bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Spatial Attention in Visual Search for Features and Feature Conjunctions
Authors: Kim Min-Shik , Cave Kyle R.
Published: April 2006

Spatial attention was measured in visual search tasks using a spatial probe Both speed and accuracy measures showed that in a conjunction task, spatial attention was allocated to locations according to the presence of target features Also, contrary to some predictions, spatial attention was used when a clearly distinguishable feature defined the target The results raise questions about any account that assumes separate mechanisms for feature and conjunction search The probe method demonstrated here allows a very direct measurement of attentional allocation, and may uncover aspects of selection not revealed by visual search
Grouping by Proximity and Multistability in Dot Lattices: A Quantitative Gestalt Theory
Authors: Kubovy Michael , Wagemans Johan
Published: April 2006

Gestalt phenomena have long resisted quantification In the spirit of Gestalt field theory, we propose a theory that predicts the probability of grouping by proximity in the six kinds of dot lattices (hexagonal, rhombic, square, rectangular, centered rectangular, and oblique) We claim that the unstable perceptual organization of dot lattices is caused by competing forces that attract each dot to other dots in its neighborhood We model the decline of these forces as a function of distance with an exponential decay function This attraction function has one parameter, the attraction constant Simple assumptions allow us to predict the entropy of the perceptual organization of different dot lattices We showed dot lattices tachistoscopically to 7 subjects, and from the probabilities of the perceived organizations, we calculated the entropy of each lattice for each subject The model fit the data exceedingly well The attraction constant did not vary much over subjects
Overt and Covert Recognition of Faces in Children and Adults
Authors: Newcombe Nora , Lie Eunhui
Published: April 2006

There has been considerable recent interest in covert face-recognition effects In Experiment 1, we adapted a paradigm, previously shown to produce covert recognition effects, to test 5-year-old children Classmates' photographs served as the familiar faces Children showed effects of familiarity on face matching similar to the effects normal adults and prosopagnosics had previously shown for famous faces In Experiment 2, we investigated whether brief familiarization with the photographs used in Experiment I would suffice to produce the effects, in children and adults It did not, even though the exposure did lead to above-chance overt recognition Taken together with previous studies, the data suggest that covert recognition may be doubly dissociable from overt recognition Finding a double dissociation would place constraints on models of face recognition
The Distinctiveness Effect in Social Categorization: You Are What Makes You Unusual
Authors: Nelson Lori J. , Miller Dale T.
Published: April 2006

Three studies tested the hypothesis that people assume that the identities of other people are tied more closely to their distinctive than to their nondistinctive traits In Studies 1 and 3, subjects predicted the preferences of a target person who was a member of both a statistically distinctive and a statistically nondistinctive category (e g, sky diver and tennis player) In Study 2, subjects judged the degree of interpersonal similarity between pairs of people sharing distinctive as opposed to nondistinctive category memberships Consistent with the hypothesis, subjects linked targets with their more distinctive traits and assumed targets would be more similar to people who shared their distinctive traits than to people who shared their nondistinctive traits The implications of this distinctiveness effect for an understanding of stereotyping are explored
The Verdict on Freud
Authors: Crews Frederick
Published: April 2006

During the past 25 years, a momentous change has been overtaking the study of Sigmund Freud and his elaborate, engrossing, but ever more controversial creation, psychoanalysis Formerly, authors who deemed Freud worth discussing at book length tended to be either Freudian loyalists or partisans of some variant doctrine that shared at least a few of Freud's depth-psychological premises Their critiques were often selectively astute but rarely rigorous or thoroughgoing No doubt the same can still be said of most new books in the field, produced as they are by practicing analysts on the one hand and, on the other, by academic humanists who have raised their sights above narrowly “positivistic” (alias empirical) concerns Increasingly, however, Freud's oeuvre has been receiving sustained attention from scholars who hold no personal stake in the fortunes of psychoanalysis As recent works by Scharnberg (1993), Esterson (1993), Wilcocks (1994), Dawes (1994), Webster (1995), and Erwin (1996) attest, independent studies have begun to converge toward a verdict that was once considered a sign of extremism or even of neurosis that there is literally nothing to be said, scientifically or therapeutically, to the advantage of the entire Freudian system or any of its component dogmas
The Role of Task and Context in Preference Measurement
Authors: Mellers Barbara A. , Cooke Alan D.J.
Published: April 2006

