Are visual features of a looming or receding object processed in a capacity-free manner?

Numerous experiments have examined whether moving stimuli capture spatial attention but none have sought to determine whether visual features of looming and receding objects are extracted in a capacity-free manner. The current experiment (N = 28) used the task-choice procedure originated by Besner and Care (2003) to examine this possibility. Stimuli were presented in 3D space by manipulating retinal disparity. Results indicate that features of an object are extracted in a capacity-free manner for both looming and receding objects for participants who consciously perceive motion but not for participants who do not consciously perceive motion. These results suggest that the cognitive system is biased to process potentially animate objects, perhaps because of the evolutionary advantage this cognitive ability may provide.     

Are Arabic and verbal numbers processed in different ways?

Four experiments were conducted in order to examine effects of notation--Arabic and verbal numbers--on relevant and irrelevant numerical processing. In Experiment 1, notation interacted with the numerical distance effect, and irrelevant physical size affected numerical processing (i.e., size congruity effect) for both notations but to a lesser degree for verbal numbers. In contrast, size congruity had no effect when verbal numbers were the irrelevant dimension. In Experiments 2 and 3, different parameters that could possibly affect the results, such as discriminability and variability (Experiment 2) and the block design (Experiment 3), were controlled. The results replicated the effects obtained in Experiment 1. In Experiment 4, in which physical size was made more difficult to process, size congruity for irrelevant verbal numbers was observed. The present results imply that notation affects numerical processing and that Arabic and verbal numbers are represented separately, and thus it is suggested that current models of numerical processing should have separate comparison mechanisms for verbal and Arabic numbers.     

Are all Semitic languages immune to letter transpositions? The case of Maltese

Recent research using the rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) paradigm with English sentences that included words with letter transpositions (e.g., jugde) has shown that participants can readily reproduce the correctly spelled sentences with little cost; in contrast, there is a dramatic reading cost with root-derived Hebrew words (Velan & Frost, Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 14:913-918, 2007, Cognition 118:141-156, 2011). This divergence could be due to (1) the processing of root-derived words in Semitic languages or (2) the peculiarities of the transitional probabilities in root-derived Hebrew words. Unlike Hebrew, Maltese is a Semitic language that does not omit vowel information in print and whose morphology also has a significant non-Semitic (mostly Romance) morphology. Here, we employed the same RSVP technique used by Velan and Frost (Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 14:913-918, 2007, Cognition 118:141-156, 2011), this time with Maltese (and English) sentences. The results showed that Maltese-English bilinguals were able to reproduce the Maltese words-regardless of whether they were misspelled (involving the transposition of two letters from the consonantal root) or not, with no reading cost-just as in English. The apparent divergences between the RSVP data with Hebrew versus Maltese sentences are likely due to the combination of the characteristics of the Hebrew orthographic system with the Semitic morphology.     

Are Arabic numerals processed as pictures in a Stroop interference task?

In a picture-word interference task, picture naming is interfered by an incongruent word, but word naming is hardly hindered by the presence of an incongruent picture. In this study, we investigated whether Arabic digits are processed more like pictures or like words. We report two experiments in which Arabic digits and verbal numerals were confronted in a Stroop task. Arabic digit naming is interfered by the presence of an incongruent verbal numeral, while naming the verbal numeral is not influenced by the presence of an incongruent Arabic digit. In a second experiment, we excluded the hypothesis that the results are due to ignoring the Arabic digits: interferences from an incongruent distracter were similar for both notations in a semantic classification task. It seems that an asemantic conversion for Arabic digits is too slow to influence naming times, and that Arabic digit naming, like picture naming, is semantically mediated.     

Rule use in character classification: Are serial and parallel processing discrete?

Contrary to predictions of a stochastic self-terminating search model, choice reaction times were lower for rulebound positive sets than for nonrulebound positive sets when memory set sizes were varied and stimulus probabilities were held constant. The result suggests that rule use and chunking, as opposed to probability alone, facilitate character classification. As a corollary, it is proposed that serial and parallel processing differ in degree rather than in kind. The extent to which the memory set has been chunked is the critical variable affecting Ss’ scanning practices.     

Women and men in love: who really feels it and says it first?

A widely held belief exists that women are more romantic and tend to fall in love faster than men. Responses from 172 college students indicated that although both men and women believe that women will fall in love and say "I love you" first in a relationship, men reported falling in love earlier and expressing it earlier than women reported. Analyses also showed no sex differences in attitudinal responses to items about love and romance. These results indicate that women may not be the greater "fools for love" that society assumes and are consistent with the notion that a pragmatic and cautious view of love has adaptive significance for women.     

