Children’s Toy Collections in Sweden—A Less Gender-Typed Country?

The aim of this study was to describe and analyze differences between girls and boys toy collections in a country that strongly emphasizes gender equality (Sweden). The study was based on the assumptions that toy collections reflect social values in the society where they are found and that Sweden has less gendered values than do many other countries. The toy collections of 152 3- and 5-year old Swedish children were inventoried, and the results were analyzed and discussed in relation to previous research on childrens toy collections and toy preferences in North America and Western Europe. The Swedish toy collections were found to be gender-typed in ways similar to those reported in previous research in other countries.     

Immediate and sustained effects of planning in a problem-solving task

In 4 experiments, instructions to plan a task (water jugs) that normally produces little planning altered how participants solved the problems and resulted in enhanced learning and memory. Experiment 1 identified planning strategies that allowed participants to plan full solutions to water jugs problems. Experiment 2 showed that experience with planning led to better solutions even after planning was no longer required, whereas control participants showed little improvement. Experiments 3 and 4 showed that although the most recent planned solution could be recalled following a long filled retention interval, retroactive interference (RI) between successive problems resulted in much lower recall of earlier solutions. RI during plan generation could also explain participants' choice of depth-first planning strategies.     

Repeated Interrogations –Stretching the Deception Detection Paradigm

In real life, suspects are often subjected to repeatedinterrogations. Psycho-legal research on deception has neglectedthis fact. To remedy this mismatch a series of studies wasconducted mapping how repeated interrogations affectlie-catchers' judgemental processes, deception detectionperformance, and meta-assessments. In two experiments we foundthat lie-catchers given access to consecutive statements from onesuspect did not perform better than lie-catchers given access toone statement only. In addition, access to repeatedinterrogations inflated the lie-catchers' confidence in thecorrectness of their veracity judgement, which had a detrimentaleffect on the accuracy-confidence relation. As the basis forassessing veracity was changed from one to several statements thelie-catchers, to a large extent, seemed to trust the `consistencyheuristic'. The assumption underlying this heuristic is thatinconsistency implies deception and consistency implies truth.The data show that (a) people tend to disagree as to whether aparticular set of consecutive statements is consistent or not,and (b) deceptive statements are at least equally consistent astruthful statements. In order to explain the latter finding a`repeat vs. reconstruct' hypothesis was suggested, assuming thatliars try to repeat their initial statement, whereastruth-tellers try to reconstruct a previously experienced event.The low predictive accuracy found for the `consistency heuristic'strongly questions beliefs held by professional lie-catchers,opinions expressed in the psycho-legal literature andrecommendations found in applied interrogation manuals.     

Improving the encoding of verbal reports by using MPAS: A computer-aided encoding system

The dramatically increased use of verbal report methodologies in psychological research has created a need for new tools to improve the efficiency and reliability of encoding these data. A computer-aided protocol encoding system called MPAS (Multiple Protocol Analysis System) presents individual protocol segments in a randomised order to one or more coders and then stores computer keyboard-entered codes for later output to an SPSS formatted data file. In the present paper, MPAS is described, and a brief example is provided of how MPAS can be used in a con-trolled laboratory study to rigorously analyze verbal protocol data.     

Realism of confidence in sensory discrimination: The underconfidence phenomenon

This paper documents a very pervasive underconfidence bias in the area of sensory discrimination. In order to account for this phenomenon, a subjective distance theory of confidence in sensory discrimination is proposed. This theory, based on the law of comparative judgment and the assumption of confidence as an increasing function of the perceived distance between stimuli, predicts underconfidence—that is, that people should perform better than they express in their confidence assessments. Due to the fixed sensitivity of the sensory system, this underconfidence bias is practically impossible to avoid. The results of Experiment 1 confirmed the prediction of underconfidence with the help of present-day calibration methods and indkated-a-good quantitative fit of the theory. The results of Experiment 2 showed that prolonged experience of outcome feedback (160 trials) had no effect on underconfidence. It is concluded that the subjective distance theory provides a better explanation of the underconfidence phenomenon than-do previous accounts in terms of subconscious processes.     

