Rate of binocular rivalry alternation in psychotic and nonpsychotic patients.

To determine the relationship between binocular rivalry rate and the presence of psychopathology, rivalry rate measures for 2 1-min. observation periods were taken from 3 matched groups of organic, schizophrenic, and nonorganic-nonpsychotic patients. The rate of the nonorganic-nonpsychotic group increased significantly over observation periods relative to the other groups, a result consistent with other data which suggests that rate provides some measure of cognitive efficiency. Differences in rate between organic and schizophrenic groups were not found, contrary to previous report. Procedural variables which could account for the discrepancy are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A cross-cultural study of perceptual predominance in binocular rivalry.

Pairs of similar scenes, one Mexican and one from the United States, were presented stereoscopically to 12 Mexican Ss and 12 matched Ss from the United States. "Under these conditions of experimentally induced binocular rivalry,… scenes from the S's own culture tended to be perceptually predominant." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Perception of facial expressions of emotion during binocular rivalry.

Binocular rivalry is the perceptual alternation between two incompatible stimuli presented simultaneously but to each eye separately. The observer's perception switches back and forth between the two stimuli that are competing for perceptual dominance. In two studies, pictures of emotional faces (disgust and happy) were pitted against each other or against pictures of faces with neutral expressions. Study 1 demonstrated that (a) emotional facial expressions predominate over neutral expressions, and (b) positive facial expressions predominate over negative facial expression (i.e., positivity bias). Study 2 examined individual differences in emotional predominance and positivity bias during binocular rivalry. Although the positivity bias was not affected by the levels of depressive symptoms, results demonstrated that emotional predominance diminished as the level of depressive symptoms increased. These results indicate that individuals who report more depressive symptoms compared to their less depressed counterparts tend to assign more meaning to neutral faces. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Here is looking at you: Emotional faces predominate in binocular rivalry.

Two incompatible pictures compete for perceptual dominance when they are presented to one eye each. This so-called binocular rivalry results in an alternation of dominant and suppressed percepts. In accordance with current theories of emotion processing, the authors' previous research has suggested that emotionally arousing pictures predominate in this perceptual process. Three experiments were run with pictures of emotional facial expressions that are known to induce emotions while being well controlled in terms of physical characteristics. In Experiment 1, photographs of emotional and neutral facial expressions were presented of the same actor to minimize physical differences. In Experiment 2, schematic emotional expressions were presented to further eliminate low-level differences. In Experiment 3, a probe-detection task was conducted to control for possible response-biases. Together, these data clearly demonstrate that emotional facial expressions predominate over neutral expressions; they are more often the first percept and they are perceived for longer durations. This is not caused by physical stimulus properties or by response-biases. This novel approach supports that emotionally significant visual stimuli are preferentially perceived. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Binocular rivalry and the study of identification in asthmatic and nonasthmatic boys.

Describes a method for studying motivational properties of identification in a group of 55 8-11 yr. old asthmatic and nonasthmatic boys. Selective attention of a child toward his mother or father was measured by the child's resolution of a binocular rivalry test in which the competing stimuli were photographs of the child's own parents. Perceptual dominance scores derived from this test were then examined in relation to certain other perceptions of the child. Split-half reliability of perceptual dominance scores was .84. Perceptual dominance of the father was positively related to perceived power of the father among nonasthmatic boys (r = .37, p     

Binocular rivalry: A window into emotional processing in aging.

Previous binocular rivalry studies with younger adults have shown that emotional stimuli dominate perception over neutral stimuli. Here we investigated the effects of age on patterns of emotional dominance during binocular rivalry. Participants performed a face/house rivalry task where the emotion of the face (happy, angry, neutral) and orientation (upright, inverted) of the face and house stimuli were varied systematically. Age differences were found with younger adults showing a general emotionality effect (happy and angry faces were more dominant than neutral faces) and older adults showing inhibition of anger (neutral faces were more dominant than angry faces) and positivity effects (happy faces were more dominant than both angry and neutral faces). Age differences in dominance patterns were reflected by slower rivalry rates for both happy and angry compared to neutral face/house pairs in younger adults, and slower rivalry rates for happy compared to both angry and neutral face/house pairs in older adults. Importantly, these patterns of emotional dominance and slower rivalry rates for emotional-face/house pairs disappeared when the stimuli were inverted. This suggests that emotional valence, and not low-level image features, were responsible for the emotional bias in both age groups. Given that binocular rivalry has a limited role for voluntary control, the findings imply that anger suppression and positivity effects in older adults may extend to more automatic tasks. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Aging and directed forgetting in episodic memory: A meta-analysis.

