Modeling Task Control of Eye Movements

In natural behavior, visual information is actively sampled from the environment by a sequence of gaze changes. The timing and choice of gaze targets, and the accompanying attentional shifts, are intimately linked with ongoing behavior. Nonetheless, modeling of the deployment of these fixations has been very difficult because they depend on characterizing the underlying task structure. Recently, advances in eye tracking during natural vision, together with the development of probabilistic modeling techniques, have provided insight into how the cognitive agenda might be included in the specification of fixations. These techniques take advantage of the decomposition of complex behaviors into modular components. A particular subset of these models casts the role of fixation as that of providing task-relevant information that is rewarding to the agent, with fixation being selected on the basis of expected reward and uncertainty about environmental state. We review this work here and describe how specific examples can reveal general principles in gaze control

Dreamy Alabama

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By The Old Ohio Shore : A Memory

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Dreamy Alabama

https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mmb-vp/1366/thumbnail.jp

Do dietary interventions improve ADHD symptoms in children?

Insufficient evidence exists to suggest that dietary interventions improve the symptoms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in children (strength of recommendation: B, extrapolation from randomized controlled trials [RCTs]). Interventions that have been investigated include removal of sugar and artificial food colorings from the diet and supplementation with fatty acids

Beyond the mask: women’s experiences of public and private ageing during midlife and their use of age-resisting activities

Accounts of ageing often employ the metaphor of a mask and suggest that individuals are motivated to present a youthful image. Drawing on interview data, we reveal that women aged 51-57 years distinguish between what we call ‘public’ and ‘private’ body ageing, both of which have an impact on age-resistance. Public ageing is visible, arising from physical changes in body appearance. These changes have the potential for concealment through age-resisting activities. Private ageing is less visible and arises largely from physiological changes within the body, which were perceived by women as irreversible indicators of ageing. This obduracy of the body led women to perceive themselves as ageing and also deterred them from participating in age-resistance. In contrast to masking theories, our study shows that most women in their 50s wanted to project a socially acceptable image that reflected their subjective sense of growing old

A Writing Intervention for Negative Body Image: Pennebaker Fails to Surpass the Placebo

Pennebaker’s therapeutic writing paradigm was assessed as a brief intervention for negative body image. Females were randomly assigned to write about their body image (experimental; n = 23) or their bedroom (controls; n = 25) for four days. Body image, eating-disordered behavior, and mood were assessed at baseline, after the 4th day of writing, and at 1-month follow-up. Despite hypotheses that experimental participants would show more improvement over time, participation in the study, regardless of condition, was related to significant improvements in body image and mood, and decreased eating-disordered behavior over time. Placebo, sensitization effects, and regression to the mean are discussed as potential explanations for this unexpected finding. Suggestions for future research are made

Development and Evaluation of a Measure of Dangerous, Aggressive, Negative Emotional, and Risky Driving

The Dula Dangerous Driving Index (DDDI) was created to measure drivers’ self-reported likelihood to drive dangerously. Each DDDI scale (DDDI Total, Aggressive Driving, Negative Emotional Driving, and Risky Driving scales) had strong internal reliability and there was also evidence for the construct validity of the scales. The DDDI was used to examine the relation between dangerous and aggressive driving and dispositional aggression and anger among 119 college students. Males reported significantly more aggressive, risky, and angry driving than did females. Males and females reported similar levels of dangerous driving and negative emotions while driving. Dangerous driving was positively related to traffic citations and causing accidents. The DDDI will be useful as a research instrument to examine dangerous driving

School Aggression and Dispositional Aggression among Middle School Boys

We examined the relationship between dispositional (trait) aggression and administrative reports of school aggression among 100 adolescent male participants from an urban middle school. Aggression was fairly common among the sample; 58 boys had a record of school aggression, and many of those were repeat offenders. Our hypothesis that those higher in dispositional aggression would have more records of aggression at school was supported. Dispositional aggression was significantly, positively correlated with verbal and physical aggression at school. Regression analyses indicated that dispositional aggression accounted for a substantial amount of the variance in administrative reports of school aggression. Two other factors, family income and age, accounted for a minimal amount of the variance in school aggression

Attributional Style, Depression, and Self-esteem: Adult Children of Alcoholic and Non-Alcoholic Parents

Undergraduate adult children of alcoholics (ACOAs; N = 57) were compared to children of nonalcoholic parents (CONAs; N = 100) on measures of the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), self-esteem, and attributional style. ACOA status was determined using the Children of Alcoholics Screening Test (Jones, 1981). ACOAs were found to have significantly higher scores on the BDI and to have significantly lower self-esteem, as measured by the Index of Self- Esteem, than CONAs. ACOAs were also more likely to have a depressive attributional style, in that they perceived failure as more internal, stable, and global than CONAs. Further, females had significantly higher BDI scores than males