Daily-life difficulties in person recognition reported by young and elderly subjects

Elderly people frequently complain spontaneously about their inability to remember people and their names. Naturalistic methods such as diaries, checklists, etc. provide useful means to study and make more explicit the nature of such memory difficulties among the elderly, as well as to better understand normal memory functioning. We developed a checklist (inspired by a study by Young, Hay and Ellis, 1985) to explore normal young and elderly people's difficulties in person recognition. The checklist is composed of four parts, each one corresponding to a particular context in which the difficulty took place. Each part has the same structure and consists of precise questions about the type of incident, the circumstances, the persons involved, and the way the incident ended. Three groups of normal subjects kept records of their difficulties and errors in recognizing people for 1 month: young subjects with a bad memory for faces, young subjects without particular problems of face memory, and a group of elderly subjects. A total of 299 records were collected. They were classified with respect to the functional components presumably implied in the process breakdown. The elderly subjects experienced difficulties with retrieving names, first names, or nicknames (Name Codes), while the young subjects with a bad memory for faces reported overall the greatest number of incidents and were particularly impaired in access to Face Recognition Units. A characterization of these two kinds of difficulties is proposed. Young subjects without problems of face memory presented equal numbers of difficulties at all stages of person recognition. These patterns of results will be discussed in terms of current cognitive models of person recognition.     

Decomposing coronary-prone behavior: Dimensions of type a behavior in the Videotaped Structured Interview

This study examined the factorial structure of data generated in the Videotaped Structured Interview for assessment of Type A behavior. Based on the literature, it was argued that there are at least three distinct concepts of Type A behavior, focused on competitiveness and pressured drive, speech characteristics, and hostility, respectively. These three concepts were clearly represented among the factors from factor analyses based on data from 282 subjects. Three factors represented speech and psychomotor characteristics, where the first reflected interactions between subject and interviewer (e.g., response latency, interruptions), the second tempo of speech (accelerating, dysrhythmic and rapid speech), and the third oral gestures (e.g., expiratory sighs). Hostility was reflected in two factors, one defined by emotional intensity (e.g., anger when recalling paat event) and the other hostility expressed towards the interviewer. Pressured drive dominated a content factor reflecting self-awareness of Type A behavior. Finally, there was one factor related to psychomotor tension. Through further factor and item analyses, it was possible to combine these factors into three homogeneous and moderately intercorrelated subscales of Type A behavior reflecting Hostility, Speech Characteristics, and Self-Awareness of Type A behavior. These scales showed good interrater agreement and stability over two years. The Self-Awareness Scale was highly correlated with self-report measures of Type A behavior. The Hostility Scale, on the other hand, was moderately related to measures of Type A behavior, anger and hostility, but was unrelated to anxiety. The Speech Characteristic Scale, finally, was virtually unrelated to psychometric measures.     

Interpersonal determinants of attitude change following counterattitudinal behavior

In a test of predictions derived from an identity-analytic model of self-presentational behavior, individuals who privately endorsed positive or negative attitudes about sexual behavior were asked to deliver a prosexuality speech while alone, while watched by observers, or while being watched by observers who questioned the morality of the subject’s actions. Subsequent attitude measures indicated that the subjects who initially adopted negative attitudes justified their behavior by expressing more favorable attitudes about sexuality, but only when no audience witnessed their speech. When an audience was present, these individuals emphasized their lack of choice. In contrast, subjects who privately endorsed positive attitudes publicly expressed less favorable attitudes when their morality was challenged by the observers. These findings suggest that attitude change following counterattitudinal behavior (a) stems from private image-maintenance needs as well as public self-presentational concerns, and (b) is sometimes designed to secure an image of morality as well as an image of consistency.     

Appraisal of behavioral measurement techniques for assessing dental anxiety and fear in children: A review

The aim of this article is to review and evaluate behavioral and physiological measurement techniques frequently used to assess dental anxiety and fear in children. Attention is given to the data collected, the empirical findings obtained, and the availability of normative data. The main focus, however, is on the reliability and validity. Results show that all questionnaires are open to criticism. Of the behavioral measures, Melamed's Behavior Profile Rating Scale is to be preferred to Frankl's Rating Scale, Venham Rating Scales, and Visual Analogue Scales. The main reasons are that Melamed's BPRS measures the behavior of the child more precisely and that it has superior psychometric properties. Furthermore, because of their practical, conceptual, and psychometric problems, physiological measures at this stage are found to be less appropriate for assessing dental fear in children. It is concluded that a behavioral measure is not always the ideal, but often the only available technique for assessing dental fear in children.     

Reasoning about update logic

Logical frameworks for analysing the dynamics of information processing abound [4, 5, 8, 10, 12, 14, 20, 22]. Some of these frameworks focus on the dynamics of the interpretation process, some on the dynamics of the process of drawing inferences, and some do both of these. Formalisms galore, so it is felt that some conceptual streamlining would pay off.This paper is part of a larger scale enterprise to pursue the obvious parallel between information processing and imperative programming. We demonstrate that logical tools from theoretical computer science are relevant for the logic of information flow. More specifically, we show that the perspective of Hoare logic [13, 18] can fruitfully be applied to the conceptual simplification of information flow logics.