Inhibitory interaction: the effects of multiple non-predictive visual cues

When the interval between a non-predictive cue and a target appearing at the same spatial location is longer than about 200 ms, target performance is typically poorer than when the cue and target appear at different locations. Recent studies have shown that this effect, known as inhibition of return (IOR), can occur at multiple cued locations, and is enhanced when multiple cues are presented at the same spatial location. However, little is known about how the magnitude of IOR at one spatial location is influenced by a subsequent or preceding cue presented at a different spatial location. We investigated this issue by presenting single or multiple cues at varying inter-cue intervals prior to target onset. Results suggest that the magnitude of IOR at a given location is influenced by the presentation of a preceding cue, but that once IOR occurs, it is unaffected by the presentation of a subsequent cue.     

Disentangling perceptual and motor components in inhibition of return

Following an abrupt onset of a peripheral stimulus (a cue), the response to a visual target is faster when the target appears at the cued position than when it appears at other positions. However, if the stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) is longer than approximately 300 ms, the response to the target is slower at the cued position than that at other positions. This phenomenon of a longer response time to cued targets is called "inhibition of return" (IOR). Previous hypotheses propose contributions of both response inhibition and attentional inhibition at cued position to IOR, and suggest that responding to the cue can eliminate the component of response inhibition. The current study uses tasks either executing or withholding response to the cue to investigate the relative contributions of response and attention components to IOR. A condition with bilateral display of the cue is also chosen as a control condition, and eight different SOAs between 1,000 and 2,750 ms are tested. Compared to the control condition, response delay to the target at a cued position is eliminated by responding to the cue, and a response advantage to the target at an uncued position is not affected by responding to the cue. Furthermore, both response delay at a cued position and response advantage at an uncued position decrease with SOA in the time window tested in these experiments. The results reported here indicate a dominant response inhibition at a cued position and a primary attentional allocation at an uncued position for IOR. Nonsignificant perceptual/attentional suppression at a cued position is argued to be a benefit for visual detection in a changing world.     

Anxiety at 13 and its effect on pain,pain-related anxiety,and pain-related disability at 17: An ALSPAC cohort longitudinal analysis

The aim of the present study was to investigate the influence of anxiety at 13 years of age on the presence of chronic pain, pain-related anxiety, and pain-related disability at 17 years of age in a large longitudinal cohort. We hypothesized that mother-reported anxiety at 13 would be associated with the presence of chronic pain at 17 and an increase in pain-related anxiety using all available data from the longitudinal cohort. Further, we hypothesized that anxiety at 13 would predict pain-related disability in adolescents who reported chronic pain at 17 years of age. Participants were recruited from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children based in the UK who attended a university research clinic at 17. Child anxiety (reported by the mother) was extracted at child age 13, and self-report of the presence of chronic pain, pain-related anxiety, and pain-related disability at 17. Analyses revealed that child anxiety at 13 was not significantly associated with the presence of chronic pain at 17 (n = 842). However, anxiety at 13 was significantly associated with pain-related anxiety at 17 (n = 1831). For the subsample of adolescents who reported chronic pain, anxiety at 13 was associated with pain-related disability at 17 (n = 393). Further analyses revealed that pain-related anxiety at 17 mediated the association between anxiety at 13 and pain-related disability at 17, suggesting that pain-related anxiety should be a target for treatment in adolescents with chronic pain, to reduce the impact of pain in later adolescence. General anxiety at 13 was unrelated to the presence of chronic pain at 17, but should be considered a risk factor for later pain-related anxiety and disability in a subset of adolescents who develop chronic pain.     

The effects of parental scaffolding on preschoolers' executive function

The present study explores the effects of parental scaffolding of children's problem solving on the development of executive function (EF). Eighty-two children were assessed at 2, 3, and 4 years of age on a variety of EF tasks and, at ages 2 and 3, on a problem-solving puzzle with which parents offered structured assistance (i.e., scaffolding). Unlike previous studies of parental scaffolding, children's EF was examined at each time point. Scaffolding at age 3 was found to have a direct effect on EF at age 4. Furthermore, scaffolding at age 2 had an indirect on EF at age 4 through the child's verbal ability at age 3.     

