Correcting the correction of conditional recency slopes

Farrell (Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 36, 324–347, 2010) presented some analyses of free recall data that suggest that recency items initially become more accessible as recall progresses, in contrast to the assumptions of temporal drift models. Moran and Goshen-Gottstein (2013) present some challenges to Farrell’s (2010) analyses of the change in conditional recency across output position in free recall. Simulations using a very basic free recall model that controls conditional recency across recall show that Farrell’s (2010) analyses are not substantially biased, while the procedure proposed by Moran and Goshen-Gottstein introduces a substantial underestimation of the true slopes. The null slopes observed in immediate recall by Moran and Goshen-Gottstein are not informative of the true slopes characterizing the data. Accordingly, Farrell’s (2010) results continue to present a challenge to temporal drift models.     

Exogenous spatial precuing reliably modulates object processing but not object substitution masking

Object substitution masking (OSM) is used in behavioral and imaging studies to investigate processes associated with the formation of a conscious percept. Reportedly, OSM occurs only when visual attention is diffusely spread over a search display or focused away from the target location. Indeed, the presumed role of spatial attention is central to theoretical accounts of OSM and of visual processing more generally (Di Lollo, Enns, & Rensink, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 129:481–507, 2000). We report a series of five experiments in which valid spatial precuing is shown to enhance the ability of participants to accurately report a target but, in most cases, without affecting OSM. In only one experiment (Experiment 5) was a significant effect of precuing observed on masking. This is in contrast to the reliable effect shown across all five experiments in which precuing improved overall performance. The results are convergent with recent findings from Argyropoulos, Gellatly, and Pilling (Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 39:646–661, 2013), which show that OSM is independent of the number of distractor items in a display. Our results demonstrate that OSM can operate independently of focal attention. Previous claims of the strong interrelationship between OSM and spatial attention are likely to have arisen from ceiling or floor artifacts that restricted measurable performance.     

Synergy between Positive Psychology and Indian Psychology? Reflections on Barriers and Pathways

There are points of convergences between Positive Psychology and Indian Psychology. But we do have to cross many barriers and travel some distance on converging pathways for the potential synergies between these fields to manifest. There are indicators in the global literature that Positive Psychology is maturing as an approach but this is yet to become very evident in the Indian research on Positive Psychology. Systematic efforts at discovering convergences between Indian Psychology and Positive Psychology can go a long way in enriching our understanding of well being.     

A Commentary on “Positive Psychology and Indian Psychology: In Need of Mutual Reinforcement”

For those who consider Indian Psychology (IP) a cause worthy of support, comparing IP with Positive Psychology (PP) is a compelling, but at first sight rather embarrassing exercise. Though these two approaches to psychology started roughly at the same time with similar-looking intentions, PP has made by now a major impact in terms of published papers, books and “name recognition”, while IP is still no more than a fringe phenomenon that is hardly on the map, even in India. K. Ramakrishna Rao’s analysis of the situation is as always impressive, but alternative perspectives are possible. To start, I agree of course with Prof. Ramakrishna Rao that these two new schools of psychology are similar in their intent of bringing some more “goodness” into mainstream psychology, but in my humble opinion, their similarity ends there. PP is a simple attempt at correcting mainstream psychology’s tendency to focus primarily on difficulties and negative emotional states. Beyond that, it doesn’t challenge the mainstream in any way. In spite of a not very successful attempt at internationalising itself (for an excellent critique see Christopher & Hickinbottom, 2008), it is still solidly American, and as a whole it fits perfectly and noiselessly within the existing discipline and its supporting culture.     