The present studies show that preferences change systematically depending on the global context and the measurement task Subjects evaluated apartments described by monthly rent and distance to campus using two different tasks (choices and attractiveness ratings) in two different global contexts (one with a narrow range of rents and a wide range of distances, and the other with a wide range of rents and a narrow range of distances) With the task held constant, preference orders for the same pair of apartments reversed in the two different contexts Similarly, with the context held constant, preference orders for the same pair of apartments reversed in the two tasks Taken together, the effects are startling Out of 25 apartments common to all four conditions, the preference rank of the apartment that was most expensive and closest to campus ranged from the 28th percentile to the 80th percentile We argue that, in the present experiments, the global context influences the scale values (or the perceptions of the attributes), and the task influences the weights (or the psychological importance) of the attributes
Cognitive Suppression During Saccadic Eye Movements
Authors: Irwin David E. , Carlson-Radvansky Laura A.
Published: April 2006

Saccadic eye movements are made at least 100,000 times each day It is well known that sensitivity to visual input is suppressed during saccades, we examined whether cognitive activity (specifically, mental rotation) is suppressed as well If cognitive processing occurs during saccades, a prime viewed in one fixation should exert a larger influence on a target viewed in a second fixation when a long rather than a short saccade separates their viewing No such effect was found, even though the time difference between long and short saccades was effective in a no-saccade control These results indicate that at least some cognitive operations are suppressed during saccades
Word Frequency and Word Difficulty: A Comparison of Counts in Four Corpora
Authors: Breland Hunter M.
Published: April 2006

This article compares word counts made using four different collections of text, including one based on collections of electronic text For each of the collections, standard word frequency indices were computed and compared with a carefully developed list of words ranked in order of difficulty as determined by vocabulary tests Correlations between the word frequency indices and word difficulty ranks show that word frequencies for all four corpora are highly correlated with word difficulty Despite these high correlations, the results show also that the difficulty of some words is not estimated accurately by word frequency The reasons for disparities between word frequency and word difficulty are not clear The high correlations obtained for the corpus based on electronic text suggest that this method of text sampling has potential but that caution is advisable in conducting such collections
Repetition Blindness Interacts with Syntactic Grouping in Rapidly Presented Sentences
Authors: Abrams Lise , Dyer Jennifer R. , MacKay Donald G.
Published: April 2006

This study tested for predicted effects of syntax on a repetition deficit (RD) known as repetition blindness, the reduced probability of recall for repeated words in rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) sentences The syntactic variable was phrase-congruent versus phrase-incongruent grouping within simultaneous RSVP displays With phrase-congruent grouping, each RSVP display contained a syntactic phrase (e g, “to play sports” in the sentence “They wanted to play sports but sports were not allowed”), whereas with phrase-incongruent grouping, RSVP displays contained nonphrases (e g, “sports but sports”) RD was extensive with phrase-incongruent grouping (29%), but nonsignificant (6%) with phrase-congruent grouping, as if phrase-congruent groups free up the extra processing time needed to connect repeated words into phrases in rapidly presented sentences, enabling top-down retrieval of the phrases during recall The present results comport with effects of syntax and prosody on auditory RD, and suggest that visual and auditory RD are identical underlying phenomena
Averageness, Exaggeration, and Facial Attractiveness
Authors: Rhodes Gillian , Tremewan Tanya
Published: April 2006

Langlois and her colleagues reported in this journal that composite faces are more attractive than the component faces used to create them, and conjectured that averageness is attractive (Langlois & Roggman, 1990, Langlois, Roggman, & Musselman, 1994) However, extremes may also be attractive (Perrett, May, & Yoshikawa, 1994) We investigated the effect of averageness (proximity to a norm or average face) on attractiveness using a computerized caricature generator to vary averageness Attractiveness increased with averageness (Experiment 1) and was negatively correlated with distinctiveness, a subjective measure of the converse of averageness (Expertments 1 and 2) Extremes (caricatures) were not attractive Line-drawing composites, which avoid some of the problems associated with gray-level composites, were significantly more attractive and less distinctive (more average) than individual faces (Experiment 2) These results support the claim that averageness is attractive
Infant Attachment Security and Affective-Cognitive Information Processing at Age 3
Authors: Belsky Jay , Spritz Becky , Crnic Keith
Published: April 2006

Three-year olds' attention toward and memory of affectively laden information presented in specially designed puppet shows were examined to test the hypothesis, based on Bowlby's theory of attachment and the internal-working-model construct central to the theory, that children with secure attachment histories (measured at 12 months) would prove less distractable during positive than negative events and would remember positive events more accurately than negative events, with the reverse being true of children with insecure attachment histories Support for this hypothesis emerged in the case of memory but not attention (for which no attachment effects emerged), even when infants' temperament-emotionality and general verbal intelligence were taken into consideration Results are discussed in terms of life-course implications of affective-cognitive information processing and directions for future research
Causality, Quality, and Creativity: A Reply to Repp
Authors: Weisberg Robert W.
Published: April 2006

