What will they say?—Public Announcement Games

The last two decades have seen a rising interest in (a) the notion of a scientific phenomenon as distinct from theories and data, and (b) the intricacies of experimentally producing and stabilizing phenomena. This paper develops an analysis of the stabilization of phenomena that integrates two aspects that have largely been treated separately in the literature: one concerns the skills required for empirical work; the other concerns the strategies by which claims about phenomena are validated. I argue that in order to make sense of the process of stabilization, we need to distinguish between two types of phenomena: phenomena as patterns in the data (“surface regularities”) and phenomena as underlying (or “hidden”) regularities. I show that the epistemic relationships that data bear to each of these types of phenomena are different: Data patterns are instantiated by individual data, whereas underlying regularities are indicated by individual data, insofar as they instantiate a data pattern. Drawing on an example from memory research, I argue that neither of these two kinds of phenomenon can be stabilized in isolation. I conclude that what is stabilized when phenomena are stabilized is the fit between surface regularities and hidden regularities.     

Age and ageing: What do they mean?

This article provides a philosophical overview of different approaches to age and ageing. It is often assumed that our age is determined by the amount of time we have been alive. Here, I challenge this belief. I argue that there are at least three plausible, yet unsatisfactory, accounts to age and ageing: the chronological account, the biological account, and the experiential account. I show that all of them fall short of fully determining what it means to age. Addressing these problems, I suggest the Two‐tier principle of age: whenever the three accounts of age contradict, combine the two accounts that differ the least, and reject the third. However, while this principle does solve some difficulties, it is itself vulnerable to problems; therefore I propose we should jettison it. I conclude that there are no accounts to ageing that are satisfactory; they all come with a bullet to bite.     

What gives victims satisfaction when they seek revenge?

The present paper aims to elucidate under what conditions victims of injustice who seek revenge feel satisfied and perceive that everybody got what he or she deserved. Two hypotheses are discussed: The comparative suffering hypothesis states that seeing the offender suffer from fate is sufficient for evoking satisfaction and perceptions of deservingness among victims. The understanding hypothesis states that revenge can only be satisfactory when the offender understands it as a response to his or her prior behavior. These hypotheses were tested in three experimental studies. The comparative suffering hypothesis received only weak support. The understanding hypothesis, on the other hand, received much stronger support: When the offender understood revenge as punishment, revenge led to satisfaction and deservingness among victims. These findings are discussed with regard to the question why people take revenge. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Choice theories: What are they good for?

Simonson et al. present an ambitious sketch of an integrative theory of context. Provoked by this thoughtful proposal, I discuss what is the function of theories of choice in the coming decades. Traditionally, choice models and theory have attempted to predict choices as a function of the attributes of options. I argue that to be truly useful, they need to generate specific and quantitative predictions of the effect of the choice environment upon choice probability. To do this, we need to focus on rigorously modeling and measuring the underlying processes causing these effects, and use the Simonson et al. proposal to provide some examples. I also present some examples from research in decision-making and decision neuroscience, and argue that models that fail, and fail spectacularly are particularly useful. I close with a challenge: How would consumer researcher aid the design of real world choice environments such as the health exchanges under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act?     

Causal attributions of married couples: when do they search for causes? What do they conclude when they do?

In this study, we examined when and whether married people engage in attributional activity or form causal attributions to explain their partners' behavior. We used an indirect probe to better approximate naturally occurring cognitive activity. We also examined the content of spouses' causal attributions, using both direct and indirect probes. Spouses were asked about frequent as well as infrequent relationship events, and about partner behaviors that had positive or negative impacts on the recipient. Husbands in unsatisfying relationships reported more attributional thoughts than did happily married husbands, whereas wives in the two groups did not differ. Behaviors having negative impacts elicited more attributional activity than did positive behaviors. Behavioral frequency and impact interacted in ways contrary to predictions. Finally, distressed couples were particularly likely to report distress-maintaining attributions and were particularly unlikely to report relationship-enhancing attributions, compared with their nondistressed counterparts.     

Regularity effects in word naming: What are they?

