Field dependence: experimenters' expectancy, sex difference or no difference?

The possibility that sex differences found in previous research on field dependence may have been due partly to experimenters' expectancy, was investigated. Three pairs of naive student-experimenters received different information about expected outcomes for males and females on the Rod and Frame Test and the Embedded Figures Test. There was no evidence of an experimenters' expectancy effect, but there was also no significant difference in the performance of men and women on these two tests of field dependence.     

The bilateral effect: callosal inhibition or intrahemispheric competition?

The magnification of visual field asymmetry observed with bilateral compared to unilateral tachistoscopic presentation of homologous stimuli (bilateral effect) can be explained by two hypothetical processes: homologous activation with subsequent inhibition of callosal information transfer or intrahemispheric competition for processing resources. A lexical decision task with unilateral and bilateral stimulation and response with the right or left hand was used in an attempt to decide between these hypotheses. Analysis of response time data revealed a bilateral effect, superimposed on a right visual field advantage, and no interaction between visual field and response hand. Results are consistent with the hypothesis of intrahemispheric competition in the left hemisphere.     

The face inhibition effect: Social contrast or motor competition?

This research examined the relative importance of encoding and retrieval contexts to the demonstration of concreteness effects in memory. Predictions from relational-distinctive and dual-code positions were evaluated. In the first two experiments, concreteness and recall task (free recall or cued recall) were manipulated following a relational semantic orienting task. The results showed an interaction between concreteness and recall type only when distinctive information could be accessed both within and between pairs. The third experiment showed that concreteness effects appeared under a relational, non-semantic orienting task. In the fourth experiment, we reexamined the magnitude of the concreteness effect following semantic versus non-semantic tasks and relational versus item-specific processing. Overall, the findings were inconsistent with both dual code theory and distinctiverelational view accounts of concreteness effects. An alternative "bidirectionality hypothesis" is suggested.     

The affective consequences of cognitive inhibition: devaluation or neutralization?

Affective evaluations of previously ignored visual stimuli are more negative than those of novel items or prior targets of attention or response. This has been taken as evidence that inhibition has negative affective consequences. But inhibition could act instead to attenuate or "neutralize" preexisting affective salience, predicting opposite effects for stimuli that were initially positive or negative in valence. We tested this hypothesis by presenting trustworthy and untrustworthy faces (Experiment 1), strongly positive and negative photographs (Experiment 2), and monetary gain- and loss-associated patterns (Experiment 3) in a Go/No-Go task and assessing subsequent affective ratings. Evaluations of prior No-Go (inhibited) stimuli were more negative than of prior Go (noninhibited) stimuli, regardless of a priori affective valence. Ratings of No-Go stimuli also became increasingly negative (vs. increasingly neutral) when preexisting salience was increased via stimulus repetition (Experiment 4). Our results suggest inhibition leads to affective devaluation, not affective neutralization.     

Hyperstriatal function in the pigeon: response inhibition or response shift?

Experiment 1 showed that pigeons with lesions of the anterior or posterior hyperstriatum were impaired relative to unoperated controls and to control operates having neostriatal lesions on both acquisition and reversal of a simultaneous position discrimination. The observation that hyperstriatal birds showed more tendency than controls to halt responding altogether in this situation cast doubt on the notion that the reversal deficit was due to a loss of response inhibition. A second experiment supported an alternative hypothesis, that hyperstriatal birds have a deficit in the ability to shift responding to an alternative stimulus as a consequence of nonreinforcement.     

Response-repetition costs in choice-RT tasks: Biased expectancies or response inhibition?

Repetition effects are often viewed as informative regarding the cognitive mechanisms of action control. One particular finding, namely costs for repeating the same response in subsequent trials, especially challenges theorizing. Costs for response repetitions have recently been reported in task-switch studies on task-switch trials (whereas benefits usually arise in task-repetition trials), but also in some choice-RT task studies. In three experiments, two of the most successful accounts for the response-repetition costs in choice-RT task studies and task switching were tested: an expectancy-based explanation, and an inhibition-based account. Using a choice-RT task introduced by Smith (1968) and manipulating the response–stimulus interval (RSI) and the categorizability of the stimuli, some specific predictions of the two accounts were tested. The results clearly revealed that expectancy-based explanations fail to account for the observed patterns of effects, whereas they are well in line with the predictions from the inhibition-based account. Finally, the results are further discussed with respect to alternative accounts from the field of task switching.     

Action or attention in social inhibition of return?

Psychological Research - When two individuals alternate reaching responses to targets located in a visual display, reaction times are longer when responses are directed to where the co-actor just...     

