Averting the gaze disengages the environment and facilitates remembering

When people are asked moderately difficult questions, they often avert their gazes. We report five experiments in which we documented this phenomenon. They demonstrate that (1) the frequency of gaze aversion is related to the difficulty of cognitive processing, (2) this behavior cannot be due solely to demand characteristics or embarrassment, and (3) the behavior is functional: Averting the gaze improves performance. We speculate that averting the gaze helps people to disengage from environmental stimulation and thereby enhances the efficiency of cognitive processing directed by nonenvironmental stimulation.     

Dyadic Duration and the Performance-Satisfaction Relationship: A Contextual Perspective 1

This study examined dyadic duration as a contextual variable affecting the relationship between subordinate performance and job satisfaction. Dyadic duration, the length of time a subordinate has been directed by the same immediate superior, was expected to enhance the performance-satisfaction relationship in dyads of shorter duration and neutralize this relationship in dyads of longer duration. As anticipated, in shorter duration dyads, performance was found to be positively associated with satisfaction with the nature of work, characteristics of supervision, and characteristics of coworkers. For dyads of longer duration, an unexpected inverse relationship was found between performance and all of these same variables. Overall, these results suggest that considering dyadic duration as a contextual variable offers a unique perspective on the relationship between subordinates' performance and job satisfaction.     

Moral Questions and Amoral Answers: Who Decides?

ABSTRACT Researchers have examined moral thought using selected philosophical standards without showing that such standards represent moral thinking. Recently, we examined the extent to which assumed standards actually organize moral knowledge (Quinn, Houts, & Graesser, this issue). We found dimensions not accounted for by previous theories. In his response (this issue), Shaffer misrepresents the aims of our research, and he overlooks the implications of assessing naturalistic rather than prescribed dimensions of morality.     

Reducing interference in forgetting

According to interference theories forgetting results from the intervention of extraneous associations which disturb the patterns built up during learning. It also seems that the period immediately following learning is critical for forgetting. The experiment which is described was carried out to investigate whether administration of the central-depressant drug nitrous oxide immediately after learning would reduce forgetting, since it had been shown to impair the formation of associations and ought therefore to reduce interference. This expectation was borne out, significantly less forgetting occurring when nitrous oxide was given than when air was given. A possible physiological basis, relating these results to those for sleep is discussed.     

Spectral sensitivity of the Sooty mangabey

Purkinje shift and scotopic and photopic spectral sensitivity functions were determined for four Sooty mangabeys and five human controls using a flicker technique in a four-choice discrete trials task. Results-indicate a Purkinje shift similar in magnitude and frequency locus to that of human controls. Scotopic spectral sensitivity was almost identical to that of human controls, although both species showed reduced sensitivity relative to the standard CIE function, -at short wavelengths. Photopic spectral sensitivity disclosed enhanced sensitivity in the blue and reduced sensitivity (0.3–0.4 log units) in the red relative to human controls.     

Serial rote-learning: Incremental or all-or-none?

If the associative connections in a serial list are acquired in an all-or-none fashion, rather than gradually with every trial adding an increment of associative strength, then changing the serial order of the middle items in the list during the course of practice should have no effect on the rate of learning the list as a whole or even of the particular items that have been interchanged. Thirty subjects learned a serial list by the anticipation method. The middle items of the list were reversed in serial order approximately half-way through the number of trials required for mastery. The subjects took no longer to learn the list and made no more errors than did 30 control subjects for whom there was no change in serial order. The serial-position curves of the two groups were almost identical. It was also shown that the learning “curves” of single items in the series, when plotted for individual subjects do not reveal a gradually increasing probability of the correct response, but show instead a sudden jump on one trial from the chance guessing level to a level close to 100 per cent, correct responses. The results are consistent with a non-incremental theory of serial learning.     

The testing environment as an explanation for unproctored internet‐based testing device‐type effects

Device‐type effects on cognitive tests appear to covary with whether unproctored internet‐based test (UIT) scores were obtained operationally or nonoperationally. The present study examined whether the testing environment and distractions therein—one of three contextual factors identified as plausible explanations—accounts for this covariation. Four‐hundred and twenty‐five college students were randomly assigned to one of three conditions which differed by the testing environment and device used to complete a cognitive test. Test scores did not differ between conditions despite greater distractions reported by those who tested in the distracting environment. Results were replicated within‐study, and suggest that the self‐selection and testing‐stakes hypotheses warrant subsequent empirical examination as explanations for the differences in device‐type effects observed in operational and nonoperational settings.     

Simple Co‐Occurrence Statistics Reproducibly Predict Association Ratings

What determines human ratings of association? We planned this paper as a test for association strength (AS) that is derived from the log likelihood that two words co‐occur significantly more often together in sentences than is expected from their single word frequencies. We also investigated the moderately correlated interactions of word frequency, emotional valence, arousal, and imageability of both words (r's ≤ .3). In three studies, linear mixed effects models revealed that AS and valence reproducibly account for variance in the human ratings. To understand further correlated predictors, we conducted a hierarchical cluster analysis and examined the predictors of four clusters in competitive analyses: Only AS and word2vec skip‐gram cosine distances reproducibly accounted for variance in all three studies. The other predictors of the first cluster (number of common associates, (positive) point‐wise mutual information, and word2vec CBOW cosine) did not reproducibly explain further variance. The same was true for the second cluster (word frequency and arousal); the third cluster (emotional valence and imageability); and the fourth cluster (consisting of joint frequency only). Finally, we discuss emotional valence as an important dimension of semantic space. Our results suggest that a simple definition of syntagmatic word contiguity (AS) and a paradigmatic measure of semantic similarity (skip‐gram cosine) provide the most general performance‐independent explanation of association ratings.