In the blink of an electronic eye: A prospectus

Some potential uses of computers for education and training paradigms are discussed. These capitalize on the capabilities to provide analog feedback about ongoing “real-time” events. In particular, we examine the use of computers to detect nuances and subtleties in rhythm and timing. Examples are suggested, including new controls for interactive computers and ways of using such machines for training in motor skills.     

Quiet eye and the Bereitschaftspotential: visuomotor mechanisms of expert motor performance

Concurrent exploration of the Bereitschaftspotential (BP) and quiet eye period (QE) was implemented to assess potential mechanisms underlying psychomotor skills that differentiate expert and near-expert performers. Twenty golfers were classified by their USGA handicap rating as either a high handicap (HH; near-expert) or low handicap (LH; expert) to permit skill-based inferences. Participants completed 90 trials during which QE duration, BP activity, and putting performance were recorded. The application of single-subject analyses illustrated that LH golfers were more accurate and less variable in their performance than the HH group. Systematic differences in QE duration and BP were also observed, with experts exhibiting a prolonged quiet eye period and greater cortical activation in the right-central region compared with non-experts. A significant association between cortical activation and QE duration was also noted. The results of this investigation lend support to the motor programming/preparation function of the QE period. Practical and theoretical implications are presented and suggestions for future empirical work provided.     

In the eye of the storm: race and genomics in research and practice

The difficulties of operationalizing race in research and practice for social, behavioral, and genetic researchers and practitioners are neither new nor related to recent genetic knowledge. For geneticists, the bases for understanding groups are clines, observed traits that gradually change in frequency between geographic regions without distinct identifiable population boundaries and population histories that carry information about the distribution of genetic variants. For psychologists, race may not exist or be a social and cultural construct associated with fluid social inferences. Because definitions of populations and race can be socially and biologically incongruent, the authors suggest that geneticists and social and behavioral scientists and clinicians attend to external validity issues by operationalizing population and racial categories and avoiding race proxies for other biological, social, and cultural constructs in research designs, data analyses, and clinical practice.     

Repression and self-presentation: when audiences interfere with self-deceptive strategies.

To defend against threatening feedback, one may avoid and ignore it, or one may dwell on it and think of refutations. Repressors who received threatening feedback privately spent the least amount of time reading it, whereas repressors who received the same feedback publicly spent a long time reading it. Thus, the audience prevented repressors from ignoring threatening feedback; instead, they thought and worried about the partner's (bad) impression of them. Nonrepressors were unaffected by the favorability of the evaluation or the public nature of the situation. Repressors showed superior recall for the few bits of threatening information embedded in a generally favorable evaluation, suggesting that they are especially sensitive when their defenses are down.     

When multiple identities interfere: the role of identity centrality

The current study extends research in the area of identity conflict or interference by focusing on a new identity combination, the woman and scientist identities. In addition, it examines the influence of identity centrality, or importance, as a predictor of interference and moderator of the relation between interference and well-being and science performance. Supporting hypotheses, greater identity interference was related to lower levels of performance and well-being. Furthermore, woman centrality was unrelated to interference for those with a central scientist identity, but for those without a central scientist identity, they were positively related. Although central identities were related to positive outcomes in the absence of interference, the outcomes of all women suffered when interference was high, contrary to the hypothesis. The implications of identity centrality for understanding the negotiation of potentially conflicting identities, and for the retention of women in the sciences, are discussed.     

In the eye of the beholder: views of psychological well-being among middle-aged and older adults

Although the topic of psychological well-being has generated considerable research, few studies have investigated how adults themselves define positive functioning. To probe their conceptions of well-being, interviews were conducted with a community sample of 171 middle-aged (M = 52.5 years, SD = 8.7) and older (M = 73.5 years, SD = 6.1) men and women. Questions pertained to general life evaluations, past life experiences, conceptions of well-being, and views of the aging process. Responses indicated that both age groups and sexes emphasized an "others orientation" (being a caring, compassionate person, and having good relationships) in defining well-being. Middle-aged respondents stressed self-confidence, self-acceptance, and self-knowledge, whereas older persons cited accepting change as an important quality of positive functioning. In addition to attention to positive relations with others as an index of well-being, lay views pointed to a sense of humor, enjoying life, and accepting change as criteria of successful aging.     

Adaptive reasoning: Componential and eye movement analysis of geometric analogy performance

The present study explored individual differences in performance of a geometric analogies task. Whereas past studies employed true/false or two-alternative items, the present research included four-alternative items and studied eye movements and confidence judgements for each item performance as well as latency and error. Item difficulty proved to be a function of an interaction between the number of response alternatives and the number of elements in items, especially for subjects lower in fluid-analytic reasoning ability. Results were interpreted using two hypothesized performance strategies: constructive matching and response elimination. The less efficient of these, response elimination, seemed to be used more by lower ability subjects on more difficult items. While two previous theories resemble one or the other of these strategies, neither alone seems to capture the complexity of adaptive problem solving. It appears that a comprehensive theory should incorporate strategy shifting as a function of item difficulty and subject ability.Componential models, based in part on past research, revealed that a justification component was activated and deactivated depending upon the nature of the analogy being solved. In addition, two new components, spatial inference and spatial application, were identified as important on some items, suggesting that different geometric analogy items invoke different cognitive processing components. Thus, a comprehensive theory should also describe component activation and deactivation.     

