Dissociating speed and accuracy in absolute identification: the effect of unequal stimulus spacing

Identification accuracy for sets of perceptually discriminable stimuli ordered on a single dimension (e.g., line length) is remarkably low, indicating a fundamental limit on information processing capacity. This surprising limit has naturally led to a focus on measuring and modeling choice probability in absolute identification research. We show that choice response time (RT) results can enrich our understanding of absolute identification by investigating dissociation between RT and accuracy as a function of stimulus spacing. The dissociation is predicted by the SAMBA model of absolute identification (Brown, Marley, Dockin, & Heathcote, 2008), but cannot easily be accommodated by other theories. We show that SAMBA provides an accurate, parameter free, account of the dissociation that emerges from the architecture of the model and the physical attributes of the stimuli, rather than through numerical adjustment. This violation of the pervasive monotonic relationship between RT and accuracy has implications for model development, which are discussed.

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Are There Stable Factors in Preadolescent Girls’ Externalizing Behaviors?

Relatively little is known about the factor structure of disruptive behavior among preadolescent girls. The present study reports on exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses of disruptive girl behavior over four successive data waves as rated by parents and teachers in a large, representative community sample of girls (N = 2,451). Five factors were identified from parent ratings (oppositional behavior/conduct problems, inattention, hyperactivity/impulsivity, relational aggression, and callous-unemotional behaviors), and four factors were identified derived from teacher ratings (oppositional behavior/conduct problems/callous-unemotional behaviors, inattention, hyperactivityimpulsivity, and relational aggression). There was a high degree of consistency of items loading on equivalent factors across parent and teacher ratings. Year-to-year stability of factors between ages five and 12 was high for parent ratings (ICC = 0.70 to 0.88), and slightly lower for teacher ratings (ICC = 0.56 to 0.83). These findings are discussed in terms of possible adjustment to the criteria for children's disruptive behavior disorders found in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders.

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Memory for words location in writing

In two experiments, we investigated memory for words location after writing a text. Experiment 1 demonstrated the existence of a memory for words location in writing by showing that participants who first composed a text and were then asked to locate words extracted from their text performed above a chance level established using a computer simulation, and better than participants who did not compose a text but were told the subject of the text. Experiment 2 showed that memory for words location in writing is mainly supported by a visuospatial representation of the text, as indicated by the lower recall of words location by participants who performed a visuospatial concurrent task at the time of the composition, compared with participants who performed a verbal concurrent task. The findings highlight the role of a spatial representation of the physical layout of the text and the role of such a memory in the writing process.

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Phenomenology and the Third Generation of Cognitive Science: Towards a Cognitive Phenomenology of the Body

Phenomenology of the body and the third generation of cognitive science, both of which attribute a central role in human cognition to the body rather than to the Cartesian notion of representation, face the criticism that higher-level cognition cannot be fully grasped by those studies. The problem here is how explicit representations, consciousness, and thoughts issue from perception and the body, and how they cooperate in human cognition. In order to address this problem, we propose a research program, a cognitive phenomenology of the body, which is basically motivated by the perspective of Merleau-Ponty. We find a substantial clue in developmental psychological studies on the body and language.

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Effect of task presentation on students’ performances in introductory statistics courses

Research on academic learning indicates that many students experience major difficulties with introductory statistics and methodology courses. We hypothesized that students’ difficulties may depend in part on the fact that statistics tasks are commonly viewed as related to the threatening domain of math. In two field experiments which we carried out in the ecological context of introductory statistics courses, the representation of a statistics task administered to undergraduate students in Psychology (Study 1; n = 127) and Biology (Study 2; n = 166) was manipulated. In both studies we found that students who reported the least favorable prior attainments in math had their performance thwarted when the task was presented as related to the math domain, whereas no performance impairment was observed when the task was presented as related to the verbal/linguistic domain. Implications of the findings for the design and delivery of introductory statistics and research methodology courses are discussed.

