Perceived political self‐efficacy: Theory,assessment, and applications

Political efficacy is addressed within the framework of social cognitive theory and a new measure to assess perceived political self‐efficacy is presented. Three studies document the validity of the new scale of measurement. The first study (N = 1673) examined the psychometric properties of the scale in accordance with classical test theory. This led to the identification of a unidimensional factor structure, including perceived political self‐efficacy in promoting one's own political opinion, in sustaining the political programs of the party to which one belongs, and in monitoring one's own political representatives' commitment. The second study (N = 632) further confirmed the internal and construct validity of the scale; criterion validity was also investigated using several indicators of political interest and participation. The third study (N = 1176) showed that politicians holding offices have higher levels of perceived political self‐efficacy than partisans and voters, further corroborating the criterion validity of the scale. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The role of unconscious memory errors in judgments of confidence for sentence recognition

The present experiment tested the hypothesis that unconscious reconstructive memory processing can lead to the breakdown of the relationship between memory confidence and memory accuracy. Participants heard deceptive schema-inference sentences and nondeceptive sentences and were tested with either simple or forced-choice recognition. The nondeceptive items showed a positive relation between confidence and accuracy in both simple and forced-choice recognition. However, the deceptive items showed a strong negative confidence/accuracy relationship in simple recognition and a low positive relationship in forced choice. The mean levels of confidence for erroneous responses for deceptive items were inappropriately high in simple recognition but lower in forced choice. These results suggest that unconscious reconstructive memory processes involved in memory for the deceptive schema-inference items led to inaccurate confidence judgments and that, when participants were made aware of the deceptive nature of the schema-inference items through the use of a forced-choice procedure, they adjusted their confidence accordingly.     

Co-occurrence of sequential and practice effects in the Simon task: Evidence for two independent mechanisms affecting response selection

The Simon effect refers to the observation that responses to a relevant stimulus dimension are faster and more accurate when the stimulus and response spatially correspond than when they do not, even though stimulus position is irrelevant. Recent findings have suggested that the Simon effect can be strongly modulated by prior practice with a spatially incompatible mapping and by correspondence sequence. Although practice is thought to influence conditional stimulus —response (S-R) processing, leaving response priming through the unconditional route unaffected, sequential effects are thought to represent trial-by-trial adaptations that selectively involve unconditional S —R processing. In the present study, we tested this assumption by assessing the effects of correspondence sequence both when the Simon task alone was performed and when it was preceded by a spatial compatibility task with either incompatible (Experiments 1-2) or compatible (Experiment 2) instructions. The observation that practice and correspondence sequence co-occur and exert additive effects strongly demonstrates that the two factors affect different processing routes.     

Learning orthography in adulthood: A magnetoencephalographic study

Previous work demonstrated that there were differences between literate and comparable illiterate adult subjects. These differences were found in the performance on several tests and on patterns of activation on PET and fMRI. In the present study subjects that learned to read and to write in adulthood (being previously completely illiterate) were compared to controls, that is subjects that learned at school at the proper age. Magnetoencephalography was done while subjects were reading words. Results showed that, although the reading performance was the same in both groups while performing the task, the pattern of source distribution was different between groups. There were more late sources in right temporo‐parietal areas of late literates compared to controls and more late sources in left inferior frontal cortex in control subjects. It is concluded that learning to read in adulthood is a process supported by different brain structures from the ones used when learning occurs at the proper age. This may suggest that the same task can be similarly performed by relying on diverse functional brain anatomic networks.     

Peripheral and foveal segmentation of angle textures

Studies of the effects of retinal eccentricity on the visual segmentation of textures are presented. The textures used in these studies were composed of angle elements. These were presented tachistoscopically to college students in three different experiments. Results showed that there were different relationships between segmentation performance and eccentricity, depending on the width of the angles used in the background and target texture. One major difference was that peak performance was found in the fovea in some conditions, and in peripheral areas in other conditions. Performance in the fovea and the periphery seemed to be determined by qualitatively different features. It was assumed that an appropriate explanation is that the system-internal representation of a specific stimulus within the early visual system differs as a function of the retinal location at which it is projected. Thus, the critical features discriminating between target and background texture have to be sought in the system-internal representation of the stimulus instead of in the stimulus itself. The data show that a relatively exact system-internal representation of the stimulus is present in the fovea, where performance is determined by angle width. In the periphery, in contrast, angles seem to be represented as “blobs,” and performance is determined by the orientation of the blobs’ main axes.     

