Tachistoscopic presentation of verbal stimuli for assessing cerebral dominance: Reliability data and some practical recommendations.

Reliability data point to rather high test-retest correlations (>.65) for VHF data with four- and live-letter words as stimuli, but replicate previous findings that the first test score correlates poorly with later test scores. The same results are obtained for accuracy and latency data, though small differences exist. All laterality indices lead to the same conclusions and have high intercorrelations. The point-biserial correlation coefficient is, however, a slightly more reliable index of naming latency than the mere difference between LVF and RVF. No such superiority is found for the indices based on accuracy data. The results also point to the need to present a sufficient number of stimuli before firm conclusions can be drawn

Individual analysis of laterality data

Graphical and statistical analyses are presented that allow one to check for an individual subject whether the performance during a session is stable. whether the difference between the left and the right visual half-field is significant. and whether the performance is uniform over different sessions. Analyses are given for accuracy data and for latency data. Though the analyses are described for a visual half-field experiment, they can easily be adapted for other laterality tasks

Age and interhemispheric transfer time: A failure to replicate.

In a recent study with the Poffenberger paradigm, Brizzolara et al. reported longer estimates of interhemispheric transfer time (IHTT) for children aged 7 years than for adults. They interpreted this finding as evidence for incomplete functional maturity of the corpus callosum in young children. The present study was we were unable to replicate the age effect reported by Brizzolara et al. A closer look at the original study revealed that only 80 observations per child had been collected, which makes it probable that the larger IHTTs in 7-year-olds were caused by stimulus-response compatibility rather than by the lower efficiency of the corpus callosum during childhood years

Eye movement control during reading: foveal load and parafoveal processing.

We tested theories of eye movement control in reading by looking at parafoveal processing. According to attention-processing theories, attention shifts towards word n+ 1 only when processing of the fixated word n is finished, so that attended parafoveal processing does not start until the programming of the saccade programming to word n+ 1 is initiated (Henderson &amp; Ferreira, 1990; Morrison, 1984), or even later when the processing of word n takes too long (Henderson &amp; Ferreira, 1990). Parafoveal preview benefit should be constant whatever the foveal processing load (Morrison, 1984), or should decrease when processing word n outlasts an eye movement programming deadline (Henderson &amp; Ferreira, 1990). By manipulating the frequency and length of the foveal word n and the visibility of the parafoveal word n+ 1, we replicated the finding that the parafoveal preview benefit is smaller with a low-frequency word in foveal vision. Detailed analyses, however, showed that the eye movement programming deadline hypothesis could not account for this finding which was due not to cases where the low-frequency words n had received a long fixation, but to cases of a short fixations less than 240 msec. In addition, there was a spill-over effect of word n to word n+ 1, and there was an element of parallel processing of both words. The results are more in line with parallel processing limited by the extent to which the parafoveal word processing on fixation n can be combined with the foveal word processing on fixation n+ 1. </jats:p

Transparent Meta-Analysis of Prospective Memory and Aging

Prospective memory (ProM) refers to our ability to become aware of a previously formed plan at the right time and place. After two decades of research on prospective memory and aging, narrative reviews and summaries have arrived at widely different conclusions. One view is that prospective memory shows large age declines, larger than age declines on retrospective memory (RetM). Another view is that prospective memory is an exception to age declines and remains invariant across the adult lifespan. The present meta-analysis of over twenty years of research settles this controversy. It shows that prospective memory declines with aging and that the magnitude of age decline varies by prospective memory subdomain (vigilance, prospective memory proper, habitual prospective memory) as well as test setting (laboratory, natural). Moreover, this meta-analysis demonstrates that previous claims of no age declines in prospective memory are artifacts of methodological and conceptual issues afflicting prior research including widespread ceiling effects, low statistical power, age confounds, and failure to distinguish between various subdomains of prospective memory (e.g., vigilance and prospective memory proper)

Transparent Meta-Analysis: Does Aging Spare Prospective Memory with Focal vs. Non-Focal Cues?