Influence of emotional expression on the processing of gaze direction

Research demonstrates an influence of gaze direction in emotion recognition. Here we examined whether facial affect similarly influences recognition of gaze direction. Across two studies we found that averted relative to direct gaze was processed more quickly and accurately when coupled with fear, and direct relative to averted gaze with anger. Also evident was that slower overall gaze processing was associated with increased interaction effects between emotion and gaze. Examining individual differences, therefore, enabled us to extend previous research examining speed of processing as a moderator of the interaction effect, while holding constant task demands and stimulus features. Unexpectedly, a main effect emerged such that averted relative to direct gaze was found to be processed more quickly and accurately overall. This effect was not moderated by processing speed and is discussed as a potential stimulus-driven effect that may help explain discrepant findings in the literature.

Aiming at Happiness: How Motivation Affects Attention to and Memory for Emotional Images

Socioemotional Selectivity Theory (Carstensen, L. L., Isaacowitz, D. M., & Charles, S. T. (1999). American Psychologist, 54, 155–181) posits that older adults, and anyone else who perceives their time as limited, show a motivational shift toward emotion regulation which causes them to exhibit a positivity bias and negativity avoidance in attention and memory. We tested whether such a motivational shift can indeed cause changes in emotional processing by manipulating motivation in a sample of young adults. After the manipulation, participants looked at real-world images while their eye movements were tracked. It was found that participants motivated to regulate emotion attended less to negative than positive images and showed less looking time to all stimulus types compared to the other two conditions. No evidence was found linking the motivational manipulation to emotional memory.

Towards a New Epistemology of Mathematics

In this introduction we discuss the motivation behind the workshop “Towards a New Epistemology of Mathematics” of which this special issue constitutes the proceedings. We elaborate on historical and empirical aspects of the desired new epistemology, connect it to the public image of mathematics, and give a summary and an introduction to the contributions to this issue.

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The Influence of Positive Affect on Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation: Facilitating Enjoyment of Play,Responsible Work Behavior,and Self-Control

Two experiments demonstrated that positive affect fosters intrinsic motivation, as reflected by choice of activity in a free-choice situation and by rated amount of enjoyment of a novel and challenging task, but also promotes responsible work behavior in a situation where the work needs to be done. Where there was work that needed to be done, people in the positive-affect condition reduced their time on the enjoyable task, successfully completed the work task, but also spent time on the more enjoyable task. These results indicate that positive affect does foster intrinsic motivation, and enjoyment and performance of enjoyable tasks, but not at the cost of responsible work behavior on an uninteresting task that needs to be done. Implications for the relationship between positive affect and such aspects of self-regulation as forward-looking thinking and self-control are discussed.

Speaking to Pictures

A review of Peter Steele’s Plenty, a book in which each poem is faced by a colour plate of the painting or object which sparked it off. Hollander’s ecphrasis and Krieger’s ekphrasis are held in – possibly unresolvable – dialectic by Steele’s poems. The only resolution which one can find is one of wit rather than of philosophy.

Structure and conventions

Wayne Davis’s Meaning, Expression and Thought argues that linguistic meaning is conventional use to express ideas. An obvious problem with this proposal is that complex expressions that have never been used are nonetheless meaningful. In response to this concern, Davis associates conventions of use not only with linguistic expressions but also with the modes in which such expressions can combine into larger expressions. I argue that such constructive conventions are in conflict with the principle of compositionality (as it is usually understood) and that (at least in the cases Davis considers) they are unnecessary for semantic explanations.

Unrestricted composition and restricted quantification

Many of those who accept the universalist thesis that mereological composition is unrestricted also maintain that the folk typically restrict their quantifiers in such a way as to exclude strange fusions when they say things that appear to conflict with universalism. Despite its prima facie implausibility, there are powerful arguments for universalism. By contrast, there is remarkably little evidence for the thesis that strange fusions are excluded from the ordinary domain of quantification. Furthermore, this reconciliatory strategy seems hopeless when applied to the more fundamental conflict between universalism and the intuitions that tell against it.

Witnessing to Hope in the Christian Community Through Irony

The concept of witnessing to hope reminds us that nurturing hope is fundamentally a communal endeavor. In the Christian tradition, this witnessing takes a particular form. It involves the use of the ironic imagination: Death leads to new life, the poor are considered blessed, and the faithful boast in their suffering. It is argued that a central pastoral task is stimulating the ironic imagination. While this can take place in a number of settings, the focus here is on public worship. Practical examples of how this task might be executed are offered.