Attentional inhibition or paracontrast?

In visual search experiments using asynchronous presentation of target and distractors, a robust and unexpected inhibition of reaction time was observed for the discrimination of a temporally trailing target. A number of experiments were required to determine the source of this inhibition. These experiments eliminated the possibilities that the inhibition might be a manifestation of three attentional processes: inhibition of return, attentional dwell time, or attentional capture by the temporally leading item. Other experiments eliminated the possible preattentional process of the temporal impulse response, the psychological refractory period, and a response inhibition. The characteristics of this inhibition lead to the conclusion that it is a manifestation of paracontrast.     

Treaters or punishers? The ethical role of mental health clinicians in sex offender programs

Clinicians in sex offender treatment programs are forced to breach traditional mental health ethical principles in order to successfully achieve their outcomes. These breaches include placing the community's interest ahead of those of the offender, restricting confidentiality, and the imposition of involuntary treatment. Unlike breaches in other treatment settings, they are not exceptions to general rules of non-maleficence or beneficence but, rather, must be carried out routinely and universally. Such programs thus take on the characteristics of punishment, rather than treatment, and, unsurprisingly, traditional codes of mental health ethics fail to give any real guidance to clinicians providing them. It is argued that ethical principles justifying and limiting punishment will be of more value in limiting the harms which might be inflicted on offenders participating in these programs while maintaining the integrity of the clinicians working with them.     

The MRCI with juvenile detainees: optimizing performance or emphasizing ecological validity?

The Miranda Rights Comprehension Instruments (MRCI) are intended to be administered to legally involved youths in a setting free from distractions and stressors with the explicit goal of assessing the examinee's best understanding. However, marked disparities have been observed between juveniles' MRCI performance and their unassisted recall of a representative Miranda warning. We hypothesized that youths' very strong MRCI performance might be partially due to prompts and clarifications used whenever incomplete or ambiguous answers are provided. In this archival study, we systematically re‐scored three MRCI instruments from 231 legally involved youths to evaluate their original responses (i.e., non‐queried scoring). This approach is viewed as more ecologically valid because actual Miranda warnings are typically provided in a routine manner without assistance following each Miranda component. For the large majority of legally involved juveniles, only small differences were noted between standard and non‐queried scoring. However, some dramatic decrements were observed, especially on the Comprehension of Miranda Rights‐II (CMR‐II). More specifically, 15.7% of CMR‐II percentiles dropped precipitously by 60% or more, when using the non‐queried scores. The results are discussed within the context of optimized performances versus ecological validity as applied to Miranda evaluations.     

Processing bottlenecks in dual-task performance: structural limitation or strategic postponement?

Recent evidence indicates that a central bottleneck causes much of the slowing that occurs when two tasks are performed at the same time. This bottleneck might reflect a structural limitation inherent in the cognitive architecture. Alternatively, the bottleneck might reflect strategic (i.e., voluntary) postponement, induced by instructions to emphasize one task over the other. To distinguish structural limitations from strategic postponement, we examine a new paradigm in which subjects are told to place equal emphasis on both tasks and to emit both responses at about the same time. An experiment using this paradigm demonstrated patterns of interference that cannot easily be attributed to strategic postponement, preparation effects, or conflicts in response production. The data conform closely to the predictions of structural central bottleneck models.     

Anger and social appraisal: a "spicy" sex difference?

The central objective of this study was to investigate the role of social appraisal in sex differences in anger expression. Anger expression was inferred from the amount of hot sauce given to the person who induced anger. Participants were randomly assigned to a social condition, in which they expected to meet this person, or to a nonsocial condition, in which they had no such expectation. Men and women differed in their anger expressions, despite the fact that they did not differ in anger experience. Women expressed anger to a lesser extent than men, but only in the social condition. Social appraisal partly mediated the relation between sex and anger expression. The role of social appraisal in emotion and appraisal theory is discussed.     

The Individual in Organizations: Rediscovered or Lost Forever?

In this article the author argues that managers are confronted with increasing pressures to transform the human being into a sheer economical resource. Three related factors are discussed to explain this penetrating influence of a utilitarian conception of the human being: (1) A movement away from a communitarian towards a new individualistic ideology, (2) the overriding influence of a materialistic, meta-economic theory, and (3) the deep separation of clinical and organizational psychology in teaching, research, and practice. The trend to reduce the human being to an instrumental resource is illustrated by a discussion of current management and consulting practices. These practices include participation as social engineering, modal management with lack of concern for understanding the human being in his or her individuality, and the practice of contracted relations between organizations and employees.     