Jumping to conclusions in the less-delusion-prone? Further evidence from a more reliable beads task

BackgroundA single meta-analysis has found that healthy people with higher delusion-proneness tend to gather less information (i.e., make fewer draws to decision, or DTD) on the beads task, although the findings of contributing studies were mixed, and the pooled effect size was small. However, using a new and more reliable “distractor sequences” beads task, we recently found a positive relationship between delusion-proneness and DTD in a healthy sample. In the current study, we re-tested this relationship in a new sample, and tested the possibility that the relationship is driven by participant’s ability to understand and use odds or likelihood information (“odds literacy”).MethodsHealthy participants (N = 167) completed the distractor sequences beads task, the Peters Delusions Inventory (PDI) which measures delusion-proneness, a measure of odds literacy, and the Depression, Anxiety, and Stress scale.ResultsPDI and DTD were positively correlated, and comparing PDI quartiles on DTD confirmed a statistically significant trend of increasing DTD with PDI quartile. Odds literacy was positively rather than negatively associated with both DTD and PDI. Anxiety was positively correlated with PDI and DTD.ConclusionsWe replicated our earlier finding that DTD and delusion-proneness were positively related in a non-clinical sample, but found that increased odds-literacy did not drive lower PDI and DTD, and hence did not explain their covariance. It is possible however that anxiety and co-occurring risk aversion drive increased delusion-proneness and information-gathering, potentially accounting for the positive relationship between PDI and DTD.     

Are better eye movements an advantage in ball games? A study of prosaccadic and antisaccadic eye movements

The aim of this study was to compare prosaccadic and antisaccadic eye movements of experts in ball sports and controls. In the prosaccadic and antisaccadic task, subjects made saccades respectively towards and away from a suddenly appearing stimulus. By means of infrared-oculography, we compared horizontal eye movements of experts (n=18) and controls (n=20). Experts had shorter overall saccadic latencies, but significantly shorter latencies occurred only on the antisaccade task, not on the prosaccade task. Our findings seem to support the concept that prosaccades and antisaccades have different underlying mechanisms and that expertise in ball games mainly improves antisaccadic performance in terms of latency and variability.     

How do we code the letters of a word when we have to write it? Investigating double letter representation in French

How do we code the letters of a word when we have to write it? We examined whether the orthographic representations that the writing system activates have a specific coding for letters when these are doubled in a word. French participants wrote words on a digitizer. The word pairs shared the initial letters and differed on the presence of a double letter (e.g., LISSER/LISTER). The results on latencies, letter and inter-letter interval durations revealed that L and I are slower to write when followed by a doublet (SS) than when not (ST). Doublet processing constitutes a supplementary cognitive load that delays word production. This suggests that word representations code letter identity and quantity separately. The data also revealed that the central processes that are involved in spelling representation cascade into the peripheral processes that regulate movement execution.     

Mirror reading in right and left handers: Are sinistrals really superior?

While left handers, where they do in fact appear to differ from right handers in cognitive function, have generally been found to be slightly inferior on verbal tasks, there are some reports of a sinistral superiority for nonverbal or spatial abilities. Tankle and Heilman (Brain and Language, 1982, 17, 124-132) report a sinistral superiority in (obligatory) reading of left-right mirror-reversed text. However, in an investigation which included various other forms of geometrical transformation of the written word, we find that strong familial sinistrals are either not different from or even slightly inferior to dextrals in reading most transformations, including left-right mirror reversals.     

Is there evidence of robust,unconscious self-deception? A reply to Funkhouser and Barrett

Robust self-deception, in Funkhouser and Barrett’s sense, consists in the strategic pursuit of the goal of misleading oneself with respect to some proposition. Funkhouser and Barrett’s thesis is that an evaluation of the relevant empirical literatures reveals that the unconscious mind engages in robust self-deception. If Funkhouser and Barrett are correct, the psychological evidence vindicates an account of self-deception that challenges the orthodox motivationalist approach and makes clear the distinction between self-deception and other forms of motivated belief formation such as wishful thinking. The aim of this paper is to show that the evidence adduced by Funkhouser and Barrett fails to establish the existence of robust, unconscious self-deception.     

