Information and discriminability as determinants of absolute judgment choice reaction time

The integration of information model of signal detection theory (SDT) was tested in a multiple observation tilt-discrimination task. Improvement in discriminability with additional observations was consonant with theory over two observations, but observations beyond the second yielded less improvement than predicted by the integration model. Analyses of operating characteristics lent some support to the applicability of SDT to the tilt-discrimination task.     

Participants' reactions to “Equity with the world”

According to traditional Equity theory, the injustices that an individual encounters in one relationship should not affect his other relationships. By definition, the equitableness of one relationship (say the AB relationship) depends entirely on how much Participants A and B contribute to the relationship and how much they get out of it.Austin, in Austin and Walster (1973), however, argues that Equity theory must make transrelational predictions. He argues that persons attempt to maintain both “Person-specific Equity” and “Equity with the World” (e.g., Equity with others in general). The authors predicted (and found) that whether a person focuses on “Person-specific Equity” or “Equity with the World” depends on whether or not he feels “accountable” for his behavior. When participants knew they could not be held accountable for their actions, they routinely sacrificed Person-specific Equity in order to maintain Equity with the World. However, when they knew they would have to confront their second partner eventually, they rarely sacrificed Person-specific Equity. (Evidently, they assumed their partners would not sympathize with their desire to maintain transrelational equity.)In this experiment, we predicted (and found) that such pessimism (by persons wishing to restore “Equity with the World”) is not justified. Inequitably treated partners' dissatisfaction and hostility were markedly blunted when individuals believed that their “unfair” partner was attempting to restore “Equity with the World“.     

Balance,positivity, and agreement in the Jordan Paradigm: A defense of balance theory

It was argued that Heider's p?o?x triad can best be conceptualized according to a three- factor analysis of variance model in which the p?o, p?x, and o?x bands are all factors. From this perspective the balance effect is the triple interaction, the positivity effect a main effect for the p?o factor, and the agreement effect a p?x by o?x interaction. Although the existence of the latter two effects has previously been regarded as damaging to balance theory, it was shown that these effects could be interpreted from a balance perspective and that balance theory could be used to generate supportable propositions regarding these effects. Thus in agreement with a unit-relation interpretation it was shown, in accordance with balance theory, that positivity effects are obtained when the subject, or p, assumes future contact with o, that reverse positivity effects are obtained when the subject anticipates breaking off contact with o, and that no positivity effect is obtained when there is absolutely no contact, past or future. It was also demonstrated in an experiment involving the p?o?q triad that, in accordance with balance theory, positivity effects may be produced by the assumption or inference of same-sign reciprocation in sentiment. Evidence for two balance processes underlying agreement effects was also found. One of these processes was based on the assumption that the subject would have or reveal psycho-logical reasons for the disagreement and thus produce imbalance. Consistent with this interpretation it was found that the agreement effect was significantly larger when future contact with discussion of x was assumed than when future contact without discussion of x was assumed. The other, or unit-relation interpretation was supported by evidence indicating that the breaking off of contact resulted in a reversed agreement effect. In general, it was argued that balance theory did quite well in such phenomenological investigations when attention was not narrowly restricted to the three-sign pattern but considered other potential cognitive bands.     

The effect of memory color on form identification

Previous studies have demonstrated that a form’s identity affects the phenomenal hue of that form. This effect has been attributed to the operation of the “memory color” phenomenon. The present study was proposed to assess the effect of “memory” or characteristic color on form identification. Results indicate that memory color, rather than interacting with the object in such a manner as to aid identification, induces a bias toward identification of an object of the memory color.     

Aggressive Children and Effective Communication

Testing a component of a theoretical model which postulates that low levels of communication effectiveness accompany the social and affective problems presented by aggressive children, the study compared the communication skills of a group of aggressive (n = 49) and nonaggressive (n = 49) elementary school children (selected on the basis of teacher ratings) in a structured and cooperative communication task. Based on direct observational measures of communication effectiveness and aggression, and on teacher, peer, and self-rating measures of peer rejection and depressive symptoms, results showed that (a) aggressive children exhibited less effective communication skills and more disruptive communication skills than nonaggressive peers; (b) aggressive children experienced higher levels of peer rejection and depressive symptoms than nonaggressive peers; and (c) group differences in communication effectiveness could not be accounted for by differences in observed aggression and remained significant, even after controlling for differences in peer status and affective functioning. These findings highlight the role that ineffective communication may play in the development and maintenance of aggression and have important theoretical and applied implications, which are briefly discussed. © 1994 Wiley-Liss, Inc.     

