Do gains in working memory capacity explain the written self-disclosure effect?

Klein and Boals (2001) concluded that expressive writing about negative life events improves health by reducing intrusive thoughts, as measured by the Impact of Events Scale (IES), and thus freeing working memory (WM) capacity. We replicated their WM gain and rejected the possibility that it reflected task practice alone. We extended their work by showing that such WM effects and reductions in self-reported health symptoms can be observed within a short time frame of a week in a normal population of college students and can occur without reductions in IES scores. Two alternative explanations are discussed of how WM gains can be observed in the written self-disclosure effect without reductions in the frequency of intrusive thoughts and avoidance attempts.     

Do computer simulations support the Argument from Disagreement?

According to the Argument from Disagreement (AD) widespread and persistent disagreement on ethical issues indicates that our moral opinions are not influenced by moral facts, either because there are no such facts or because there are such facts but they fail to influence our moral opinions. In an innovative paper, Gustafsson and Peterson (Synthese, published online 16 October, 2010) study the argument by means of computer simulation of opinion dynamics, relying on the well-known model of Hegselmann and Krause (J Artif Soc Soc Simul 5(3):1–33, 2002; J Artif Soc Soc Simul 9(3):1–28, 2006). Their simulations indicate that if our moral opinions were influenced at least slightly by moral facts, we would quickly have reached consensus, even if our moral opinions were also affected by additional factors such as false authorities, external political shifts and random processes. Gustafsson and Peterson conclude that since no such consensus has been reached in real life, the simulation gives us increased reason to take seriously the AD. Our main claim in this paper is that these results are not as robust as Gustafsson and Peterson seem to think they are. If we run similar simulations in the alternative Laputa simulation environment developed by Angere and Olsson (Angere, Synthese, forthcoming and Olsson, Episteme 8(2):127–143, 2011) considerably less support for the AD is forthcoming.     

Do self-reported decision styles relate with others’ impressions of decision quality?

Research has demonstrated the usefulness of decision styles for predicting various performance-related criteria. It is still unclear, however, which particular styles are associated with a general tendency to make high-quality decisions. Participants (n = 168) completed a common measure of five decision styles, along with a measure of the traits in the five-factor model of personality. Self and peer evaluations of general decision quality were obtained as performance criteria. Results showed that specific decision styles predicted variance in both measures of decision quality. And, there was clear evidence for incremental validity for specific decision styles when self-ratings were predicted. In the context of past research, this study supports a primary focus on rational or analytical styles for understanding and predicting decision success.     

Posttraumatic growth: why do people grow from their trauma?

In two experimental studies we found that participants who recalled a highly traumatic autobiographical event (trauma recall) compared with a lesser traumatic event (stress recall) reported having increasingly grown (posttraumatic growth, PTG). Moreover, participants who recalled a traumatic (vs. stressful) event perceived more death-related thoughts (Study 1) and reported coping with this event in a more emotion-focused and in a less problem-focused way (Study 2). Mediation analyzes revealed that the effect of trauma versus stress recall on PTG was mediated by emphasizing the positive, a subscale of emotion-focused coping. These results imply that growth resulting from traumatic events can be traced back to an illusion. No evidence was found that real PTG took place or that the effects shown resulted from death-related thoughts (terror management theory).     

Do we know what we've learned from listening to the news?

This study investigates the relationship between knowledge acquisition and an awareness of that knowledge within the context of listening to the news, Subjects listened to a recording of a radio news program consisting of regular news items as well as editorials, manipulated to be of high or low personal relevance. They then completed a surprise memory test and rated their confidence in their answers. In contrast to many studies, the results indicated a strong positive confidence-accuracy relationship. Confidence ratings were generally a better predictor of an individual's performance than were predictions based on item difficulty. Whereas subjects reported strong and accurate feelings of knowing, they apparently lacked complementary feelings ofnot knowing. The implications of these findings and others are discussed.     

Do Trompe l'oeils Look Right When Viewed from the Wrong Place?

Picture perception and ordinary perception of real objects differ in several respects. Two of their main differences are: (1) Depicted objects are not perceived as present and (2) We cannot perceive significant spatial shifts as we move with respect to them. Some special illusory pictures escape these visual effects obtained in usual picture perception. First, trompe l'oeil paintings violate (1): the depicted object looks, even momentarily, like a present object. Second, anamorphic paintings violate (2): they lead to appreciate spatial shifts resulting from movement. However, anamorphic paintings do not violate (1): they are still perceived as clearly pictorial, that is, nonpresent. What about the relation between trompe l'oeil paintings and (2)? Do trompe l'oeils allow us to perceive spatial shifts? Nobody has ever focused on this aspect of trompe l'oeil perception. I offer the first speculation about this question. I suggest that, if we follow our most recent theories in philosophy and vision science about the mechanisms of picture perception, then, the only plausible answer, in line with phenomenological intuitions, is that, differently from nonillusory, usual picture perception, and similarly to ordinary perception, trompe l'oeil perception does allow us to perceive spatial shifts resulting from movement. I also discuss the philosophical implications of this claim.     

