What do letter migration errors reveal about letter position coding in visual word recognition?

Dividing attention across multiple words occasionally results in misidentifications whereby letters apparently migrate between words. Previous studies have found that letter migrations preserve within-word letter position, which has been interpreted as support for position-specific letter coding. To investigate this issue, the authors used word pairs like STEP and SOAP, in which a letter in 1 word could migrate to an adjacent letter in another word to form an illusory word (STOP). Three experiments show that both same-position and adjacent-position letter migrations can occur, as well as migrations that cross 2 letter positions. These results argue against position-specific letter coding schemes used in many computational models of reading, and they provide support for coding schemes based on relative rather than absolute letter position.     

White guilt and racial compensation: the benefits and limits of self-focus

In two studies, the authors investigated guilt as a response to group-based advantage. Consistent with its conceptualization as a self-focused emotion, White guilt was based in self-focused beliefs in racial inequality. Thus, guilt was associated with belief in White privilege (Study 1) and resulted from seeing European Americans as perpetrators of racial discrimination (Study 2). Just as personal guilt is associated with efforts at restitution, White guilt was predictive of support for affirmative action programs aimed at compensating African Americans. White guilt was not, however, predictive of support for noncompensatory efforts at promoting equality, such as affirmative action programs that increase opportunities (Study 2). In contrast, the other-focused emotion of group-based sympathy was a more general predictor of support for different affirmative action policies. Our findings demonstrate the benefits and limits of group-based guilt as a basis of support for social equality and highlight the value of understanding the specific emotions elicited in intergroup contexts.     

Hypnotic control of attention in the Stroop task: a historical footnote

Raz, Shapiro, Fan, and Posner (2002) have recently provided a compelling demonstration of enhanced attentional control under post-hypnotic suggestion. Using the classic color-word interference paradigm, in which the task is to ignore a word and to name the color in which it is printed (e.g., RED in green, say "green"), they gave a post-hypnotic instruction to participants that they would be unable to read. This eliminated Stroop interference in high suggestibility participants but did not alter interference in low suggestibility participants. replicated this pattern and further demonstrated that it is not due to a visual strategy (such as blurring or looking at a different location). As a historical footnote, we describe a "case study" from 18 years ago in which we observed the same result using a hypnotic instruction to a single highly suggestible individual that he could not read. The elimination of Stroop interference has important implications for both the study of attention and the study of hypnosis.     

Comment on “Visual layout modulates Fitts’s law: The importance of first and last positions”

Pratt, Adam, and Fischer (2007) investigated the effect of surrounding targets on the time it took to move to an individual target and found that the movement time to a central target was above the Fitts’s law line related to the first and last targets. They explained their results in terms of a “visuomotor hypothesis.” Here, an alternative explanation is given in terms of a previously validated model of the “available target width” that is determined by the size of the target and the width of the finger pad that is being used to hit the target.     

The detection of feigned disabilities: the effectiveness of the Personality Assessment Inventory in a traumatized inpatient sample

Research on feigned mental disorders indicates that severe psychopathology coupled with significant trauma histories often complicate feigning determinations, resulting in inaccuracies on otherwise effective measures. As part of malingering assessments, the Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI) is often used because of its excellent validation and the availability of three feigning indicators (Negative Impression, Malingering Index, and Rogers Discriminant Function), which have evidenced large effect sizes and clinically useful cut scores. The current study examined the effectiveness of the PAI in a traumatized inpatient sample using a between-subjects simulation design. Although Negative Impression appeared affected by trauma--especially in conjunction with dissociative symptoms--very positive results were found for Malingering Index and Rogers Discriminant Function. They remained relatively unelevated under honest conditions, despite posttraumatic stress disorder and extensive comorbidity. Using single-point cut scores provided moderately good classification of feigned and genuine PAI profiles. For purposes of classification, the authors operationally defined small indeterminate groups that were considered too close to classify (i.e., ±5T of the cut scores). With indeterminate cases removed, the overall classification rates improved modestly. However, the more important finding involved the error rates for the indeterminate group, which exceeded 50%. Directions for further research are discussed.