Effects of reiteration,hindsight bias,and memory on realism in eyewitness confidence

This study investigated the effects of repetition, memory, feedback, and hindsight bias on the realism in confidence in answers to questions on a filmed kidnapping. In Experiment 1 the participants showed overconfidence in all conditions. In the Repeat condition (‘how confident are you now that your previous answers are correct’) overconfidence was reduced as a consequence of the decrease in confidence in both correct and incorrect answers compared with the Repeat condition when the participants received feedback on their answers and were asked to remember their initial confidence, the confidence level was higher for correct and lower for incorrect answers. In Experiment 2, recalled confidence (the Memory condition) increased compared with the original confidence both for correct and incorrect answers; the effect of this was increased overconfidence. The Hindsight condition showed a decrease in confidence in incorrect answers. The results suggest that a unique hindsight effect may be more clearly present for incorrect than for correct answers. Our study gives further evidence for the malleability of the realism in eyewitness confidence and we discuss both the theoretical and forensic implications of our findings. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Individual variable pay for performance,controlling effects,and intrinsic motivation

Motivation and Emotion - A core question in research on compensation and motivation is whether individual variable pay for performance (IVPFP) can undermine intrinsic motivation in the workplace....     

Maternal postpartum depression is a risk factor for infant emotional variability at 4 months

Maternal postpartum depression (PPD) is a risk for disruption of mother–infant interaction. Infants of depressed mothers have been found to display less positive, more negative, and neutral affect. Other studies have found that infants of mothers with PPD inhibit both positive and negative affect. In a sample of 28 infants of mothers with PPD and 52 infants of nonclinical mothers, we examined the role of PPD diagnosis and symptoms for infants’ emotional variability, measured as facial expressions, vocal protest, and gaze using microanalysis, during a mother–infant face-to-face interaction. PPD symptoms and diagnosis were associated with (a) infants displaying fewer high negative, but more neutral/interest facial affect events, and (b) fewer gaze off events.  PPD diagnosis, but not symptoms, was associated with less infant vocal protest. Total duration of seconds of infant facial affective displays and gaze off was not related to PPD diagnosis or symptoms, suggesting that when infants of depressed mothers display high negative facial affect or gaze off, these expressions are more sustained, indicating lower infant ability to calm down and re-engage, interpreted as a disturbance in self-regulation. The findings highlight the importance of not only examining durations, but also frequencies, as the latter may inform infant emotional variability.     

Subjectivity in parent-infant relationships: A discussion of internal working models

Bowlby (1969/1982, 1973, 1980) has proposed that internal working models of self and other are psychic structures that guide an individual's subjective experience of and responses to others in important relationships. They are termed “working” models because they are believed to be dynamic mental representations that are modifiable, although they are presumed to become more resistant to change after the early years. This paper reviews Bowlby's construct of internal working models, including some recent empirical evidence usefully explained by the construct. The authors apply the construct of working models to parents' subjective experiences of their infants and review some preliminary evidence that suggests that parental working models of their infants are present even prior to the infants' birth and influence the parents' perception and interpretation of the infants' characteristics and behaviors. The authors then consider the development of infants' working models of self and other in the context of parental attributions. They conclude that subjectivity in parent-infant relationships is an exciting and promising area for investigation, although, at present, future progress is limited by problems of measurement. A brief discussion of directions for future research is included.     

Preparedness for action: responding to the snake in the grass

A visual search study by Ohman, Flykt, and Esteves (2001) found shorter reaction times to snake and spider targets than to flower and mushroom targets. The present study investigated whether preparation for action in response to potential threats could explain this difference. In this study 2 main changes were made to the paradigm. All possible combinations of target and distractors were used to disentangle the effects of targets and distractors, and the responses were withheld until after detection. The results suggest that the shorter reaction times to snakes and spiders than to flowers and mushrooms resulted from preparation for faster action in response to potential threats than to nonthreats.