Anxiety sensitivity: the role of conscious awareness and selective attentional bias to physical threat

Selective attentional biases were examined amongst individuals varying in levels of physical anxiety sensitivity. The dot-probe paradigm was used to examine attention towards anxiety symptomatology, social threat and positive words. Stimuli were presented above (unmasked) and below (masked) the level of conscious awareness. High physical anxiety sensitivity was associated with attentional vigilance for anxiety symptomatology words in both unmasked and masked conditions. For positive words, however, those high in anxiety sensitivity were found to avoid such stimuli when they were masked, whereas they exhibited a relative vigilance when unmasked. If the differences between awareness conditions are reliable, then the impact of the automatic vigilance for threat might be modified by conscious attempts to direct attention towards other types of stimuli.     

Perceptions of multiple risk factors for heart attacks

There is increasing evidence that in some diseases such as coronary heart disease, risk factors may interact synergistically, resulting in greater likelihood of disease than would be produced by the sum of the risk factors. These two studies aimed to examine the extent to which 210 undergraduate students and 28 heart attack patients perceive risk factors to combine synergistically. Respondents read one of four vignettes, describing information about risk factors (with high and low smoking and family history), and estimated a man's likelihood of a heart attack in a hypothetical case. In both studies an interaction was found with either a family history or smoking eliciting ratings of high likelihood of heart attack, providing no evidence of synergistic models. This finding may reflect respondents' beliefs or the insensitivity of this paper-and-pencil method in detecting synergistic effects.     

Apparent Distortions in Photography and the Geometry of Visual Space

In this paper I contrast the geometric structure of phenomenal visual space with that of photographic images. I argue that topologically both are two-dimensional and that both involve central projections of scenes being depicted. However, I also argue that the metric structures of the spaces differ inasmuch as two types of “apparent distortions”—marginal distortion in wide-angle photography and close-up distortions—which occur in photography do not occur in the corresponding visual experiences. In particular, I argue that the absence of marginal distortions in vision is evidence for a holistic metric of visual space that is spherical, and that the absence of close-up distortions shows that the local metric structure possesses a dynamic variable curvature which is dependent upon the distance away of objects being viewed at a given time.     

Bidirectional Effects of Parenting Quality and Child Externalizing Behavior in Predominantly Single Parent, Under-Resourced African American Families

This study investigates the bidirectional perspective of parent–child effects by examining the extent to which parenting quality predicted child externalizing behavior and vice versa. Data was collected over four time points from primary caregivers and early school age children in low-income, primarily single parent homes (N = 249, mean age of children at Time 1 = 6.41 years). Parenting quality was operationalized as primary caregiver perceptions of positive parenting, effectiveness of parenting discipline, parenting efficacy and satisfaction. Child externalizing behavior data was captured via an assessment of the frequency of externalizing behavior as reported by caregivers. We hypothesized that parenting quality and child externalizing behavior would remain stable over time and that a bidirectional relationship would be present. Data was analyzed using structural equation modeling and results indicated that child externalizing behavior predicted subsequent parenting quality, and parenting quality predicted subsequent child externalizing. Specifically, our research team found that the influence of child externalizing behavior on parenting quality decreased with time, while the influence of parenting quality on child externalizing behavior increased with time. Overall results reveal the complex transactional influences of child externalizing behavior and parenting quality in our sample. Findings support the notion that parenting quality and child externalizing behavior are interactive processes which might best be handled by continual assessment and which may be potentially strong targets for interventions.     

Notational Variance and Its Variants

What does it take for two logics to be mere notational variants? The present paper proposes a variety of different ways of cashing out notational variance, in particular isolating a constraint on any reasonable account of notational variance which makes plausible that the only kinds of translations which can witness notational variance are what are sometimes called definitional translations.

     

Asymmetric interference in 3‐ to 4‐month‐olds' sequential category learning

Three‐ to 4‐month‐old infants show asymmetric exclusivity in the acquisition of cat and dog perceptual categories. The cat perceptual category excludes dog exemplars, but the dog perceptual category does not exclude cat exemplars. We describe a connectionist autoencoder model of perceptual categorization that shows the same asymmetries as infants. The model predicts the presence of asymmetric retroactive interference when infants acquire cat and dog categories sequentially. A subsequent experiment conducted with 3‐ to 4‐month‐olds verifies the predicted pattern of looking time behaviors. We argue that bottom‐up, associative learning systems with distributed representations are appropriate for modeling the operation of short‐term visual memory in early perceptual category learning.