Priming across modalities and priming across category levels: extending the domain of preserved function in amnesia

Amnesia is considered to reflect the effects of damage to a specific brain system required for elaboration, consolidation, and conscious recollection. The study of amnesia is therefore a useful approach for establishing dissociations of function and for understanding the normal organization of memory functions. Amnesic patients and two control groups were tested in two studies of priming. In the first experiment, as measured by a word completion test, all groups exhibited significant priming effects that were greater within a modality than across modalities. The amnesic patients exhibited normal priming effects both within and across modalities, despite severe impairment in recall. In the second experiment, all groups exhibited significant and equivalent priming of category exemplars when category labels were presented and subjects were asked to produce the first exemplars that came to mind. The results extend the domain in which preserved priming effects can be observed in amnesia and they suggest that features of priming observed in normal subjects describe a capacity that is independent of the brain system damaged in amnesia.     

An aphasia database on the internet: a model for computer-assisted analysis in aphasiology

A web-based software model was developed as an example for data mining in aphasiology. It is used for educating medical and engineering students. It is based upon a database of 254 aphasic patients which contains the diagnosis of the aphasia type, profiles of an aphasia test battery (Aachen Aphasia Test), and some further clinical information. In addition, the cerebral lesion profiles of 147 of these cases were standardized by transferring the coordinates of the lesions to a 3D reference brain based upon the ACPC coordinate system. Two artificial neural networks were used to perform a classification of the aphasia type. First, a coarse classification was achieved by using an assessment of spontaneous speech of the patient which produced correct results in 87% of the test cases. Data analysis tools were used to select four features of the 30 available test features to yield a more accurate diagnosis. This classifier produced correct results in 92% of the test cases. The neural network approach is similar to grouping performed in group studies, while the nearest-neighbor method shows a design more similar to case studies. It finds the neurolinguistic and the lesion data of patients whose AAT profiles are most similar to the user's input. This way lesion profiles can be compared to each other interindividually. The Aphasia Diagnoser is available on the Web address http://fuzzy.iau.dtu.dk/aphasia.nsf and thus should facilitate a discussion about the reliability and possibilities of data-mining techniques in aphasiology.     

Competition between automatic and controlled processes

We investigated the competition between automatic and controlled processes in a word stem completion task. Prime-display duration and the prime-target interval were manipulated. On each trial a masked prime was displayed briefly, followed either immediately or after a delay by a word stem. The subjects were required to complete each stem with the first word that came to mind, to report any prime they could identify, and not to give as completion any identified prime. By the assumption that automatic processes require less stimulus input and can be completed faster than consciously controlled processes we expected a stronger performance contribution from automatic processes with the shorter prime-display durations and in the immediate stems condition. The results confirmed this expectation. The findings highlight that consciously controlled processes require more time to run their course than unconscious automatic processes.     

Gender-Related Jokes in the Workplace: Sexual Humor or Sexual Harassment?1

When does a joke become sexual harassment? In a partial test of an integrative model of gender-related humor in the workplace, the role of personal and situational variables in perceptions of sexual harassment was examined. Other implications of sexual humor in the office were also studied.     

UTILIZATION OF METACOGNITIVE JUDGMENTS IN THE ALLOCATION OF STUDY DURING MULTITRIAL LEARNING

Abstract— We contrasted several ways that an individual's judgments of learning (JOLs) can be utilized when allocating additional study ("restudy") during the learning of Swahilt-English translation equivalents The findings demonstrate how metacognitive monitoring can be utilized to benefit multitrial learning Computer-controlled allocation of restudy based on people's JOLs was equivalent to most people's own allocation of restudy (indicating that the computer algorithm can provide a sufficient account of people's allocation of restudy) and was more effective than a computer-controlled allocation based on normative performance (indicating that people's metacognitive monitoring of idiosyncratic knowledge has functional utility in causal chains for learning)     

The World at 7:00: Comparing the Experience of Situations Across 20 Countries

The purpose of this research is to quantitatively compare everyday situational experience around the world. Local collaborators recruited 5,447 members of college communities in 20 countries, who provided data via a Web site in 14 languages. Using the 89 items of the Riverside Situational Q‐sort (RSQ), participants described the situation they experienced the previous evening at 7:00 p.m. Correlations among the average situational profiles of each country ranged from r = .73 to r = .95; the typical situation was described as largely pleasant. Most similar were the United States/Canada; least similar were South Korea/Denmark. Japan had the most homogenous situational experience; South Korea, the least. The 15 RSQ items varying the most across countries described relatively negative aspects of situational experience; the 15 least varying items were more positive. Further analyses correlated RSQ items with national scores on six value dimensions, the Big Five traits, economic output, and population. Individualism, Neuroticism, Openness, and Gross Domestic Product yielded more significant correlations than expected by chance. Psychological research traditionally has paid more attention to the assessment of persons than of situations, a discrepancy that extends to cross‐cultural psychology. The present study demonstrates how cultures vary in situational experience in psychologically meaningful ways.     