Effects of the height of the internal features of faces on adults' aesthetic ratings and 5-month-olds' looking times

We examined the influence of the height of the internal features of faces on adults' ratings of attractiveness and on 5-month-olds' looking times. Subjects viewed drawings or coloured photographs of faces presented in pairs that were identical except that the internal features were at a low height, with a large forehead and small chin; at a high height, with a small forehead and large chin; or at a medium height. Adults rated faces with their features at the medium and low heights as more attractive than faces with their features at the high height, and, at least for drawings, rated faces with medium features as more attractive than faces with low features. Babies looked equally long at faces with their features at various heights except for looking slightly longer at faces with high rather than low features. The results suggest that the influence of feature height on reactions to faces is different for adults and 5-month-olds, and hence that it may be shaped by cultural learning and/or experience with faces sometime after early infancy.     

Job autonomy and workload as antecedents of workplace bullying: A two‐wave test of Karasek's Job Demand Control Model for targets and perpetrators

The current study aims to test the hypotheses that are central to Karasek's Job Demand Control Model in relation to workplace bullying. Particular contributions are, first, the focus upon both targets and perpetrators of workplace bullying, and second, the two‐wave design with a 6‐month time lag. We assume that (a) workload at Time 1 associates positively with being a target/perpetrator at Time 2, (b) job autonomy at Time 1 associates negatively with being a target/perpetrator at Time 2, and (c) the positive relationship between workload at Time 1 and being a target/perpetrator at Time 2 is stronger under the condition of low (vs. high) job autonomy at Time 1 (i.e., interaction between workload and job autonomy). Moderated hierarchical regression analyses (N= 320) revealed lagged main effects for being a target, and interaction effects for being a perpetrator. In particular, Time 1 workload was positively and Time 1 job autonomy negatively associated with being a target at Time 2. Job autonomy at Time 1 reduced the positive relationship between workload at Time 1 and being a perpetrator at Time 2. Overall, our results suggest that high strain jobs relate to both being a target and to being perpetrator of workplace bullying, yet through different processes: main effects and interactions, respectively.     

Visual statistical learning at basic and subordinate category levels in real-world images

Visual statistical learning (VSL) has been proposed as a powerful mechanism underlying the striking ability of human observers to handle complex visual environments. Previous studies have shown that VSL can occur when statistical information is embedded at multiple levels of abstraction, such as at semantically different category levels. In the present study, we further examined whether statistical regularities at a basic category level (e.g., a regular sequence of a bird, then a car, and then a dog) could influence the ability to extract statistical regularities at the subordinate level (e.g., a regular sequence of a parrot, then a sports car, and then an Eskimo dog). In the familiarization phase, participants were exposed to a stream of real-world images whose semantic categories had temporal regularities. Importantly, the temporal regularities existed at both the basic and subordinate levels, or the regularities existed at only the subordinate level, depending on the experimental condition. After completing the familiarization, participants performed a surprise two-alternative forced choice (2AFC) task for a familiarity judgment between two triplets in which the temporal regularities were either preserved or not preserved. Our results showed that the existence of statistical regularities at the basic level did not influence VSL at the subordinate level. The subsequent experiments showed these results consistently even when the basic-level categories had to be explicitly recognized and when the stimuli were not easily categorized at their subordinate level. Our results suggest that VSL is constrained to learn a particular level of patterns when patterns are presented across multiple levels.     