Having it all? Combining work and family in a male and a female profession

Are women in a female-dominated profession more successfully able to combine work and family obligations than women in a male-dominated profession? To explore this question, a comparison was made between the family status and careers of 747 women librarians (a female-dominated profession) and those of 449 women MBAs (a male-dominated profession). It was expected that the librarians would marry earlier and have more children. This general prediction was not supported. Over half of both groups of women were married, and after controlling for age, there were no differences in number of children. However, many women without children in both groups reported that they would like to be mothers. This disparity between wanting children and not having them was more common for women MBAs than women MLSs. MBAs and librarians were about equally likely to have had job interruptions, but librarians were more likely to have worked part-time. Reasons for an interruption to full-time work were as likely to be for problems finding (full-time) work as for family responsibilities. Librarians' salaries were much lower, but job interruptions and part-time work had a more negative effect on the salaries of women in business. In sum, the data suggest that many of the women surveyed have not combined motherhood with a professional career and that it is probably somewhat more difficult to combine a family with a career in business than with a career in library science.     

What didTriplett really find? A contemporary analysis of the first experiment in social psychology

In 1898, Norman Triplett published was has been called the first experiment in social psychology and sports psychology. Claiming to demonstrate "the dynamogenic factors in pacemaking and competition," this oft-cited article began the serious investigation of social facilitation. This area of research now numbers in the hundreds of published works, includes the study of humans and other animials, and encompasses basic research and applied settings. But what did Triplett really find? I examine Triplett's original data and show that very little evidence existed for the social facilitation of the simple task he investigated. These analyses indicate the need to correct contemporary accounts of Triplett's work and underscore the differences in how research was evaluated at that time compared with today.     

Are anticipatory first and second interval skin conductance responses indicators of predicted aversiveness?

The experiment reviewed here was an attempt to examine whether or not magnitudes of first and second interval skin conductance responses (FIR, SIR) to different conditioned stimuli (CS), each predicting another unconditioned stimulus (US), mirror the aversiveness of the predicted USs. Twenty human subjects received a differential Pavlovian conditioning training with five CSs, each one paired eight times with a specific US. Magnitudes of FIR and SIR elicited by CSs increased with increasing aversiveness of the USs predicted. It is concluded therefore that the SIR is not a mere indicator of a cognitive expectancy process but is also affected by emotional aspects.     

Are illusory contours a cause or a consequence of apparent differences in brightness and depth in the Kanizsa square?

The causal flows between the processes responsible for illusory contour clarity, brightness, and apparent depth in the Kanizsa square were examined. The sixty-four stimuli used consisted of all possible combinations of eight disk luminances and eight centre-to-centre separations between nearest disks. Ten subjects were instructed to rate the clarity of the illusory contour and the brightness and apparent depth differences between the Kanizsa square and its surround in each stimulus. On the basis of results obtained with the causal inference method, using partial correlations and path analysis, it is suggested that clarity of illusory contour can be influenced directly by disk separation, and that the output from the process responsible for illusory contour clarity has some effect on the processes responsible for the apparent depth and brightness differences.     

Are creativity and schizotypy products of a right hemisphere bias?

Prior research has shown associations between higher creativity (e.g., semantic association, verbal fluency), higher schizotypy (e.g., magical ideation), and relatively stronger right hemisphere laterality measures--when each of the three pairings has been studied individually. Our prior study related creativity and schizotypy to signal detection theory response criterion aspects of laterality. The present study attempted to integrate findings regarding these three constructs and to replicate the signal detection theory laterality results by providing measures of all three constructs in a within subjects design. Participants were 60 undergraduates who completed a test battery including two measures of creativity, three measures of schizotypy, a lateralized lexical decision task, and a dichotic listening task. Results are consistent with individual differences in creativity and schizotypy being partly related to a response criterion favoring right hemisphere, possibly nonconscious, processing. Dichotic listening results revealed a strong association of better right hemisphere (left ear) localization ability and creativity.     

Are all safety behaviours created equal? A comparison of novel and routinely used safety behaviours in obsessive-compulsive disorder

Contamination fear is one of the most common symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Exposure and response prevention (ERP) is effective for OCD, but a significant minority of treatment-seeking individuals refuse ERP entirely or drop out prematurely. Research suggests that safety behaviour (SB) may enhance the acceptability of ERP; however, questions remain about how to incorporate SB into existing treatments. Clinical participants with OCD and contamination fear (N = 57) were randomized to receive an exposure session with no SB (ERP), a routinely used SB (RU), or a never-used SB (NU). Significant reductions in contamination fear severity were observed in all conditions. Although omnibus comparisons were only marginally significant, pairwise comparisons revealed some condition differences. NU demonstrated significantly lower self-reported contamination fear severity at post-exposure, as well as marginally higher treatment acceptability ratings. Findings suggest that exposure with SB may be effective and acceptable, and are discussed in terms of cognitive-behavioural theory and treatment of anxiety and related disorders.