bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Effects of Evidence on Attitudes: Is Polarization the Norm?
Authors: Kuhn Deanna , Lao Joseph
Published: April 2006

A 1979 study by Lord, Ross, and Lepper has been widely cited as showing that examination of mixed evidence on a topic leads to polarization of attitudes The polarization phenomenon, we suggest, in fact encompasses two distinct change patterns—a shift from an initially moderate to a more extreme position (regarded here as genuine polarization) and a shift from an initially neutral to a moderate position (which might better be termed “articulating a position”) The findings reported here indicate that genuine polarization is a real but infrequent outcome of exposure to mixed evidence In addition, we offer data in support of the view that the effective component of such interventions is simply cognitive engagement, rather than exposure to new evidence
The Difficulty of Measuring Musical Quality (And Quantity): Commentary on Weisberg
Authors: Repp Bruno H.
Published: April 2006

In a recent article in this journal, Weisberg (1994) examined the hypothesis that creative individuals suffering from manic-depressive disease not only are more productive during hypomanic phases (which they commonly are) but also produce works of higher quality than during normal or depressed periods As his test case, he took the composer Robert Schumann (1810-1856), who suffered from a bipolar affective disorder (Jamison, 1993, Ostwald, 1985, Slater & Meyer, 1959) and who left extensive records of his mood swings in letters and diaries A plot of the number of Schumann's compositions by year of completion (Weisberg's Fig 1) reveals two periods of particularly intense activity the years 1840 and 1849-1851, especially 1849 According to Slater and Meyer (1959), the years 1840, 1849, and 1851 coincide with hypomanic periods in Schumann's life Years classified as mostly depressive periods, by contrast, show very low productivity
Is the Self-Concept a Habitual Referent in Judgments of Similarity?
Authors: Catrambone Richard , Beike Denise , Niedenthal Paula
Published: April 2006

People typically provide higher similarity ratings in response to the question “How similar is the typical preppie to you?” than to the question “How similar are you to the typical preppie?” Observed asymmetries in comparisons of the self and person prototypes have been offered as evidence that the self-concept acts as a habitual reference point in social judgment However, such a task does not test the habitual placement of a concept in the referent position of a comparison In this study, participants judged the similarity between the self and person prototypes in response to linguistic (forced directional) queries or to spatial (nonforced) queries in which the self was positioned above or below the person concept Participants also rated pairs of familiar and unfamiliar countries in a similar manner, to replicate and extend the work of Tversky (1977) Expected asymmetries were observed in forced comparisons The self and the familiar country were seen as more similar to other people and less familiar countries, respectively, when the former concepts served as the referent of a comparison than when they served as the subject Asymmetries were not observed in the nonforced conditions, and mean similarity in these conditions was of the same magnitude as in the forced condition in which the more familiar stimulus was the referent of the comparison This result provides the first direct evidence that the self serves as a habitual referent in similarity judgments
Gesture, Speech, and Lexical Access: The Role of Lexical Movements in Speech Production
Authors: Rauscher Frances H. , Krauss Robert M. , Chen Yihsiu
Published: April 2006

In a within-subjects design that varied whether speakers were allowed to gesture and the difficulty of lexical access, speakers were videotaped as they described animated action cartoons to a listener When speakers were permitted to gesture, they gestured more often during phrases with spatial content than during phrases with other content Speech with spatial content was less fluent when speakers could not gesture than when they could gesture, speech with nonspatial content was not affected by gesture condition Preventing gesturing increased the relative frequency of nonjuncture filled pauses in speech with spatial content, but not in speech with other content Overall, the effects of preventing speakers from gesturing resembled those of increasing the difficulty of lexical access by other means, except that the effects of gesture restriction were specific to speech with spatial content The findings support the hypothesis that gestural accompaniments to spontaneous speech can facilitate access to the mental lexicon
Vulnerability of Contrast Tests to Simpler Interpretations: An Addendum to Rosnow and Rosenthal
Authors: Abelson Robert P.
Published: April 2006

The recent article in this journal by Rosnow and Rosenthal (1995) amplified on previous pleas that in analyses of variance, priority be given single-degree-of-freedom contrasts focused on specific hypotheses The present commentary supports this plea, but notes a problem in choosing appropriate contrasts when global predicted patterns link two or more local effect predictions Misleading claims can arise in very simple experimental designs, because global patterns are often confounded with relatively uninteresting simple effects or main effects This problem is illustrated with a 1 x 3 example and a discussion of the 2 x 2 With careful attention to what points are of most interest in the data, and an appreciation of the potential sensitivity of some contrasts to banal alternative interpretations, this problem can be avoided
Understanding Data When Interactions Are Present or Hypothesized
Authors: Petty Richard E. , Fabrigar Leandre R. , Wegener Duane T. , Priester Joseph R.
Published: April 2006