Do phonological representations specify variables? Evidence from the obligatory contour principle

Mental variables are central to symbolic accounts of cognition. Conversely, according to the pattern associator hypothesis, variables are obsolete. We examine the representation of variables by investigating the Obligatory Contour Principle (OCP, McCarthy, 1986) in Hebrew. The OCP constrains gemination in Hebrew roots. Gemination is well formed at the root's end (e.g., SMM), but not in its beginning (e.g., SSM). Roots and geminates, however, are variables; hence, according to the pattern associator view, the OCP is unrepresentable. Three experiments demonstrate that speakers are sensitive to the presence of root gemination and constrain its location. In forming words from novel biconsonantal roots, speakers prefer to reduplicate the root's final over its initial radical, and they rate such outputs as more acceptable. The avoidance or rejection of root-initial gemination is independent of its position in the word and is inexplicable by the statistical frequency of root tokens. Our results suggest that linguistic representations specify variables. Speakers' competence, however, is governed by violable constraints.     

Do military decision makers behave as predicted by prospect theory?

Four experiments were conducted to explore the robustness of risky choice framing among military decision makers. In the first experiment the original version of the Asian disease problem was administered. In contrast to Tversky and Kahneman's ( 1981 ) original findings, military decision makers were not influenced by the gain and loss framing. They demonstrated risk‐seeking behavior in both domains. In the second experiment, we administered a military version of the Asian disease problem. We found a significant framing effect, but it was unidirectional: The decision makers were risk seeking in both domains, but significantly more risk seeking in the loss domain. To explore the strength of this risk‐seeking preference, we altered the problem in a third experiment, making the risky alternative 12.5% less attractive than the certain one. Again, we found risk‐seeking behavior in both domains. Finally, we explored reasons for these deviations from prospect theory by comparing the responses of business students and military officers. In this analysis, we observed significantly higher levels of self‐efficacy in the military sample, as compared to the civil sample, and that the self‐efficacy influenced risk seeking only in the military sample. In a post hoc analysis we also found that years of education reduced risk‐seeking preference. Implications and directions for future research are discussed. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Are adoption gains on the g factor? A meta-analysis

When children are adopted into prosperous families they generally show IQ gains. The meta-analytic correlation between subtest g loadings and adoption gains is examined (K = 4, combined N = 3018). A number of meta-analytic corrections are applied to the estimate, yielding a correlation of −1. The results are discussed.     

Where Do We Go from Here?

Beginning with the End represents an excellent collection of articles devoted to the thought of Wolfhart Pannenberg. This volume includes many of the most important thinkers in the science-religion dialogue and shows as well the importance and impact of Pannenberg's theology. This response addresses themes that surface in several of the articles: What is religion? What is science? What is theology? What is God? On some of these themes there is agreement, on others sharp disagreement. The conclusion also considers what this volume suggests about the future of Pannenberg's theology.     

Are intertemporal preferences contagious? Evidence from collaborative decision making

Prior research has provided substantial insight into individuals’ intertemporal preferences (i.e., preferences about delayed rewards). In the present study, we instead investigated the preferences of small groups of individuals asked to express collective intertemporal decisions. The paradigm consisted of three phases. During the precollaboration and postcollaboration phases, participants completed an intertemporal decision task individually. During the collaboration phase, participants completed a similar task in small groups, reaching mutually-agreed-upon decisions. The results suggest that group preferences were systematically related to the mean of the group members’ precollaboration preferences. In addition, collaborative decision making altered the group members’ intertemporal preferences. Specifically, individuals’ postcollaboration preferences converged toward the preferences of their respective groups. Furthermore, we found that individuals’ postcollaboration preferences were independently related to both their precollaboration preferences and the preferences of the other group members, suggesting that individuals’ postcollaboration preferences represented a revision of their precollaboration preferences based on the preferences observed in other group members. In Experiment 2, we demonstrated that similar patterns of results were found whether participants were making matching judgments or binary choices.     

Do masks terminate the icon?