Changes in body image during cognitive-behavioral treatment in women with bulimia nervosa

The purposes of this study were: (1) to examine multidimensional aspects of body image of individuals with bulimia nervosa (BN) at pre-treatment, post-treatment, and at follow-up, compared to a group of participants without BN; and (2) to investigate whether measures of body image predicted outcome at post-treatment and follow-up. The clinical sample consisted of 109 females with BN who were enrolled in a 12-week cognitive-behavioral group treatment program. Participants were assessed at baseline, at the completion of treatment, and at 1- and 6-month follow-up visits. The 82 females who comprised the non-bulimic sample were assessed at comparable time intervals. At baseline, the participants with BN reported greater body dissatisfaction and overestimated body size to a significantly greater degree than the comparison group, and reported a significantly smaller ideal size relative to perceived size. Results at the end of treatment indicated significant improvement in self-reported attitudinal disturbance and size overestimation, with continued reductions at follow-up. Logistic regression analyses did not demonstrate a predictive relationship between body image measures at baseline and outcome at post-treatment or follow-up, or between post-treatment and follow-up. Implications for treatment include specifying the source of body image-related distress and enhancing treatment efforts for perceptual and attitudinal aspects of body image.     

Psychological strain and emotional labor among police-officers: A diary study

The authors examined the relationship between psychological strain, emotional dissonance and emotional job demands during a working day of 65 Dutch (military) police officers, using a 5-day diary design. We hypothesized that emotional dissonance partly mediated the relationship between psychological strain at the start and at the end of a work shift. We also tested the mediating role of emotional dissonance between emotional job demands and psychological strain at the end of a work shift. Results of structural equation modeling analyses showed that psychological strain at the start of a work shift had a positive effect on the experience of emotional dissonance and psychological strain at the end of a work shift. Emotional dissonance partly mediated the relationship between psychological strain at the start and psychological strain at the end of a work shift. Results are discussed in light of conservation of resources theory (Hobfoll, S. E. (1988). The ecology of stress. New York: Hemisphere Publishing Corporation).     

Infants' persistence and mothers' teaching as predictors of toddlers' cognitive development

This study examined the relative contributions of infants' persistence and mothers' teaching at 6 and 14 months to infants' cognitive development at 14 months in a sample of 65 low-income mother-infant dyads. Infants' persistence was assessed from a videotaped persistence task at 6 months and from the Behavior Record Scale of the Bayley Scales of Infant Development, 2nd ed. (BSID II) at 14 months. Mothers' teaching was assessed from a videotaped teaching interaction at 6 and 14 months using the Nursing Child Assessment Satellite Training (NCAST) teaching scale. Cognitive development at 14 months was based on the Mental Scale, BSID II. Infants' persistence at both ages and mothers' teaching at 6 months each explained unique variance in infants' cognitive status at 14 months. Persistence appears to be a stable quality that can be measured early on, and both infants' early persistence and mothers' teaching are direct pathways to cognitive status at the start of the second year.     

Relationships among alcohol consumption, drug use, and goal orientation among college students in the southeastern USA

Students attending 2 different universities completed a Goals Inventory as well as a self-report survey designed to address their use of alcohol and other drugs. University 1 was a large, public state-supported school that did not restrict alcohol use. From this university were 30 male and 77 female students who ranged in age from 18-25 years (M = 20 yr.). University 2 was a small, private church-affiliated school that enforced a no-alcohol-on-campus policy. This sample included 41 male and 50 female students, whose ages ranged from 18-24 years (M = 19 yr.). More than half of the sample at each school had consumed alcohol at some time. While men drank more than women at University 1, the sex-ratio at University 2 was not different. Students at University 2 had higher learning and performance goal scores, alcohol-use scores, and drug-abuse scores than those at University 1. Students at University 2 had higher alcohol-abuse scores. Learning goal orientation was inversely related to alcohol-abuse behaviors but only at University 1. General alcohol use was inversely related to learning goal orientation at University 2. Students at both universities reported drinking to relieve tension. Those with a learning goal orientation were reportedly not drinking excessive amounts of alcohol. However, the relationship between alcohol use and abuse and performance is unclear because students had high performance scores at both universities along with high alcohol-use scores.     

