Investigation of Functional Hemispheric Asymmetry of Language in Tinnitus Sufferers.

The authors tested functional hemispheric asymmetry through word dichotic listening and lateralized lexical decision tasks in tinnitus patients and controls stimulated by a continuous tinnitus-like noise to test the influence of a tinnitus-like external stimulation. A classic right-ear advantage was shown in the auditory task for all but right-ear tinnitus patients, who performed as equally badly when the stimuli were presented to the right and left ears. Concerning the visual task, all participants demonstrated the expected right visual field advantage for word stimuli. Moreover, those who submitted to external stimulation demonstrated normal asymmetric patterns. These data suggest a specific effect of tinnitus on central processing and provide evidence for a functional reorganization induced by this auditory phantom perception. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Laterality: Functional asymmetry in the intact brain.

Reviews the book, Laterality: Functional asymmetry in the intact brain by M. P. Bryden (1982). Bryden's book is, first of all, an impressive review of the literature on laterality research with normal subjects, giving a well-organized and lucid expositon of a very large body of information (the citation list has close to 800 entries). In the process of reviewing the literature, however, the book does much more. It provides (a) a critical challenge to many of the practices and interpretations common in this area of research, together with guidelines for improving methodology in the future; (b) a thoughtful discussion of most of the major theoretical issues in the field, and (c) an argument for some of Bryden's own controversial proposals. The book is an impressive, important, and provocative contribution to the field; it is both a major sourcebook, filled with data, and a manifesto filled with challenging proposals. One may take issue with specific details, but this does not diminish one's excitement at finding such a rich and stimulating collection of ideas gathered in one place. The book is a "must read" for those involved in this area of research. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Seating arrangement and leadership emergence.

Based on the proposition that seating position effects the flow of communication which, in turn, effects leadership emergence, 20 groups of 5 Ss performed a problem solving task and then rated the group members on exhibited leadership. The seats were arranged so that 2 Ss were opposite 3 Ss. A greater number of leaders than would be expected by chance emerged from the 2-seat side of the table, thus, lending support to the hypothesis. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"Seating arrangement and leadership emergence": Ettatum.

Reports an error in the original article by L. T. Howells and S. W. Becker (Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 1962, 64[2], 148-150). On page 148 of the article, the last sentence of Paragraph 2, Column 1, should read: However, Steinzor did not investigate the present program, namely, the relationship between seating distance and leadership emergence. The original sentence implied that Steinzor had reached conclusions about seating arrangement and leadership, and this implication is incorrect. (The following abstract of this article originally appeared in record 1964-02596-001): Based on the proposition that seating position effects the flow of communication which, in turn, effects leadership emergence, 20 groups of 5 Ss performed a problem solving task and then rated the group members on exhibited leadership. The seats were arranged so that 2 Ss were opposite 3 Ss. A greater number of leaders than would be expected by chance emerged from the 2-seat side of the table, thus, lending support to the hypothesis. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

On the Selective Relation of Frontal Cortical Asymmetry and Anger-Out Versus Anger-Control.

The model of anterior asymmetry and emotion proposes an asymmetric representation of approach and withdrawal systems in the left and right anterior brain regions. Within this framework, 3 different concepts have been related to anterior asymmetry: affective valence, motivational direction, and behavioral activation. The aim of the present study was an empirical investigation into the relation between anterior cortical activity and questionnaire measures related to the 3 dimensions positive versus negative affect, approach versus withdrawal motivation, and behavioral activation versus inhibition. Subjects with relative greater left than right frontal cortical activity showed higher anger-out scores and lower anger-control scores. These results support the hypothesis that motivational direction is related to frontal asymmetry (approach-left and withdrawal-right). Furthermore, subjects with greater bilateral (left and right) frontal cortical activity showed higher behavioral activation scores. This finding might suggest that behavioral activation is related to approach and withdrawal motivation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of The evolution of lateral asymmetries, language, tool use, and intellect and The lopsided ape: Evolution of the generative mind.

