Learning and attention: Brain and behavioural approaches the 1995 Banff Annual Seminar in Cognitive Science.

The Banff Annual Seminar in Cognitive Science (BASICS) was founded in 1982, and thus the meeting this past May marks the 14th anniversary of this conference. Many recent talks have stressed the importance of studying these processes in conjunction with each other. In keeping with this theme, the focus of BASICS 1995 was on recent neuropsychological, neurophysiological, and behavioural findings with respect to attention and learning. Further, many of the talks provided evidence in support of attentional organization centered around objects, rather than locations. The first talk, from world-renowned scientist Michael Posner, centered on his work involving neuroscientific approaches to the study of high-level skills such as reading. Steven Luck's talk also emphasized the use of multiple neurophysiological techniques to study high-level cognitive function, in this case, the binding of features. The talk by Lynn Robertson about her work in collaboration with Anne Treisman, switched to a focus on neuropsychological, rather than neurophysiological, findings regarding attention in humans. The last speaker of the first afternoon, Patrick Cavanagh, gave a talk replete with impressive visual demonstrations regarding his work in the behavioural analysis of spatial visual attention. The first speaker of the following morning session, Jeremy Wolfe, began his presentation by comparing his theory of visual search, which he calls Guided Search, to the more traditional theory of search, Feature Integration Theory (FIT), as proposed by Anne Treisman. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The 1988 Banff Annual Seminar in Cognitive Science.

The Banff Annual Seminar in Cognitive Science (BASICS) was founded in 1982 and has met each spring since then in Banff, Alberta. BASICS was originated to provide an informal atmosphere for the in-depth discussion of a wide variety of research topics within the broadly defined domain of cognitive psychology. Topics of discussion have often revolved around the relationship between cognition and basic perceptual processes. The structure of the BASICS conference provides each speaker with 90 minutes to present his or her research, which is then followed by an extensive question-and-answer period. This format has been received enthusiastically by speakers and audience alike. Although there was no nominal theme to the 1988 BASICS conference, most of the talks concerned the relationship between visual information processing and higher-level cognitive processes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The 1994 Banff Annual Seminar in Cognitive Science: Activating and maintaining representations in discourse processing.

The Banff Annual Seminar in Cognitive Science (BASICS) has met each spring since 1982 in Banff, Alberta. This conference was conceived somewhat differently, with an conscious attempt to organize the talks around the theme of language and discourse processing. We were extremely fortunate to be able secure six internationally renowned researchers to present talks in the general area: Morton Gernbacher, Marcel Just, Paul van den Broek, Charles Fletcher, Carl Frederiksen, and Keith Rayner. The conference as a whole provided interesting insight into how the field of discourse processing has isolated a small collection of critical theoretical ideas that are central to understanding the nature of language processing. The notion of activating and maintaining representations is perhaps most explicit in die structure-building framework of Morton Gernsbacher. Individual differences in maintaining discourse representations was the central theme of the talk presented by Marcel Just. The interaction of strategies with capacity was also a central theme in Charles Fletcher's talk. Paul van den Brock is also concerned with how concepts are activated during the course of reading and has developed a landscape model of that activation; the "landscape" in this case refers the characteristic pattern of activation over concepts and time during the course of reading. The talks by Carl Frederiksen and Keith Rayner focussed more specifically on the methodologies that are needed for tracking the development of discourse representations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Intention and strategic control: The 1992 Banff Annual Seminar in Cognitive Science.

The Banff Annual Seminar in Cognitive Science (BASICS) has met each year since 1982 in Banff, Alberta. BASICS is a small conference in which six invited speakers present full, colloquium-length talks, followed by extensive discussion and interaction with the other conference participants. The talks this year, as in previous years, coveted a wide range of issues, problems, and paradigms. However, a common thread can be identified in all of the presentations: Each speaker was concerned in one way or another with strategy and intention as an explanatory variable. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The 1989 Banff Annual Seminar in Cognitive Science.

The Banff Annual Seminar in Cognitive Science (BASICS) was founded in 1982 and has met each spring since then in Banff, Alberta. BASICS was originated to provide an informal atmosphere for the in-depth discussion of a wide variety of research topics within the broadly defined domain of cognitive psychology. Topics of discussion have often revolved around the relationship of cognition to basic perceptual processes. There were two themes to this year's conference, visual processes, specifically preattentive processes and the assessment of visual deficits in older adults, and language processing, both spoken and written. Attendees at this year's BASICS were presented with a broad spectrum of exciting ideas in cognitive psychology and cognitive science. All of the talks demonstrate how important insights into the workings of the mind can be found by the judicious application of cognitive science theories and methodologies. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The 1990 Banff Annual Seminar in Cognitive Science.

