Repetition Priming of Face Gender Judgments: An Instance Based Explanation.

Earlier studies of repetition priming using faces have been interpreted as indicating that such effects are confined to the processing of known faces. The experiment reported here employed 8 rather than the more usual 2 presentation trials and required subjects to make gender decisions ( is it a male or is it a female face?) to both familiar and unfamiliar faces. This allowed the currently favoured recognition unit theories of face processing to be compared with the Logan (1988) instance model. Equivalent repetition priming effects were observed for both familiar and unfamiliar faces and were well fitted by power functions. It is argued that the findings are consistent with the strong predictions made by Logan’s model and pose problems for recognition unit based theories

Infill asymptotics for adaptive kernel estimators of spatial intensity

We apply the Abramson principle to define adaptive kernel estimators for the intensity function of a spatial point process. We derive asymptotic expansions for the bias and variance under the regime that n independent copies of a simple point process in Euclidean space are superposed. The method is illustrated by means of a simple example and applied to tornado data

Differential contributions of set-shifting and monitoring to dual-task interference

It is commonly argued that complex behaviour is regulated by a number of “executive functions” which work to co-ordinate the operation of disparate cognitive systems in the service of an overall goal. However, the identity, roles, and interactions of specific putative executive functions remain contentious, even within widely accepted tests of executive function. The authors present two experiments that use dual-task interference to provide further support for multiple distinct executive functions and to establish the differential contributions of those functions in two relatively complex executive tasks – Random Generation and the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test. Results are interpreted in terms of process models of the complex executive tasks