The traditional approach to interpreting data when an interaction is present is to interpret cell means as reflecting a difference between differences An alternative is to interpret any main effects and separately interpret interaction residuals Interpretation of interaction residuals can sometimes lead to nonsensical conclusions Thus in deciding between the approaches, researchers should consider (a) the conceptual nature of the variables involved, (b) relevant theories and (c) the additional data that might be necessary to distinguish among competing plausible representations Issues have also arisen regarding how to best test a hypothesis that involves interaction variance Some researchers have argued that the use of a focused contrast designed to test a specific ordering of cell means (e g, a linear contrast) is often the best strategy We note potential problems with the use of such contrasts and discourage researchers from blanket use of contrasts that combine main effect and interaction variance
Accuracy and Distortion in Memory for High School Grades
Authors: Bahrick Harry P. , Hall Lynda K. , Berger Stephanie A.
Published: April 2006

The relation between accuracy and distortion of autobiographical memory content was examined by verifying 3,220 high school grades recalled by 99 college students Accuracy of recall declined monotonically with letter grade, from 89% for grades of A to 29% for grades of D The positive correlation between achievement and accuracy of recall is attributed to more frequent rehearsals of affectively positive content and to greater accuracy of reconstructive inferences based on homogeneous, generic memories Most errors inflated the verified grade, and the degree of asymmetry of the error distribution is used as an index of the degree of distortion Distortions are attributed to reconstructions in a positive, emotionally gratifying direction Contrary to expectation, the percentage of accurate recall and the degree of asymmetry of the error distribution were uncorrelated This finding indicates that the process of distortion does not cause forgetting of the veridical content Rather, distortion reflects bias in reconstructive inferences that occur after the veridical content has been forgotten for other reasons
Natural Musical Intervals: Evidence From Infant Listeners
Authors: Schellenberg E. Glenn , Trehub Sandra E.
Published: April 2006

Ancient and medieval scholars considered tones related by simple (small-integer) ratios to be naturally pleasing, but contemporary scholars attribute the special perceptual status of such sounds to exposure We investigated the possibility of processing predispositions for some tone combinations by evaluating infants' ability to detect subtle changes to patterns of simultaneous and sequential tones Infants detected such changes to pairs of pure tones (intervals) only when the tones were related by simple frequency ratios This was the case for 9-month-old infants tested with harmonic (simultaneous) intervals and for 6-month-old infants tested with melodic (sequential) intervals These results are consistent with a biological basis for the prevalence of particular intervals historically and cross-culturally
Illusion of Control: Detecting Response-Outcome Independence in Analytic but Not in Naturalistic Conditions
Authors: Matute Helena
Published: April 2006

Experiments in which subjects are asked to analytically assess response-outcome relationships have frequently yielded accurate judgments of response-outcome independence, but more naturalistically set experiments in which subjects are instructed to obtain the outcome have frequently yielded illusions of control The present research tested the hypothesis that a differential probability of responding p(R), between these two traditions could be at the basis of these different results Subjects received response-independent outcomes and were instructed either to obtain the outcome (naturalistic condition) or to behave scientifically in order to find out how much control over the outcome was possible (analytic condition) Subjects in the naturalistic condition tended to respond at almost every opportunity and developed a strong illusion of control Subjects in the analytic condition maintained their p(R) at a point close to 5 and made accurate judgments of control The illusion of control observed in the naturalistic condition appears to be a collateral effect of a high tendency to respond in subjects who are trying to obtain an outcome, this tendency to respond prevents them from learning that the outcome would have occurred with the same probability if they had not responded
Whistling in the Dark: Exaggerated Consensus Estimates in Response to Incidental Reminders of Mortality
Authors: Pyszczynski Tom , Wicklund Robert A. , Floresku Stefan , Koch Holgar , Gauch Gerardine , Solomon Sheldon , Greenberg Jeff
Published: April 2006

Terror management theory posits that cultural worldviews function to provide protection against anxiety concerning human vulnerability and mortality and that their effectiveness as buffers against such anxiety is maintained through a process of consensual validation Two field experiments were conducted to test the hypothesis that incidental reminders of one's mortality increase the need to believe that others share one's worldview In both studies, passersby on city streets were asked to estimate the extent of social consensus for culturally relevant attitudes, 100 m before passing a funeral home, 100 m after passing a funeral home, or directly in front of a funeral home In the first study, conducted in Germany, subjects were asked to estimate the percentage of Germans who shared their opinions about a proposal to change the German constitution to restrict the immigration of foreigners, in the second study, conducted in the United States, subjects were asked to estimate the percentage of Americans who shared their opinions about the teaching of Christian values in the public schools In both studies, subjects who held the minority position on the issue estimated greater consensus for their opinions when interviewed directly in front of a funeral home than when interviewed either before or after passing it
Acting as Intuitive Scientists: Contingency Judgments Are Made While Controlling for Alternative Potential Causes
Authors: Spellman Barbara A.
Published: April 2006