Temporal Predication with Temporal Parts and Temporal Counterparts

If ordinary objects have temporal parts, then temporal predications have the following truth conditions: necessarily, (a is F) at t iff a has a temporal part that is located at t and that is F. If ordinary objects have temporal counterparts, then, necessarily, (a is F) at t iff a has a temporal counterpart that is located at t and that is F. The temporal-parts account allows temporal predication to be closed under the parthood relation: since all that is required to be F at t is to have a temporal part, a t, that is located at t and that is F, every object that has a t as a temporal part is F at t. Similarly for the temporal-counterparts account. Both closure under parthood and closure under counterparthood are shown to have unacceptable consequences. Then strategies for avoiding closure are considered and rejected.     

Discrimination of compound stimuli involving the presence or absence of a distinctive visual feature

Pigeons learned a free operant, go/no-go discrimination between stimuli produced by rapid alternation of different features on the response key. The 0 degrees -B compound consisted of a vertical black line on a white background (the 0 degrees feature) alternated with a blank white field (the B feature), with successive 0.75-sec feature on periods separated by 0.20-sec dark periods. Pecks at the alternating 0 degrees and B features were recorded separately. When pecks at the 0 degrees -B compound were reinforced and pecks at the B-B stimulus (repeated brief presentations of the B feature) were extinguished, the birds pecked more at the 0 degrees feature than at the B feature in the 0 degrees -B compound; subsequently, decremental line-tilt generalization gradients were obtained. When pecks at B-B were reinforced and pecks at 0 degrees -B were extinguished, the rate of pecking at the 0 degrees feature decreased to a low level much more rapidly than did the rate of pecking at the B feature in the 0 degrees -B compound; incremental line-tilt gradients were obtained. Following training with pecks at 0 degrees -B reinforced and pecks at 0 degrees -0 degrees extinguished, incremental line-tilt gradients were obtained, whereas the gradients were decremental following training with 0 degrees -0 degrees reinforced and 0 degrees -B extinguished.     

The impact of multiple irrelevant visual events at the same spatial location on inhibition

If an irrelevant visual event, such as a nonpredictive cue, is presented prior to a target, performance is impaired when the target appears at the cued location relative to when it is presented at an uncued location. This phenomenon, referred to as inhibition of return, can be found at multiple spatial locations when each is cued in succession. The present study examined the effect of successively cuing the same spatial location. Results suggested that additional inhibition occurred when more than one cue appeared at a single location at longer intercue intervals, but not at shorter intervals. These findings suggest that total inhibition to respond to targets at a spatial location reflects a summation of facilitatory and inhibitory factors generated by the presentation of each cue.     

Ego development in college

Using the Sentence Completion Test for ego development, we studied several cohorts of students between 1971 and 1979 at a technological institute (Tech) and between 1974 and 1979 at a predominantly liberal arts university (MU). Ego level tended to rise slightly except among women at MU, for whom there was a slight but consistent loss. This particular finding challenges one assumption of a widely accepted version of Piagetian theory: that stage development is irreversible. Women tended to enter MU slightly ahead of men in ego level, but left at the same level. Contrary to expectation, men and women appeared to gain more at Tech than at MU; the difference was significant only for women.     

Processing of new arguments at clause boundaries

In a subject-paced reading-time study, we examined the processing of new arguments at clause boundaries. Word reading times increased with the cumulative number of new-argument nouns at clause boundaries (as well as at sentence boundaries). New-argument nouns had a greater impact at clause boundaries than at nonboundary locations. In accordance with a buffer-integrate-purge model of reading (see Jarvella, 1979), the increase of reading times at boundaries was attributed to the integration of new information from the current sentence with prior information in the text representation. The increase at nonboundary locations was attributed to the growing load of buffering the new information. Reading times at clause boundaries were influenced to a greater extent by text-level integration than by such sentence-level processes as organization of words into clauses and linking of clauses within a sentence. The new contribution of this study was that it showed that clause boundaries provide an opportunity not only for sentence-level processes, but also for a text-level process, namely, the integration of text-new information with the growing text representation.     

