Getting a grip on numbers: numerical magnitude priming in object grasping

To investigate the functional connection between numerical cognition and action planning, the authors required participants to perform different grasping responses depending on the parity status of Arabic digits. The results show that precision grip actions were initiated faster in response to small numbers, whereas power grips were initiated faster in response to large numbers. Moreover, analyses of the grasping kinematics reveal an enlarged maximum grip aperture in the presence of large numbers. Reaction time effects remained present when controlling for the number of fingers used while grasping but disappeared when participants pointed to the object. The data indicate a priming of size-related motor features by numerals and support the idea that representations of numbers and actions share common cognitive codes within a generalized magnitude system.     

Getting a grip on drinking behavior: training working memory to reduce alcohol abuse

Alcohol abuse disrupts core executive functions, including working memory (WM)--the ability to maintain and manipulate goal-relevant information. When executive functions like WM are weakened, drinking behavior gets out of control and is guided more strongly by automatic impulses. This study investigated whether training WM restores control over drinking behavior. Forty-eight problem drinkers performed WM training tasks or control tasks during 25 sessions over at least 25 days. Before and after training, we measured WM and drinking behavior. Training WM improved WM and reduced alcohol intake for more than 1 month after the training. Further, the indirect effect of training on alcohol use through improved WM was moderated by participants' levels of automatic impulses: Increased WM reduced alcohol consumption in participants with relatively strong automatic preferences for alcohol. These findings are consistent with the theoretical framework and demonstrate that training WM may be an effective strategy to reduce alcohol use by increasing control over automatic impulses to drink alcohol.     

Getting a grip on your feelings: effects of action orientation and external demands on intuitive affect regulation

The authors propose that volitional action is supported by intuitive affect regulation, defined as flexible, efficient, and nonrepressive control of own affective states. Intuitive affect regulation should be most apparent among action-oriented individuals under demanding conditions. Consistent with this, a demanding context led action-oriented individuals to down-regulate negative affect in self-reports (Study 1), in an affective Simon task (Study 2), and in a face discrimination task (Study 3). In line with the idea that intuitive affect regulation is guided by top-down self-regulation processes, intuitive affect regulation in a face discrimination task was mediated by increases in self-accessibility (Study 3). No parallel effects emerged among action-oriented participants in a nondemanding context or among state-oriented participants.     

Getting a grip on the resilience to blur: The impact of simulated vision loss on a visually guided combat sports interaction

Research has shown that performance in highly visually demanding sports can be resilient to substantial levels of blur. This raises the question whether the need for high visual clarity might be reduced even more in less visually demanding sports such as combat sports, where athletes compete at relatively close distances. The aim of this study was to examine the resilience to blur in the grip fighting phase of judo as an exemplar of a visually guided combat sports task. The results were particularly relevant for the purposes of Paralympic judo for athletes with vision impairment (VI judo), because athletes are currently allowed to compete with a visual acuity (VA) of 1.0 logMAR or worse (i.e., 6/60 or 20/200 vision), suggesting this is the presumed level of impairment that decreases performance in able-sighted judo. We let 28 able-sighted judo athletes compete in pairs in a series of grip fighting tasks under increasing levels of simulated vision impairment. Visual function was tested in each condition by measuring VA and contrast sensitivity (CS). We found that VA was a better predictor than CS of grip fighting performance. VA needed to be reduced to at least 1.3 logMAR before a decrease in performance was found, with approximately twice as much blur needed to be applied when compared to visually demanding tasks such as cricket batting, but less than what has been found in static tasks such as basketball free-throw shooting and golf putting. These findings hold implications for VI judo regulations, suggesting that a more severe degree of impairment should be required to participate than is currently the case.     

