Self and other obedience estimates: biases and moderators

The authors conducted 2 studies regarding behavior perceptions of "self" and "typical other" in hypothetical replications of S. Milgram's (1963) obedience experiment. In Study 1, participants' knowledge about Milgram's actual results was manipulated. Regardless of knowledge, results demonstrated several specific social and perceptual biases (e.g., the self-other bias; J. D. Brown, 1986), in addition to several general, fundamental lessons of social psychology (e.g., the perseverance of lay dispositionism). Study 2 was designed to explore the possibility that participants' own academic interests and worldview could influence the biases explicated in Study 1. The authors assessed perceptions of both criminal-justice majors and non-criminal-justice majors regarding their perceptions of behaviors of self and typical other. The criminal-justice students' self-other obedience estimates were significantly higher than those of the non-criminal-justice students. Further, the self-other discrepancy for criminal-justice students was significantly smaller than the difference reported by non-criminal-justice majors, suggesting that the criminal-justice students demonstrated the self-other bias significantly less than non-criminal-justice students in this context. The findings indicate that specific social-perceptual biases may have been moderated by career interest and worldview.     

Cognitive control and parsing: Reexamining the role of Broca’s area in sentence comprehension

A century of investigation into the role of the human frontal lobes in complex cognition, including language processing, has revealed several interesting but apparently contradictory findings. In particular, the results of numerous studies suggest that left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG), which includes Broca’s area, plays a direct role in sentence-level syntactic processing. In contrast, other brain-imaging and neuropsychological data indicate that LIFG is crucial for cognitive control—specifically, for overriding highly regularized, automatic processes, even when a task involves syntactically undemanding material (e.g., single words, a list of letters). We provide a unifying account of these findings, which emphasizes the importance of general cognitive control mechanisms for the syntactic processing of sentences. On the basis of a review of the neurocognitive and sentence-processing literatures, we defend the following three hypotheses: (1) LIFG is part of a network of frontal lobe subsystems that are generally responsible for the detection and resolution of incompatible stimulus representations; (2) the role of LIFG in sentence comprehension is to implement reanalysis in the face of misinterpretation; and (3) individual differences in cognitive control abilities in nonsyntactic tasks predict correlated variation in sentence-processing abilities pertaining to the recovery from misinterpretation.     

The effects of errorless learning and backward chaining on the acquisition of Internet skills in adults with developmental disabilities

An important area in the learning and development of individuals with disabilities is the acquisition of independent, age-appropriate leisure skills. Three adults with autism and mental retardation were taught to access specific Internet sites using backward chaining and most-to-least intrusive prompting. The number of independent steps completed in the task analysis increased following training.     

Capacity estimates in working memory: Reliability and interrelationships among tasks

The concept of capacity has become increasingly important in discussions of working memory (WM), in so far as most models of WM conceptualize it as a limited-capacity mechanism for maintaining information in an active state, and as capacity estimates from at least one type of WM task—complex span—are valid predictors of real-world cognitive performance. However, the term capacity is also often used in the context of a distinct set of WM tasks, change detection, and may or may not refer to the same cognitive capability. We here develop maximum-likelihood models of capacity from each of these tasks—as well as from a third WM task that places heavy demands on cognitive control, the self-ordered WM task (SOT)—and show that the capacity estimates from change detection and complex span tasks are not correlated with each other, although capacity estimates from change detection tasks do correlate with those from the SOT. Furthermore, exploratory factor analysis confirmed that performance on the SOT and change detection load on the same factor, with performance on our complex span task loading on its own factor. These findings suggest that at least two distinct cognitive capabilities underlie the concept of WM capacity as it applies to each of these three tasks.     

