On the self-serving function of social anxiety: shyness as a self-handicapping strategy

We tested the hypothesis that socially anxious or shy individuals use their anxiety symptoms as a strategy to control attributions made about their performances in social-evaluative settings (i.e., self-handicapping strategies). Specifically, we predicted that trait-socially anxious or shy persons would report more symptoms of social anxiety in an evaluative setting in which anxiety or shyness could serve as an excuse for poor performance than would individuals in (a) an evaluative setting in which shyness was precluded as an excuse or (b) a nonevaluative setting. Furthermore, we predicted that this self-protective pattern of symptom reporting would not occur for individuals who were not trait-socially anxious because these persons would not commonly use such symptoms as a self-handicapping strategy. Results supported these predictions for male subjects, but not for female subjects. Sex differences in the strategic use of shyness are discussed in relation to other research on sex differences in the etiology and correlates of social anxiety.     

Children's attention to stimulus components with variation in relative salience of components and degree of stimulus integration

A total of 400 children at ages 5, 9, and 12 years were given a component selection task with stimuli differing in color and shape. Relative salience of these two stimulus components was manipulated across subjects in two ways: the standard shapes and colors from previous studies were compared with standard shapes in fluorescent colors, and the latter materials were compared with nonsense shapes in fluorescent colors. While fluorescence of color had little effect, the replacement of standard shapes with nonsense figures caused attention to be redirected from shape to color as the primary cue for learning. This effect was more pronounced at age 9 than at age 5. Apparently there is a greater tendency for older than for younger children to withdraw attention from a normally dominant component such as shape, when it is advantageous to adopt another feature such as color as the primary functional cue. An additional variable was integration of components (color within shape vs color as background for shape). Integration produced generally greater attention to color but did not affect the general pattern of salience effects.     

Attitude polarization as a function of thought and reality constraints

It was suggested that thought changes cognitions to be more consistent with one's initial attitude direction and, therefore, results in attitude polarization. Specifically, it was predicted that polarization would be highest under thought with reality constraints absent, followed by thought with reality constraints present, followed by distration. During the first period of each of two trials, some of the 144 subjects were distracted from thinking about a preselected painting, others thought about the painting while viewing it, and others thought about it in its absence. Subjects were redistributed across the same three conditions for a second period. They then indicated their feelings about the painting. In the original study as well as a partial replication, females behaved as predicted: Thought with reality constraints absent produced the most polarization, followed by thought with reality constraints present, followed by distraction. In both the original study and the replication there was no systematic trend for the males. The theoretical implications of the female results and the sex differences were discussed.     

Influence of linguistic complexity,rate of presentation,and interphrase pause time on auditory-verbal comprehension of adult aphasic patients

Among the variables affecting comprehension of linguistic stimuli by aphasic subjects are syntactic complexity and processing time. Comprehension performance of 15 aphasic adults was studied while altering the rate of speech presentation and varying the pause time between the major phrases within sentences of increasing grammatical complexity.Simple Active Affirmative Declarative Sentences, Negative, and Passive sentences were presented (1) at the rate of 150 words per minute (wpm) with 1-sec interphrase pause time (IPT); (2) 150 wpm with no pauses; (3) 120 wpm with 1-sec IPT; (4) 120 wpm with no pauses added.Performance was seen to vary with increasing syntactical complexity and as a function of processing time. Greater comprehension was seen with active affirmative than negative; greater with passive affirmative than with active negative. Clinical implications are discussed. Subjects demonstrated greater comprehension when sentences were presented at slower than normal rate; addition of interphrase pause time intervals aided comprehension. Combining slower rate of presentation and IPT intervals provided greatest increase in auditory processing time and showed concomitant increase in comprehension performance.     

The cumulative semantic cost does not reflect lexical selection by competition

The cumulative semantic cost describes a phenomenon in which picture naming latencies increase monotonically with each additional within-category item that is named in a sequence of pictures. Here we test whether the cumulative semantic cost requires the assumption of lexical selection by competition. In Experiment 1 participants named a sequence of pictures, while in Experiment 2 participants named words instead of pictures, preceded by a gender marked determiner. We replicate the basic cumulative semantic cost with pictures (Exp. 1) and show that there is no cumulative semantic cost for word targets (Exp. 2). This pattern was replicated in Experiment 3 in which pictures and words were named along with their gender marked definite determiner, and were intermingled within the same experimental design. In addition, Experiment 3 showed that while picture naming induces a cumulative semantic cost for subsequently named words, word naming does not induce a cumulative semantic cost for subsequently named pictures. These findings suggest that the cumulative semantic cost arises prior to lexical selection and that the effect arises due to incremental changes to the connection weights between semantic and lexical representations.     

