bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Automated
de novo
sequencing of proteins by tandem high-resolution mass spectrometry
Authors: Horn David M. , Zubarev Roman A. , McLafferty Fred W.
Published: July 2002

A
de novo
sequencing program for proteins is described that uses tandem MS data from electron capture dissociation and collisionally activated dissociation of electrosprayed protein ions. Computer automation is used to convert the fragment ion mass values derived from these spectra into the most probable protein sequence, without distinguishing Leu/Ile. Minimum human input is necessary for the data reduction and interpretation. No extra chemistry is necessary to distinguish N- and C-terminal fragments in the mass spectra, as this is determined from the electron capture dissociation data. With parts-per-million mass accuracy (now available by using higher field Fourier transform MS instruments), the complete sequences of ubiquitin (8.6 kDa) and melittin (2.8 kDa) were predicted correctly by the program. The data available also provided 91% of the cytochrome
c
(12.4 kDa) sequence (essentially complete except for the tandem MS-resistant region K
13
–V
20
that contains the cyclic heme). Uncorrected mass values from a 6-T instrument still gave 86% of the sequence for ubiquitin, except for distinguishing Gln/Lys. Extensive sequencing of larger proteins should be possible by applying the algorithm to pieces of ≈10-kDa size, such as products of limited proteolysis.
Quantum groups with invariant integrals
Authors: Van Daele Alfons
Published: July 2002

Quantum groups have been studied intensively for the last two
decades from various points of view. The underlying mathematical
structure is that of an algebra with a coproduct. Compact quantum
groups admit Haar measures. However, if we want to have a Haar measure
also in the noncompact case, we are forced to work with algebras
without identity, and the notion of a coproduct has to be adapted.
These considerations lead to the theory of multiplier Hopf algebras,
which provides the mathematical tool for studying noncompact quantum
groups with Haar measures. I will concentrate on the
*-algebra case and assume positivity of the invariant
integral. Doing so, I create an algebraic framework that serves as a
model for the operator algebra approach to quantum groups. Indeed, the
theory of locally compact quantum groups can be seen as the topological
version of the theory of quantum groups as they are developed here in a
purely algebraic context.
Candidate gene analysis of organ pigmentation loci in the Solanaceae
Authors: Thorup T. A. , Tanyolac B. , Livingstone K. D. , Popovsky S. , Paran I. , Jahn Molly
Published: July 2002

Ten structural genes from the
Capsicum
(pepper)
carotenoid biosynthetic pathway have been localized on a
(
Capsicum annuum
×
Capsicum
chinense
)F
2
genetic map anchored in
Lycopersicon
(tomato). The positions of these genes were
compared with positions of the same genes in tomato when known, and
with loci from pepper, potato, and tomato that affect carotenoid levels
in different tissues.
C2,
one of three phenotypically
defined loci determining pepper fruit color, cosegregated with phytoene
synthase. The capsanthin–capsorubin synthase (
Ccs
)
locus, shown previously to cosegregate with
Y,
another
pepper fruit color locus, mapped to pepper chromosome 6. Other
structural genes in pepper corresponded to loci affecting carotenoid
production as follows:
Ccs
in pepper and the
B
locus for hyperaccumulation of β-carotene in tomato
fruit mapped to homeologous regions; the position of the lycopene
β-cyclase gene in pepper may correspond to the
lutescent-2
mutation in tomato; and the lycopene
ɛ-cyclase locus in pepper corresponded to the lycopene ɛ-cyclase
locus/
Del
mutation for hyperaccumulation of
δ-carotene in tomato fruit. Additional associations were seen between
the structural genes and previously mapped loci controlling
quantitative variation in pepper and tomato fruit color. These results
demonstrate that comparative analyses using candidate genes may be used
to link specific metabolic phenotypes and loci that affect these
phenotypes in related species.
Targeted modification and transportation of cellular proteins
Authors: Colas Pierre , Cohen Barak , Ferrigno Paul Ko , Silver Pamela A. , Brent Roger
Published: July 2002

Peptide aptamers are proteins selected from combinatorial
libraries that display conformationally constrained variable regions.
Peptide aptamers can disrupt specific protein interactions and thus
represent a useful method for manipulating protein function
in
vivo
. Here, we describe aptamer derivatives that extend the
range of functional manipulations. We isolated an aptamer with
increased affinity for its Cdk2 target by mutagenizing an existing
aptamer and identifying tighter binding mutants with calibrated
two-hybrid reporter genes. We used this and other anti-Cdk2 aptamers as
recognition domains in chimeric proteins that contained other
functional moieties. Aptamers fused to the catalytic domain of a
ubiquitin ligase specifically decorated LexA-Cdk2 with ubiquitin
moieties
in vivo
. Aptamers against Cdk2 and another
protein, Ste5, that carried a nuclear localization sequence transported
their targets into the nucleus. These experiments indicate that fusion
proteins containing aptameric recognition moieties will be useful for
specific modification of protein function
in vivo
.
Haploinsufficiency of
steroidogenic factor-1
in mice disrupts adrenal development leading to an impaired stress response
Authors: Bland Michelle L. , Jamieson Christina A. M. , Akana Susan F. , Bornstein Stefan R. , Eisenhofer Graeme , Dallman Mary F. , Ingraham Holly A.
Published: July 2002

