Mnemonic instruction, with a focus on transfer.

The authors conducted 4 experiments to examine mnemonic transfer in the form of knowledge generalization, in the context of an artwork-learning task. In each experiment, college students first studied a set of painting–artist name pairs using an adaptation of the face–name mnemonic technique. Immediate and 2-day delayed performance measures consisted of (a) tests over the studied paintings (memory) and (b) new tests over sets of nonstudied, yet thematically or stylistically similar, paintings by the same artists (transfer). In all 4 experiments mnemonic instruction produced memory benefits on a direct test over the studied paintings. Moreover, Experiments 1–3 indicated that on the transfer task mnemonic students who were directed to focus on the general theme or style of the artist outperformed both nonmnemonic control students and mnemonic students who focused on details of the paintings. Finally, the results of Experiment 4 further suggested that even when mnemonic-detail students are specifically informed about the nature of the forthcoming near-transfer task, their transfer performance is not facilitated. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Roles of retinal periphery and depth periphery in linear vection and visual control of standing in humans.

Two groups of 60 adults (mean ages 23.7 and 29.3 yrs) were exposed to central and/or peripheral visual motion affecting either the foreground or the background of the visual field. Body sway and duration of vection over a 1-min period were measured. Results show that depth periphery and retinal periphery both play a role in the regulation of posture and in vection. Movement limited to the foreground produced little vection or postural sway compared with motion located in the background. Results also show that motion covering the periphery of the visual field is more efficient in inducing vection and body sway than motion restricted to the center of the visual field. (French abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Spacing as the friend of both memory and induction in young and older adults.

We compared the effects of spaced versus massed practice on young and older adults' ability to learn visually complex paintings. We expected a spacing advantage when 1 painting per artist was studied repeatedly and tested (repetition) but perhaps a massing advantage, especially for older adults, when multiple different paintings by each artist were studied and tested (induction). We were surprised to find that spacing facilitated both inductive and repetition learning by both young and older adults, even though the participants rated massing superior to spacing for inductive learning. Thus, challenging learners of any age appears to have unintuitive benefits for both memory and induction. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Pupillary responses in art appreciation: Effects of aesthetic emotions.

The authors examined effects of aesthetic emotions in art appreciation. Subjects were presented three groups of slides of cubistic paintings that differed in their processing fluency. In an explicit classification procedure, subjects were asked to indicate by button press the moment when they recognized any depicted object in the painting. The time to recognize a depicted object was shortest for high processing fluency paintings, which were also rated higher in their preference. This is in accordance with the “hedonic fluency model” that predicts higher processing fluency being associated with positive aesthetic emotions in art appreciation (Reber, Schwartz, & Winkielman, 2004). In addition, higher processing fluency was associated with increased pupil dilations following the point of explicit classification. The finding of higher pupil dilation associated with easy-to-process stimuli is interpreted as reflecting aspects of aesthetic emotions that follow explicit classification of art stimuli as proposed in the “model of aesthetic appreciation and aesthetic judgments” (Leder, Belke, Oeberst, & Augustin, 2004). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of fatigue and anxiety on certain psychomotor and visual functions.

The comparative value of five measures of behavior decrement (steadiness, body sway, body sway time score, tapping rate, and critical flicker frequency) under conditions of fatigue or anxiety was studied in the collegiate competitive boxing situation. Measurements were made of 24 boxers under 4 conditions: at rest, after heavy exercise, before fighting, and after fighting. The data were subjected to analysis of variance. Measures of steadiness (hand steadiness and body sway) best satisfied the criteria for indicators of behavior decrement. "The remaining variables… may be made into more useful measures… if trial-to-trial variation and the very wide individual differences exhibited are diminished. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Position and velocity coupling of postural sway to somatosensory drive

Light touch contact of a fingertip to a stationary surface provides orientation information that enhances control of upright stance. Slight changes in contact force at the fingertip lead to sensory cues about the direction of body sway, allowing attenuation of sway. In the present study, the coupling of postural sway to a moving contact surface was investigated in detail. Head, center of mass, and center of pressure displacement were measured as the contact surface moved rhythmically at 0.1, 0.2, 0.4, 0.6, and 0.8 Hz. Stimulus amplitude decreased with frequency to maintain peak velocity constant across frequency. Head and body sway were highly coherent with contact surface motion at all frequencies except 0.8 Hz, where a drop-off in coherence was observed. Mean frequency of head and body sway matched the driving frequency 相似文献   

Influence of sensory manipulation on postural control in Parkinson's disease

Postural control was assessed on a tilting platform system in 20 patients with idiopathic Parkinson's disease and 20 age-matched controls. The amount of information provided by vision and lower limb proprioception was varied during the experiment to investigate the influence of changes in sensory cues on postural control. The patient group with clinical evidence of impaired postural control (Hoehn and Yahr III) had significantly higher sway scores over all sensory conditions than either the Hoehn and Yahr II group or controls. The pattern of sway scores indicated that no obvious deficit in the quality, or processing, of sensory information was responsible for the postural instability observed in this group. The patients in both Hoehn and Yahr groups were also able to respond appropriately to potentially destabilising sensory conflict situations and significantly improved their sway scores when provided with visual feedback of body sway. The results indicate that in Parkinson's disease, the main site of dysfunction in postural control is likely to be at a central motor level.     

