Does stimulus correspondence account for the Simon effect? Comments on Hasbroucq and Guiard (1991)

Summary In a recent paper analysing the Simon effect, Hasbroucq and Guiard (1991) concluded that stimulus congruence, a correspondence relationship between stimulus components, accounts for the Simon effect and explains its reversal in the Hedge and Marsh experiment (1975). We contend that their definition of stimulus congruence is applied inconsistently, which invalidates their conclusion. It is argued here that the effect of display-control arrangement correspondence (Simon, Sly, & Vilapakkam, 1981) is an alternative account that fits the presented data better. In a second experiment, Hasbroucq and Guiard (1991) claimed to have invalidated the suggestion that display-control arrangement correspondence could be considered to be an alternative account of the findings in their Experiment 1. However, we assert that the type of display-control arrangement employed in their second experiment was so unpredictable that no effect of display-control arrangement correspondence could occur.     

Three constructions of transference in Freud, 1895-1915

Three distinct constructions of transference which have related though differentiable histories can be identified in Freud's writings. The postulation of discrete meta-psychological, clinical, and universal constructions was completed by 1915, although many significant revisions within those constructions were made thereafter. Most significant is the distinction drawn between the clinical and universal constructions which (while both are founded on the metapsychological construction) facilitates recognition of cultural critical uses of transference as distinct from the clinical transference phenomena and as applicable far beyond the confines of psychopathology.     

Toward a Social Psychology of Culture and Globalization: Some Social Cognitive Consequences of Activating Two Cultures Simultaneously

Despite the increased attention given to cultural phenomena in social psychology, the field has neglected issues related to globalization's cultural impacts. Meanwhile, opinions in the debates over these issues are divided, polarized, and often motivated by political and ideological commitments. Globalization has brought symbols of diverse cultures together and provided ample opportunities for the simultaneous activation of two or more cultural representations. Using our research on the social cognitive consequences of activating two cultural representations simultaneously as an example, we argue for constructing a social psychology of globalization that offers nuanced understandings of people's psychological responses to globalization. Although simultaneous activation of cultural representations does not determine an individual's cultural identity, it enlarges the felt distinctions between different identity options and magnifies the effects of identity choice. Furthermore, in situations that emphasize appropriating intellectual resources from diverse cultures to foster creativity, simultaneous activation of cultural representations may facilitate creative performance.     

高技术工作团队的交互记忆系统及其效果

交互记忆系统近来被认为是影响工作团队绩效的重要特性之一。以往的研究局限于实验室样本或者由学生组成的临时团队,该研究从高技术企业中选取190个工作团队作为样本,考查了团队的交互记忆系统与团队中的其它现象之间的关系。研究除了发现Lewis的量表中有两个题目不理想外,还发现交互记忆系统与团队成员之间的信任、合作性目标导向具有显著的正相关,同时交互记忆系统与团队的工作绩效和凝聚力也具有显著的关系。该文在检验团队层次的现象时,通过计算团队成员在相应变量上得分的一致性(rwg)来检查加总分析的合理性,这是从事团队层次的研究中需要遵循的方法     

Aversion to Happiness Across Cultures: A Review of Where and Why People are Averse to Happiness

A common view in contemporary Western culture is that personal happiness is one of the most important values in life. For example, in American culture it is believed that failing to appear happy is cause for concern. These cultural notions are also echoed in contemporary Western psychology (including positive psychology and much of the research on subjective well-being). However, some important (often culturally-based) facts about happiness have tended to be overlooked in the psychological research on the topic. One of these cultural phenomena is that, for some individuals, happiness is not a supreme value. In fact, some individuals across cultures are averse to various kinds of happiness for several different reasons. This article presents the first review of the concept of aversion to happiness. Implications of the outcomes are discussed, as are directions for further research.     

道德之一元论与多元论：缘起、内涵与论争

一元论与多元论之争是道德心理学领域近些年最为活跃的理论交锋之一。道德一元论认为所有外在的道德现象与内在的道德结构都可以用一种因素来解释。道德多元论则认为道德不能只用单一因素来解释,而是存在多个不同质的道德维度,且具有文化敏感性。对应道德理论和道德基础理论是这场争议的典型代表。双方就伤害的解释力、道德失声现象、模块化道德与洁净维度独立性等方面展开论争。未来研究应从三个具体方面进一步探索道德之一元论与多元论难题,进而保持道德心理学领域的理论活力。     

When Reminiscence is Harmful: The Relationship Between Self-Negative Reminiscence Functions,Need Satisfaction,and Depressive Symptoms Among Elderly People from Cameroon,the Czech Republic,and Germany