Adrenal steroids are essential for homeostasis and survival during
severe physiological stress. Analysis of a patient heterozygous for the
steroidogenic factor-1
(
SF-1)
gene
suggested that reduced expression of this nuclear receptor leads to
adrenal failure. We therefore examined
SF-1
heterozygous
(+/−) mice as a potential model for delineating mechanisms
underlying this disease. Here we show that
SF-1
+/−
mice exhibit adrenal insufficiency resulting from profound defects in
adrenal development and organization. However, compensatory mechanisms,
such as cellular hypertrophy and increased expression of the
rate-limiting steroidogenic protein StAR, help to maintain adrenal
function at near normal capacity under basal conditions. In contrast,
adrenal deficits in
SF-1
heterozygotes are revealed
under stressful conditions, demonstrating that normal gene dosage of
SF-1
is required for mounting an adequate stress
response. Our findings predict that natural variations leading to
reduced SF-1 function may underlie some forms of subclinical adrenal
insufficiency, which become life threatening during traumatic stress.
Peopling the past: New perspectives on the ancient Maya
Authors: Robin Cynthia
Published: July 2002

The new direction in Maya archaeology is toward achieving a greater understanding of people and their roles and their relations in the past. To answer emerging humanistic questions about ancient people's lives Mayanists are increasingly making use of new and existing scientific methods from archaeology and other disciplines. Maya archaeology is bridging the divide between the humanities and sciences to answer questions about ancient people previously considered beyond the realm of archaeological knowledge.
Moral panic versus the risk society: the implications of the changing sites of social anxiety
Authors: Ungar Sheldon
Published: July 2002

This paper compares moral panic with the potential political catastrophes of a risk society. The aim of the comparison is threefold: 1. to establish the position of risk society threats alongside more conventional moral panics; 2. to examine the conceptual shifts that accompany the new types of threats; and 3. to outline the changing research agenda. The paper suggests that as new sites of social anxiety have emerged around environmental, nuclear, chemical and medical threats, the questions motivating moral panic research have lost much of their utility. Conceptually, it examines how the roulette dynamics of the risk society accidents expose hidden institutional violations that redound into ‘hot potatoes’ that are passed among and fumbled by various actors. Changing conceptions of folk devils, claims making activities, and of a safety are also discussed.
Effet de l'intensité sur la catégorisation des prototypes émotionnels faciaux chez l'enfant et l'adulte
Authors: Gosselin Pierre , Pélissier Dominique
Published: July 2002

Cette étude examine l'effet de l'intensité des prototypes émotionnels faciaux sur leur catégorisation chez des enfants et de jeunes adultes. Des prototypes faciaux de joie et de dégoût, comprenant des unités d'action de trois niveaux d'intensité, sont présentés à 30 enfants et à 30 adultes dans le cadre d'une tâche de catégorisation. Conformément aux prédictions, l'exactitude de la catégorisation augmente, de façon générale, en fonction de l'intensité des unités d'action. Un accroissement de l'exactitude de la catégorisation est aussi relevé en fonction de l'âge des décodeurs mais seulement pour le prototype de dégoût comprenant des unités d'action de faible intensité. Le prototype de joie est mieux catégorisé que celui de dégoût. Deux types d'erreurs sont nettement plus fréquentes que les autres dans la catégorisation du prototype de dégoût: dégoût/colère et dégoût/tristesse. Les résultats sont discutés en relation avec les processus de régulation impliqués dans la socialisation des émotions.
Globalisation, Institutional Structures and Real Estate Markets in Central European Cities
Authors: Keivani Ramin , Parsa Ali , McGreal Stanley
Published: July 2002

This paper examines the urban development process in post-socialist cities of Budapest, Prague and Warsaw in the context of economic globalisation and societal transformation. Several factors have helped to shape the post-socialist cities of central Europe since the end of the 1980s. These include political transformation, economic change, restitution, privatisation, price liberalisation and decentralisation of local government. It is argued that local government administrative and planning structures have been ill prepared in meeting the requirements of international investment capital in a co-ordinated and effective manner. Institutional constraints has promoted an organic form of urban development primarily determined through the international demand for, and supply of, commercial and retail space.
The Changing Competitive Relationship between Small Town Centres and Out-of-town Retailing: Town Revival in South Wales
Authors: Thomas Colin J. , Bromley Rosemary D. F.
Published: July 2002