Reviews the books, The evolution of lateral asymmetries, language, tool use, and intellect by J. L. Bradshaw and L. J. Rogers (see record 1992-98933-000) and The lopsided ape: Evolution of the generative mind by M. C. Corballis (see record 1991-98134-000). We have come to think of the left cerebral hemisphere as being "analytic" and the right hemisphere as being "holistic". Just as there is an analytic-holistic distinction in functional brain asymmetry, there is also an analytic-holistic distinction in books, and these two books by Bradshaw and Rogers and by Corballis represent the ends of this continuum. The Bradshaw and Rogers book provides a thorough review of behavioural and morphological asymmetries in a wide variety of species, with a concentration on birds, rodents, and primates. They argue that there are not only behavioural and morphological asymmetries in many different species, but that these are frequently influenced by environmental factors and often show sex differences. Their basic message appears to be that there have long been many different forms of functional asymmetry, and that the present state of affairs in homo sapiens sapiens is the end product of the coevolution of many different interacting factors. In contrast, Corballis views human language and representation as a property that has evolved fairly recently and that is uniquely human. In Corballis' view, homo sapiens sapiens is the "lopsided ape", and, by implication, other apes are not lopsided. Of the two books, then, the primary contribution of the Corballis volume lies in its speculations about the emergence of complex thought and mental representation in humans; that of the Bradshaw and Rogers volume in its thorough review of the literature on animal laterality. As a story, Corballis makes far better reading, and may well generate more creative research; as a reference source, Bradshaw and Rogers may have more lasting usefulness. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Visual Search Asymmetry With Uncertain Targets.

The underlying mechanism of search asymmetry is still unknown. Many computational models postulate top-down selection of target-defining features as a crucial factor. This feature selection account implies, and other theories implicitly assume, that predefined target identity is necessary for search asymmetry. The authors tested the validity of the feature selection account using a singleton search task without a predefined target. Participants conducted a target-defined and a singleton search task with a circle (O) and a circle with a vertical bar (Q). Search asymmetry was observed in both tasks with almost identical magnitude. The results were not due to trial-by-trial feature selection, because search asymmetry persisted even when the target was completely unpredictable. Asymmetry in the singleton search was also observed with more complex stimuli, Kanji characters. These results suggest that feature selection is not necessary for search asymmetry, and they impose important constraints on current visual search theories. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

PTSD Arousal and Depression Symptoms Associated With Increased Right-Sided Parietal EEG Asymmetry.

Researchers have proposed that depression and particular types of anxiety are associated with unique patterns of regional brain activation. The authors examined the relationship among posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety, and depressive symptoms and frontal, temporal, and parietal EEG alpha asymmetry in female Vietnam War nurse veterans. The results indicate that PTSD arousal symptoms are associated with increased right-sided parietal activation. However, the combination of arousal, depression, and their interaction explain more than twice the variance in parietal asymmetry compared with arousal alone. The results support the contention that the association between anxiety and right-sided posterior activation is specific to the anxious arousal subtype. These findings underscore the importance of isolating, both theoretically and statistically, emotional subcomponents in studies of regional brain activation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Recording of Classroom Lectures.

Author laments the neglect in recording psychology lectures of eminent psychologists for posterity. He proposes that, while there is still time, under American Psychological Association or other auspices, funds be appropriated for the purpose of recording classroom lectures of prominent psychologists. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Emotions and Classroom Talk: Toward a Model of the Role of Affect in Students' Experiences of Classroom Discussions.

To understand the role of affect in classroom discussion, the authors asked 16 students taking a 3-hr seminar to participate in a semester-long grounded theory inquiry. Coding of classroom observations, stimulated recall interviews, and self-ratings from each class meeting resulted in a model of affect as a catalyst in students' experience of classroom discussion, both moment by moment and cumulatively across the semester. Influenced by personal and contextual factors, four main actions--attending, listening, talking, and tuning out--constituted the experience of discussion, with affect playing a key role. The consequences of this dynamic system of affect, cognition, and action in discussion were that students learned content, became more aware of social aspects, experienced different affective states, and changed their motivation to talk in future discussions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Brain lesions and five MMPI items.

A 29-item scale was developed using 30 + 30 Ss and .05 level X2 values, for differentiating patients with CNS diseases from those without. Upon cross-validation, the scale differentiated too poorly for clinical use. The X2 values of 5 of the original 29 items towered above the others, and when these 5 were used with cross-validation groups, a cuttingpoint score of 4 on them differentiated above the .01 level of significance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

On the relationship between lateralized brain function and orienting asymmetries.

