Functional imaging reveals working memory and attention interact to produce the attentional blink

Copyright @ 2012 Massachusetts Institute of Technology PressIf two centrally presented visual stimuli occur within approximately half a second of each other, the second target often fails to be reported correctly. This effect, called the attentional blink (AB; Raymond, J. E., Shapiro, K. L., & Arnell, K. M. Temporary suppression of visual processing in an RSVP task: An attentional blink? Journal of Experimental Psychology, Human Perception and Performance, 18, 849-860, 1992], has been attributed to a resource "bottleneck," likely arising as a failure of attention during encoding into or retrieval from visual working memory (WM). Here we present participants with a hybrid WM-AB study while they undergo fMRI to provide insight into the neural underpinnings of this bottleneck. Consistent with a WM-based bottleneck account, fronto-parietal brain areas exhibited a WM load-dependent modulation of neural responses during the AB task. These results are consistent with the view that WM and attention share a capacity-limited resource and provide insight into the neural structures that underlie resource allocation in tasks requiring joint use of WM and attention.This research was supported by a project grant (071944) from the Wellcome Trust to Kimron Shapiro

RATE OF LIQUID JET BREAKUP BY A TRANSVERSE SHOCK WAVE

Breakup of water jet by transverse shock wav

Legitimacy and the cognitive sources of international institutional change: The case of regional parliamentarization

How and under what conditions does legitimacy affect processes of international institutional change? This article specifies and evaluates three causal mechanisms by which variation in legitimacy induces institutional change in international organizations (IOs) and argues that an important, yet hitherto neglected, source of legitimacy-based change is cognitive in nature. Using survival analysis, we evaluate these mechanisms with a novel dataset on the establishment of parliamentary institutions in thirty-six regional organizations between 1950 and 2010. We find that the empowerment of supranational secretariats, engagement with the European Union, and parliamentarization in an organization's neighborhood increase the likelihood of regional parliamentarization. This suggests that legitimacy judgments that draw on cognitive referents provide an important source of international institutional change. We illustrate the underlying cognitive emulation mechanism with a case study of parliamentarization in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations

The social brain: neural basis of social knowledge

Social cognition in humans is distinguished by psychological processes that allow us to make inferences about what is going on inside other people—their intentions, feelings, and thoughts. Some of these processes likely account for aspects of human social behavior that are unique, such as our culture and civilization. Most schemes divide social information processing into those processes that are relatively automatic and driven by the stimuli, versus those that are more deliberative and controlled, and sensitive to context and strategy. These distinctions are reflected in the neural structures that underlie social cognition, where there is a recent wealth of data primarily from functional neuroimaging. Here I provide a broad survey of the key abilities, processes, and ways in which to relate these to data from cognitive neuroscience

Multiple goal orientations as predictors of moral behavior in youth soccer

The purpose of this study was to examine task-, ego-, and social-goal orientations as predictors of prosocial and antisocial behavior in youth soccer. Participants were 365 male (n = 227) and female (n = 138) youth soccer players (M-age = 13.4 years, SD = 1.8), who completed questionnaires measuring task and ego orientation; the goals of social affiliation, social recognition and social status; prosocial and antisocial behavior; and demographics. Regression analyses revealed that prosocial behavior was predicted positively by task orientation and social affiliation and negatively by social status. In contrast, antisocial behavior was predicted positively by ego orientation and social status and negatively by task orientation. Findings for task and ego orientation are consistent with previous work. Social-goal orientations explained further variance in prosocial and antisocial behavior, and their inclusion in future moral research is encouraged

The acquisition of Tense and Aspect in Spanish

280 p.En esta tesis doctoral se investiga la adquisición de las marcas de aspecto y tiempo por parte de niños de 5 años (madrileños y navarros) que adquieren el español como lengua materna. Para su realización se han analizado, en primer lugar, cuáles son las características semánticas y pragmáticas de dichas formas y cuáles son las dificultades que supone su adquisición. En base a dicha investigación, se han diseñado una serie de tareas experimentales en las que se ha estudiado cuál es el conocimiento que tienen los niños de las marcas de tiempo y aspecto A) teniendo en cuenta tanto las formas sintéticas (formas simples, perfectivas e imperfectivas) como de formas perifrásticas (perfectos y progresivos), B) estudiando cada uno de los niveles ¿tiempo, aspecto gramatical y aspecto léxico¿ de manera separada y C) con una metodología experimental variada que incluye estudios de comprensión y producción con distintos tipos de tareas. Hemos podido constatar que a los 5 años de edad los niños pueden distinguir las marcas de pasado, presente y futuro y son capaces de utilizarlas de manera adecuada. Asimismo, también son capaces de distinguir las marcas de PF e IPF, pero su respuesta no es similar a la adulta en ciertas tareas debido a que no han adquirido aún los usos pragmáticos del IPF (no generan las implicaturas de escala asociadas al IPF) y tienen dificultades a la hora de identificar la referencia temporal del IPF. A nivel del aspecto del predicado, los niños en la edad de 5 todavía tienen problemas en identificar como télicos los predicados de tema incremental, dado que la telicidad con estos predicados depende del objeto y es generada pragmáticamente por una implicatura conversacional. Por último, se ha podido constatar que, aunque los niños muestran en producción una preferencia por las formas perifrásticas, la relativa complejidad morfológica y el grado de polisemia de las diferentes formas no afecta a la comprensión de las marcas de tiempo y aspecto

Lift Not the Painted Veil! To Whom Are Directors’ Duties Really Owed?

In this article, we identify a fundamental contradiction in the law of fiduciary duty of corporate directors across jurisdictions, namely the tension between the uniformity of directors’ duties and the heterogeneity of directors themselves. American scholars tend to think of the board as a group of individuals elected by shareholders, even though it is widely acknowledged (and criticized) that the board is often a largely self-perpetuating body whose inside members dominate the selection of their future colleagues and eventual successors. However, this characterization is far from universally true internationally, and it tends to be increasingly less true even in the United States. Directors are often formally or informally selected by specific shareholders (such as a venture capitalist or an important shareholder) or other stakeholders of the corporation (such as creditors or employees), or they are elected to represent specific types of shareholders (e.g. minority investors). The law thus sometimes facilitates the nomination of what has been called “constituency” directors. Once in office, legal rules tend nevertheless to treat directors as a homogeneous group that is expected to pursue a uniform goal. We explore this tension and suggest that it almost seems to rise to the level of hypocrisy: Why do some jurisdictions require employee representatives that are then seemingly not allowed to strongly advocate employee interests? Why can a director representing a specific shareholder not advance this shareholder’s interests on the board? Behavioral research indicates that directors are likely beholden to those who appointed them and will seek to pursue their interests in order to maintain their position in office. We argue that for many decision-making processes, it does not matter all that much what specific interest directors are expected to pursue by the law, given that across jurisdictions, enforcement of the corporate purpose is highly curtailed

A Fuzzy Logic Control application to the Cement Industry

A case study on continuous process control based on fuzzy logic and supported by expert knowledge is proposed. The aim is to control the coal-grinding operations in a cement manufacturing plant. Fuzzy logic is based on linguistic variables that emulate human judgment and can solve complex modeling problems subject to uncertainty or incomplete information. Fuzzy controllers can handle control problems when an accurate model of the process is unavailable, ill-defined, or subject to excessive parameter variations. The system implementation resulted in productivity gains and energy consumption reductions of 3% and 5% respectively, in line with the literature related to similar applications