Number Created by the Interaction Between Consciousness and Memory: A Mathematical Basis for Preafference

I would like to deal with a process that numbers are generated by the interaction between consciousness and memory, associated with time with a finite width. It is pointed out that this process can be related with the emergence of preafference. It is concluded that only humans can create numbers, whereas animals simply produce ‘random’ sequences of symbols because they lack intentionality to search for an appropriate internal observation window that makes intention and memory compatible.

Dysphoria and Mobilization of Mental Effort: Effects on Cardiovascular Reactivity

Two studies examined the influence of dysphoria on motivational intensity in a student sample. Participants worked on a memory task (Study 1) or a mental concentration task (Study 2) without fixed performance standard (“do your best”). Based on their scores on the Center for Epidemiologic Studies – Depression Scale (L. S. Radloff, 1977), dysphoric and nondysphoric students were compared with regard to their effort-related cardiovascular reactivity during task performance. As predicted on the basis of the mood-behavior-model (G. H. E. Gendolla, 2000) and motivational intensity theory (J. W. Brehm & E. A. Self, 1989), dysphoric participants showed stronger cardiovascular reactivity while working on the cognitive tasks than nondysphoric participants. In Study 1, nondysphoric participants performed better on the memory task than dysphoric participants. Theoretical implications are discussed.

Threat is a Multidimensional Construct: Exploring the Role of Children’s Threat Appraisals in the Relationship Between Interparental Conflict and Child Adjustment

Past research has emphasised the importance of children’s appraisals of the threat posed by parent conflict for understanding links between interparental conflict and child outcomes. However, little is known about what it is that children actually find threatening about parent conflict. Children (n = 236) aged 10–16 years were recruited to examine the relative contribution of four specific threat subtypes—fear of parent conflict escalating, fear of being drawn into parent conflict, fear of parent conflict resulting in family breakdown, and fear of parent conflict disrupting parent/child attachment relationships—in explaining links between interparental conflict and child internalising adjustment. Results showed that children’s worries about being drawn into parent conflict mediated the relationship between interparental conflict and child internalising adjustment. Fear of interparental conflict disrupting parent/child attachment bonds mediated the relationship between interparental conflict and child internalising problems for girls, but not boys. Results are discussed in terms of the importance of considering multiple dimensions of threat for advancing understanding of the processes underlying the interparental conflict/child adjustment relationship.

The Role of Ideal Affect in the Experience and Memory of Emotions

According to Affect Valuation Theory (Tsai et al. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54, 1031–1039), culture influences how people want to feel (ideal affect). Integrating Affect Valuation Theory with the Time-sequential Framework of Subjective Well-being (Kim-Prieto et al. Journal of Happiness Studies, 6, 261–300), we proposed that cultural norms influence the memory, but not the experience, of emotion. The present study examined the role of ideal affect in relation to experience sampling and retrospective reports of emotion. Ideal affect correlated with retrospective reports but not experience sampling reports. Extraversion and neuroticism were more strongly related to experience sampling reports than to ideal levels of emotion. Results suggest that retrospective reports of emotion involve a dynamic process that incorporates cultural information into the reconstruction whereas on-line emotions are more constrained by temperament.

Task switching based on externally presented versus internally generated information

A number of observations from the task switching literature suggest that task preparation based on internally generated knowledge is less efficient than task preparation based on externally presented information. In the present study, we investigated task switching based on internally generated versus externally presented information and additionally varied the reliability of foreknowledge. Source and reliability of foreknowledge were varied between groups of participants. With reliable foreknowledge, the relevant task always conformed to foreknowledge, even when the features of the imperative stimulus called for an alternative task. With unreliable foreknowledge, the relevant task was determined by the imperative stimulus and foreknowledge was sometimes misleading. Apart from measuring switch costs, we examined the effectiveness of establishing a task set by measuring interference exerted by conflicting stimuli (conditions with reliable foreknowledge) or misled expectancies (conditions with unreliable foreknowledge). In terms of switch costs, we observed a slight superiority of externally presented over internally generated information when foreknowledge was reliable, but this relationship strongly reversed with unreliable foreknowledge. This conclusion was corroborated by observations regarding the effectiveness of task-set establishment in terms of proneness to interference.

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Bootstrapping and knowledge of reliability

This is a critical discussion of a paper on the problem of bootstrapping by Jose Zalabardo.