Direct comparison of auditory implicit memory tests

In this experiment, we examined the degree to which four implicit tests and two explicit tests, all involving auditory presentation, were sensitive to the perceptual characteristics of the stimuli presented during study. Presenting stimuli visually decreased priming in all the implicit memory tests, relative to auditory presentation. However, changing voice between study and test decreased priming only in the implicit memory tests requiring identification of words degraded by noise or by low-pass filtering, but not in those tests requiring generation from word portions (stems and fragments). Modality effects without voice effects were observed in cued recall, but the opposite pattern of results (voice effects without modality effects) was obtained in recognition. The primary new finding is the demonstration that auditory memory tests, both explicit and implicit, differ in their sensitivity to the perceptual information encoded during study.     

How to Be an Alethically Rational Naturalist

Alvin Plantinga has famously argued that naturalism is self-defeating. Plantinga's argument is, at its heart, an argument from analogy. Plantinga presents various epistemic situations and claims of each that (i) a person in such a situation has an undefeated defeater for each of his beliefs, and (ii) a reflective naturalist is in a relevantly similar situation. I present various epistemic situations and claim of each that a person in such a situation does not have an undefeated defeater for each of his beliefs. I further claim that at least some of these situations are more relevantly like the situation faced by the reflective naturalist than any of the situations Plantinga describes. Therefore, Plantinga's argument fails to establish that the reflective naturalist has an undefeated defeater for each of his beliefs and hence fails to establish that naturalism is self-defeating.     

Drug addicts in therapy—changes in life space in the course of one year

In a residential community treatment setting, moods and emotional states of drug addicts were explored over a 1‐year period. The specific form of treatment of heroin addiction employed in the communities is based on the importance of interpersonal relationships for psychosocial transition. Twenty‐nine participants reported current mood, emotions, attributions, and motive activation using a time‐sampling diary for 2 weeks at the beginning of the treatment, and 6 and 12 months later. Results show an increase in positive emotions, and in subjective strength and freedom. Furthermore, participants report higher self‐esteem and use less fatalistic attributions. This is interpreted as indicating successful transition processes in terms of higher autonomy, a more extended life space and increased levels of realism. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Family transmission of work affectivity and experiences to children

Theory and research suggest that children develop orientations toward work appreciably influenced by their family members’ own expressed work experiences and emotions. Cross-sectional data from 100 children (53 girls, 47 boys; mean age = 11.1 years) and structural equation modeling were used to assess measures of work affectivity and experiences and to test hypotheses suggesting that family work experiences and emotions influence the orientations children develop toward work and how they in turn influence children’s work and school motivation. Results indicated that the family setting influences children’s perceptions of and future orientation toward the world of work through adults’ expression of positive work experiences, negative work affect, and negative work experiences. Furthermore, children’s work and school motivations appear to be principally influenced by indicators of favorable work affect and experiences. Implications and suggestions for future research are offered that cast the family as an important core setting for children’s vocational development.     

Pip and pop: nonspatial auditory signals improve spatial visual search

Searching for an object within a cluttered, continuously changing environment can be a very time-consuming process. The authors show that a simple auditory pip drastically decreases search times for a synchronized visual object that is normally very difficult to find. This effect occurs even though the pip contains no information on the location or identity of the visual object. The experiments also show that the effect is not due to general alerting (because it does not occur with visual cues), nor is it due to top-down cuing of the visual change (because it still occurs when the pip is synchronized with distractors on the majority of trials). Instead, we propose that the temporal information of the auditory signal is integrated with the visual signal, generating a relatively salient emergent feature that automatically draws attention. Phenomenally, the synchronous pip makes the visual object pop out from its complex environment, providing a direct demonstration of spatially nonspecific sounds affecting competition in spatial visual processing.     

Maternal ratings of infant regulatory competence from 6 to 12 months: influence of perceived stress, birth-weight, and intervention: a randomized controlled trial

Mothers’ reports of preterm and term infants’ temperament from 6 to 12 months of age were studied, with intervention and stress as predictors. Preterm infants with a birth weight <2000 g were randomized to an intervention (71) or a control (69) group. A control group of healthy term infants (74) was also established. The intervention was a modified version of the “Mother–Infant Transaction Program”, aimed at sensitizing caregivers to the infants’ individual characteristics. Temperament was measured with the Infant Behavior Questionnaire, and stress with the Parenting Stress Index. There were no group differences in temperament at 6 or 12 months or in change during the same period. There was a strong association between stress and negative reactivity in the preterm control group at 12 months. In the preterm intervention group, there were strong negative correlations between stress and regulatory competence at 6 months. The intervention seemed to change the relationship between stress and temperament. The strength of this association indicates that the intervention sensitized mothers to the temperamental regulatory competence of their preterm infants.     

European norms and equations for a two dimensional presentation of values as measured with Schwartz's 21‐item portrait values questionnaire

The present study utilizes European Social Survey (ESS) data to introduce European norms and equations for computation of the Self‐Transcendence—Self‐Enhancement and Conservation—Openness to Change value dimensions, as measured with the 21‐item Portrait Values Questionnaire (PVQ). Our analysis of ESS round 1 and 2 data suggest that the two‐dimensional structure and the equations based on this structure are extremely robust. Presenting the two value dimensions besides the 10 basic values offers the advantages of (a) heightened reliability, (b) control of response tendency, and (c) possibility to present results in two‐dimensional space. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.