In this meta-analysis, we examined the effects of aging on directed forgetting. A cue to forget is more effective in younger (d = 1.17) than in older (d = 0.81) adults. Directed-forgetting effects were larger (a) with the item method rather than with the list method, (b) with longer presentation times, (c) with longer postcue rehearsal times, (d) with single words rather than with verbal action phrases as stimuli, (e) with shorter lists, and (f) when recall rather than recognition was tested. Age effects were reliably larger when the item method was used, suggesting that these effects are mainly due to encoding differences. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Aging, source memory, and emotion.

In 2 experiments we assessed younger and older adults' ability to remember contextual information about an event. Each experiment examined memory for 3 different types of contextual information: (a) perceptual information (e.g., location of an item); (b) conceptual, nonemotional information (e.g., quality of an item); and (c) conceptual, emotional information (e.g., safety of an item). Consistent with a large literature on aging and source memory, younger adults outperformed older adults when the contextual information was perceptual in nature and when it was conceptual, but not emotional. Age differences in source memory were eliminated, however, when participants recalled emotional source information. These findings suggest that emotional information differentially engages older adults, possibly evoking enhanced elaborations and associations. The data are also consistent with a growing literature, suggesting that emotional processing remains stable with age (e.g., Carstensen & Turk-Charles, 1994, 1998; Isaacowitz, Charles, & Carstensen, 2000). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Aging and the revelation effect.

Previous research by M. W. Prull, L. L. Light, M. E. Collett, and R. F. Kennison (1998) has shown that older adults are not susceptible to a memory illusion referred to as the revelation effect. The authors examined the robustness of Prull et al.'s findings by having participants solve a word fragment (Experiment 1) or an anagram (Experiment 2) prior to the recognition memory decision. In both experiments, younger and older adults showed a reliable revelation effect. These results simultaneously challenge both the conclusion that older adults are not vulnerable to the revelation effect and the conclusion that aging is associated with increasing susceptibility to memory illusions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Aging and the vulnerability of speech to dual task demands.

Tracking a digital pursuit rotor task was used to measure dual task costs of language production by young and older adults. Tracking performance by both groups was affected by dual task demands: time on target declined and tracking error increased as dual task demands increased from the baseline condition to a moderately demanding dual task condition to a more demanding dual task condition. When dual task demands were moderate, older adults' speech rate declined but their fluency, grammatical complexity, and content were unaffected. When the dual task was more demanding, older adults' speech, like young adults' speech, became highly fragmented, ungrammatical, and incoherent. Vocabulary, working memory, processing speed, and inhibition affected vulnerability to dual task costs: vocabulary provided some protection for sentence length and grammaticality, working memory conferred some protection for grammatical complexity, and processing speed provided some protection for speech rate, propositional density, coherence, and lexical diversity. Further, vocabulary and working memory capacity provided more protection for older adults than for young adults although the protective effect of processing speed was somewhat reduced for older adults as compared to the young adults. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Aging and task switching: A meta-analysis.

A meta-analysis of 26 published articles (with 36 independent participant groups) was conducted to analyze the relationship between task-switching effects and aging. Latency served as the dependent measure. Multilevel modeling was used to test for additive and multiplicative complexity effects in local and global switch costs. Global task switching was found to add 1 or more stages to processing and resulted in a marked age deficit. Local task-switching costs, on the other hand, showed a multiplicative complexity effect but no specific attention-related age deficits. Cueing or switch predictability did not affect age differences. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Specific- and Partial-Source Memory: Effects of Aging.

Normal aging can be associated with impairments in source memory (recollecting an event's context). This study examined the effects of aging on specific-source memory (e.g., remembering which of 4 people spoke a word) and partial-source memory (e.g., remembering the gender of the person who spoke the word). When young and older adults were matched in terms of old-new recognition, age-related deficits were observed on both specific- and partial-source recollection. When the groups were matched on partial-source performance, no disproportionate specific-source impairment was seen. The results suggest that aging does not differentially affect specific- versus partial-source memory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Aging and fluency-based illusions in recognition memory.

We examined age-related differences in susceptibility to fluency-based memory illusions. The results from 2 experiments, in which 2 different methods were used to enhance the fluency of recognition test items, revealed that older and young adults did not differ significantly in terms of their overall susceptibility to this type of memory illusion. Older and young adults were also similar in that perceptual fluency did not influence recognition memory responses when there was a mismatch in the sensory modality of the study and test phases. Likewise, a more conceptual fluency manipulation influenced recognition memory responses in both older and young adults regardless of the match in modality. Overall, the results indicate that older adults may not be more vulnerable than young adults to fluency-based illusions of recognition memory. Moreover, young and older adults appear to be comparable in their sensitivity to factors that modulate the influence of fluency on recognition decisions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Memory and Aging in Context.

