Spacing effects in recognition memory: When meaning matters

The present study showed that using incidental learning tasks promoting structural/perceptual processing of targets it is possible to obtain a reliable spacing effect for nonwords in a yes/no recognition memory task, whereas no spacing effect is detected for words. These data are, collectively, incompatible with current theories of spacing effects. A theoretical proposal to account for these findings is outlined.     

When groups are more competitive than individuals: the domain of the discontinuity effect

The related goals of the research were to delineate the domain of discontinuity, 1st by demonstrating its occurrence in a nonmatrix situation and, 2nd, by establishing the antecedent outcome conditions necessary for producing a discontinuity effect. The 1st goal was met by designing a mixed motive situation involving the production of origami products. Under these conditions, the magnitude of the discontinuity effect did not significantly differ from that in a matrix-only condition. The 2nd goal was met by a separate experiment that used H. H. Kelley and J. W. Thibaut's (1978) analysis of degree of noncorrespondence of outcomes. This experiment demonstrated that as noncorrespondence increased, so did the rate of competitive responding by groups but not by individuals. This pattern was qualified by an interaction with gender such that competitiveness was more markedly affected by noncorrespondence for groups of women than for groups of men.     

Further investigation on the mnemonic effect of gestures: Their meaning matters

Three experiments are reported that examine the nature of knowledge underlying performance in the invariant learning task. Previous research (Bright & Burton, 1994; McGeorge & Burton, 1990) has supported an account of performance based on the implicit abstraction and application of a rule pertaining to the invariant feature. In contrast, we found effects in both the digit and clock invariant tasks that are difficult to explain solely in terms of subjects acquiring the experimenters' rule. In all three experiments, manipulation of test item properties that are independent of the invariant feature led to a detriment in performance that is not predicted by an account based on the experimenters' rules. Furthermore, the use of an on-line measure of awareness (confidence ratings) provided some evidence that performance is mediated by low confidence explicit knowledge.     

Inner speech slips exhibit lexical bias, but not the phonemic similarity effect

Inner speech, that little voice that people often hear inside their heads while thinking, is a form of mental imagery. The properties of inner speech errors can be used to investigate the nature of inner speech, just as overt slips are informative about overt speech production. Overt slips tend to create words (lexical bias) and involve similar exchanging phonemes (phonemic similarity effect). We examined these effects in inner and overt speech via a tongue-twister recitation task. While lexical bias was present in both inner and overt speech errors, the phonemic similarity effect was evident only for overt errors, producing a significant overtness by similarity interaction. We propose that inner speech is impoverished at lower (featural) levels, but robust at higher (phonemic) levels.     

The meaning of "natural": process more important than content

The meaning of the desirable attribute "natural" was explored in two samples, American college students and adults in the Philadelphia jury pool. Participants rated the naturalness of a variety of "natural" entities, before and after they were transformed by operations such as freezing, adding or removing components, mixing with other natural or unnatural entities, domestication, and genetic engineering. Results support four hypotheses. First, the principle of contagion accounts for many aspects of the reduction of naturalness by contact with unnatural entities. Second, chemical transformations reduce naturalness much more than physical transformations do. Third, the history of an entity's processing is more important in determining its naturalness than is the nature of the entity's contents. Fourth, mixing like natural entities (e.g., water from different sources) does not markedly reduce naturalness. The insertion of a gene from another species, the process used in producing genetically modified organisms, produces the biggest drop in naturalness; domestication, a human-accomplished activity that changes genotype and phenotype in major ways, is considered much less damaging to naturalness.     

On the determinants of implicit evaluations: When the present weighs more than the past

It is often assumed that implicit evaluations are influenced by early childhood experiences, whereas explicit evaluations reflect recent experiences. However, previous findings supporting this assumption remain ambiguous as to whether the differential effects of early versus recent experiences are driven by their temporal distance or their affective versus cognitive nature. Controlling for affectivity by using a predominantly affective attitude object (i.e., religion), the present study found that both implicit and explicit evaluations were related to recent, but not early, experiences. This pattern consistently emerged for self-reported experiences as well as independent reports from parents. Moreover, the relation of recent experiences to one type of evaluation remained significant after controlling for the respective other type of evaluation, suggesting that recent experiences influenced implicit and explicit evaluations independently. Implications for attitudinal dissociations and processes of attitude change are discussed.     