[Correction Notice: An erratum for this article was reported in Vol 125(1) of Behavioral Neuroscience (see record 2011-02594-005). In the article “On the Relationship Between Lateralized Brain Function and Orienting Asymmetries,” by Christoph Teufel, Asif A. Ghazanfar, and Julia Fischer (Behavioral Neuroscience, 2010, Vol. 124, No. 4, pp. 437–445), we wrote that “the likelihood of obtaining at least one significant result at p n. The probability of obtaining at least one significant result is therefore 1 — (1— α)n.] Hemispheric specializations for language perception constitute one of the classic topic in cognitive neuroscience. Evidence has accumulated to suggest that lateralized acoustic processing is not restricted to humans but is also found in numerous animal species. One of the methods used to track such lateralization is the orienting-asymmetry paradigm, a simple, noninvasive means to study lateralization that has been applied to a range of different species ranging from harpy eagles to humans. Here we summarize and compare the results of studies employing the orienting-asymmetry paradigm, showing that these studies yield largely inconsistent results. We critically discuss the methodology's implicit assumptions and conclude that the empirical inconsistencies produced by the orienting-asymmetry paradigm, and the lack of sufficient evidence supporting the paradigm's underlying assumptions, warrant serious caution when interpreting results obtained by the method. Nontrivial interpretations of orienting-asymmetry results will require a much better understanding of how lateralized brain functions interact with overt behaviors. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Predictors of Academic Self-Handicapping and Achievement: Examining Achievement Goals, Classroom Goal Structures, and Culture.

The purposes of this study were to examine the predictors and achievement consequences of academic self-handicapping and to explore cultural variations in the pursuit and effects of performance goals and perceived classroom performance goal structures. Data were collected in 2 consecutive academic years from a diverse sample of high school students (N=675). Performance-avoidance and classroom performance goal structure were positively associated with self-handicapping, whereas performance-approach goals negatively predicted handicapping. Self-handicapping was negatively associated with achievement in English. Cultural differences in the effects of performance goals on achievement and in the effects of classroom performance goal structure on the subsequent adoption of personal performance goals were found. Implications for efforts to alter classroom goal structures are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Brain injury and morphine withdrawal.

"A review of the literature indicates lack of agreement as to the presence or absence of opiate withdrawal symptoms following surgically imposed brain damage. The controversy is resolved when recourse is made to the temporal factor, i.e., the time at which withdrawal is carried out relative to the time an operation is performed. It is suggested that the withdrawal phenomenon is as complex as addiction itself, and that both are related to many peculiar effects that accrue to cerebral tissue destruction." 26 references. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Anger style, psychopathology, and regional brain activity.

Depression and anxiety often involve high levels of trait anger and disturbances in anger expression. Reported anger experience and outward anger expression have recently been associated with left-biased asymmetry of frontal cortical activity, assumed to reflect approach motivation. However, different styles of anger expression could presumably involve different brain mechanisms and/or interact with psychopathology to produce various patterns of brain asymmetry. The present study explored these issues by comparing resting regional electroencephalographic activity in participants high in trait anger who differed in anger expression style (high anger-in, high anger-out, both) and participants low in trait anger, with depression and anxiety systematically assessed. Trait anger, not anger-in or anger-out, predicted left-biased asymmetry at medial frontal EEG sites. The anger-in group reported higher levels of anxious apprehension than did the anger-out group. Furthermore, anxious apprehension moderated the relationship between trait anger, anger-in, and asymmetry in favor of the left hemisphere. Results suggest that motivational direction is not always the driving force behind the relationship of anger and left frontal asymmetry. Findings also support a distinction between anxious apprehension and anxious arousal. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

浅谈课堂教学与计算机辅助教学的整合

计算机辅助教学已被广泛应用到现在的教育领域之中。如何更好地发挥计算机的功能,提高教学效果,是每一位教师面临的课题。主要从教学资源、教学方法、教学内容、教师培养等几个方面,讨论如何利用计算机这一工具提高教学质量的问题。     

Asymmetry in object substitution masking occurs relative to the direction of spatial attention shift.