Repp raises several issues that call into question the validity of my analysis Most important, he questions my interpretation of Kraepelin's and Jamison's view of mania and creativity I discuss this issue first because, if Repp is correct, there is no purpose in going further Repp also questions the validity of the measure I used to test the notion that mania increased the quality of Schumann's output I will also respond to this criticism
The Social Psychology of False Confessions: Compliance, Internalization, and Confabulation
Authors: Kassin Saul M. , Kiechel Katherine L.
Published: April 2006

An experiment demonstrated that false incriminating evidence can lead people to accept guilt for a crime they did not commit Subjects in a fast- or slow-paced reaction time task were accused of damaging a computer by pressing the wrong key All were truly innocent and initially denied the charge A confederate then said she saw the subject hit the key or did not see the subject hit the key Compared with subjects in the slow-pacelno-witness group, those in the fast-pace/witness group were more likely to sign a confession, internalize guilt for the event, and confabulate details in memory consistent with that belief Both legal and conceptual implications are discussed
Chimpanzees: Joint Visual Attention
Authors: Povinelli Daniel J. , Eddy Timothy J.
Published: April 2006

Gaze following is a behavior that draws the human infant into perceptual contact with objects or events in the world to which others are attending One interpretation of the development of this phenomenon is that it signals the emergence of joint or shared attention, which may be critical to the development of theory of mind An alternative interpretation is that gaze following is a noncognitive mechanism that exploits social stimuli in order to orient the infant (or adult) to important events in the world We report experimental results that chimpanzees display the effect in response to both movement of the head and eyes in concert and eye movement alone Additional tests indicate that chimpanzees appear able to (a) project an imaginary line of sight through invisible space and (b) understand how that line of sight can be impeded by solid, opaque objects This capacity may have arisen because of its reproductive payoffs in the context of social competition with conspecifics, predation avoidance, or both
Automatic Stereotyping
Authors: Banaji Mahzarin R. , Hardin Curtis D.
Published: April 2006

Two experiments tested a form of automatic stereo-typing Subjects saw primes related to gender (e g, mother, father, nurse, doctor) or neutral with respect to gender (e g, parent, student, person) followed by target pronouns (stimulus onset asynchronv = 300 ms) that were gender related (e g, she, he) or neutral (it, me) or followed by nonpronouns (do, all, Experiment 2 only) In Experiment 1, subjects judged whether each pronoun was male or female Automatic gender beliefs (stereotypes) were observed in faster responses to pronouns consistent than inconsistent with the gender component of the prime regardless of subjects' awareness of the prime-target relation, and independently of subjects explicit beliefs about gender stereotypes and language reform In Experiment 2, automatic stereotyping was obtained even though a gender-irrelevant judgment task (pronoun/not pronoun) was used Together, these experiments demonstrate that gender information imparted by words can automatically influence judgment, although the strength of such effects may be moderated by judgment task and prime type
Infants' Individuation and Enumeration of Actions
Authors: Wynn Karen
Published: April 2006

Two experiments examined 6-month-old infants' ability to individuate and enumerate physical actions—the sequential jumps of a puppet In both experiments, which employed a habituation paradigm, infants successfully discriminated two-jump from three-jump sequences The sequences of activity in the two experiments provided for an initial exploration of the cues infants use to individuate actions Results show that (a) infants can individuate and enumerate actions in a sequence, indicating that their enumeration mechanism is quite general in the kinds of entities over which it will operate, (b) actions whose temporal boundaries are characterized by a contrast between motion and absence of motion are especially easy to individuate and enumerate, but nonetheless (c) infants can individuate and enumerate actions embedded in a sequence of continuous motion, indicating that infants possess procedures for parsing an ongoing motionful scene into distinct portions of activity
Mechanisms of Placebo Pain Reduction: An Empirical Investigation
Authors: Montgomery Guy , Kirsch Irving
Published: April 2006

Identical experimental pain stimuli were applied to the right and left index fingers of 56 university students, following the application of a placebo in the guise of a topical anesthetic to one of the fingers The pain stimuli were administered simultaneously to treated and untreated fingers for half of the subjects and sequentially for the others Significant and equivalent reductions in pain were reported in both conditions as a function of placebo administration These data indicate that reductions of experimental pain produced by placebos presented in the guise of local anesthetics are not mediated by such global mechanisms as anxiety reduction or the release of endogenous opioids
Most People Are Happy
Authors: Diener Ed , Diener Carol
Published: April 2006

Myers and Diener (1995) asked “Who is happy?” but examined the question of who is more and who is less happy In fact, most people report a positive level of subjective well-being (SWB), and say that they are satisfied with domains such as marriage, work, and leisure People in disadvantaged groups on average report positive well-being, and measurement methods in addition to self-report indicate that most people's affect is primarily pleasant Cross-national data suggest that there is a positive level of SWB throughout the world, with the possible exception of very poor societies In 86% of the 43 nations for which nationally representative samples are available the mean SWB response was above neutral Several hypotheses to explain the positive levels of SWB are discussed
Happiness Is a Stochastic Phenomenon
Authors: Lykken David , Tellegen Auke
Published: April 2006