Getting ahead of yourself: Parafoveal word expectancy modulates the N400 during sentence reading

An important question in the reading literature regards the nature of the semantic information readers can extract from the parafovea (i.e., the next word in a sentence). Recent eye-tracking findings have found a semantic parafoveal preview benefit under many circumstances, and findings from event-related brain potentials (ERPs) also suggest that readers can at least detect semantic anomalies parafoveally (Barber, Van der Meij, & Kutas, Psychophysiology, 50(1), 48–59, 2013). We use ERPs to ask whether fine-grained aspects of semantic expectancy can affect the N400 elicited by a word appearing in the parafovea. In an RSVP-with-flankers paradigm, sentences were presented word by word, flanked 2° bilaterally by the previous and upcoming words. Stimuli consisted of high constraint sentences that were identical up to the target word, which could be expected, unexpected but plausible, or anomalous, as well as low constraint sentences that were always completed with the most expected ending. Findings revealed an N400 effect to the target word when it appeared in the parafovea, which was graded with respect to the target’s expectancy and congruency within the sentence context. Furthermore, when targets appeared at central fixation, this graded congruency effect was mitigated, suggesting that the semantic information gleaned from parafoveal vision functionally changes the semantic processing of those words when foveated.     

Getting a New Lease on Life

Abstract

A significant number of marriages today arc interchurch, that is, marriages in which each spouse belongs to a different Christian church or denomination. The limited research on interchurch couples suggests that they are more at risk for divorce than same-church couples. A qualitative study and a national telephone survey were conducted by the Center for Marriage and Family at Creighton University to better understand interchurch marriages. Based on findings from these studies, clinical implications for premarital counseling with interchurch couples are presented. The findings suggest not only how to work with interchurch couples, but how religion can potentially impact all couples regardless of their denominational affiliation.     

Outraged Consumers: Getting Even at the Expense of Getting a Good Deal

This article introduces the concept of desire for consumer vengeance. Desire for consumer vengeance (DCV) is conceptualized as the desire of a decision maker to “get even” with an entity, such as a firm, in response to a perceived wrongdoing. Drawing on research in psychology and organization behavior, a theoretical framework is proposed for understanding variables that influence the extent to which the DCV is felt and the conditions under which one acts on such feelings. The results of 2 experiments show that, given sufficient desire for vengeance, some consumers will choose a suboptimal decision outcome to get even with a firm. We also find that it is the interpersonal factors of the redress experience, rather than its tangible outcomes, that drive consumers to exact revenge on firms after a dissatisfying experience.     

Getting a little closure for closure

Synthese - In this paper, I’ll survey a number of closure principles of epistemic justification and find them all wanting. However, it’ll be my contention that there’s a novel...     

Coordination of grip configurations as a function of force output

In this investigation, the authors examined the coordination and control of force production by the digits of the hand as a function of criterion force level and grip configuration. Each adult participant (N = 6: 3 men and 3 women) was required to place the thumb and a finger (or fingers) upon load cells that were fixed to a grasping apparatus that was clamped to a table. In the task, participants had to match a criterion continuous constant total force level displayed on a computer screen. There were 10 trials at each grip configuration and criterion force level combination on each of 3 consecutive days. The results showed that (a) different grip configurations minimized error at each force level; (b) there was a specific digit pairing within a given grip configuration that produced the highest correlation of force output; (c) the correlation between the force output of digits generally increased at higher force levels; (d) error was reduced at each force level and grip configuration over the practice period; and (e) the organization of the force output of each digit varied as a function of digit, force level, grip configuration, and practice. The findings are consistent with the hypothesis that coordination of the digits in prehension is reflective of an adaptive, task-specific solution that is modified with practice.     

A possible proximity effect on human grip strength

A double-blind experiment with 58 adults tested the hypothesis that proximity to sugar reduces human grip strength. An analysis of variance supported the hypothesis.     

Seeing yourself helps you see others

It has been proposed that self-face representations are involved in interpreting facial emotions of others. We experimentally primed participants' self-face representations. In Study 1, we assessed eye tracking patterns and performance on a facial emotion discrimination task, and in Study 2, we assessed emotion ratings between self and nonself groups. Results show that experimental priming of self-face representations increases visual exploration of faces, facilitates the speed of facial expression processing, and increases the emotional distance between expressions. These findings suggest that the ability to interpret facial expressions of others is intimately associated with the representations we have of our own faces.     