Reminiscence has various functions, not all of which are beneficial for well-being. In particular, self-negative reminiscence functions—boredom reduction, bitterness revival, and intimacy maintenance—have been shown to be associated with reduced well-being. The present paper examines the link between self-negative reminiscence functions and depression in three cultural contexts. We hypothesize that both variables are indirectly linked via satisfaction of basic psychological needs: Self-negative reminiscing is associated with an impairment of need satisfaction which in turn relates to enhanced depressive symptoms. This hypothesis is tested in elderlies from Cameroon, the Czech Republic, and Germany. A total of 637 elderly participants reported on self-negative reminiscing, need satisfaction, and depressive symptoms. Analyses indicate that for boredom reduction and bitterness revival an indirect effect on depression via decreased need satisfaction can be established in all cultural contexts. For intimacy maintenance, a different picture emerges in that in the Czech and the German sample, there was a direct effect on depression but not an indirect one via need satisfaction. Yet, among Cameroonian participants an indirect effect was found, demonstrating that intimacy maintenance was related to decreased depression via enhanced need satisfaction. These results suggest that reminiscence functions may have partly universal, partly culture-specific effects on well-being.     

Understanding Happiness: A Vedantic Perspective

The pursuit of happiness has been the one of the most prominent goals of humanity since time immemorial. However, understanding and experiencing happiness varies across cultures. While the dominant understanding on happiness has developed from the Euro-American cultural background there are other significant conceptualizations present in the Eastern philosophical and cultural traditions like India and China. It has been noted that Eastern psychologies offer rich insights into human phenomena which are equally universal in nature because of their long-standing civilizational experiences. Drawing from these traditions would make the discourse on happiness culturally informed and more comprehensive. Furthermore, Indian tradition which considers bliss as the essential nature of the individual personality can contribute immensely in understanding and realizing lasting happiness. This paper explores the types and nature of happiness as expounded in the Vedantic tradition in the context of Indian psychology.     

Variability and moral phenomenology

Many moral philosophers in the Western tradition have used phenomenological claims as starting points for philosophical inquiry; aspects of moral phenomenology have often been taken to be anchors to which any adequate account of morality must remain attached. This paper raises doubts about whether moral phenomena are universal and robust enough to serve the purposes to which moral philosophers have traditionally tried to put them. Persons’ experiences of morality may vary in a way that greatly limits the extent to which moral phenomenology can constitute a reason to favor one moral theory over another. Phenomenology may not be able to serve as a pre-theoretic starting point or anchor in the consideration of rival moral theories because moral phenomenology may itself be theory-laden. These doubts are illustrated through an examination of how moral phenomenology is used in the thought of Ralph Cudworth, Samuel Clarke, Joseph Butler, Francis Hutcheson, and Søren Kierkegaard.     

LOGIQUE ET PSYCHOLOGIE DE L'APPRENTISSAGE DES CONCEPTS

In the field of concept learning, there are very few studies in which logícal conditions are used as independent variables. A logical analysis of concept learning phenomena is presented: it is an application of some elementary theoremas of logics and set theory. To learn a concept means to identify relevant attributes of the phenomena observed; the theoretical analysis of the situation shows that concept learning can be seen as a problem, the solution of which depends on a precise algorithm. Numerous experiments have been carried out on the basis of such an analysis, some of which are described here. Results provide evidence that time and quality of performance depend on the length and logical structure of the set of successive stimuli presented to subjccts. So logical features of the situation influence concept learning; but, there are various other factors which control subject's performance : for instance, number of redundant examples, and subject's memory and perceptual-motor activity. Current interpretations of concept learning, i.e., stochastic models of learning and logical and mathematical interpretation are discussed and the need of an approach which would combine both to fit the complexity of concept learning phenomena is emphasized.     

Inverting faces does not abolish cultural diversity in eye movements

Face processing is widely understood to be a basic, universal visual function effortlessly achieved by people from all cultures and races. The remarkable recognition performance for faces is markedly and specifically affected by picture-plane inversion: the so-called face-inversion effect (FIE), a finding often used as evidence for face-specific mechanisms. However, it has recently been shown that culture shapes the way people deploy eye movements to extract information from faces. Interestingly, the comparable lack of experience with inverted faces across cultures offers a unique opportunity to establish the extent to which such cultural perceptual biases in eye movements are robust, but also to assess whether face-specific mechanisms are universally tuned. Here we monitored the eye movements of Western Caucasian (WC) and East Asian (EA) observers while they learned and recognised WC and EA inverted faces. Both groups of observers showed a comparable impairment in recognising inverted faces of both races. WC observers deployed a scattered inverted triangular scanpath with a bias towards the mouth, whereas EA observers uniformly extended the focus of their fixations from the centre towards the eyes. Overall, our data show that cultural perceptual differences in eye movements persist during the FIE, questioning the universality of face-processing mechanisms.     

