bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Industry and Regional Patterns in Sequential Foreign Market Entry
Authors: Chang Sea‐Jin , Rosenzweig Philip M.
Published: March 2003

This study empirically investigates industry and region of origin patterns of sequential foreign market entry by multinational corporations (MNCs) at the line of business level. We use event history analysis to study sequential foreign direct investment in the United States by European and Japanese firms in the chemical and electronics industries from 1975 to 1992. Results show that European firms as well as Japanese firms first enter in their largest and strongest lines of business, and over time extend their positions by entering in lines of business that are smaller and less strong. As for industry effects, sequential entry is observed more strongly among electronics firms than among chemical firms, reflecting differences in the speed and extent of globalization of these two industries. Our findings confirm that foreign market entry is a sequential process, and show that industry effects are more important than region of origin effects.
From Dyadic Change to Changing Business Networks: An Analytical Framework
Authors: Halinen Aino , Salmi Asta , Havila Virpi
Published: March 2003

This paper investigates the dynamics of business networks. We distinguish between confined dyadic change and network change and show how change itself may be incremental or radical, using the punctuated equilibrium model of change. The concept of the critical event is introduced to highlight radical change. We propose an analytical framework where the ideas of mechanism, nature and forces of change are integrated. Two circles of network change (incremental and radical) are presented and transfers from one circle to the other are discussed. We believe this conceptual elaboration may have significant implications for future network dynamic research
British Factory, Japanese Factory and Mexican Factory: An International Comparison of Front‐Line Management and Supervision
Authors: Lowe James , Morris Jonathan , Wilkinson Barry
Published: March 2003

This paper presents a case study of a Japanese‐owned electronics firm, presenting a comparative analysis of the company's supervisory systems in three of its plants located in different countries – Japan, Mexico and Britain. Comparative analysis is enabled through use of the concept of a supervisory system of control, which allows us to match the relative positions of managers, supervisors and workers across the three sites. The case study data enables us systematically to examine questions of the transferability of a Japanese supervisory system – a central component of Japanese manufacturing – outside of Japan. The results suggest that ‘Japanese’ supervisory systems have been established with more success in Mexico than in Britain, and the main factors that explain this are varying local labour market conditions, limits to managerial control on the shopfloor, the relationship between the product market and the organization of production, and local and expatriate management commitment to a Japanese system.
Framework of Joint Venture Development: Theory‐Building Through Qualitative Research
Authors: Büchel Bettina
Published: March 2003

Based on an inductive, longitudinal case study, this paper proposes a framework of joint venture development. The framework is comprised of three overlapping stages of development: formation, adjustment, and evaluation with shorter, cyclical periods. These periods, labeled phases, can be described in terms of alternations between divergence and convergence of two types of group relationships: intra‐joint venture relations and boundary group relations. Propositions lay out the development from the formation to the evaluation stage explaining the cyclical nature of divergence and convergence. The framework advances the existing literature on joint venture development by pointing out both micro‐ and macro‐level driving forces and the conditions under which certain developmental patterns emerge.
Looking inside the joint venture to help understand the link between inter‐parent cooperation and performance
Authors: Pearce Robert J.
Published: March 2003

Cooperation is the Holy Grail for inter‐organizational relationships, and significant research effort has been directed towards understanding its antecedents. However, the extant literature on joint ventures indicates that relatively few researchers have attempted to measure either cooperation or its organizational consequences. This paper examines the thesis that the link between inter‐parent cooperation and joint venture performance may be mediated by important conditions inside the joint venture. The findings suggest that the nature of relations between the managers transferred into the joint venture from the parents can help explain the link between joint venture performance and inter‐parent cooperation. In that regard, this research highlights the mediating roles of interdependence, factionalism, and patterns of influence behaviour. A parsimonious model is offered to help understand joint venture performance.
Kaizen, Ethics, and Care of the Operations: Management After Empowerment
Authors: Styhre Alexander
Published: March 2003

The notion of empowerment has been increasingly used within management discourses during the 1990s. Empowerment is depicted by its proponents as the common denominator for recent managerial techniques and activities that acknowledge the individual employee as an intelligent, accountable, creative being, and therefore a productive resource for the company. Rather than thinking of management techniques as being, or not being, used to empower employees, this paper suggests that the notion of ethics, and more specifically what Foucault calls technologies of the self, provides possibilities for analysing how employees constitute themselves as ethical, productive, and legitimate members of society through the use of management techniques. This paper presents a study of how the management technique of kaizen, continuous improvements, is used in three Swedish companies. Thinking of work as ethically embedded rather than determined by the degree of distribution of the empowering resources in organizations paves the way for opportunities to conduct more sensitive analyses of how managerial techniques operate in practice.
Changing Organizational Forms and the Employment Relationship
Authors: Rubery Jill , Earnshaw Jill , Marchington Mick , Cooke Fang Lee , Vincent Steven
Published: March 2003