In a word-naming experiment, word-body consistency was crossed with grapheme-to-phoneme regularity to test predictions of current models of word recognition. In the latency and error data, a clear effect of consistency was observed, with the influence of regularity somewhat weaker. In addition, simulation data from three contemporary models of word recognition were obtained for the stimuli used in the experiment in order to compare the models' latencies with those of humans. The simulations showed that the human latency data are most consistent with the parallel-distributed-processing model of Plaut, McClelland, Seidenberg, and Patterson (1996), less so with the dual-process model (Zorzi, Houghton, & Butterworth, 1998), and least so with the dual-route-cascaded model (Coltheart & Rastle, 1994).     

Trainee nondisclosure in supervision: What are they not telling you?

Aims: The purposes of this study were to examine: (1) the content of and reasons for trainee nondisclosure in supervision, and (2) the influence of trainee anxiety and perception of the supervisory working alliance on amount of nondisclosure and willingness to disclose. Method: As the focus of the study was a single supervision session, qualitative and quantitative data were collected from 204 trainees about their most recent supervision session. Results: Within the single supervision session on which they reported, 84.3% of trainees withheld information from their supervisors. Trainees reported an average of 2.68 nondisclosures occurring in the session, with the most common nondisclosure involving a negative supervision experience. Trainee perception of a better supervisory working alliance was related to less nondisclosure and greater overall willingness to disclose in supervision. Higher trainee anxiety was related to greater nondisclosure and lower overall willingness to disclose in supervision. Implications: The implications of the findings for the practice of supervision are discussed and areas for further research are suggested.     

Commentary: What are behavior systems and what use are they?

The contributions of this symposium on behavior systems are summarized and evaluated by considering two questions: (1) What is a behavior system? (2) What use to the learning theorist are behavior systems? Two examples of behavior systems from the classical ethological literature are compared with the behavior systems discussed in the symposium, and some similarities and differences in the type of analyses used are discussed. Analysis of the pre-organized species-typical behavior systems relevant to the unconditioned stimuli or reinforcers in learning experiments can contribute performance rules and better understanding of the conditions and contents of learning. The organization of behavior systems can also provide important clues to the neural circuitry underlying behavior, and a behavior systems approach can raise novel questions concerning learning and behavioral development. Possible future directions for the behavior systems approach are briefly discussed.     

Scientific societies and research integrity: What are they doing and how well are they doing it?

Scientific societies can play an important role in promoting ethical research practices among their members, and over the past two decades several studies have addressed how societies perform this role. This survey continues this research by examining current efforts by scientific societies to promote research integrity among their members. The data indicate that although many of the societies are working to promote research integrity through ethics codes and activities, they lack rigorous assessment methods to determine the effectiveness of their efforts. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the AAAS-Office of Research Integrity (ORI) meeting in Washington DC on the theme: “The Role and Activities of Scientific Societies in Promoting Research Integrity” held on April 10–11, 2000.     

What do children and adolescents say they do during video game play?

We examined the problem-solving behaviors that 5th, 6th, and 7th graders used to negotiate a novel recreational video game. Students were characterized as frequent or infrequent players and instructed to think aloud during game play for 20 consecutive minutes. Comments were used to make inferences about the students' problem-solving behaviors while playing. These comments were then linked to game performance. Among all students, the greatest number of comments concerned their actions and game events at a given point in game play. Females made greater reference to strategies for game play and process goals whereas males made greater reference to their evaluations of the game and when they reached an impasse. Among 5th graders, reference to impasse and rules for game play was linked to better game performance; among 7th graders, reference to insight about how to enact a specific move or circumvent an impasse was related to better performance.     

What do fully paralyzed awake humans feel when they attempt to move?