Happiness, or subjective well-being, was measured on a birth-record-based sample of several thousand middle-aged twins using the Well-Being (WB) scale of the Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire Neither socioeconomic status, educational attainment, family income, marital status, nor an indicant of religious commitment could account for more than about 3% of the variance in WB From 44% to 52% of the variance in WB, however, is associated with genetic variation Based on the retest of smaller samples of twins after intervals of 4 5 and 10 years, we estimate that the heriability of the stable component of subjective well-being approaches 80%
Processing Speed, Working Memory, and Fluid Intelligence: Evidence for a Developmental Cascade
Authors: Fry Astrid F. , Hale Sandra
Published: April 2006

Processing speed, working memory capacity, and fluid intelligence were assessed in a large sample (N = 214) of children, adolescents, and young adults (ages 7 to 19 years) Results of path analyses revealed that almost half of the age-related increase in fluid intelligence was mediated by developmental changes in processing speed and working memory and nearly three fourths of the improvement in working memory was mediated by developmental changes in processing speed Moreover, even when age-related differences in speed, working memory and fluid intelligence were statistically controlled, individual differences in speed had a direct effect on working memory capacity which, in turn was a direct determinant of individual differences in fluid intelligence
Contrasts and Interactions Redux: Five Easy Pieces
Authors: Rosnow Ralph L. , Rosenthal Robert
Published: April 2006

This reply to Abelson (this issue) and Petty, Fabrigar, Wegener, and Priester (this issue) is couched within the framework of five basic principles advising that we (1) hang on to what we predicted long enough to test it (Tarzan's leap), (2) be wary of beguiling statistical designs that may not address the question of interest (the Sirens' song), (3) not allow well-worn habits of thinking to ensnare our perceptions (Lavoisier's crease), (4) weigh the possibility of more than one correct hypothesis (the dayyan's decree), and (5) not confuse unplanned with planned contrasts (the archer's aim)
Perceptions of Behavioral Consistency: Are People Aware of the Actor-Observer Effect?
Authors: Krueger Joachim , Ham Jacob J. , Linford Kirsten M.
Published: April 2006

Actors view behavior relevant for personality traits as more variable than observers do This study was designed to replicate this actor-observer effect (AOE) in a common-target paradigm, test whether actors, observers, or both are intuitively aware of the AOE, and examine the effects of social projection on people's awareness of the AOE Within each actor-observer pair, subjects described the actor on a series of trait adjectives and rated the consistency of relevant behavior They then predicted the other person's ratings The AOE emerged, and actors, but not observers, were aware of the effect On average, actors correctly predicted that observers rated actors' behavior as more consistent than actors themselves did Correlational analyses showed that actors and observers were equally prone to project their own ratings to their matched partners
Color Space of Normally Sighted and Color-Deficient Observers Reconstructed from Color Naming
Authors: Paramei Galina V.
Published: April 2006

An experimental procedure based on the color-naming method introduced by Boynton, Schafer, and Neun (1964) was used to study the color appearance of equiluminant spectral stimuli in observers with congenital red-green color deficiencies, as well as in normal trichromats Subjects' responses (choice of one or more labels from the set red, yellow, green, blue, and white) were converted to numeric scores, which were used to estimate subjective differences between pairs of colors Individual subjects' matrices were processed by means of multidimensional scaling As in the direct rating of color dissimilarities in normal trichromats (Sokolov & Izmatlov, 1983) and color-deficient observers (Paramei Izmatlov, & Sokolov, 1991), these indirectly obtained measures yielded a color space in which three dimensions appear to be necessary and sufficient The dimensions are interpreted as evidence for red-green, blue-yellow, and achromatic (saturation) subsystems Based on the color-naming technique, three-dimensional spaces were reconstructed for the color-deficient observers These results were compared with those obtained by Helm (1964) It is argued that retaining more than one (blue-yellow) dimension in the color spaces of such observers provides additional information indicating preservation of residual red-green discrimination accompanied by finer discrimination of chroma than in normal trichromats The spherical model of color discrimination developed for normal trichromats (Izmatlov & Sokolov, 1991) is shown to be valid for color-deficient subjects as well and may be useful as a framework for differentiating protan and deutan types of color deficiency Colornaming functions, which seem not to reveal a differentiation between protans and deutans, provide results from which this differentiation can be extracted in reconstructed color spaces
Biological Significance as a Determinant of Cue Competition
Authors: Denniston James C. , Miller Ralph R. , Matute Helena
Published: April 2006