Chronic tolerance and sensitization to alcohol in sons of alcoholics: II. Replication and reanalysis.

Data from D. B. Newlin and J. B. Thomson (1991) were reanalyzed, and data from an independent replication study were analyzed, relative to tonic (baseline) and phasic (response to alcohol challenge) aspects of drinking alcohol administered at the same dose on several occasions. Among the high-risk men (sons of alcoholic fathers), linear trends across days for resting (predrinking) baselines were opposite to alcohol-evoked changes for finger pulse amplitude, finger temperature, and skin conductance in Study 1 and for pulse transit time and body sway (static ataxia) in Study 2. In contrast, the structure of the low-risk men's (sons of nonalcoholic parents) data was precisely the opposite. Results are discussed in terms of sensitization as a potential mechanism that relates vulnerability to final manifestation of addictive behavior. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sensory strategies in human postural control before and after unilateral vestibular neurotomy

Vestibular inputs tonically activate the anti-gravitative leg muscles during normal standing in humans, and visual information and proprioceptive inputs from the legs are very sensitive sensory loops for body sway control. This study investigated the postural control in a homogeneous population of 50 unilateral vestibular-deficient patients (Ménière's disease patients). It analyzed the postural deficits of the patients before and after surgical treatment (unilateral vestibular neurotomy) of their diseases and it focused on the visual contribution to the fine regulation of body sway. Static posturographic recordings on a stable force-plate were done with patients with eyes open (EO) and eyes closed (EC). Body sway and visual stabilization of posture were evaluated by computing sway area with and without vision and by calculating the percentage difference of sway between EC and EO conditions. Ménière's patients were examined when asymptomatic, 1 day before unilateral vestibular neurotomy, and during the time-course of recovery (1 week, 2 weeks, 1 month, 3 months, and 1 year). Data from the patients were compared with those recorded in 26 healthy, age- and sex-matched participants. Patients before neurotomy exhibited significantly greater sway area than controls with both EO (+52%) and EC (+93%). Healthy participants and Ménière's patients, however, displayed two different behaviors with EC. In both populations, 54% of the subjects significantly increased their body sway upon eye closure, whereas 46% exhibited no change or significantly swayed less without vision. This was statistically confirmed by the cluster analysis, which clearly split the controls and the patients into two well-identified subgroups, relying heavily on vision (visual strategy, V) or not (non-visual strategy, NV). The percentage difference of sway averaged +36.7%+/-10.9% and -6.2%+/-16.5% for the V and NV controls, respectively; +45.9%+/-16.8% and -4.2%+/-14.9% for the V and NV patients, respectively. These two distinct V and NV strategies seemed consistent over time in individual subjects. Body sway area was strongly increased in all patients with EO early after neurotomy (1 and 2 weeks) and regained preoperative values later on. In contrast, sway area as well as the percentage difference of sway were differently modified in the two subgroups of patients with EC during the early stage of recovery. The NV patients swayed more, whereas the V patients swayed less without vision. This surprising finding, indicating that patients switched strategies with respect to their preoperative behavior, was consistently observed in 45 out of the 50 Ménière's patients during the whole postoperative period, up to 1 year. We concluded that there is a differential weighting of visual inputs for the fine regulation of posture in both healthy participants and Ménière's patients before surgical treatment. This differential weighting was correlated neither with age or sex factors, nor with the clinical variables at our disposal in the patients. It can be accounted for by a different selection of sensory orientation references depending on the personal experience of the subjects, leading to a more or less heavy dependence on vision. The change of sensory strategy in the patients who had undergone neurotomy might reflect a reweighting of the visual and somatosensory cues controlling balance. Switching strategy by means of a new sensory selection of orientation references may be a fast adaptive response to the lesion-induced postural instability.     

On the Cover.

Franklin Carmichael (1890-1945) became the youngest member of the famous Canadian Group of Seven. Formally recognized in mous 1920, the seven artists were known for their love of the Canadian North. By and large, viewers do not see people in their paintings. They preferred to depict landscapes without humans to the extent that even when painting a village, they included no people in the work. A. Y. Jackson, a member of the Group, described Carmichael as "a lyrical painter of great ability and a fine craftsman" (MacDonald, 1986, p. 116). As important as landscapes are to artists, they are more important in Canadian culture. A strong value held by almost all Canadians is a love of nature, so the Group of Seven paintings became iconic. The landscapes painted by the Group of Seven artists were of specific places, but they could be located anywhere in the Canadian North. People throughout Canada connected with the painted images and saw places that made them think of where their grandfather's cottage could have been or where they took summer vacations and the like. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Postural stabilization of looking.

