Evolutionary psychology is compatible with equity feminism, but not with gender feminism: A reply to Eagly and Wood (2011)

I comment on Eagly and Wood's biosocial constructionist evolutionary theory (2011; DOI: 10.1007/s11199-011-9949-9). Although this gender feminist theory allows for evolved physical differences between men and women and evolved psychological similarities for men and women, it fails to consider evolutionary accounts of psychological sex differences. I hypothesize that gender feminists' reluctance to acknowledge that evolution has left different fingerprints on men's and women's bodies and brains stems from two common misunderstandings of evolutionary psychology: the myth of immutability and the naturalistic fallacy. I conclude that although evolutionary psychology is eminently compatible with equity feminism, evolutionary psychology and feminist psychology will conflict as long as the latter adheres to gender feminism and its unwillingness to acknowledge the evidence for evolved psychological sex differences. Gender feminism's dualistic view of evolution hinders the search for and understanding of the proximate and ultimate causes of inequality. Feminist psychology needs to evolve by embracing equity feminism, which has no a priori stance on the origin or existence of differences between the sexes.     

Serial processing in reading aloud: reply to Zorzi (2000)

K. Rastle and M. Coltheart (1999; see also M. Coltheart & K. Rastle, 1994) reported data demonstrating that the cost of irregularity in reading aloud low-frequency exception words is modulated by the position of the irregularity in the word. They argued that these data implicated a serial process and falsified all models of reading aloud that operate solely in parallel, a conclusion that M. Zorzi (2000) challenged by successfully simulating the position of irregularity effect with such a model. Zorzi (2000) further claimed that a reanalysis of K. Rastle and M. Coltheart's (1999) data demonstrates sensitivity to grapheme-phoneme consistency (which he claimed was confounded across the position of irregularity manipulation) rather than the use of a serial process. Here, the authors argue that M. Zorzi's (2000) reanalyses were inappropriate and reassert that K. Rastle and M. Coltheart's (1999) findings are evidence for serial processing.     

Composite models never (well, hardly ever) compromise: reply to Schooler and Tanaka (1991)

With respect to the influence of postevent information, Schooler and Tanaka (1991) made a useful distinction between composite recollections--in which subjects retrieve "items from both the original and the postevent sources" (p.97)--and compromise recollections--in which subjects retrieve" at least one feature that cannot be exclusively associated with either the original or the postevent sources, but which reflects some compromise between [the] two" (p.97). Schooler and Tanaka argued that only the latter constitutes good evidence for blend-memory representations of the CHARM-type. As it turns out, Schooler and Tanaka's intuitions (and Metcalfe & Bjork's, initially) are faulty. Compromise recall--defined as a preference for an intervening alternative over either of the actually presented alternatives--is not normally a prediction of CHARM and may not be a prediction of composite-trace models in general. Only under specialized conditions--a systematic displacement of the test alternatives or a systematic shift attributable to assimilation to prior semantic knowledge--will computer simulations of CHARM produce unimodal compromise recollection. Equally surprising is the fact that separate-trace models, under a different set of conditions, can predict compromise recollection.     

The belief bias effect is aptly named: a reply to Klauer and Kellen (2011)

In "Assessing the Belief Bias Effect With ROCs: It's a Response Bias Effect," Dube, Rotello, and Heit (2010) examined the form of receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves for reasoning and the effects of belief bias on measurement indices that differ in whether they imply a curved or linear ROC function. We concluded that the ROC data are in fact curved and that analyses using statistics that assume a linear ROC are likely to produce Type I errors. Importantly, we showed that the interaction between logic and belief that has inspired much of the theoretical work on belief bias is in fact an error stemming from inappropriate reliance on a contrast (hit rate-false alarm rate) that implies linear ROCs. Dube et al. advanced a new model of belief bias, which, in light of their data, is currently the only plausible account of the effect. Klauer and Kellen (2011) disputed these conclusions, largely on the basis of speculation about the data collection method used by Dube et al. to construct the ROCs. New data and model-based analyses are presented that refute the speculations made by Klauer and Kellen. We also show that new modeling results presented by Klauer and Kellen actually support the conclusions advanced by Dube et al. Together, these data show that the methods used by Dube et al. are valid and that the belief bias effect is simply a response bias effect.     

