Response Inhibition as a Function of Movement Complexity and Movement Type Selection.

This study aims to determine whether response inhibition shows the same degree of effectiveness for two sources of motor complexity: (1) Movement complexity, which is measured through two actions with different motor requirements (simple lifting action vs. complex reaching action), and (2) Movement type selection, which is measured in movements performed separately (no active-movement type selection) vs. selectively (active-movement type selection).

Mitigating Simulator Adaptation Syndrome by means of tactile stimulation.

Some drivers experience Simulator Adaptation Syndrome (SAS), a condition in which nausea, disorientation, dizziness, headache, and difficulty focusing, are exhibited when driving in a simulator. To reduce this syndrome, we investigated the efficacy of tactile stimulation (TS) on mitigating Simulator Adaptation Syndrome (SAS) in a driving simulation. Fifteen drivers (eight women; mean age = 24.

Self-Knowledge Dim-Out: Stress Impairs Metacognitive Accuracy.

Modulation of frontal lobes activity is believed to be an important pathway trough which the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis stress response impacts cognitive and emotional functioning. Here, we investigate the effects of stress on metacognition, which is the ability to monitor and control one's own cognition. As the frontal lobes have been shown to play a critical role in metacognition, we predicted that under activation of the HPA axis, participants should be less accurate in the assessment of their own performances in a perceptual decision task, irrespective of the effect of stress on the first order perceptual decision itself.

Developmental study of the hippocampal formation in rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta): II. Early ablations do not spare the capacity to retrieve conditional object-object associations.

A companion article (see record 2005-06959-001) revealed that hippocampectomy in infancy spares concurrent discrimination learning but not recognition memory. The present report describes the results obtained with a more complex task, conditional object- object association, in which rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) had to first learn to discriminate between pairs of objects rather than single ones and to subsequently remember which particular object had been a member of a rewarded stimulus pair (contextual retrieval). Hippocampectomized infants obtained normal scores in learning individual pair discriminations, but they were severely impaired in contextual retrieval.

Developmental study of the hippocampal formation in rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta): I. Early ablations spare discrimination learning but not recognition memory.

In clinical cases of amnesia that followed bilateral excisions of medial temporal lobe structures, with some perceptual learning abilities intact, damage to the hippocampus was presumed to be the critical factor. The authors' search for an animal model of amnesia, based on ablations aimed at the hippocampal formation in infant rhesus monkeys, provides support for this view. Ablations of the hippocampal formation in 2-month-old infants tested shortly after recovery from surgery resulted in a deficit on a recognition memory task but left intact the ability to learn the concurrent object discrimination task, even though the latter task was administered with the use of a massed practice procedure.

Students' learning through hypermedia.

This study assessed the effectiveness of hypermedia software in the learning and retention, association, and structuring of biological knowledge by using fifth grade students (ages 9 to 11 years) from three urban schools in Southern Chile. Four groups of 24 subjects each were exposed to either hypermedia software presentation on basic functions of the human body (Group 1), the same information in linear, electronic book mode (Group 2), the same information on a printed brochure (Group 3), or no experimental treatment but exposure (as were students in the other three groups) to regular lectures and materials (control group or Group 4). Six students from each school were randomly assigned to the treatment and control groups; thus 24 students from each school (N=72) participated.