Just one look:Direct gaze briefly disrupts visual working memory

Direct gaze is a salient social cue that affords rapid detection. A body of research suggests that direct gaze enhances performance on memory tasks (e.g., Hood, Macrae, Cole-Davies, & Dias, Developmental Science, 1, 67–71, 2003). Nonetheless, other studies highlight the disruptive effect direct gaze has on concurrent cognitive processes (e.g., Conty, Gimmig, Belletier, George, & Huguet, Cognition, 115(1), 133–139, 2010). This discrepancy raises questions about the effects direct gaze may have on concurrent memory tasks. We addressed this topic by employing a change detection paradigm, where participants retained information about the color of small sets of agents. Experiment 1 revealed that, despite the irrelevance of the agents’ eye gaze to the memory task at hand, participants were worse at detecting changes when the agents looked directly at them compared to when the agents looked away. Experiment 2 showed that the disruptive effect was relatively short-lived. Prolonged presentation of direct gaze led to recovery from the initial disruption, rather than a sustained disruption on change detection performance. The present study provides the first evidence that direct gaze impairs visual working memory with a rapidly-developing yet short-lived effect even when there is no need to attend to agents’ gaze

The cognitive demands of remembering a speaker’s perspective and managing common ground size modulate 8- and 10-year-olds’ perspective-taking abilities

Using “theory of mind” to successfully accommodate differing perspectives during communication requires much more than just acquiring basic theory of mind understanding. Evidence suggests that children’s ability to adopt a speaker’s perspective continues to develop through childhood to adolescence till adulthood (e.g., Dumontheil, Apperly, & Blakemore, 2010). The present study examined the cognitive factors that could account for variations in children’s abilities to use a speaker’s perspective during language comprehension, and whether the same factors contribute to age-related improvements. Our study incorporated into a commonly-used communication task two types of memory demands which are frequently present in our everyday communication but have been overlooked in the previous literature: remembering a speaker’s perspective, and the amount of common ground information. Findings from two experiments demonstrated that both 8- and 10-year-olds committed more egocentric errors when each of these memory demands was high. Our study also found some supporting evidence for the age-related improvement in children’s perspective use, as 10-year-olds generally committed fewer egocentric errors compared to 8-year-olds. Interestingly, there was no clear evidence that the memory factors that affected children’s perspective use in our experiments were also the factors that drove age-related improvement

Offending users: designing-in deterrence with mobile telephones

This paper describes research relating to the design semantics of desirable products and the crime of theft. The methods employed range from the review of existing designs of mobile phones and associated systems and technologies, the perception of crime from a student designer's viewpoint and, importantly, the opinions of young offenders about proposed design solutions. We developed conceptual designs in consultation with the Mobile Data Association and these were reviewed by a sample of groups of young offenders and 'non-offender' consumers of similar age, to reflect the different user perspectives. The conclusions reveal differences between offenders and non-offenders in their perceptions of the deterrent effect of different design solutions. It is suggested that the research offers insight into the use of empathic strategies in the design of frequently stolen 'hot products'

Language complexity modulates 8- and 10-year-olds’ success at using their theory of mind abilities in a communication task

Basic competence in theory of mind is acquired during early childhood. Nonetheless, evidence suggests that the ability to take others’ perspectives in communication improves continuously from middle childhood to the late teenage years. This indicates that theory of mind performance undergoes protracted developmental changes after the acquisition of basic competence. Currently, little is known about the factors that constrain children’s performance or that contribute to age-related improvement. A sample of 39 8-year-olds and 56 10-year-olds were tested on a communication task in which a speaker’s limited perspective needed to be taken into account and the complexity of the speaker’s utterance varied. Our findings showed that 10-year-olds were generally less egocentric than 8-year-olds. Children of both ages committed more egocentric errors when a speaker uttered complex sentences compared with simple sentences. Both 8- and 10-year-olds were affected by the demand to integrate complex sentences with the speaker’s limited perspective and to a similar degree. These results suggest that long after children’s development of simple visual perspective-taking, their use of this ability to assist communication is substantially constrained by the complexity of the language involved

Perspective-taking across cultures:shared biases in Taiwanese and British adults

The influential hypothesis by Markus & Kitayama (Markus, Kitayama 1991. Psychol. Rev.98, 224) postulates that individuals from interdependent cultures place others above self in interpersonal contexts. This led to the prediction and finding that individuals from interdependent cultures are less egocentric than those from independent cultures (Wu, Barr, Gann, Keysar 2013. Front. Hum. Neurosci.7, 1–7; Wu, Keysar. 2007 Psychol. Sci.18, 600–606). However, variation in egocentrism can only provide indirect evidence for the Markus and Kitayama hypothesis. The current study sought direct evidence by giving British (independent) and Taiwanese (interdependent) participants two perspective-taking tasks on which an other-focused ‘altercentric’ processing bias might be observed. One task assessed the calculation of simple perspectives; the other assessed the use of others' perspectives in communication. Sixty-two Taiwanese and British adults were tested in their native languages at their home institutions of study. Results revealed similar degrees of both altercentric and egocentric interference between the two cultural groups. This is the first evidence that listeners account for a speaker's limited perspective at the cost of their own performance. Furthermore, the shared biases point towards similarities rather than differences in perspective-taking across cultures

Protein digestibility and relevance to allergenicity.

In January 2001 a Joint Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations/World Health Organization Expert Consultation Committee on Allergenicity of Foods Derived from Biotechnology published a report outlining in detail an approach for assessing the allergenic potential of novel proteins. One component of this decision tree is a determination of whether the protein of interest is resistant to proteolytic digestion. Although these (Italic)in vitro(/Italic) methodologies have been useful, the correlation between resistance to proteolysis and allergenic activity is not absolute. Two views and highlights of supporting research regarding the relationship of resistance to digestion and allergenicity are presented in this article

The Grizzly, October 12, 1993

The Truth Behind the Conspiracy • U.S. Involvement in Somalia • Homecoming 1993 • Dave Binder: A Tribute to James Taylor • In Other Words • Ursinus College: Altar to the God of Apathy? • Letter to the Editor • Bears Lose Toughhttps://digitalcommons.ursinus.edu/grizzlynews/1321/thumbnail.jp