On Getting Best of Both the Worlds

As continuing globalization brings psychological insights from varied backgrounds closer, the prospect for developing a richer psychology based on complementary insights and techniques opens up. Against this background, Prof. Rao’s paper correctly points out that time is now right for the convergence of traditional Indian Psychology (IP) and Positive Psychology (PP). What brings them together is their common aim to pursue the highest possible level of happiness. As pointed out by the author, the deeper philosophical foundations of Indian psychology (IP), and the expanding empirical studies of Positive Psychology (PP), are the strongest instances of their complementarity. Mutually enriching exchange between these fields can take place only on grounds of compatible principles. If this is correct, then a close examination of the basic ontological premises, epistemic principles, and convergent values is needed to ensure success in collaboration. At the same time it is important to recognize the points of conflict and possible fault lines so we could steer clear of them.     

Generality of a congruity effect in judgements of relative order

The judgement of relative order (JOR) procedure is used to investigate serial-order memory. Measuring response times, the wording of the instructions (whether the earlier or the later item was designated as the target) reversed the direction of search in subspan lists (Chan, Ross, Earle, & Caplan Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 16(5), 945–951, 2009). If a similar congruity effect applied to above-span lists and, furthermore, with error rate as the measure, this could suggest how to model order memory across scales. Participants performed JORs on lists of nouns (Experiment 1: list lengths = 4, 6, 8, 10) or consonants (Experiment 2: list lengths = 4, 8). In addition to the usual distance, primacy, and recency effects, instructions interacted with serial position of the later probe in both experiments, not only in response time, but also in error rate, suggesting that availability, not just accessibility, is affected by instructions. The congruity effect challenges current memory models. We fitted Hacker’s (Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning and Memory, 6(6), 651–675, 1980) self-terminating search model to our data and found that a switch in search direction could explain the congruity effect for short lists, but not longer lists. This suggests that JORs may need to be understood via direct-access models, adapted to produce a congruity effect, or a mix of mechanisms.     

A report on the development and prospects of Medical Psychology in the Federal Republic of Germany

For eight years Medical Psychology has been an integral part of medical pre-examination as well as of research and teaching in the Federal Republic of Germany, and a great deal of psychological knowledge is taught to the medical student under this heading. Besides mere theory the medical student is supposed to acquire behavior based on psychological findings which will be important to him in medical practice. Nevertheless, students often complain that teaching is too far from reality, due to the fact that Medical Psychology is part of the first, more theoretical, period of medical eduction, even though one of the main objects of this new field is the analysis of the interaction between patient and physician.     

Search asymmetry and eye movements in infants and adults

Search asymmetry is characterized by the detection of a feature-present target amidst feature-absent distractors being efficient and unaffected by the number of distractors, whereas detection of a feature-absent target amidst feature-present distractors is typically inefficient and affected by the number of distractors. Although studies have attempted to investigate this phenomenon with infants (e.g., Adler, Inslicht, Rovee-Collier, & Gerhardstein in Infant Behavioral Development, 21, 253–272, 1998; Colombo, Mitchell, Coldren, & Atwater in Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, 19, 98–109, 1990), due to methodological limitations, their findings have been unable to definitively establish the development of visual search mechanisms in infants. The present study assessed eye movements as a means to examine an asymmetry in responding to feature-present versus feature-absent targets in 3-month-olds, relative to adults. Saccade latencies to localize a target (or a distractor, as in the homogeneous conditions) were measured as infants and adults randomly viewed feature-present (R among Ps), feature-absent (P among Rs), and homogeneous (either all Rs or all Ps) arrays at set sizes of 1, 3, 5, and 8. Results indicated that neither infants’ nor adults’ saccade latencies to localize the target in the feature-present arrays were affected by increasing set sizes, suggesting that localization of the target was efficient. In contrast, saccade latencies to localize the target in the feature-absent arrays increased with increasing set sizes for both infants and adults, suggesting an inefficient localization. These findings indicate that infants exhibit an asymmetry consistent with that found with adults, providing support for functional bottom-up selective attention mechanisms in early infancy.     