Change has characterised the retail environment of British cities since the mid 1960s. Many new retail forms have emerged which have often impacted adversely on the traditional retail hierarchy. Evidence suggests that the middle order, comprising small towns, district centres and small market towns, has been particularly affected adversely and the potential for 'a spiral of decline' in many such centres has been suggested widely. Thus, many communities face the prospect of losing their commercial and social foci. Central and local government activity has aimed intermittently to redress this problem by a combination of constraint on new developments and the stimulation of renewal in the traditional centres. This article seeks to examine whether the reinvestment process has improved the commercial situation of a small town in the context of strong local competition and continued retail decentralisation. The evidence presented suggests that it is possible to reverse the commercial fortunes of a middle-order traditional centre, even in the context of considerable competition from the newer retail forms. The continued decline of potentially strong middle-order shopping centres is not the inevitable result of the process of retail transformation.
Ethnic Segregation in Cities: New Forms and Explanations in a Dynamic World
Authors: van Kempen Ronald , şule Özüekren A.
Published: July 2002

As an introduction to this special issue on ethnic segregation in cities, we offer the readers an overview of the explanatory factors of ethnic segregation and spatial concentration in modern welfare states. After a discussion of the disadvantages and advantages of segregation and concentration, which can be seen as the impetus behind the widespread interest in this topic, we will briefly review some 'traditional' theories. That review will be followed by a closer look at behavioural theories and explanations in which constraints are central. The next section will elaborate on restructuring processes, giving special attention to economic change and its effects on cities, groups and spatial arrangements. We will conclude this introduction with a few remarks on the future of ethnic segregation and concentration and outline some possible directions for future research in this field.
Too Hot to Handle: The Cultural Politics of Fire
Authors: Kapur Ratna
Published: July 2002

This essay explores the ways in which the definition of Indian culture has become a site of contest, and how this contest played out in the controversy that erupted over the release and screening of Deepa Mehta's diasporic film, Fire, in India. I locate this controversy within the broader controversies that are taking place over culture, particularly when issues of sex and sexuality are involved. The continuous targeting of representations of sex and sexuality, betrays an underlying fear that sex is something that is threatening to Indian cultural values, to the Indian way of life, to the very existence of the Indian nation. I discuss the responses to the release of the film by the forces of the Hindu Right as well as feminist and lesbian groups and critique the uncomplicated understandings of culture that informed these positions. Contingent upon these responses rests the story in Fire and the way in which the lesbian subject, a sexual subaltern, is constructed in the cultural space represented in the film. I challenge the positions that suggest that the women are represented as victims in the film, and draw attention to the cultural, sexual and familial ruptures brought about by the main protagonists through their desire for one another. I explore the complicated understandings of agency and desire that are represented through the assertion of this relationship.
Orientalist Sociology and the Creation of Colonial Sexualities
Authors: Levine Philippa
Published: July 2002

In what Arjun Appadurai has dubbed the ‘colonial imaginary’ issues of femininity, and who possessed it, were of prime importance. An orientalizing sociology sought to distinguish, and indeed to fix, differences between metropolitan and indigenous women as a rhetoric of hierarchy which secured proper and western femininity to white women. One critical route which colonial commentators and authorities took to produce that knowledge was to measure women's proximity to the practice of prostitution, a means which permitted discussion and judgement of racialized sexualities as well as of proper models of feminine behaviour. This article will explore the ways in which the new sociology of the Victorian period, wielded in a colonial context, served to separate women through race-based ideas of sexual behaviour and sexual order. It will deal with British India in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
‘White Already to Harvest’: South Australian Women Missionaries in India1
Authors: Allen Margaret
Published: July 2002

In 1882, the South Australian Baptist Missionary Society sent off its first missionaries to Faridpur in East Bengal. Miss Marie Gilbert and Miss Ellen Arnold were the first of a stream of missionary women who left the young South Australian colony to work in India. Scores of women from other Christian denominations and from other Australian colonies also went to India and indeed to other mission fields in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. As with other western women missionaries, these women intended to save souls and to bring India's daughters to Christ, often by means of medical work. But unlike their British sisters, these women came from the edge of empire to intervene in another, but different, colonial site. These missionary ventures coincided with efforts of the Australian settlers to elaborate for themselves an identity separate from and against that of the metropolitan centre. Within these debates, contestations over the meaning of ‘the colonial girl’ and ‘the Australian girl’ played a key role. The article explores why the women were drawn to India rather than to working with Aboriginal people in Australia. It begins to investigate how in seeking to reconstruct Indian womanhood they elaborated for themselves a separate colonial, Australian identity and how much in their missionary endeavours they affirmed an identity as white, Christian and ultimately British.
Ouch!
Authors: Doezema Jo
Published: July 2002

Trafficking in women’ has, in recent years, been the subject of intense feminist debate. This article analyses the position of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women (CATW) and the writings of its founder, Kathleen Barry. It suggests that CATW's construction of ‘third world prostitutes’ is part of a wider western feminist impulse to construct a damaged ‘other’ as justification for its own interventionist impulses. The central argument of this article is that the ‘injured body’ of the ‘third world trafficking victim’ in international feminist debates around trafficking in women serves as a powerful metaphor for advancing certain feminist interests, which cannot be assumed to be those of third world sex workers themselves. This argument is advanced through a comparison of Victorian feminist campaigns against prostitution in India with contemporary feminist campaigns against trafficking.

