Deleterious effects of alcohol intoxication: diminished cognitive control and its behavioral consequences

The authors tested the hypothesis that impaired behavioral performance during intoxication results partly from alcohol's deleterious effects on cognitive control. The impact of alcohol on perseverative behavior was examined with an n-back working memory task that included manipulations of task complexity and prepotency of inclinations to respond or withhold responding. Thirty-two social drinkers (16 men) participated in either an alcohol (.075g/100ml) or a no-alcohol condition. Alcohol increased perseveration of prepotent, task-inappropriate response patterns only under cognitively demanding (heavy memory load) conditions. This effect was evident for both commission errors (response persistence despite contingencies altered to require restraint) and omission errors (failure to respond when contingencies were revised to encourage action). Findings suggested that alcohol-induced perseveration arises from impairments in cognitive control.     

Investigating the encoding and retrieval of intentions with event-related potentials

Strong evidence exists in the literature that remembering to complete intentions involves executive processing subserved by the frontal lobes. Event-related potentials were measured during the encoding of actions with the intention to perform versus more neutral material about which there was no such intentionality. Event-related potentials were also measured in a two-alternative discrimination task requiring identification of the to-be-performed actions and to-be-memorized actions. The results suggest that formation and retrieval of intentions differs from encoding and retrieval of similar material committed to memory. Additionally, the results suggest that right frontal areas may play an important role in the formation of prospective actions and that intentions are kept active in memory by processing mediated by the left frontal pole.     

Theory of planned behaviour and parasuicide: An exploratory study

Recent evidence suggests that parasuicide (deliberate self-harm) should be considered in terms of ‘normal’ rather than ‘abnormal’ behaviour. This study aimed to address this assertion by applying a social cognition model, for the first time, to parasuicidal behaviour. An extended theory of planned behaviour (TPB) model was tested on 55 individuals drawn from hospital and non-hospital populations. Thirty-eight percent of the sample (n=21) reported a history of deliberate self-harm. Findings supported the utility of the TPB: attitudes, subjective norm, self-efficacy, moral norm and anticipated affect discriminated significantly between those with and without a history of parasuicide. The extended TPB explained more than 50% of the variance associated with intentions to deliberately self-harm. These findings have considerable theoretical and practical implications for intervention. Future research should investigate the utility of the TPB employed within a prospective framework.     

Reactions to gay men: Contact and overcorrection in an employee selection simulation

The current study examines the role of contact on reactions to gay and heterosexual targets by U.S. heterosexual college students. Aversive bias research finds that minority group members receive unfavorable evaluations only when non-category-based information justifies bias. We argue that under other conditions, namely absence of conditions justifying bias, minority group members receive more favorable evaluations than non-minorities, an effect we term overcorrection. We apply this research to the study of attitudes toward gay men. The current study examines this effect on evaluations of a highly qualified male job candidate who is either gay or heterosexual and flawed or not flawed. We predicted and found, among 180 college students, that the overcorrection effect was present only for those individuals who have experienced no friendships with gay men. Those individuals who do have gay male friends did not exhibit overcorrection. We interpret this result as an indication that individuals who have gay friends (contact) ignore category information such as gay/ heterosexual and are more likely to exhibit truly egalitarian ratings. Implications for aversive bias and outgroup covariation perspectives are discussed. We presented portions of this paper at the 2000 Western Psychological Association conference, Maui, HI.     

Team learning: collectively connecting the dots

This article tests the degree to which personal and situational variables impact the acquisition of knowledge and skill within interactive project teams. On the basis of the literature regarding attentional capacity, constructive controversy, and truth-supported wins, the authors examined the effects of cognitive ability, workload distribution, Agreeableness, Openness to Experience, and structure on team learning. Results from 109 four-person project teams working on an interdependent command and control simulator indicated that teams learned more when composed of individuals who were high in cognitive ability and when the workload was distributed evenly. Conversely, team learning was negatively affected when teams were composed of individuals who were high in Agreeableness. Finally, teams using a paired structure learned more than teams structured either functionally or divisionally. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed, as well as possible limitations and directions for future research.     