In judging the efficacy of multiple causes of an effect, human performance has been found to deviate from the “normative”Δ P contingency rule However, in cases of multiple causes, that rule might not be normative, scientists and philosophers, for example, know that when judging a potential cause, one must control for all other potential causes. In an experiment in which they were shown trial-by-trial effects of two potential causes (which sometimes covaried), subjects used conditional rather than unconditional contingencies to rate the efficacy of the causes. A conditional contingency analysis may explain various “nonnormative” cue-integration effects (e.g., discounting) found in the literature and is relevant to how people unravel Simpson's paradox.
Relations Between Language and Memory: The Case of Repetition Deafness
Authors: Miller Michelle D. , MacKay Donald G.
Published: April 2006

Immediate recall decreases for repeated relative to unrepeated words in rapidly presented spoken lists, a phenomenon known as repetition deafness (RD) The present study examines RD as a test case for a distributed memory account of relations between language and memory Within the distributed memory framework, general connection-formation processes required for language comprehension influence repetition deficits in sentences Thus, RD should increase as a function of factors, such as listlike sentence prosody, that disrupt the formation of word-to-phrase links Also under this account, repetition blindness and RD in sentences should display fundamentally similar characteristics (e.g., relative insensitivity to low-level sensory differences between the repeated words) Using innovative procedures for computer sound manipulation, the present study obtained data supporting both predictions RD increased for sentences generated with listlike versus normal prosody, but did not differ reliably for acoustically similar versus dissimilar repeated words Implications of these data for the general issue of relations between language and memory are discussed
Attitudes Toward the Use of Animals in Psychological Research and Education: Results From a National Survey of Psychology Majors
Authors: Plous S.
Published: April 2006

This article reports the results of a national survey in which psychology majors were asked about the use of animals in psychological research and teaching In general, the attitudes of psychology majors closely resembled the attitudes of practicing psychologists Students tended to (a) support animal experiments involving observation or confinement, but disapprove of studies involving pain or death, (b) support mandatory pain assessments and the federal protection of rats, mice, pigeons, and reptiles, and (c) support the use of animals in teaching, but oppose an animal laboratory requirement for the psychology major Opposition to the use of animals was greatest among women, among students at selective schools, and among students living in the Northeast/Mid-Atlantic region of the country
Sex Differences in Jealousy in Evolutionary and Cultural Perspective: Tests From the Netherlands, Germany, and the United States
Authors: Buunk Bram P. , Angleitner Alois , Oubaid Viktor , Buss David M.
Published: April 2006

As predicted by models derived from evolutionary psychology, men within the United States have been shown to exhibit greater psychological and physiological distress to sexual than to emotional infidelity of their partner, and women have been shown to exhibit more distress to emotional than to sexual infidelity Because cross-cultural tests are critical for evolutionary hypotheses, we examined these sex differences in three parallel studies conducted in the Netherlands (N = 207), Germany (N = 200), and the United States (N = 224) Two key findings emerged First, the sex differences in sexual jealousy are robust across these cultures, providing support for the evolutionary psychological model Second, the magnitude of the sex differences varies somewhat across cultures—large for the United States, medium for Germany and the Netherlands Discussion focuses on the evolutionary psychology of jealousy and on the sensitivity of sex differences in the sexual sphere to cultural input
The Comprehensive System for the Rorschach: A Critical Examination
Authors: Wood James M. , Nezworski M. Teresa , Stejskal William J.
Published: April 2006

The Comprehensive System (Exner, 1993) is widely accepted as a reliable and valid approach to Rorschach interpretation However, the present article calls attention to significant problems with the system First, contrary to common opinion, the interrater reliability of most scores in the system has never been demonstrated adequately Second, important scores and indices in the system are of questionable validity Third, the research base of the system consists mainly of unpublished studies that are often unavailable for examination Recommendations are made regarding research and clinical use of the Comprehensive System
Thinking Critically About the Comprehensive System for the Rorschach: A Reply to Exner
Authors: Wood James M. , Nezworski M. Teresa , Stejskal William J.
Published: April 2006

Psychology's long controversy regarding the Rorschach inkblot technique was apparently settled in 1974 with the publication of The Rorschach A Comprehensive System ( TRACS, Exner, 1974) That volume, with its subsequent extensions and revisions (Exner, 1978, 1986, 1991, 1993, Exner & Weiner, 1982, 1994), seemed to establish the Rorschach on a solid foundation of empirical research The Comprehensive System for the Rorschach as set forth in TRACS is now widely applied in clinical and forensic settings
Behavioral Therapy Development and Psychological Science: Reinforcing the Bond
Authors: Onken Lisa Simon , Blaine Jack D.
Published: April 2006