Effects of surface texture on weight perception when lifting objects with a precision grip

In this paper, we show that, when lifting an object using a precision grip with the distal pads of the thumb and index finger at its sides, the perceived weight depends on the object’s surface texture. The smoother the surface texture, the greater the perceived weight. We suggest that a smoother object is judged to be heavier because the grip force, normal to the surface, required to prevent it from slipping is greater. The possibility of there being an influence of surface texture per se is excluded by a second experiment that employed a variant of the precision grip in which the thumb supports the weight of the object from underneath. With the grip oriented in this way, there is no need to match grip force to surface texture and, under these conditions, there is no effect of surface texture on weight perception. In the first two experiments, the test and comparison weights were lifted successively by the same hand. In a third experiment, the effect of surface texture was replicated for sequential lifts made with separate hands. Thus, the effect is not restricted to comparisons made with the same hand.     

Getting lost

This paper seeks to explore the process, challenges and journey of setting up counselling within a boys’ public school setting, as an independent practitioner. It looks at the structure and way in which the service was set up and what had to be changed and adapted as time went on. The school had a strong reputation for pastoral care but had come to recognise that there were some issues that it was neither possible nor appropriate for school staff to deal with. So, whilst the school could and did provide containment for many of its pupils, there were those who got lost or were outside of the culture. This seemed to get reflected in my own experience. Setting up counselling in a school is not straightforward, and like the process of therapy itself, it takes time and is not a linear process. Although the service grew steadily, there were factors that led to my finally resigning from the post – I also got lost in the system. There is also a comparison with setting up a service under the auspices of an organisation at the same time.     

Body-scaled transitions in human grip configurations

This article reports two experiments that were set up to examine the preferred human grip configuration used to displace cubes that varied in length (Lc), mass (Mc), and density (ML3). In particular, the authors sought to provide a more precise test of a dimensional relation between the object and the hand that had previously been shown to predict the grip configuration used to transport an object from one location to another. The experiments examined 2 grip transitions (from 3 digits to 4 digits and from 1 hand to 2 hands) within 2 sets of object conditions. In Experiment 1, cubes with a low density and a small increment in size (1 mm) were used, whereas in Experiment 2, cubes with 2 fixed sizes and small increments in mass were used. The results showed that the body-scaled equation K = logLc + (logMc/a + bMh + cLh), where Mh and Lh are the anthropometric measures of the hand mass and length and a, b, and c are empirical constants, is the body-scaled information that predicts the grip configurations used to displace objects.     

Effect of bandwidth knowledge of results on the learning of a grip force control task

An experiment was conducted to investigate the persistence of the effect of "bandwidth knowledge of results (KR)" manipulated during the learning phase of performing a manual force-control task. The experiment consisted of two phases, an acquisition phase with the goal of maintaining 60% maximum force in 30 trials, and a second phase with the objective of maintaining 40% of maximum force in 20 further trials. There were four bandwidths of KR: when performance error exceeded 5, 10, or 15% of the target, and a control group (0% bandwidth). Analysis showed that 5, 10, and 15% bandwidth led to better performance than 0% bandwidth KR at the beginning of the second phase and persisted during the extended trials.     

Sugar proximity and human grip strength

In a double-blind experiment with 90 undergraduate students the hypothesis was tested that proximity to sugar reduces human grip strength. An earlier study indicated that sugar proximity does indeed significantly reduce human grip strength. When additional controls were added to this design to reduce random sampling error, the hypothesis was not supported.     

You owe it to yourself: boosting retirement saving with a responsibility-based appeal

Americans are not saving enough for retirement. Previous research suggests that this is due, in part, to people's tendency to think of the future self as more like another person than like the present self, making saving feel like giving money away rather than like investing in oneself. Using objective employer saving data, a field experiment capitalized on this phenomenon to increase saving. It compared the effectiveness of a novel message--one appealing to people's sense of "social" responsibility to their future selves--with a more traditional appeal to people's sense of rational self-interest. The social-responsibility-to-the-future-self message resulted in larger increases in saving than the self-interest message, but only to the extent that people felt a strong "social" connection to their future selves. These results broaden our understanding of the psychology of moral responsibility and refine our understanding of the role of future-self continuity in fostering intertemporal patience. They further demonstrate how understanding conceptions of the self over time can suggest solutions to important and challenging policy problems.