Improving performance expectancies in stereotypic domains: task relevance and the reduction of stereotype threat

The experiments presented here extend previous research on reducing stereotype threat, along with examining the mediating role of performance expectancies. Women who generated shared academic characteristics between men and women predicted higher scores for themselves on a math test compared to the baseline and those who generated shared non‐academic characteristics or shared physical characteristics. No effects were found for male participants' performance expectancies on an English test. Extending the relevance of these findings for stereotype threat research, women completing a math test, who first completed the shared academic characteristics task, both expressed higher performance expectancies and greater accuracy in math performance than participants in all other conditions. A partially mediating role of performance expectancies in relation to task and math performance was also found. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Action and object processing in aphasia: from nouns and verbs to the effect of manipulability

The processing of words and pictures representing actions and objects was tested in 21 aphasic patients and 20 healthy controls across three word production tasks: picture-naming (PN), single word reading (WR) and word repetition (WRP). Analysis 1 targeted task and lexical category (noun-verb), revealing worse performance on PN and verb items for both patients and control participants. For Analysis 2 we used data collected in a concurrent gesture norming study to re-categorize the noun-verb items along hand imagery parameters (i.e., objects that can/cannot be manipulated and actions which do/do not involve fine hand movements). Here, patients displayed relative difficulty with the 'manipulable' items, while controls displayed the opposite pattern. Therefore, whereas the noun-verb distinction resulted simply in lower verb accuracy across groups, the 'manipulability' distinction revealed a 'double-dissociation' between patients and control participants. These results carry implications for theories of embodiment, lexico-semantic dissociations, and the organization of meaning in the brain.     

On the nature of perceptual limits in vision

Summary Studies of attention have generally assumed that the principal limit to visual perception involves the capacity to identify a stimulus. Analyses of responses in visual tasks, however, suggest that errors can arise from a loss of position information, as well as a loss of identity information, and that these two types of errors may be affected by different variables. Based on this, we have proposed that the difficult aspect of perception is not that of recognizing the form of the stimulus but rather determining its position relative to other items in the field. To demonstrate this, we conducted a series of experiments on lateral masking that showed that the failure to perceive a parafoveal stimulus surrounded by other items is due to two quite separate components: a loss of identity information induced by the immediately adjacent items and a loss of position information induced by both adjacent and non-adjacent items.This research was supported by grant A-9581 from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada to the senior author. The first two experiments were reported in a paper to the annual meeting of the Psychonomics Society, San Antonio, 1984     

Frog skin,time series,and other kinds of data: Nonisomorphic representation and analysis

Representational art is spatially congruent, or isomorphic, with objects in the world. In other words, they are the same in some important way. But not all representation is isomorphic. Data graphs are a type of nonisomorphic representation. A major goal of data graphs is to facilitate the rapid comprehension of differences or relations. This is done by providing a kind of analogy between something that can be “seen” (the relative heights of points) and some relevant information. This article discusses some rules about data graphing, then some new visualization tools are briefly critiqued.     

Subject-pool record keeping: A database application

This paper describes a record-keeping system we developed for our subject pool, utilizing ORACLE database software on a VAX computer. This system consists of three data tables and four processes: set up, updating, report generation, and editing. This article describes the rationale and function of each of these four processes in detail. All input and output is in ASCII format. The combination of ASCII files and the ORACLE database system produces a subject-pool recordkeeping system that is adaptable, expandable, and exportable.     

Near-death experiences: Perceptionis reality

The authors propose three etiologies responsible for the neardeath experience, which they refer to as an altered state of consciousness: physiologic, pharmacologic, and psychologic. They recommend research to determine what developmental factors influence the emotionality of the experience and how in-depth understanding can be used to provide better patient care.     

Reading skill and the use of orthographic knowledge by Mature Readers

Summary Butler and Hains (1979) found individual differences in the effect of word length on RT in word naming and lexical-decision tasks; subjects scoring high on a vocabulary test were much less affected by word length than subjects with low scores. The present study attempted to determine whether such differences could be due to differences in the use of intraword structure, since word recognition has been linked, both empirically (Mason, 1978; Scheerer-Neumann, 1981) and theoretically (Mewhort & Campbell, 1981) to the use of orthographic redundancy. In Experiment 1, subjects were shown tachistoscopically presented letter strings varying in approximation to English. High vocabulary subjects were more capable of capitalizing on the redundancy with the higher-order approximations. Experiment 2 then established that performance on the vocabulary test was correlated with reading skill, measured by the Nelson-Denny Reading Test, and that skilled readers were more sensitive to the syllable structure in words. In the experiment, subjects were shown eight-letter words presented as three separate word units which either matched or violated syllable boundaries in the word. Skilled readers were more sensitive to the difference between syllable and nonsyllable units than were less skilled readers. The results obtained by Butler and Hains appear to reflect differences in reading skill and the efficiency of letter sequence parsing prior to word recognition.     

Perceived punishment and reward values of supervisor actions

The study investigated employee perceptions about the reward or punishment values inherent in a variety of supervisor actions. Actions viewed as most rewarding were generally actions that possessed (a) public visibility, (b) tangibility, (c) implied esteem, and (d) long-term implications. Actions viewed as punishing or aversive involved similar characteristics. Visibility appeared to be most strongly related to perceived severity. In contrast with suggestions in the literature (cf. León, 1981), substantial levels of agreement among raters were found for aversive as well as rewarding actions. Also reviewed are characteristics of leader actions that received mixed ratings from respondents.