The accuracy of abstracts in psychology journals

This article provides an empirically supported reminder of the importance of accuracy in scientific communication. The authors identify common types of inaccuracies in research abstracts and offer suggestions to improve abstract-article agreement. Abstracts accompanying 13% of a random sample of 400 research articles published in 8 American Psychological Association journals during 1997 and 1998 contained data or claims inconsistent with or missing from the body of the article. Error rates ranged from 8% to 18%, although between-journal differences were not significant. Many errors (63%) were unlikely to cause substantive misinterpretations. Unfortunately, 37% of errors found could be seriously misleading with respect to the data or claims presented in the associated article. Although deficient abstracts may be less common in psychology journals than in major medical journals (R. M. Pitkin, M. A. Branagan, & L. F. Burmeister, 1999), there is still cause for concern and need for improvement.     

Naming and categorization in young children: vocal tact training

In three experiments, 2- to 4-year-old children, following pretraining with everyday objects, were presented with arbitrary stimuli of differing shapes. In Experiment 1A, 9 subjects were trained one common tact response, "zag," to three of these and a second tact, "vek," to another three. In category match-to-sample Test 1, 4 subjects sorted accurately when required only to look at the sample before selecting from five comparisons. The remaining 5 subjects succeeded in Test 2, in which they were required to tact the sample before selecting comparisons. Experiment 1B showed, for 2 of these subjects, that tact training with 12 arbitrary stimuli established two six-member classes that were still intact 6 weeks later. In Experiment 2, 3 new subjects participated in a common tact training procedure that ensured that none of the exemplars from the same class were presented together prior to the test for three-member classes. Two subjects passed category Test 1 and the third passed Test 2. Tests showed subjects' listener behavior in response to hearing /zog/ and /vek/ to be in place. These experiments indicate that common naming is effective in establishing arbitrary stimulus classes and that category match-to-sample testing provides a robust measure of categorization.     

Age-related differences in inference revision processing

In comparison to younger adults, older adults demonstrate deficiencies in cognitive and linguistic abilities. Such cognitive factors that decline with age include working memory capacity and inhibitory abilities. The purpose of the present investigation was to measure differences in time course processing of inference revision abilities, as well as working memory, as they exist relative to adult age differences. Fifteen neurologically intact older adults and 15 younger adults participated in this study. A cross-modal lexical priming paradigm was chosen as the measure of the inference revision task; the listening span task of Tompkins, Bloise, Timko, and Baumgaertner (1994) was selected as the measure of working memory. Both groups demonstrated normal priming effects. No age-related differences were found on the working memory measure. Age-related differences did emerge on inferencing abilities. A significant correlation emerged between the older group's performance on comprehending inference revisions and their working memory capacity. Generally, inhibitory abilities and working memory capacity appeared to adversely affect older participant's performance.     

Pessimism

The problem of pessimism is the secular analogue to the evidential problem of evil facing traditional theism. The traditional theist must argue two things: that the evidence shows that this is on balance a good world and that it is the best possible world. Though the secular optimist who advocates any form of secular moral theory need not argue that the current and future world will likely be the best possible world, she nonetheless must argue that were there a clean solution to the problem of current and future suffering in which all sentient life could be instantly and painlessly eliminated, we would have reasons not to employ the clean solution because the future promises to bring on balance a good world in which the evil of human and animal suffering is outweighed by whatever is good in the world. Pessimism is the view that the evidence argues against secular optimism. It is argued here that it is anything but clear that secular optimism is warranted when viewed from an impersonal point of view. The problem is then evaluated from the personal point of view in which a form of personal optimism is defended even in the face of impersonal pessimism.     

Individual differences in stress reactions during a peer entry episode: effects of age, temperament, approach behavior, and self-perceived peer competence

The purpose of the current study was to determine whether a standardized peer entry paradigm would produce stress responses in 3- and 4-year-olds and how such stress responses would relate to temperament, observed approach to peers, and self-perceived peer competence. Physiological stress reactions were measured by activity of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) system. The 4-year-old group showed significantly less avoidance of the new peers and was rated higher on approach temperament. This older group also showed larger HPA stress responses to the new peer situation. Finally, discrepancy between self-reported peer competence and behavior in the peer entry situation was associated with larger stress responses on average. These findings support the notion that investment in a salient episode plays a role in determining the magnitude of HPA stress responses. The importance of examining discrepancies between self-perception and action in research on stress is discussed.     