The term ‘injured identity’ is drawn from Wendy Brown's (1995) States of Injury, Power and Freedom in Late Modernity. Brown argues that certain groups have configured their claims to inclusion in the liberal state in terms of ‘historical ‘injuries’. Antoinette Burton (1998) extends Brown's analysis to look at Victorian feminists’ relationship to Empire, arguing that the ‘injured identities’ of colonial ‘others’ were central to feminist efforts to mark out their own role in Empire. This paper builds on Burton's analysis, asking what role the ‘injured identities’ of third world sex workers play in the construction of certain contemporary feminist identities. The notion of ‘injured identities’ offers a provocative way to begin to examine how CATW feminists position the ‘trafficking victim’ in their discourse. If ‘injured identity’ is a constituent element of late modern subject formation, this may help explain why CATW and Barry rely so heavily on the ‘suffering’ of ‘third world trafficking victims’ in their discourses of women's subjugation. It also raises questions about the possible repressive consequences of CATW's efforts to combat ‘trafficking in women’ through ‘protective’ legislation.
Enabling Citizenship: Gender, Disability and Citizenship in Australia
Authors: Meekosha Helen , Dowse Leanne
Published: July 2002

This paper queries the absence of disabled voices in contemporary citizenship literature. It argues that the language and imagery of the citizen is imbued with hegemonic normalcy and as such excludes disability. Feminist perspectives, such as those which argue for a form of maternal citizenship, largely fail to acknowledge disability experiences. Exclusionary practices are charted and links are made between gender, race and disability in this process. A citizenship which acknowledges disability is fundamental to re-imaging local, national and international collectivities.
Women's Publics and the Search for New Democracies
Authors: Eisenstein Zillah
Published: July 2002

The article examines the intersections between gender, racism, global capitalism and corporate multiculturalism. The notion of nation and nationalism for the twenty-first century is explored. Women's voices from Beijing provide a possible imaginary for transnation discourse.
Love and Colonialism in Takamure Itsue's Feminism: A Postcolonial Critique
Authors: Ryang Sonia
Published: July 2002

Takamure Itsue has many faces following different phases of her life: poet, activist-writer, anarchist, ethnologist and historian. Throughout these transformations, Takamure maintained her feminist position. This article concentrates on her politics of love, sex and marriage, formulated and presented in the pre-war period during the time of Japanese colonial empire. A specific focus is placed on her positionality in the act of writing within the discursive field of women whose nation was colonizing others, notably Koreans. The combination of positivistic craving for ‘scientific’ history to substantiate the uxorilocal tradition of Japanese matrimony and uncritical acceptance of ‘motherhood’ as a superior virtue led her to consequently embrace Japan's colonialism.
Popular Sexual Knowledges and Women's Agency in 1920s England: Marie Stopes's Married Love and E.M. Hull's the Sheik
Authors: Chow Karen
Published: July 2002

This article examines popular discourses of women's sexuality in 1920s England and argues that sex manuals like Marie Stopes's Married Life and sex novels like E.M. Hull's The Sheik, despite their adherence to status quo values, were liberating for women through their affirmation of women's sexual subjectivity. Stopes's enormously popular book contributed strongly to a new understanding of women's sexual drives as natural and autonomous. The changing attitudes were reflected in the numbers of postwar women who actively participated in the creation and consumption of popular sex-novels and films, exercising both economic and sexual freedoms at once. This article focusses on the film version of The Sheik, which experienced great success as part of this growing leisure market catering specifically to women's desire, and in particular on the figure of Rudolph Valentino as a “woman-made” man. The film's “crossed” representations of sexuality (the emancipated “flapper” and the effeminate yet virile “sheik”) challenged traditional notions of femininity and masculinity, and in doing so, were liberating for women consumers at the same time that they threatened the sexual identities of men.
The Scent of Memory: Strangers, Our Own, and Others
Authors: Brah Avtar
Published: July 2002

Using, as a point of departure, Tim Lott's recent autobiography where he attempts to make sense of his mother's suicide of 1988 through a reconstruction of his family genealogy, this article tries to map the production of gendered, classed, and racialized subjects and subjectivity in west London. It addresses the tension between Lott's discourse of his own white working-class boyhood during the 1970s where questions of ‘race’ are all but absent, and the racialized ‘commonsense’ that pervades the interviews with other local white contemporaries of Lott and his parents. These narratives are analysed in relation to the socio-economic context and the political activism of the period. Theoretically, it analyses the ‘diaspora space’ of London/Britain, interrogating essentialist ‘origin stories’ of belonging; reaching out to a glimmer on the horizon of emerging non-identical formations of kinship across boundaries of class, racism, and ethnicity; and exploring the purchase of certain South Asian terms – ‘ajnabi’, ‘ghair’, and ‘apna/apni’ – in constructing a non-binarized understanding of identification across ‘difference’.
What a Difference a Decade Makes: Coming to Power and the Second Coming
Authors: O'Sullivan Sue
Published: July 2002

