Gender bias in fame judgments: Implicit gender stereotyping or matching study phase fame?

Familiarized names are falsely judgedfamous more often than nonfamiliarized names. Banaji and Greenwald (1995) demonstrated a gender bias in thisfalse fame effect, with the effect being larger for male than for female names. This effect was interpreted as reflecting the operation of a gender stereotype. However, the famous male names were, in fact, better known than the famous female names. Thus, the presence of more famous male names during study may have contributed to the observed male-famous association. If so, there should be no gender bias if the studied famous male and female names are equally famous, and a reversed gender bias should emerge if the famous female names are more famous than the male names. In two experiments, these predictions were corroborated. A “classical” gender bias was found only when the famous males were more famous than the famous females. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that the gender bias in fame judgments, rather than showing implicit gender stereotyping in the sense of a transsituational judgment bias, reflects the fact that, in test, participants select a proportion of fame judgments to male and female names so that it matches the relative degree of fame of male and female names encountered during study.     

The relations of problem behavior status to children's negative emotionality, effortful control, and impulsivity: concurrent relations and prediction of change

The relations of children's internalizing and externalizing problem behaviors to their concurrent regulation, impulsivity (reactive undercontrol), anger, sadness, and fearfulness and these aspects of functioning 2 years prior were examined. Parents and teachers completed measures of children's (N = 185; ages 6 through 9 years) adjustment, negative emotionality, regulation, and behavior control; behavioral measures of regulation also were obtained. In general, both internalizing and externalizing problems were associated with negative emotionality. Externalizers were low in effortful regulation and high in impulsivity, whereas internalizers, compared with nondisordered children, were low in impulsivity but not effortful control. Moreover, indices of negative emotionality, regulation, and impulsivity with the level of the same variables 2 years before controlled predicted stability versus change in problem behavior status.     

Development of attentional and oculomotor control

The present study was conducted to examine the development of attentional and oculomotor control. More specifically, the authors were interested in the development of the ability to inhibit an incorrect but prepotent response to a salient distractor. Participants, who ranged in age from 8 to 25 years, performed 3 different eye movement tasks: a prosaccade, an antisaccade, and an oculomotor capture task. The time required to initiate a saccade decreased with age across all 3 tasks. Consistent with previous reports, accuracy was relatively age invariant in the prosaccade task. Performance improved with age, asymptoting at 16 years in the antisaccade task. It is interesting to note that despite the superficial similarity of the antisaccade and oculomotor capture tasks, performance was relatively age invariant in the latter. These results are discussed in terms of developmental differences in the interaction of goal-directed and stimulus-driven processes in the control of attention and action.     

Temporal ventriloquism: sound modulates the flash-lag effect

A sound presented in close temporal proximity to a visual stimulus can alter the perceived temporal dimensions of the visual stimulus (temporal ventriloquism). In this article, the authors demonstrate temporal ventriloquism in the flash-lag effect (FLE), a visual illusion in which a flash appears to lag relative to a moving object. In Experiment 1, the magnitude and the variability of the FLE were reduced, relative to a silent condition, when a noise burst was synchronized with the flash. In Experiment 2, the sound was presented before, at, or after the flash (+/- approximately 100 ms), and the size of the FLE varied linearly with the delay of the sound. These findings demonstrate that an isolated sound can sharpen the temporal boundaries of a flash and attract its temporal occurrence.     

Destruktivität in Paarbeziehungen

Quarreling couples caught in destructive patterns of communication often cause difficult situations during couple therapy. Such communication patterns range from pure verbal humiliation and insults up to outbursts of violence. In order to remain capable of therapy, psychotherapists must know the underlying mechanisms that provoke and maintain the destructive viscious circles. Moreover, they must have at their disposal the required explanatory ideas and practical intervention strategies for de-escalation and interruption of these destructive patterns.     

The use of the placebo effect in clinical medicine — ethical blunder or ethical imperative?

The current debate in medical ethics on placebos focuses mainly on their use in health research. Whereas this is certainly an important topic the discussion tends to overlook another longstanding but nevertheless highly relevant question, namely if and how the placebo effect should be employed in clinical practice. This paper describes the way the placebo effect is perceived in modern medicine and offers some historical reflections on how these perceptions have developed; discusses elements of a definition of the placebo effect; and suggests some conditions under which making use of the therapeutic potential of the placebo effect can be ethically acceptable, if not warranted. An earlier version of this paper was presented at an international conference, “Placebo: Its Action and Place in Health Research Today,” held in Warsaw, Poland on 12–13 April, 2003. Nikola Biller-Andorno, MD, PhD, is Assistant Professor in the Dept. of Medical Ethics and History of Medicine, University of Goettingen, Germany. Dr. Biller-Andorno also serves as an ethicist for the World Health Organization (WHO). This paper does not necessarily reflect the views of the World Health Organization.     

Effect of visual experience on face processing: a developmental study of inversion and non-native effects

In adults, three phenomena are taken to demonstrate an experience effect on face recognition: an inversion effect, a non-native face effect (so-called 'other-race' effect) and their interaction. It is crucial for our understanding of the developmental perception mechanisms of object processing to discover when these effects are present in childhood. Three- to 5-year-old Caucasian children (N = 64) were asked to recognize upright and inverted Caucasian and Asian faces. Recognition was tested with a forced-choice procedure. Overall performance improved with age. However, there was an interaction between the inversion and non-native effects that did not change with age between ages 3 and 5: (a) the inversion effect with native (Caucasian) faces was larger than with non-native (Asian) faces, and (b) upright native faces were recognized better than upright non-native faces. These results show that face orientation and morphology constrain face processing in 3- to 5-year-olds. The first 3 years of life during which the brain and the environment interact are sufficient to build a face-processing system that constrains recognition.