The binding pool: A model of shared neural resources for distinct items in visual working memory

Visual working memory (VWM) refers to the ability to encode, store, and retrieve visual information. The two prevailing theories that describe VWM assume that information is stored either in discrete slots or within a shared pool of resources. However, there is not yet a good understanding of the neural mechanisms that would underlie such theories. To address this gap, we provide a computationally realized neural account that uses a pool of shared neurons to store information about one or more distinct stimuli. The binding pool model is a neural network that is essentially a hybrid of the slot and resource theories. It describes how information can be stored and retrieved from a pool of shared resources using a type/token architecture (Bowman & Wyble in Psychological Review 114(1), 38–70, 2007; Kanwisher in Cognition 27, 117–143, 1987; Mozer in Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 15(2), 287–303, 1989). The model can store multiple distinct objects, each containing binding links to one or more features. The binding links are stored in a pool of shared resources and, thus, produce mutual interference as memory load increases. Given a cue, the model retrieves a specific object and then reconstructs other features bound to that object, along with a confidence metric. The model can simulate data from continuous report and change detection paradigms and generates testable predictions about the interaction of report accuracy, confidence, and stimulus similarity. The testing of such predictions will help to identify the boundaries of shared resource theories, thereby providing insight into the roles of ensembles and context in explaining our ability to remember visual information.     

Knowledge in Society as an Empirical Base for Indian Psychology

Indian society has enormous complexity and diversity of religion and culture. The Indian Psychology will be truly enriched if it explores and integrates these experiences at the individual and group levels. In addition there is perhaps something to learn from the Positive Psychology as to how to best utilize the knowledge in Indian society for the sake of humanity.     

Setting semantics: conceptual set can determine the physical properties that capture attention

The ability of a stimulus to capture visuospatial attention depends on the interplay between its bottom-up saliency and its relationship to an observer’s top-down control set, such that stimuli capture attention if they match the predefined properties that distinguish a searched-for target from distractors (Folk, Remington, & Johnston, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance, 18, 1030–1044 1992). Despite decades of research on this phenomenon, however, the vast majority has focused exclusively on matches based on low-level physical properties. Yet if contingent capture is indeed a “top-down” influence on attention, then semantic content should be accessible and able to determine which physical features capture attention. Here we tested this prediction by examining whether a semantically defined target could create a control set for particular features. To do this, we had participants search to identify a target that was differentiated from distractors by its meaning (e.g., the word “red” among color words all written in black). Before the target array, a cue was presented, and it was varied whether the cue appeared in the physical color implied by the target word. Across three experiments, we found that cues that embodied the meaning of the word produced greater cuing than cues that did not. This suggests that top-down control sets activate content that is semantically associated with the target-defining property, and this content in turn has the ability to exogenously orient attention.     

The perception of a familiar face is no more than the sum of its parts

Why do faces become easier to recognize with repeated exposure? Previous research has suggested that familiarity may induce a qualitative shift in visual processing from an independent analysis of individual facial features to analysis that includes information about the relationships among features (Farah, Wilson, Drain, & Tanaka Psychological Review, 105, 482–498, 1998; Maurer, Grand, & Mondloch Trends in Cognitive Science, 6, 255–260, 2002). We tested this idea by using a “summation-at-threshold” technique (Gold, Mundy, & Tjan Psychological Science, 23, 427–434, 2012; Nandy & Tjan Journal of Vision, 8, 3.1–20, 2008), in which an observer’s ability to recognize each individual facial feature shown independently is used to predict their ability to recognize all of the features shown in combination. We find that, although people are better overall at recognizing familiar as opposed to unfamiliar faces, their ability to integrate information across features is similar for unfamiliar and highly familiar faces and is well predicted by their ability to recognize each of the facial features shown in isolation. These results are consistent with the idea that familiarity has a quantitative effect on the efficiency with which information is extracted from individual features, rather than a qualitative effect on the process by which features are combined.     