A critical look at two books, Coming to Power – Writings and Graphics on Lesbian S/M, published in 1981, and its ‘long awaited sequel’, The Second Coming – A Leatherdyke Reader, published in 1996, yields many differences and similarities. Both books have been judged negatively or positively on the basis of their sadomasochistic content and in line with knee-jerk positions around the lesbian ‘sex wars’ of the 1980s. The feminist politics represented in each book and the connections to more general lesbian feminist concerns and developments of either the late 1970s (Coming to Power) or the late 1980s and early 1990s (The Second Coming) are often overlooked or dismissed. Comparing the kind of sex acts and personas fetishized in each book as well as the claims made for lesbian sm by its adherents often reveals more than the writers may have intended. A more nuanced reading of both books also reveals connections between lesbian feminism, particularly lesbian radical feminism and the sm dykes. Rather than being the ‘illegitimate children’ of lesbian feminism, as Coming to Power maintained in 1981, it is clear now that sm dykes and lesbian feminists are strange sisters who needed each other to define their particular politicized identities.
Effects of Microsomal Enzyme Inducers on Thyroid Follicular Cell Proliferation and Thyroid Hormone Metabolism
Authors: Klaassen Curtis D. , Hood Alan M.
Published: July 2002

The effects of microsomal enzyme inducers on thyroid hormone homeostasis and the thyroid gland are of concern. We have investigated the effects of microsomal enzyme inducers on thyroid follicular cell proliferation and thyroid hormone metabolism in rats. We have shown that small increases in serum TSH can result in large increases in thyroid follicular cell proliferation. Furthermore, only those microsomal enzyme inducers that increase serum TSH—that is, phenobarbital (PB) and pregnenolone-16α-carbonitrile (PCN)—increase thyroid follicular cell proliferation, whereas those microsomal enzyme inducers that do not increase serum TSH— that is, 3-methylcholanthrene (3MC) and Aroclor 1254 (PCB)—do not increase thyroid follicular cell proliferation. Deiodination does not appear to be the reason why serum T3 concentrations are maintained in microsomal enzyme inducer—treated rats. We have also shown that those microsomal enzyme inducers that increase serum TSH increase T3 UDP-glucuronosyltransferase (UGT) activity, whereas those microsomal enzyme inducers that do not increase serum TSH do not increase T3 UGT activity. This fi nding suggests that induction of T3 glucuronidation, rather than T4 glucuronidation, mediates increases in serum TSH of microsomal enzyme inducer treated rats.
PEArL: A Systems Approach to Demonstrating Authenticity in Information Systems Design
Authors: Champion D. , Stowell F. A.
Published: July 2002

The process of information systems (IS) design has been dominated by the demands inherent in providing a technical solution to a perceived problem or need. Engineering IS design methods applied in order to satisfy the problem situation tend to have a preoccupation with verifying specifications as being mathematically correct. Difficulties arise when the ideas underpinning verification are extended in an attempt to ‘prove’ the validity of a proposed design for an IS. A pure engineering approach does not facilitate a response to the subjective elements within social situations, which experience has shown to be essential in demonstrating the pertinence of new designs to those concerned. We suggest that, by applying interpretivist systems ideas, it is possible to support concerned individuals in reflecting upon crucial aspects of the inquiry, enabling those individuals to judge the relevance or ‘authenticity’ of the learning, according to their own values and beliefs. The elements of participants, engagement, authority, relationships and learning are suggested as being crucial. These make up the mnemonic PEArL, which is offered as an aide-mémoire for those concerned with IS design.
After the Goldrush: Deconstructing the Myths of the dot.com Market
Authors: Howcroft Debra
Published: July 2002

Many would claim that the development of electronic commerce is reshaping almost all industries, even to the extent that we are undergoing a paradigm shift. This enthusiasm represents a speculative bubble, what economists would describe as ‘mania’, as we witness increasing numbers of firms embracing the need for an on-line presence, despite the absence of both profits and sales. The recent turn of events, which is referred to as the ‘ dot.com implosion’, indicates that the rapid profit growth that was initially projected is unlikely to be achieved by many. As the technology markets have crashed along with a number of high-profile dot.com collapses, numerous investors have almost turned off from funding this sector. This should come as little surprise. What is of interest is why myriad investors were drawn into financially supporting these start-ups in the first instance. This paper aims to focus on the concept of business-to-consumer commerce and uses mythology for providing some explanation as to why so many investors were lured into participating in the dot.com share bubble.
Explaining Intranet use with the Technology Acceptance Model
Authors: Horton Robin P. , Buck Tamsin , Waterson Patrick E. , Clegg Chris W.
Published: July 2002

