Effects of eye color on frisbee toss

Light-eyed individuals generally perform better at self-paced activities while dark-eyed individuals perform better at reactive activities. Using multiple regression it was found that dark-eyed students hit a target with a frisbee more times than did light-eyed students.     

Effects of eye color on the accuracy of ball throwing of elementary school children

Light-eyed individuals generally perform better at self-paced activities while dark-eyed individuals perform better at reactive activities. In throwing a ball at a target there were no differences between light- and dark-eyed elementary school-age children. Boys hit the target more times than did girls, and older children in upper grades hit the target more often than did younger children in lower grades.     

Eye colour and reaction time to visual stimuli in rugby league players.

Subjects with dark eye colour are thought to perform better on reactive tasks in comparison to light-eyed subjects, whereas light-eyed subjects show enhanced performance over dark-eyed subjects on self-paced activities. This study examined reaction time using unrestricted and peripheral vision and success at the self-paced activity of goal kicking in 59 elite male Rugby League players. Subjects with dark eye colour did not react significantly faster than the light-eyed subjects when tested using unrestricted vision or peripheral vision. Examination of the self-paced activity of goal kicking showed that the percentage success rate was not significantly higher in the light-eyed group than the dark-eyed group. In conclusion, there was no significant difference in reaction time to a visual stimulus or success in goal kicking between dark- and light-eyed Rugby League players.     

Dispositional Group Loyalty and Individual Action for the Benefit of an Ingroup: Experimental and Correlational Evidence

Much of individuals′ lives are spent working in groups, but not all individuals necessarily react to groups in the same way. Based upon previous research, we examined the construct of dispositional group loyalty as a predictor of willingness to contribute to organizational success. Individuals high in dispositional group loyalty were thought to be more likely to exert effort on behalf of their ingroups than individuals low in dispositional group loyalty. Furthermore, this effect should only be manifested in certain situations. In particular, individuals with high group loyalty should perform better when their group is being compared to another than when intergroup comparison is lacking. Three experimental studies were done to test this possibility. In each case, the prediction outlined above was supported. A fourth correlational study provided evidence from outside of the laboratory that dispositional group loyalty predicts involvement in group-based organizational activities, positiveness of attitudes toward organizations, and inclination to perform behaviors for the benefit of one′s organization. Theoretical and applied implications are discussed.     

Once a boring task always a boring task? Interest as a self-regulatory mechanism.

A process was proposed through which individuals regulate their motivation to perform necessary but uninteresting activities over time. If committed to continuing, individuals may engage in interest-enhancing strategies that can change the activity into something more positive to perform. In Study 1 Ss performed novel tasks and generated strategies to make regular performance interesting. In Study 2 Ss actually used these strategies primarily in conditions indicating a self-regulatory attempt: The task was currently boring, there was a perceived reason to continue (alleged health benefit), and a relevant strategy was available. Strategy use was associated with a change in activity definition and greater likelihood of subsequently performing the activity. In Study 3 Ss beliefs about how to maintain motivation to perform more everyday activities emphasized the importance of regulating interest relative to other self-regulatory strategies.     

Overcoming Collaborative Inhibition through Error Correction: A Classroom Experiment

Research in classrooms has shown mixed evidence for benefits of collaborative learning compared with learning individually. Moreover, laboratory research has shown that individuals working in dyads or groups often perform worse than individuals working alone — a robust finding called the collaborative inhibition effect. Despite these findings, we hypothesize that some classroom activities may afford benefits for collaborative learning over individual learning. We created a classroom writing activity that incorporated features such as shared prior knowledge and error‐correction processes, which have been hypothesized to eliminate collaborative inhibition and to support constructive collaboration. Students participated in this activity either individually or in dyads. Results showed that the individuals who worked collaboratively performed equally well as those who worked individually and also showed better learning as measured by performance on a future writing assignment. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Eye color and responsiveness to arousing stimuli.

The hypothesis was advanced that dark-eyed subjects are more responsive to arousing stimuli than light-eyed subjects. 40 subjects listened to neutral and arousing auditory stimuli and viewed scenes which were neutral, violent, or sexual in nature. The dependent measure of arousal was a score derived from a combination of physiological responses recorded on a polygraph. Scores were significantly higher for dark-eyed than light-eyed subjects. Significant sex differences were also found, females having higher scores than males. Implications for future research and application were discussed.     

Correlation of eye color on self-paced and reactive motor performance.

Researchers continue to examine the distinctiveness of motor performance by dark- versus light-eyed individuals. Dark-eyed individuals generally perform better at reactive type tasks (boxing, hitting a ball, defensive positions in football, rotary pursuit), while light-eyed individuals perform better at self-paced tasks (bowling, golf, pitching baseballs). Subjects performed two tasks, rotary pursuit and ball tossing (with light and dark background). Eye color (light or dark) and accuracy of performance were recorded for each subject. No significant difference was found between eye color and performance on the pursuit rotor (reactive activity). A significant difference was found between men's and women's performance in throwing a ball (self-paced activity) at a light-colored background.     