Investigating the Links Between Cultural Values and Belief in Conspiracy Theories: The Key Roles of Collectivism and Masculinity

Research suggests that belief in conspiracy theories (CT) stems from basic psychological mechanisms and is linked to other belief systems (e.g., religious beliefs). While previous research has extensively examined individual and contextual variables associated with CT beliefs, it has not yet investigated the role of culture. In the current research, we tested, based on a situated cultural cognition perspective, the extent to which culture predicts CT beliefs. Using Hofstede's model of cultural values, three nation-level analyses of data from 25, 19, and 18 countries using different measures of CT beliefs (Study 1, N = 5323; Study 2a, N = 12,255; Study 2b, N = 30,994) revealed positive associations between masculinity, collectivism, and CT beliefs. A cross-sectional study among U.S. citizens (Study 3, N = 350), using individual-level measures of Hofstede's values, replicated these findings. A meta-analysis of correlations across studies corroborated the presence of positive links between CT beliefs, collectivism, r = .31, 95% CI = [.15; .47], and masculinity, r = .39, 95% CI = [.18; .59]. Our results suggest that in addition to individual differences and contextual variables, cultural factors also play an important role in shaping CT beliefs.     

Behavioral trainings and manipulations to reduce delay discounting: A systematic review

In everyday decision-making, individuals make trade-offs between short-term and long-term benefits or costs. Depending on many factors, individuals may choose to wait for larger delayed reward, yet in other situations they may prefer the smaller, immediate reward. In addition to within-subject variation in the short-term versus long-term reward trade-off, there are also interindividual differences in delay discounting (DD), which have been shown to be quite stable. The extent to which individuals discount the value of delayed rewards turns out to be associated with important health and disorder-related outcomes: the more discounting, the more unhealthy or problematic choices. This has led to the hypothesis that DD can be conceptualized as trans-disease process. The current systematic review presents an overview of behavioral trainings and manipulations that have been developed to reduce DD in human participants aged 12 years or older. Manipulation studies mostly contain one session and measure DD directly after the manipulation. Training studies add a multiple session training component that is not per se related to DD, in between two DD task measurements. Ninety-eight studies (151 experiments) were identified that tested behavioral trainings and manipulations to decrease DD. Overall, results indicated that DD can be decreased, showing that DD is profoundly context dependent and changeable. Most promising avenues to pursue in future research seem to be acceptance-based/mindfulness-based trainings, and even more so manipulations involving a future orientation. Limitations and recommendations are discussed to identify the mechanistic processes that allow for changes in discount rate and behavior accordingly.

     

Marry who you love: Intergroup contact with gay people and another stigmatized minority is related to voting on the restriction of gay rights through threat

The study examined factors associated with discrimination against gay people in a public referendum aimed at the restriction of gay rights. We tested whether positive and negative intergroup contact with gay people and intergroup contact with another stigmatized minority, the Roma, were associated with how the heterosexual majority voted in the referendum (i.e., discrimination). We tested two mechanisms underlying the link between intergroup contact and discrimination—the mediation by intergroup threat and the mediation by outgroup attitudes. We found that negative contact with both gay people and the Roma was associated with a higher probability of gay discrimination while positive contact was associated with a lower probability of gay discrimination. Intergroup threat, not intergroup attitudes, mediated the link between intergroup contact and discrimination. In the case of contact with gay people, intergroup contact was linked to discrimination through threat from gay people. In the case of contact with Roma, intergroup contact was linked to discrimination through the generalization of threats from the Roma to gay people but not via the generalization of outgroup attitudes. Our research brings novel evidence that contact with one minority can affect discrimination against another minority in both positive and negative way and that perceived threat, but not attitudes, plays a key role in majority's decision to discriminate against gay people.     

Identity formation of United States American and Asian Indian adolescents

The Extended Version of the Objective Measure of Ego Identity Status-II was completed by 434 high school students from the United States and India. Students were male and female between the ages of 13 and 18 years. Asian Indian adolescents were found to be more diffused, foreclosed, and in moratorium in identity formation than adolescents in the United States. Gender and age differences in identity status also were found. Adolescent males and females in India had higher moratorium scores than adolescent males and females in the United States. Younger adolescents had lower exploration scores than did older adolescents. Implications for research are discussed.