Unrealistic optimism about future life events: a cautionary note

A robust finding in social psychology is that people judge negative events as less likely to happen to themselves than to the average person, a behavior interpreted as showing that people are "unrealistically optimistic" in their judgments of risk concerning future life events. However, we demonstrate how unbiased responses can result in data patterns commonly interpreted as indicative of optimism for purely statistical reasons. Specifically, we show how extant data from unrealistic optimism studies investigating people's comparative risk judgments are plagued by the statistical consequences of sampling constraints and the response scales used, in combination with the comparative rarity of truly negative events. We conclude that the presence of such statistical artifacts raises questions over the very existence of an optimistic bias about risk and implies that to the extent that such a bias exists, we know considerably less about its magnitude, mechanisms, and moderators than previously assumed.     

Control beliefs and susceptibility to the promises of memory improvement

Brain training is increasingly popular, and many believe in the efficacy of such programs without empirical evidence. We examined whether instructions promising memory improvement would influence subjective and objective cognition. Participants (n = 145; age: M = 50.64) were randomly assigned to a memory improvement or memory task condition. Participants completed demographic and perceived control over cognition measures, in addition to cognitive tasks and subjective cognition items for 7 days. Participants in the improvement condition reported significantly greater memory increases than those in the memory task condition. This effect was moderated by perceived control over cognition; participants in the improvement condition with high control beliefs were significantly more likely than those with low control beliefs or those in the task condition to report better memory. Individuals with higher control beliefs may be more susceptible to the claims of brain training programs, which is significant given that such programs are increasingly popular and commercially available.     

Influence of attentional capture on oculomotor control

Previous research has shown that when searching for a color singleton, top-down control cannot prevent attentional capture by an abrupt visual onset. The present research addressed whether a task-irrelevant abrupt onset would affect eye movement behavior when searching for a color singleton. Results show that in many instances the eye moved in the direction of the task-irrelevant abrupt onset. There was evidence that top-down control could neither entirely prevent attentional capture by visual onsets nor prevent the eye from starting to move in the direction of the onset. Results suggest parallel programming of 2 saccades: 1 voluntary goal-directed eye movement toward the color singleton target and 1 stimulus-driven eye movement reflexively elicited by the abrupt onset. A neurophysiologically plausible model that can account for the current findings is discussed.     

Medical Education for Social Justice: Paulo Freire Revisited

Although social justice is an integral component of medical professionalism, there is little discussion in medical education about how to teach it to future physicians. Using adult learning theory and the work of Brazilian educator Paulo Freire, medical educators can teach a socially-conscious professionalism through educational content and teaching strategies. Such teaching can model non-hierarchical relationships to learners, which can translate to their clinical interactions with patients. Freirian teaching can additionally foster professionalism in both teachers and learners by ensuring that they are involved citizens in their local, national and international communities.     

Aging and visual search: automatic and controlled attentional bias to threat faces

Using a visual search paradigm, we investigated how age affected attentional bias to emotional facial expressions. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants searched for a discrepant facial expression in a matrix of otherwise homogeneous faces. Both younger and older adults showed a more effective search when the discrepant face was angry rather than happy or neutral. However, when the angry faces served as non-target distractors, younger adults' search was less effective than happy or neutral distractor conditions. In contrast, older adults showed a more efficient search with angry distractors than happy or neutral distractors, indicating that older adults were better able to inhibit angry facial expressions. In Experiment 3, we found that even a top-down search goal could not override the angry face superiority effect in guiding attention. In addition, RT distribution analyses supported that both younger and older adults performed the top-down angry face search qualitatively differently from the top-down happy face search. The current research indicates that threat face processing involves automatic attentional shift and a controlled attentional process. The current results suggest that age only influenced the controlled attentional process.     

Personality of Counselors and Administrators

The Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire was administered to 41 counselors and 41 administrators enrolled in graduate courses at Auburn University. The scores were compared in terms of individual factors and profiles. A discriminate analysis of scores correctly identified counselors in 31 out of 40 cases while principals were classified correctly in 34 out of 41 cases. Five factors found to be significantly different (P < .05) between counselors and administrators were: Factor C (Emotional vs Mature, Calm), Factor G (Expedient vs Conscientious), Factor I (Tough-Minded vs Tender-Minded), Factor L (Trusting vs Suspicious), and Factor N (Forthright vs Shrewd).     

Methods and findings in an analysis of a vocal operant

The relations among acoustic parameters of a vocal operant were considered and some methods for their measurement are described. Four human subjects (Ss) and one chick were employed in an experiment on the relations among vocal rate, vocal topography, and schedules of reinforcement. The earlier finding that schedules of reinforcement control human and infra-human vocal responding as they do other operants was replicated and extended to the case of variable-interval reinforcement. An analysis of response amplitude, pitch, and duration showed that the mean and variance of these parameters typically increase from CRF to VI, from VI to EXT and, for a second group of Ss, from CRF to EXT. The topography of the chick's vocal response appears to stand in the same relation to reinforcement operations as does the human vocal response.     

An experiment on the theory of visual motion perception

Two classes of theories of motion perception were studied: correlation and gradient models (in the sense of D. Marr). Random-dot kinematograms with a shifted square were presented to subjects, and the 80% threshold for detection of correct direction of movement was determined. Correlation models predict scale invariance, that is, a constant shift measured in units of texture elements of the translated pattern in spite of a geometric magnification. This was refuted for all subjects. The increase of the recognizable translation with the area of the translated form was verified except for the patterns with the largest texture elements (8 minutes of arc). This prediction, however, is not very specific for competing theories. Gradient models are not yet fully specified, and they contain some free parameters. They cannot be tested strictly, but there exist reasonable numerical parameter values by which our data can be satisfactorily explained.