This paper considers the application of the technology acceptance model (TAM) in explaining intranet usage in two organizations. The TAM was originally developed for explaining technology acceptance and has since been successfully applied to a number of technologies. Its suitability for modelling intranet use is considered here. The model is tested in two UK companies from the banking and engineering sectors. Study 1 finds that the TAM may be valuable as a tool for helping with analysing and understanding intranet usage. The second study indicates that its applicability may be variable between intranets and demonstrates that self-report and actual measures of usage are not interchangeable when applying such a model. The findings have implications for previous and current research employing the TAM and for intranet research in general.
Influence of Irrelevant Information on Human Performance: Effects of S-R Association Strength and Relative Timing
Authors: Lu Chen-Hui , Proctor Robert W.
Published: July 2002

Six experiments examined effects of stimulus-response (S-R) association strength and relative timing on the magnitude of consistency effects for irrelevant information in Stroop-like tasks. Keypresses were made to two-dimensional stimuli (a colour or location word surrounded by a coloured rectangle or arrow), with the irrelevant information presented simultaneously with or prior to the relevant information. With simultaneous presentation, irrelevant information affected performance regardless of whether its S-R association was weak or strong, if the relevant S-R association was weak (e.g., colour word to keypress). However, a weak irrelevant S-R association (location word to keypress) had little effect when paired with a strong relevant S-R association (arrow direction to keypress), except when the stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) between the irrelevant and relevant information was 300 ms. When the relevant information was colour, the effect of an irrelevant colour word persisted at a 500-ms SOA but that of an irrelevant physical colour did not, reflecting different decay functions for irrelevant verbal and non-verbal information. The persisting effect of an irrelevant colour word was reduced by articulatory suppression and eliminated at extended SOAs of 3 s. The results indicate that whether the consistency effect patterns are symmetric or asymmetric is determined by the relative strengths of the relevant and irrelevant S-R associations, as specified by the criteria of conceptual and mode similarity. The magnitude of the consistency effect is also a function of the temporal overlap of the resulting response activation, which is determined primarily by mode similarity.
Influences of different combinations of conceptual, perceptual, and structural similarity on stimulus-response compatibility
Authors: Proctor Robert W. , Wang Huifang , Vu Kim-Phuong L.
Published: July 2002

This study evaluated the hypothesis that an increase in set-level stimulus-response compatibility produces facilitation for congruent mappings and interference for incongruent mappings. The degree of set-level compatibility was manipulated by varying combinations of conceptual, perceptual, and structural similarity. Experiment 1 varied perceptual similarity, by combining two stimulus codes (spatial, verbal) with two response modalities (manual, vocal) for orthogonal spatial dimensions, which have structural similarity. The element-level mapping effect did not vary as a function of the code-modality relation, in contrast to findings obtained with parallel spatial dimensions, which also have conceptual similarity. Experiment 2 manipulated combinations of conceptual and perceptual similarity by combining vertical and horizontal stimulus and response orientations, using verbal or spatial stimuli and vocal responses. The element-level mapping effect was larger for parallel than orthogonal orientations, with congruent mappings showing facilitation and incongruent mappings showing interference. The largest effect was facilitation for parallel orientations with the verbal-vocal set, consistent with the view that perceptual similarity contributes to performance primarily when responding with the identity of the stimulus. Our results indicate that conceptual similarity, but not perceptual similarity, produces the facilitation/interference pattern suggestive of automatic activation of the corresponding response regardless of mapping.
Goal specificity effects on hypothesis testing in problem solving
Authors: Burns Bruce D. , Vollmeyer Regina
Published: July 2002

Previous research has found that having a nonspecific goal (NSG) leads to better problem solving and transfer than having a specific goal (SG). To distinguish between the various explanations of this effect requires direct evidence showing how a NSG affects a participant's behaviour. Therefore we collected verbal protocols from participants learning to control a linear system consisting of 3 outputs by manipulating 3 inputs. This system was simpler than the one we had used previously, so in Exp. 1 we generalized our earlier goal specificity findings to this system. In Exp. 2 protocol analysis confirmed our prediction (based on dual-space theories of problem solving) that NSG participants focused on hypothesis testing whereas SG participants focused on the goal. However, this difference only emerged over time. We also replicated the goal specificity effect on performance and showed that giving participants a hypothesis to test improved performance.
How not to revisit Highway 61: Negative repetition effects in a post-cue naming task
Authors: Mayall Kate , Humphreys Glyn W. , Kotsanis Sotiris
Published: July 2002

