On Cognition,Need, and Action: How Working Memory and Need for Cognition Influence Leisure Activities

The present study examined the relationships among college students' need for cognition (NFC), their working memory capacity, and their preferred leisure activities. Results indicated that scoring higher on the NFC scale was related to participants engaging in cognitively higher load leisure activities (e.g., writing) than lower load leisure activities (e.g., watching TV). We did not find a relationship between participants' cognitive ability (as measured by an attentional capacity task) and their choice of leisure activities. In sum, personal dispositions contributed to the choice and complexity of people's leisure activities, whereas cognitive ability did not. These findings provide a theoretical framework for further exploring the relationships between disposition, cognition, and action. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The contribution of familiarity to within- and between-domain associative recognition memory: Use of a modified remember/know procedure

The purpose of the present study was to determine the extent to which familiarity can support associative recognition memory as a function of whether the associations are within- or between-domain. Standard recognition and familiarity only performance were compared in different participants, using a new adaptation of the remember/know procedure. The results indicated that within-domain (face–face) associative recognition was mainly supported by familiarity. In contrast, familiarity provided relatively poor support to between-domain (face–name) associative recognition for which optimal performance required a major recollection contribution. These findings suggest that familiarity can support associative recognition memory, particularly for within-domain associations, and contrast with the widely held view that associative recognition depends largely on recollection.     

GENDER, JEALOUSY, AND REASON

Abstract— Research has suggested that men are especially bothered by evidence of their partner's sexual infidelity, whereas women are troubled more by evidence of emotional infidelity. One evolutionary account (Buss, Larsen, Westen, & Semmelroth, 1992) argues that this is an innate difference, arising from men's need for paternity certainty and women's need for male investment in their offspring. We suggest that the difference may instead be based on reasonable differences between the sexes in how they interpret evidence of infidelity. A man, thinking that women have sex only when in love, has reason to believe that if his mate has sex with another man, she is in love with that other. A woman, thinking that men can have sex without love, should still be bothered by sexual infidelity, but less so because it does not imply that her mate has fallen in love as well. A survey of 137 subjects confirmed that men and women do differ in the predicted direction in how much they think each form of infidelity implies the other, proposing innate emotional differences may, therefore, be gratuitous.     

Luther’s Trinitarian Hermeneutic and the Old Testament

In this study, the author shows that Luther’s trinitarian understanding is shaped by the royal Psalms’ dialogical model as well as informed by a hermeneutics that moors a trinitarian semantics in the Hebrew text of the Old Testament. The analysis concentrates on Luther’s translation into German of two Hebrew names for God and of passages classically associated with the trinitarian doctrine (Psalm 110:1; Psalm 2:2.12). The result is a trinitarian structure of transparency. The text’s syntax, narrative and direct speech mirror literally the transparency of the divine essence through the distinguishing characteristics of each trinitarian person.     

Putting Everything in Context

In response to Casasanto, Brookshire, and Ivry (2015), we address four points: First, we engaged in conceptual replications of Brookshire, Casasanto, and Ivry (2010), not direct replications. Second, we did not question the validity of Brookshire et al.'s (2010) results, nor the similar findings of other researchers, but instead explained divergent findings within an integrated theoretical framework. Third, challenges to the construct of automaticity, including ours, were widespread, long before Brookshire et al.'s (2010) article. Fourth, the planned comparisons that we reported tested our theoretical claims and offered strong evidence for them.