Is there a sex difference in lateralization for processing of humorous materials?

Leventhal and Cupchik (1976) reported an unpublished finding that women rate items funnier with left-ear input, while men give higher ratings with right-ear input. This finding, widely cited in the literature, has sometimes been quoted as evidence for a biological basis for sex differences in humor appreciation, in particular, and in information processing, in general. However, the effect has apparently never been replicated. In this study, 120 subjects rated the funniness of 35 monaurally-presented comedy excerpts, with half of the subjects receiving input over each ear. Although the experiment had several features intended to maximize replicability, the reported sex difference was not found. While failure to find an effect in a particular case is not definitive, it is troubling to see such widespread citation of an unpublished and apparently unreplicated effect and to see rather extreme conclusions based on it receive serious consideration in the literature.This research was supported by a University College of Cape Breton research grant and by a job internship grant awarded by Enterprise Cape Breton Corporation. I am very grateful to Wayne Baillie, Manager, UCCB Electronic Learning Center, for his assistance in conducting this experiment. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the Canadian Psychological Association, Ottawa, June, 1990.     

Suppressing irrelevant information: knowledge activation or inhibition?

In 3 experiments, the authors examined the role of knowledge activation in the suppression of contextually irrelevant meanings for ambiguous homographs. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants with greater baseball knowledge, regardless of reading skill, more quickly suppressed the irrelevant meaning of ambiguous words in baseball-related, but not general-topic, sentences. Experiment 3 demonstrated that participants with greater general knowledge, regardless of reading skill, more quickly suppressed the irrelevant meaning of the ambiguous words in general-topic sentences. As predicted by D. S. McNamara's (1997) knowledge-based account of suppression, ambiguity effects are influenced by greater activation of knowledge related to the intended meaning of the homograph. These results challenge inhibition (e.g. M. A. Gernsbacher, K. R. Varner. & M. Faust, 1990) as the sole mechanism responsible for the suppression of irrelevant information.     

Gender symmetry in intimate aggression: an effect of intimacy or target sex?

Men's greater use of direct aggression is not evident in studies of intimate partner aggression. In previous research, the effects of target sex and relationship intimacy have frequently been confounded. This study sought to examine these effects separately. One hundred and seventy-four participants (59 male and 115 female) read vignette scenarios in which they were provoked by a same-sex best friend, an opposite-sex best friend, and a partner. For each target, participants estimated their likely use of direct physical and verbal aggression as well as noninjurious forms of anger expression. Results showed that men lower their aggression in the context of an intimate partnership and that this is an effect of the target's sex. In contrast, women raise their aggression in the context of an intimate partnership and this is an effect of intimacy with the target. The use of noninjurious angry behavior did not vary between targets for either sex of the participant, which suggests that the effects of target are confined to behaviors which carry an intention to harm. Possible effects of social norms and oxytocin-mediated emotional disinhibition on intimate partner aggression are discussed.     

Age-related changes in antisaccade task performance: inhibitory control or working-memory engagement?

In antisaccade tasks, subjects are required to generate a saccade in the direction opposite to the location of a sudden-onset target stimulus. Compared to young adults, older adults tend to make more reflex-like eye movements towards the target, and/or show longer saccadic onset latencies on correct direct antisaccades. To better understand the nature of these effects of aging on antisaccade performance, we examined the role of age-related deficiencies in inhibitory control vis-a-vis age changes in the engagement of working memory. Inhibitory demands were manipulated using fixation-offset conditions, while working-memory demands were manipulated by varying memory-updating requirements. The results indicate that inhibitory oculomotor functions remain largely intact with advancing age; older adults' performance breaks down only when their limited working-memory capacity is taxed by increasing updating demands.     

Memory and metamemory performance in older adults: One deficit or two?

In two separate experiments, three groups of older adults (50-80 years old) were shown lists of forename-surname pairs. At test subjects were cued with the surname and asked whether they knew the forename (prospective evaluation). Subjects attempted recall for those items they claimed to know and rated their confidence in their answer (retrospective evaluation). In Experiment 1 subjects saw the name list on 5 successive occasions and attempted recall after each. The older subjects recalled fewer items, but there were no age differences on retrospective memory evaluation. There was a marginally significant age effect on the prospective memory evaluation, which on closer inspection appeared to be a scaling effect related to recall performance. Experiment 2 verified this conclusion in a sample of older adults taking part in a training study extended over many weeks. The main implication of this work is that studies that compare metamemory accuracy in groups that differ in baseline memory performance should be careful before drawing conclusions about metamemory independently of memory performance.