Many researchers have noted the similarities between causal judgment in humans and Pavlovian conditioning in animals One recently noted discrepancy between these two forms of learning is the absence of backward blocking in animals, in contrast with its occurrence in human causality judgment Here we report two experiments that investigated the role of biological significance in backward blocking as a potential explanation of this discrepancy With rats as subjects, we used sensory preconditioning and second-order conditioning procedures, which allowed the to-be-blocked cue to retain low biological significance during training for some animals, but not for others Backward blocking was observed only when the target cue was of low biological significance during training These results suggest that the apparent discrepancy between human causal judgment and animal Pavlovian conditioning arises not because of a species difference, but because human causality studies ordinarily use stimuli of low biological significance, whereas animal Pavlovian studies ordinarily use stimuli of high biological significance, which are apparently protected against cue competition
True Imitative Learning in Pigeons
Authors: Zentall Thomas R. , Sutton Jennifer E. , Sherburne Lou M.
Published: April 2006

Providing evidence for imitative learning in animals has been made difficult by the need to control for a number of possible nonimitation accounts (e.g., mere presence of another animal, attention drawn to a location, attention drawn to an object being manipulated) that often have not been recognized in previous research In the present experiment we used a version of the two-action method in which a treadle could be operated by a pigeon in one of two distinctive ways with its beak by pecking or with its foot by stepping What is unique in this experiment is not only the distinct response topographies, but also that both responses have the same effect on the environment (depression of the treadle followed by food reward) When pigeons that had observed one of the two response topographies were given access to the treadle, a significant correspondence was found between the topography of the observers responses and that of their respective demonstrators' responses
Gender, Jealousy, and Reason
Authors: Harris Christine R. , Christenfeld Nicholas
Published: April 2006

Research has suggested that men are especially bothered by evidence of their partner's sexual infidelity, whereas women are troubled more by evidence of emotional infidelity One evolutionary account (Buss, Larsen, Westen, & Semmelroth, 1992) argues that this is an innate difference, arising from men's need for paternity certainty and women's need for male investment in their offspring We suggest that the difference may instead be based on reasonable differences between the sexes in how they interpret evidence of infidelity A man, thinking that women have sex only when in love, has reason to believe that if his mate has sex with another man, she is in love with that other A woman, thinking that men can have sex without love, should still be bothered by sexual infidelity, but less so because it does not imply that her mate has fallen in love as well A survey of 137 subjects confirmed that men and women do differ in the predicted direction in how much they think each form of infidelity implies the other, proposing innate emotional differences may, therefore, be gratuitous
Evolutionary Origins of Sex Differences in Jealousy? Questioning the “Fitness” of the Model
Authors: DeSteno David A. , Salovey Peter
Published: April 2006

Evolutionary psychology has become a popular framework for studying jealousy Much of this popularity can be attributed to work by Buss and his colleagues showing an apparent relation between an individual's sex and jealousy for certain types of infidelity (i e, sexual vs emotional) that is consistent with evolutionary theory (Buss, Larsen, Westen, & Semmelroth, 1992) In two studies, we take issue with these findings and argue that the relation between sex and jealousy reported by Buss and his colleagues is more properly explained by considering individuals' beliefs concerning the covariation between sexual and emotional infidelity
A Comment on “The Comprehensive System for the Rorschach: A Critical Examination”
Authors: Exner John E.
Published: April 2006

Wood, Nczworski, and Stejskal are correct in noting that the Comprehensive System has been scrutinized less carefully than might have been expected or desired A few critiques have addressed isolated variables in the system, and some comments that have been published suggest that attempts at detailed scoring-coding of the Rorschach tend to neglect the idiographic features of the subject and that the system itself has limited use because it is not aligned with any particular theory of personality This article by Wood et al evolves from a different perspective in which the authors attempt to evaluate the system from an empirical basis Unfortunately, I am not sure that they have achieved their objective, mainly because the manner in which they have addressed each of the issues selected for discussion presents a rather misleading picture Let me attempt to address each in this comment
Much ADO About Nothing? Revisionists and Traditionalists Choose an Introductory English Syllabus
Authors: Robinson Robert J. , Keltner Dacher
Published: April 2006

One perspective on social conflict asserts that attitudes and behavior are relatively independent, thus suggesting that opposing partisans may differ minimally in concrete actions, but may assume great differences in attitude and ideology Alternatively, we proposed that partisans' concrete preferences are linked to ideology, and that partisans would exaggerate the ideological extremity of their opposition These hypotheses were tested within the “Western Canon debate” by asking revisionist and traditionalist partisans (English faculty) to select from a list of 50 books a syllabus of 15 books they would teach in an introductory course and 15 books that they believed their ideological counterparts would choose Consistent with the hypotheses, traditionalists selected books of more traditionalist ideology than did revisionists (who chose more books by female and minority authors) and exaggerated the extremity of revisionists' preferences Revisionists made less ideological book selections and judged traditionalists more accurately This asymmetry may reflect the standing of the two groups relative to the status quo
The Roles of Recognition Processes and Look-Ahead Search in Time-Constrained Expert Problem Solving: Evidence From Grand-Master-Level Chess
Authors: Gobet Fernand , Simon Herbert A.
Published: April 2006