Spatial and relational frameworks for free recall in young and older adults

Previous studies have demonstrated that older adults can use visually distinctive cues to enhance their spatial memory performance and their recall of the identities of items located in space. Other research has shown that older adults can also use relational information to enhance recall. The relationship between relational and visuospatial support for memory across the adult lifespan is complex and has been little explored. In the present study, this relationship was examined in tasks that measured free recall for item sets possessing different degrees of visuospatial and relational support for recall. It was predicted that both types of support would enhance older adult recall relative to that of the young, and that the two types of support would synergize. The results were generally consistent with these predictions. These findings show that older adults can use relatively simple relational or visuospatial support systems to enhance free recall significantly. This research was supported by Grant AGI 1605, National Institute on Aging.     

The cognitive therapy of evaluation: Therapeutic techniques-[2]

The main aim of this paper is to introduce the techniques used in cognitive therapy of evaluation. The Cognitive therapy of evaluation is being developed from the theoretical background of general semantics theory and it is a therapy based on language as an instrument of cognitive processes, and on the role it plays, through word-facts identification, in the development and treatment of emotional problems. The main techniques developed (abstraction orders and the extensional devices) and other therapeutic issues are introduced and explained.     

Strategic behavior and counterfactuals

The difficulty of defining rational behavior in game situations is that the players' strategies will depend on their expectations about other players' strategies. These expectations are beliefs the players come to the game with. Game theorists assume these beliefs to be rational in the very special sense of beingobjectively correct but no explanation is offered of the mechanism generating this property of the belief system. In many interesting cases, however, such a rationality requirement is not enough to guarantee that an equilibrium will be attained. In particular, I analyze the case of multiple equilibria, since in this case there exists a whole set of rational beliefs, so that no player can ever be certain that the others believe he has certain beliefs. In this case it becomes necessary to explicitly model the process of belief formation. This model attributes to the players a theory of counterfactuals which they use in restricting the set of possible equilibria. If it were possible to attribute to the players the same theory of counterfactuals, then the players' beliefs would eventually converge.I wish to thank Michael Bacharach, In-Koo Cho, William Harper, Aanund Hylland, Isaac Levi, Wolfgang Spohn, Tommy Tan and two anonymous referees for many useful comments and suggestions. Financial support from National Science Foundation grant SES 87-10209 is gratefully acknowledged.     

The effects of number of responses on the postreinforcement pause in fixed-interval schedules

The present study manipulated the number of responses in a modified fixed-interval schedule by imposing a blackout after each unreinforced response during the interval. The blackout duration was varied, and the duration of the fixed interval was held constant. The subjects were initially exposed to a fixed-interval 300-sec schedule. Blackout durations of 0, 10, and 50 sec were used. Following this, a fixed-interval 30-sec schedule was used with blackout durations of 0, 1, and 5 sec. Under the fixed-interval 300-sec schedule, the number of interreinforcement responses varied over a wider range than occurred under the fixed-interval 30-sec schedule. The duration of the postreinforcement pause decreased as blackout durations were increased and number of responses decreased on the fixed-interval 300-sec schedule, but pause length did not vary with changes in blackout duration and number of responses for the fixed-interval 30-sec schedule. The differences in the effects of blackout duration and response manipulation on the two fixed-interval schedules were attributed to relatively greater changes in the number of interreinforcement responses for the fixed-interval 300-sec schedule.     

The role of proactive interference in mnemonic techniques

The success of many mnemonic techniques, such as the method of loci, is based on the use of specific well-known anchors, which are mentally combined with to-be-learned items and subsequently facilitate their retrieval. In our studies we intended to answer the question of whether the repeated application of the method of loci may result in proactive interference effects, as might be expected due to the applied association of items with the same loci each time the method is used. To this end, we manipulated list similarity in a typical proactive interference design and compared the method of loci with the link method and the rehearsal method, which do not involve the use of a specified set of anchors. Our results replicate those from other studies, which have shown that the use of a mnemonic technique leads to superior recall of list items compared to a simple rehearsal strategy. We were further able to show that the repeated learning of items from different categories results in moderate practice effects over three list-learning trials, whereas this effect is superimposed by an effect of proactive interference if different lists are composed of items from the same category. However, this effect of proactive interference was not increased for the method of loci, and we discuss this finding with regard to its practical implications.