This paper draws upon new research in the UK into the relationship between changing organizational forms and the reshaping of work in order to consider the changing nature of the employment relationship. The development of more complex organizational forms – such as cross organization networking, partnerships, alliances, use of external agencies for core as well as peripheral activities, multi‐employer sites and the blurring of public/private sector divide – has implications for both the legal and the socially constituted nature of the employment relationship. The notion of a clearly defined employer–employee relationship becomes difficult to uphold under conditions where employees are working in project teams or on‐site beside employees from other organizations, where responsibilities for performance and for health and safety are not clearly defined, or involve more than one organization. This blurring of the relationship affects not only legal responsibilities, grievance and disciplinary issues and the extent of transparency and equity in employment conditions, but also the definition, constitution and implementation of the employment contract defined in psychological and social terms. Do employees perceive their responsibilities at work to lie with the direct employer or with the wider enterprise or network organization? And do these perceptions affect, for example, how work is managed and carried out and how far learning and incremental knowledge at work is integrated in the development of the production or service process? So far the investigation of both conflicts and complementarities in the workplace have focused primarily on the dynamic interactions between the single employer and that organization’s employees. The development of simultaneously more fragmented and more networked organizational forms raises new issues of how to understand potential conflicts and contradictions around the ‘employer’ dimension to the employment relationship in addition to more widely recognized conflicts located on the employer–employee axis.
The Effects of Prior Performance on the Choice Between Related and Unrelated Acquisitions: Implications for the Performance Consequences of Diversification Strategy
Authors: Park Choelsoon
Published: March 2003

Whereas a majority of previous research in the diversification literature has focused on the performance consequences of diversification strategy, this paper examines the reverse relationship, that is, the effects of a firm’s prior performance on the choice between related and unrelated diversification. This paper empirically tests and confirms the view that there are systematic ex ante performance differences between firms diversifying into related businesses and firms diversifying into unrelated businesses. These findings imply that ex post performance differences between related and unrelated diversifiers, often reported in previous research, are largely attributable to these ex ante performance differences, not to diversification strategy per se.
Shame, Guilt, Ego Development and the Five‐Factor Model of Personality
Authors: Einstein Danielle , Lanning Kevin
Published: March 2003

Shame, guilt, and ego development are conceptually interrelated constructs, yet their empirical relations have not yet been examined. Further, these constructs have not yet been mapped onto the widely used Five‐Factor Model. In Study 1, relations were examined between these three domains within a sample of Australian university students. Two types of guilt were distinguished, Empathic Guilt (associated with Agreeableness) and Anxious Guilt (associated with Neuroticism). The relationship between Shame and Ego Level was found to be curvilinear, with Shame greatest for persons at intermediate stages of ego development. In Study 2, relations between ego development and the Five‐Factor Model were further examined. Across both studies, Ego Level was best predicted from Conscientiousness among men and from Openness among women. Relations between Ego Level, proneness to shame and guilt, and the five factors were typically modest, suggesting that these represent complementary approaches to the study of personality.
Cardiovascular Reactivity and Neuroticism: Results From a Laboratory and Controlled Ambulatory Stress Protocol
Authors: Schwebel David C. , Suls Jerry
Published: March 2003

A laboratory and controlled ambulatory protocol was used to study whether there are differences in the cardiovascular reactivity of persons varying in neuroticism, the disposition to experience negative subjective emotions. Thirty‐six individuals (19 men, 17 women) who scored approximately 1 standard deviation above or below the mean on the NEO PI‐R Neuroticism scale (Costa & McCrae, 1992) were recruited from a larger pool of undergraduate students. Participants, who had been outfitted with an ambulatory blood pressure/heart rate monitor, were exposed to 5 laboratory stressors and 7 field stressors during a 6‐hour protocol. Results indicated that individuals scoring high in neuroticism showed blood pressure reactivity to laboratory and field stressors that was comparable to that of persons low in neuroticism. Aggregating responses across stressors, there was evidence of exaggerated heart rate responses. The results suggested that, although neuroticism is related to high levels of negative subjective experience, differences between persons scoring high versus low in neuroticism were not exhibited strongly at the cardiovascular level. The implications for stress, coping, and disease are discussed.
Attributional Style and Psychodynamic Defense Mechanisms: Toward an Integrative Model of Depression
Authors: Kwon Paul
Published: March 2003