Chess has long served as an important standard task environment for research on human memory and problem-solving abilities and processes In this article, we report evidence on the relative importance of recognition processes and planning (look-ahead) processes in very high level expert performance in chess The data show that the rated skill of a top-level grand master is only slightly lower when he is playing simultaneously against a half-dozen grand-master opponents than under tournament conditions that allow much more time for each move As simultaneous play allows little time for look-ahead processes, the data indicate that recognition, based on superior chess knowledge, plays a much larger part in high-level skill in this task than does planning by looking ahead
The Influence of Functional Relations on Spatial Term Selection
Authors: Carlson-Radvansky Laura A. , Radvansky Gabriel A.
Published: April 2006

Expressions describing the spatial relation between two objects can be interpreted from a perspective defined by the objects (intrinsic) or by the viewer or the environment (deictic-extrinsic) Identifying the factors that govern the selection of one perspective over another is an important step in understanding the interaction between language and perception In two experiments, we explored the influence of a functional relation between two objects on the formulation of a spatial expression relating the objects Both rating and production tasks showed that people preferred to use intrinsic descriptions in the presence of a functional relation and deictic-extrinsic descriptions in the absence of such a relation These results suggest that contextual aspects of the scene influence spatial term selection
Writing About Emotional Experiences as a Therapeutic Process
Authors: Pennebaker James W.
Published: April 2006

For the past decade, an increasing number of studies have demonstrated that when individuals write about emotional experiences, significant physical and mental health improvements follow The basic paradigm and findings are summarized along with some boundary conditions Although a reduction in inhibition may contribute to the disclosure phenomenon changes in basic cognitive and linguistic processes during writing predict better health Implications for theory and treatment are discussed
The Mutual Enrichment of Basic and Applied Research in Psychological Science and Practice
Authors: Davison Gerald C.
Published: April 2006

Dealing with the problems of substance abuse requires both an appreciation of clinical reality and an understanding of basic psychosocial principles Each of the conference presentations of theory and research most of them nonapplied in nature, created a welcome and rare occasion for experimental and clinical psychologists (and hybrids) to reflect together on the applied implications of some basic research and on the research implications of some applied professional activities Among the issues found especially noteworthy by this discussant were the following the return of cognition and rational decision making as legitimate and critical foci in behavior therapy, the role of exposure to aversive events in reducing their fearsomeness, the advantages of not working doggedly to achieve goals that are better approached with a nonachievement attitude the possibility that the difficulty in altering pathological behavior derives from the properties of human language, appreciation of individual differences in psychotherapy outcome research, the importance of considering the meaning that therapeutic ministrations can have for certain patients, and the need to reexamine the utility of patients expressing their concerns
Genetic and Environmental Contributions to Variance in Age at First Sexual Intercourse
Authors: Dunne M.P. , Martin N.G. , Statham D.J. , Slutske W.S. , Dinwiddie S.H. , Bucholz K.K. , Madden P.A.F. , Heath A.C
Published: April 2006

Little is known about the relative importance of genetic and environmental factors as determinants of age at first sexual intercourse In this study, subjects were 5,080 individuals from the Australian Twin Registry (3,310 females, I 770 males, age range 27-70 years, median 40 years) who completed a semistructured interview by telephone in 1992-1993 Self-reported age at first intercourse correlated higher for identical (monozygotic) twins than for nonidentical (dizygotic) twins Structural equation model fitting found that the genetic contribution to variance was considerably greater among twins aged 40 years or less (72% for males and 49% for females) than for those aged from 41 to 70 years (0% for males and 32% for females) Among the older cohort, there was evidence that somewhat different aspects of the shared social environment influenced age at onset in males and females In a more laissez-faire social climate in recent decades, it is likely that biological and psychological characteristics that are partly under genetic control significantly influence the age at which a person commences sexual activity
Three-Dimensional Bilateral Symmetry Bias in Judgments of Figural Identity and Orientation
Authors: McBeath Michael K. , Schiano Diane J. , Tversky Barbara
Published: April 2006