An abundance of research from diverse areas of psychological science is potentially relevant to behavioral therapy development research The National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health convened a workshop to reinforce the connection between basic behavioral and therapy development research The articles in this Special Section are the product of this workshop Several lines of basic behavioral research are described, and implications for the development of behavioral therapies are discussed This Special Section highlights the notion that strengthening the bond between behavioral therapy development research and basic behavioral science will accelerate the advancement of knowledge about behavior, behavioral change and therapeutic interventions
On the Need for a Basic Science Approach to Psychotherapy Research
Authors: Borkovec T.D.
Published: April 2006

This article argues that the greatest progress in developing more effective psychotherapies will come from a renewed emphasis on designing and conducting therapy research as basic science devoted to the acquisition of cause-and-effect relationships and from collaborations between clinical researchers and basic researchers from other domains of psychology
Contributions of Cognitive Theory to New Behavioral Treatments
Authors: McFall Richard M. , Treat Teresa A , Viken Richard J
Published: April 2006

Although clinical, social, and cognitive psychologists all use the concept of ‘cognition’, they often use it in different ways to refer to different phenomena We offer a heuristic framework for distinguishing among three general uses of the word cognition, and apply this framework to an evaluation of the experiential avoidance concept presented by Hayes and Gifford (this issue) While acknowledging the promise of such work, we raise concerns about its possible limitations We recommend that clinical applications of the cognition concept be grounded in the theories and methods of contemporary cognitive and neural sciences In support of our recommendation, we present three examples from experiments from our own research
The Trouble with Change: Self-Verification and Allegiance to the Self
Authors: Swann William B.
Published: April 2006

Past approaches to the self have emphasized people's desire for positive evaluations I suggest that this emphasis overlooks another powerful and important motive, the desire for evaluations that verify self-views Among people with negative self-views, this desire for self-verification can override the desire for positive evaluations For example, people with negative self-views seek relationship partners who view them negatively, elicit unfavorable evaluations from partners, and “see” more negativity in the reactions of others than is actually there Although these self-verification processes ordinarily impede progress in therapy, awareness of these processes can allow therapists to either circumvent them or actually use them in the service of fostering self-concept change
Prefrontal Brain Asymmetry: A Biological Substrate of the Behavioral Approach and Inhibition Systems
Authors: Sutton Steven K. , Davidson Richard J.
Published: April 2006

Resting anterior brain electrical activity, self-report measures of Behavioral Approach and Inhibition System (BAS and BIS) strength, and general levels of positive and negative affect (PA and NA) were collected from 46 unselected undergraduates on two separate occasions Electroencephalogram (EEG) measures of prefrontal asymmetry and the self-report measures showed excellent internal consistency reliability and adequate test-retest stability Aggregate measures across the two assessments were computed for all indices Subjects with greater relative left prefrontal activation reported higher levels of BAS strength, whereas those with greater relative right prefrontal activation reported higher levels of BIS strength Prefrontal EEG asymmetry accounted for more than 25% of the variance in the self-report measure of relative BAS-BIS strength Prefrontal EEG, however, was not significantly correlated with PA or NA, or the relative strength of PA versus NA Posterior asymmetry was unrelated to the self-report measures
Egocentric Action in Early Infancy: Spatial Frames of Reference for Saccades
Authors: Gilmore Rick O. , Johnson Mark H.
Published: April 2006

The extent to which infants combine visual (i e, retinal position) and nonvisual (eye or head position) spatial information in planning saccades relates to the issue of what spatial frame or frames of reference influence early visually guided action We explored this question by testing infants from 4 to 6 months of age on the double-step saccade paradigm, which has shown that adults combine visual and eye position information into an egocentric (head- or trunk-centered) representation of saccade target locations In contrast, our results imply that infants depend on a simple retinocentric representation at age 4 months, but by 6 months use egocentric representations more often to control saccade planning Shifts in the representation of visual space for this simple sensorimotor behavior may index maturation in cortical circuitry devoted to visual spatial processing in general
Associative Processes in False Recall and False Recognition
Authors: Robinson Kerry J. , Roediger Henry L.
Published: April 2006

Studying a list of words associated to a critical nonpresented word results in high rates of false recall and false recognition for that nonpresented item (Roediger & McDermott, 1995) Two experiments examined the effect of manipulating the number of associates presented on false recall and later false recognition of a nonpresented item In Experiment 1, associate lists of varying lengths were studied, in Experiment 2, list length was held constant and the number of associates within the list was manipulated In both experiments, the rate of critical intrusions in recall increased steadily with increasing number of associates studied Most notably, the filler words used in Experiment 2 to equate the list lengths did not affect the rate of critical intrusions, although they did depress recall of studied words False recall and false recognition appear to be tied to the total, not the mean, associative strength of items in the list
Working Memory Capacity Dissociates Lexical and Sentential Context Effects
Authors: Van Petten Cyma , Weckerly Jill , McIsaac Heather K. , Kutas Marta
Published: April 2006

