Effects of loss aversion on post-decision wagering: Implications for measures of awareness

Wagering contingent on a previous decision, or post-decision wagering, has recently been proposed to measure conscious awareness. Whilst intuitively appealing, it remains unclear whether economic context interacts with subjective confidence and how such interactions might impact on the measurement of awareness. Here we propose a signal detection model which predicts that advantageous wagers placed on the identity of preceding stimuli are affected by loss aversion, despite stimulus visibility remaining constant. This pattern of predicted results was evident in a psychophysical task where we independently manipulated perceptual and economic factors. Changes in wagering behaviour induced by changes in wager size were largely driven by changes in criterion, consistent with the model. However, for near-threshold stimuli, a reduction in wagering efficiency was also evident, consistent with an apparent but potentially illusory decrease in awareness of the stimulus. These findings challenge an assertion that post-decision wagering provides a direct index of subjective awareness.     

Self–other awareness and peer relationships in toddlers: gender comparisons

Toddlers' growing self–other awareness has been linked with their ability to interact with peers, but there is reason to think that self–other awareness may relate to different aspects of peer relationships for boys and girls. We hypothesized that boys would express self–other awareness by separating self from other through claiming toys, while girls would express self–other awareness by creating similarities between self and other through use of the duplicate of a partner's toy. For 52 22–26 month olds, self–other awareness was assessed through four tasks: mirror self recognition, perceptual role taking, pronoun recognition and pronoun use. Each child subsequently interacted with a same‐sex peer for 30 min. Girls high in self–other awareness, and their partners were more likely to engage in duplicate toy use than girls low in self–other awareness. No differences in toy claiming were found. Future longitudinal research would clarify how the onset of self–other awareness relates to developments in peer interaction for girls and boys. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Rumination on Sadness and Dimensions of Communality and Agency: Comparing White and Visible Minority Individuals in a Canadian Context

The present study was conducted to address the relation of dimensions of communality and agency to rumination on sadness for white and visible minority individuals. A sample of Canadian undergraduates (N?=?1192) completed the Extended Personal Attributes Questionnaire (EPAQ; Spence et al. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 37:1673–1682, 1979) and the Rumination on Sadness Scale (Conway et al. Journal of Personality Assessment 75:404–425, 2000). Multiple regressions were performed with participants’ EPAQ scores as predictors of rumination. Overall, the strongest relation was that greater agency predicted less rumination. For all but visible minority men, greater communality predicted more rumination. For white men and women, greater unmitigated agency was associated with more rumination. These and other findings are discussed in terms of theoretical accounts of sex differences in rumination.     

Audience-contingent variation in action demonstrations for humans and computers

People may exhibit two kinds of modifications when demonstrating action for others: modifications to facilitate bottom-up, or sensory-based processing; and modifications to facilitate top-down, or knowledge-based processing. The current study examined actors' production of such modifications in action demonstrations for audiences that differed in their capacity for intentional reasoning. Actors' demonstrations of complex actions for a non-anthropomorphic computer system and for people (adult and toddler) were compared. Evidence was found for greater highlighting of top-down modifications in the demonstrations for the human audiences versus the computer audience. Conversely, participants highlighted simple perceptual modifications for the computer audience, producing more punctuated and wider ranging motions. This study suggests that people consider differences in their audiences when demonstrating action.     

Flashbulb memory for 11 September 2001

The recollection of particularly salient, surprising or consequential events is often called ‘flashbulb memories’. We tested people's autobiographical memory for details of 11 September 2001 by gathering a large national random sample (N = 678) of people's reports immediately following the attacks, and then by contacting them twice more, in September 2002 and August 2003. Three novel findings emerged. First, memory consistency did not vary as a function of demographic variables such as gender, geographical location, age or education. Second, memory consistency did not vary as a function of whether memory was tested before or after the 1‐year anniversary of the event, suggesting that media coverage associated with the anniversary did not impact memory. Third, the conditional probability of consistent recollection in 2003 given consistent recollection in 2002 was p = .73. In contrast, the conditional probability of consistent recollection in 2003 given inconsistent recollection in 2002 was p = .18. Finally, and in agreement with several prior studies, confidence in memory far exceeded consistency in the long term. Also, those respondents who revealed evidence for consistent flashbulb memory experienced more anxiety in response to the event, and engaged in more covert rehearsal than respondents who did not reveal evidence for consistent flashbulb memory. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Importance of Sound for Cognitive Sequencing Abilities: The Auditory Scaffolding Hypothesis