When knowing more means less: the effect of fan on metamemory judgments

The authors used a "fan" paradigm (J. R. Anderson, 1974) to test the accessibility and competition models of metamemory using judgments of learning (JOLs). JOLs in this study reflect one's confidence level in subsequently recognizing newly learned material. The number of facts, or "fan," associated with JOL-queried concepts varied from 1 to 3 associates. Results of 3 experiments indicated that as the level of fan increased, the magnitude of JOLs decreased. This finding was observed even when the fan effect (i.e., slower recognition as number of facts increase) was attenuated on a verification task in 2 of the experiments by manipulating the organization of the multiple concepts. The results supported the competition hypothesis (T. A. Schreiber, 1998; T. A. Schreiber & D. L. Nelson, 1998) as an important determinant of JOLs.     

When the whole is more than the sum of the parts: Evidence from visuospatial neglect

One possible pathological mechanism underlying the rightward bisection error of right‐brain‐damaged patients with left spatial neglect is a leftward relaxation of the spatial representational medium. This view was originally based on the finding that patients with left neglect, required to extend horizontal segments, in order to double their original length, may exhibit a relative left overextension of the drawn lines ( Bisiach et al., 1994 ). We investigated this putative distortion of representational space using a 16 cm ‘line segmentation’ task (Experiment 1). Were the representation of space relaxed contralesionally, a progressive increase from right to left of the size of the drawn segments would be expected. Right‐brain‐damaged patients with left unilateral neglect (N=12) performed the segmentation task with no left versus right differences, as right‐brain‐damaged patients without neglect (N=8), and neurologically unimpaired control subjects (N=10), did. Experiments 2 and 3 explored the effects of sample length (1, 2, 4, and 8 cm), by which the 16 cm lines had to be segmented. Neglect patients produced longer left‐sided segments only for the 8 cm sample (i.e. half of the length of the segment). This set of experiments suggests an impairment in the segmentation task only with the larger (8 cm) sample, when a more global level of processing may be involved. Experiment 4 assessed this hypothesis by a ‘part/whole’ bisection task, using 8 cm lines, presented either embedded in a longer 16 cm line or in isolation. Neglect patients made a larger rightward bisection error when the segment was not embedded. The suggestion is made that the lateral distortion of the representation of space in neglect patients (i.e. a leftward relaxation of the spatial medium) concerns tasks where a more ‘global’ representation of the visual stimulus has to be set up. The different demands of the segmentation and bisection tasks are discussed.     

High blood pressure and marital discord: not being nasty matters more than being nice

Theories linking anger and blood pressure (BP) reactivity to cardiovascular disease must be able to identify naturally occurring stressors that arouse emotion with sufficient frequency to cause chronic physiologic stress. We examine the impact of normal family arguments on 43 patients (24 women, 19 men) with essential hypertension. Patients and their partners discussed a threatening disagreement for 10 min while BP and conversation were recorded. Discussing problems increased BP, but the causal pathways differed by sex. In women, hostile interaction and marital dissatisfaction were associated with increased BP; "supportive" or "neutral" exchanges were unrelated to BP. In men, BP fluctuations were related only to the patient's speech rate. These findings are consistent with other research on sex differences in communication and social problem-solving styles and implicate different mechanisms (frequent anger, active coping) through which marital discord could increase risk. Implications for intervention are considered.     

When timeliness matters: the effect of status on reactions to perceived time delay within distributed collaboration

This research examines the interactive effects of status and perceived time delay on acceptance of partner knowledge contributions within a distributive collaboration work environment. Results across 2 studies suggest that within distributed collaboration, time delays attributed to low-status partners had a significantly more harmful effect on influence acceptance than time delay attributed to high-status partners. This was so, despite the fact that partners' actual behavior was held constant across experimental conditions. In addition, results indicate that judgments of partner competence significantly mediated the interactive effects of perceived time delay and partner status on acceptance of partner influence.     

Resume evaluations and cosmetics use: When more is not better

Physical appearance is an integral component of self-presentation in all social situations, including that of applying for a job. This project investigated the relationship between employment evaluations of women and one aspect of their appearance under the individual's control—the use of varying degrees of cosmetics. Cosmetics use was found to be positively correlated with perceived attractiveness, femininity, and sexiness. Based on resume evaluations, however, cosmetics use had a negative effect on the expected performance of female applicants for a gender-typed (secretary) position, but no effect on the expected performance of female applicants for a nongender-typed (accountant) position. Makeup thus appears to strengthen sex role stereotypes associated with traditionally feminine jobs.We gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Merle Norman Cosmetics and John B. Wheat, photographer, for their assistance in preparing the stimulus pictures. Partial support for writing this paper was provided by a Spurgeon Bell Fellowship to the second author. A previous version of this paper was presented at the Academy of Management Annual Meeting, Dallas, Texas, August 1983.     