Trait anxiety and perceptual load as determinants of emotion processing in a fear conditioning paradigm

The impact of trait anxiety and perceptual load on selective attention was examined in a fear conditioning paradigm. A fear-conditioned angry face (CS+), an unconditioned angry face (CS-), or an unconditioned face with a neutral or happy expression were used in distractor interference and attentional probe tasks. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants classified centrally presented letters under two conditions of perceptual load. When perceptual load was high, distractors had no effect on selective attention, even with aversive conditioning. However, when perceptual load was low, strong response interference effects for CS+ face distractors were found for low trait-anxious participants. Across both experiments, this enhanced distractor interference reversed to strong facilitation effects for those reporting high trait anxiety. Thus, high trait-anxious participants were faster, rather than slower, when ignoring CS+ distractors. Using an attentional probe task in Experiment 3, it was found that fear conditioning resulted in strong attentional avoidance in a high trait-anxious group, which contrasted with enhanced vigilance in a low trait-anxious group. These results demonstrate that the impact of fear conditioning on attention is modulated by individual variation in trait anxiety when perceptual load is low. Fear conditioning elicits an avoidance of threat-relevant stimuli in high trait-anxious participants.     

Brain bases of English morphological processing: A comparison between Chinese-English,Spanish-English bilingual,and English monolingual children

How do early bilingual experiences influence children's neural architecture for word processing? Dual language acquisition can yield common influences that may be shared across different bilingual groups, as well as language-specific influences stemming from a given language pairing. To investigate these effects, we examined bilingual English speakers of Chinese or Spanish, and English monolinguals, all raised in the US (N = 152, ages 5–10). Children completed an English morphological word processing task during fNIRS neuroimaging. The findings revealed both language-specific and shared bilingual effects. The language-specific effects were that Chinese and Spanish bilinguals showed principled differences in their neural organization for English lexical morphology. The common bilingual effects shared by the two groups were that in both bilingual groups, increased home language proficiency was associated with stronger left superior temporal gyrus (STG) activation when processing the English word structures that are most dissimilar from the home language. The findings inform theories of language and brain development during the key periods of neural reorganization for learning to read by illuminating experience-based plasticity in linguistically diverse learners.     

Construct validity for the verbal associated pairs screen

The present study introduces the Verbal Associated Pairs Screen (VAPS) as a new measure for assessing performance validity in pediatric populations. This study presents initial data on psychometric properties and establishes construct validity for the VAPS in a sample of 30 adolescent healthy controls and 206 youths with traumatic brain injury (TBI: moderate/severe, N = 30; mild, N = 176). The control group’s age (M = 14.93, SD = 1.8) was significantly higher than the moderate/severe TBI (M = 13.9, SD = 2.8), t(68.508) = ?3.038, p = .003, and mild TBI (mTBI) groups (M = 14, SD = 2.8), t(54.147) = 2.038, p = .046. The TBI groups were administered the VAPS in accord with other established performance validity tests (PVTs) and well-established memory tests as part of routine clinical evaluations. The healthy control group was administered the VAPS only. VAPS score distributions for the control group were negatively skewed and highly kurtotic. VAPS scores from the moderate/severe TBI and control groups were indistinguishable for Trial 2 (U = 274, p < .01) and the Delay (U = 396, p = .218). In the mTBI group, convergent and divergent validity was established with other well-validated PVTs and memory tests, respectively. ROC curve analyses identified optimal cutoff scores for the VAPS Total Score, with acceptable sensitivity (55%) and excellent specificity (100%), as well as strong detectability (AUC = .829, 95% CI: 0.731 – 0.928, p < .001). Clinical applications, limitations, and directions for future research with the VAPS are discussed.     

Speeded multielement decision-making as diffusion in a hypersphere: Theory and application to double-target detection

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review - We generalize the circular 2D diffusion model of Smith (Psychological Review, 123, 425–451: 2016) to provide a new model of speeded decision-making in...