Iconic memory is operationally defined by part-report experiments (Sperling, 1960 Sperling, G. 1960. The information available in a brief visual presentation. Psychological Monographs: General and Applied, 74(11): 1–29. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). If a mask is presented after the target, the mask is thought to be superposed on the target in the iconic representation, or to displace it from the representation. But could a cue presented after a pattern mask still allow selection within the target array? A target array of letters was followed by a checkerboard mask. We compared two target–mask interstimulus intervals (ISIs; 0 and 100 ms), and six cue delays. At ISI?=?0 ms, performance was at chance, for part report and whole report. At ISI?=?100 ms, with the shortest cue delay, observers demonstrated a part-report advantage of 25–30%. As cue delay increased the part-report advantage decreased. These results are inconsistent with an iconic memory that is automatically displaced or overwritten by new information. We consider two alternatives: a second-stage store, which represents letters in terms of their high-level features and which the mask cannot penetrate, or a four-dimensional store that preserves separately the representations of the target and its aftercoming mask. We discuss the implications of our results for studies that use backward masking to “terminate the icon”.     

Do masks terminate the icon?

Iconic memory is operationally defined by part-report experiments (Sperling, 1960). If a mask is presented after the target, the mask is thought to be superposed on the target in the iconic representation, or to displace it from the representation. But could a cue presented after a pattern mask still allow selection within the target array? A target array of letters was followed by a checkerboard mask. We compared two target-mask interstimulus intervals (ISIs; 0 and 100 ms), and six cue delays. At ISI = 0 ms, performance was at chance, for part report and whole report. At ISI = 100 ms, with the shortest cue delay, observers demonstrated a part-report advantage of 25-30%. As cue delay increased the part-report advantage decreased. These results are inconsistent with an iconic memory that is automatically displaced or overwritten by new information. We consider two alternatives: a second-stage store, which represents letters in terms of their high-level features and which the mask cannot penetrate, or a four-dimensional store that preserves separately the representations of the target and its aftercoming mask. We discuss the implications of our results for studies that use backward masking to "terminate the icon".     

Do drop-outs differ from successfully treated obsessive-compulsives?

The most common reasons given by patients for dropping out of treatment are: environmental constraints, dissatisfaction with services and that they no longer need help. In this study two groups of patients suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorders are compared. The drop-outs' reasons for terminating treatment are compared with the comments of patients who completed the therapy successfully. Drop-outs differ from successfully treated OCD's in five respects: they appear to be less obsessive-compulsive; they have more discongruent treatment expectations; they are more critical of the therapist; they experience less anxiety in carrying out homework assignments; they less frequently come under pressure from people close to them.     

Do emotional stimuli interfere with response inhibition? Evidence from the stop signal paradigm

Participants performed a stop signal task in which an emotional picture preceded a neutral stimulus. They were asked to respond on the basis of the identity of the neutral stimulus unless an auditory tone was presented, in which case participants should try to withhold their response. In Experiment 1, we used positive, neutral and negative pictures. Results demonstrated that the presentation of an emotional stimulus prolonged both response and stopping latencies regardless of the valence of the emotional stimulus. This suggested that the degree of arousal could modulate the interference effect. In Experiment 2, high- and low-arousing pictures with a positive or negative valence were used. In line with the arousal hypothesis, high-arousal pictures interfered more with responding and stopping than low-arousing pictures whereas the valence of the pictures had little or no effect. These findings support the hypothesis that emotional stimuli interrupt ongoing cognitively controlled activities because they attract attention away from these ongoing activities.     

Narcissism through the ages: What happens when narcissists grow older?

Three types of adult narcissism, as assessed with Wink’s (1991) observational rating method, were studied over a period of 25 years, with participants from the Intergenerational Studies of the Institute of Human Development, UC Berkeley. Narcissism was assessed on three occasions, from age 34 to age 59. Hypersensitive narcissism was found to decrease, Autonomous narcissism increased, and Willfulness narcissism did not change with age. At age 34, both Willfulness and Autonomous narcissism were related to agentic personality characteristics, but only Autonomous narcissism was related to the communal personality characteristic of empathy. Change in narcissism between age 34 and age 59 was shown to predict change in personality at age 71. The agentic personality characteristics that had been associated with Willfulness narcissism at age 34 were no longer characteristic of those individuals at age 71. In addition, in contrast to Autonomous narcissism, at age 34 Willfulness and Hypersensitivity were associated with emotional maladjustment, and predicted continuing maladjustment and less favorable life outcomes in later life.     

Is the go/no-go lexical decision task an alternative to the yes/no lexical decision task?

In the go/no-go lexical decision task (LDT), participants are instructed to respond as quickly as they can when a word is presented and not to respond if a nonword is presented. By minimizing part of the response selection process in the experimental task, the impact of response decision time on the obtained lexical decision time is probably reduced relative to the standard yes/no LDT (Gordon, 1983). Experiments 1 and 2 show that the go/no-go LDT is sensitive to the effects of word frequency and associative priming--the magnitude of these effects is similar with the two tasks. More important, the go/no-go LDT has a number of advantages with respect to the "standard" yes/no LDT: It offers faster response times, more accurate responding, and fewer processing demands than does the yes/no task. Accordingly, the go/no-go task appears to be an excellent alternative to the standard yes/no task.