Does marriage protect older people from distress? The role of equity and recency of bereavement

The association between marital status and distress was examined in a largely neglected group, namely older people (65 and older; N = 1,649). In this 2-wave study, married persons were less distressed than single persons, but perceived equity within the marriage and recency of bereavement qualified these findings. Married persons who felt inequitably treated were more distressed than persons who had always been single. Married persons reported less distress than recently (= 2 years ago) widowed persons, but only equitably treated married persons reported less distress than persons widowed for more than 2 years. Increased distress between the 2 waves occurred in recently widowed persons, and there was a decrease in distress in persons who were widowed shortly before the 1st wave. No gender effects were found.     

A computational model for simulating text comprehension

In the present article, we outline the architecture of a computer program for simulating the process by which humans comprehend texts. The program is based on psycholinguistic theories about human memory and text comprehension processes, such as the construction-integration model (Kintsch, 1998), the latent semantic analysis theory of knowledge representation (Landauer & Dumais, 1997), and the predication algorithms (Kintsch, 2001; Lemaire & Bianco, 2003), and it is intended to help psycholinguists investigate the way humans comprehend texts.     

Relationships of Functional Flexibility with Individual and Work Factors

To investigate how functional flexibility is related to demographics, personality traits, and work perceptions, 250 employees of a large Dutch passenger transport firm filled out a written questionnaire. Two dimensions of functional flexibility were discerned: willingness and ability to be flexible. Analysis of variance showed the support staff and managers were higher on willingness and ability to be flexible than workers. Hierarchic regression analysis showed that willingness to be flexible was positively related to initiative and trust in management, and was negatively related to age and task formalization. Ability to be flexible was positively related to general self-efficacy and initiative, and was negatively related to task formalization. It was concluded that willingness to be flexible depends on fair treatment and freedom provided by their organization and that ability to be flexible is part of the development of general self-efficacy.     

Modulation of recognition and temporal order memory retrieval by dopamine D1 receptor in rats

The present study examines the effects of SKF 81297, a selective D1 agonist, on information retrieval in recognition and temporal order memory for objects, using three different tasks. Separate groups of rats were trained in each task and then given an intraperitoneal injection of saline or the D1 agonist (0.03, 0.3 mg/kg), before the memory testing trial in an object recognition, object location, and object temporal order memory tasks. We show that SKF 81297, at high dose (0.3 mg/kg), facilitates information retrieval after a long delay (4 h) in the three memory tasks whereas both high and low doses of D1 agonist impair recognition memory after a short delay (15 min). These results indicate a significant role of dopamine D1 receptors in recognition memory for both familiarity and place of objects in addition to object temporal order memory.     

Why are average faces attractive? The effect of view and averageness on the attractiveness of female faces

Images of faces manipulated to make their shapes closer to the average are perceived as more attractive. The influences of symmetry and averageness are often confounded in studies based on full-face views of faces. Two experiments are reported that compared the effect of manipulating the averageness of female faces in profile and full-face views. Use of a profile view allows a face to be ”morphed“ toward an average shape without creating an image that becomes more symmetrical. Faces morphed toward the average were perceived as more attractive in both views, but the effect was significantly stronger for full-face views. Both full-face and profile views morphed away from the average shape were perceived as less attractive. It is concluded that the effect of averageness is independent of any effect of symmetry on the perceived attractiveness of female faces.     

Perceptions of a fluid consensus: uniqueness bias, false consensus, false polarization, and pluralistic ignorance in a water conservation crisis

A 5-day field study (N = 415) during and right after a shower ban demonstrated multifaceted social projection and the tendency to draw personality inferences from simple behavior in a time of drastic consensus change. Bathers thought showering was more prevalent than did non-bathers (false consensus) and respondents consistently underestimated the prevalence of the desirable and common behavior--be it not showering during the shower ban or showering after the ban (uniqueness bias). Participants thought that bathers and non-bathers during the ban differed greatly in their general concern for the community, but self-reports demonstrated that this gap was illusory (false polarization). Finally, bathers thought other bathers cared less than they did, whereas non-bathers thought other non-bathers cared more than they did (pluralistic ignorance). The study captures the many biases at work in social perception in a time of social change.     

Vicarious dissonance: attitude change from the inconsistency of others

Three studies support the vicarious dissonance hypothesis that individuals change their attitudes when witnessing members of important groups engage in inconsistent behavior. Study 1, in which participants observed an actor in an induced-compliance paradigm, documented that students who identified with their college supported an issue more after hearing an ingroup member make a counterattitudinal speech in favor of that issue. In Study 2, vicarious dissonance occurred even when participants did not hear a speech, and attitude change was highest when the speaker was known to disagree with the issue. Study 3 showed that speaker choice and aversive consequences moderated vicarious dissonance, and demonstrated that vicarious discomfort--the discomfort observers imagine feeling if in an actor's place--was attenuated after participants expressed their revised attitudes.     

Preattentive auditory context effects

The effects of auditory context on the preattentive and perceptual organization of tone sequences were investigated. Two sets of experiments were conducted in which the pitch of contextual tones was varied, bringing about two different contextual manipulations. Preattentive auditory organization was indexed by the mismatch negativity event-related potential, which is elicited by violations of auditory regularities even when participants ignore the sounds (e.g., by reading a book). The perceptual effects of the contextual manipulations on auditory grouping were assessed using target-detection and orderjudgment tasks. The close correspondence found between the effects of auditory context on the perceptual and preattentive measures of auditory grouping suggests that a large part of contextual processing is preattentive.     

The concept of auditory stimulus representation in cognitive neuroscience

The sequence of neurophysiological processes elicited in the auditory system by a sound is analyzed in search of the stage at which the processes carrying sensory information cross the borderline beyond which they directly underlie sound perception. Neurophysiological data suggest that this transition occurs when the sensory input is mapped onto the physiological basis of sensory memory in the auditory cortex. At this point, the sensory information carried by the stimulus-elicited process corresponds, for the first time, to that contained by the actual sound percept. Before this stage, the sensory stimulus code is fragmentary, lacks the time dimension, cannot enter conscious perception, and is not accessible to top-down processes (voluntary mental operations). On these grounds, 2 distinct stages of auditory sensory processing, prerepresentational and representational, can be distinguished.     

Event-related brain potentials reflect traces of echoic memory in humans

In sequences of identical auditory stimuli, infrequent deviant stimuli elicit an event-related brain potential component called mismatch negativity (MMN). MMN is presumed to reflect the existence of a memory trace of the frequent stimulus at the moment of presentation of the infrequent stimulus. This hypothesis was tested by applying the recognition-masking paradigm of cognitive psychology. In this paradigm, a masking sound presented shortly before or after a test stimulus diminishes the recognition memory of this stimulus, the more so the shorter the interval between the test and masking stimuli. This interval was varied in the present study. It was found that the MMN amplitude strongly correlated with the subject’s ability to discriminate between frequent and infrequent stimuli. This result strongly suggests that MMN providesa measure for a trace of sensory memory, and further, that with MMN, this memory can be studied without performance-related distortions.