Side preference in adults for holding infants: contributions of sex and handedness in a test of imagination

Five hundred one right-handers (150 men, 351 women) and 53 left-handers (15 men, 38 women) were asked to imagine holding a young infant in their arms. Right-handers reported significant left-side biases--in 68% of the men and 73% of the women. For left-handers, side preferences were weaker, the left-side bias dropping to 47% for men and 60% for women, with neither figure different from chance. The results are discussed in the context of theory and research on the functional neuroanatomy of attention, emotional arousal, and the generation, maintenance, and manipulation of mental images.     

Comparing contrast-modulated and luminance-modulated masking: effects of spatial frequency and phase

The masking of a sinusoidal test grating by contrast-modulated (CM) gratings could, in principle, be attributable to the presence of a distortion product, injected into the stimulus during some nonlinear transformation at an early level of visual processing (e.g. Nachmias, 1989 Vision Research 29 137-142). If so, CM gratings and luminance-modulated (LM) gratings of similar effective contrast and spatial frequency should mask the detection of sinusoids in a similar fashion. We compared the effects of masking by 1 cycle deg-1 CM gratings [both simple beats (8 + 9 cycles deg-1) and amplitude-modulated gratings (8 + 9 + 10 cycles deg-1)], with those of masking by 1 cycle deg-1 LM gratings of low contrast. We found that: (i) CM and low-contrast LM grating masks yielded similar spatial-frequency tuning functions around the modulation frequency of 1 cycle deg-1; (ii) low-contrast LM gratings masked the detection of test sinusoids in a highly phase-dependent fashion, while masking by CM gratings did not vary systematically with relative spatial phase. The results suggest that masking produced by CM gratings cannot simply be explained by the presence of a distortion product at the beat or modulation frequency.     

Turning objects on their heads: the influence of the stored axis on object individuation

We used repetition blindness (RB) as a measure of object recognition and compared the pattern of RB obtained for objects with a well-established upright orientation (mono-oriented objects) and those without a usual upright orientation (polyoriented objects), when the critical objects were either in identical orientations or differed by 30 degrees, 60 degrees, 90 degrees, or 180 degrees. Overall, we found robust RB despite differences in orientation, consistent with the idea that object recognition, as indexed by RB, is largely independent of orientation. However, whereas for polyoriented objects RB was obtained in all orientation conditions, for mono-oriented objects there was no RB between upright and upside-down versions of the stimuli. These findings suggest that the usual orientation of an object-when it exists-is stored in memory and can facilitate orientation processing when the principal axis of a viewed object is aligned with the stored axis orientation. This, in turn, allows for more rapid and successful construction of distinct episodic representations of an object, thus alleviating RB.     

Intervention Groups for Adolescents With Conduct Problems: Is Aggregation Harmful or Helpful?

Past research has suggested that the aggregation of deviant peers during treatment may cause harmful effects (T. J. Dishion, J. McCord, & F. Poulin, 1999). This study compared the effectiveness of problem-solving skills training groups in which all members had conduct problems (pure group condition) with groups that consisted of adolescents with and without behavior problems (mixed group condition). Participants were 139 sixth- and seventh-graders (mean age = 12.7; 63% male; 55% White) enrolled at public middle schools. Pre-, post-, and 6-month follow-up data were collected, along with intervention process variables. Results showed that, contrary to the deviancy training hypothesis, adolescents in the pure-group condition engaged in more adaptive in-session behavior and received lower scores on the parent and teacher ratings of externalizing behavior at postintervention than those in the mixed-group condition. Mediation analyses showed that the deviancy training that occurred in the mixed-group condition accounted for their worse postintervention scores, findings consistent with the deviancy training hypothesis.