The present study examined the influences of cognitive style and psychodynamic defense mechanisms in accounting for levels of dysphoria. Measures of dysphoria, defense mechanisms, and attributional style were completed by 147 undergraduate students. Consistent with the hypothesis, both attributional style and principalization were independently associated with dysphoria. Moreover, principalization moderated the influence of attributional style on levels of dysphoria. In addition, attributional style and turning against self were independently associated with dysphoria. Turning against other, projection, and reversal were not associated with dysphoria. The results provide partial support for the notion that the applicability and validity of the hopelessness theory of depression are bolstered by a consideration of psychodynamic phenomena. Potential implications of this line of research for the movement toward psychotherapy integration are discussed.
The Emerging Meanings of Religiousness and Spirituality: Problems and Prospects
Authors: Zinnbauer Brian J. , Pargament Kenneth I. , Scott Allie B.
Published: March 2003

This article examines traditional and modern psychological characterizations of religiousness and spirituality. Three ways in which religiousness and spirituality are polarized by contemporary theorists are examined: organized religion versus personal spirituality; substantive religion versus functional spirituality; and negative religiousness versus positive spirituality. An alternative approach to understanding religiousness and spirituality is presented that integrates rather than polarizes these constructs, and sets boundaries to the discipline while acknowledging the diversity of religious and spiritual expressions. Directions for future investigations of these two constructs are presented.
Toward an Evolutionary Psychology of Religion and Personality
Authors: Kirkpatrick Lee A.
Published: March 2003

Evolutionary psychology is an emerging paradigm for the social sciences that offers a powerful metatheoretical framework for personality psychology and, as I attempt to demonstrate in this article, for the psychology of religion as well. I argue that religion is not an evolved adaptation; rather, the diverse range of beliefs, behavior, and experience that we collectively refer to as religion emerge as byproducts of numerous, domain‐specific psychological mechanisms that evolved to solve other (mundane) adaptive problems. These include mechanisms for reasoning about the natural world (naive physics and biology), about other people’ minds (naive psychology), and about specific kinds of interpersonal relationships (attachment, kinship, social exchange, coalitions, status hierarchies).
Religion, Personality, and Aging: A Life Span Perspective
Authors: McFadden Susan H.
Published: March 2003

A life span model of development provides the framework for examining the relation between religion and personality in aging persons. This article emphasizes the interplay of constancy and change in adult religious life. Important contextual factors that influence religion and personality are noted. A discussion of generativity and ego integrity shows how the maturing personality can embrace religiously motivated acts of justice and mercy as well as a deepening of spiritual life. Also discussed are the ways religion encourages generativity and ego integrative processes. The article concludes with suggestions for future studies of religion, personality, and aging utilizing a life span model of development.
Motive‐Related Memories: Content, Structure, and Affect
Authors: Woike Barbara , Polo Marilyn
Published: March 2003

Two studies tested hypotheses on the content and structure of autobiographical memories and the affect linked to them. In Study 1, agentic and communal‐motivated individuals recorded their most memorable experiences and completed the PANAS each day for 6 weeks. Memories were coded for content and structure. Agentics and communals reported more motive congruent memories, and their congruent memories were structured using more differentiation and integration, respectively. In addition, agentics had slightly higher PA and lower NA scores. In Study 2, agentics and communals recalled an event pertaining to either social separation or connection and then completed an affect measure of agentic and communal items. Agentics recalled more agentic memories in the separation condition and communals recalled more communal memories in the connection condition. Complexity analyses showed that agentics and communals used differentiation and integration respectively to recall their motive‐ congruent memories. The affect data showed a modest predicted pattern. Results suggest that implicit motives have an impact on autobiographical memory but are not as clearly related to self‐report affect measures, possibly due to method variance.
Failure Criterion of Concrete under Triaxial Stresses Using Neural Networks
Authors: Zhao Zhiye , Ren Liqun
Published: March 2003

A neural network approach to model the strength of concrete under triaxial stresses is presented in this paper. A radial basis function neural network (RBFNN) and a backpropagation neural network (BPNN) are used for training and testing the experimental data in order to acquire the failure criterion of concrete strength. Unlike the traditional regression analyses where the explicit forms of the equation must be defined first, the neural network approach provides a general form of strength envelope. The study shows that the RBFNN model provides better prediction than the BPNN model. Parametric studies on both models are carried out to find the best neural network structure. Finally, a comparison study between the neural network model and two regression models is made.
Geographic Information System for Coordination of Fast‐Track Projects
Authors: Shanmugam Sangeetha P. , Parvatham Ravikanth , Varghese Koshy
Published: March 2003

