Author Correction: Why free choices take longer than forced choices: evidence from response threshold manipulations.

The authors regret that some errors that had been addressed during the proofing process were not corrected by the publisher. Most of these errors are of a stylistic nature and do not change the substance of the article. Please note, however, that the corresponding author's e-mail address is christoph.

Why free choices take longer than forced choices: evidence from response threshold manipulations.

Response times (RTs) for free choice tasks are usually longer than those for forced choice tasks. We examined the cause for this difference in a study with intermixed free and forced choice trials, and adopted the rationale of sequential sampling frameworks to test two alternative accounts: Longer RTs in free choices are caused (1) by lower rates of information accumulation, or (2) by additional cognitive processes that delay the start of information accumulation. In three experiments, we made these accounts empirically discriminable by manipulating decision thresholds via the frequency of catch trials (Exp.

Evidence for a global oculomotor program in reading.

Recent corpus studies of eye-movements in reading revealed a substantial increase in saccade amplitudes and fixation durations as the eyes move over the first words of a sentence. This start-up effect suggests a global oculomotor program, which operates on the level of an entire line, in addition to the well-established local programs operating within the visual span. The present study investigates the nature of this global program experimentally and examines whether the start-up effect is predicated on generic visual or specific linguistic characteristics and whether it is mainly reflected in saccade amplitudes, fixation durations or both measures.

What draws the line between perception and cognition?

The investigation of top-down effects on perception requires a rigorous definition of what qualifies as perceptual to begin with. Whereas Firestone & Scholl's (F&S's) phenomenological demarcation of perception from cognition appeals to intuition, we argue that the dividing line is best attained at the functional level. We exemplify how this approach facilitates scrutinizing putative interactions between judging and perceiving.

The neural bases of the pseudohomophone effect: Phonological constraints on lexico-semantic access in reading.

We investigated phonological processing in normal readers to answer the question to what extent phonological recoding is active during silent reading and if or how it guides lexico-semantic access. We addressed this issue by looking at pseudohomophone and baseword frequency effects in lexical decisions with event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The results revealed greater activation in response to pseudohomophones than for well-controlled pseudowords in the left inferior/superior frontal and middle temporal cortex, left insula, and left superior parietal lobule.

Occipital and orbitofrontal hemodynamics during naturally paced reading: an fNIRS study.

Humans typically read at incredibly fast rates, because they predict likely occurring words from a given context. Here, we used functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to track the ultra-rapid hemodynamic responses of words presented every 280 ms in a naturally paced sentence context. We found a lower occipital deoxygenation to unpredictable than to predictable words.

The benefit of no choice: goal-directed plans enhance perceptual processing.

Choosing among different options is costly. Typically, response times are slower if participants can choose between several alternatives (free-choice) compared to when a stimulus determines a single correct response (forced-choice). This performance difference is commonly attributed to additional cognitive processing in free-choice tasks, which require time-consuming decisions between response options.

Time pressure affects the efficiency of perceptual processing in decisions under conflict.

The negative correlation between speed and accuracy in perceptual decision making is often explained as a tradeoff, where lowered decision boundaries under time pressure result in faster but more error-prone responses. Corresponding implementations in sequential sampling models confirmed the success of this account, which has led to the prevalent assumption that a second component of decision making, the efficiency of perceptual processing, is largely independent from temporal demands. To test the generality of this claim, we examined time pressure effects on decisions under conflict.

[Combination of alendronate plus alfacalcidol in the treatment of osteoporosis. Rationale, preclinical data and clinical evidence].

Background: The therapeutic strategy for the reduction of fracture risk in osteoporosis should not only aim to increase bone strength, but should also improve muscle function and reduce falls without increasing the risk of significant side effects. Since 2008 a combination therapy of the antiresorptive active bisphosphonatealendronate and the pleiotropic active D-hormone-prodrug alfacalcidol is licensed in Germanyfor treatment of postmenopausal osteoporosis (Tevabone).

Methods: In the review the results of numerous preclinical and clinical studies are reported, showing the efficacy of the combination of alendronate plus alfacalcidol.

Evidence for direct control of eye movements during reading.

It is well established that fixation durations during reading vary with processing difficulty, but there are different views on how oculomotor control, visual perception, shifts of attention, and lexical (and higher cognitive) processing are coordinated. Evidence for a one-to-one translation of input delay into saccadic latency would provide a much needed constraint for current theoretical proposals. Here, we tested predictions of such a direct-control perspective using the stimulus-onset delay (SOD) paradigm.

Visual adaptation of the perception of causality.

We easily recover the causal properties of visual events, enabling us to understand and predict changes in the physical world. We see a tennis racket hitting a ball and sense that it caused the ball to fly over the net; we may also have an eerie but equally compelling experience of causality if the streetlights turn on just as we slam our car's door. Both perceptual and cognitive processes have been proposed to explain these spontaneous inferences, but without decisive evidence one way or the other, the question remains wide open.

Investigating the speed-accuracy trade-off: better use deadlines or response signals?

Deadlines (DLs) and response signals (RSs) are two well-established techniques for investigating speed-accuracy trade-offs (SATs). Methodological differences imply, however, that corresponding data do not necessarily reflect equivalent processes. Specifically, the DL procedure grants knowledge about trial-specific time demands and requires responses before a prespecified period has elapsed.

Stimulus onset asynchrony and the timeline of word recognition: event-related potentials during sentence reading.