A sparse mask that persists beyond the duration of a target can reduce its visibility, a phenomenon called object substitution masking. Y. Jiang and M. M. Chun (2001a) found an asymmetric pattern of substitution masking such that a mask on the peripheral side of the target caused stronger substitution masking than on the central side. Assuming spatial attention was focused toward the target, the peripheral and central masks were located in the same and opposite direction of an attentional path with reference to the target in their study. We hypothesized that this asymmetric mask configuration relative to the attentional shift contributes to asymmetric substitution masking. To test this hypothesis, we conducted four experiments among which the presence or absence of the center–periphery relationship and the presence or absence of the asymmetric mask configuration were manipulated independently and orthogonally. The results suggest that asymmetric substitution masking occurs relative to the direction of spatial attention irrespective of the central–peripheral relation. We propose that the asymmetry in substitution masking might be explained by attentional momentum associated with orienting toward the target. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Brain mechanisms for consciousness and conscious experience.

In planning the McMaster University Brain and Behaviour Research Programme's 1983 Bauer lecture, it was deemed that a topic in the area of cognitive neuroscience might be suitable, preferably one of a general nature that would be of interest to several disciplines. Consciousness, one of the most perplexing of human issues, requires that we question how the living material of the human brain results in the subjective awareness humankind experiences. Julian Jaynes was asked to present the lecture, which was entitled "Consciousness and the voices of the mind" (see record 2007-08986-001). In this article, George Ojemann discusses the neurological aspects of Jaynes's theory. As a beginning, he makes distinctions between several phenomena included in the term "consciousness." One is to distinguish between an individual and a collective consciousness. The individual consciousness is clearly biologic, for it's gone with the loss of brain function. But a collective consciousness recorded in culture through language, as written or oral tradition, obviously transcends any one individual. This collective consciousness is a sum, a highly variably weighted sum, of individual brain functions, but is no longer dependent on any individual's brain function. It is the collective consciousness that is the source of most of Jaynes's evidence for changes in the individual consciousness. What Ojemann talks about here are the individual biologic brain mechanisms for language and consciousness that underlie the collective consciousness. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"On the relationship between lateralized brain function and orienting asymmetries": Correction to Teufel et al. (2010).

Reports an error in "On the relationship between lateralized brain function and orienting asymmetries" by Christoph Teufel, Asif A. Ghazanfar and Julia Fischer (Behavioral Neuroscience, 2010[Aug], Vol 124[4], 437-445). In the article, we wrote that “the likelihood of obtaining at least one significant result at p n. The probability of obtaining at least one significant result is therefore 1 — (1— α)n. (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 2010-16138-001.) Hemispheric specializations for language perception constitute one of the classic topic in cognitive neuroscience. Evidence has accumulated to suggest that lateralized acoustic processing is not restricted to humans but is also found in numerous animal species. One of the methods used to track such lateralization is the orienting-asymmetry paradigm, a simple, noninvasive means to study lateralization that has been applied to a range of different species ranging from harpy eagles to humans. Here we summarize and compare the results of studies employing the orienting-asymmetry paradigm, showing that these studies yield largely inconsistent results. We critically discuss the methodology's implicit assumptions and conclude that the empirical inconsistencies produced by the orienting-asymmetry paradigm, and the lack of sufficient evidence supporting the paradigm's underlying assumptions, warrant serious caution when interpreting results obtained by the method. Nontrivial interpretations of orienting-asymmetry results will require a much better understanding of how lateralized brain functions interact with overt behaviors. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Resting frontal EEG asymmetry as an endophenotype for depression risk: Sex-specific patterns of frontal brain asymmetry.

Resting frontal electroencephalographic (EEG) asymmetry has been hypothesized as a marker of risk for major depressive disorder (MDD), but the extant literature is based predominately on female samples. Resting frontal asymmetry was assessed on 4 occasions within a 2-week period in 306 individuals aged 18–34 (31% male) with (n = 143) and without (n = 163) lifetime MDD as defined by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th edition (American Psychiatric Association, 1994). Lifetime MDD was linked to relatively less left frontal activity for both sexes using a current source density (CSD) reference, findings that were not accounted for solely by current MDD status or current depression severity, suggesting that CSD-referenced EEG asymmetry is a possible endophenotype for depression. In contrast, results for average and linked mastoid references were less consistent but demonstrated a link between less left frontal activity and current depression severity in women. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)