To meet the increasing demands to deliver projects within a short period of time, many projects are being executed on a fast‐track basis. On fast‐track projects, the construction begins when the design is between 35% and 65% complete. This poses numerous challenges. One of the key challenges is to ensure that the flow of information and deliverables between the engineering, procurement, and construction is synchronized. This work initially studied the information flow on process plant projects, the disruptions to information flow, and the problems faced due to the disruptions. It was identified that an information system that has the capability to (1) capture the relationships between different deliverables, (2) record the status of deliverables, and (3) process queries from any of the teams regarding status and impact of disruptions will support the decision‐making required for rapid development of pragmatic plans. Further, as the information requirements require the representation and querying of both spatial and nonspatial data, the design and implementation of the system using the concepts and features of a geographic information system was explored. The paper discusses the design of the geographic information system and its implementation within the AutoCAD Map environment. The use of the system to retrieve information required for project coordination is illustrated through sample queries.
The Concept of Dreaming: On Three Theses by Malcolm
Authors: Shroeder Severin
Published: March 2003

In his monograph Dreaming (1959), Normal Malcolm puts forward the following three theses:

(1) The temporal location of dreams as taking place in one’s sleep is not an empirical fact, but determined by grammar.

(2) This grammatical determination does not allow dreams a precise date in physical time.

(3) Dreams do not consist of mental occurrences.

I argue that (1) is indeed perfectly true, whereas (2) is false; (3) is not borne out by Malcolm’s verificationist main argument, although it can be shown to be largely true for other considerations.
On Showing in Argumentation
Authors: Lueken Geert‐Leuke
Published: March 2003

There is a relation between the way we analyse arguments and the consideration we give to the role of showing in argumentation. the concept of showing covers different ideas. Different kinds of showing are present in argumentative practice. This can be exemplified by reference to sensory evidence, logical inference, and analogical arguments. If showing plays an essential role in the argumentative use of language, and analysis which completely replaces that which is shown by that which is said, distorts what it is trying to understand. Analysing argument is interpreting and continuing argumentative practice; it does not operate on a separate level.
Before Language and After
Authors: Knott Hugh
Published: March 2003

It has been assumed by some writers that Wittgenstein’s talk of primitive reactions amounts to a theory of concept formation out of instinctive behaviour. Others have argued that Wittgenstein is thinking of reactions within language‐games, which therefore belong to its structure not its origins. The author concurs, but argues that Wittgenstein also has in mind that it belongs to the grammars of certain concepts that the language‐games in which they lie are themselves supplementary to natural behavioural forms. This provides a context in which the notion of pre‐linguistic behaviour may be employed legitimately in philosophy whilst avoiding unjustified theorising.
Illusions of Sense in the Tractatus: Wittgenstein and Imaginative Understanding
Authors: Weiss Jonathan
Published: March 2003

Certain expositors of the Tractatus have tried to make sense of Wittegnstein’s curious revocation of its propositions by suggesting that although they lack content, they nonetheless express (“show,” but do not say) some ineffable truths about reality. Such a view Cora Dimaond labels “chickening out.” I attempt to diagnose the lingering attraction of the ‘chicken’ (in this case an attraction to an illusion of sense) by condsidering a (false) parallel with the case of perceptual illusion. To this end, I make a brief excursion into the work of Gareth Evans in order to draw out what the parallel would look like and more specifically how the chicken might be tempted to think that there is indeed such a parallel. In this way, I hope to better ‘understand’ the chicken and her seduction, and in the process make a plea for not “chickening out.” I then turn to a positive consideration of how we should in fact read this work. In particular, I consider Diamond’s idea that the Tractatus requires an “imaginative understanding” of its reader, an ability to ‘think’ oneself into certain philosophical illusions of sense in order to dismantle them from within. I explore exactly what such an imagination involves. In particular, I suggest that it presupposes a kind of ‘metaphysical’ thesis of its own about the nature of human beings and their innermost tendencies, a position, I argue, that Wittegnstein held.
Political Settlements in Northern Ireland and South Africa
Authors: McGarry John
Published: March 2003

The article examines comparisons between Northern Ireland's recent peace process and agreement and similar developments in South Africa. On the one hand, the analogy has been used to explain Northern Ireland's conflict and the type of prescription it requires. On the other, it has been employed to suggest ways in which agreement might be achieved in Northern Ireland, or, more recently, why agreement has been reached. These uses of the analogy ignore or downplay crucial contextual differences between the two cases. The most important of these is that while South Africa's conflict took place largely within a single state, Northern Ireland's occurs within a wider British–Irish space. This contextual difference is crucial for understanding the Northern Ireland conflict, the type of institutions required there, and why agreement was reached.
Learning Lessons and Transferring Policy across Time, Space and Disciplines
Authors: Stone Diane
Published: March 2003