The Banff Annual Seminar in Cognitive Science (BASICS) was founded in 1982 and has met each spring since then in Banff, Alberta. BASICS was originated to provide an informal atmosphere for the in-depth discussion of a wide variety of research topics within the broadly defined domain of cognitive psychology. Topics covered in this year's seminar included visual spatial attention and target detection, attention and eye movements during reading, the integration of information across eye movements, language production and its dependency on structure, and parallel distributed processing models. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Childhood disorders: Behavioral-developmental approaches.

Reviews the book, Childhood disorders: Behavioral-developmental approaches edited by Robert J. McMahon and Ray Dev. Peters (1985). This volume includes 11 original chapters from the 1983 Banff International Conference on Behavioral Sciences. Together, these chapters provide an overview of a number of high-quality programmes of research in the area of childhood disorders. The editors state that the purpose of the current offering is to focus on recent advances in the conceptualization, assessment, and treatment of childhood behaviour disorders, with particular attention being given to the role of developmental processes. The book contains two major sections. The first provides an overview of the conceptual foundations for a "behavioural-developmental" approach to childhood disorders. The second, which constitutes approximately 80% of the volume, illustrates programmes for the assessment and treatment of childhood disorders spanning the developmental spectrum from infancy to adolescence. Although this volume's attempt to bridge the gap between behavioural and developmental work may fall short, it is nevertheless a worthwhile contribution that nicely illustrates a range of outstanding programmes of clinical research for a variety of childhood disorders. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Attentional processing: The brain's art of mindfulness.

Reviews the book, Attentional processing: The brain's art of mindfulness by David LaBerge (see record 1995-97550-000). David LaBerge has crafted a book on visual attention that will be accessible and interesting to a broad audience, from students doing their first project in cognitive psychology, to accomplished researchers in the field. The goal of the book is to present a coherent cognitive-neuroscience model of attention - a framework within which one can understand the rich database of findings pertaining to visual attention. In some respects, the book is also an overview and synthesis of LaBerge's own work on spatial attention. The first half of the book covers behavioural investigations; the second half covers cognitive-neuroscience investigations. When most books in psychology are tomes with each chapter written by a different author, it was rewarding to review a scientific book that one could conveniently carry in one's hand, written from cover to cover by one author. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

When learning met memory.

The first sentence of the introduction to Hebb's (1949) classic monograph, The organization of behavior, is “It might be argued that the task of the psychologist, the task of understanding behaviour and reducing the vagaries of human thought to a mechanical process of cause and effect, is a more difficult one than that of any other scientist” (p. xi). Nowhere is this more true than in the realm of human learning and memory, given our truly remarkable ability to acquire and retain prodigious amounts of information. This article is divided into two parts. The first part sketches my lifelong fascination with learning that led me to study first memory, then attention, and then their interplay, with examples of a few interesting findings along that path. The second part details recent work in my laboratory exploring a simple yet quite powerful encoding technique: Saying things aloud improves memory for them. This benefit, which we call the production effect, likely occurs by enhancing the distinctiveness of the things said aloud, and may constitute a beneficial study method. Understanding how we learn and remember is ultimately a crucial step in understanding ourselves. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Toward Unification in Psychology: The First Banff Conference on Theoretical Psychology.

Reviews the book, Toward Unification in Psychology: The First Banff Conference on Theoretical Psychology by Joseph R. Royce (Ed.) (1970). The First Banff Conference on Theoretical Psychology was held in April of 1965. The present volume records eight of the papers presented at that conference as well as edited remarks by discussants and auditors. In addition, a Prologue by Joseph R. Royce, the organizer of the conference, and an Epilogue by David Krech, a discussant, are included. The participants were S. Howard Bartley, Ludwig von Bertalanffy, Lawrence K. Frank, Eugene H. Galanter, Robert B. MacLeod, Joseph R. Royce, William W. Rozeboom, and Herman Tennessen. The papers range in length from von Bertalanffy's three pages to Rozeboom's 123 pages. Bibliographies and an index are provided. It is a pity that it took so long to get these papers into print. A great deal of theoretical water has passed under the psychological bridge in the past five years, and at least some of this material seems dated. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Postattentive vision.

