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Current and recent relationship evaluations offer important information about the strength and stability of relationships. The diagnostic value of relationship evaluations should motivate people to accurately recall recent changes in relationship quality (tracking accuracy) but may also increase sensitivity to times of low relationship quality (directional bias). Such a vigilant pattern of tracking accuracy and negatively biased memories of relationship quality should be amplified for those high in attachment anxiety. The current study used repeated assessments to compare memories of relationship quality across several weeks with actual evaluations of relationship quality gathered in prior weeks (787 weekly reports, N = 113, 94% women). People high in attachment anxiety more accurately tracked the ups and downs of past relationship quality, but also remembered times of low relationship quality to be lower than actually reported. People high in attachment anxiety also experienced greater depressed moods across weeks when they remembered their relationship quality more negatively. These results have important implications for understanding inconsistencies in prior research and the links between attachment anxiety and depressed mood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Electrofishing techniques are widely used for the estimation of the size of stream-dwelling fish populations for both fishery management and scientific study. In contrast to multiple pass, population depletion methods, single-pass catch-per-unit-effort ( CPUE) methods are less time-consuming and labour-intensive. A possible issue with the commonly used fixed total time CPUE protocol is that it does not differentiate between the time spent actively fishing and the time incurred while not actively fishing (e.g. removing fish from nets and navigating the site). This issue is likely related to fish density. This study compared two methods of CPUE electrofishing and tested the hypothesis that time spent handling fish and navigating a site can be a source of error in the commonly used fixed total time electrofishing method. Seventy-one sites were sampled across three subcatchments in the Foyle catchment in Northern Ireland. We found a difference in the catch per unit time between the two methods and that this difference increased with fish density. The fixed-time CPUE method also failed to detect a species presence in low-density sites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Five individuals with autism or other developmental disabilities participated in paired-stimulus preference assessments during repeated baseline probes. All subjects initially showed a pronounced bias by typically selecting the stimulus placed in either the left or right position. Biased responding for 3 subjects was eliminated when training trials were conducted in which a stimulus of known lesser quality was presented as one of the choices. Reinforcer-quality training was unsuccessfiil for 2 subjects, as was a condition in which reinforcer magnitude was modified to favor unbiased responding. These subjects' biased responding was eliminated only when a correction procedure (repetition of error trials) was implemented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An orientation component leads to directionally biased paths, with major consequences in animal population redistribution. Classical orientation analyses, which focus on the overall direction of motion, are useless for detecting such a component when the preferred direction is not common to the whole population, but differs from one path to another. In-depth path analyses are required in this case. They consist of determining whether paths are more suitably represented as biased or unbiased random walks. The answer is not easy because most animals' paths show some forward persistence propensity that acts as a purely local directional bias and, hence, blurs the possible occurrence of an additional, consistent bias in a preferred direction. I highlight the key differences between biased and unbiased random walks and the different ways orientation mechanisms can generate a consistent directional bias. 1 then examine the strength and weakness of the available methods likely to detect it. Finally, I introduce a new procedure based on the backward evolution of the beeline distance, from the end of the path, which might correspond to a goal toward which the animal orients itself, to each of the animal's preceding locations. This new procedure proves to be very efficient, as it requires only a small sample of short paths for detecting a possible orientation component. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: With various patterns of whisker deafferentation, C3 whisker stimulation produced divergently shaped metabolic barrel representations in layer IV of the primary somatosensory cortex. Whisker deafferentation results in functional and structural reorganization of the barrels in the primary somatosensory cortex. The present study examines the alteration of the metabolic barrel representations in layer IV with various configurations of selective whisker deafferentation in neonates, using [14C]2-deoxyglucose autoradiography. The deafferentation was produced by unilateral ablation of whiskers, leaving certain follicles intact. Configurations of intact follicles included: (I) row C follicles; (II) B3, C3, and D3 follicles; (III) B3, B4, C3, and C4 follicles; (IV) C2, C3, D2, and D3 follicles. The metabolic C3 barrel representations in layer IV after the deafferentations were found to have expanded only toward the barrel sites in which the corresponding whiskers were ablated, with no expansion toward the neighboring barrels. Expansion toward row D was significantly more pronounced than expansion toward row B, and expansion toward the C2 barrel was significantly more pronounced than expansion toward the C4 barrel. From these results, it can be inferred that asymmetric intrinsic structural connections are reflected in the functional metabolic barrel representation under the condition of neural plasticity in the barrel cortex following whisker deafferentation. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]