Semantically associated and unassociated word pairs were embedded in normal meaningful sentences and in sentences that were semantically anomalous throughout The influence of lexical context was isolated via comparison of responses to the second words of the associated and unassociated pairs The influence of sentence-level context was isolated by comparing responses to the same words in the two sentence types Subjects of high, medium and low working memory capacity (as evaluated by the reading span test) showed modulations of event-related brain potentials in response to lexical context In contrast, only the high- and medium-capacity groups were responsive to purely sentence-level semantic context The results demonstrate that sentential context influences the processing of words in intermediate sentence positions at normal reading speeds but that the on-line utilization of this context is more demanding of working memory than single-word contexts
On the Immediacy of Phonetic Perception
Authors: Xu Yi , Liberman Alvin M. , Whalen D.H
Published: April 2006

If, as we believe, language is a specialization all the way down to its roots, then perception of its consonantal elements should be immediately phonetic, not as in the conventional view, a secondary translation from percepts of an auditory sort Supporting observations come from an experiment in which formant transitions that distinguish [da] and [ga] were presented as sinusoids and combined with a synthetic syllable made of resonances, thus causing the auditory system to treat these acoustically incoherent parts as different sources Evidence for the source difference was varied by changing the intensity of the sinusoids relative to the remainder of the syllable Over the greater part of a 60-dB range, listeners accurately identified the consonants, indicating that they had integrated the stimuli according to a coherence that existed only in the phonetic domain At the lowest intensities, indeed, the consonants were accurately identified, even though the whistles—the normal responses to the sinusoids—were not There followed then a range over which perception was duplex Both consonants and whistles were accurately identified At the highest intensities, phonetic integration failed, but accurate perception of the whistles was maintained That the phonetic percept was present when its auditory counterpart was absent, and vice versa, is evidence that the phonetic percept is independent of its auditory counterpart and not a translation from it, as is the fact that the two percepts followed very different courses in response to the experimental variable
To See or not to See: The Need for Attention to Perceive Changes in Scenes
Authors: Rensink Ronald A. , O'Regan J. Kevin , Clark James J.
Published: April 2006

When looking at a scene, observers feel that they see its entire structure in great detail and can immediately notice any changes in it However, when brief blank fields are placed between alternating displays of an original and a modified scene, a striking failure of perception is induced Identification of changes becomes extremely difficult, even when changes are large and made repeatedly Identification is much faster when a verbal cue is provided showing that poor visibility is not the cause of this difficulty Identification is also faster for objects considered to be important in the scene These results support the idea that observers never form a complete, detailed representation of their surroundings In addition, the results indicate that attention is required to perceive change, and that in the absence of localized motion signals attention is guided on the basis of high-level interest
Subliminal Exposure to Death-Related Stimuli Increases Defense of the Cultural Worldview
Authors: Arndt Jamie , Greenberg Jeff , Pyszczynski Tom , Solomon Sheldon
Published: April 2006

Three experiments reported here provide empirical support for the hypothesis derived from terror management theory that unconscious concerns about death motivate allegiance to cultural beliefs Study 1 contrasted exposure to a subliminal death-related stimulus, a standard mortality-salience treatment, and a neutral subliminal stimulus, and found that both the subliminal and the standard reminder of mortality led to more favorable evaluations of people who praised subjects' cultural worldview and more unfavorable evaluations of those who challenged it Study 2 replicated this finding by comparing the effects of exposure to subliminal death stimuli and subliminal pain stimuli Study 3 contrasted subliminal death stimuli, supraliminal death stimuli, and subliminal pain stimuli and found that only subliminal death stimuli produced these effects
On the Efficiency of Visual Selective Attention: Efficient Visual Search Leads to Inefficient Distractor Rejection
Authors: Lavie Nilli , Cox Sally
Published: April 2006

The ability to ignore irrelevant peripheral distractors was assessed as a function of the efficiency in visual search for a target at the center of a display Efficient target search, among dissimilar nontargets, led to greater distraction than inefficient search, among similar nontargets This seemingly paradoxical result is predicted by the recent proposal (Lavie, 1995a) that irrelevant processing can be prevented only by increasing the load for relevant processing Varying the set size of similar items in the central search task demonstrated that interference from irrelevant distractors was eliminated only with more than four relevant items These results demonstrate how capacity limits determine the efficiency of selective attention, and raise questions about some standard assumptions of most visual search models
Other Folks' Theories of Mind and Behavior
Authors: Lillard Angeline S.
Published: April 2006