Reading aloud is not automatic: processing capacity is required to generate a phonological code from print

The present experiments tested the claim that phonological recoding occurs "automatically" by assessing whether it uses central attention in the context of the psychological refractory period paradigm. Task 1 was a tone discrimination task and Task 2 was reading aloud. The joint effects of long-lag word repetition priming and stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) were underadditive in Experiment 1, suggesting that an early component of lexical processing does not use central attention. In contrast, nonword letter length and grapheme-phoneme complexity yielded additive effects with SOA in Experiments 2, 3, and 4, suggesting that assembled phonology uses central attention. Further, orthographic neighborhood density also yielded additive effects with SOA in Experiments 5, 6, and 7, suggesting that lexical contributions to phonological recoding use central attention. Taken together, the results of these experiments are inconsistent with the widespread claim that phonological codes are assembled and/or addressed automatically. It is suggested that "automaticity" should be replaced by accounts that make more specific claims about how processing unfolds.     

Reaction time methodology and the aphasic patient: a reply to Hagoort (1988)

P. Hagoort (1988, Brain and Language, 36, 335-348) suggests that the results of an experiment conducted with aphasic patients reported by W. Milberg, S. E. Blumstein, and B. Dworetzky (1987, Brain and Language, 31, 138-150) are "difficult to interpret in terms of a selective access model for normal processing because of a confound caused by the use of repeated lexical decision targets." We argue that the use of repeated lexical decision targets and other methodological compromises are necessary for using the lexical decision reaction time paradigm with aphasic patients. Furthermore, the minor differences between our data and those presented by Hagoort do not undermine our claims concerning semantic processing in different subgroups of aphasics, nor our comparisons of these patients to normal subjects.     

Consciousness is not a property of states: A reply to Wilberg

According to Rosenthal's higher-order thought (HOT) theory of consciousness, one is in a conscious mental state if and only if one is aware of oneself as being in that state via a suitable HOT. Several critics have argued that the possibility of so-called targetless HOTs—that is, HOTs that represent one as being in a state that does not exist—undermines the theory. Recently, Wilberg (2010) has argued that HOT theory can offer a straightforward account of such cases: since consciousness is a property of mental state tokens, and since there are no states to exhibit consciousness, one is not in conscious states in virtue of targetless HOTs. In this paper, I argue that Wilberg's account is problematic and that Rosenthal's version of HOT theory, according to which a suitable HOT is both necessary and sufficient for consciousness, is to be preferred to Wilberg's account. I then argue that Rosenthal's account can comfortably accommodate targetless HOTs because consciousness is best understood as a property of individuals, not a property of states.     

Wringing the perceptual rags: reply to IJzerman and Koole (2011)

We Landau, Meier, & Keefer (2010) reviewed a growing body of research demonstrating metaphors' far-reaching influence on social information processing. In their commentary, IJzerman and Koole (2011) claimed that we devoted insufficient attention to the origin of metaphors, and they reviewed research showing that bodily, social, and cultural experiences constrain metaphor development. Given the focus of our article and the tone of our admittedly cursory treatment of metaphors' origins, we view IJzerman and Koole's commentary less as a critique and more as a valuable extension of our analysis. We elaborate on this extension and address three related issues raised in the comment: metaphors and representational format, the explanatory value of a metaphor-enriched perspective over the embodied cognition perspective, and the direction of metaphoric mappings between concrete and abstract concepts.     

