Retrieval from memory: vulnerable or inviolable?

We show that retrieval from semantic memory is vulnerable even to the mere presence of speech. Irrelevant speech impairs semantic fluency--namely, lexical retrieval cued by a semantic category name--but only if it is meaningful (forward speech compared to reversed speech or words compared to nonwords). Moreover, speech related semantically to the retrieval category is more disruptive than unrelated speech. That phonemic fluency--in which participants are cued with the first letter of words they are to report--was not disrupted by the mere presence of meaningful speech, only by speech in a related phonemic category, suggests that distraction is not mediated by executive processing load. The pattern of sensitivity to different properties of sound as a function of the type of retrieval cue is in line with an interference-by-process approach to auditory distraction.     

Broken expectations: violation of expectancies, not novelty, captures auditory attention

The role of memory in behavioral distraction by auditory attentional capture was investigated: We examined whether capture is a product of the novelty of the capturing event (i.e., the absence of a recent memory for the event) or its violation of learned expectancies on the basis of a memory for an event structure. Attentional capture-indicated by disruption of a focal visually presented serial recall task-was found when the voice conveying a concurrent irrelevant auditory sequence changed every 5 recall trials (from male to female or vice versa). There was no evidence of attentional capture when the irrelevant sequence was first encountered and hence novel; capture occurred only when an expectation for a particular voice had been learned and then violated. Furthermore, with the increasing predictability of (and hence expectancy for) the voice changes across the experimental session, the capture response diminished only to be reinstated when that session-wide expectation was itself violated by a break in the change-every-5-trials pattern. The results highlight the critical role of learned expectations, as opposed to novelty detection, in behavioral auditory attentional capture.     

Dimensional and Cross‐Cutting Assessment in the DSM‐5

A significant proposed change to the 5th edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM‐5) that will significantly affect the way counselors diagnose mental disorders is the addition of dimensional assessments to the categorical diagnoses. The author reviews the current DSM's (4th ed., text rev.; American Psychiatric Association, 2000 ) categorical classification system, describes the proposed dimensional and cross‐cutting assessments, and provides implications about clinical utility and user acceptability of a dimensional diagnostic approach.     

Individual differences in women's perceptions of other women's dominance

Recent research on men's dominance perception suggests that the extent to which men perceive masculine men to be more dominant than relatively feminine men is negatively correlated with measures of their own dominance. In the current studies, we investigated the relationship between indices of women's own dominance and their perceptions of other women's facial dominance. Women's own height and scores on a dominance questionnaire were negatively correlated with the extent to which they perceived masculine women to be more dominant than relatively feminine women. In follow‐up studies, we observed similar individual differences when (i) women separately judged other women's social and physical dominance, suggesting that individual differences in women's dominance perceptions generalize across two different types of dominance judgment and (ii) we assessed the perceivers' dominance indirectly by using a questionnaire that measures the extent to which women view interactions with other women in competitive terms. These findings present new evidence that the extent to which people perceive masculine individuals to be more dominant than relatively feminine individuals is negatively correlated with measures of their own dominance and suggest that competition and conflict among women may have shaped individual differences in women's dominance perception. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Adolescent Sexual Risk-Taking in the Informal Settlements of Nairobi, Kenya: Understanding the Contributions of Religion

Young people in sub-Saharan Africa are at the centre of the global HIV epidemic as they account for a disproportionate share of new infections. Their vulnerability to HIV has been attributed to a myriad of factors, in particular, risky sexual behaviours. While economic factors are important, increasing attention has been devoted to religion on the discourse on sexual decision-making because religious values provide a perspective on life that often conflicts with risky sexual behaviours. Given the centrality of religion in the African social fabric, this study assesses the relationship between adolescent religiousness and involvement in risky sexual behaviours using data from the informal settlements of Nairobi. Guided by social control theory, the paper explores if and how religion and religiosity affect sexual risk-taking among adolescents.     

The dynamics of search,impasse, and representational change provide a coherent explanation of difficulty in the nine-dot problem

The nine-dot problem is often used to demonstrate and explain mental impasse, creativity, and out of the box thinking. The present study investigated the interplay of a restricted initial search space, the likelihood of invoking a representational change, and the subsequent constraining of an unrestricted search space. In three experimental conditions, participants worked on different versions of the nine-dot problem that hinted at removing particular sources of difficulty from the standard problem. The hints were incremental such that the first suggested a possible route for a solution attempt; the second additionally indicated the dot at which lines meet on the solution path; and the final condition also provided non-dot locations that appear in the solution path. The results showed that in the experimental conditions, representational change is encountered more quickly and problems are solved more often than for the control group. We propose a cognitive model that focuses on general problem-solving heuristics and representational change to explain problem difficulty.