Malinowski's influence on Wittgenstein on the matter of use in language

Language use in social contexts plays a central role in the thinking of philosophers and social scientists. Evidence is presented that suggests that the anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski influenced Ludwig Wittgenstein on the contexted use of language. It is also proposed that non-Western peoples have been a heuristic for Western thinkers on epistemological matters.     

Automaticity in reading and the Stroop task: testing the limits of involuntary word processing

We investigated the parameters of involuntary word reading in the Stroop task in 7 experiments. Experiments 1-4 varied response modality and the presence of congruent word trials in a test of the claim that presenting a Stroop color word with only one letter in the target color eliminates the Stroop effect. Experiments 5 and 6 addressed the roles of spatial attention and orthographic processing as possible mechanisms behind the reduction of Stroop effects with the single-letter format. Experiment 7 investigated the limits of involuntary reading under optimal conditions for selective processing of rectangular color patch targets. We found that the single-letter format reduced but never eliminated Stroop effects, spatial attention but not orthographic processing plays a role in the effect of the single-letter format, and word reading is not completely prevented even with austere presentation conditions. We conclude with a defense of the involuntariness criterion for automaticity in the Stroop task, particularly when word reading is viewed in the context of a skilled performance.     

Processing speed in the 1st year of life: a longitudinal study of preterm and full-term infants

Processing speed was assessed at 5, 7, and 12 months in full-term and preterm infants (birth-weight < 1,750 g). Speed was gauged directly in a new task by presenting infants with a series of paired faces, one that remained the same across trials and one that changed; trials continued until infants showed a consistent novelty preference. At all ages, preterms required about 20% more trials and 30% more time than full-terms to reach criterion. Among preterms, slower processing was associated with greater medical risk (e.g., respiratory distress syndrome). Developmental trajectories for speed (and attention) were similar for both groups. Thus, the deficits in processing speed previously found for preterms in childhood are already present in the 1st year of life.     

Targets' Awareness of Expectations and Behavioral Confirmation in Ongoing Interactions

Participants engaged in a getting-acquainted interaction over an intercom after one participant (the perceiver) was provided with a positive (extraverted) or relatively negative (introverted) expectation about the other participant (the target). After completing evaluations of each other and the interaction, participants interacted for a second time. Prior to this second interaction, however, targets were made aware of the perceivers' initial expectation, told that it had been confirmed by their own behavior, and given a randomly assigned attribution (either dispositional or situational) about the perceived cause of their confirmatory behavior. Results demonstrated that targets made aware of dispositionally attributed and relatively negative expectations were more likely to increase in expectation-disconfirming behavior, compared to targets made aware of situationally attributed and relatively negative expectations, who were themselves more likely to continue to confirm the expectations. Implications for the study of behavioral confirmation of expectations and other interpersonal processes are discussed.     

Effects of caffeine on performance of low intensity tasks

31 college age men and women who consume less than three caffeinated beverages per week agreed to participate as subjects in research on the effects of acute caffeine intake on low intensity task performance. All subjects performed two randomly administered test conditions: (1) caffeine (5 mg/kg) and (2) placebo on separate visits following an initial 1-hr. orientation visit. Subjects were administered the beverage 30 min. prior to performing 12 separate tests assessing basic mathematics, simple response, logical reasoning, hand-eye coordination, and spatial and assembly skills. The Spielberger State Anxiety test was administered immediately after consuming the test beverage and once again at posttest. Analysis showed that caffeine did not significantly affect performance on all tests with the exception of the peripheral awareness (hand-eye coordination) test on which performance was higher after ingesting caffeine. The placebo treatment produced no effect on state anxiety, which contrasted with a significant rise in anxiety after caffeine consumption. State anxiety values were significantly greater after caffeine treatment relative to the placebo at pretest, and this difference persisted at posttest. These results demonstrated that the dose of caffeine increased scores on state anxiety for individuals who consumed less than three caffeinated beverages weekly but had very little effect on performance of low intensity tasks, except for a hand-eye coordination test involving peripheral awareness. Perhaps longer continuous performance of more demanding tasks would be more sensitive.     

When rejection stings: how self-esteem constrains relationship-enhancement processes

Three experiments examined how needs for acceptance might constrain low versus high self-esteem people's capacity to protect their relationships in the face of difficulties. The authors led participants to believe that their partner perceived a problem in their relationship. They then measured perceptions of the partner's acceptance, partner enhancement, and closeness. Low but not high self-esteem participants read too much into problems, seeing them as a sign that their partner's affections and commitment might be waning. They then derogated their partner and reduced closeness. Being less sensitive to rejection, however, high self-esteem participants affirmed their partner in the face of threat. Ironically, chronic needs for acceptance may result in low self-esteem people seeing signs of rejection where none exist, needlessly weakening attachments.     

Effects of pyridoxine on dreaming: a preliminary study

The effect of pyridoxine (Vitamin B-6) on dreaming was investigated in a placebo, double-blind study to examine various claims that Vitamin B-6 increases dream vividness or the ability to recall dreams. 12 college students participated in all three treatment conditions, each of which involved ingesting either 100 mg B-6, 250 mg B-6, or a placebo prior to bedtime for a period of five consecutive days. The treatment conditions were completely counterbalanced and a two-day wash-out period occurred between the three five-day treatment blocks. Morning self-reports indicated a significant difference in dream-salience scores (this is a composite score containing measures on vividness, bizarreness, emotionality, and color) between the 250-mg condition and placebo over the first three days of each treatment. The data for dream salience suggests that Vitamin B-6 may act by increasing cortical arousal during periods of rapid eve movement (REM) sleep. An hypothesis is presented involving the role of B-6 in the conversion of tryptophan to serotonin. However, this first study needs to be replicated using the same procedures and also demonstrated in a sleep laboratory before the results can be considered certain.     

Age dissociates recency and lag recency effects in free recall

The temporal relations among word-list items exert a powerful influence on episodic memory retrieval. Two experiments were conducted with younger and older adults in which the age-related recall deficit was examined by using a decomposition method to the serial position curve, partitioning performance into (a) the probability of first recall, illustrating the recency effect, and (b) the conditional response probability, illustrating the lag recency effect (M. W. Howard & M. J. Kahana, 1999). Although the older adults initiated recall in the same manner in both immediate and delayed free recall, temporal proximity of study items (contiguity) exerted a much weaker influence on recall transitions in older adults. This finding suggests that an associative deficit may be an important contributor to older adults' well-known impairment in free recall.     

Learning nonlinearly separable categories by inference and classification

Previous research suggests that learning categories by classifying new instances highlights information that is useful for discriminating between categories. In contrast, learning categories by making predictive inferences focuses learners on an abstract summary of each category (e.g., the prototype). To test this characterization of classification and inference learning further, the authors evaluated the two learning procedures with nonlinearly separable categories. In contrast to previous research involving cohesive, linearly separable categories, the authors found that it is more difficult to learn nonlinearly separable categories by making inferences about features than it is to learn them by classifying instances. This finding reflects that the prototype of a nonlinearly separable category does not provide a good summary of the category members. The results from this study suggest that having a cohesive category structure is more important for inference than it is for classification.