Brain, Behavior, and the Emergence of Cognitive Competence

A program-project grant supported by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (HD-38051)

Research Updates:

RESEARCH UPDATE - APRIL 2004

From April 8 to April 11, 2004, investigators involved in the B2EC2 program-project again attended the annual meeting of theSouthern Society for Philosophy and Psychology (SSPP) in New Orleans. This was a special conference for a number of reasons. In addition to being the 100th anniversary of the organization, LRC director David Washburn was the president of the society for 2003-2004. On Friday evening, Dr. Washburn gave the presidential address entitled "Requesting that you attend:
Constraint competition and the control of attention."

Papers from other B2EC2 researchers covered a diverse range of topics including attention, circadian rhythm, delay of gratification, numerical cognition, brain asymmetry, perception, and categorization.

In the Key Barkley Symposium on the History of Psychology, James Pate presented a paper entitled "Early Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology Programs and Early Program Participants."

In a session on comparative psychology, Timothy Flemming, Frances James, and David Washburn co-authored a paper entitled "Morning Monkeys, Evening Monkeys?" that discussed circadian rhythms in monkeys. Flemming was awarded a travel grant from the Society for this paper. Emily Harris and David A. Washburn co-authored a paper entitled "How Many Mazes Did I Run? Estimation of Trial Number by Monkeys" that dealt with numerical cognition in monkeys. Claudio Cantalupo presented a paper entitled "Behavioral correlates of cerebral asymmetries in great apes" that dealt with issues of lateralization in the great apes.

In a session of former Griffith Award winners (organized by Claudio Cantalupo), Michael Beran presented a paper entitled "Continued Studies of Delay of Gratification in Nonhuman Primates" that dealt with self-control and delay of gratification in chimpanzees.

In a session on cognitive psychology, Tom Putney and David Washburn co-authored a paper entitled "Executive and Attention Factors of the NASA TLX." Frances James, Timothy Flemming and David Washburn co-authored a paper entitled "Temporal Variation in Attention Skills." Pamela Rice, David Washburn, and Lauren Taglialatela co-authored a paper entitled "Do People Know Their Own Attention Strengths?" These three papers dealt with issues of attention in adult humans. David Smith presented a paper entitled "Getting the Kinks out of Formal Models of Categorization" that addressed issues of categorization by humans, and Lauren Taglialatela and Jared Taglialatela co-authored a paper entitled "Conceptual and Perceptual Processes Related to the Category Effect in Visual Search" that addressed issues related to perception.