Onset of frailty in older adults and the protective role of positive affect

The aim of this study was to examine the longitudinal association between positive affect and onset of frailty for 1,558 initially nonfrail older Mexican Americans from the Hispanic Established Populations for Epidemiological Studies of the Elderly database. The incidence of frailty increased 7.9% during the 7-year follow-up period. High positive affect was found to significantly lower the risk of frailty. Each unit increase in baseline positive affect score was associated with a 3% decreased risk of frailty after adjusting for relevant risk factors. Findings add to a growing positive psychology literature by showing that positive affect is protective against the functional and physical decline associated with frailty.     

A dual-process model of reactions to perceived stigma

The authors propose a theoretical model of individual psychological reactions to perceived stigma. This model suggests that 2 psychological systems may be involved in reactions to stigma across a variety of social contexts. One system is primarily reflexive, or associative, whereas the other is rule based, or reflective. This model assumes a temporal pattern of reactions to the stigmatized, such that initial reactions are governed by the reflexive system, whereas subsequent reactions or "adjustments" are governed by the rule-based system. Support for this model was found in 2 studies. Both studies examined participants' moment-by-moment approach-avoidance reactions to the stigmatized. The 1st involved participants' reactions to persons with HIV/AIDS, and the 2nd, participants' reactions to 15 different stigmatizing conditions.     

Liking and memory for musical stimuli as a function of exposure

Three experiments examined changes in liking and memory for music as a function of number of previous exposures, the ecological validity of the music, and whether the exposure phase required focused or incidental listening. After incidental listening, liking ratings were higher for music heard more often in the exposure phase and this association was stronger as ecological validity increased. After focused listening, liking ratings followed an inverted U-shaped function of exposure for the most ecologically valid stimuli (initial increases followed by decreases), but this curvilinear function was attenuated or nonexistent for less valid stimuli. In general, recognition improved as a function of previous exposure for focused listeners, but the effect was attenuated or absent for incidental listeners.     

Perceptions of Ethical Behaviour among Business Faculty in Canada

Faculty members at Canadian business schools were surveyed regarding their ethical perceptions of behaviours related to undergraduate instruction. Fifty-five behavioural statements were listed and respondents were asked to rate the extent to which they felt each behaviour was ethical or unethical. The only item that respondents endorsed as unequivocally unethical (90% indicated it was definitely unethical) was Becoming sexually involved with an undergraduate in one of your classes. We also compared the results of our sample to those of an American sample. Overall, an interesting pattern of differences emerged between the responses obtained in Canada and the U.S. In general, the direction of the significant differences was such that Canadian professors viewed the behaviours in question as less ethical than did their American counterparts.     

Visual perspective taking for avatars in a Simon task

In modern digital applications, users often interact with virtual representations of themselves or others, called avatars. We examined how these avatars and their perspectives influence stimulus–response compatibility in a Simon task. Participants responded to light/dark blue stimuli with left/right key presses in the presence of a task-irrelevant avatar. Changes in stimulus–response compatibility were used to quantify changes in the mental representation of the task and perspective taking toward this avatar. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that perspective taking for an avatar occurred in orthogonal stimulus–response mappings, causing a compatibility effect from the avatar’s point of view. In the following two experiments we introduced a larger variety of angular disparities between the participant and avatar. In Experiment 3, the Simon effect with lateralized stimulus positions remained largely unaffected by the avatar, pointing toward an absence of perspective taking. In Experiment 4, after avatar hand movements were added in order to strengthen the participants’ sense of agency over the avatar, a spatial compatibility effect from the avatar’s perspective was observed again, and hints of the selective use of perspective taking on a trial-by-trial basis were found. Overall, the results indicate that users can incorporate the perspective of an avatar into their mental representation of a situation, even when this perspective is unnecessary to complete a task, but that certain contextual requirements have to be met.     

The Mozart Effect: An Artifact of Preference

The "Mozart effect" reported by Rauscher, Shaw, and Ky (1993, 1995) indicates that spatial-temporal abilities are enhanced after listening to music composed by Mozart. We replicated and extended the effect in Experiment 1: Performance on a spatial-temporal task was better after participants listened to a piece composed by Mozart or by Schubert than after they sat in silence. In Experiment 2, the advantage for the music condition disappeared when the control condition consisted of a narrated story instead of silence. Rather, performance was a function of listeners' preference (music or story), with better performance following the preferred condition.     

Knowledge level learning and the power law: A soar model of skill acquisition in scheduling

Zusammenfassung. Das hier vorgestellte Modell lernt graduell, Planungsaufgaben aus der Klasse der Maschinenbelegungsprobleme (job-shop-scheduling problems) zu lösen. Mit Hilfe des Chunking-Mechanismus von Soar wird episodisches Wissen über die Belegungsreihenfolge von Aufträgen auf Maschinen memoriert. Bei der Entwicklung des Modells wurden zahlreiche qualitative (z. B. Transfereffekte) und quantitative Befunde (z. B. Bearbeitungszeiten) aus einer früheren empirischen Untersuchung berücksichtigt. In einer Validierungsstudie wurden dieselben Aufgaben von 14 Probanden und dem Modell bearbeitet. Die Passung von Simulationsdaten und empirischen Ergebnissen fiel insgesamt gut aus. Allerdings löst das Modell die Aufgaben schneller und zeigt auch einen etwas besseren Lernverlauf als die Probanden. Das Modell liefert eine Erklärung für das Rauschen, das typischerweise bei Bearbeitungszeiten zu beobachten ist: es handelt sich um erworbenes Wissen, das mehr oder weniger gut und auch unterschiedlich häufig auf neue Situationen übertragen wird. Der Lernverlauf der Probanden entspricht nur für aggregierte Daten einer Potenzfunktion (power law). Der vorgestellte Mechanismus zeigt, wie ein symbolisches Modell der Informationsverarbeitung graduelle Verhaltensänderungen generiert und wie der offensichtliche Erwerb allgemeiner Prozeduren ohne explizites Lernen von deklarativen Regeln erfolgen kann. Es wird nahegelegt, daß es sich hier um die Modellierung einer Form impliziten Lernens handelt. Summary. The model presented here gradually learns how to perform a job-shop scheduling task. It uses Soar's chunking mechanism to acquire episodic memories about the order to schedule jobs. The model was based on many qualitative (e.g., transfer effects) and quantitative (e.g., solution time) regularities found in previously collected data. The model was tested with new data where scheduling tasks were given to the model and to 14 subjects. The model generally fit these data with the restrictions that the model performs the task (in simulated time) faster than the subjects, and its performance improves somewhat more quickly than the subjects' performance. The model provides an explanation of the noise typically found in problem solving times - it is the result of learning actual pieces of knowledge that transfer more or less to new situations but rarely by an average amount. Only when the data are averaged (i.e., over subjects) does the smooth power law appear. This mechanism demonstrates how symbolic models can exhibit a gradual change in behavior and how the apparent acquisition of general procedures can be performed without resorting to explicit declarative rule generation. We suggest that this may represent a type of implicit learning.