Repetition effects were studied in a post-cue naming task, in which participants were cued to name one of two stimuli following their presentation. When pairs of pictures were repeated in a second block, former distractors (not named in Block 1) were named faster than former targets (named in Block 1). This negative repetition effect was not found when two words rather than two pictures were used or when a semantic categorization task was used with two pictures. From this we conclude that the effect reflects a process of mapping from a semantic representation to a name. Negative repetition was not found with a simultaneous selection cue, suggesting that it arose only when there was competition for name selection. It was also dependent on memory for previous acts of semantic naming. We propose that negative repetition reflects a form of speech monitoring that is applied when there is competition in the process of mapping from semantic to name representations.
Examining the activity-distribution model of visual attention with exogenous cues and targets
Authors: Pratt Jay , Quilty Lena
Published: July 2002

LaBerge and his co-workers (e.g., LaBerge & Brown, 1986, 1989; LaBerge, Carlson, Williams, & Bunney, 1997) used an experimental method consisting of three rapid successive displays, each requiring a difficult letter discrimination, to show that visual attention is best accounted for with an activity-distribution model rather than a moving-spotlight model. The present study sought to further this line of investigation by inserting exogenous cues and targets, often used in studies that have found support for the moving-spotlight model, into the basic method used by LeBerge and colleagues. The results from three experiments were consistent with the activity-distribution model and not with the moving-spotlight model.
Attention shifts and memory averaging
Authors: Kerzel Dirk
Published: July 2002

When observers are asked to localize the final position of a moving stimulus, judgements may be influenced by additional elements that are presented in the visual scene. Typically, judgements are biased toward a salient non-target element. It has been assumed that the non-target element acts as a landmark and attracts the remembered final target position. The present study investigated the effects of briefly flashed non-target elements on localization performance. Similar to landmark attraction, localization was biased toward these elements. However, an influence was only noted if the distractor was presented at the time of target disappearance or briefly thereafter. It is suggested that memory traces of distracting elements are only averaged with the final target position if they are highly activated at the time the target vanishes.
The formation of structurally relevant units in artificial grammar learning
Authors: Perruchet Pierre , Vinter Annie , Pacteau Chantal , Gallego Jorge
Published: July 2002

A total of 78 adult participants were asked to read a sample of strings generated by a finite state grammar and, immediately after reading each string, to mark the natural segmentation positions with a slash bar. They repeated the same task after a phase of familiarization with the material, which consisted, depending on the group involved, of learning items by rote, performing a short term matching task, or searching for the rules of the grammar. Participants formed the same number of cognitive units before and after the training phase, thus indicating that they did not tend to form increasingly large units. However, the number of different units reliably decreased, whatever the task that participants had performed during familiarization. This result indicates that segmentation was increasingly consistent with the structure of the grammar. A theoretical account of this phenomenon, based on ubiquitous principles of associative memory and learning, is proposed. This account is supported by the ability of a computer model implementing those principles, PARSER, to reproduce the observed pattern of results. The implications of this study for developmental theories aimed at accounting for how children become able to parse sensory input into physically and linguistically relevant units are discussed.
Influence of Connectives on Language Comprehension: Eye tracking Evidence for Incremental Interpretation
Authors: Traxler Matthew J. , Bybee Michael D. , Pickering Martin J.
Published: July 2002

An eye-tracking experiment investigated whether incremental interpretation applies to interclausal relationships. According to Millis and Just's (1994) delayed-integration hypothesis, interclausal relationships are not computed until the end of the second clause, because the processor needs to have two full propositions before integration can occur. We investigated the processing of causal and diagnostic sentences (Sweetser, 1990; Tversky & Kahneman, 1982) that contained the connective because. Previous research (Traxler, Sanford, Aked, & Moxey, 1997) has demonstrated that readers have greater difficulty processing diagnostic sentences than causal sentences. Our results indicated that difficulty processing diagnostic sentences occurred well before the end of the second clause. Thus comprehenders appear to compute interclausal relationships incrementally.
Generalization in Human Category Learning: A Connectionist Account of Differences in Gradient after Discriminative and Non discriminative Training
Authors: Wills A.J. , McLaren I.P.L.
Published: July 2002

Two experiments are reported that investigate the difference in gradient of generalization observed between one-category (non-discriminative) and two-category (discriminative) training. Extrapolating from the results of a number of animal learning studies, it was predicted that the gradient should be steeper under discriminative training. The first experiment confirms this basic prediction for the stimuli used, which were novel, prototype-structured, and constructed from 12 symbols positioned on a grid. An explanation for the effect, based on the Rescorla-Wagner theory of Pavlovian conditioning (Rescorla & Wagner, 1972), is that under non-discriminative training “incidental stimuli” have significant control over responding, whereas under discriminative training they do not. Incidental stimuli are those aspects of the stimulus, or the surrounding context, that are not differentially reinforced under discriminative training. This explanation leads to the prediction that a comparable effect of blocked versus intermixed discriminative training should also be found. This prediction is disconfirmed by the second experiment. An alternative model, still based on the Rescorla Wagner theory but with the addition of a decision mechanism comprising a threshold unit and a competitive network system, is proposed, and its ability to predict both the choice probabilities and the pattern of response times found is evaluated via simulation.
Is Subjective Shortening in Human Memory Unique to Time Representations?
Authors: Wearden J.H. , Parry A. , Stamp L.
Published: July 2002