Feeling before knowing why: The role of the orbitofrontal cortex in intuitive judgments—an MEG study

In theory, intuitive decisions are made immediately, without conscious, reasoned thought. They are experienced as decisions based on hunches that cannot be explicitly described but, nevertheless, guide subsequent action. Investigating the underlying neural mechanisms, previous research has found the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) to be crucial to intuitive processes, but its specific role has remained unclear. On the basis of a two-stage conceptualization of intuition suggested by Bowers, Regehr, Balthazard, and Parker Cognitive Psychology, 22, 72-110 (1990), we attempt to clarify the OFC’s role in intuitive processing. We propose that it functions as an early integrator of incomplete stimulus input guiding subsequent processing by means of a coarse representation of the gist of the information. On the subjective level, this representation would be perceived as a (gut) feeling biasing the decision. Our aim in the present study was to test this neural model and rule out alternative explanations of OFC activation in intuitive judgments. We used magnetoencephalography (MEG) to record participants' electromagnetic brain responses during a visual coherence judgment task. As in earlier studies, the OFC was found to be activated when participants perceived coherence. Using MEG, it could be shown that this increase in activation began earlier in the OFC than in temporal object recognition areas. Moreover, the present study demonstrated that OFC activation was independent of physical stimulus characteristics, task requirements, and participants’ explicit recognition of the stimuli presented. These results speak to the OFC’s fundamental role in the early steps of intuitive judgments and suggest the proposed neural model as a promising starting point for future investigations.     

The place of the conditioned reflex in psychology and psychiatry: Reply to reese,dykman, and peters

Razran’s “The Place of the Conditional Reflex in Psychology and Psychiatry” delivered at GAP Symposium No. 9 traced historically the influence of Russian physiology on American behavior systems, first in the classical Watson period and then in present-day Neobehaviorism. The address collated Pavlovianism and Behaviorism, and mentioned recent Soviet emphasis of interoceptive, semantic, and compound-stimulus conditioning. Within the limits of time, it dealt with group developments and not with individual contributions. And it assumed that a behavior system comprises both normal and abnormal aspects; that is, the basics of both psychology and psychiatry. The assertion by Reese, Dykman and Peters that “Psychiatrists tend to avoid contributions of experimental psychologists and vice versa” is not shared by Razran, nor, he believes, by American psychiatry and experimental psychology as such. And the assertion is contrary to the Pavlovian tradition. Pavlov’s first, 1903, publication on conditioned reflexes was entitled “Experimental Psychology and Psychopathology in Animals” which he later renamed “the physiology and pathology [or pathophysiology] of higher nervous activity.”     

Evaluating Attitudes toward Clergy Restoration: The Psychometric Properties of Two Scales

Restoring clergy to leadership following a transgression is a pastoral psychology topic of international concern. Few empirical studies have examined factors weighed by offended congregants challenged with considerations of forgiveness and restoration. The purpose of this study was to assess the validity and reliability of two attitudinal measures of restoration used in previous research (Sutton, McLeland, Weaks, Cogswell and Miphouvieng. Pastoral Psychology, 55, 643–663, 2007; Sutton and Thomas 2004; Sutton and Thomas. Pastoral Psychology, 53, 583–599, 2005a). Analysis (sample n?=?210) of the Clergy Situational Restoration Inventory (CSRI) suggested two levels of offense severity account for most of the variance. Reliability and concurrent validity values for the CSRI and the two Leadership Restoration Scales (LRS) were adequate. We included the scales for future research and reference.     

Search for the Grounds for Mutual Reinforcement

Both PP and IP are the outgrowth of disenchantment with the mainstream western psychology. However, it is argued that these two psychologies are rooted in irreconcilable epistemological traditions. PP calls for a correction in western psychology, to focus less on human pathology and negativity and more on strengths and virtues. Indian Psychology has begun as an alternative psychology, shaped by the spiritual traditions, with emphasis on development of human potentials. IP, in its modern incarnation, is still at a nascent stage and must grow independently till it acquires its own identity and strength. Unless IP collaborates from the position of strength, the danger is real that it may be eventually usurped by the western psychology.     

