The End of the Solidly Democratic South: The Impressionable‐Years Hypothesis

The partisan realignment of the White South, which transformed this region from being solidly Democratic to being the base of the Republican Party, has been the focus of much scholarship. Exactly how it occurred is unclear. Widespread individual‐level attitude changes would be contrary to the well‐known within‐person stability of party identification. However, according to the impressionable‐years hypothesis, events that occur during adolescence and early adulthood may have a lasting impact on later political attitudes. This would suggest that cohort replacement may be driving partisan realignment. We test this possibility using data from the American National Election Studies from 1960 to 2008. Consistent with the impressionable‐years hypothesis, Southern Whites from the pre‐Civil Rights cohort (born before 1936) maintained their Democratic Party identification longer than their younger counterparts. However, all cohorts in the South have changed their partisan attitudes at comparable rates over time, contrary to the impressionable‐years hypothesis. These data suggest that the partisan realignment of the South was driven by both cohort replacement and within‐cohort attitude change. More targeted case studies of older cohorts living through the civil rights era, and of younger cohorts in the post‐Reagan era, yield results generally consistent with the impressionable‐years hypothesis. More generally, our findings suggest that very large scale events are required to disrupt the normal continuity of party identification across the life span.     

No-go trials can modulate switch cost by interfering with effects of task preparation

It has recently been shown that the cost associated with switching tasks is eliminated following ‘no-go’ trials, in which response selection is not completed, suggesting that the switch cost depends on response selection. However, no-go trials may also affect switch costs by interfering with the effects of task preparation that precede response selection. To test this hypothesis we evaluated switch costs following standard go trials with those following two types of non-response trials: no-go trials, for which a stimulus is presented that indicates no response should be made (Experiment 1); and cue-only trials in which no stimulus is presented following the task cue (Experiment 2). We hypothesized that eliminating no-go stimuli would reveal effects of task preparation on the switch cost in cue-only trials. We found no switch cost following no-go trials (Experiment 1), but a reliable switch cost in cue-only trials (i.e., when no-go stimuli were removed; Experiment 2). We conclude that no-go trials can modulate the switch cost, independent of their effect on response selection, by interfering with task preparation, and that the effects of task preparation on switch cost are more directly assessed by cue-only trials.     

Family functioning of Chinese families in an impoverished neighborhood in Hong Kong

Consonant with the family stress model, in this study family economic disadvantage, concomitant with cumulative family stressors, concurrently contributed to poor family functioning of 504 Chinese families in an impoverished neighborhood in Hong Kong, in which the latter factor appeared to be more pronounced. Implications were briefly discussed.     

Do children "DRM" like adults? False memory production in children

The Deese/Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm was used to investigate developmental trends in accurate and false memory production. In Experiment 1, DRM lists adjusted to be more consistent with children's vocabulary were used with 2nd graders, 8th graders, and college students. Accurate and false recall and recognition increased with age, but semantic information appeared to be available to all age groups. Experiment 2 created a set of child-generated lists based on the free associations by a group of 3rd graders to critical items. The child-generated associates were different from those generated by adults; long and short versions of the child-generated lists were therefore presented to 2nd, 5th, and 8th graders and college students in Experiment 3. Second graders exhibited few false memories, whereas 5th graders were similar to adults in low-demand conditions and more similar to younger children in high-demand conditions. Findings are discussed in terms of developmental changes in automatic and effortful processing and the use of semantic networks.     

Distraction,attentional conflict,and drivelike behavior

Two studies provide evidence supporting a distraction-conflict view of social facilitation effects. Study 1 demonstrated that presence of an audience produced drivelike effects on the latency and vigor of a motor response. This effect, however, only occurred when attending to the audience caused attentional conflict. Study 2 demonstrated that in a two-task setting, attentional conflict, resulting from having to choose which task to work on, led to poorer performance on a complex copying task (p < .01, one tailed) and a larger percentage of dominant responses on J. L. Cohen and J. H. Davis' (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1973, 27, 74–85) hidden word task (p < .04, one tailed), relative to a yoked control. Study 2 is consistent with earlier reports that choice heightens drivelike effects, while Study 1 indicates that attentional conflict contributes to social facilitation phenomena.     

The development of change detection

Changes to a scene often go unnoticed if the objects of the change are unattended, making change detection an index of where attention is focused during scene perception. We measured change detection in school-age children and young adults by repeatedly alternating two versions of an image. To provide an age-fair assessment we used a bimanual choice rather than open-ended verbal responses. The difference in detection speed and accuracy between 50-ms versus 250-ms blank screens between views indexed change detection in short-term visual memory independent of sensory and response processes. Younger children were significantly less efficient than older participants, especially when an object changed color or had a part deleted. Changes in object orientation were detected more readily. These results point to important differences in the perceptual reality of younger and older children.     

The impact of cognitive deficits on conflict monitoring. Predictable dissociations between the error-related negativity and N2

Monitoring of ongoing processing plays a critical role in regulating cognitive function. Two event-related potential components, the error-related negativity (ERN) and N2, have been proposed to reflect this monitoring function. Specifically, it has been suggested that both components reflect the role of anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) in monitoring for the occurrence of response conflict. This view appears to be challenged by findings that alcohol consumption and lesions in ACC have dissociable effects on the ERN and N2. Using a computational model, the present research demonstrates that the conflict-monitoring theory can account for these dissociations in terms of the dissociable effects of alcohol and ACC lesions on processing of relevant stimulus information (which determines ERN amplitude) and processing of irrelevant, distracting information (which determines N2 amplitude). The simulation results suggest new interpretations of the cognitive deficits caused by alcohol consumption (impaired stimulus processing) and ACC lesions (impaired attentional control).