The two experiments reported explored a bias toward symmetry in judging identity and orientation of indeterminate two-dimensional shapes Subjects viewed symmetric and asymmetric filled, random polygons and described “what each figure looks like” and its orientation Viewers almost universally interpreted the shapes as silhouettes of bilaterally symmetric three-dimensional (3-D) objects This assumption of 3-D symmetry tended to constrain perceived vantage of the identified objects such that symmetric shapes were interpreted as straight-on views, and asymmetric shapes as profile or oblique views Because most salient objects in the world are bilaterally symmetric, these findings are consistent with the view that assuming 3-D symmetry can be a robust heuristic for constraining orientation when identifying objects from indeterminate patterns
Implicit and Explicit Memory for Haptically Experienced Two-Dimensional Patterns
Authors: Srinivas Kavitha , Greene Anthony J. , Easton Randolph D.
Published: April 2006

Recent research with visual objects has delineated important representational differences between memory measures that tap identification (implicit tests) and measures that require episodic recognition (explicit tests) We investigated whether these differences reflect a fundamental architecture for the representation of object information in memory In the present experiment, we contrasted identification and episodic recognition for haptically presented two-dimensional patterns Haptic identification was not affected by elaborative processing at study, whereas haptic episodic recognition was enhanced by elaborative processing This finding suggests important similarities in the organization of object information in the visual and haptic modalities
Separating Speed from Automaticity in a Patient with Focal Brain Atrophy
Authors: Wingfield Arthur , Goodglass Harold , Lindfield Kimberly C.
Published: April 2006

Automatic processes are characterized as being rapid, as requiring little attentional effort, and as obligatory (once initiated, the activity cannot be inhibited or controlled) In contrast, controlled processes are slower, require attention, and are non-obligatory This distinction appears in the Stroop effect the interference that appears when a person tries to name the color of the ink in which a word is printed when the word spells the name of a different color This effect has historically been attributed to an automatic reading of the color name interfering with the slower, less automatic, naming of the ink color (MacLeod, 1991, Stroop, 1935) In this report, we describe a patient with focal brain atrophy whose speed of reading was no faster than his speed of naming colors, but who still showed the classic Stroop effect This finding critically challenges the traditional identification of automaticity with processing speed
The Similarity of Brain Activity Associated with True and False Recognition Memory Depends On Test Format
Authors: Johnson Marcia K. , Nolde Scott F. , Mather Mara , Kounios John , Schacter Daniel L. , Curran Tim
Published: April 2006

Event-related potentials (ERPs) were compared for correct recognitions of previously presented words and false recognitions of associatively related, nonpresented words (lures) When the test items were presented blocked by test type (old, new, lure), waveforms for old and lure items were different, especially at frontal and left parietal electrode sites, consistent with previous positron emission tomography (PET) data (Schacter, Reiman, et al, 1996) When the test format randomly intermixed the types of items, waveforms for old and lure items were more similar We suggest that test format affects the type of processing subjects engage in, consistent with expectations from the source-monitoring framework (Johnson, Hashtroudi, & Lindsay, 1993) These results also indicate that brain activity as assessed by neuroimaging designs requiring blocked presentation of trials (e.g., PET) do not necessarily reflect the brain activity that occurs in cognitive-behavioral paradigms, in which types of test trials are typically intermixed
Score on the Examination for Professional Practice in Psychology as a Function of Attributes of Clinical Psychology Graduate Programs
Authors: Yu Laurina M. , Rinaldi Sharon A. , Templer Donald I. , Colbert Louise A. , Siscoe Karen , Van Patten Katherine
Published: April 2006

Graduate programs' correlates with doctoral recipients' scores on the Examination for Professional Practice in Psychology (EPPP) were determined Higher EPPP score was associated with larger faculty-to-student ratios, smaller clinical programs traditional as opposed to professional program orientation, and Ph D rather than Psy D awarded Programs approved by the American Psychological Association and those that scored favorably on a number of objective indices also produced graduates with high EPPP scores Among the more frequently used admissions requirements median Quantitative score on the Graduate Record Examination correlated most highly with EPPP score
The Effects of Alignability on Memory
Authors: Markman Arthur B. , Gentner Dedre
Published: April 2006

According to structure-mapping theory, the process of comparison is one of alignment and mapping between representational structures. This process induces a focus on commonalities and alignable differences (i.e., those related to the commonalities). Nonalignable differences (i.e., those not related to the commonalities) are held to be neglected. The theory thus predicts increased focus on the corresponding information, whether these are commonalities or differences. In this article, we explore the implications of this claim for memory: Specifically, we test the prediction that alignable differences are more likely to be processed and stored than nonalignable differences.