An area of recent interest in the International Relations and Comparative Politics literature concerns ‘policy transfer’. This is a dynamic whereby knowledge about policies, administrative arrangements or institutions is used across time or space in the development of policies, administrative arrangements and institutions elsewhere. Policy transfer is deemed to be on the increase in an era of globalisation. Indeed, some governments and international organisations are proactive in promoting harmonisation and convergence or exporting policy lessons. This paper surveys the state of the burgeoning literature, identifies some methodological issues in studying policy transfer, and outlines some additional routes of research.
Looming Responses to Obstacles and Apertures: The Role of Accretion and Deletion of Background Texture
Authors: Schmuckler Mark A. , Li Nicole S.
Published: March 2003

Successful navigation in the world requires differentiating an obstacle in one's path from an aperture through which one could pass. An approaching obstacle is specified by texture expansion within the obstacle's contour and the deletion of background texture outside the object. In contrast, an approaching aperture contains texture expansion within the aperture's frame and accretion of background texture within the aperture's contour. This study investigated 3- to 5-month-old infants' discrimination of obstacles from apertures, examining eyeblink responses to the movement of both kinds of objects against backgrounds varying in salience. Obstacles produced stronger looming reactions than apertures, and the salience of the background influenced responses to apertures but not obstacles. These findings imply that infants differentiate obstacles from apertures based on their relative patterns of accretion versus deletion of background texture, and suggest that infants recognize the functional consequences of contact with these objects.
The Role of Decision Processes in Conscious Recollection
Authors: Hirshman Elliot , Henzler Amanda
Published: March 2003

Dual-process models of recognition memory posit a rapid retrieval process that produces a general sense of familiarity and a slower retrieval process that produces conscious recollections of prior experience. The remember/know paradigm has been used to study the subjective correlates of these two processes, with remember judgments assumed to index conscious recollection and know judgments assumed to index familiarity. Recently, a two-criterion signal detection model has been proposed as an alternative account of this paradigm. This model assumes only a single memory process with a criterion separating remember from know responses. This report presents an empirical test of the model's critical prediction that manipulations that influence criterion placement should influence both remember and know judgments. An experiment confirmed this prediction, demonstrating that subjects who were told that 70% of the test items were study items produced more remember and know responses than subjects who were told that 30% of the test items were study items.
Self-Corrected Reaching in a Three-Location Delayed-Response Search Task
Authors: Reznick J. Steven , Fueser J. J. , Bosquet Michelle
Published: March 2003

Infants watched an experimenter hide a toy in one of three wells and then attempted to retrieve it after a brief delay. Seven-month-olds performed at chance. Nine-month-olds reached correctly on 43% of trials, which is significantly better than chance. After an incorrect reach, infants were allowed to choose between the two remaining locations. Seven-month-olds responded at a chance level on their second reach, but 9-month-olds chose correctly more often than would be expected by chance despite a 10- to 20-s delay between hiding and search. One cause of error on the initial reach was a profound bias toward the center well. In Experiment 2, the wells were covered simultaneously, and the infant's spatial orientation was disrupted during the delay; this procedure eliminated the centripetal bias. Nine-month-olds still responded correctly more often than would be expected by chance on their second reach. These findings suggest that 9-month-olds sometimes have a more durable working memory for location than is generally reported for that age group.
Does Evidence Presentation Format Affect Judgment? An Experimental Evaluation of Displays of Data for Judgments
Authors: Sanfey Alan , Hastie Reid
Published: March 2003

Information relevant to a prediction was presented in one of eight formats: a table of numbers, a brief text, a longer biographical story, and five different types of bar graphs. Experimental participants made judgments of marathon finishing times based on information about the runners' ages, prior performance, training, and motivation. A regression analysis was used to assess the individual judges' relative weighting of the various types of information relevant to their predictions. The different formats for displaying information yielded different levels of accuracy and patterns of information utilization. In accordance with an explanation-based decision model, the text and story displays induced the heaviest reliance on information about runners' motivation and prior performance and produced the most accurate judgments of marathon finishing times.
Orienting to Extinguished Signals in Hemispatial Neglect
Authors: Danziger Shai , Kingstone Alan , Rafal Robert D.
Published: March 2003

This study tested for spatial orienting effects, without awareness, to signals presented in the neglected hemifield of 2 hemispatialneglect patients. The experiment adapted a spatial precuing paradigm for measuring the effects of visual attention. Contralesional orienting hastened subsequent target detection at the location of an extinguished precue. These findings validate a claim that orienting can occur independently of overt detection and indicate that location information is registered in the neglected field.
Risk Factors for Infant Abuse and Neglect in Group-Living Rhesus Monkeys
Authors: Maestripieri Dario , Carroll Kelly A.
Published: March 2003