Sexual Priming, Gender Stereotyping, and Likelihood to Sexually Harass: Examining the Cognitive Effects of Playing a Sexually-Explicit Video Game

The present study examines the short-term cognitive effects of playing a sexually explicit video game with female “objectification” content on male players. Seventy-four male students from a university in California, U.S. participated in a laboratory experiment. They were randomly assigned to play either a sexually-explicit game or one of two control games. Participants’ cognitive accessibility to sexual and sexually objectifying thoughts was measured in a lexical decision task. A likelihood-to-sexually-harass scale was also administered. Results show that playing a video game with the theme of female “objectification” may prime thoughts related to sex, encourage men to view women as sex objects, and lead to self-reported tendencies to behave inappropriately towards women in social situations.     

Activity of wrist muscles elicited during imposed or voluntary movements about the elbow joint

To examine the coordination of muscles during multijoint movement, we compared the response of wrist muscles to perturbations about the elbow joint with their activation during a volitional elbow movement. The purpose was to test the following two predictions: (a) Responses can occur in muscles not stretched by the perturbation, as has been reported for other multijoint systems; and (b) the motor pattern in response to a perturbation mimics an opposing volitional motor pattern across the two joints. We recorded the electromyographic (EMG) activity of elbow and wrist muscles as well as the flexion/extension motions at the elbow and wrist joints during individual trials that either involved a response to a torque perturbation that extended the elbow or required volitional elbow flexion. The results of this study confirmed that responses were elicited in the nonstretched wrist muscles when the elbow joint was perturbed. The same motor sequence of elbow and wrist flexors was present for both the volitional and perturbation task (with the forearm supinated), regardless of whether the wrist joint was immobilized or freely moving. The findings suggest that the nervous system relies on the purposeful coupling of elbow and wrist flexors to counter the inertial effects during the unrestricted voluntary movement, even though the coupling does not appear to be purposeful during the perturbation or with the wrist immobilized. The coupling of elbow and wrist flexors, however, was not rigidly fixed, as evidenced by muscle onsets that adapted over repeated perturbation trials and a reversal of the wrist muscle activated (wrist extensor) when the forearm was pronated. Hence, the coupling of muscle activities can be modified quantitatively when not beneficial and can be altered qualitatively with different initial configurations of the arm.     

Two Dimensions of the Ethical Problems Related to Nanotechnology

The current literature on nanoethics focuses on a wide array of topics such as equity, privacy, military, environment, human enhancement, intellectual property, and security. The identification of those topics leads to the adoption of an ethical stance, which we call the in itself dimension. In this article we argue that even though it is correct to identify the areas where ethical problems are imperative to deal with (in itself dimension), it is a partial approach. This is because the in itself dimension pays no attention to another ethical stance; one that does not have anything to do with individual or collective responsibilities, but rather with the socio-economic system into which those responsibilities are embedded. We call this second issue the contextual dimension.     

Colorless green ideas (can) prime furiously

That similar words can prime one another is not news. However, this phenomenon can be exploited to make inferences about the organization of conceptual representations. What types of similarity matter? Although there is evidence that similarity of function, shape, and even manner of manipulation is reflected in semantic memory, evidence for organization on the basis of color similarity is sparse. This lack of evidence is surprising: Intuition suggests that color is a prominent feature of many object concepts. The research reported here clarifies this puzzle and illustrates the dynamic nature of conceptual representations. Our research demonstrates color-based priming (e.g., "emerald" primes "cucumber") in participants who completed a Stroop color-naming task before a priming task. Notably, the size of the Stroop effect predicted the size of the priming effect. When the order of tasks was reversed, priming effects were eliminated. By demonstrating that both extrinsic and intrinsic factors can influence conceptual activation, our findings have implications for theories of semantic memory.