Remembering Alexandra Symonds

The American Journal of Psychoanalysis -     

An examination of Euro-American and African-American differences in social physique anxiety among college women

Many studies have examined sex differences in social physique anxiety; however, few researchers have examined possible perceptual differences in such anxiety based on ethnicity. The present purpose was to examine social physique anxiety among college-age women of Euro-American and African-American descent. Participants (N = 91) from physical activity classes at a university located in the southeastern United States completed the Social Physique Anxiety Scale. The participants were 67 Euro-Americans and 24 African Americans. An independent t test yielded a significant difference (p =.01) between groups on Eklund's scale, which supports the hypothesis.     

“Girls Are as Good as Boys at Math” Implies That Boys Are Probably Better: A Study of Expressions of Gender Equality

Although “Girls are as good as boys at math” explicitly expresses equality, we predict it could nevertheless suggest that boys have more raw talent. In statements with this subject‐complement structure, the item in the complement position serves as the reference point and is thus considered more typical and prominent. This explains why “Tents are like houses,” for instance, sounds better than “Houses are like tents”—people generally think of houses as more typical. For domains about ability, the reference point should be the item that is typically more skilled. We further propose that the reference point should be naturally more skilled. In two experiments, we presented adults with summaries of actual scientific evidence for gender equality in math (Experiment 1) or verbal ability (Experiment 2), but we manipulated whether the reference point in the statements of equality in the summaries (e.g., “Boys’ verbal ability is as good as girls’”) was girls or boys. As predicted, adults attributed more natural ability to each gender when it was in the complement rather than subject position. Yet, in Experiment 3, we found that when explicitly asked, participants judged that such sentences were not biased in favor of either gender, indicating that subject‐complement statements must be transmitting this bias in a subtle way. Thus, statements such as “Girls are as good as boys at math” can actually backfire and perpetuate gender stereotypes about natural ability.     

The perception of a face is no more than the sum of its parts

When you see a person's face, how do you go about combining his or her facial features to make a decision about who that person is? Most current theories of face perception assert that the ability to recognize a human face is not simply the result of an independent analysis of individual features, but instead involves a holistic coding of the relationships among features. This coding is thought to enhance people's ability to recognize a face beyond what would be expected if each feature were shown in isolation. In the study reported here, we explicitly tested this idea by comparing human performance on facial-feature integration with that of an optimal Bayesian integrator. Contrary to the predictions of most current notions of face perception, our findings showed that human observers integrate facial features in a manner that is no better than would be predicted by their ability to use each individual feature when shown in isolation. That is, a face is perceived no better than the sum of its individual parts.     

What factors underlie children’s susceptibility to semantic and phonological false memories? Investigating the roles of language skills and auditory short-term memory

Two experiments investigated the cognitive skills that underlie children’s susceptibility to semantic and phonological false memories in the Deese/Roediger–McDermott procedure ( and ). In Experiment 1, performance on the Verbal Similarities subtest of the British Ability Scales (BAS) II (Elliott, Smith, & McCulloch, 1997) predicted correct and false recall of semantic lures. In Experiment 2, performance on the Yopp–Singer Test of Phonemic Segmentation (Yopp, 1988) did not predict correct recall, but inversely predicted the false recall of phonological lures. Auditory short-term memory was a negative predictor of false recall in Experiment 1, but not in Experiment 2. The findings are discussed in terms of the formation of gist and verbatim traces as proposed by fuzzy trace theory (Reyna & Brainerd, 1998) and the increasing automaticity of associations as proposed by associative activation theory (Howe, Wimmer, Gagnon, & Plumpton, 2009).     

Working memory load and distraction: dissociable effects of visual maintenance and cognitive control

We establish a new dissociation between the roles of working memory (WM) cognitive control and visual maintenance in selective attention as measured by the efficiency of distractor rejection. The extent to which focused selective attention can prevent distraction has been shown to critically depend on the level and type of load involved in the task. High perceptual load that consumes perceptual capacity leads to reduced distractor processing, whereas high WM load that reduces WM ability to exert priority-based executive cognitive control over the task results in increased distractor processing (e.g., Lavie, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 9(2), 75–82, 2005). WM also serves to maintain task-relevant visual representations, and such visual maintenance is known to recruit the same sensory cortices as those involved in perception (e.g., Pasternak & Greenlee, Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 6(2), 97–107, 2005). These findings led us to hypothesize that loading WM with visual maintenance would reduce visual capacity involved in perception, thus resulting in reduced distractor processing—similar to perceptual load and opposite to WM cognitive control load. Distractor processing was assessed in a response competition task, presented during the memory interval (or during encoding; Experiment 1a) of a WM task. Loading visual maintenance or encoding by increased set size for a memory sample of shapes, colors, and locations led to reduced distractor response competition effects. In contrast, loading WM cognitive control with verbal rehearsal of a random letter set led to increased distractor effects. These findings confirm load theory predictions and provide a novel functional distinction between the roles of WM maintenance and cognitive control in selective attention.     

Psychology,community, and the recovering racist

This study adds to the tradition of studying race talk in the context of a flash point in biculturalism in Aotearoa New Zealand. The research examined constructions of the Mayor of New Plymouth (Andrew Judd) following his advocacy for extended Māori representation on the New Plymouth District Council. Data comprised reports, editorials, opinion pieces, and letters to the local newspaper immediately after Judd's appearance on a nationally broadcast current affairs television show when he announced the end of his mayoralty. The analysis considered constructions of Judd as both hero and anti‐hero, with complimentary constructions of the local community as racist, or not. In subscribing to the view for extended representation on the grounds of cultural constituency, Judd was variously positioned as culturally and politically naïve, as a hero for the cause for greater political representation for Māori, and an anti‐hero responsible for letting his own community down and bringing negative publicity to the town he was meant to serve. Judd was the target of abuse that prompted him to end his mayoralty, and this abuse stimulated constructions of widespread community racism. The discussion includes an interrogation of what it means to be a recovering racist, and finally, it is argued that the analysis provides further evidence of the sinuousness of racism.     

Hypo-egoic self-regulation: exercising self-control by diminishing the influence of the self

Theory and research dealing with self-regulation have focused primarily on instances of self-regulation that involve high levels of self-reflection and effortful self-control. However, intentionally trying to control one's behavior sometimes reduces the likelihood of achieving one's goals. This article examines the process of hypo-egoic self-regulation in which people relinquish deliberate, conscious control over their own behavior so that they will respond more naturally, spontaneously, or automatically. An examination of spontaneously occurring hypo-egoic states (such as flow, deindividuation, and transcendence) suggests that hypo-egoic states are characterized by lowered self-awareness and/or an increase in concrete and present-focused self-thoughts. In light of this, people may intentionally foster hypo-egoism via two pathways-(a) taking steps to reduce the proportion of time that they are self-aware (such as repeating a behavior until it is automatic or practicing meditation) or (b) increasing the concreteness of their self-thoughts (such as inducing a concrete mindset or practicing mindfulness). In this way, people may deliberately choose to regulate hypo-egoically when effortful control might be detrimental to their performance.     

The Relationship of Korean Students’ Age and Years of English-as-a-Foreign-Language Exposure with English-Reading Ability: A Cross-Age Study

The differences in spelling error features among learning disabled and normal students spelling instructionally on four grade levels of achievement were investigated. The categories of errors were determined by invented spelling research. The results indicated that the ranking of error features for each group were significantly correlated, and that the range of individual variation about the mean group pattern of spelling error variables was highly similar at each level of achievement. The findings are congruent with the theory of developmental word knowledge and support the position that learning disabled and normally achieving children acquire specific aspects of English orthography in highly similar progressions.