Affective,but hardly effective: a reply to Gauvin and Rejeski (2001)

Background and purpose: This paper is a reply to Gauvin and Rejeski’s rebuttal (Psychol. Sport Exerc. 2 (2001) 73) of a previously published conceptual and methodological critique (Psychol. Sport Exerc. 2 (2001) 1) of the Exercise-induced Feeling Inventory (EFI; J. Sport Exerc. Psychol. 15 (1993) 403).Methods: Our responses focus on (a) issues regarding scientific debates, (b) the necessity of psychometric scrutiny, (c) the ongoing search for a definition of “exercise-induced feeling states,” (d) concerns regarding the underrepresentation of the intended domain of content of the EFI and its appropriate uses, (e) the implications of inductive and deductive scale development, (f) several methodological issues, (g) the value of a circumplex model for exercise psychology research, and (h) the compatibility of categorical and dimensional models of affect.Results and conclusions: We maintain that the most important issues raised in the original critique of the EFI, such as the definition, the demarcation, and the structure of its intended domain of content, were not addressed in Gauvin and Rejeski’s rejoinder and remain unclear. Researchers are urged to contemplate the theoretical bases and to scrutinize the psychometric data of the available measures before making their selection.     

Language lateralization in bilinguals: more not less is needed: a reply to Paradis (1990).

Paradis (1990) took an extremely pessimistic view of research to date looking at the lateralization of cerebral function in bilingual subjects. We, however, argue that some of his conclusions are, in fact, incorrect, while others speak more to the youth of the field. The problems in the latter body of work are now acknowledged and are being overcome. That the shortcomings are recognized seems to be more a case for satisfaction than of despair.     

All data collection and analysis methods have limitations: reply to Rabbitt (2011) and Raz and Lindenberger (2011)

The commentaries on my article contain a number of points with which I disagree but also several with which I agree. For example, I continue to believe that the existence of many cases in which between-person variability does not increase with age indicates that greater variance with increased age is not inevitable among healthy individuals up to about 80 years of age. I also do not believe that problems of causal inferences from correlational information are more severe in the cognitive neuroscience of aging than in other research areas; I contend instead that neglect of these problems has led to confusion about neurobiological underpinnings of cognitive aging. I agree that researchers need to be cautious in extrapolating from cross-sectional to longitudinal relations, but I also note that even longitudinal data are limited with respect to their ability to support causal inferences.     

Some thoughts on essence placeholders, interactionism, and heritability: reply to Haslam (2011) and Turkheimer (2011)

In the target article (Dar-Nimrod & Heine, 2011), we provided a social-cognitive framework which identified genetic essentialist biases and their implications. In their commentaries, Haslam (2011) and Turkheimer (2011) indicated their general agreement with this framework but highlighted some important points for consideration. Haslam suggested that neuroessentialism is a comparable kind of essentialist bias and identified similarities with the genetic essentialism framework. In response, we acknowledge similarities but also identify qualitative and quantitative differences between genetic essentialism and other kinds of essentialist biases. Turkheimer challenged us to extend our discussion to address the question of how should people respond to genetic etiological information, critiqued the use of heritability coefficients, and identified a new construct (1 - rMZ), which may be termed a free-will coefficient. In response, we emphasize the need to transform interactionist explanations from being empty platitudes to becoming the default conceptual framework; we wholeheartedly accept his critical view of heritability coefficient estimates (but acknowledge a more limited utility for them); and we are intrigued by his conceptual interest in identifying free-will coefficients yet warn against falling into pitfalls similar to those that were stumbled into in the past.     

The interaction between time and number in a temporal bisection task: a reply to Vicario (2011)

Abstract. We discuss the results of Vicario (2011, Perception 40 23-29), in the light of an experiment designed to bypass some of the limits of that study. There, participants were asked to perform a temporal bisection on numerical stimuli (small or large digits) presented either for 700/900 ms or 2000/2200 ms. For the two longest durations only, bisections of larger digits occurred later than those of smaller digits. Here, subjects judged the temporal position of a flick occurring during the visual presentation of a digit (1, 5, or 9) which lasted on the screen for either 700 ms or 2000 ms. Results revealed no difference in the perceived temporal midpoints of large compared to small digits. In contrast, they showed a response bias: only with the shortest-duration stimuli the digit's magnitude affected the subject's response.