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- P-ISSN1226-9654
- E-ISSN2733-466X
- KCI
ISSN : 1226-9654
Vol.24 No.4
Abstract
This study investigated the relation among response time, cerebral cortex's activities and empathy level during mentalizing and emotional inference in comic strip task. Experimental participants were separated into high empathy group and low empathy group by their interpersonal reactivity index score. Comic strip task consisted of mentalizing condition, positive emotion inference condition, and negative emotion inference condition. Base line was recorded before performance of task. Reaction time and EEG were measured during performance of comic strip task. According to the results, on response time, both high empathy group and low empathy group responded more quickly to positive emotion inference condition and negative emotion inference condition than mentalizing condition. On the result of cerebral cortex's activities, mirror neuron system, medial prefrontal gyrus, anterior and posterior cingulate gyrus, fusiform gyrus, insula and parahippocampal gyrus of high empathy group were activated in all comic strip condition. According to the results of response time and cerebral cortex's activities, emotion inference is triggered more quickly than mentalizing, but cerebral cortices related to emotion inference are overlapped with that related to mentalizing. In addtion, this study suggest activities of parahippocampal gyrus and posterior cingulate show that there are integration of cognitive information and emotional information and association with memorial representation in empathy process. Finally, the relation between individual personality and physiological difference was discussed.
Abstract
Syllable frequency effect plays an important role in finding evidence supporting the hypothesis, incorporating syllable unit between letter and whole word level. The syllable frequency effect is defined as the inhibitory effect of words starting with high syllable frequency in lexical desition tasks. According to some studies, syllable frequency can be divided into two values. First is the type frequency which indicates the number of syllabic neighbors sharing the first syllable of a target word. Second is the token frequency which means the accumulated word frequency of the syllabic neighbors. Although type and token syllable frequency can make different effect, there is no evidence in Korean. This study conducted the meta-analyses to access whether the inhibitory syllable frequency effect could be expected by syllabic type or token frequency. The results showed that the syllabic token frequency played a critical role in the inhibitory effect in Korean syllable frequency effect and we explained the role of token and type frequency in visual word recognition model.
Abstract
The lateralized readiness potential (LRP) that uses the contralateral organization of motor control is derived from event-related brain potentials (ERPs). Because of the high temporal resolution of the technique, it has been a beneficial research method investigating mental chronometry in human information processing. In particular, studies using the LRP have shown evidence that information flows continuously and concurrently in the brain. In this review, I introduced the background of the LRP emergence, basic principles behind its arithmetic computations, LRP types, data analysis and statistical tests. Finally, I reviewed studies in which the LRP was used and applied for various purposes, and suggested that the LRP can contribute to expanding the scope of brain research in the country.
Abstract
The human visual system is extremely sensitive to motion stimuli. Especially when motion signals carry complex movements generated by animals or humans, most people are readily capable of extracting information of perceptual, psychological, and even social implications. Therefore, the visual recognition of such ‘biological motion’ is not only crucial for survival, but also important for developing social skills and adaptive behaviors. Considering this importance, several past studies have revealed some unique characteristics of biological motion stimuli, perceptual processing of biological motion and its underlying neural mechanisms using various psychophysical methods and brain-imaging techniques. More recent studies expanded this issue to examine people with mental illness exhibiting social dysfunctions, raising the question of whether biological motion perception could serve as an endophenotypic marker of impaired social cognition. This article reviews those advances and suggests possible future investigations and clinical application.
Abstract
The present study examined Visual Working Memroy (VWM) storage efficiency when items with different features are displayed across different positions. In separate-memory condition of Experiment 1, either colored boxes or orientation bars were displayed respectively on either side of the visual fields as memory items whereas the items were all colored boxes or orientations bar in a control condition. Subjects were asked to remember the features of the memory items followed by a brief memory delay. After the delay, test items were displayed and subjects reported presence or absence of a change in either color or orientation across the memory and test items. The results showed that change detection performance was significantly higher in the separate memory condition than the control condition. Also, the difference became more apparent if the set size became larger. In Experiment 2, the items in separate-memory condition were replaced with colored orientation bars (i.e., conjunction items). The change in the test items could occur in either color or orientation dimension, but the side of visual fields for its occurrence was designated exclusively for each features (e.g., left for color vs. right for orientation). In the control condition (i.e., integrate-memory condition), no such constraint was present and either color or orientation change could occur randomly across the sides of visual fields. The results showed that the difference in change detection performance between separate-memory and the control conditions was greatly reduced, and no differential effect of the setsize manipulation was observed across each condition. These results support the weak-object hypothesis where items in VWM are represented flexibly either as a form of well-bound features or of independently-stored discrete features. rather than the strict models according to integrated-object or parallel-independent storage hypothesis.
Abstract
Remembering has been a traditional topic of cognitive research since the foundation of psychology, but it was only over few decades that social aspects of episodic memory have taken an increasing amount of interest. Social aspects of memory can be easily observed in everyday events of remembering, as people often have their memories influenced and updated while interacting with others. We focus on this normative and informational conforming processes of memory, so called memory conformity, introducing previous studies about memory conformity in social settings. Normative influence is caused by social reinforcement learning while informational influence is triggered by urge of achieving high memory accuracy. In our review, moderators of memory conformity are discussed as well as individual differences which can affect the two conforming processes. Noticeable neuroscience experiments of memory conformity researches are also discussed. This review will provide an overall insight into how social interaction can alter memories and on delineating the various psychological and neural underpinnings of memory conformity.
Abstract
Based on the assumption that emotional contagion by facial mimicry is a key factor in emotional empathy, this study examined whether facial mimicry was related to emotional contagion and emotional empathy. Twenty-five 4th to 6th graders were participated. Facial electromyographic (EMG) activity in the zygomaticus major and corrugator supercilii muscle regions and heart rate activity were studied during exposure to dynamic happy and sad expressions. Emotional contagion was measured by asking children to report their emotional states while they were looking at the dynamic expressions. Emotional empathy was assessed by the emotional empathy subscales of self-report questionnaires for children; IRI, BEI and EQ-C. The zygomaticus muscle activity was increased to happy expressions, but the corrugator muscle activity was not increased above the significance level to sad expressions. Differences in mean muscle activity at the zygomaticus major between exposure to happy and sad expressions correlated positively with emotional contagion and the emotional empathy subscale scores. In contrast, the correlations between the differences in mean muscle activity at the corrugator and the emotional empathy subscale scores were not consistent. The present results suggest that the facial mimicry is a key component in the process of emotional empathy
Abstract
An event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiment was conducted to test the effects of categorical relationship between memory items on hippocampal activation during encoding and retrieval of long-term associative memory. The experiment alternated a learning and a test phase eight times in the scanner. Each phase presented 12 associative pairs. During a test phase, a half of the learned pairs were repeated and the other half were rearranged. Participants determined if each pair was intact or rearranged. The between-domain association condition presented face-building pairs and the within-domain association condition presented either face-face or building-building pairs. As results, although behavioral performance of associative recognition was not different between the two conditions, many clusters in the hippocampus and the other brain areas showed greater activation in the between-domain association condition both during learning and test phases, confirming and extending a previous observation (Piekema et al., 2009). In the hippocampus, while such clusters were not spatially overlapped between learning and test phases, the clusters defined in the learning phase produced patterns of activation similar to the test phase. Overall, the current study demonstrates that perceptual and conceptual similarity of memory items affects hippocampal activity and suggests that theoretical and empirical understanding about domain is useful to investigate binding functions in the hippocampus.