No abstract

Successful performance of a vigilance task in a particular modality can be affected by the allocation of attentional resources to other cognitive processes using same or different modalities. The present study investigated whether loss of hearing affects visual vigilance task performance and also if it's a function of increased task complexity. A sample of 30 adolescents (15 with hearing loss and 15 with normal hearing) were selected by matching them in pairs according to their working memory functioning and other relevant organismic variables. A software program measured the performance on vigilance task with varying task complexity levels. Analysis of the obtained data indicates that the effect of hearing impairment on visual vigilance is moderated by task complexity and that is contingent to attentional resources. Here, deprivation in hearing ability negatively affects functioning of visual vigilance significantly only when the task complexity increases. But no significant differences are observed in hearing and hearing impaired adolescents when the task demanded less attentional resources.

The spotlight regarding the concept of vigilance somehow was limited to the national security for decades. With technological advancement the concept of vigilance has attained importance in industrial set up. But vigilance as a cognitive aspect in regular life was somehow neglected throughout these years. An automated warning system is a sensory stimulation meant to reduce errors in highly loaded cognitive tasks. Previous research findings suggest that performance efficiency is uninfluenced by warning (Helton et. al., 2008) or a higher error of omission reported in the presence of warning signals (Helton et. al., 2011).  But how it affects cognitive process like vigilance is rarely been explored. The present study attempts to reveal the effect of warning on vigilance. Participants were 95 adults chosen from metropolitan areas of Kolkata, India. Participant’s Intelligence, processing speed and accuracy along with their psychiatric morbidity was controlled statistically. Finally, the participants were given a visual vigilance task using a software program (Panda & Banerjee, 2011). Whenever the participants made two consecutive errors, an automated warning signal appeared. Results indicate a significant effect of automated warning on the false alarm scores. The means reflect a lower false alarm score when automated warning was given. The effect size indicates 35.3% of the change in false alarm score can be attributed by automated warning. The findings of the present study proposes if we can incorporate warning signals to provide feedback to the participants during performance of a visual vigilance task the performance accuracy can be increased.  The finding of the study can be used in defense services, industrial set up as well as during performing day to day cognitive tasks that demand sustained attention or vigilance.

There has been a stigma attached to diseases of the skin for centuries. A  healthy  normal  skin  is  essential  for  a  person’s  physical  and  mental  well-being  and  sense  of  self –confidence.  It   has  been  estimated   that  approximately   one  third  of  the   patients  presenting  with  the  dermatological  disorders  have  some  psychological  co-morbidity (Rosenberg, 1960).  Literature has shown that patients with vitiligo and acne are mostly affected by their psychosocial wellbeing, whereas psoriasis and atopic dermatitis patients are affected by both physical and psychosocial well-being. Self-evaluative salience reflects the importance of appearance to one’s sense of self-worth.  A  person  who  is  self-evaluative  define  or measure  themselves  and  their  self- worth  by  their  physical   appearance  and it  deem  influential  in  their  social  and  emotional  experiences. The present study aimed to evaluate any difference between appearance schema self-evaluative salience among the patients of psoriasis, acne, vitiligo and their controlled counterparts. Total 200 samples, 50 patients (Mean age = 32.8 years, SD= 3.97 years) for each group were chosen following purposive sampling technique from Department of Dermatology, R. G. Kar Medical College, Kolkata, India. The Appearance Schemas Inventory-Revised (ASI-R) was used to measure evaluation of appearance schema of the participants. Results indicate a significantly higher salience of self-evaluative appearance schema in patients with acne, followed by patients with psoriasis, vitiligo and their controlled counterparts. The findings indicate that the control group outperforms their clinical counterparts significantly in self evaluative appearance schema measure.  The effect size measure indicates a small impact of dermatological disorder on self-evaluative appearance schema, indicating though prevails the stigma of dermatological disorders in our society; the patients acquire effective coping strategies to boost their self esteem. Their body image is not primarily guided by evaluation of their appearances. To support this view, it is found that though among these three diseases social stigma is associated more with vitiligo, but the patients with acne have a higher self-evaluative appearance schema. The pattern of the effects of dermatological disorder on self evaluative appearance schema is discussed

Dual coding theory states that information is stored by visual and verbal channel separately. During formation of imagery the visual and verbal channels are used distinctly. The study explores how retrieval of visual imageries of natural scenes varies with the variation in representational forms of encoding and recognition. Each stimulus set contained two different cards for encoding and recognition purpose. Both encoding and recognition of visual scenes were varied in both pictorial (picture form) and linguistic (word form) mode. Thus four plausible conditions are pictorial encoding associated with pictorial recognition, pictorial encoding and linguistic recognition; linguistic encoding and linguistic recognition and lastly, linguistic encoding with pictorial recognition. The aim of the study is to see whether the mode of object representation influences imagery formation. The aim of the study is to explore which kind of representation benefits recognition of imagery. 40 female University students (21 to 23 years) were selected and randomly assigned in to four experimental conditions. From each participant data was collected in the laboratory set up in a single session. Nine stimulus cards were presented to each subject. Presentation of a single stimulus card in encoding situation was followed by the recognition situation. The two way ANOVA result shows changing the representational forms has significant effects on retrieval.  The present finding supports the notion of Dual coding hypothesis with an additional observation that poor retrieval in case of pictorial recognition when the information has been encoded linguistically.