Three experiments compared forgetting of the duration of a bar-like visual stimulus with forgetting of its length. The main aim of the experiments was to investigate whether subjective shortening (a decrease in the subjective magnitude of a stimulus as its retention interval increased) was observable in length judgements as well as in time judgements, where subjective shortening has been often observed previously. On all trials of the three experiments, humans received two briefly presented coloured bars, separated by adelay ranging from 1 to 10 s, and the bars could differ in length, duration of presentation, or both. In Experiment 1 two groups of subjects made either length or duration judgements, and subjective shortening-type forgetting functions were observed only for duration. Experiments 2 and 3 used the same general procedure, but the stimuli judged could differ both in length and duration within a trial, and different subject groups (Experiment 2) or the same subjects in two conditions (Experiment 3) made either length or duration judgements of stimuli, which were on average physically identical. Subjective shortening was only found with duration, and never with length, supporting the view that subjective shortening may be unique to time judgements.
Influence of Dorsolateral Periaqueductal Grey (DLPAG) Lesions on Contextual Conditioning with Massed and Distributed Shock
Authors: Klassen Jake J. , Williams Douglas A. , Bolster Bruce , Tait Robert W.
Published: July 2002

Three experiments investigated the conditions under which electrolytic lesions of the dorsolateral periaqueductal grey (dlPAG) facilitate conditioned defensive freezing in the rat (Rattus norvegicus). Experiment 1 found that dlPAG lesions placed before context-shock pairings facilitated conditioned defensive freezing with massed but not distributed shock. No such effect was found in Experiment 2, when the lesions were placed after context-shock pairings. Experiment 3 found that dlPAG lesions facilitated subsequent conditioning with massed but not a single shock. In addition, no differences in sensitivity to thermal or shock pain were evident in lesioned and unlesioned rats. Taken together, these results are consistent with the suggestion that dlPAG activation interferes with the processing of contextual cues during association formation.
The Location and Interpretation of the Bisection Point
Authors: Allan Lorraine G.
Published: July 2002

In atemporal bisectiontask with humans, the observer is required to decide whether a probe duration (t) is more similar to the short referent (S), an R S response, or to the long referent (L), an R L response. Temporal bisection yields a psychometric function relating the proportion of long responses, P(R L), to probe duration t. The value of t at which R S and R L occur with equal frequency, P(RL) =.5, is referred to as the bisection point, T 1/2. Bisection models usually interpret T 1/2 as identifying the value of t that is equally confusable with S and L, but they differ in their predictions for the location of T 1/2. The present paper presents new data relevant to the location and interpretation of T 1/2. The data indicate that the empirical values usually are biased, the biases being influenced by duration range, L:S ratio, and probe spacing. Moreover, the biases often are not consistent across observers. It is concluded that empirical values of T 1/2 should not be interpreted as indicating the value of t that is equally confusable with S and L.
Analysis of the Perceptual Learning Effect in Flavour Aversion Learning: Evidence for Stimulus Differentiation
Authors: Mondragón Esther , Hall Geoffrey
Published: July 2002

Rats received exposure to two compound flavours, AX and BX, where A and B were sucrose and saline and X was acid. For group intermixed (I), exposure consisted of alternating trials with AX and BX; group blocked (B) received a block of AX trials and a separate block of BX trials. Experiment 1 showed that generalization to BX after conditioning with AX was less profound in group I than in group B. Separate examination of the elements of the compound showed that the source of this difference lay in the strength acquired by the X element. X acquired less strength in group I than in group B (Experiments 1 and 2), whereas for the A element (Experiments 3 and 4) the reverse pattern was obtained. These results support the proposal that the perceptual learning effect (restricted generalization from AX to BX in group I) depends on a process that enhances the effectiveness of unique stimulus elements (A and B) and reduces that of common elements (such as X).
Successive Positive Contrast in One-Way Avoidance Learning
Authors: Cándido Antonio , Maldonado Antonio , Rodríguez Alicia , Morales Alberto
Published: July 2002

The main finding of these experiments was a positive contrast effect in one-way avoidance learning. Experiment 1 showed that increasing safety time during one-way avoidance training led to improved performance, surpassing that of a control group that had received the high reward (safe time) from the beginning of training. Experiment 2 showed that a similar positive contrast effect occurred when the time spent in the danger compartment before the onset of the warning signal was shortened. These results suggest that time spent in a safe context acts as a reinforcer of the avoidance response; however, its incentive value depends not only on its duration, but also on the length of the time spent in the danger compartment before the onset of the signal. Overall, results also suggest that the avoidance response is a mixture of flight (motivated by fear) and approach (to a safe place) behaviour. The specific weight of the flight or approach component may be a function of the time and the amount of activation of each emotional state (fear or relief) due to opponent homeostatic compensatory processes that occur in the danger and safe compartments during one-way avoidance learning.