Why girls say 'holded' more than boys

Women are better than men at verbal memory tasks, such as remembering word lists. These tasks depend on declarative memory. The declarative/procedural model of language, which posits that the lexicon of stored words is part of declarative memory, while grammatical composition of complex forms depends on procedural memory, predicts a female superiority in aspects of lexical memory. Other neurocognitive models of language have not made this prediction. Here we examine the prediction in past-tense over-regularizations (e.g. holded) produced by children. We expected that girls would remember irregular past-tense forms (held) better than boys, and thus would over-regularize less. To our surprise, girls over-regularized far more than boys. We investigated potential explanations for this sex difference. Analyses showed that in girls but not boys, over-regularization rates correlated with measures of the number of similar-sounding regulars (folded, molded). This sex difference in phonological neighborhood effects is taken to suggest that girls tend to produce over-regularizations in associative lexical memory, generalizing over stored neighboring regulars, while boys are more likely to depend upon rule-governed affixation (hold+-ed). The finding is consistent with the hypothesis that, likely due to their superior lexical abilities, females tend to retrieve from memory complex forms (walked) that men generally compose with the grammatical system (walk+-ed). The results suggest that sex may be an important factor in the acquisition and computation of language.     

Concept driven color experiences in digit-color synesthesia

In digit-color synesthesia, black digits elicit conscious experiences of highly specific colors (photisms). This paper describes C, an undergraduate student who experiences digit-color synesthesia. We evaluated whether C's photisms could occur even in the absence of an externally presented digit. C was shown simple arithmetic problems (e.g., 5 + 2) followed by a color patch. C was significantly faster at naming the color of the patch when it was congruent with the photism associated with the answer to the problem than when the color patch was incongruent with the answer. These results replicate previous findings (Dixon, Smilek, Cudahy, & Merikle, 2000) and strongly suggest that for C, an externally presented inducing stimulus is not necessary to trigger a photism--activating the concept of a digit is sufficient.     

Why Saturday could be both green and red in synesthesia

It has long been observed that certain words induce multiple synesthetic colors, a phenomenon that has remained largely unexplored. We report here on the distinct synesthetic colors two synesthetes experienced with closed sets of concepts (digits, weekdays, months). For example, Saturday was associated with green, like other word starting with s; however, Saturday also had its specific color (red). Auditory priming and Visual Color Stroop tasks were used to understand the cognitive mechanisms supporting the distinct synesthetic colors. Results revealed that processing of word segments and whole words was specifically involved in each type of synesthetic colors. However, these mechanisms differed between participants, as they could relate either to orthography (and written words) or phonology (and spoken words). Further differences concerned the word representations, which varied as to whether or not they encoded serial positions. In addition to clarifying the cognitive mechanisms underlying the distinct synesthetic colors, our results offer some clues for understanding the neurocognitive underpinnings of a rather common form of synesthesia.     

Why metacognition matters more than ever before: Real lessons of 2020

As we study, this pivotal time in our history and the ongoing implications, one thing that has become abundantly clear is the incredible need for strong critical thinking skills across our population. Based on several years of prior research four metacognitive skills appear to be pivotal to deftly manage the coming years. These include the breadth of approach, information management, proactive thinking, and integrative strategy. This article provides insights and examples of the implications of these four skills.     

Instructed faking of the HEXACO reduces facet reliability and involves more Gc than Gf

Research on the role of intelligence in the capacity to fake personality tests tends to use the Big Five and g-factor models of personality and intelligence. The current study (N = 185 university students) examines instructed faking on the HEXACO and separately considers the role of fluid intelligence (Gf) and crystallized intelligence (Gc). Results demonstrate that: (a) participants can fake the HEXACO domains and facets to about the same extent as the Big Five; (b) faking has little effect on domain reliability but reduces facet reliability; and (c) faking involves Gc to a much greater degree than Gf. Results are discussed in terms of practical applications of facet scores, and process models of faking.     