Much research has examined preattentive vision: visual representation prior to the arrival of attention. Most vision research concerns attended visual stimuli; very little research has considered postattentive vision. What is the visual representation of a previously attended object once attention is deployed elsewhere? The authors argue that perceptual effects of attention vanish once attention is redeployed. Experiments 1–6 were visual search studies. In standard search, participants looked for a target item among distractor items. On each trial, a new search display was presented. These tasks were compared to repeated search tasks in which the search display was not changed. On successive trials, participants searched the same display for new targets. Results showed that if search was inefficient when participants searched a display the first time, it was inefficient when the same, unchanging display was searched the second, fifth, or 350th time. Experiments 7 and 8 made a similar point with a curve tracing paradigm. The results have implications for an understanding of scene perception, change detection, and the relationship of vision to memory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Motivational variables and children's text search.

This experiment investigated the effects of choice and response format on children's search of informational text. We compared the information-seeking performance of 42 Grade 3 children who were given a choice of books with 42 children who were not given a choice. Half of the children in the choice and no-choice conditions were instructed to record their answers on a theme board, and half were instructed to write their answers on a work sheet. Children were randomly assigned to the following conditions: (a) choice–theme board, (b) choice–work sheet, (c) no-choice–theme board, and (d) no-choice–work sheet. Prior knowledge and topic interest were included as covariates. Choice of topic facilitated both performance and process measures, whereas response format affected process measures only. Prior knowledge emerged as a significant contributor to accuracy and time to locate information. Children's text search was affected by choice and context. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Shaping the future of feminist psychology: Education, research, and practice.

Reviews the book, Shaping the future of feminist psychology: Education, research, and practice by Judith Worell and Norine G. Johnson (see record 1997-36316-000). This book is distinct in that it is neither a psychoanalytic nor psychoanalytically informed reader. The book is the collective outcome of the first National Conference on Education and Training in Feminist Practice, a working conference that convened in 1993, in Boston, and was attended by some of the nation's preeminent feminist psychologists. The 4 day conference was organized for purposes of developing a solid training and educational plan for prospective feminist practice. The focus was on the re-creation of a psychology that would be consistent with feminist principles and practices. The book evokes a sense of how exciting the conference must have been. It focuses on nine topics: theory, assessment, therapy, research, curriculum development, teaching, supervision, diversity, and postdoctoral training. In general, each chapter provides a summary review of the status of the topic, describes the process and content of the work group meetings, considers some models, and identifies future directions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Computerized versus motivational interviewing alcohol interventions: Impact on discrepancy, motivation, and drinking.

The authors conducted two randomized clinical trials with ethnically diverse samples of college student drinkers in order to determine (a) the relative efficacy of two popular computerized interventions versus a more comprehensive motivational interview approach (BASICS) and (b) the mechanisms of change associated with these interventions. In Study 1, heavy drinking participants recruited from a student health center (N = 74, 59% women, 23% African American) were randomly assigned to receive BASICS or the Alcohol 101 CD-ROM program. BASICS was associated with greater post-session motivation to change and self-ideal and normative discrepancy relative to Alcohol 101, but there were no group differences in the primary drinking outcomes at 1-month follow-up. Pre to post session increases in motivation predicted lower follow-up drinking across both conditions. In Study 2, heavy drinking freshman recruited from a core university course (N = 133, 50% women, 30% African American) were randomly assigned to BASICS, a web-based feedback program (e-CHUG), or assessment-only. BASICS was associated with greater post-session self-ideal discrepancy than e-CHUG, but there were no differences in motivation or normative discrepancy. There was a significant treatment effect on typical weekly and heavy drinking, with participants in BASICS reporting significantly lower follow-up drinking relative to assessment only participants. In Study 2, change in the motivation or discrepancy did not predict drinking outcomes. Across both studies, African American students assigned to BASICS reported medium effect size reductions in drinking whereas African American students assigned to Alcohol 101, e-CHUG, or assessment did not reduce their drinking. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Paying attention to newly learned semantic codes.

