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Living language and the resonant self
Published in Anthony Korner, Communicative Exchange, Psychotherapy and the Resonant Self, 2020
Phenomenal awareness, in the sense of being able to perceive separate events, occurs in humans over very short time frames, from as little as 20 milliseconds (ms) (Stern, 2004). The presence of the psychological refractory period means that humans can’t make a discrimination until the last one is completed – at least 100–150ms (Edelman & Tononi, 2000). Phenomenal awareness consists in a flow of conscious states each of which has a limited duration (20–150ms). It is associated with a sense of unity, in that each conscious state cannot be further divided (ibid.). In recent work using a stimulus-response paradigm, the conscious recognition of feeling took 500ms (Damasio, 2012, p. 122). Processing a concept takes longer still – about 800ms (ibid.).
Information processing
Published in Andrea Utley, Motor Control, Learning and Development, 2018
Telford (1931) was the first to demonstrate that when people respond to each of two successive stimuli, the response to the second stimulus often becomes slower when the interval between the two stimuli is reduced; i.e. the RT for the second movement is slower than the first. Telford termed this slowing the psychological refractory period (PRP). In a typical PRP experiment, two stimuli are presented (S1, S2) which are separated by a stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA), and the person has to make a response to each of the stimuli. However, as this SOA shortens, the RT to the second stimuli becomes longer. This slowing has been observed in a great variety of tasks, including both RT (Telford 1931) and CRT tasks (Creamer 1963), and although most of the early experiments involved two manual responses, recent work has shown that a PRP effect can be found when the pair of tasks used require different responses (Levy et al. 2006).
ENTRIES A–Z
Published in Philip Winn, Dictionary of Biological Psychology, 2003
(from Latin, refractarius, stubborn) Refractory refers to resistance. For example, the refractory period (or refractory phase) is the very short interval following an ACTION POTENTIAL when a NEURON cannot fire again. In the very short term, no firing is possible (the ABSOLUTE REFRACTORY PERIOD) though this ameliorates with time. The psychological refractory period is the interval following stimulation during which reactions to a second stimulus are longer than normal. The term refractory can also be used adjectivally to describe a variety of conditions: during intervals such as the POST- REINFORCEMENT PAUSE an animal could be described as refractory.
Parallel dual-task processing and task-shielding in older and younger adults: Behavioral and diffusion model results
Published in Experimental Aging Research, 2018
Markus Janczyk, Patrik Mittelstädt, Carolin Wienrich’s
Typically, performing two tasks at the same time induces performance costs in at least one of these tasks. A standard paradigm to investigate dual-tasking in the laboratory is the psychological refractory period (PRP) paradigm. On each trial, two stimuli (S1 and S2) are presented with a varying stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) and require two different responses (R1 and R2). While response times to S1 (RT1) are usually unaffected by the SOA manipulation, response times to S2 (RT2) reduce as SOA increases—the PRP effect (Telford, 1931). To account for this finding, the still widely accepted central bottleneck model was suggested (Pashler, 1994; Welford, 1952). Its crucial assumption is that at any time only one central stage of processing, typically identified as response selection, can be processed. Earlier perceptual and later motor processes, however, can run in parallel with other tasks (see Figure 1(a)). The PRP effect seems rather universal (see Pashler, 1994, for a review) and only few exceptions were reported (see Janczyk, Pfister, Wallmeier & Kunde, 2014). The important point is that according to the central bottleneck model, response selection of Task 2 cannot begin until that of Task 1 has finished; this idle time of waiting is called the cognitive slack. However, there is actually evidence for parallel processing of response selection-related aspects, and the main goal of the present study is to investigate the amount of parallel processing in older adults compared to younger ones. To this end, we will continue by introducing measures of parallel processing in the next section, which is followed by reviewing applications of these measures in aging research and the respective results.
Emotional arousal deficit or emotional regulation bias? An electrophysiological study of age-related differences in emotion perception
Published in Experimental Aging Research, 2018
James R Houston, Joshua W Pollock, Mei-Ching Lien, Philip A Allen
The interest in the P1’s role in emotion processing has also expanded into the adult developmental literature. Mienaltowski et al. (2011) examined the perceptual “boost” experienced in processing probes (i.e., a checkerboard) overlaid onto irrelevant faces expressing different emotions. Younger adults exhibited larger P1 amplitudes from lateral parietal sites in response to angry and happy expressions relative to neutral expressions. By comparison, older adults presented smaller P1 amplitudes in response to angry faces relative to neutral faces, with no P1 differences involving happy expressions. Hilimire, Mienaltowski, Blanchard-Fields, and Corballis (2014) used a similar probe task, but examined ERPs in response to the emotional expressions rather than the probes, and found an emotional expression by age group by channel location interaction at an early time window (110–130 ms) that is considered to be preconscious like the P1. This interaction was driven by younger adults exhibiting greater, positive amplitudes in response to angry and sad faces at frontal sites and to happy faces at posterior sites. Conversely, older adults exhibited greater, positive amplitudes in response to happy faces at frontal sites and to angry and sad faces at posterior sites. Pollock et al. (2012) examined adult age differences in P1 activations in an expression identification task using a psychological refractory period (PRP) paradigm. They found that younger adults, but not older adults, exhibited greater P1 ERP activations in response to faces of angry expressions compared to happy expressions. Given the differences in design (i.e., expression identification, probe identification, etc.) and conflicting results from the previous studies, consensus is yet to be reached regarding the P1 waveform as it relates to emotion processing and cognitive aging.
Circadian and homeostatic modulation of the attentional blink
Published in Chronobiology International, 2019
Carlos Gallegos, Aída García, Candelaria Ramírez, Jorge Borrani, Carolina V. M. Azevedo, Pablo Valdez
Two different phenomena are linked to these restrictions in the processing of a second stimulus: The Psychological Refractory Period (PRP) (Telford 1931) and the Attentional Blink (AB) (Raymond et al. 1992). It is also important to emphasize that different tasks are used to measure each phenomenon. The PRP is an increase in the time (reaction time) required to process a second stimulus occurring within a 500 ms interval of the first stimulus; the interval between the two stimuli is known as Stimulus Onset Asynchrony (SOA). Shorter SOAs produce longer reaction times.