Why older adults make more immediate treatment decisions about cancer than younger adults

Literature relevant to medical decision making was reviewed, and a model was outlined for testing. Two studies examined whether older adults make more immediate decisions than younger adults about treatments for prostate or breast cancer in authentic scenarios. Findings clearly showed that older adults were more likely to make immediate decisions than younger adults. The research is important because it not only demonstrates the consistency of this age-related effect across disease domains, gender, ethnic groups, and prevalent education levels but begins to investigate a model to explain the effect. Major reasons for the effect focus on treatment knowledge, interest and engagement, and cognitive resources. Treatment knowledge, general cancer knowledge, interest, and cognitive resources relate to different ways of processing treatment information and preferences for immediate versus delayed decision making. Adults with high knowledge of treatments on a reliable test tended to make immediate treatment decisions, which supports the knowledge explanation. Adults with more cognitive resources and more interest tended to delay their treatment decisions. Little support was found for a cohort explanation for the relationship between age and preference for immediate medical decision making.     

Discrimination is more closely associated with perceived similarity than with distance and color

Diverse factors affect perceived similarity and discrimination, with high perceived similarity associated with poor discrimination. To investigate this hypothesis, college students made speeded same-different discriminations between 2 achromatic colors when they were contiguous and separated, did the same with 2 chromatic colors, and rated similarity. Compared with chromatic color, the separation for achromatic color impaired the performance on different stimuli more than on same stimuli with response bias controlled, which implied an increase in the perceived similarity of the discriminated stimuli, hurt overall performance, and elevated rated similarity. Thus, discrimination was more closely associated with 2 measures of perceived similarity than with distance and color, in support of the hypothesis.     

The name-pronunciation effect: Why people like Mr. Smith more than Mr. Colquhoun

Names are rich sources of information. They can signal gender, ethnicity, or class; they may connote personality characteristics ranging from warmth and cheerfulness to morality. But names also differ in a much more fundamental way: some are simply easier to pronounce than others. Five studies provide evidence for the name-pronunciation effect: easy-to-pronounce names (and their bearers) are judged more positively than difficult-to-pronounce names. Studies 1–3 demonstrate that people form more positive impressions of easy-to-pronounce names than of difficult-to-pronounce names. Study 4 finds this effect generalizable to ingroup targets. Study 5 highlights an important real-world implication of the name-pronunciation effect: people with easier-to-pronounce surnames occupy higher status positions in law firms. These effects obtain independent of name length, unusualness, typicality, foreignness, and orthographic regularity. This work demonstrates the potency of processing fluency in the information rich context of impression formation.     

Why some are perceived as more confident and more insecure, more reckless and more cautious, more trusting and more suspicious, than others: Enriched and impoverished options in social judgment

In line with the principle of compatibility, when making social judgments, people tend to focus on personality attributes compatible with the trait under consideration. Better known, orenriched, personages are more likely to present attributes that are compatible with a particular trait than are personages about whom little is known. As a result, enriched personages are more likely to have various, sometimes even conflicting, traits attributed to them. This hypothesis is supported by a number of studies that compare the frequency with which some people are chosen as being better described by opposite trait adjectives than are others. Celebrities more often have both of a pair of opposing adjectives ascribed to them than do less well known figures. Similarly, subjects judge themselves to be better described by either of a pair of opposite adjectives than is a person who is relatively unknown in their lives. The implications for social judgment and for everyday decisions are discussed.     

Retrieval of concrete words involves more contextual information than abstract words: multiple components for the concreteness effect

The current study used the directed forgetting paradigm in implicit and explicit memory to investigate the concreteness effect. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded to explore the neural basis of this phenomenon. The behavioral results showed a clear concreteness effect in both implicit and explicit memory tests; participants responded significantly faster to concrete words than to abstract words. The ERP results revealed a concreteness effect (N400) in both the encoding and retrieval phases. In addition, behavioral and ERP results showed an interaction between word concreteness and memory instruction (to-be-forgotten vs. to-be-remembered) in the late epoch of the explicit retrieval phase, revealing a significant concreteness effect only under the to-be-remembered instruction condition. This concreteness effect was realized as an increased P600-like component in response to concrete words relative to abstract words, likely reflecting retrieval of contextual details. The time course of the concreteness effect suggests advantages of concrete words over abstract words due to greater contextual information.     