Most investigations of semantic memory treat it as a static system with a relatively fixed organization. It seems clear, however, that people continue to add facts and to expand their organized semantic knowledge across most or all of the lifespan. This talk made four points concerning the acquisition of new semantic knowledge. First, fully integrated new information into semantic memory is arduous and time consuming. The second point of the talk was that early in learning, a weakly established semantic code is likely to suffer competition from older, stronger codes, making it difficult and effortful to retrieve. The third point of the talk was that an attention mechanism that works on the center-surround principle could be very helpful in these circumstances, facilitating retrieval of weak codes by actively suppressing their stronger competitors. The final point was that evidence for a center-surround attention mechanism has been observed in the form of inhibitory semantic priming in training studies that involve vocabulary acquisition and shape categorization. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A UK-wide trial of the Banff classification of renal transplant pathology in routine diagnostic practice

BACKGROUND: The Banff classification of renal transplant pathology has gained wide support since its introduction in 1993. There have been several studies which have tested its usefulness in the context of research-oriented centres. We sought to evaluate its use in a wider context. METHODS: We recruited pathologists from all but one of the renal transplant centres in the UK. Sections were circulated from 21 selected, 'difficult' cases, in all of which the clinical question was confirmation or exclusion of acute rejection, and in all of which a definite diagnosis had been obvious from the subsequent clinical course. Participants were asked first to diagnose or exclude acute rejection by their usual approach, then to apply the Banff classification. No clinical information was given beyond the time since engraftment, in order to confine the evaluation to the morphological features present in the sections. At the end of the study the subjective impressions of the participants were sought using a structured questionnaire. RESULTS: Using the Banff classification produced no detectable difference in the number of 'correct' diagnoses when compared with a conventional approach, irrespective of whether the 'correct' diagnosis is based on retrospective clinical information or on the consensus opinion of the pathologists involved, and irrespective of where in the Banff schema one applies a 'cut-off' for the diagnosis of acute rejection. However, the reproducibility of the diagnoses was improved. The results suggest that in the Banff classification the best 'cut-off' for the diagnosis of acute rejection is between Banff category 3 and category 4, although in this difficult area we found a large improvement in diagnostic accuracy if input of clinical information occurs. CONCLUSIONS: The improved reproducibility justifies the use of the Banff classification to harmonise approaches between centres, especially in research projects. While there are good reasons also to adopt it in routine diagnostic practice, further refinement is necessary before an improvement in the accuracy of diagnosis can be demonstrated.     

The time course of competition for attention: Attention is initially labile.

Competition for attention between 2 written words was investigated by presenting the words briefly in a single stream of distractors (Experiment 1) or in different streams (Experiment 2- 6), using rapid serial visual presentation at 53 ms/item. Stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) was varied from 0 to 213 ms. At all SOAs there was strong competition, but which word was more likely to be reported shifted markedly with SOA. At SOAs in the range of 13-53 ms the second word was more likely to be reported, but at 213 ms, the advantage switched to the first word, as in the attentional blink. A 2-stage competition model of attention is proposed in which attention to a detected target is labile in Stage 1. Stage 1 ends when one target is identified, initiating a serial Stage 2 process of consolidation of that target. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sometimes, two swallows do make a summer.

Reviews the book, The social world of children learning to talk by B. Hart and T. Risley (1999). Betty Hart and Todd Risley's second book reporting the results of a longitudinal study of language development among children, ranging in age from 9 to 36 months, and their families. Rather than providing too little information from which to draw accurate conclusions, this second volume is a forceful and important follow-up to their earlier work, Meaningful differences in the everyday lives of young American children (Hart & Risley, 1996). This second volume focuses on the children themselves and the changes they make in social interactions and language production across the span of infancy, toddlerhood, and early preschool years. Learning to talk is an important volume in its own right, offering a detailed and rich picture of the relation between social and language development in young children. Serious students of language development, psychologists interested in early development, and practitioners or researchers interested in early development and intervention will all profit from this important contribution to our understanding of young children and their families. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Relative efficacy of a brief motivational intervention for college student drinkers.

The authors evaluated the efficacy of Brief Alcohol Screening and Intervention for College Students (BASICS; L. A. Dimeff, J. S. Baer, D. R. Kivlahan, & G. A. Marlatt, 1999), a single session of drinking-related feedback intended to reduce heavy drinking and related harm. 84 college student drinkers (N?=?99) were assigned to BASICS, an educational intervention, or an assessment-only control group. At 3 months post-intervention, there were no overall significant group differences, but heavier drinking BASICS participants showed greater reductions in weekly alcohol consumption and binge drinking than did heavier drinking control and education participants. At 9 months, heavier drinking BASICS participants again showed the largest effect sizes. BASICS participants evaluated the intervention more favorably than did education participants. This study suggests that BASICS may be more efficacious than educational interventions for heavier drinking college students. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)