‘A good odour to breathe?’ The effect of pleasant ambient odour on human visual vigilance

The present study examined the effect of an alerting and a relaxing odour on human visual vigilance. Three groups of undergraduates (N = 54) completed a sustained visual vigilance task which required them to respond whenever a target stimulus appeared on a computer monitor. One group completed the task in the presence of an alerting odour (peppermint), another did so in the presence of a relaxing odour (bergamot) and a third group completed the task in an unscented environment. A 2×3×2 (sex×odour×diurnal preference) MANOVA was performed in order to determine group differences in response times and number of correct detections. Participants in the bergamot condition detected fewer targets correctly within 1.25 seconds of the target appearing than did those in the peppermint or no‐odour groups. Exposure to bergamot was also associated with significantly fewer correct detections in the second than in the first half of the task, when compared with the other two conditions. The results suggest that sustained exposure to a relaxing odour can impair visual vigilance. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Nutritional habits and motivations to eat after a palatable pre-load

A representative sample of college students was surveyed about nutritional habits and motivations to eat. Females were more likely to report dieting, being overweight, reading nutritional labels, eating healthy meals, as well as hungering for and consuming lower fat foods compared to males. Males reported a greater hunger for and consumption of candy bars compared to females. Thus, females may not be as ambivalent about eating sweet or higher fat foods as previously suggested. The experimental manipulation involved exposing subjects to either candy before the survey, candy with the survey, or just the survey with no candy exposure. Females exposed to the candy preload indicated an increased hunger for fruits and vegetables compared to female controls. Portions of this research have been presented at the 1999 annual meeting of the Eastern Psychological Association in Providence, RI. The authors would like to thank Mr. Steve Lukasik and Ms. Christie Piedmont for their assistance on this project.     

What makes a good story

Three different ways have been selected for analyzing a story's structure, each focusing on different types of information. (a) Episodic or story grammar approaches stories as problem-solving episodes, emphasizing goals and activities to achieve them. (b) Labov's high point structure emphasizes affective information and sees stories as organized around emotional high points or crisis events. (c) Deese's dependency analysis emphasizes linguistic complexity and, in particular, the way propositions are related to each other through a relationship of either coordination or subordination. Stories were scored according to how well they realized good structure in each system, and the three scoring systems were relatively independent of each other. Adults were asked to rate 3-to 9-year old children's personal narratives in terms of how good a story each was, and their ratings were compared to how the stories were scored in terms of all three systems. None of the systems completely explained the subjective quality ratings; rather, all three seemed to contribute in different ways to subjects' ratings, with the best narratives generally deemed sophisticated and complex in at least two of the three systems.The authors wish to acknowledge their great debt to James Deese and Christine Glenn. This research was supported by the National Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada Grant A-7911 to Carole Peterson.     

Age differences in skill acquisition and transfer in an implicit learning paradigm

Age differences in learning a complex cognitive skill are examined. The type of knowledge gained and levels of performance and transfer achieved, under different practice conditions, were compared in younger and older groups of trainees. The development of verbalizable knowledge about the task but not task performance itself varied as a function of age and practice condition. All trainees achieved transfer to novel versions of the task but older subjects appeared restricted to tasks drawn from the same semantic domain. The implications of these findings for developing training programmes for older workers are discussed.     

Effect of Questioning Techniques and Interview Setting on Young Children's Eyewitness Memory

The goal of this research was to learn if supposed ineffective questioning techniques (e.g., question repetition within the interview) would reduce the accuracy of five-year-olds' eyewitness memory. In the first study, children viewed a slide show depicting a minor crime and were then interviewed either with a standard interview or one which incorporated ineffective questioning techniques. The results indicated that the type of interview did not affect children's eyewitness memory. In a second study, children were presented with the ineffective interview by an authoritative interviewer in a formal office setting. The results again indicated little influence of interview setting or question technique on children's eyewitness memory, identification accuracy, and suggestibility.     

The Experience of Growing Up in a Minister's Home and the Religious Commitment of the Adult Child of a Minister

A survey of 487pastors' children (PKs) age 25+ was undertaken to ascertain if there was any relationship between the unique aspects of the pastoral family and their relationships, and his or her adult religious commitment. Variables included the feelings of the PK toward moving, consistency of parental behavior, amount and quality of family time, ability to be oneself without being noticed, expectations by others for self-perceived as greater than their expectations for others, the status of having a pastor as a father, and the support of church and members, intimacy with each parent, satisfying parental marriage, and relationships with friends and extended family. All variables correlated with at least some measures of religious commitment although none were strong predictors. The strongest was the PKs' perception that more was expected of him or her. Other influences not examined in this study appear to have a greater impact on adult religious commitment. Qualitative analysis was consistent with the above.     

Bounded Identities: Women and Religion in Colonial Brazil, 1550–1750

This article examines the creation of women’s gender identity in the religious discourse of colonial Brazil and documents the creation of two separate norms—one for elite women and another for slave, lower-class, and mixed-race women. The Roman Catholic Church, closely linked with the Portuguese monarchic state and its colonial ambitions, transmitted both norms in religious guidebooks, missionary letters and sermons. This summary centers on the defining role for women in marriage, and indicates that the epoch of colonial Brazil is particularly important for feminist study. With the increasingly disparate perspectives on women from Late Antiquity, the Humanists, and Counter-Reformation theologians, this early modern era saw conflicted discourse concerning traditional gender roles.