When the event is more than the sum of its parts: 9-month-olds' long-term ordered recall

Research suggests that 9-month-old infants are able to recall single object-specific actions over delays of 24 hours. In the present research we investigated whether 9-month-olds are able to recall over more extended delays, and to recall the temporal order of events, as well as the individual actions in them. In addition, we investigated whether recall can be enhanced by pre- and/or re-exposure to target events. Using elicited imitation of novel, multi-step event sequences, we demonstrated that, as a group, 9-month-olds are able to recall target actions after delays of five weeks. However, after this long delay, only 45% of the infants recalled the temporal order of the events. Re-exposure to events during the delay interval proved necessary for boys, but not for girls; pre-exposure to events did not affect later recall. The implications of individual differences in infants' recall ability for the understanding of the development of the neural correlates of declarative memory are discussed.     

Purity matters more than harm in moral judgments of suicide: Response to Gray (2014)

Many people judge suicide to be immoral. We have found evidence that these moral judgments are primarily predicted by people’s belief that suicide taints the soul and by independent concerns about purity. This finding is inconsistent with accounts that define morality as fundamentally based upon harm considerations. In this commentary, we respond to a critique of our finding, and we provide further support for our original conclusions. Even when applying new exclusion criteria to our data, an examination of effect sizes demonstrates that concerns about purity robustly and meaningfully explain variance in moral judgments of suicide. While harm concerns sometimes predict moral judgments of suicide alongside purity concerns, they reliably explain a much smaller proportion of the variance than do purity concerns. Therefore, data from six studies continue to suggest that the relevance of harm concerns for moral judgments of suicide is substantially overshadowed by the contribution of purity concerns.     

When the whole is more than the sum of its parts: Group motivation gains in the wild

Whereas negative effects of groups on individual motivation have been reported for many years, recent research has begun to show when and why working in a group can produce motivation gains compared to individual work. So far, this evidence has been limited to laboratory settings and rather simple tasks. Using data from swimming competitions at the 2008 Olympics, evidence is presented that motivation gains in groups also occur in field settings with more complex tasks. Based on an instrumentality × value approach, we expect that late positions in a relay trigger motivation gains in groups due to an increase in perceived indispensability for the group outcome. This idea has been initially tested in a pilot study with competitive swimmers, demonstrating that perceived indispensability for the relay outcome indeed increases with later serial positions in a relay. Moreover, the main study with data from the 2008 Olympics revealed performance times consistent with this pattern of indispensability perceptions: while starting swimmers in the swimming relays performed at similar levels as in their individual competitions, swimmers at the later positions showed higher performance in the relay compared to their individual competition heats.     

Unstable in more ways than one: reaction time variability and the neuroticism/distress relationship

The authors hypothesized that a greater degree of stimulus-response variability could either serve adaptive or maladaptive control purposes, depending on levels of Neuroticism. Specifically, a more variable relation between stimulus and response may be emotionally beneficial if such flexibility is used to support non-neurotic forms of self-regulation, but costly if it is used to support neurotic forms of self-regulation. To investigate these ideas, the authors asked 232 college undergraduates within three studies to perform several choice reaction time (RT) tasks. On the basis of performance, we could quantify stimulus-response variability in terms of RT variability from trial to trial. Such a measure of stimulus-response variability interacted with Neuroticism in predicting momentary negative affect (Study 1), informant judgments of negative affect (Study 2), and informant judgments of anxious symptoms (Study 3). As hypothesized, greater stimulus-response variability tended to be associated with less distress among individuals low in Neuroticism, but more distress among individuals high in Neuroticism. The results highlight the manner in which Neuroticism may "taint" control functions, in turn reinforcing Neuroticism-linked outcomes.     

