The Implications of Cortical Recruitment and Brain Morphology for Individual Differences in Inhibitory Function in Aging Humans.

The authors assessed individual differences in cortical recruitment, brain morphology, and inhibitory task performance. Similar to previous studies, older adults tended toward bilateral activity during task performance more than younger adults. However, better performing older adults showed less bilateral activity than poorer performers, contrary to the idea that additional activity is universally compensatory. A review of the results and of extant literature suggests that compensatory activity in prefrontal cortex may only be effective if the additional cortical processors brought to bear on the task can play a complementary role in task performance. Morphological analyses revealed that frontal white matter tracts differed as a function of performance in older adults, suggesting that hemispheric connectivity might impact both patterns of recruitment and cognitive performance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Reduced Stroop Interference for Opponent Colors May Be Due to Input Factors: Evidence From Individual Differences and a Neural Network Simulation.

Sensory or input factors can influence the strength of interference in the classic Stroop color-word task. Specifically, in a single-trial computerized version of the Stroop task, when color-word pairs were incongruent, opponent color pairs (e.g., the word BLUE in yellow) showed reduced Stroop interference compared with nonopponent color pairs (e.g., BLUE in red). In addition, participants' color discrimination ability was measured by standard color vision tests (i.e., Farnsworth-Munsell 100-Hue Test and Ishihara plates). Error rates in the Farnsworth-Munsell test correlated positively with the amount of Stroop interference. Neural network simulations (variants of J. D. Cohen, K. Dunbar, & J. L. McClelland's, 1990, model) showed that only a distributed trichromatic input layer was able to simulate these findings. Thus, sensory input from the color system needs to be incorporated into current accounts of the Stroop effect. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Emotion as a Thermostat: Representing Emotion Regulation Using a Damped Oscillator Model.

The authors present in this study a damped oscillator model that provides a direct mathematical basis for testing the notion of emotion as a self-regulatory thermostat. Parameters from this model reflect individual differences in emotional lability and the ability to regulate emotion. The authors discuss concepts such as intensity, rate of change, and acceleration in the context of emotion, and they illustrate the strengths of this approach in comparison with spectral analysis and growth curve models. The utility of this modeling approach is illustrated using daily emotion ratings from 179 college students over 52 consecutive days. Overall, the damped oscillator model provides a meaningful way of representing emotion regulation as a dynamic process and helps identify the dominant periodicities in individuals' emotions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Karen A. Matthews: Award for Distinguished Scientific Applications of Psychology.

This document presents the citation awarded to Karen A. Matthews, recipient of the 2005 APA Award for Distinguished Scientific Applications of Psychology. A brief biography and a selected bibliography of Matthews accompany the citation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Individual differences in negative affect repair.

The extant literature implicates affect repair ability as one source of individual differences in negative affect. Emerging from this literature are three regulatory traits that should predict repair ability (negative mood regulation expectancies, monitoring, labeling), yet no experimental examination of this possibility exists. Two studies explored this issue. Participants (Ns = 305, 146) watched negative affect-inducing videos and completed a repair or control writing task, before and after which they reported their affect. Results revealed wide individual differences in repair ability. Specifically, participants with high expectancies of repair success and those who attend to and understand their affect experienced the largest decreases in negative affect and largest increases in positive affect following the repair tasks. These findings advance understanding of individual differences in affect regulation and have implications for future research. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Beyond the Golden Section and normative aesthetics: Why do individuals differ so much in their aesthetic preferences for rectangles?