Background: Prospective memory (ProM) is the ability to become aware of a previously-formed plan at the right time and place. For over twenty years, researchers have been debating whether prospective memory declines with aging or whether it is spared by aging and, most recently, whether aging spares prospective memory with focal vs. non-focal cues. Two recent meta-analyses examining these claims did not include all relevant studies and ignored prevalent ceiling effects, age confounds, and did not distinguish between prospective memory subdomains (e.g., ProM proper, vigilance, habitual ProM) (see Uttl, 2008, PLoS ONE). The present meta-analysis focuses on the following questions: Does prospective memory decline with aging? Does prospective memory with focal vs. non-focal cues decline with aging? Does the size of age-related declines with focal vs. non-focal cues vary across ProM subdomains? And are age-related declines in ProM smaller than agerelated declines in retrospective memory? Methods and Findings: A meta-analysis of event-cued ProM using data visualization and modeling, robust count methods, and conventional meta-analysis techniques revealed that first, the size of age-related declines in ProM with both focal and non-focal cues are large. Second, age-related declines in ProM with focal cues are larger in ProM proper and smaller in vigilance. Third, age-related declines in ProM proper with focal cues are as large as age-related declines in recall measures of retrospective memory

Foreign Subtitles Help but Native-Language Subtitles Harm Foreign Speech Perception

Understanding foreign speech is difficult, in part because of unusual mappings between sounds and words. It is known that listeners in their native language can use lexical knowledge (about how words ought to sound) to learn how to interpret unusual speech-sounds. We therefore investigated whether subtitles, which provide lexical information, support perceptual learning about foreign speech. Dutch participants, unfamiliar with Scottish and Australian regional accents of English, watched Scottish or Australian English videos with Dutch, English or no subtitles, and then repeated audio fragments of both accents. Repetition of novel fragments was worse after Dutch-subtitle exposure but better after English-subtitle exposure. Native-language subtitles appear to create lexical interference, but foreign-language subtitles assist speech learning by indicating which words (and hence sounds) are being spoken

Electrophysiological Correlates of Strategic Monitoring in Event-Based and Time-Based Prospective Memory

Prospective memory (PM) is the ability to remember to accomplish an action when a particular event occurs (i.e., event-based PM), or at a specific time (i.e., time-based PM) while performing an ongoing activity. Strategic Monitoring is one of the basic cognitive functions supporting PM tasks, and involves two mechanisms: a retrieval mode, which consists of maintaining active the intention in memory; and target checking, engaged for verifying the presence of the PM cue in the environment. The present study is aimed at providing the first evidence of event-related potentials (ERPs) associated with time-based PM, and at examining differences and commonalities in the ERPs related to Strategic Monitoring mechanisms between event- and time-based PM tasks

The effects of kinetic occlusion and categorization on amodal completion: A comment on Gerbino and Salmaso (1987)

The experimental study of Gerbino and Salmaso (1987) focused on the process of amodal completion, i.e. the process that leads to the impression of a total pattern in the absence of information about all parts of the pattern. One of the questions that they have attempted to answer with respect to this process is whether or not it depends on the categorization of the modal part (i.e. the part about which visual information is present) as a modification of a complete prototype. The major conclusion of their experiments is that amodal completion does not depend upon categorization. Furthermore, they interpret their results as indicating that neither the truncated form of the occluded part nor the unification/segregation of contour segments are phenomenally real. We designed some variants of the tunnel effect to demonstrate (1) that the explicit categorization of some parts of the input can have an influence on amodal completion and (2) that the truncated form of a pattern can be phenomenally real. Our results corroborate these hypotheses and can, therefore, interpreted as refuting two rather central claims of Gerbino and Salmaso (1987). The conclusion of our experiment must be that amodal completion is not as primary as they have supposed but can be influenced by kinetic occlusion and categorization stored in visual memory.status: publishe