Much research has indicated that aging is accompanied by decrements in memory performance across a wide variety of tasks and situations. A dominant perspective is that these age differences reflect normative changes in the integrity and efficiency of the information-processing system. Contextual perspectives of development, however, argue for consideration of a broader constellation of factors as determinants of both intraindividual change and interindividual variation in memory functioning. The validity of the contextual perspective in characterizing the relationship between aging and memory is examined through a review of studies exploring a variety of alternative mechanisms associated with age differences in performance. It is concluded that a more multidimensional approach to the study of aging and memory is warranted. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Memory for object location: A span study in children.

The aim of the present study was to analyze the developmental changes in three spatial processes, namely, in positional reconstruction involving the retention of spatial locations per se (Positional encoding task), in the assignment of objects to positions (Object-to-position assignment task), and in the integration of these two (Combined task). A span procedure was used to assess the development of spatial memory in children aged 6, 8, and 10 years tested in these three tasks. The findings of the present study provide developmental spans for each relocation task. Results show an age-dependent improvement in all tasks, suggesting that spatial position is not automatically encoded. The results also show different developmental patterns for the relocation tasks considered, suggesting that spatial memory comprises a number of different component processes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Context Processing and Context Maintenance in Healthy Aging and Early Stage Dementia of the Alzheimer's Type.

Declines in the ability to process context information may represent a fundamental mechanism of age-related cognitive changes. Two components of context processing--activation/updating and maintenance--were examined in a sample of healthy younger and older adults, along with individuals suffering from early stage dementia of the Alzheimer's type (DAT). All older adult groups showed context activation/updating impairments, whereas context maintenance was only impaired in the oldest adults (age>75 years) and was further exacerbated in DAT individuals. The results suggest that context processing may be composed of functionally dissociable components and point to the utility of this construct in understanding the timecourse of cognitive decline in healthy and pathological aging. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Aging, hearing acuity, and the attentional costs of effortful listening.

A dual-task interference paradigm was used to investigate the effect of perceptual effort on recall of spoken word lists by young and older adults with good hearing and with mild-to-moderate hearing loss. In addition to poorer recall accuracy, listeners with hearing loss, especially older adults, showed larger secondary task costs while recalling the word lists even though the stimuli were presented at a sound intensity that allowed correct word identification. Findings support the hypothesis that extra effort at the sensory–perceptual level attendant to hearing loss has negative consequences to downstream recall, an effect that may be further magnified with increased age. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Aging, memory load, and resource allocation during reading.

To test the notion that aging brings an inability to self-initiate processing, the authors investigated the effects of memory load on online sentence understanding. Younger and older adults read a series of short passages with or without a simultaneous updating task, which would be expected to deplete resources by consuming memory capacity. Regression analyses of word-by-word reading times onto text variables within each condition were used to decompose reading times into resources allocated to the array of word-level and textbase-level processes needed for comprehension. Among neither the young nor the old were word-level processes disrupted by a simultaneous memory load. However, older readers showed relatively greater levels of resource allocation to conceptual integration than the younger adults when under load, regardless of working-memory span or task priority. These results suggest that the ability to self-initiate the allocation of processing resources during reading is preserved among older readers. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Aging, Inhibition, and Social Inappropriateness.

This study explores the hypothesis that age-related declines in inhibitory ability are associated with increases in socially inappropriate behavior. Consistent with this hypothesis, older participants were less likely than younger participants to differentiate between public and private settings when inquiring about potentially embarrassing issues, according to their peers. Additionally, this indiscriminate public inquiry was associated with decreased closeness with participants' peers, particularly for older adults. Finally, this age-related increase in social inappropriateness was mediated by inhibitory deficits associated with aging. These results suggest that age-related deficits in inhibitory ability may cause people to become socially inappropriate against their will. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The fate of cognition in very old age: Six-year longitudinal findings in the Berlin Aging Study (BASE).

The authors report full-information longitudinal age gradients in 4 intellectual abilities on the basis of 6-year longitudinal changes in 132 individuals (mean age at T? = 79.27, age range = 70-100) from the Berlin Aging Study. Relative to the cross-sectional parent sample (N = 516, mean age at T? = 84.92 years), this sample was positively selected because of differential mortality and experimental attrition. Perceptual speed, memory, and fluency declined with age. In contrast, knowledge remained stable up to age 90, with evidence for decline thereafter. Age gradients were more negative in old old (n = 66, mean age at T? = 83.04) than in old (n = 66, mean age at T? = 73.77) participants. Rates of decline did not differ reliably between men and women or between participants with high versus low life-history status. They conclude that intellectual development after age 70 varies by distance to death, age, and intellectual ability domain. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)