LaGuardia Community College

Abstract Attention generally enhances both visual performance and subjective appearance. Yet, at matched performance, unattended items can appear more visible than attended ones, a phenomenon called “subjective inflation.” Inflation, however, has only been narrowly tested near detection thresholds, making it unclear whether attention regularly dissociates objective and subjective aspects of perception with broad implications for everyday vision—where attention is usually unevenly distributed—and for studies of consciousness. Here, in four experiments, we tested inattentional inflation over varied stimulus and task conditions, spanning threshold to suprathreshold regimes. Using a new analytic approach to relate objective and subjective reports over full psychometric functions, we measured subjective inflation over wide ranges of matched performance. In all experiments, inattention inflated subjective stimulus visibility. But when subjective reports specified visibility of the task-relevant feature, we only found evidence for inflation at threshold. Thus, what we think we see may regularly dissociate from what we can visually discriminate.

Abstract Blindness provides a unique model for investigating brain plasticity in response to sensory deprivation. While structural changes in both gray and white matter have been widely documented, particularly in cases of early or congenital visual deprivation, gray matter studies have traditionally focused on cortical thickness, often finding cortical thickening in posterior regions. However, other aspects of gray matter integrity, such as cortical myelin content, remain underexplored. In this study, we examined the effects of visual deprivation on cortical structure in a cohort of congenitally blind individuals who received eye surgery during adolescence, expanding beyond conventional measures to include cortical thickness, curvature, and T1-weighted signal intensity. This multi-faceted approach offers a more comprehensive view of cortical adaptations to congenital sensory deprivation.While blindness offers valuable insights into sensory-driven brain plasticity, an intriguing and unresolved question is whether structural plasticity reverses after sight restoration, enabling typical visual processing circuits to develop despite the initial period of deprivation. To address this, we assessed the effect of sight-recovering eye surgery on gray matter changes. Critically, individuals in this cohort received surgery after the closure of the sensitive period for visual development. We did not find evidence of gray matter changes after surgery. However, in a previous study conducted on the same cohort, we reported that notable plasticity in white matter emerged in this same population. These results suggest that white matter alterations, rather than gray matter changes, may potentially serve as a biomarker of structural plasticity following sight restoration, even beyond the sensitive developmental window.

The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) affirms that millions of people across the globe are displaced annually because of “persecution, conflict, violence, and human rights violations.” Given the abrupt departures from their countries of origin and their time in resettlement camps, these migrants are typically denied access to educational opportunities. They thus arrive in countries like the United States as students with limited or significant interruptions in their formal educations (SLIFE). They then access adult education, often ESOL, programs that are typically ill-equipped to address their unique needs and staffed by instructors who are ill-prepared to provide impactful instruction. The purpose of this inquiry was to explore the extant research literature to formulate policies and practices that could be implemented to address the needs of adult SLIFE, ideally in more culturally responsive, trauma-informed, and decolonized ways. In addition to Universal Design for Learning (UDL), the approach most often cited in this literature review was the Mutually Adaptive Learning Paradigm (MALP) as devised by DeCapua and Marshall (2023). Using this paradigm and its corollaries as a conceptual foundation, the authors offer practical suggestions regarding administrative policies and instructional practices for adult education programs to address the psychosocial and instructional needs of adult SLIFE more effectively. Areas for future investigation and implementation were identified, including incorporating these best practices into preservice preparation and continuous professional development for instructors of adults, especially those of emergent bi/multilingual learners

Abstract Titian's Bacchus and Ariadne represents not only Bacchus' attraction to Ariadne, as has long been recognized, but also his infatuation with a boy‐satyr, Ampelos, who struts at the centre of the composition. The little satyr's identity, recognized in the seventeenth century, but overlooked by modern scholars, is confirmed by newly revealed pentimenti. Titian was probably the first to embed this homoerotic love story in a painting depicting the Bacchus and Ariadne myth. The textual impetus for Titian's inclusion of the Ampelos myth was Nonnos' Dionysiaca. Guided by Nonnos' text, Titian alludes not only to Bacchus' love for Ampelos, but to the boy's transformation into a grapevine. His metamorphosis prompted Bacchus' discovery of wine, which precipitated his identity as the god of wine, hence his prominent position in the painting. Titian's portrayal of Bacchus' overwhelming ardour for the negligently dressed Ariadne, along with his former dalliance with the engaging, rosy‐cheeked boy‐satyr Ampelos, was never meant to represent celestial or marital love as has been claimed. Such an ennobling interpretation is disproved through an analysis of contemporary descriptions of the picture and its ancient literary sources.