This study investigated maternal abuse and neglect of offspring in a large population of rhesus monkeys over a period of 29 years. Abuse and neglect did not occur together and were associated with different risk factors. Infant abuse was concentrated in 8 of 57 families and among closely related females. Abuse was also repeated with successive offspring. In contrast, infant neglect was not affected by genealogical factors, was not repeated with successive offspring, and was displayed mostly by primiparous mothers. These results suggest that abuse and neglect may be different phenomena and that infant abuse in group-living monkeys could represent a good animal model for investigating the mechanisms underlying the intergenerational transmission of child maltreatment.
Illusory Conjunctions of Color and Motion With Shape Following Bilateral Parietal Lesions
Authors: Bernstein Lori J. , Robertson Lynn C.
Published: March 2003

The primate visual system responds to shapes, colors, and various other features more strongly in some brain areas than others. However, it remains unclear how these features are bound together so that an object with all its attributes is perceived. A patient (R.M.) with bilateral parietal-occipital lesions has been shown previously to mis-combine the shape and color of items, making errors known as illusory conjunctions (ICs). In this study, we examined the effects of a third feature (motion) on this patient's IC rates. R.M. was presented with two letters that moved in different ways. He often reported seeing the shape of one of the letters with the other letter's motion. His performance on the same task with three features shows that correctly combining two features did not necessarily lead to correctly binding the third. These data support modularity of feature representations in the human brain and provide supporting evidence that spatial representations associated with the parietal lobe are necessary for normal feature integration.
Grasping the Nature of Pictures
Authors: DeLoache Judy S. , Pierroutsakos Sophia L. , Uttal David H. , Rosengren Karl S. , Gottlieb Alma
Published: March 2003

The role of experience in the development of pictorial competence has been the center of substantial debate. The four studies presented here help resolve the controversy by systematically documenting and examining manual exploration of depicted objects by infants. We report that 9-month-old infants manually investigate pictures, touching and feeling depicted objects as if they were real objects and even trying to pick them up off the page. The same behavior was observed in babies from two extremely different societies (the United States and the Ivory Coast). This investigation of pictures occurs even though infants can discriminate between real objects and their depictions. By the time infants are 19 months of age, their manual exploration is replaced by pointing at depicted objects. These results indicate that initial uncertainty about the nature of pictures leads infants to investigate them. Through experience, infants begin to acquire a concept of “picture.” This concept includes the fact that a picture has a dual nature (it is both an object and a representation of something other than itself), as well as knowledge about the culturally appropriate use of pictures.
Cerebral Organization of Motor Imagery: Contralateral Control of Grip Selection in Mentally Represented Prehension
Authors: Johnson Scott H.
Published: March 2003

The principle of contralateral organization of the visual and motor systems was exploited to investigate contributions of the cerebral hemispheres to the mental representation of prehension in healthy, right-handed human subjects. Graphically rendered dowels were presented to either the left or right visual field in a variety of different orientations, and times to determine whether an underhand or overhand grip would be preferred for engaging these stimuli were measured. Although no actual reaching movements were performed, a significant advantage in grip-selection time was found when information was presented to the cerebral hemisphere contralateral to the designated response hand. Results are consistent with the position that motor imagery recruits neurocognitive mechanisms involved in movement planning. More precisely, these findings indicate that processes within each cerebral hemisphere participate in mentally representing object-oriented actions of the contralateral hand.
The American Dream Revisited: Is It What You Want or Why You Want It That Matters?
Authors: Carver Charles S. , Baird Eryn
Published: March 2003

Previous research found that aspirations to financial success related inversely to self-actualization and that aspirations to community involvement related positively to self-actualization. We argue that diverse reasons can underlie both of these aspirations, leading to more complex predictions. In a sample of 246 participants, we assessed both self-determining and controlling reasons for each class of aspiration, along with endorsements of the aspirations themselves. Initial regression analyses replicated the earlier findings. Subsequent analyses found that endorsement of self-determining reasons for either class of aspiration related positively to self-actualization and that endorsement of controlling reasons for either class of aspiration related inversely to self-actualization. In the analysis involving community involvement, the aspiration itself no longer retained predictive power after the other variables were taken into account. In the analysis involving financial success, however, the aspiration retained an independent predictive role.
Getting the Right Idea: Semantic Activation in the Right Hemisphere May Help Solve Insight Problems
Authors: Bowden Edward M. , Beeman Mark Jung
Published: March 2003