Interest in the experimental aesthetics of rectangles originates in the studies of Fechner (1876), which investigated Zeising's suggestion that Golden Section ratios determine the aesthetic appeal of great works of art. Although Fechner's studies are often cited to support the centrality of the Golden Section, a century of subsequent experimental work suggests it has little normative role in rectangle preferences. However, rectangles are still of interest to experimental aesthetics, and McManus (1980) used a paired comparison method to show that although population preferences are weak, there are strong, stable, statistically robust and very varied individual preferences. The present study measured rectangle preferences in 79 participants, particularly assessing their relationship to a wide range of background measures of individual differences. Once again weak population preferences but strong and varied individual rectangle preferences were found, and computer presentation of stimuli, with detailed analyses of response times, confirmed the coherent nature of aesthetic preferences for rectangles. Q-mode factor analysis found two main factors, labeled “square” and “rectangle,” with participants showing different combinations of positive and negative loadings on these factors. However, the individual difference measures, including Big Five personality traits, Need for Cognition, Tolerance of Ambiguity, Schizotypy, Vocational Types, and Aesthetic Activities, showed no correlation at all with rectangle preferences. Individual differences in rectangle preferences are a robust phenomenon that clearly requires explanation, but at present their variability is entirely unexplained. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

基于开源软件构建教师个人网站探索与应用

针对目前高校教师如何自主创建高质量动态个人教学网站展开讨论,通过介绍基于Web的开源软件二次开发的方法,为教师拓展网络教学空间,构建个人教学网站提供一种有效途径,并结合实践与应用进行案例分析,提出了行之有效的实现方法.     

Collaborative knowledge work environments

How can the physical design of the workplace enhance collaborations without compromising an individual's productivity? The body of research on the links between physical space and collaboration in knowledge work settings is reviewed. Collaboration is viewed as a system of behaviours that includes both social and solitary work. The social aspects of collaboration are discussed in terms of three dimensions: awareness, brief interaction and collaboration (working together). Current knowledge on the links between space and the social as well as individual aspects of collaborative work is reviewed. The central conflict of collaboration is considered: how to design effectively to provide a balance between the need to interact and the need to work effectively by oneself. The body of literature shows that features and attributes of space can be manipulated to increase awareness, interaction and collaboration. However, doing so frequently has negative impacts on individual work as a result of increases in noise distractions and interruptions to on-going work. The effects are most harmful for individual tasks requiring complex and focused mental work. The negative effects are compounded by a workplace that increasingly suffers from cognitive overload brought on by time stress, increased workload and multitasking.     

Assessing social approachability: Individual differences, in-group biases, and experimental control.

The willingness of strangers to approach others and engage in social interactions is a fundamental social evaluation. Yet, evidence is lacking on how well these social engagement decisions can be assessed. The authors evaluated the psychometric characteristics of an experimentally based measure of social approachability tendencies. Young adults (N = 130) rated the approachability of 48 emotionally neutral and mildly positive faces. Significant variance in approachability judgements was attributable to differences in the faces and in the participants making the judgements. Face-level approachability ratings were comparable across face gender and face race. Person-level approachability ratings identified reliable individual differences, gender, and race in-group biases, and subtle mere-exposure effect preferences. Thus, this social approachability measure is internally reliable, sensitive to individual differences, and amenable to experimental manipulations. This ability to differentiate individual-, group-, and experimental-level responses is important for furthering the understanding of the primary social decision of when to approach and socially engage others. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

An analysis of 0+ barbel (Barbus barbus) response to discharge fluctuations in a flume

We studied the response in velocity use and time in refuge of 0+ juvenile barbel (Barbus barbus) to an increase in discharge in a flume. Each of five treated and five control fish were observed individually in separate eight‐hour experiments. Observations (trials) were arranged into a hierarchically structured, semi‐randomized sampling schedule consisting of four time levels: phase (4 h) ? period (2 h) ? sub‐period (30 min) ? trial (120 s). Increased discharge caused treated barbel to use higher velocities than control individuals, with individual differences in behaviour present at the various temporal tiers. Individual responses were modelled as either random‐walk or short‐memory processes, and those by treated fish were generally abrupt and permanent, with only one individual showing a gradual and permanent use of the higher velocities. Time in refuge was not affected by increased discharge, except for one fish that sought shelter after intervention. There was a significant relationship for most treated individuals between selection of lower velocities and time in refuge, and most barbel (both treated and control) showed significant deviations of used from mean flume velocities. The potential of the proposed approach to assess memory‐based individual fish responses to discharge and its consequences for (PHABSIM‐oriented) behavioural studies is discussed, and the mosaic of barbel behaviours observed is compared with available laboratory and field studies. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.