Are behaviors at one alternative in concurrent schedules independent of contingencies at the other alternative?

Some have reported changing the schedule at one alternative of a concurrent schedule changed responding at the other alternative (Catania, 1969), which seems odd because no contingencies were changed there. When concurrent schedules are programmed using two schedules, one associated with each alternative that operate continuously, changing the schedule at one alternative also changes the switch schedule at the other alternative. Thus, changes in responding at the constant alternative could be due to the change in the switch schedule. To assess this possibility, six rats were exposed to a series of conditions that alternated between pairs of interval schedules at both alternatives and a pair of interval schedules at one, constant, alternative and a pair of extinction schedules at the other alternative. Comparing run lengths, visit durations and response rates at the constant alternative in the alternating conditions did not show consistent increases and decreases when a strict criterion for changes was used. Using a less stringent definition (any change in mean values) showed changes. The stay/switch analysis suggests it may be inaccurate to apply behavioral contrast to procedures that change from concurrent variable‐interval variable‐interval schedules to concurrent variable‐interval extinction schedules because the contingencies in neither alternative are constant.     

Additive summation following intradimensional discrimination training

Rats were exposed to intradimensional composite stimuli presented on the response lever that varied in both light intensity and flicker rate. For all subjects, pressing the lever was reinforced when it was illuminated at a high intensity and flickered at a low rate (I + f) or when it was illuminated at a low intensity and flickered at a high rate (i + F). For half the subjects, lever responding was not reinforced when it was illuminated at a low intensity and flickering at a low rate (i + f). For the remaining subjects, lever presses were not reinforced when the lever was illuminated at a high intensity and flickered at a high rate (I + F). When the composite stimulus composed of the light intensity and flicker rates that had been associated only with reinforced responding was displayed (I + F for half the subjects and i + f for the remaining subjects), it controlled the highest response rate of all stimuli (additive summation). The results demonstrated that similar attentional processes control intra- and interdimensional composite-stimulus discriminations in a manner consistent with Weiss' (1972) analysis of summation.     

SES affects infant cognitive flexibility

Cognitive flexibility requires processing multiple sources of information and flexible adaptation of behavioral responses. Poverty negatively impacts cognitive control in young children, but its effects on infants are not well-understood. This study investigated longitudinally the development of cognitive flexibility in low-income infants. Thirty-two infants (15 low-SES, 17 high-SES) were tested at 6, 9, and 12 months of age. Cognitive flexibility was measured with a perseverative reaching task, where infants were taught to reach to one location and then asked to switch to a second location. High-SES infants replicated the typical developmental trajectory, reaching randomly at 6 months, perseverating at 9 months, and reaching correctly at 12 months. In contrast, the low-SES infants showed a delayed pattern, reaching correctly at 6 months, randomly at 9 months, and perseverating at 12 months. Links between cognitive flexibility and frontal cortex development are explored as a potential mechanism.     

Is there any scapegoat around? Determinants of intergroup conflicts at different categorization levels.

Recategorization at a higher level reduces tensions between groups. However, recategorization may cause conflicts between the common in-group and a new out-group. Additionally, determinants of conflict between subgroups may enhance conflict at the higher categorization level. In the context of German unification, the authors explored these suggestions with an East German 3-wave longitudinal study and a West German control group. Results show that a salient East German versus West German categorization enhances conflict between subgroups, whereas categorization as German enhances conflict at the common in-group level. Determinants of subgroup conflict also influence conflict at the inclusive level (Germans and foreigners). Thus, recategorization is a 2-edged instrument: Although it reduces conflict at the subgroup level, it may initiate conflict at the common in-group level.