The Power of Prestige: Why Young Men Report Having more Sex Partners than Young Women

In a survey of 48 men and 61 women from a southwestern US college, the gender difference in reported number of sex partners was mediated by the degree to which individuals felt that men and women who had many sexual partners were prestigious. In addition, men cared about the quantity and quality of their sex partners more than women did and these two factors were also related to reported number of sexual partners. The gender difference in reported sex partners is not veridical; it can be accounted for with attitudinal measures related to status and sex that are more common in men than women. Results are discussed in terms of understanding biased reporting in young American men and women.     

Why some surprises are more surprising than others: Surprise as a metacognitive sense of explanatory difficulty

Early theories of surprise, including Darwin’s, argued that it was predominantly a basic emotion. Recently, theories have taken a more cognitive view of surprise, casting it as a process of “making sense of surprising events”. The current paper advances the view that the essence of this sense-making process is explanation; specifically, that people’s perception of surprise is a metacognitive estimate of the cognitive work involved in explaining an abnormal event. So, some surprises are more surprising because they are harder to explain. This proposal is tested in eight experiments that explore how (i) the contents of memory can influence surprise, (ii) different classes of scenarios can retrieve more/less relevant knowledge from memory to explain surprising outcomes, (iii) how partial explanations constrain the explanation process, reducing surprise, and (iv) how, overall, any factor that acts to increase the cognitive work in explaining a surprising event, results in higher levels of surprise (e.g., task demands to find three rather than one explanations). Across the present studies, using different materials, paradigms and measures, it is consistently and repeatedly found that the difficulty of explaining a surprising outcome is the best predictor for people’s perceptions of the surprisingness of events. Alternative accounts of these results are considered, as are future directions for this research.     

Bidirectional lexical-gustatory synesthesia

In developmental lexical–gustatory synesthesia, specific words (inducers) can trigger taste perceptions (concurrents) and these synesthetic associations are generally stable. We describe a case of multilingual lexical–gustatory synesthesia for whom some synesthesias were bidirectional as some tastes also triggered auditory word associations. Evoked concurrents could be gustatory but also tactile sensations. In addition to words and pseudowords, many voices were effective inducers, suggesting increased connections between cortical taste areas and both voice-selective and language-selective areas. Lasting changes in some evoked tastes occurred during childhood suggesting that some plasticity can be present after the initial learning of associations. Inducers were often linked to taste concurrents phonologically or semantically, but also through identifiable childhood episodes (persons or events). Several inducers were phonologically linked to episodic inducers suggesting a process of secondary acquisition for many inducers. Implications of these observations are discussed.     

Why night owls are more intelligent

The origin of values and preferences is an unresolved theoretical problem in social and behavioral sciences. The Savanna–IQ Interaction Hypothesis suggests that more intelligent individuals are more likely to acquire and espouse evolutionarily novel values and preferences than less intelligent individuals, but general intelligence has no effect on the acquisition and espousal of evolutionarily familiar values and preferences. Individuals can often choose their values and preferences even in the face of genetic predisposition. One example of such choice within genetic constraint is circadian rhythms. Survey of ethnographies of traditional societies suggests that nocturnal activities were probably rare in the ancestral environment, so the Hypothesis would predict that more intelligent individuals are more likely to be nocturnal than less intelligent individuals. The analysis of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) confirms the prediction.     

Concepts do more than categorize

Concepts underlie all higher-level cognitive processes. Until recently, the study of concepts has largely been the study of categorization. But categorization is only one conceptual function among several. We argue that concepts cannot be understood sufficiently through the study of categorization, or any other function, in isolation, for two important reasons. First, concepts serve multiple functions which interact to affect conceptual structure and processing. Second, studying a single function in isolation encourages one to see cognitive processes that are particular to each function, but discourages the discovery of processes that are common to multiple functions. For these two reasons, we suggest that concepts should instead be studied in the context of a system of interrelated functions.