Two experiments examined hemispheric differences in information processing that may contribute to solving insight problems. We propose that right-hemisphere (RH) coarse semantic coding is more likely than left-hemisphere (LH) fine semantic coding to activate distantly related information or unusual interpretations of words, and thus more likely to activate solution-relevant information for insight problems. In Experiment 1, after trying to solve insight problems, participants read aloud solution or unrelated target words presented to the left visual field (lvf) or right visual field (rvf). Participants showed greater lvf-RH than rvf-LH priming for solutions for solved problems and priming only in the lvf-RH for unsolved problems. In Experiment 2, participants showed an lvf-RH advantage for recognizing solutions to unsolved problems. These results demonstrate that in a problem-solving context, there was greater activation of solution-relevant information in the RH than in the LH. This activation is useful for recognizing, and perhaps producing, solutions to insight problems.
Classical Conditioning in a Nonclinical Obsessive-Compulsive Population
Authors: Tracy Jo Anne , Ghose Sushmita S. , Stecher Tamara , McFall Richard M. , Steinmetz Joseph E.
Published: March 2003

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is an intrusive and debilitating condition in which the individual experiences uncontrollable thoughts, compulsions, and urges. Successful treatments for OCD are based on Mowrer's theory of fear and avoidance behavior, which predicts that OCD subjects should show accelerated associative conditioning. This prediction was tested in two experiments that compared the classical eyeblink conditioning of OCD-like and control college students. OCD and control subjects learned normally and similarly when the conditioning procedure was accompanied by an active visual search background task (Experiment 1). However, when the background task was changed so that subjects passively viewed neutral pictures, OCD subjects conditioned significantly faster than control subjects (Experiment 2). Overall, the performance of all subjects in Experiment 1 was superior to the performance of subjects in Experiment 2.
Left-Hemisphere Advantage for Click Consonants is Determined by Linguistic Significance and Experience
Authors: Best Catherine T. , Avery Robert A.
Published: March 2003

Left-hemisphere (LH) superiority for speech perception is a fundamental neurocognitive aspect of language, and is particularly strong for consonant perception. Two key theoretical aspects of the LH advantage for consonants remain controversial, however: the processing mode (auditory vs. linguistic) and the developmental basis of the specialization (innate vs. experience dependent). Click consonants offer a unique opportunity to evaluate these theoretical issues. Brief and spectrally complex, oral clicks exemplify the acoustic properties that have been proposed for an auditorily based LH specialization, yet they retain linguistic significance only for listeners whose languages employ them as consonants (e.g., Zulu). Speakers of other languages (e.g., English) perceive these clicks as nonspeech sounds. We assessed Zulu versus English listeners' hemispheric asymmetries for clicks, in and out of syllable context, in a dichotic-listening task. Performance was good for both groups, but only Zulus showed an LH advantage. Thus, linguistic processing and experience both appear to be crucial.
Blind to Object Changes: When Learning the Same Object at Different Levels of Categorization Modifies Its Perception
Authors: Archambault Annie , O'Donnell Christopher , Schyns Philippe G.
Published: March 2003

The perceptual features people extract from objects depend on how they typically categorize them. It is now commonly acknowledged that the human perceiver can interact with the objects of his or her world at different, hierarchically organized levels of categorization. People who have learned to categorize an object as general or specific may therefore perceive different features in this object. We report two experiments that examined the hypothesis that the nature of categorization (general vs. specific) can influence the perceived properties of an identical distal object.
Illuminating Mental Representations Through Speech and Gesture
Authors: Alibali Martha W. , Bassok Miriam , Solomon Karen Olseth , Syc Sharon E. , Goldin-Meadow Susan
Published: March 2003

Can the gestures people produce when describing algebra word problems offer insight into their mental representations of the problems? Twenty adults were asked to describe six word problems about constant change, and then to talk aloud as they solved the problems. Two problems depicted continuous change, two depicted discrete change, and two depicted change that could be construed as either continuous or discrete. Participants' verbal and gestured descriptions of the problems often incorporated information about manner of change. However, the information conveyed in gesture was not always the same as the information conveyed in speech. Participants' problem representations, as expressed in speech and gesture, were systematically related to their problem solutions. When gesture reinforced the representation expressed in the spoken description, participants were very likely to solve the problem using a strategy compatible with that representation—much more likely than when gesture did not reinforce the spoken description. The results indicate that gesture and speech together provide a better index of mental representation than speech alone.
Inhibition of Return is a Foraging Facilitator in Visual Search
Authors: Klein Raymond M. , MacInnes W. Joseph
Published: March 2003