We present a study in which people made similarity comparisons between pairs of pictures and then were probed for recall. The recall probes were figures taken from the pictures and were either alignable or nonalignable differences between the pairs. The alignable differences were better memory probes than the nonalignable differences, suggesting that people were more likely to encode and store the corresponding information than the noncorresponding information.
Priming Spatial Layout of Scenes
Authors: Sanocki Thomas , Epstein William
Published: April 2006

Observers responded to full-color images of scenes by indicating which of two critical objects was closer in the pictorial space. These target images were preceded by prime images of the same scene sans critical objects, or by control primes or different-scene primes. Reaction times were faster following same-scene primes than following the various control and different-scene primes. Same-scene facilitation was obtained with color primes, line-drawing primes, and primes with shifted views. The effect occurred with natural scenes having gist and simple artificial scenes having little or no gist. The results indicate that prime-induced representations influence the perception of spatial layout in pictures.
Early Cortical Influences in Object Segregation and the Perception of Surface Lightness
Authors: Laurinen Pentti I. , Olzak Lynn A. , Peromaa Tarja L.
Published: April 2006

The apparent brightness of a surface is profoundly influenced by the brightness of an adjacent surface, but these contrast effects are reduced when the surfaces are perceived as separate three-dimensional entities Previous work has suggested that high-level perceptual and cognitive processes involved in scene segmentation may be responsible for modifying a surface s appearance We demonstrate large reductions in contrast effects when the cues available for segmentation are restricted to those that isolate separate groups of early cortical neurons in the visual system Our data contradict standard contrast-signaling models of brightness perception and imply that mechanisms of figure-ground segmentation are already available at low levels of visual processing
Flexibility in Spatial Attention Before and After Practice
Authors: Cave Kyle R , Zimmerman James M
Published: April 2006

These experiments used spatial probes to measure how spatial attention is allocated across the visual field during search for a target letter in an eight-letter array There were three main findings Attentional strength is flexibly adjusted according to the confusability between target and distractors Distractor locations near the target receive more inhibition than those farther from the target, indicating that the nearby distractors interfere more with target identification Despite the fact that consistent practice improves search rate it does not diminish the strength of spatial attention in this task
Group Research Trends in Social and Organizational Psychology: Whatever Happened to Intragroup Research?
Authors: Sanna Lawrence J. , Parks Craig D.
Published: April 2006

We report the results of an archival study of group research published in three organizational psychology journals (Journal of Applied Psychology, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, and Academy of Management Journal) from 1975 through 1994 Moreland, Hogg, and Hains (1994), in a review of three social psychology journals (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, and Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin), suggested there is an increasing enthusiasm for the social psychological study of groups However, their data indicated that nthusiasm for group research in social psychology may be primarily due to the popularity of one category, intergroup relations We tested the proposal that research traditionally viewed as intragroup (e g, group performance) has been taken up by organizational psychologists Our data support this contention, as the publication pattern for intragroup research topics in the three organizational journals was an inverse of that reported by Moreland et al Results are discussed in terms of historical and interdisciplinary trends within psychology.
The Credible Shrinking Room: Very Young Children's Performance With Symbolic and Nonsymbolic Relations
Authors: DeLoache Judy S , Miller Kevin F. , Rosengren Karl S.
Published: April 2006

Becoming a proficient symbol user is a universal developmental task in the first years of life, but detecting and mentally representing symbolic relations can be quite challenging for young children To test the extent to which symbolic reasoning per se is problematic, we compared the performance of 2 1/2-year-olds in symbolic and nonsymbolic versions of a search task. The children had to use their knowledge of the location of a toy hidden in a room to draw an inference about where to find a miniature toy in a scale model of the room (and vice versa) Children in the nonsymbolic condition believed a shrinking machine had caused the room to become the model They were much more successful than children in the symbolic condition, for whom the model served as a symbol of the room The results provide strong support for the role of dual representation in symbol understanding and use.
Very Long-Lasting Priming in Picture Naming
Authors: Cave Carolyn Backer
Published: April 2006

A form of long-lasting repetition priming has been demonstrated by faster naming of pictures repeated from a prior exposure than new pictures This facilitation is independent of explicit memory in both normal subjects (Mitchell & Brown, 1988) and amnesic patients (Cave & Squire, 1992) Using picture naming, the current study demonstrated that priming could be detected with delays of between 6 and 48 weeks between the initial exposure and the priming test Recognition memory was also above chance at these delays, but performance on the two tests appeared independent These results show that a single stimulus exposure can have very long-lasting effects Accounts of repetition priming as a form of implicit memory will have to accommodate long-lasting changes in stimulus processing based on a single exposure.
Auditory Pitch as a Perceptual Analogue to Odor Quality
Authors: Belkin Kira , Martin Robyn , Kemp Sarah E. , Gilbert Avery N.
Published: April 2006

Experiments in cross-modal matching suggest that smells can be arranged by odor quality along the color dimensions of hue and lightness Here we report that subjects readily adjust the loudness-equalized pitch of an auditory tone to match a stimulus odor The results allow odors to be arranged in sequence by their pitch-equivalents The tone matches appear to be based on perceptual features of olfaction other than stimulus intensity or pleasantness The results suggest that features of odor quality may be more accessible and structured than previously acknowledged.