In the eye of the beholder: subjective and observer ratings of middle-class African American mother-adolescent interactions

Middle-class African American mothers and adolescents (n=81) participated in a dyadic interaction task in early adolescence (M=13.06 years, SD=1.27) and then again 2 years later (M=15.01 years, SD=1.27). Following the task, mothers and adolescents rated their own and their partner's support and involvement in the task; observers rated videotaped interactions for the same dimensions. African American mothers perceived adolescents' behavior in the interactions more positively than did observers, and both mothers and observers viewed mothers' behavior as more positive than adolescents' behavior. With observers' ratings controlled, early adolescents' more negative perceptions of their mothers' interactions led to less trust and communication with mothers 2 years later, but subjective understanding did not influence later ratings of conflict intensity.     

The perceptual aspect of skilled performance in chess: Evidence from eye movements

Expert and intermediate chess players attempted to choose the best move in five chess positions while their eye movements were monitored. Experts were faster and more accurate than intermediates in choosing the best move. Experts made fewer fixations per trial and greater amplitude saccades than did intermediates, but there was no difference in fixation duration across skill groups. Examining the spatial distribution of the first five fixations for each position by skill group revealed that experts produced more fixations on empty squares than did intermediates. When fixating pieces, experts produced a greater proportion of fixations on relevant pieces than did intermediates. It is argued that expert chess players perceptually encode chess configurations, rather than individual pieces, and, consequently, parafoveal or peripheral processing guides their eye movements, producing a pattern of saccadic selectivity by piece saliency.     

Investigating the lower level demands of writing: handwriting movements interfere with immediate verbal serial recall

The research identifies if handwriting captures attention for significant periods, resulting in a decline in working memory performance. Additionally, the experiments isolate whether the movements produced during handwriting contribute to that interference. To do this, verbal serial recall was compared between three different tasks???a listening task; a listening?+?handwriting task (i.e., motor and verbal demands); and a listening?+?handwriting-like drawing task (i.e., motor demands), in two experiments. Results showed that verbal serial recall was worse in the handwriting and drawing conditions compared to the listening condition. The handwriting and drawing conditions did not differ. In a third experiment, handwriting fluency was compared between a recall and no-recall task. This showed that handwriting fluency remains stable despite the addition of a verbal working memory task. In conclusion, the handwriting movements capture attention for significant periods, with little deterioration in recall due to the verbal component of handwriting.     

Neurophysiological evidence of how quiet eye supports motor performance

Prolonged quiet eye (QE) duration is associated with greater performance in various types of targeting and interceptive tasks. However, the mechanism by which QE affects performance remains debatable. This study aimed to test the validity of the pre-programming and online control hypotheses using electromyography (EMG), electrooculography (EOG) and electroencephalography (EEG) during a golf putting task. Twenty-one college students were recruited for this study. Each participant performed 100 golf putting trials during which the putting performance, EMG, EOG, and EEG signals were recorded. The QE duration including the pre- and post-movement initiation components, and movement-related cortical potentials (MRCPs) were analyzed off-line. We found that successful putts were associated with longer QEtotal (the total QE duration from QE onset to QE offset), QEpre (QE occurring before movement initiation), and QEpost (QE occurring after movement initiation) durations than failed putts. Greater cortical activation in the MRCPs was observed within the prefrontal, premotor, and parietal cortices during successful putts compared with failed putts. These findings suggest that QE serves both pre-programming and online control roles in supporting golf putting performance.

     

Depressive symptoms interfere with post-rehabilitation exercise: Outcome expectancies and experience as mediators

The aim of the study was to examine the relationship between depressive symptoms and physical exercise by unveiling how outcome expectancies regarding exercise and positive exercise experience could mediate between depressive symptoms and exercise. A longitudinal study included 178 cardiac and orthopedic rehabilitation patients in Germany. Patients responded to psychometric scales at two points in time with a six-week interval, assessing depressive symptoms (Time 1), outcome expectancies regarding exercise (Time 1), exercise experiences (Time 2), and exercise behavior (Times 1 and 2). Depressive symptoms were negatively related to physical exercise (r?=-?0.18), to positive outcome expectancies (r?=-?0.23), and to positive exercise experiences (r?=-?0.26). In a multiple-step mediation model, expectancies and experiences mediated between depressive symptoms and exercise. In total, 15% of the exercise variance was accounted for. Outcome expectancies and a lack of positive experience seem to partly explain why depressed individuals are less likely to exercise.     