Alternatives to switch-cost scoring in the task-switching paradigm: Their reliability and increased validity

In the task-switching paradigm, the latency switch-cost score—the difference in mean reaction time between switch and nonswitch trials—is the traditional measure of task-switching ability. However, this score does not reflect accuracy, where switch costs may also emerge. In two experiments that varied in response deadlines (unlimited vs. limited time), we evaluated the measurement properties of two traditional switch-cost scoring methods (the latency switch-cost score and the accuracy switch-cost score) and three alternatives (a rate residual score, a bin score, and an inverse efficiency score). Scores from the rate residual, bin score, and inverse efficiency methods had comparable reliability for latency switch-cost scores without response deadlines but were more reliable than latency switch-cost scores when higher error rates were induced with a response deadline. All three alternative scoring methods appropriately accounted for differences in accuracy switch costs when higher error rates were induced, whereas pure latency switch-cost scores did not. Critically, only the rate residual and bin score methods were more valid indicators of task-switching ability; they demonstrated stronger relationships with performance on an independent measure of executive functioning (the antisaccade analogue task), and they allowed the detection of larger effect sizes when examining within-task congruency effects. All of the three alternative scoring methods provide researchers with a better measure of task-switching ability than do traditional scoring methods, because they each simultaneously account for latency and accuracy costs. Overall, the three alternative scoring methods were all superior to the traditional latency switch-cost scoring method, but the strongest methods were the rate residual and bin score methods.     

Working memory and second language comprehension and production: A meta-analysis

Although working memory (WM) figures centrally in many theories of second language (L2) proficiency development and processing, some have argued that the importance of WM is overstated (e.g., Juffs, Transactions of the Philological Society, 102, 199–225, 2004). Despite many studies over the past two decades, the literature lacks a quantitative synthesis of the extant results. In this article, we report a meta-analysis of data from 79 samples involving 3,707 participants providing 748 effect sizes. The results indicate that WM is positively associated with both L2 processing and proficiency outcomes, with an estimated population effect size (ρ) of .255. In additional analyses, we assessed whether the WM–criterion relationship was modulated by potential covariates identified in the literature search (i.e., participant characteristics, WM measure features, criterion measure factors, and publication status). The results of the covariate analyses indicated larger effect sizes for the executive control (vs. storage) component of WM, and for verbal (vs. nonverbal) measures of WM. Minimal publication bias was detected, suggesting that WM has a robust, positive relationship with L2 outcomes. We discuss the implications of these results for models of WM and theories of L2 processing and L2 proficiency development.     

Clinical Validity of Prototype Personality Disorder Ratings in Adolescents

A growing body of research shows that personality pathology in adolescents is clinically distinctive and frequently stable into adulthood. A reliable and useful method for rating personality pathology in adolescent patients has the potential to enhance conceptualization, dissemination, and treatment effectiveness. The aim of this study is to examine the clinical validity of a prototype matching approach (derived from the Shedler Westen Assessment Procedure–Adolescent Version) for quantifying personality pathology in an adolescent inpatient sample. Sixty-six adolescent inpatients and their parents or legal guardians completed forms of the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) assessing emotional and behavioral problems. Clinical criterion variables including suicide history, substance use, and fights with peers were also assessed. Patients’ individual and group therapists on the inpatient unit completed personality prototype ratings. Prototype diagnoses demonstrated substantial reliability (median intraclass correlation coefficient =.75) across independent ratings from individual and group therapists. Personality prototype ratings correlated with the CBCL scales and clinical criterion variables in anticipated and meaningful ways. As seen in prior research with adult samples, prototype personality ratings show clinical validity across independent clinician raters previously unfamiliar with the approach, and they are meaningfully related to clinical symptoms, behavioral problems, and adaptive functioning.     

A new look at “the hard problem” of bilingual lexical access: evidence for language-switch costs with univalent stimuli

Considerable work has used language-switching tasks to investigate how bilinguals manage competition between languages. Language-switching costs have been argued to reflect persisting inhibition or persisting activation of a non-target language. However, these costs might instead reflect the use of bivalent stimuli (i.e. pictures or digits that can be responded to in either language). That is, language-switching costs may simply reflect a cost of selecting the task-appropriate response for a given item and so may not be reflective of bilingual lexical access [Finkbeiner, M., Almeida, J., Janssen, N., & Carramaza, A. (2006). Lexical selection in bilingual speech production does not involve language suppression. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 32(5), 1075–1089]. The present study addresses this concern by having Chinese/English bilinguals switch between languages in response to inherently univalent stimuli (English words and Chinese Characters) as well as lexically univalent, but orthographically bivalent, stimuli (English words and Chinese Pinyin). Speakers showed switch costs when naming both univalent and orthographically bivalent stimuli, showing that switch costs can be found even with inherently univalent stimuli.