ABSTRACT— Sound is inherently a temporal and sequential signal. Experience with sound therefore may help bootstrap—that is, provide a kind of "scaffolding" for—the development of general cognitive abilities related to representing temporal or sequential patterns. Accordingly, the absence of sound early in development may result in disturbances to these sequencing skills. In support of this hypothesis, we present two types of findings. First, normal-hearing adults do best on sequencing tasks when the sense of hearing, rather than sight, can be used. Second, recent findings suggest that deaf children have disturbances on exactly these same kinds of tasks that involve learning and manipulation of serial-order information. We suggest that sound provides an "auditory scaffolding" for time and serial-order behavior, possibly mediated through neural connections between the temporal and frontal lobes of the brain. Under conditions of auditory deprivation, auditory scaffolding is absent, resulting in neural reorganization and a disturbance to cognitive sequencing abilities.     

Role of the Disease in the Psychological Impact of Pre-Symptomatic Testing for SCA2 and FAP ATTRV30M: Experience with the Disease, Kinship and Gender of the Transmitting Parent

To identify possible factors affecting the psychological impact of pre-symptomatic testing for spinocerebellar ataxia type 2 (SCA2) and familial amyloid polyneuropathy (FAP ATTRV30M), we studied (1) the effect of previous experience with the disease in the family, (2) kinship with the closest affected relative and (3) gender of affected parent, when adapting to test results; as well as (4) differences in the course of psychological wellbeing in 63 subjects ( 28 at-risk for FAP ATTRV30M, and 35 at risk for SCA2), who pursued predictive testing for these diseases, in Cuba and in Portugal. Our research shows that individuals with little or no experience with the disease in their family exhibited more anxiety; at-risk subjects for SCA2 or FAP ATTRV30M who had a first degree relative with the disease showed lower levels of anxiety and depression during pre-symptomatic testing. Also those with an affected mother had lower levels of depression, either immediately, or one year after receipt of test results. Adaptation to pre-symptomatic testing results differed for subjects at-risk for the two different conditions. Unlike the FAP ATTRV30M families, carriers for SCA2 reported pathological levels of depression immediately after-testing (3 weeks), although those levels had returned to normal levels at 6 months. Subjects at-risk for FAP ATTRV30M tended to have less anxiety than those tested for SCA2, at the one-year follow-up. Overall, depression levels improved over time, while anxiety remained more constant. A longer awareness of the disease in the family, closer kinship, and a transmitting mother all lessened the impact of pre-symptomatic testing, as expressed by the post-test levels of anxiety and depression.     

Prenatal Exposure of Mice to Tobacco Smoke and Ethanol: Preweaning Behavioral and Growth Effects

The Psychological Record - Pregnant Swiss-albino mice were treated with cigarette smoke by inhalation and/or ethanol orally from Days 6 through 17 of gestation. Smoke-, ethanol-, and non-treatment...     

Late adolescents' home-leaving strategies: predicting ego identity and college adjustment

A definition of leaving home, derived from previous theoretical and empirical conceptualizations, was used to predict late adolescents' ego identity and college adjustment. Four interrelated yet distinct variables, economic independence, separate residence, personal control, and emotional attachment to parents, were highly significant predictors of both ego identity and college adjustment. The results confirm earlier preliminary investigations and support a broader definition of leaving home than those typically discussed in the theoretical literature.