Processing letters in words at different levels

Subjects indicated whether two letters, two words, or a letter and the first letter of a word were the same. Letter targets were matched more quickly than word targets when the stimuli were presented simultaneously. When the target and comparison stimuli were separated by a 3-sec interval, word targets were matched more quickly than a letter and a letter in a word. It was also shown that the physical similarity of the targets and comparison stimuli had a greater effect in the simultaneous matching conditions. These findings are consistent with a model of word processing in which letters are individually compared prior to word identification at a physical level of processing. At a higher level of processing, words may be encoded as a unit, and the identification of the letters within the word may require a decoding of the word unit.     

Group participation and intergroup relations: An experimental study of negotiation groups

Negotiations were conducted to investigate the effects on settlement-points andon the attitudes and perceptions of participants of (i) group participation and (ii)belief in own group's point of view, in a 2 × 2 factorial design. Ninety-six school children prepared cases in groups of four before representing their group's position against an individual of a similarly prepared opposed group. Group participation was manipulated by groups either participating in preparatory discussions or observing video films of another group's discussions. Belief was manipulated by systematically varying the composition of groups according to scores on a pre-test of attitudes towards the raising of the school-leaving age. In general the belief manipulation operated as expected, ‘believers’ exhibiting less variability, more tit-for-tat agreements and less opinion change than the ‘disbelievers’. Group participation did not influence the measures as predicted, and measures of interpersonal perception did not conform to the pattern of findings in recent experiments on intergroup discrimination. The results are discussed in terms of (i) their relevance to the issue of the appropriate relationship of the representative to his group in a negotiation and (ii) their implications for intergroup relations theory.     

Closed Structure

Journal of Philosophical Logic - According to the structured theory of propositions, if two sentences express the same proposition, then they have the same syntactic structure, with corresponding...     

Pathways to prejudice and outgroup hostility: Group alignment and intergroup conflict among football fans

How do different forms of group alignment influence our attitudes toward outgroups? To answer this, the current fieldwork study explored how identification and identity fusion differentially impact outgroup anxiety, prejudice, and hostility toward rival football fan supporter groups in Australia. The community participants (N = 100) were members of two active fan groups who had experienced a history of intergroup tensions. The findings from the full path model confirmed that the predictor group alignment variables of identification and fusion were correlated, and the two outcome variables of outgroup prejudice and hostility were correlated, as predicted. The findings also revealed that fusion with one's club predicted outgroup hostility, but not prejudice, whereas identification with one's club predicted outgroup prejudice, but not hostility. Additionally, outgroup anxiety was found to significantly mediate the relationship between ingroup identification and outgroup prejudice, whereas a similar relationship was not found for fusion. These findings highlight the differential impact of group alignment (i.e., identification and identity fusion) on social constructs of outgroup anxiety, prejudice, and hostility. Empirically, this is the first study to demonstrate the workings of these distinct group alignment pathways in an applied setting involving hard-core football fans. We discuss the broader implications of these findings for a fuller understanding of the drivers of intergroup tensions and conflict.     

Differential impact of parenting sick infants

Parenting a newborn infant has been identified as a significant stressor, and parenting a sick infant evokes an even greater stress. This study evaluated the differential impact of parenting infants with interrupted infantile apnea vs. extremely low birth weight infants. These infants were compared to normal infants on the Bayley Scales of Infant Assessment and the Parenting Stress Index when the infants were 6 months old. Significant effects on the mental index revealed that the low birthweight infants performed more poorly than did the other groups. A stepwise multiple discriminant analysis on the Parenting Stress Index suggested that child adaptability, maternal restrictions, isolation, and health were significant stressors. Mothers of apneic infants were affected most severely by their child's illness. The lower educational level of these mothers may have influenced these findings.     

Are Resource Fluctuations Anticipated in Resource Allocation Tasks?

Resource-allocation behavior has recently received increasing attention in the decision-theory literature partially because individuals and societies are facing hard decisions about the allocation of constrained resources. We observed in two previous studies that resource allocators do not plan for probable losses in loss situations, but instead react to losses after they occur. In this paper, we determine if a similar failure to anticipate changes in resources occurs in a gain situation. The data suggest that subjects do not allocate their resources in anticipation of probable gains or losses, thus considerably increasing the generality of our previous findings.     

A cognitive model of insomnia

Insomnia is one of the most prevalent psychological disorders, causing sufferers severe distress as well as social, interpersonal, and occupational impairment. Drawing on well-validated cognitive models of the anxiety disorders as well as on theoretical and empirical work highlighting the contribution of cognitive processes to insomnia, this paper presents a new cognitive model of the maintenance of insomnia. It is suggested that individuals who suffer from insomnia tend to be overly worried about their sleep and about the daytime consequences of not getting enough sleep. This excessive negatively toned cognitive activity triggers both autonomic arousal and emotional distress. It is proposed that this anxious state triggers selective attention towards and monitoring of internal and external sleep-related threat cues. Together, the anxious state and the attentional processes triggered by it tricks the individual into overestimating the extent of the perceived deficit in sleep and daytime performance. It is suggested that the excessive negatively toned cognitive activity will be fuelled if a sleep-related threat is detected or a deficit perceived. Counterproductive safety behaviours (including thought control, imagery control, emotional inhibition, and difficulty problem solving) and erroneous beliefs about sleep and the benefits of worry are highlighted as exacerbating factors. The unfortunate consequence of this sequence of events is that the excessive and escalating anxiety may culminate in a real deficit in sleep and daytime functioning. The literature providing preliminary support for the model is reviewed and the clinical implications and limitations discussed.