What are you looking at? Acuity for triadic eye gaze

The authors measured observers' ability to determine direction of gaze toward an object in space. In Experiment 1, they determined the difference threshold for determining whether a live "looker" was looking to the left or right of a target point. Acuity for eye direction was quite high (approximately 30 s arc). Viewing the movement of the looker's eyes did not improve acuity. When one of the looker's eyes was occluded, the observers' acuity was disrupted and their point of subjective equality was shifted away from the exposed eye. Experiment 2 was a replication of Experiment 1, but digitized gaze displays were used. The results of Experiment 3 showed that the acuity for direction of gaze depended on the position of the looker's target. Overall, the results indicated that humans are highly sensitive to gaze direction and that information from both eyes is used to determine direction of regard.     

Differing conceptions of moral exemplarity: just, brave, and caring

People's conceptions of different types of moral exemplarity were examined in an attempt to augment the current emphasis on moral rationality with a fuller understanding of moral personality. In Study 1 (with 805 adults), a free-listing procedure was used to generate the attributes of 3 types of moral exemplars (just, brave, and caring). In Study 2 (with 401 undergraduates), prototypicality- and personality-rating procedures were used to generate a personality profile for each type of moral exemplar and to examine the relations among them. In Study 3 (with 240 undergraduates), a similarity-sorting procedure was used to identify the typologies implicit in people's understanding of these different types of moral exemplarity. The findings indicate that moral excellence can be exemplified in rather divergent ways and that understanding of moral functioning would be enhanced by attention to this wider range of moral virtues.     

Contextual interference effect on acquisition and retention of pistol-shooting skills

The effects of contextual interference on learning pistol-shooting skills in a natural training environment were examined. The shooting skills consisted of three "stages" with different requirements for the skill variations commonly used in the field. 12 participants were randomly assigned into one of two practice conditions, blocked vs serial. Following a 20-min. safety and skill instructional session, Blocked group practiced 10 trials in a row at each stage, while Serial group performed 5 trials in a row for each of the three stages and then repeated the cycle. Both groups completed a total of 30 practice trials over the three stages. A 10-min. rest interval was provided prior to a retention test which included 9 trials (3 trials at each stage in a blocked format). Results based on the data of Stage III, the most complex skill among the three stages, showed a pattern consistent with previous findings that practicing in the serial schedule depressed performance during initial training but maintained the performance better at retention, relative to the blocked practice.     

Learning and performance effects of accurate and erroneous knowledge of results on time perception

Performance feedback (also known as knowledge of results or KR) has both performance and learning effects on many tasks. Earlier studies have demonstrated performance but not learning effects on time perception tasks. In this experiment, we dissociate and identify these two phenomena on two different time perception tasks. Participants were presented with either accurate (100%) or erroneous (80% or 120% of actual performance) KR on either a reproduction or a numerical estimation time perception task. Accurate (100%) KR reduced the group variability and increased the accuracy of response magnitude but left individual variability unchanged. Erroneous (80% or 120%) KR also reduced the group variability while leaving individual variation unchanged, but decreased the true accuracy of the response, with response magnitudes increasing for the 80% KR group and decreasing for the 120% group. Thus external KR that is in conflict with internal time cues overrides these internal cues and dictates response magnitude on these two tasks. Thus KR provides guidance for these behaviors. KR did not reduce the variability (dispersion) of participants' responses, but centered each participant's responses closer to the targeted performance. This decreased group response variability reflected a performance enhancing effect of KR because group response variability increased after KR was withdrawn. In contrast, response magnitudes remained changed for the duration of the post-KR period, indicating that KR also induced a learned response. Thus individual response variability, group response variability and response magnitude represent dissociable features of performance on these time perception tasks.     

Neutralizing substitutes for leadership theory: leadership effects and common-source bias

The purpose of this research was to examine alternative models of substitutes for leadership theory given the general lack of empirical support for the moderating effects postulated by the theory. On this basis, the research posited that the effects of substitutes also could be conceptualized as mediated relations. The research examined moderated and mediated relations for several sets of leader behaviors and substitutes that have been examined in the literature. The research design sampled 49 organizations, with 940 subordinates rating 156 leaders. Results, although generally not supportive of the moderator or mediator hypotheses, essentially demonstrated that leadership matters. The findings also suggest that prior significant effects in substitutes literature may be merely a statistical artifact, resulting from common-source bias.     

Knowledge of partner's ability as a moderator of group motivation gains: an exploration of the Köhler discrepancy effect

O. K?hler (1926, 1927) found that less able performers tried harder as team members under conjunctive task demands (Kohler motivation gain effect) and that the greatest gain occurred with moderately discrepant coworker abilities (K?hler discrepancy effect). Recent investigations have reproduced K?hler's overall motivation gain but not the discrepancy effect. The present research examined whether workers' foreknowledge of task abilities--present in Kohler's research, absent in contemporary studies--moderates the discrepancy effect. Participants worked alone or in 2-person teams under conjunctive task demands. Experiment 1 manipulated foreknowledge of ability. Experiment 2 manipulated discrepancy: a (confederate) teammate performed slightly, moderately, or substantially better. Both experiments found (a) overall motivation gains and (b) discrepancy moderation under foreknowledge conditions. Implications for understanding group motivation gains are discussed.     

Auditory frequency-based inhibition differs from spatial IOR

Uninformative auditory frequency cues have a facilitatory effect on reaction time and accuracy of detection and intensity discrimination of target tones for cue-target intervals of up to 3 sec (Green & McKeown, 2001; Ward, 1997). Under some conditions, however, this facilitatory effect can reverse to an inhibitory effect at cue-target intervals longer than 450 msec (Mondor, Breau, & Milliken, 1998). Thepresent work demonstrates that such inhibitory effects are not found in target-target experiments (Experiment 1) or in cue-target experiments requiring a go-no-go discrimination of the target (Experiment 2), whereas they do appear in the paradigm used by Mondor et al. (1998, Experiment 3), albeit unaffected by the similarity of cue and target. Thus, the frequency-based inhibitory effects sometimes found in auditory cuing tasks can be distinguished empirically from those characterizing spatial inhibition of return (IOR), which are found in both target-target and go-no-go cue-target paradigms. The present work and functional and neurophysiological arguments all support the position that different mechanisms underlie spatial IOR and the inhibitory effects sometimes found in auditory frequency processing.     

When debiasing backfires: accessible content and accessibility experiences in debiasing hindsight

Two studies demonstrated that attempts to debias hindsight by thinking about alternative outcomes may backfire and traced this to the influence of subjective accessibility experiences. Participants listed either few (2) or many (10) thoughts about how an event might have turned out otherwise. Listing many counterfactual thoughts was experienced as difficult and consistently increased the hindsight bias, presumably because the experienced difficulty suggested that there were not many ways in which the event might have turned out otherwise. No significant hindsight effects were obtained when participants listed only a few counterfactual thoughts, a task subjectively experienced as easy. The interplay of accessible content and subjective accessibility experiences in the hindsight bias is discussed.