Disability and rehabilitation research. Opportunities for participation,collaboration, and extramural funding for psychologists

The National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research (NIDRR) funds research and related activities that promote new knowledge that helps individuals with disabilities to perform regular activities in the community and increases the capacity of society to provide full opportunities and supports for individuals with disabilities. NIDRR achieves this goal by promoting interdisciplinary research and related activities. Psychologists play a key role in many of these activities and assist with improving understanding of disability and rehabilitation by participating in peer review of research proposals or by reviewing NIDRR's proposed research priorities. Psychologists also contribute by taking advantage of training and the many other opportunities for support outlined in this article.     

Regulating the effects of depletion through monitoring

A robust finding is that participants who perform a depleting initial self-regulatory task are less persistent on a contiguous second task than are those who perform a less arduous initial self-regulatory task. We explain this regulatory depletion effect in terms of a monitoring process. According to this view, depleted individuals focus on the resources they have devoted to a second task, neglect to monitor their performance against their standards for such activities, and prematurely suspend their performance. Consistent with this view, we demonstrate that the regulatory depletion effect can be eliminated when individuals are encouraged to monitor their performance against some standard (Studies 1, 2, and 4) or when they have a proclivity to engage in such monitoring (Studies 3 and 4).     

Famous face recognition,face matching,and extraversion

It has been previously established that extraverts who are skilled at interpersonal interaction perform significantly better than introverts on a face-specific recognition memory task. In our experiment we further investigate the relationship between extraversion and face recognition, focusing on famous face recognition and face matching. Results indicate that more extraverted individuals perform significantly better on an upright famous face recognition task and show significantly larger face inversion effects. However, our results did not find an effect of extraversion on face matching or inverted famous face recognition.     

Divided attention,memory, and spatial discrimination in food-storing and nonstoring birds,black-capped chickadees (Poecile atricapilla) and dark-eyed juncos (Junco hyemalis)

Food-storing birds, black-capped chickadees (Poecile atricapilla), and nonstoring birds, dark-eyed juncos (Junco hyemalis), matched color or location on a touch screen. Both species showed a divided attention effect for color but not for location (Experiment 1). Chickadees performed better on location than on color with retention intervals up to 40 s, but juncos did not (Experiment 2). Increasing sample-distractor distance improved performance similarly in both species. Multidimensional scaling revealed that both use a Euclidean metric of spatial similarity (Experiment 3). When choosing between the location and color of a remembered item, food storers choose location more than do nonstorers. These results explain this effect by differences in memory for location relative to color, not division of attention or spatial discrimination ability.     

Teaching students with ASD: Does teacher enthusiasm make a difference?

There is a general belief that students perform better in an environment in which teachers exude enthusiasm. In elementary, secondary, and college settings, the display of teacher enthusiasm is associated with positive attitudes toward teachers, recall of information, and improved classroom behavior. Although the assumption that students perform better when teachers are enthusiastic is frequently extended to individuals diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), there is currently no published research on the topic. Research on social avoidance suggests that individuals with ASD may have no reaction or even respond negatively to teacher enthusiasm and thus perform better in conditions of low teacher attention. The current study was conducted to examine the effects of teacher enthusiasm on task performance for 12 students diagnosed with ASD. For each participant, performance on a matching task was measured during a high attention condition and during a low attention condition. Inspection of performance data indicated that out of 12 participants, only one demonstrated better performance under high teacher attention and one demonstrated better performance under low teacher attention. Interestingly, when experimenters who served as teachers in the study were asked to judge student performance, they stated that all students performed better with high teacher attention. Based on the findings of the current study, educators and parents of children with ASD are cautioned against attributing differences or changes in student performance to type and intensity of social attention provided during task instruction in the absence of conducting a functional analysis. Implications from the current study serve as a reminder to avoid oversimplifying the complex learning challenges of children with autism and reiterate the importance of obtaining continuous objective performance data. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Group vs. Individual Performance in a Price-Searching Experiment

We report results of an experiment evaluating performance of small groups relative to individuals in an iterated monopoly-pricing problem. Profits generated by 10 three-person groups and 18 individuals in six nominal groups are compared. Half of the sessions were conducted under a “coarse-grid” treatment in which price choices were restricted to 25-cent increments. The remaining sessions were conducted under a more complicated “fine-grid” treatment in which price choices were allowed in 5-cent increments. The problem is well suited to an investigation of learning by groups relative to individuals: solutions are not obvious and substantial learning occurs in both environments. Although in the coarse-grid treatment groups perform no better than individuals, in the fine-grid treatment groups respond better to feedback than individuals and generate higher profits in later periods. We conjecture that superior learning by groups is a consequence of error-checking by groups, unhampered by any source of bias that would induce common errors across individuals.     

