical examination and the DDASS has made available for the OMI medical staff listings of public institutions likely to welcome the migrants.     

Structure and function of the core histone N-termini: more than meets the eye

For two decades, the core histone N-termini generally have been thought of as unstructured domains whose function is to bind to DNA and screen negative charge. New data indicates that both the molecular mechanisms of action and biological functions of the core histone N-termini in chromatin are considerably more complex. At the level of the chromatin fiber, multiple distinct functions of the N-termini are required to achieve higher order chromatin condensation, two of which apparently involve protein-protein rather than protein-DNA interactions. In addition, the N-termini have been documented to participate in specific interactions with many chromatin-associated regulatory proteins. Here, we discuss evidence supporting the new concepts that when functioning in their natural chromatin context, (1) the N-termini are engaged primarily in protein-protein interactions, (2) as a consequence of these interactions the N-termini adopt specific secondary structure, (3) posttranslational modifications such as acetylation disrupt the ability of the N-termini to form secondary structure, and (4) because the N-termini perform essential roles in both chromatin condensation and also bind specific chromatin-associated proteins, the global structure and function of any given region of the genome will be determined predominantly by the core histone N-termini and their specific interaction partners.     

There's more to children's spelling than the errors they make: Strategic and automatic processes for one-syllable words.

Researchers have attempted to understand the cognitive processing used in spelling by looking at children's spelling errors. The authors examined 2 other types of data—children's self-reported verbal protocols and on-line measures of spelling latencies. Elementary school children spelled 3 types of common 4-letter words, consonant–consonant–vowel–consonant, consonant–vowel–consonant–consonant, and consonant–vowel–consonant–silent e. Correctly and incorrectly spelled words were analyzed as a function of word type, verbal report, and keystroke latencies. Different typing patterns emerged for strategic and automatic reports and for different word types. Children seemed to use a relatively sequential read-out from long-term memory when directly retrieving a spelling, whereas they used a consonant pair strategy for final consonant clusters when sounding out words. Implications for spelling instruction are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

There's more than one way to measure powder particle size!

The renewed focus on quality in PM manufacturing goes all the way back to the powder, the size of the particles that make it up and their distribution in the powder mix. Sieve systems and laser analysers are commonly used in the industry to characterise powders, but now a Swiss company has come up with yet another alternative…     

The medium can obscure the message: young children's understanding of video

In the first few years of life, children acquire a great deal of general information through symbolic media, including television. Here we explored whether very young children would use information presented via video to solve a retrieval problem. The children watched on a monitor as a toy was hidden in the room next door. A group of 2 1/2-year-olds was very successful at finding the hidden toy based on the televised hiding event, but a group of 2-year-olds was not. Substantially better performance was achieved by other 2-year-olds who either watched the hiding event directly through a window or who believed they were watching directly (but were in fact looking at the monitor through the window). These results (like those from other symbolic media such as models and pictures) indicate that very young children have difficulty using a symbolic representation as a source of information about an existing situation.     

It's more than interpreting an interpretation: Response to Stolorow (2002).

The author responds to Stolorow's (2002) contention that the latter's emphasis on the patient's giving meaning to interpretations is "rather similar" to the author's views on therapeutic action set forth in a recent paper (Summers, 2001). The author finds a clear difference between the 2 positions given that the latter requires transitional space for the creation of new ways of being and relating. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

When speech conflicts with seeing: young children's understanding of informational priority

In a series of investigations we found that children between 3 and 5 years of age judged that an utterance (such as, "There's milk in the jug") would be ignored by a listener who had previously seen something contradictory (orange juice in the jug). However, children judged that the listener would believe the message "There's milk in the jug" when he had not previously seen inside. In these various conditions, child participants had not seen for themselves what was inside the jug, so it was impossible for their own directly perceived knowledge to contaminate their judgments of what the protagonist believed. Under these conditions, even many false-belief failers did not assume that the listener would believe whatever they themselves thought was true. Moreover, the results of control conditions suggested that children's success could not be attributed to low-level strategies. These results seem to indicate an early understanding of how people prioritize information, with the consequence that they acknowledge that one and the same message would be believed in one context but not in another.     

Animal research in psychology: More than meets the eye of the general psychology student.

The general psychology course provides a unique opportunity to present the science of psychology to a wide audience. Informing the general public about the importance of animal research in psychology is especially important given contemporary concerns about animal rights and animal welfare. A study of 8 leading introductory psychology textbooks indicated that with the exception of principles of conditioning and learning, the contributions of animal research to psychology were often not explicitly acknowledged. In addition, major findings from animal research were frequently presented as if they had been obtained with humans. In obscuring the contributions of animal research, introductory psychology textbooks miss the opportunity to ensure that public policy is based on accurate information about the significance of this research to many areas of psychological science. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Development of young children's understanding that the recent past is causally bound to the present.

The results of 6 studies (involving 304 children) suggested that 4- and 5-year olds, but not 3-year olds, understand that very recent past events determine the present. In Studies 1–3, 3- and 4-year old children were introduced to 2 empty hiding locations. With children's backs to these locations, a camera recorded an experimenter secretly hiding a puppet in one of them. Children viewed the videotape of what had just happened, along with another tape that depicted identical events with a different child and with the puppet hidden in the other location. Only 4-year olds were subsequently able to locate the puppet, even though 3-year olds remembered the contents of the tapes and understood the equivalence between the video events and the real world. In Study 4, similar effects were obtained when a verbal analog of the test was presented to 3–5 year olds. Studies 5 and 6 showed that when children observed 2 events in which they had just participated, only 5-year olds understood that the most recent events were relevant. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

When three is less than two: Early developments in children's understanding of fractional quantities.