Our everyday, basic understanding of people's mental states and behaviors has recently been a lively topic of debate in the social sciences This article addresses whether some aspects of our European-American theory of mind are universal, by examining ethnographic and experimental reports of cultural variation Implications of that variation for nativist theories of development are discussed and research strategies to augment our understanding are proposed.
Fluctuations in the Time Required for Elementary Decisions
Authors: Gilden D.L.
Published: April 2006

The nature of reaction time variability is analyzed in a suite of four experiments involving tasks, methodologies, and types of perceptual judgment commonly encountered in cognitive psychology In every case, a substantial fraction of the trial-by-trial variability in reaction time latency is shown to be well described by a particular type of fluctuation known as IA noise These results suggest that the time it takes to make and register a speeded decision reflects a kind of dynamic complexity that is seen in natural systems that self-organize at the boundary between order and chaos.
Viewpoint Dependence in Scene Recognition
Authors: Diwadkar Vaibhav A. , McNamara Timothy P.
Published: April 2006

Two experiments investigated the viewpoint dependence of spatial memories In Experiment 1, participants learned the locations of objects on a desktop from a single perspective and then took part in a recognition test, test scenes included familiar and novel views of the layout Recognition latency was a linear function of the angular distance between a test view and the study view In Experiment 2, participants studied a layout from a single view and then learned to recognize the layout from three additional training views A final recognition test showed that the study view and the training views were represented in memory, and that latency was a linear function of the angular distance to the nearest study or training view These results indicate that interobject spatial relations are encoded in a viewpoint-dependent manner, and that recognition of novel views requires normalization to the most similar representation in memory These findings parallel recent results in visual object recognition.
Judgments of Learning at Delays: Shifts in Response Patterns or Increased Metamemory Accuracy?
Authors: Weaver Charles A. , Kelemen William L.
Published: April 2006

Nelson and Dunlosky (1991) found that judgment-of-learning (JOL) accuracy (measured using G) was nearly perfect if the JOL was made several minutes after study (the delayed-JOL effect) However, over time, the distribution of judgments changed radically When JOLs were made immediately, subjects typically used the middle of the scale, after a delay, more than 50% of judgments were made using the ends of the scale (Dunlosky & Nelson, 1994, Experiment 1) We replicated the delayed-JOL effect and found a similar rating shift Is the delayed-JOL effect an artifact produced by this shift, or does it reflect true metamemory improvement? Monte Carlo simulations allowed us to separate these effects Shifting judgments to ends of the scale did inflate JOL accuracy somewhat The bulk of the delayed-JOL effect, however, resulted from increases in calibration We conclude that the delayed-JOL effect reflects true metamemory improvement.
Preservation of Implicit Memory for New Associations in Global Amnesia
Authors: Gabrieli John D.E. , Keane Margaret M. , Zarella Melissa M. , Poldrack Russell A.
Published: April 2006

This study examined whether amnesic patients have preserved implicit memory for new associations between unrelated words, as measured by repetition priming, despite impaired explicit memory for such new associations Prior studies provide conflicting and ambiguous results Amnesic and control participants read aloud visually presented, unrelated word pairs and then attempted to identify old, recombined, and new word pairs shown at threshold durations Amnesic and control groups showed equivalent priming for new associations by identifying old pairs better than recombined pairs Amnesic patients were impaired on a matched explicit test of memory for new associations The preserved priming in amnesia indicates that implicit memory for new associations need not be supported by the mnemonic processes and brain structures that mediate explicit memory for new associations.
Experience and the Water-Level Task Revisited: Does Expertise Exact a Price?
Authors: Vasta Ross , Rosenberg Deirdre , Knott Jill A. , Gaze Christine E.
Published: April 2006

A recently published study (Hecht & Proffitt, 1995) reported that adults in Munich, Germany, whose occupations involved considerable experience with liquids in containers were less accurate on Piaget's water-level task than were comparable adults in other occupations The present study attempted to replicate that experiment with a North American sample, but using tighter controls The resulting data and conclusions contrast with those of the original study and indicate instead, that individuals in occupations that provide much experience with liquids in containers (bartenders, waiters and waitresses) are, in fact, more accurate on two versions of the water-level task than individuals of equivalent gender, age, and education in control occupations (salespeople, clerical workers) The data are discussed in terms of both the impact and the limits of experience on spatial-task performance.
Memory, Amnesia, and Dissociative Identity Disorder
Authors: Eich Eric , Macaulay Dawn , Loewenstein Richard J. , Dihle Patrice H.
Published: April 2006