Performance benefits of depression: sequential decision making in a healthy sample and a clinically depressed sample

Previous research reported conflicting results concerning the influence of depression on cognitive task performance. Whereas some studies reported that depression enhances performance, other studies reported negative or null effects. These discrepant findings appear to result from task variation, as well as the severity and treatment status of participant depression. To better understand these moderating factors, we study the performance of individuals-in a complex sequential decision task similar to the secretary problem-who are nondepressed, depressed, and recovering from a major depressive episode. We find that depressed individuals perform better than do nondepressed individuals. Formal modeling of participants' decision strategies suggested that acutely depressed participants had higher thresholds for accepting options and made better choices than either healthy participants or those recovering from depression.     

Field dependence and short-term memory

This study examined the relationship between field dependence and short-term memory. It was predicted that relatively field-independent individuals would perform better on short-term memory tests in which a large amount of interference is assumed to be present than would individuals who are more field-dependent. Subjects' appraisals of their own attentional facility, as well as their thoughts and feelings about the experimental tasks, were also elicited, and were looked at in terms of their relationship to field dependence and short-term memory.     

What makes us busy? Predictors of perceived busyness across the adult lifespan

Busier people tend to perform better on cognitive tasks than less busy individuals. Nevertheless, the characteristics that are associated with greater perceived busyness are unknown. To address this question participants (N?=?463) from the Dallas Lifespan Brain Study (ages 20–89) completed a self-report busyness assessment and demographic, health, personality, and lifestyle measures. Results revealed that perceived busyness peaked in 30-year-olds, showed age-related decreases until age 60, and then remained stable. Moreover, women generally reported being busier than men. Analysis of age by gender interactions revealed that men exhibited a significant cubic age effect for busyness, whereas women did not. Overall, younger age, female gender, agreeableness, neuroticism, frequent participation in novel activities, and enjoyment of cognitive processing were independently associated with being busier, and the characteristics related to busyness were generally stable across age. Notably, participation in novel activities and need for cognition were the most predictive lifestyle characteristics, supporting the framing of busyness as an indicator of mental engagement. We also propose personality-based sources of self-generated and other-generated busyness.     

Cognitive effects of life stress and learned helplessness

Abstract Stressful life events and learned helplessness attributional styles have been shown to impact a variety of personal outcomes. This study examined how these factors influence two classes of cognitive behaviors: the occurrence of intrusive thoughts and performance in memory and verbal-spatial reasoning tasks. Negative life change and attributions for negative events predicted different types of cognitive responses. Individuals reporting higher levels of life stress were more likely to experience distracting thoughts that were unrelated to the current task, whereas individuals with learned helplessness attributional styles tended to have more worrisome thoughts about their task performance. In general, individuals reporting high levels of negative life stress tended to perform more poorly in tasks, whereas individuals with learned helplessness attributional styles tended to perform better than those who did not share this explanatory style. These results suggest that life stress and attributional style have important influecnes on cognitive processes, and that a learned helplessness attributional style can have beneficial effects on behavior in some situations.     

The role of self-esteem and locus of control in the differential prediction of performance,program satisfaction,and life satisfaction in an educational organization

The present research was an attempt to examine the role of task-specific self-esteem Korman, 1966, Korman, 1976 and locus of control (Rotter, 1966) in the differential prediction of academic performance, program satisfaction, and personal life satisfaction. Based on earlier research and theory in this area, it was predicted that (1) high task-specific self-esteem individuals would perform better, would be more satisfied with their program of studies and their personal lives compared to low task-specific self-esteem individuals, and (2) individuals with an internal locus of control would also perform better, would be more satisfied with their program of studies and their personal lives compared to individuals with an external locus of control. These hypotheses found strong empirical support in the study. The findings are interpreted as being strongly supportive of Korman's theory on the role of task specific esteem and Rotter's theory on the concept of locus of control in the prediction of certain select organizational outcomes.     

Learning as a function of coordination bias: building upon pre-practice behaviours

Instructions and demonstrations were manipulated to make pre-practice behaviours explicit and inform participants how to build-upon these to perform a novel bi-manual movement. In Experiment 1, participants who could perform only in- and anti-phase movements were studied, whereas in Experiment 2, individuals who could perform additional movements were tested. Zanone and Kelso (Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 23 (1997) 1454) predicted differential learning progressions as a result of initial ability. Instruction promoting gradual adaptation of an existing skill would be more likely to benefit participants in Experiment 2. Irrespective of initial ability, participants did not benefit from instruction. Instructions that built-upon the in-phase pattern were particularly detrimental to acquisition, as compared to withholding instruction and providing only feedback. Instructional effects were related to decreased within-trial variability early in practice due to avoidance of certain movements and a complement bias to another undesirable one. It was suggested that trying to implement instructions, especially for the participants in Experiment 2, caused individuals to exert control over processes better controlled by lower, less cognitive levels of the motor system.