Verbal descriptions of spatial information can interfere with picture processing

Two studies are reported that tested the assumption that learning is improved by presenting text and pictures compared to text only when the text conveys non-spatial rather than spatial information. In Experiment 1, 59 students learned with text containing either visual or spatial contents, both accompanied by the same pictures. The results confirmed the expected interference between the processing of spatial text contents and pictures: Learners who received text containing spatial information showed worse text and picture recall than learners who received text containing visual information. In Experiment 2, 85 students were randomly assigned to one of four conditions, which resulted from a 2×2 between-participants design, with picture presentation (with vs without) and text contents (visual vs spatial) as between-participants factors. Again the results confirmed the expected interference between processing of spatial text information and pictures, because beneficial effects of adding pictures to text were observed only when the texts conveyed visual information. Importantly, when no pictures were present no differences were observed between learners with either visual or spatial texts contents, indicating that the observed effects are not caused by absolute differences between the two texts such as their difficulty. The implications of these results are discussed.     

In sight, out of mind: the role of eye movements in the rapid resumption of visual search

Three experiments investigated the role of eye movements in the rapid resumption of an interrupted search. Passive monitoring of eye position in Experiment 1 showed that rapid resumption was associated with a short distance between the eye and the target on the next-to-last look before target detection. Experiments 2 and 3 used two different methods for presenting the target to the point of eye fixation on some trials. If eye position alone is predictive, rapid resumption should increase when the target is near fixation. The results showed that gaze-contingent targets increased overall search success, but that the proportion of rapid responses decreased dramatically. We conclude that rather than depending on a high-quality single look at a search target, rapid resumption of search depends on two glances; a first glance in which a hypothesis is formed, and a second glance in which the hypothesis is confirmed.     

In the eye of the beholder: The role of cognitive style and similarity in the evaluation of brand extensions

Fit has been identified as an antecedent of the success of brand extensions. Recently, a new stream of literature has distinguished two different types of fit: feature‐based taxonomic similarity and relation‐based thematic similarity. Although researchers in this field have investigated how thematic and taxonomic brand extensions are evaluated, they have not accounted for interindividual differences in these evaluations. To address this gap, we investigate how cognitive styles are related to the evaluation of brand extensions that are based on different types of similarity. We show that a systematic cognitive style is related to the evaluation of taxonomic brand extensions. Moreover, we take the first steps to disentangle the relationship between intuitive cognitive style and the evaluation of thematic brand extensions, and we show that positive affect might play an important role as a moderator in these cases. The results provide us with a better understanding of how interindividual differences in information processing might account for differences in preferences for different types of brand extensions and, hence, consumer behavior.     

Inferring task performance and confidence from displays of eye movements

Eye movements reveal what is at the center of people's attention, which is assumed to coincide with what they are thinking about. Eye-movement displays (visualizations of a person's fixations superimposed onto the stimulus, for example, as dots or circles) might provide useful information for diagnosing that person's performance. However, making inferences about a person's task performance based on eye-movement displays requires substantial interpretation. Using graph-comprehension tasks, we investigated to what extent observers (N = 46) could make accurate inferences about a performer's multiple-choice task performance (i.e., chosen answer), confidence, and competence from displays of that person's eye movements. Observers' accuracy when judging which answer the performer chose was above chance level and was higher for displays reflecting confident performance. Observers were also able to infer performers' confidence from the eye-movement displays; moreover, their own task performance and perceived similarity with the performer affected their judgments of the other's competence.     

Relations between 18-month-olds’ gaze pattern and target action performance: A deferred imitation study with eye tracking

Deferred imitation studies are used to assess infants’ declarative memory performance. These studies have found that deferred imitation performance improves with age, which is usually attributed to advancing memory capabilities. Imitation studies, however, are also used to assess infants’ action understanding. In this second research program it has been observed that infants around the age of one year imitate selectively, i.e., they imitate certain kinds of target actions and omit others. In contrast to this, two-year-olds usually imitate the model's exact actions. 18-month-olds imitate more exactly than one-year-olds, but more selectively than two-year-olds, a fact which makes this age group especially interesting, since the processes underlying selective vs. exact imitation are largely debated. The question, for example, if selective attention to certain kinds of target actions accounts for preferential imitation of these actions in young infants is still open. Additionally, relations between memory capabilities and selective imitation processes, as well as their role in shaping 18-month-olds’ neither completely selective, nor completely exact imitation have not been thoroughly investigated yet. The present study, therefore, assessed 18-month-olds’ gaze toward two types of actions (functional vs. arbitrary target actions) and the model's face during target action demonstration, as well as infants’ deferred imitation performance. Although infants’ fixation times to functional target actions were not longer than to arbitrary target actions, they imitated the functional target actions more frequently than the arbitrary ones. This suggests that selective imitation does not rely on selective gaze toward functional target actions during the demonstration phase. In addition, a post hoc analysis of interindividual differences suggested that infants’ attention to the model's social-communicative cues might play an important role in exact imitation, meaning the imitation of both functional and arbitrary target actions.