Subjects are able to judge the strength of muscle contraction. In theory, the force of muscular exertion could be perceived either from mechanoreceptor afferents or from knowledge of central motor command (corollary discharge). Sensations of great effort or exerted force have been described by subjects when their limbs were weakened by fatigue or partial paralysis. This has been taken as evidence that effort sensations arise from central motor commands rather than from mechanoreceptor afferent signals produced by muscle contraction. To differentiate between these possibilities, we used neuromuscular block to completely paralyze four waking subjects and required them to attempt maximal contraction of inspiratory muscles and of hand muscles. They were questioned after recovery about what their sensations were when attempting these contractions. None described the sensations of exerted force, great effort, or heaviness, which would have been expected if motor commands alone were the source of these sensations. The contradiction between our findings and those previously reported suggests that the specific neural mechanisms for effort sensations must be reexamined.     

AQS security scores: What do they represent? A study in construct validation

In a sample of 129 Dutch 15‐month‐old infants, attachment security was assessed both with the Attachment Q‐Set (AQS; Waters, 1995) and with a short version of Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, and Wall's (1978) Strange Situation (SSS). Infants classified as secure using the SSS had significantly higher AQS scores than insecure and disorganized infants in particular. At the AQS item level, disorganized infants were described as significantly more noncompliant, fussy, and angry relative to secure infants. When security as assessed using the SSS was controlled, the observed quality of parental interactive behavior, parental ego‐resilience, high levels of infant task orientation and pleasure, and low levels of infant anger proneness were found to explain significant and unique portions of the variance in the AQS security scores. The apparently unfavorable set of characteristics associated with low AQS security scores suggests such scores to predict later developmental problems. ©2004 Michigan Association for Infant Mental Health.     

Empathizing and systemizing: What are they,and what do they contribute to our understanding of psychological sex differences?

Empathizing and systemizing have recently been put forward as two important individual‐difference dimensions, whose different mean levels in men and women are argued to account for many psychological sex differences. This paper presents a series of studies designed to investigate the reliability and validity of the empathizing and systemizing quotients (EQ & SQ), to relate them to existing personality constructs, and to replicate reported sex and sexual orientation‐related differences. Correlations with interests and social behaviour suggest the two measures are valid. However, empathizing appears essentially equivalent to agreeableness in the five‐factor model of personality. Systemizing cannot be reduced to established personality dimensions, though it is moderately correlated with conscientiousness and openness. Men have higher levels of systemizing than women, and non‐heterosexual women higher than heterosexuals. However, no differences were found between heterosexual and non‐heterosexual men. Although systemizing and empathizing account for a number of observed sex differences, there are others they do not explain.     

What if they are right? Network approval,expectations, and relationship maintenance behaviors

This study drew on uncertainty reduction and decision‐making theories to investigate how perceptions of approval of romantic relationships from family and friends can influence romantic partners' dynamics. Using a dyadic approach, the authors examined whether expectations of a partner's behavior in the relationship mediated the associations between perceived social network approval and relationship maintenance behaviors in a sample of 137 couples. The actor–partner interdependence mediation model (APIMeM) was applied. Results showed that women's and men's perceptions of approval from their own and their partner's network were associated with their own level of expectations of their partner's behaviors. In turn, women's and men's expectations were associated with their own and their partner's maintenance behaviors.     

What is spiritual? What is spiritual suffering?

The author offers definitions for "spiritual" and for "spiritual suffering," suggesting that human spiritual needs include Love, Faith, Hope, Virtue, and Beauty. Spiritual suffering is experienced when these needs are unfulfilled. Spiritual care involves assisting in the fulfillment of these needs. He considers the constant movement between spiritual needs and fulfillments, encouraging use of fluid (not static) assessment methods using "spiritual spectra." As a model, this outline of basic spiritual needs may serve as the foundation for many current spiritual assessment tools.     

Peer Interaction: What Causes What?

Peer interaction is examined as a source of behavior change in children and adolescents. The dynamics of peer influence are discussed in terms of six issues: characteristics of the influence source; characteristics of the child or adolescent being influenced; the relationship existing between influence source and the individual being influenced; developmental change; processes underlying peer influence; and constraints deriving from the behavior domain being examined. Research shows that contact with peers has complex effects on individual behavior, and numerous moderators and mediators must be considered in order to account for them. The discussion is linked to the papers included in this special issue.