Virtually all patients with dissociative identity (or multiple personality) disorder manifest interpersonality amnesia, whereby events experienced by a particular personality state or identity are retrievable by that same identity but not by a different one Though considered a hallmark of dissociative identity disorder (DID), interpersonality amnesia has to date attracted little empirical attention. Further, the few studies on the topic typically include just 1 DID patient and a single index of retention In contrast the current experiment involved 9 DID patients and several measures of either explicit or implicit memory Replicating and extending the single-case study of Nissen, Ross, Willingham, MacKenzie, and Schacter (1988), the present results revealed that implicit testing is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for demonstrating transfer of information from one identity to another Specifically, whereas priming in word-stem completion occurred only if the same personality state performed at both study and at test, priming in picture-fragment completion was as robust between different identities as it was within the same identity Discussion focuses on prospects for future research aimed at understanding the nature and scope of interpersonality amnesia
On the Value of Knowing One's Likes and Dislikes: Attitude Accessibility, Stress, and Health in College
Authors: Fazio Russell H. , Powell Martha C
Published: April 2006

On the basis of laboratory research indicating that accessible attitudes ease decision making we hypothesized that freshmen who enter college knowing their likes and dislikes regarding academically relevant issues may experience better health in this new life setting To test this hypothesis, we conducted a prospective study in which students completed self-report inventories of negative life events and mental and physical health at two points in time The accessibility of attitudes toward academically relevant issues was assessed in the initial session Regression analyses revealed three-way interactions between attitude accessibility, stress (as indexed by the number of negative life events), and initial health status when predicting health scores at Time 2 For students with relatively good initial health, the generally positive relation between stress and illness was buffered by the possession of accessible attitudes For students with relatively poor initial health, recovery was generally greater among those experiencing less stress, especially as attitude accessibility increased
Nature, Nurture, and Cognitive Development from 1 to 16 Years: A Parent-Offspring Adoption Study
Authors: Plomin Robert , Fulker David W. , Corley Robin , DeFries John C
Published: April 2006

Children increasingly resemble their parents in cognitive abilities from infancy through adolescence Results obtained from a 20-year longitudinal adoption study of 245 adopted children and their biological and adoptive parents, as well as 245 matched nonadoptive (control) parents and offspring, show that this increasing resemblance is due to genetic factors Adopted children resemble their adoptive parents slightly in early childhood but not at all in middle childhood or adolescence In contrast, during childhood and adolescence, adopted children become more like their biological parents, and to the same degree as children and parents in control families Although these results were strongest for general cognitive ability and verbal ability similar results were found for other specific cognitive abilities—spatial ability, speed of processing, and recognition memory These findings indicate that within this population, genes that stably affect cognitive abilities in adulthood do not all come into play until adolescence and that environmental factors that contribute to cognitive development are not correlated with parents' cognitive ability
Eye Movements Reveal the Spatiotemporal Dynamics of Visual Search
Authors: Zelinsky Gregory J , Rao Rajesh P N. , Hayhoe Mary M , Ballard Dana H.
Published: April 2006

Given that attention precedes an eye movement to a target it becomes possible to use fixation sequences to probe the spatiotemporal dynamics of search Applying this method to a realistic search task, we found eye movements directed to the geometric centers of progressively smaller groups of objects rather than accurate fixations to individual objects in a display Such a binary search strategy is consistent with zoom-lens models positing an initially broad distribution of search, followed by a narrowing of this search region until only the target is selected We also interpret this oculomotor averaging behavior as evidence for an initially parallel search analysis that becomes increasingly serial as the search process converges on the target
Longitudinal Study of Procrastination, Performance, Stress, and Health: The Costs and Benefits of Dawdling
Authors: Tice Dianne M , Baumeister Roy F.
Published: April 2006

Procrastination is variously described as harmful, innocuous, or even beneficial Two longitudinal studies examined procrastination among students Procrastinators reported lower stress and less illness than nonprocrastinators early in the semester, but they reported higher stress and more illness late in the term, and overall they were sicker Procrastinators also received lower grades on all assignments Procrastination thus appears to be a self-defeating behavior pattern marked by short-term benefits and long-term costs
Can Imitation in Pigeons be Explained by Local Enhancement Together with Trial-and-Error Learning?
Authors: Kaiser Daren H. , Zentall Thomas R , Galef Bennett G
Published: April 2006

Zentall Sutton and Sherburne (1996) reported that pigeons observing a conspecific demonstrator either step on or peck at a treadle to obtain food subsequently showed a significant tendency to manipulate the treadle as had their demonstrator Zentall et al suggested this finding showed observer pigeons had learned by imitation to peck at or step on the treadle However, the same result might have been obtained if pigeons had learned to step on the treadle by trial and error, and pigeons exposed to a treadle-pecking demonstrator had come to peck at the treadle as a result of nonimitative social-learning processes such as local enhancement or contagion Here we report the results for two control groups showing that pigeons do not learn to step on or peck at a treadle for food reward unless they observe a relevant demonstrator These results considerably strengthen the original conclusion Future research using the two action method to demonstrate imitative learning should include similar controls
Social-Cognitive Mechanisms and Personality Coherence: Self-Knowledge, Situational Beliefs, and Cross-Situational Coherence in Perceived Self-Efficacy
Authors: Cervone Daniel
Published: April 2006