The authors studied relations between postural sway, optical flow, and constraints on posture imposed by a suprapostural looking task. Optical flow resulted from unperturbed sway and was not imposed by the experimenters. Participants fixated a distant target or a nearby target. In the key condition, participants looked past (i.e., ignored) a nearby target to fixate the distant target. The authors recorded the variability of head position as a measure of the amplitude of postural sway. In 5 of 7 experiments, sway variability was influenced by the location of the fixated target not by the distance of the nearest visible surface (the unfixated nearby target). Postural sway was modulated to facilitate the performance of suprapostural tasks and was not driven by optical flow in an autonomous (task-dependent) manner. The authors concluded that posture can be understood only in the context of explicit manipulations of suprapostural tasks. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of flicker-induced depth on chromatic subjective contours.

Two experiments examined the dependence of illusory colors on boundary salience and depth stratification by using flicker-induced depth. The first used a subjective-contour stimulus that appeared as a translucent colored rectangle covering a set of inducing circles and a dark background. The circles were then flickered so as to be perceived as background, and the previously dark background moved forward and appeared as foreground. Simultaneously, the chromatic subjective contour was eliminated. In the second experiment, a subjective-contour (faces/vase-concentric squares) figure was tinted with the McCollough effect, which produced a strong subjective color edge. This edge was visible only with the faces/vase percept and not in the squares percept. Flickering the target locked it into the square configuration because in this case the flicker held the entire pattern in the same depth plane. This eliminated the subjective color edge. Depth stratification and subjective color blockage were maximal at a flicker rate of 6 Hz. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Attitude accessibility as a moderator of autonomic reactivity during decision making.

Attitude functionality was assessed in 2 experiments examining attitude accessibility as a moderator of physiological responses during decision making. In Study 1, experimental Ss but not controls rehearsed attitudes toward novel objects (abstract paintings). Subsequently, all Ss made rapid preference judgments for pairs of the paintings. In Study 2, attitudes were rehearsed by all Ss toward 1 of 2 mutually exclusive sets of abstract paintings. During the subsequent decision-making task, half the Ss made rapid pairwise preference judgments for rehearsed abstract paintings and half for pairs from the unrehearsed set. Autonomic measures were recorded continuously throughout both experiments. As predicted, in both experiments less autonomic reactivity was evident during the criterion pairwise preference task for groups for whom attitude rehearsal was relevant to the criterion task. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Mental representation of the body: Stability and change in response to illness and disability.

Body concept and body esteem were examined among 147 male patients (mean ages 45–58 yrs) in 4 medical groups (cardiac, spinal-cord injured, alcoholic, and domiciliary). To study body concept, multidimensional scaling was used to extract the dimensions organizing 33 body parts. Three dimensions, head–body, arm-leg, and inside–outside, organized bodily experience for the groups. To study body esteem, a principal components analysis was applied to esteem ratings of the same body parts; head and body dimensions emerged, suggesting correspondence between cognition and affect. Body concept was stable across medical groups, whereas body esteem underwent dramatic, illness-related changes. A serial chain model of body concept is proposed to synthesize these and related findings. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Picasso's Guernica: The genesis of a painting.

Reviews the book, Picasso's Guernica: The genesis of a painting by Rudolf Arnheim (2006). Guernica, one of the most famous and reproduced paintings of the 20th century, was Pablo Picasso's answer to a commission for the 1937 Paris World's Fair, by the Spanish government in exile. In this book, Rudolf Arnheim, distinguished art historian and Gestalt psychologist, examines the artist's preliminary studies and states of the mural in progress. Picasso numbered and dated his studies, representing "the first time in recorded history an artist has created and carefully catalogued and preserved such extensive series of preparations" (p. 14). From those data Arnheim chronicles the progression of Picasso's "visual thinking"--his stops and starts; reversals and refinements; his attention now to detail, now to the gestalt--as he moved toward the final realization of his assignment to commemorate '...the drama of his fatherland ravished by the fascists" (p. 18). This book is packed with rich insights on art in the context of world events, on the meaning of abstraction in painting, on the artist's oeuvre, and on Picasso the man. Significantly, for the psychology of the creative process, Arnheim advances the notion of artistic creativity as fundamentally a process of problem solving, with Picasso's Guernica as a striking case study. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Personality predictors of artistic preferences as a function of the emotional valence and perceived complexity of paintings.

