Cultural psychology, A new look: reply to Bond (2002), Fiske (2002), Kitayama (2002), and Miller (2002)

M. H. Bond (2002), A. P. Fiske (2002), S. Kitayama (2002), and J. G. Miller (2002) joined D. Oyserman, H. M. Coon, and M. Kemmelmeier (2002) in highlighting limitations of the individualism-collectivism model of culture. Concern is warranted; nevertheless, individualism-collectivism helps structure discourse on the influence of culture on the mind. To avoid level-of-analysis entanglements, Oyserman et al. propose an integrative model that includes distal, proximal, and situated cultural features of societies and internalized models of these features, highlights the importance of subjective construal, and uses evolutionary perspectives to clarify the basic problems cultures address. Framed this way, it is clear that, depending on situational requirements, both individualism- and collectivism-focused strategies are adaptive; thus, it is likely that human minds have adapted to think both ways.     

The irrelevant-speech effect and children: theoretical implications of developmental change

The irrelevant-speech effect refers to the finding of impaired recall performance in the presence of irrelevant auditory stimuli. Two broad classes of theories exist for the effect, both allowing automatic entry of the distracting sounds into the processing system but differing in how attention is involved. As one source of evidence in the discussion of existing theories of the irrelevant-speech effect, the performance of children and adults on a visual serial recall task with irrelevant sounds (speech and tones) was examined. The magnitude of the effects of irrelevant sounds on performance decreased with age. The developmental differences were marked in the conditions with the greatest need for attentional control (words and especially changing words). The findings were interpreted with respect to current models of memory. Theories of the irrelevant-speech effect that include a role for attentional control were better suited to handle the results than those without a specified role for attention.     

Salvaging the self in a world without soul: William James's The Principles of psychology

This article explores William James's transformation of the religious soul into the secular self in The Principles of Psychology. Although James's views on the self are familiar to many historians of psychology, the article places his treatment of the self within the broader social and cultural context of a secularizing, industrializing society. There were palpable tensions and anxieties that accompanied the cultural shift, and these are particularly transparent in James's Principles. James attempted the project of secularizing the soul in order to promote a natural science of the mind but with marked ambivalence for the project, because it left out some of the moral and metaphysical questions of great interest to him.     

Timing variability in circle drawing and tapping: probing the relationship between event and emergent timing

R. Ivry, R. M. Spencer, H. N. Zelaznik, and J. Diedrichsen (2002) have proposed a distinction between timed movements in which a temporal representation is part of the task goal (event timing) and those in which timing properties are emergent. The issue addressed in the present experiment was how timing in conditions conducive to emergent timing becomes established. According to what the authors term the transformation hypothesis, timing initially requires an event-based representation when the temporal goal is defined externally (e.g., by a metronome), but over the first few movement cycles, control processes become established that allow timing to become emergent. Different groups of participants (N = 84) executed either 1 timed interval, 4 timed intervals, or 2 timed intervals separated by a pause. They produced the intervals by either circle drawing, a task associated with emergent timing, or tapping, a task associated with event timing. Analyses of movement variability suggested that similar timing processes were used in the 2 tasks only during the 1st interval. Those results are consistent with the transformation hypothesis and lead to the inference that the transition from event-based control to emergent timing can occur rapidly during continuous movements.     

Perceptions of Dating Violence Following a Sexualor Nonsexual Betrayal of Trust: Effects of Gender, Sexism, Acceptance of Rape Myths, and Vengeance Motivation

College womens (N = 220) and mens (N = 208) perceptions of violence following a betrayal by a romantic partner were studied in an independent groups design that varied gender of the participant, type of betrayal (sexual or nonsexual), and gender of the betrayed individual. Participants read one of four brief vignettes in which the betrayed person slapped his/her partner and made his/her lip bleed. Justification of this action was rated on 10 items. Factor analysis of these items indicated the presence of three factors for men and four for women. Both men and women indicated that hitting the partner, getting even, and being angry were more justifiable following a sexual betrayal. The hitting of a male partner by a betrayed woman was perceived as more justified than the hitting of a female partner by a betrayed man. In absolute terms, hitting and getting even by both women and men were generally viewed as unjustifiable, whereas being angry was viewed as justifiable. For both women and men, scores on the Vengeance Scale (Stuckless & Goranson, 1992) and Rape Myth Acceptance Scale (Lonsway & Fitzgerald, 1995) were related to getting even. For men, the Hostile Sexism Scale (Glick & Fiske, 2001) was related to getting even or being angry and breaking up. Results indicated that perceptions of reactions to betrayal are related to type of betrayal and to the dispositional characteristics of the perceiver.     

Eye gaze and individual differences consistent with learned attention in associative blocking and highlighting

The associative learning effects called blocking and highlighting have previously been explained by covert learned attention, but evidence for learned attention has been indirect, via models of response choice. The present research reports results from eye tracking consistent with the attentional hypothesis: Gaze duration is diminished for blocked cues and augmented for highlighted cues. If degree of attentional learning varies across individuals but is relatively stable within individuals, then the magnitude of blocking and highlighting should covary across individuals. This predicted correlation is obtained for both choice and eye gaze. A connectionist model that implements attentional learning is shown to fit the data and account for individual differences by variation in its attentional parameters.     

Coherence of the irrelevant-sound effect: Individual profiles of short-term memory and susceptibility to task-irrelevant materials

We examined individual and developmental differences in the disruptive effects of irrelevant sounds on serial recall of printed lists. In Experiment 1, we examined adults (N = 205) receiving eight-item lists to be recalled. Although their susceptibility to disruption of recall by irrelevant sounds was only slightly related to memory span, regression analyses documented highly reliable individual differences in this susceptibility across speech and tone distractors, even with variance from span level removed. In Experiment 2, we examined adults (n = 64) and 8-year-old children (n = 63) receiving lists of a length equal to a predetermined span and one item shorter (span-1). We again found significant relationships between measures of span and susceptibility to irrelevant sounds, although in only two of the measures. We conclude that some of the cognitive processes helpful in performing a span task may not be beneficial in the presence of irrelevant sounds.     

The effects of outcome expectations and satisfaction on weight loss and maintenance: correlational and experimental analyses--a randomized trial.

This study examines the hypothesis that highly favorable outcome expectations promote weight loss and hinder weight maintenance. To investigate the effects of outcome expectations and satisfaction with treatment outcomes on weight loss, 349 adults were randomly assigned to 1 of 2 weight loss programs that emphasize either (a) an "optimistic" message, focusing exclusively on the positive aspects of weight loss, or (b) a "balanced" message, giving equal time to positive and negative aspects of weight loss. Participants changed their weight loss cognitions in response to the intervention, but there was no significant difference between the intervention treatment groups in short-term or long-term (18-month) weight loss. Independent of treatment message, positive outcome expectations and satisfaction were both associated with weight loss.     

Understanding of the concept of numerically "less" by bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus)

In 2 experiments, bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) judged the ordinal relationship between novel numerosities. The dolphins were first trained to choose the exemplar with the fewer number of items when presented with just a few specific comparisons (e.g., 2 vs. 6, 1 vs. 3, and 3 vs. 7). Generalization of this rule was then tested by presenting the dolphins with all possible pairwise comparisons between 1 and 8. The dolphins chose the exemplar with the fewer number of items at levels far above chance, showing that they could recognize and represent numerosities on an ordinal scale. Their pattern of errors was consistent with the idea of an underlying analog magnitude representation.