This article presents a social-cognitive analysis of cross-situational coherence in personality functioning Social-cognitive analyses are contrasted with those of trait approaches in personality psychology Rather than attributing coherence to high-level constructs that correspond directly to observed patterns of social behavior, social-cognitive theory pursues a “bottom-up” analytic strategy in which coherence derives from interactions among multiple underlying causal mechanisms, no one of which corresponds directly to a broad set of responses Research investigating social and self-knowledge underlying cross-situational coherence in a central social-cognitive mechanism, perceived self-efficacy, is presented Idio-graphic analyses revealed that individuals' schematic self-knowledge and situational beliefs give rise to patterns of high and low self-efficacy appraisal across diverse, idiosyncratic sets of situations that do not, in general, correspond to traditional high-level trait categories Bottom-up analyses in personality psychology are related to other disciplines' analyses of organization in complex, adaptive systems
In Search of Gender Neutrality: Is Singular They a Cognitively Efficient Substitute for Generic He?
Authors: Foertsch Julie , Gernsbacher Morton Ann
Published: April 2006

With increasing frequency, writers and speakers are ignoring grammatical proscription and using the plural pronoun they to refer to singular antecedents. This change may, in part, be motivated by efforts to make language more gender inclusive. In the current study, two reading-time experiments demonstrated that singular they is a cognitively efficient substitute for generic he or she, particularly when the antecedent is nonreferential. In such instances, clauses containing they were read (a) much more quickly than clauses containing a gendered pronoun that went against the gender stereotype of the antecedent, and (b) just as quickly as clauses containing a gendered pronoun that matched the stereotype of the antecedent. However, with referential antecedents, for which the gender was presumably known, clauses containing singular they were not read as quickly as clauses containing a gendered pronoun that matched the antecedent's stereotypic gender.
Simplifying Second‐order Belief Attribution: What Facilitates Children’s Performance on Measures of Conceptual Understanding?
Authors: Coull Greig J. , Leekam Susan R. , Bennett Mark
Published: April 2006

This study investigated how 4‐ to 7‐year‐old children’s second‐order belief attribution might be facilitated by either reducing information processing or varying the sequence of task questions. In Experiment 1, compared withPerner and Wimmer’s (1985) original second‐order false‐belief task, a new task with reduced information‐processing demands promoted better second‐order reasoning. In Experiment 2, half the stories included a second‐order ignorance question before a second‐order belief question. The ignorance question promoted second‐order belief understanding, superseding the improvement induced by lowered processing demands. Together, the findings suggest that second‐order belief performance can be facilitated if children focus on the concept of ignorance during the sequence of questioning.
An Interlaminar Strain Measurement for Insulation Panels of LNG Carriers
Authors: Kim M. H. , Kim D. H. , Kang S. W. , Lee J. M.
Published: April 2006

Abstract:  The aim of the study was to investigate the dynamic failure initiation as well as the failure modes of insulation panels of liquefied natural gas (LNG) carriers. Insulation panels of LNG cargo tanks may include mechanical failures such as cracks as well as delaminations within the layers because of impact sloshing loads and fatigue loadings, and these failures cause a significant decrease of the structural safety. In this study, a structural health monitoring system was developed that employs fibre optic sensors for monitoring various failures that can occur in LNG insulation panels. Fibre optic sensors have the advantage of being embedded inside the insulation panels. The measurement signal of embedded fibre optic sensor is used to calculate the strain distribution within insulation panels and is analysed to identify the damage initiation. It has been observed that the presence of defects and delaminations produce noticeable changes in the strain measurement in a predictable manner. In addition, fibre optic sensors are used to measure static and dynamic strain variations with and without damage. It is expected that this study will be used as a fundamental study for the safety assessment of LNG insulation panels.
Left‐right political scales
Authors: Castles Francis G. , Mair Peter. , PEDERSEN MOGENS N.
Published: April 2006

Abstract Although left‐right scales are an inherent feature of much cross‐national research, they have necessarily been created on a somewhat ad hoc basis, since the empirical foundation for valid cross‐national scales rarely exists. This paper seeks to provide such a foundation by using judgements of party ideological position which are both explicit and non‐idiosyncratic across a wide range of countries. These judgements derive from a so‐called ‘expert’ survey of leading political scientists in Western Europe, the USA, and elsewhere. It is our hope that the scales which we derive in this way may prove useful in a wide variety of contexts of comparative research.