This study explored associations among the Big Five personality factors, unconventionality, selected demographics, and preference for 4 distinct visual art genres (portraiture, abstract art, geometric art, and impressionism). In total, 3,254 participants completed an online survey assessing individual difference and preference ratings for different paintings. Participants were also asked to rate each observed painting for emotional liking and perceived complexity, which enabled examination of whether personality could predict artistic preferences when the latter was classified on the basis of consensual, rather than researcher-led or art historical, taxonomies. Correlations and structural equation models showed that the correlates and predictors of artistic preferences were stronger when art was classified using consensual ratings (particularly in the case of complex art) than according to researcher-led or art historical taxonomies. Although these findings are somewhat exploratory and more comprehensive measures of individual differences and art preferences could be employed, they suggest that trait-congruent classifications of aesthetic stimuli may improve prediction and understanding of individual differences in artistic preferences. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Visual space perception and visually directed action.

The results of 2 types of experiments are reported. In 1 type, Ss matched depth intervals on the ground plane that appeared equal to frontal intervals at the same distance. The depth intervals had to be made considerably larger than the frontal intervals to appear equal in length, with this physical inequality of equal-appearing intervals increasing with egocentric distance of the intervals (4–22 min). In the other type of experiment, Ss viewed targets lying on the ground plane and then, with eyes closed, attempted either to walk directly to their locations or to point continuously toward them while walking along paths that passed off to the side. Performance was quite accurate in both motoric tasks, indicating that the distortion in the mapping from physical to visual space evident in the visual matching task does not manifest itself in the visually open-loop motoric task. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Atypical involvement of undifferentiated carcinomas of the nasopharyngeal type. Apropos of 3 cases

This study compared body sway, a measure of postural stability, between regular brisk walkers and control subjects. Furthermore, the relationship between body sway and physical activity duration in postmenopausal women was examined. Subjects were 31 healthy postmenopausal women, aged 61-71 years. They were recruited from a randomized controlled study of the influence of brisk walking on bone: 16 women had been completing 20 min d-1 brisk walking, whilst 15 controls had been completing habitual activities only. Body sway was measured using a swaymeter that measured displacement at the waist whilst subjects stood on a compliant surface, with eyes closed, for 1 min. The activity was measured using activity monitors which were worn at the waist for 3 consecutive days. Body sway (eyes closed, standing on a compliant surface) was lower in walkers than in controls: 2,958 +/- (SE) 270 versus 5,225+/-371 mm2 min-1, respectively (p < 0.05). A negative correlation was found between body sway and minutes of physical activity (r = -0.47, p < 0.01). Analysis of variance revealed that body sway differed significantly (p < 0.05) between groups of differing physical activity participation, being 4,839 +/- 499, 4,167 +/- 516, and 2,877 +/- 362 mm2 min-1, respectively, in women completing <20, 20-40, and >40 min d-1 of physical activity. Body sway was significantly lower in the most active group than in the least active (p < 0.01). These data suggest that postural stability is better in regular walkers than in control subjects. Furthermore, a dose-response relationship was observed between physical activity and postural stability in postmenopausal women. These findings provide a preliminary indication that brisk walking, a low-cost and acceptable form of physical activity for the elderly, could be incorporated into strategies for improving balance in the elderly.     

Nitrogen narcosis measured by dual-task performance.

Two hyperbaric studies tested detrimental effects of 188-ft sea water gauge (fswg) air pressure. In each experiment, 8 males aged 22–32 yrs, qualified for hyperbaric exposures, executed single-task controls of a choice reaction time (RT) task and a pursuit tracking task, as well as their dual-task combinations. All tasks were tested 0, 10, and 188 fswg. Exp I was designed to measure the effects of nitrogen narcosis on 2 successive weekly dives. No improvement specific to the 188 fswg depth was found on the 2nd dive. It is concluded that the prior exposure did not result in measurable adaptation to narcosis. At 188 fswg, the rate of information transmission in the choice RT task was slowed and tracking error increased. Dual-task requirements resulted in poorer tracking but left choice RT performance unaffected. In Exp II, half of the Ss stopped at 19 fswg before proceeding to depth. They showed a decrement in performance at 188 fswg equal to, or greater than, that found for the remaining Ss, who used the standard procedure of descending to depth directly. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Verbal responses to human figure paintings: A test of the uncertainty hypothesis.

22 undergraduates rated 36 human-figure paintings on verbal scales to index uncertainty (e.g., simple–complex) and 2 types of aesthetic reaction: epistemic (e.g., uninteresting–interesting) and diversive (e.g., displeasing–pleasing). Linear and quadratic regression equations were used to examine relations between uncertainty and evaluative reaction. Uncertainty accounted for 12–23% of the variance in epistemic and diversive ratings. Linear models were selected in both cases, with uncertainty positively related to epistemic ratings and negatively to diversive ratings. The idea that uncertainty governs aesthetic evaluations of pictures with human content is discussed. (French abstract) (22 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)