Associative priming and conflict differentially affect two processes underlying cognitive control: Evidence from reaching behavior

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review - Previous research has indicated that two components of reaching behavior, initiation time and reach curvature, exhibit distinct patterns of trial sequence...     

The Effects of Alcohol Use and Offender Remorsefulness on Sentencing Decisions1

Presentence reports on 628 offenders were content analyzed. Regression analysis found that remorseful offenders received less severe sentences than non-remorseful offenders. Offenders convicted of minor offenses received more lenient sentences if they had used alcohol in conjunction with their crimes than if they did not use alcohol. The opposite was the case for offenders commiting serious crimes. Remorseful offenders with few prior alcohol-related convictions received less severe sanctioning than non-remorseful offenders with similar conviction records. In contrast, recidivists who were remorseful were dealt with more harshly than their non-remorseful counterparts.     

A biopsychosocial model for treating infertility

With approximately one out of six married couples experiencing infertility, having a basic knowledge of infertility is important to marriage and family therapists. This paper presents important themes that infertile couples often struggle with and stresses the importance of having a biological, psychological, and social understanding of infertility. In addition, the paper suggests possible interventions that family therapists can use in helping infertile couples.     

Text-contingent color aftereffects: A reexamination

Five experiments reexamined color aftereffects contingent on the semantic properties of text (Allan, Siegel, Collins, & MacQueen, 1989). The influence of different assessment techniques and the effect of eye movements and overlapping contour information on the induction of color aftereffects by word and nonword letter strings were determined. Experiment 1 showed that no aftereffect was found when a traditional method of assessing color aftereffects was used. Experiments 2 and 4 demonstrated color aftereffects forboth words and nonwords, but only when subjects fixated the same locus during induction and testing and only when assessed with the technique described by Allan et al. (1989). If, however, eye movements were made during induction, no color aftereffect was obtained (Experiment 3). Induction to nontext patterns with properties similar to those of text but with fewer overlapping contours resulted in a strong color aftereffect (Experiment 5). These results suggest that the color aftereffect contingent on text is very weak and is not dependent on semantic factors, but that it is a product of induction to local color and orientation information.