Age differences in recognition of emotion in lexical stimuli and facial expressions

Age differences in emotion recognition from lexical stimuli and facial expressions were examined in a cross-sectional sample of adults aged 18 to 85 (N = 357). Emotion-specific response biases differed by age: Older adults were disproportionately more likely to incorrectly label lexical stimuli as happiness, sadness, and surprise and to incorrectly label facial stimuli as disgust and fear. After these biases were controlled, findings suggested that older adults were less accurate at identifying emotions than were young adults, but the pattern differed across emotions and task types. The lexical task showed stronger age differences than the facial task, and for lexical stimuli, age groups differed in accuracy for all emotional states except fear. For facial stimuli, in contrast, age groups differed only in accuracy for anger, disgust, fear, and happiness. Implications for age-related changes in different types of emotional processing are discussed.     

Unpacking attitude certainty: attitude clarity and attitude correctness

Attitude certainty has been the subject of considerable attention in the attitudes and persuasion literature. The present research identifies 2 aspects of attitude certainty and provides evidence for the distinctness of the constructs. Specifically, it is proposed that attitude certainty can be conceptualized, and empirically separated, in terms of attitude clarity (the subjective sense that one knows what one's attitude is) and attitude correctness (the subjective sense that one's attitude is correct or valid). Experiment 1 uses factor analysis and correlational data to provide evidence for viewing attitude clarity and attitude correctness as separate constructs. Experiments 2 and 3 demonstrate that attitude clarity and attitude correctness can have distinct antecedents (repeated expression and consensus feedback, respectively). Experiment 4 reveals that these constructs each play an independent role in persuasion and resistance situations. As clarity and correctness increase, attitudes become more resistant to counterattitudinal persuasive messages. These findings are discussed in relation to the existing attitude strength literature.     

The Multidimensional Nature of Social Cohesion: Psychological Sense of Community, Attraction, and Neighboring

Items from the Neighborhood Cohesion Instrument were completed by 1,732 individuals from a random sample of households in 20 rural communities across Canada during the summer of 2001. Confirmatory factor analysis of the NCI items based on polychoric correlations and weighted least squares estimation found three underlying latent variables. Although items were related to the three latent variables in a somewhat different manner than they were in Buckner's original study, the same three latent variables were evident, providing convincing evidence that social cohesion has at least three subscales: psychological sense of community, neighboring, and attraction. Correlations between subscales were relatively high (between .67 and .87). Intraclass correlation coefficients for the three scales were .115, .127, and .112. In addition, the community means differed on different subscales in a manner that related to recognized characteristics of the communities. Thus the subscales are appropriate measures for both individuals and communities and can be recommended for further research on social cohesion.     

Contingency learning without awareness: evidence for implicit control

The results of four experiments provide evidence for controlled processing in the absence of awareness. Participants identified the colour of a neutral distracter word. Each of four words (e.g., MOVE) was presented in one of the four colours 75% of the time (Experiments 1 and 4) or 50% of the time (Experiments 2 and 3). Colour identification was faster when the words appeared in the colour they were most often presented in relative to when they appeared in another colour, even for participants who were subjectively unaware of any contingencies between the words and the colours. An analysis of sequence effects showed that participants who were unaware of the relation between distracter words and colours nonetheless controlled the impact of the word on performance depending on the nature of the previous trial. A block analysis of contingency-unaware participants revealed that contingencies were learned rapidly in the first block of trials. Experiment 3 showed that the contingency effect does not depend on the level of awareness, thus ruling out explicit strategy accounts. Finally, Experiment 4 showed that the contingency effect results from behavioural control and not from semantic association or stimulus familiarity. These results thus provide evidence for implicit control.     

Simon says: Reliability and the role of working memory and attentional control in the Simon task

TheSimon effect refers to the observation that subjects identify targets (e.g., colors) faster when the irrelevant spatial location of the target corresponds to the location of the response key. Theoretical accounts of the Simon effect typically explain performance in terms of automatic and controlled processes. Furthermore, the relative contributions of automatic and controlled processes are held to change as a function of the proportion of compatible to incompatible trials (compatibility proportion). Data are presented demonstrating that the reliability of the Simon effect, indexed by correlating its magnitude within subjects across blocks of trials, varied substantially as a function of the compatibility proportion. When the compatibility proportion was high, so was reliability. When the compatibility proportion was low, reliability was low as well. The results are discussed in terms of the relative reliability of automatic and controlled processes and the role of working memory and attentional control in goal maintenance.     

Treatment integrity of school-based interventions with children in the journal of applied behavior analysis 1991-2005

We reviewed all school-based experimental studies with individuals 0 to 18 years published in the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis (JABA) between 1991 and 2005. A total of 142 articles (152 studies) that met review criteria were included. Nearly all (95%) of these experiments provided an operational definition of the independent variable, but only 30% of the studies provided treatment integrity data. Nearly half of studies (45%) were judged to be at high risk for treatment inaccuracies. Treatment integrity data were more likely to be included in studies that used teachers, multiple treatment agents, or both. Although there was a substantial increase in reporting operational definitions of independent variables, results suggest that there was only a modest improvement in reported integrity over the past 30 years of JABA studies. Recommendations for research and practice are discussed.     

On the assignment of punishment: the impact of general-societal threat and the moderating role of severity

This article reports experiments assessing how general threats to social order and severity of a crime can influence punitiveness. Results consistently showed that when participants feel that the social order is threatened, they behave more punitively toward a crime perpetrator, but only when severity associated with a crime was relatively moderate. Evidence is presented to suggest that people can correct-at least to a degree-for the "biasing" influence of these inductions. Finally, threats to social order appear to increase punitiveness by arousing a retributive desire to see individuals pay for what they have done, as opposed to a purely utilitarian desire to deter future wrongdoing. The authors suggest that individuals sometimes act as intuitive prosecutors when ascribing punishment to an individual transgressor based on their perception of general societal control efficacy.     

Single letter coloring and spatial cuing eliminates a semantic contribution to the Stroop effect

Previous work has shown that the Stroop effect is reduced in size when a single letter is colored and spatially precued. The present experiment addresses a number of criticisms of this work by (1) providing a direct measure of semantic processing, (2) using a vocal response instead of a manual one, and (3) using a more appropriate baseline. A semantically based Stroop effect (slower color naming for color-associated words than for color-neutral words) is observed when all letters in the display are precued and appear in a homogeneous color. This Stroop effect is statistically eliminated when a single letter is precued and is the “odd man out” in terms of its color. Two explanations are considered. In one, single-letter coloring and cuing serve to curtail semantic processing. In the other, single-letter coloring and cuing help to keep the informational sources (i.e, color, word) separate and hence reduce interference, but semantic analysis is not curtailed. The latter account provides a more complete account of existing data.     

Parallel distributed processing and lexical-semantic effects in visual word recognition: are a few stages necessary?

D. C. Plaut and J. R. Booth (2000) presented a parallel distributed processing model that purports to simulate human lexical decision performance. This model (and D. C. Plaut, 1995) offers a single mechanism account of the pattern of factor effects on reaction time (RT) between semantic priming, word frequency, and stimulus quality without requiring a stages-of-processing account of additive effects. Three problems are discussed. First, no evidence is provided that this model can discriminate between words and nonwords with the same orthographic structure and still produce the pattern of factor effects on RT it currently claims to produce. Second, the level of representation used by the model to make a lexical decision is inconsistent with what is known about how skilled readers with damage to their semantic system make word/nonword discriminations. Finally, there are a number of results that are difficult to reconcile with the single mechanism account. The authors' preference is to retain the stages-of-processing account.