The Development of Attention to Objects and Scenes: From Object-Biased to Unbiased

Selective attention is the ability to focus on goal-relevant information while filtering out irrelevant information. This work examined the development of selective attention to natural scenes and objects with a rapid serial visual presentation paradigm. Children (N = 69, ages 4–6 years) and adults (N = 80) were asked to attend to either objects or scenes, while ignoring the other type of stimulus. A multinomial processing tree model was used to decompose selective attention into focusing and filtering components. The results suggest that attention is object-biased in children, due to difficulty filtering attention to goal-irrelevant objects, whereas attention in adults is relatively unbiased. The findings suggest important developmental asymmetries in selective attention to scenes and objects.     

Experience and maturation: The contribution of co-occurrence regularities in language to the development of semantic organization

With development knowledge becomes organized according to semantic links, including early-developing associative (e.g., juicy–apple) and gradually developing taxonomic links (e.g., apple–pear). Word co-occurrence regularities may foster these links: Associative links may form from direct co-occurrence (e.g., juicy–apple), and taxonomic links from shared co-occurrence (e.g., apple and pear co-occur with juicy). Four experiments (2017–2020) investigated this possibility with 4- to 8-year-olds (N = 148, 82 female) and adults (N = 116, 35 female) in a U.S. city with 58.6% White; 29.0% Black, and 5.8% Asian demographics. Results revealed earlier development of the abilities to form direct (ds > 0.536) than the abilities to form shared co-occurrence-based links (ds > 1.291). We argue that the asynchronous development of abilities to form co-occurrence-based links may explain developmental changes in semantic organization.     

Effects of differently polarized microwave radiation on the microscopic structure of the nuclei in human fibroblasts

To investigate the influence of microwave radiation on the human fibroblast nuclei, the effects of three variants of electromagnetic wave polarization, linear and left-handed and right-handed elliptically polarized, were examined. Experimental conditions were: frequency (f) 36.65 GHz, power density (P) at the surface of exposed object 1, 10, 30, and 100 μW/cm², exposure time 10 s. Human fibroblasts growing in a monolayer on a cover slide were exposed to microwave electromagnetic radiation. The layer of medium that covered cells during microwave exposure was about 1 mm thick. Cells were stained immediately after irradiation by 2% (w/v) orcein solution in 45% (w/v) acetic acid. Experiments were made at room temperature (25 °C), and control cell samples were processed in the same conditions. We assessed heterochromatin granule quantity (HGQ) at 600× magnification. Microwave irradiation at the intensity of 1 μW/cm² produced no effect, and irradiation at the intensities of 10 and 100 μW/cm² induced an increase in HGQ. More intense irradiation induced more chromatin condensation. The right-handed elliptically polarized radiation revealed more biological activity than the left-handed polarized one.     

Blockbusters and market expansion: evidence from the motion picture industry

Like other cultural industries, the theatrical film industry is subject to the ‘blockbuster effect’, where popular products often dominate their competition by orders of magnitude over relatively short-run time horizons. This paper investigates this particular feature of the industry and the implication for overall market size. Using simple regression analysis, a positive relationship between (product-level) market concentration and market size is established using weekly box office revenue data from the US motion picture industry. This empirical evidence supports a simple theoretical model of heterogeneous consumers who selectively participate in the market.     

Education and the problem of social inequality in Russia

The socioeconomic changes that took place in Russia in the 1990s defined both the ideology and practice of educational reform. The answer to the question: ‘Was the educational system democratized?’, is of key importance in evaluating the social outcomes of the educational reforms. In this paper, I discuss three aspects of the problem of inequality in school education in Russia: (a) social stratification and institutional changes in the school system; (b) regional features and inequality in education; and (c) the school as the site of social differentiation. The first and second aspects are concerned with macro tendencies, and I use official statistical data in discussing these. The third aspect has a socio-psychological orientation, and here I draw on material from research undertaken by the Centre of Sociology of Education in the Russian Academy of Education.     

Capture zone of linear strategies in interception problems with variable structure dynamics

The paper considers planar interception engagements against maneuverable targets using a linearized kinematic model with constant velocities. Both the interceptor and the target have bounded controls and first-order linear dynamics. Due to the linearization, the duration of the interception is prescribed. The target dynamics is fixed, but the interceptor has variable structure dynamics, switching from one mode to another once during the engagement. For such engagements the capture zone of a given linear feedback control is constructed. Numerical examples demonstrate that proper change of the interceptor dynamic mode leads to an enlarged capture zone.