Three ERP experiments examined the effect of word presentation rate (i.e., stimulus onset asynchrony, SOA) on the time course of word frequency and predictability effects in sentence reading.

Monetary incentives in speeded perceptual decision: effects of penalizing errors versus slow responses.

The influence of monetary incentives on performance has been widely investigated among various disciplines. While the results reveal positive incentive effects only under specific conditions, the exact nature, and the contribution of mediating factors are largely unexplored. The present study examined influences of payoff schemes as one of these factors.

Eye movements and brain electric potentials during reading.

The development of theories and computational models of reading requires an understanding of processing constraints, in particular of timelines related to word recognition and oculomotor control. Timelines of word recognition are usually determined with event-related potentials (ERPs) recorded under conditions of serial visual presentation (SVP) of words; timelines of oculomotor control are derived from parameters of eye movements (EMs) during natural reading. We describe two strategies to integrate these approaches.

The effect of word position on eye-movements in sentence and paragraph reading.

The present study explores the role of the word position-in-text in sentence and paragraph reading. Three eye-movement data sets based on the reading of Dutch and German unrelated sentences reveal a sizeable, replicable increase in reading times over several words at the beginning and the end of sentences. The data from the paragraph-based English-language Dundee corpus replicate the pattern and also indicate that the increase in inspection times is driven by the visual boundaries of the text organized in lines, rather than by syntactic sentence boundaries.

Experimental Effects and Individual Differences in Linear Mixed Models: Estimating the Relationship between Spatial, Object, and Attraction Effects in Visual Attention.

Linear mixed models (LMMs) provide a still underused methodological perspective on combining experimental and individual-differences research. Here we illustrate this approach with two-rectangle cueing in visual attention (Egly et al., 1994).

Event-related potentials reveal rapid verification of predicted visual input.

Human information processing depends critically on continuous predictions about upcoming events, but the temporal convergence of expectancy-based top-down and input-driven bottom-up streams is poorly understood. We show that, during reading, event-related potentials differ between exposure to highly predictable and unpredictable words no later than 90 ms after visual input. This result suggests an extremely rapid comparison of expected and incoming visual information and gives an upper temporal bound for theories of top-down and bottom-up interactions in object recognition.

Pseudohomophone effects provide evidence of early lexico-phonological processing in visual word recognition.

Previous research using event-related brain potentials (ERPs) suggested that phonological processing in visual word recognition occurs rather late, typically after semantic or syntactic processing. Here, we show that phonological activation in visual word recognition can be observed much earlier. Using a lexical decision task, we show that ERPs to pseudohomophones (PsHs) (e.

Conflict monitoring engages the mediofrontal cortex during nonword processing.

The current study investigated the role played by conflict monitoring in a lexical-decision task involving competing word representations, using event-related potentials. We extended the multiple read-out model (Grainger and Jacobs, 1996), a connectionist model of word recognition, to quantify conflict by means of Hopfield Energy, which is defined as the sum of the products of all orthographic word node pair activations within the artificial mental lexicon of this model. With increasing conflict levels in nonwords, a late negativity increased in amplitude (400-600 ms) accompanied by activation of the anterior cingulate cortex and the medial frontal gyrus.

Welcome to the real world: validating fixation-related brain potentials for ecologically valid settings.

Exploration of the real world usually expresses itself through a perceptual behaviour that is complex and adaptive -- an interplay between external visual and internal cognitive states. However, up to now, the measurement of electrophysiological correlates of cognitive processes has been limited to situations, in which the experimental setting confined visual exploration to the mere reception of a strict serial order of events. Here we show -- exemplified by the well known old/new effect in the domain of visual word recognition -- that an alternative approach that utilizes brain potentials corresponding to eye fixations during free exploration reveals effects as reliable as conventional event-related brain potentials.

Synchronizing timelines: relations between fixation durations and N400 amplitudes during sentence reading.

We examined relations between eye movements (single-fixation durations) and RSVP-based event-related potentials (ERPs; N400s) recorded during reading the same sentences in two independent experiments. Longer fixation durations correlated with larger N400 amplitudes. Word frequency and predictability of the fixated word as well as the predictability of the upcoming word accounted for this covariance in a path-analytic model.

Prediction of hip fracture risk by quantitative ultrasound in more than 7000 Swiss women > or =70 years of age: comparison of three technologically different bone ultrasound devices in the SEMOF study.

Unlabelled: To compare the prediction of hip fracture risk of several bone ultrasounds (QUS), 7062 Swiss women > or =70 years of age were measured with three QUSs (two of the heel, one of the phalanges). Heel QUSs were both predictive of hip fracture risk, whereas the phalanges QUS was not.

Introduction: As the number of hip fracture is expected to increase during these next decades, it is important to develop strategies to detect subjects at risk.

Frequency and predictability effects on event-related potentials during reading.

Effects of frequency, predictability, and position of words on event-related potentials were assessed during word-by-word sentence reading in 48 subjects in an early and in a late time window corresponding to P200 and N400. Repeated measures multiple regression analyses revealed a P200 effect in the high-frequency range; also the P200 was larger on words at the beginning and end of sentences than on words in the middle of sentences (i.e.

Beneficial effects of regular Tai Chi exercise on musculoskeletal system.

This study was performed to evaluate the potential benefits of regular Tai Chi Chun (TCC) exercise on bone mineral density (BMD) and neuromuscular function in postmenopausal women. In this cross-sectional study, 99 healthy postmenopausal women, with a mean age of 55.9+/-3.