When attention matters: The curious incident of the wandering mind

Attention plays an essential role in the construction of the mental models necessary to make sense of ongoing events. In this article, we consider the implications of temporary inattention during reading for the construction and updating of the situation model during text comprehension. We examined how self-reported mind wandering during reading relates to the online construction of the situation model of the narrative, which in this case involved the pseudonym used by a villain in a detective novella. In successful readers, mind wandering without awareness, referred to as zoning out, was less frequent when the text revealed a clue about the villain's identity. Additional analyses indicated that mind wandering interfered with the construction of the situation model independent of the participants' ability to retrieve factual information. The analysis of the temporal consequences of zoning out indicated that lapses had the greatest influence when they occurred early in the narrative. These results confirm the intuition that zoning out during reading is an indication that the construction of the situation model has gone awry, and underscore the fact that our ability to understand ongoing events depends on the ability to pay attention when it matters.     

Aftereffects for face attributes with different natural variability: Children are more adaptable than adolescents

Adults can be adapted to a particular facial distortion in which both eyes are shifted symmetrically (Robbins, R., McKone, E., & Edwards, M. (2007). Aftereffects for face attributes with different natural variability: Adapter position effects and neural models. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 33, 570–592), but they do not show as great adaptation to an asymmetrical eye distortion. We adapted children and adolescents to symmetrical and asymmetrical eye distortions and measured the aftereffects. Children (aged 6–12, mean age 9 years) showed larger aftereffects than adolescents (aged 13–18, mean age 15 years) and demonstrated aftereffects of a similar magnitude for both asymmetrical and symmetrical distortions. Adolescents only showed aftereffects for symmetrical distortions. We propose that children may have a more flexible face norm and neural responses that allow a broader range of adapted states compared to adolescents.     

Ageing and secondary-distinctiveness-based effects: The orthographic distinctiveness effect is more robust than the bizarreness effect

Differences related to ageing were investigated in two cases of secondary-distinctiveness-based effects: the bizarreness effect and the orthographic distinctiveness effect. A secondary distinctiveness effect means that items that are unusual compared to one's general knowledge stored in permanent memory are better remembered than common items. Experiment 1 confirmed that ageing diminishes the facilitative effects of bizarreness in a mixed list design with equal numbers of bizarre and common images. We suggest that the impaired bizarreness effect in older adults (above age 70) may be due to reduced attentional resources, since no bizarreness effect was observed for younger adults in the divided attention condition. Experiment 2 studied the orthographic distinctiveness effect in ageing for the first time. Contrary to our expectations, an orthographic distinctiveness effect was observed for all participants including older adults and younger adults in a divided attention condition. Because reduced attentional resources due to normal ageing or to experimental manipulation did not impact the facilitative effects of orthographic distinctiveness, our findings suggest that the orthographic distinctiveness effect may be mediated by more automatic processing.     

Ageing and secondary-distinctiveness-based effects: The orthographic distinctiveness effect is more robust than the bizarreness effect

Differences related to ageing were investigated in two cases of secondary-distinctiveness-based effects: the bizarreness effect and the orthographic distinctiveness effect. A secondary distinctiveness effect means that items that are unusual compared to one's general knowledge stored in permanent memory are better remembered than common items. Experiment 1 confirmed that ageing diminishes the facilitative effects of bizarreness in a mixed list design with equal numbers of bizarre and common images. We suggest that the impaired bizarreness effect in older adults (above age 70) may be due to reduced attentional resources, since no bizarreness effect was observed for younger adults in the divided attention condition. Experiment 2 studied the orthographic distinctiveness effect in ageing for the first time. Contrary to our expectations, an orthographic distinctiveness effect was observed for all participants including older adults and younger adults in a divided attention condition. Because reduced attentional resources due to normal ageing or to experimental manipulation did not impact the facilitative effects of orthographic distinctiveness, our findings suggest that the orthographic distinctiveness effect may be mediated by more automatic processing.     

The effect of orthographic structure and lexical meaning on “same-different” judgments

Pairs of high frequency English words, orthographically acceptable pseudo-words, and non-word letter strings were presented in a “same”-“different” task. The mean reaction times for “same” judgments were ordered; real words were faster than pseudo-words, and pseudo-words were faster than non-words. The RTs for the “different”, judgments showed no differences among the three types of words, except in the first two days of practice in a blocked presentation condition when the difference between the real words and non-words was marginally significant. These and other results suggest that “same” judgments are based upon a comparison process which efficiently uses higher order semantic and orthographic information in words, whereas “different” judgments are based upon comparison process which performs a self-terminating search of the graphemic information in words. The results were also discussed with reference to hierarchical models of word perception and reading.