Money and subjective well-being: it's not the money, it's the motives.

Past researchers have argued that the relative importance a person attaches to money is negatively related to subjective well-being (SWB). However, the past research suffers from the theoretical problem of not including the diferent motives for making money. With a sample of 240 business students, the authors developed a set of scales to measure motives for making money. They used a sample of 492 business students to confirm the factor structure of these motives. With another sample of 266 business students, the authors found that the negative relationship between money importance and SWB was due to the two variables being the result of a common cause; namely, the motives of social comparison. seeking power, showing off, and overcoming self-doubt. This finding was replicated with a sample of 145 entrepreneurs.     

Not so fast! (and not so frugal!): rethinking the recognition heuristic

The 'fast and frugal' approach to reasoning (Gigerenzer, G., & Todd, P. M. (1999). Simple heuristics that make us smart. New York: Oxford University Press) claims that individuals use non-compensatory strategies in judgment--the idea that only one cue is taken into account in reasoning. The simplest and most important of these heuristics postulates that judgment sometimes relies solely on recognition. However, the studies that have investigated usage of the recognition heuristic have confounded recognition with other cues that could also lead to similar judgments. This paper tests whether mere recognition is actually driving the findings in support of the recognition heuristic. Two studies provide evidence that judgments do not conform to the recognition heuristic when these confounds are accounted for. Implications for the study of simple heuristics are discussed.     

Pictorial experience: not so special after all

The central thesis (CT) that this paper upholds is that a picture depicts an object by generating in those who view the picture a visual experience of that object. I begin by presenting a brief sketch of intentionalism, the theory of perception in terms of which I propose to account for pictorial experience. I then discuss Richard Wollheim’s twofoldness thesis and explain why it should be rejected. Next, I show that the socalled unique phenomenology of pictorial experience is simply an instance of perceptual indeterminacy. Lastly, I discuss a phenomenon associated with pictures that could be considered a problem for CT, and account for it by invoking the thesis that visual experience is cognitively penetrable.     

Statistical processing: not so implausible after all

Myczek and Simons (2008) have shown that findings attributed to a statistical mode of perceptual processing can, instead, be explained by focused attention to samples of just a few items. Some new findings raise questions about this claim. (1) Participants, given conditions that would require different focused attention strategies, did no worse when the conditions were randomly mixed than when they were blocked. (2) Participants were significantly worse at estimating the mean size when given small samples than when given the whole display. (3) One plausible suggested strategy--comparing the largest item in each display, rather than the mean size--was not, in fact, used. Distributed attention to sets of similar stimuli, enabling a statistical-processing mode, provides a coherent account of these and other phenomena.     

Form as Structure: It's not so Simple

Hylomorphism is the theory that objects are composites of form and matter. Recently it has been argued that form is structure, or the arrangement of an object's parts. This paper shows that the principle of form cannot be ontologically exhausted by structure. That is, I deny form should be understood just as the arrangement of an object's parts. I do so by showing that structure cannot play the role form is supposed to in a certain domain of objects, specifically, in mereological simples. Thus, I show that Hylomorphism does not reduce to Structuralism. I also draw out some important consequences from my argument for Hylomorphism in general.     

Motion-perception deficits and reading impairment: it's the noise, not the motion

We tested the hypothesis that deficits on sensory-processing tasks frequently associated with poor reading and dyslexia are the result of impairments in external-noise exclusion, rather than motion perception or magnocellular processing. We compared the motion-direction discrimination thresholds of adults and children with good or poor reading performance, using coherent-motion displays embedded in external noise. Both adults and children who were poor readers had higher thresholds than their respective peers in the presence of high external noise, but not in the presence of low external noise or when the signal was clearly demarcated. Adults' performance in high external noise correlated with their general reading ability, whereas children's performance correlated with their language and verbal abilities. The results support the hypothesis that noise-exclusion deficits impair reading and language development and suggest that the impact of such deficits on the development of reading skills changes with age.     

If it's not left, it's right. Electroencephalograph asymmetry and the development of emotion

Recent studies suggest that an initial component involving stimulus evaluation may precede subsequent steps in the generation of emotion. This article presents a model for the development of emotion that involves an initial decision of approach or withdrawal, which results in motor programs, including facial expression, that facilitate either approach or withdrawal. With development, more complex emotions arise, as products of these basic initial responses and interaction with the environment. Evidence is presented that suggests that there are brain asymmetries (as measured by scalp recorded EEG activity) localized to the frontal region that are associated with the generation of emotion in infants. Variability in the pattern of EEG asymmetry between infants may be an important marker of differences in temperament.     

Microcounseling: the counselor as trainer

The skills of the counselor are too important to be used only in the guidance office. The counselor should move into the school and the community to teach others the various skills of counseling and interpersonal communication. Microcounseling is a systematic method for teaching counseling skills in a short period of time. The author explains the relationship of microcounseling and counselor education to the role of the practicing counselor. He believes that conducting systematic training programs in such skills as microcounseling should become an important role for counselors.     

Methodological individualism in experimental games: not so easily dismissed

Orthodox game theory and social preference models cannot explain why people cooperate in many experimental games or how they manage to coordinate their choices. The theory of evidential decision making provides a solution, based on the idea that people tend to project their own choices onto others, whatever these choices might be. Evidential decision making preserves methodological individualism, and it works without recourse to social preferences. Rejecting methodological individualism, team reasoning is a thinly disguised resurgence of the group mind fallacy, and the experiments reported by Colman et al. [Colman, A. M., Pulford, B. D., & Rose, J. (this issue). Collective rationality in interactive decisions: Evidence for team reasoning. Acta Psychologica, doi:10.1016/j.actpsy.2007.08.003.] do not offer evidence that uniquely supports team reasoning.     

Attention and the processing of emotional words and names: not so special after all

Abstract— Previous research has suggested that a person's own name or emotionally charged stimuli automatically "grab" attention, potentially challenging limited-capacity theories of perceptual processing. In this study, subjects were shown two digits surrounding a word and asked to make a speeded judgment about whether the parity of the two digits matched. When the subject's own name was presented on a few scattered trials, responses were markedly slowed (replicating a previous study). However, in a subsequent block of trials in which half the words were the subject's name, the slowing did not occur. The same slowing occurred (but even more fleetingly) when an emotionally charged word was presented between the digits. When the name was embedded among multiple distractor words, it ceased to slow reaction times. The results suggest that perceptual analysis of high-priority stimuli is subject to the usual capacity limitations of other stimuli, but when enough capacity is available for a high-priority stimulus to be perceived, a transient surprise reaction may interrupt ongoing processing.     

Traumatic memories of war veterans: not so special after all

Several authors have argued that traumatic experiences are processed and remembered in a qualitatively different way from neutral events. To investigate this issue, we interviewed 121 Croatian war veterans diagnosed with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) about amnesia, intrusions (i.e., flashbacks and nightmares), and the sensory qualities of their most horrific war memories. Additionally, they completed a self-report scale measuring dissociative experiences. In contrast to what one would expect on the basis of theories emphasizing the special status of traumatic memories, amnesia, and high frequency intrusions were not particularly typical for our sample of traumatized individuals. Moreover, traumatic memories were not qualitatively different from neutral memories with respect to their stability and sensory qualities. The severity of PTSD symptoms was not significantly correlated with dissociative experiences. Our findings do not support the existence of special memory mechanisms that are unique to experiencing traumatic events.