Parallel patterns of spatial compatibility and spatial congruence…as long as you don't look too closely

The effects of spatial compatibility and spatial congruence have both been explained in terms of a dual-route model under which spatial information about the stimulus, regardless of task relevance, is directly passed from perception to action. Recently, however, some alternatives to the dual-route model of the Simon Effect have been proposed (or re-introduced) as viable explanations. The present experiment compared the magnitudes of the effects of spatial compatibility and spatial congruence across a range of tasks that varied in their dimensional overlap. The results exhibited a remarkable parallel between the two phenomena when viewed only in terms of the interaction between stimulus set and response set. This could be taken as new evidence for a common origin. However, when the entire pattern of results was examined, a large difference between compatibility and congruence were also seen, which implies that there is at least one important difference between the two phenomena.     

Stimulus-specific learning: disrupting the bow effect in absolute identification

The bow effect is ubiquitous in standard absolute identification experiments; stimuli at the center of the stimulus-set range elicit slower and less accurate responses than do others. This effect has motivated various theoretical accounts of performance, often involving the idea that end-of-range stimuli have privileged roles. Two other phenomena (practice effects and improved performance for frequently-presented stimuli) have an important but less explored consequence for the bow effect: Standard within-subjects manipulations of set size could disrupt the bow effect. We found this disruption for stimulus types that support practice effects (line length and tone frequency), suggesting that the bow effect is more fragile than has been thought. Our results also have implications for theoretical accounts of absolute identification, which currently do not include mechanisms for practice effects, and provide results consistent with those in the literature on stimulus-specific learning.     

Effect of compatibility of S-R mapping on reactions toward the stimulus source

This research was concerned with separating the effects of three varieties of S-R compatibility: reactions toward the stimulus source, compatibility of S-R mapping, and display-control arrangement correspondence. In experiments 1 and 2, subjects pressed a green or red key located on the left and right in response to the onset of a green or red stimulus presented in a left or right window. Half of the subjects pressed the key which corresponded to the color of the stimulus (compatible S-R mapping) while the other half pressed the alternate colored key (incompatible S-R mapping). In the compatible mapping task, reactions were faster when location of stimulus and response corresponded than when they did not while, in the incompatible task, reactions were faster when location of stimulus and response did not correspond. This apparent reversal in the tendency to react toward the stimulus source was attributed to display- control arrangement correspondence rather than to logical recoding of the directional cue. Experiment 3 established that faster reactions toward the stimulus source occured only under compatible mapping instructions.     

Models of Machines and Models of Phenomena

Experimental engineering models have been used both to model general phenomena, such as the onset of turbulence in fluid flow, and to predict the performance of machines of particular size and configuration in particular contexts. Various sorts of knowledge are involved in the method—logical consistency, general scientific principles, laws of specific sciences, and experience. I critically examine three different accounts of the foundations of the method of experimental engineering models (scale models), and examine how theory, practice, and experience are involved in employing the method to obtain practical results. Models of machines and mechanisms can be (and generally are) involved in establishing criteria for similar phenomena, which provide guidance in using events to model other events. Conversely, models of phenomena such as events that model other events can be (and generally are) involved in experimentation on models of machines. I conclude that often it is not more detailed models or the more precise equations they engender that leads to better understanding, but rather an insightful use of knowledge at hand to determine which similarity principles are appropriate in allowing us to infer what we do not know from what we are able to observe.     

Five potential principles for understanding cultural differences in relation to individual differences

This paper deals with psychological differences between two cultures, with respect to the differences between individuals in those same cultures. Five principles are presented which describe either actual or probable empirical relationships between within- and between-culture differences, and a possible theoretical account is given for each of the presumed differences. (1) The differences between “cultures” seem “bigger” than the actual differences between the individuals in these same cultures. This relation is attributed to the idea that universal human biological predispositions are often opposed by cultural traditions, so the outcome is somewhat of a compromise between the two. (2) Differences between individuals in different cultures are generally larger in behavior than in thoughts or feelings This is attributed to the fact that it is easier to socialize behavior than mental events. (3) Many cultural differences are expressed in individuals in terms of different default responses or interpretations or preferences for the same situation. Dominant responses in one culture are usually a less salient part of the repertoire of individuals in another culture. (4) Much of the effect of culture, and our impression of culture differences, results from the physical/social artifacts (environments, institutions) created by the culture. There is a strong tendency by psychologists to under-rate or ignore the effects of the physical environment. (5) In the contemporary world, differences between individuals in two cultures will be larger in older generations. Cultural differences may be markedly reduced in the most recent generations, on account of globalization. The position put forth is an attempt to integrate the ideas that there are real human predispositions of various sorts and that culture is a powerful force, and to explain why it is surprisingly easy for us to understand the viewpoint of people from other cultures (their “reality”is often a less preferred alternative in our own repertoire).