Target detection and localization in visual search: a dual systems perspective

The dual visual systems framework (Milner & Goodale, 1995) was used to explore target detection and localization in visual search. Observers searched for a small patch of tilted bars against a dense background of upright bars. Target detection was performed along with two different localization tasks: direct pointing, designed to engage the dorsal stream, and indirect pointing, designed to engage the ventral stream. The results indicated that (1) target detection was influenced more by orientation differences in 3-D space than by 2-D pictorial differences, (2) target localization was more accurate for direct than for indirect pointing, and (3) there were performance costs for indirect localization when it followed target detection, but not for direct localization. This is consistent with direct localization's having greater dependence on the dorsal visual system than either target detection or indirect localization.     

The theory of uncertainty orientation: a mathematical reformulation

In this paper, we present a mathematical formulation derived from the theory of uncertainty orientation (In R.M. Sorrehtino, & E.T. Higgins (Eds.), the handbook of motivation and cognition: Foundations of social behaviour, Vol. 1 (pp. 379-403). New York: The Guilford press; The uncertain mind: Individual differences in facing the unknown. London: Erlbaum (UK), Taylor & Francis). This formulation integrates affective and informational influences on thought and action. It is a model of self-regulation where the need to maintain clarity and the need to attain clarity are considered as two independent informational tendencies. These informational tendencies are influenced by the degree of self-relevance and the amount of perceived situational uncertainty. In addition, they are multiplicative with affective approach and avoidance tendencies, leading to accentuation or inhibition of behaviors expressed in action. It is further demonstrated that when the nondominant action tendency is instigated, secondary sources of motivation are expressed. This model not only accounts for past data, but also permits exploration using computer simulation. In addition, many new and testable hypotheses, including those related to affect and dynamical decision theory, are generated.     

The effect of volition on the stability of bimanual coordination

The authors investigated how the intention to passively perform a behavior and the intention to persist with a behavior impact upon the spatial and temporal properties of bimanual coordination. Participants (N = 30) were asked to perform a bimanual coordination task that demanded the continuous rhythmic extension-flexion of the wrists. The frequency of movement was scaled by an auditory metronome beat from 1.5 Hz, increasing to 3.25 Hz in.25-Hz increments. The task was further defined by the requirement that the movements be performed initially in a prescribed pattern of coordination (in-phase or antiphase) while the participants assumed one of two different intentional states: stay with the prescribed pattern should it become unstable or do not intervene should the pattern begin to change. Transitions away from the initially prescribed pattern were observed only in trials conducted in the antiphase mode of coordination. The time at which the antiphase pattern of coordination became unstable was not found to be influenced by the intentional state. In addition, the do-not-intervene set led to a switch to an in-phase pattern of coordination whereas the stay set led to phase wandering. Those findings are discussed within the framework of a dynamic account of bimanual coordination.     

The complexities of complex span: explaining individual differences in working memory in children and adults

Two studies are presented that investigated the constraints underlying working memory performance in children and adults. In each case, independent measures of processing efficiency and storage capacity are assessed to determine their relative importance in predicting performance on complex span tasks,which measure working memory capacity. Results show that complex span performance was independently constrained by individual differences in domain-general processing efficiency and domain-specific storage capacity. Residual variance, which may reflect the ability to coordinate storage and processing, also predicted academic achievement. These results challenge the view that complex span taps a limited-capacity resource pool shared between processing and storage operations. Rather, they are consistent with a multiple-component model in which separate resource pools support the processing and storage functions of working memory.     

Correlates of motives for suicide

Analysis of a large sample of suicide notes from 262 suicides in Australia showed separated/divorced suicides and suicides who abused alcohol were more likely to give love/romance as a precipitant for suicide while those who used gas (natural or car exhaust) were more likely to give depression and guilt as a motive.