Using overt orienting, participants searched a complex visual scene for a camouflaged target (Waldo from the “Where's Waldo?™” books). After several saccades, we presented an uncamouflaged probe (black disk) while removing or maintaining the scene, and participants were required to locate this probe by foveating it. Inhibition of return was observed as a relative increase in the time required to locate these probes when they were in the general region of a previous fixation, but only when the search array remained present. Perhaps also reflecting inhibition of return, preprobe saccades showed a strong directional bias away from a previously fixated region. Together with recent studies that replicate the finding of inhibition at distractor locations following serial but not parallel visual search—so long as the search array remains visible—these data strongly support the proposal that inhibition of return functions to facilitate visual search by inhibiting orienting to previously examined locations.
Number Versus Contour Length in Infants' Discrimination of Small Visual Sets
Authors: Clearfield Melissa Wechsler , Mix Kelly S.
Published: March 2003

This study examined infants' use of contour length in number discrimination tasks. We systematically varied number and contour length in a visual habituation experiment in order to separate these two variables. Sixteen 6- to 8-month-old infants were habituated to displays of either two or three black squares on a page. They were then tested with alternating displays of either a familiar number of squares with a novel contour length or a novel number of squares with a familiar contour length. Infants dishabituated to the display that changed in contour length, but not to the display that changed in number. We conclude that infants base their discriminations on contour length or some other continuous variable that correlates with it, rather than on number.
Neural Recruitment and Cognitive Aging: Two Hemispheres Are Better Than One, Especially as You Age
Authors: Reuter-Lorenz Patricia A. , Stanczak Louise , Miller Andrea C.
Published: March 2003

Several neuroimaging studies have reported that older adults show weaker activations in some brain areas together with stronger activations in other areas, compared with younger adults performing the same task. This pattern may reflect neural recruitment that compensates for age-related neural declines. The recruitment hypothesis was tested in a visual laterality study that investigated age differences in the efficiency of bihemispheric processing. Letter-matching tasks of varying complexity were performed under two conditions: (a) matching letters projected to the same visual field (hemisphere) and (b) matching letters projected to opposite visual fields (hemispheres). As predicted by the recruitment hypothesis, older adults generally performed better in the bilateral than unilateral condition, whereas younger adults showed this pattern only for the most complex task. We discuss the relation between these results and neuroimaging evidence for recruitment, and the relevance of the present bihemispheric advantage to other evidence for age-related changes in interhemispheric transfer.
Twelve-Month-Old Infants Interpret Action in Context
Authors: Woodward Amanda L. , Sommerville Jessica A.
Published: March 2003

Two experiments assessed infants' understanding that actions that occur in sequence may be related to an overarching goal. Experiment 1 tested whether embedding an ambiguous action (touching the lid of a box) in a sequence that culminated with an action infants readily construe as goal-directed (grasping a toy inside the box) would alter infants' construal of the ambiguous action. Having seen the ambiguous action in this context, infants later construed this action in isolation as being directed at the toy within the box. Experiment 2 tested whether infants related the two actions on the basis of the temporal or the causal relation between them. When the causal relation was disrupted but the temporal relation was preserved, infants no longer related the two actions. These findings indicate that 12-month-old infants relate single actions to overarching goals and that they do so by construing goal-directed action in a causal framework.
Exaggerating Temporal Differences Enhances Recognition of Individuals from Point Light Displays
Authors: Hill Harold , Pollick Frank E.
Published: March 2003

Humans are very good at perceiving each other's movements. In this article, we investigate the role of time-based information in the recognition of individuals from point light biological motion sequences. We report an experiment in which we used an exaggeration technique that changes temporal properties while keeping spatial information constant; differences in the durations of motion segments are exaggerated relative to average values. Participants first learned to recognize six individuals on the basis of a simple, unexaggerated arm movement. Subsequently, they recognized positively exaggerated versions of those movements better than the originals. Absolute duration did not appear to be the critical cue. The results show that time-based cues are used for the recognition of movements and that exaggerating temporal differences improves performance. The results suggest that exaggeration may reflect general principles of how diagnostic information is encoded for recognition in different domains.
What the Eyes Say About Speaking
Authors: Griffin Zenzi M. , Bock Kathryn
Published: March 2003

To study the time course of sentence formulation, we monitored the eye movements of speakers as they described simple events. The similarity between speakers' initial eye movements and those of observers performing a nonverbal event-comprehension task suggested that response-relevant information was rapidly extracted from scenes, allowing speakers to select grammatical subjects based on comprehended events rather than salience. When speaking extemporaneously, speakers began fixating pictured elements less than a second before naming them within their descriptions, a finding consistent with incremental lexical encoding. Eye movements anticipated the order of mention despite changes in picture orientation, in who-did-what-to-whom, and in sentence structure. The results support Wundt's theory of sentence production.