Four experiments examined young children's understanding of the inverse relation between the number of parts into which a quantity is to be divided and the size of each part. In Experiment 1, 5-, 6-, and 7-year-old children tended to judge, incorrectly, that bigger shares would result from sharing with more, rather than fewer, recipients. In Experiment 2, 5-year-olds correctly recognized the inverse effect of additional recipients when the sharing was based on subtraction rather than on equal partitioning. In Experiment 3, a modification of the equal-sharing task from Experiment 1 designed to reduce cognitive complexity successfully elicited correct performance from 7-year-olds but not from 5-year-olds. However, 5-year-olds markedly improved when they were given a chance to compare the outcomes of sharing with different numbers of recipients. Experiment 4 corroborated and extended this evidence of learning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Wanting to be it: children's understanding of intentions underlying pretense

How children understand the mental state of pretense has recently become an active area of inquiry, with some research suggesting that young children do not understand that pretending is based on mentally representing some alternate state of affairs. Because intention is thought to be understood earlier than mental representation generally, these experiments tested whether children understand pretense intentions at an earlier age than they understand pretense mental representations. Children were told about a character's intentions and conflicting actions, and were asked about the character's pretense. Across 5 experiments, children did not demonstrate appreciation that intention is crucial to pretense. Various methodological factors that might have compromised the results were examined, but to no effect.     

Stepping over obstacles: dividing attention impairs performance of old more than young adults

BACKGROUND: Tripping over an obstacle is a common cause of falls in the elderly. An earlier study of abilities to avoid stepping on suddenly appearing obstacles found that, although healthy old adults had a lower rate-of-success than young adults, the magnitude of that difference was not large. The present study inquired whether dividing attention during such a task would differentially affect young and old healthy adults. METHODS: Rates-of-success were observed in 16 young and 16 old healthy adults (mean ages 24 and 72 years) in avoiding stepping on a band of light that was suddenly projected across their gait path while they walked at their comfortable gait speed. This virtual obstacle was placed at predicted next-footfall locations to give 350 or 450 msec available response times before footfall. During most of the trials the subjects were asked, in addition to trying not to step on the obstacle, simultaneously to respond vocally as quickly as possible when red lights near the end of the walkway turned on. These attention-dividing reaction time tests were of two types: synchronized, when only red lights lit at intervals synchronized with the appearance of the obstacle, and unsynchronized, when green or yellow lights lit in addition to the red lights, with lighting intervals not synchronized with the appearance of the obstacle. RESULTS: When synchronized and unsynchronized reaction time tests were conducted concurrently with the obstacle avoidance tasks, mean rates-of-success in avoidance decreased significantly in both young and old adults. With available response times of 350 msec, mean success rates decreased from their no-division values in the young adults by 14.7% for synchronized reaction and by 19.9% for unsynchronized reaction, attention-dividing tests. Corresponding mean decreases for the old adults were 32.0 and 35.7%. This age difference in the effects of dividing attention was significant. CONCLUSION: Both young and old adults had a significantly increased risk of obstacle contact while negotiating obstacles when their attention was divided, but dividing attention degraded obstacle avoidance abilities of the old significantly more than it did in the young. Diminished abilities to respond to physical hazards present in the environment when attention is directed elsewhere may partially account for high rates of falls among the elderly.     

Why dogs have puppies and cats have kittens: the role of birth in young children's understanding of biological origins

Three studies examined young children's understanding of the biologically causal role of birth in determining animal properties and species kind identity. In Studies 1 and 2, 4- to 7-year-olds and adults were told stories in which a baby was born to an animal of one species (e.g., a horse) but was adopted and raised by an animal of another species (e.g., a cow). In Study 1, children were asked to judge which parent the baby would resemble on a set of physical properties and beliefs. The majority of children were unable to say that the baby would resemble the birth parent on physical properties but share the beliefs of the adoptive parent. These results indicate that children were not using domain-specific causal understandings to reason about the origins of these properties. In Study 2, however, when asked to explicitly predict the kind of the baby, even 5-year-olds were able to reliably judge that the baby would be of the same species kind as the birth parent rather than the adoptive parent. This result suggests that children do understand at some level that birth determines species kind. Study 3 examined further the extent to which knowledge about birth influenced children's inferences about properties. Five-year-olds were asked to judge whether a baby would share a set of physical and nonphysical properties with its mother or its father. The results showed that children who knew the factual information about where babies come from (i.e., inside mommies' tummies) were more likely to attribute the mother's properties to the baby than the father's, regardless of whether the properties were physical or nonphysical. But this finding was true only if the property of one of the parents was not inherently more desirable or true than that of the other parent. In sum, the results of these 3 studies indicate that knowledge of birth does play a role in children's inferential reasoning, even for 5-year-olds, but that that role is not domain-specific. The implications for children's understanding of biological inheritance are discussed.     

Speciation: more than the sum of the parts

Genetic studies are beginning to provide insights into the evolutionary processes that reduce the fitness of hybrids between recently diverged species. However, the deleterious gene interactions responsible for this fitness reduction are still poorly understood.