Ear-catching? Real-world distractibility scores predict susceptibility to auditory attentional capture

Although many of the everyday distractions that we encounter are auditory, most research on distractor processing to date has focused on the visual domain. A common measure of everyday distractibility is the Cognitive Failures Questionnaire (CFQ; Broadbent, Cooper, FitzGerald, & Parkes British Journal of Clinical Psychology 21: 1–16, 1982), which has previously been successfully linked with performance on controlled visual-attention tasks (e.g., Forster & Lavie Psychological Science 18: 377–381, 2007; Kanai, Dong, Bahrami, & Rees Journal of Neuroscience 31: 6620–6626, 2011; Tipper & Baylis Personality and Individual Differences 8: 667–675, 1987), such that high scorers tend to display greater distractor interference than do low scorers. We examined whether the same relationship would hold in hearing. Participants performed an auditory attentional-capture task, by responding to a target sound while ignoring an irrelevant singleton distractor (presented on half of the trials). We found that CFQ score successfully predicted distractor interference, since participants who reported being more distractible in everyday life produced more errors in the presence of the irrelevant singleton than did low scorers on the CFQ. This finding is the first to demonstrate a relationship between auditory distractor interference and everyday distractibility, and it confirms that performance on this type of laboratory-based attentional-capture task can successfully be related to behavior outside the laboratory.     

Hallucinating real things

No particular dagger was the object of Macbeth’s hallucination of a dagger. In contrast, when he hallucinated his former comrade Banquo, Banquo himself was the object of the hallucination. Although philosophers have had much to say about the nature and philosophical import of hallucinations (e.g. Macpherson and Platchias, Hallucination, 2013) and object-involving attitudes (e.g. Jeshion, New essays on singular thought, 2010), their intersection has largely been neglected. Yet, object-involving hallucinations raise interesting questions about memory, perception, and the ways in which we have knowledge of the world around us. In this paper, I offer an account of object-involving hallucinations. Specifically, I argue that they are an unusual species of perceptual remembering.     

The retrieval of abstract and concrete materials as functions of imagery,mediation, and mnemonic aids

Department of Educational Psychology, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania 16802 This study is a report of an investigation of the interaction between imagery ability and processes employed for facilitating recall. The tasks were assumed to involve contrasting processes through the use of imaginal or verbal mediators and concrete or abstract jingles (mnemonic aids) in memorizing two concrete and two abstract lists of 10 words in each list. The dependent variables were latencies in arriving at an association, number of errors and omissions on immediate recall, and number of errors and omissions on delayed recall. The main effects of imagery ability, favoring high imagers, and of kind of lists favoring concrete lists were significant. In delayed recall there was a significant interaction of mnemonic aid and kind of list. Imagery ability interacted with mediators to influence Ss’ recall. The results were discussed as supporting Paivio’s two-stage association model.     

Animates are better remembered than inanimates: further evidence from word and picture stimuli

In three experiments, we showed that animate entities are remembered better than inanimate entities. Experiment 1 revealed better recall for words denoting animate than inanimate items. Experiment 2 replicated this finding with the use of pictures. In Experiment 3, we found better recognition for animate than for inanimate words. Importantly, we also found a higher recall rate of “remember” than of “know” responses for animates, whereas the recall rates were similar for the two types of responses for inanimate items. This finding suggests that animacy enhances not only the quantity but also the quality of memory traces, through the recall of contextual details of previous experiences (i.e., episodic memory). Finally, in Experiment 4, we tested whether the animacy effect was due to animate items being richer in terms of sensory features than inanimate items. The findings provide further evidence for the functionalist view of memory championed by Nairne and coworkers (Nairne, 2010; Nairne & Pandeirada, Cognitive Psychology, 61:1–22, 2010a, 2010b).