Is there any "free" choice? Self and dissonance in two cultures

Four experiments provided support for the hypothesis that upon making a choice, individuals justify their choice in order to eliminate doubts about culturally sanctioned aspects of the self, namely, competence and efficacy in North America and positive appraisal by other people in Japan. Japanese participants justified their choice (by increasing liking for chosen items and decreasing liking for rejected items) in the standard free-choice dissonance paradigm only when self-relevant others were primed, either by questionnaires (Studies 1-3) or by incidental exposure to schematic faces (Study 4). In the absence of these social cues, Japanese participants showed no dissonance effect. In contrast, European Americans justified their choices regardless of the social-cue manipulations. Implications for cognitive dissonance theory are discussed.     

Postnatal depression among mothers in the United Arab Emirates: socio-cultural and physical factors

Postnatal depression (PND) has been found to affect women in cultures around the world. This study sought to further identify the prevalence and related socio-cultural and physical factors in Arab women from the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The study involved a sample of Emirati women recruited in a government maternity hospital in Abu Dhabi who completed demographic questionnaires soon after giving birth (n=125) and the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS) at 3 months (n=86) and 6 months postpartum (n=56). Data are presented in three categories of: No Depression (scores of 0-9), Borderline Depression (scores of 10-12) and Depression (scores of 13+). It was found that at 3 months, this sample had 22% of mothers falling into the Depression category and another 22% falling in the Borderline Depression category. At 6 months, this fell to 12.5% Depression category and 19.6% Borderline Depression category. Relationships between higher depression scores and risk factors included; not breastfeeding, giving birth to the first child, poor self body image and view of weight, poor relationship with mother-in-law, and an older age at marriage. Results are discussed in relation to UAE and Islamic culture.     

Recognition and attention guidance during contextual cueing in real-world scenes: evidence from eye movements

When confronted with a previously encountered scene, what information is used to guide search to a known target? We contrasted the role of a scene's basic-level category membership with its specific arrangement of visual properties. Observers were repeatedly shown photographs of scenes that contained consistently but arbitrarily located targets, allowing target positions to be associated with scene content. Learned scenes were then unexpectedly mirror reversed, spatially translating visual features as well as the target across the display while preserving the scene's identity and concept. Mirror reversals produced a cost as the eyes initially moved toward the position in the display in which the target had previously appeared. The cost was not complete, however; when initial search failed, the eyes were quickly directed to the target's new position. These results suggest that in real-world scenes, shifts of attention are initially based on scene identity, and subsequent shifts are guided by more detailed information regarding scene and object layout.     

A Mediated-Moderation Model of Maternal Parenting Style,Association with Deviant Peers,and Problem Behaviors in Urban African American and European American Adolescents

We examined a model positing that association with deviant peers mediates the relation between perceived maternal parenting style, represented by the dimensions demandingness, responsiveness, and their interaction, and problem behaviors in an urban sample of 82 African American and 56 European American young adolescents. Regression analyses revealed that the data are consistent with a model where association with deviant peers mediates the relation between maternal responsiveness and problem behaviors for European Americans and African American males. In addition, a responsiveness by demandingness interaction was found for European Americans. Only the relation between association with deviant peers and problem behaviors was supported for African American females. The results suggest that ethnic and gender variables might interact with pathways from parenting to association with deviant peers and problem behaviors and that the dimensions of parenting might not be equal in their salience.     

The role of saccade targeting in the transsaccadic integration of object types and tokens

The presence of location-dependent and location-independent benefits on object identification in an eye movement contingent preview paradigm has been taken as support for the transsaccadic integration of object types and object tokens (J. M. Henderson, 1994). A recent study, however, suggests a critical role for saccade targeting in the generation of the 2 preview effects (F. Germeys, De Graef, & Verfaillie, 2002). In the present study, eye movements were monitored in a preview paradigm, and both location-independent and location-dependent preview benefits were observed regardless of the saccade target status of the preview object. The findings support the view that type and token representational systems contribute independently to the integration of object information across eye movements.     

Nightmare frequency,nightmare distress,and anxiety

Using the self-reports of 300 university students, we replicated and extended the results of a 1971 study of Hersen by demonstrating a significant relationship between both nightmare frequency and nightmare distress with two dimensions of anxiety. Our results are not consistent with the 1990 findings of Wood and Bootzin who concluded that both nightmare frequency and nightmare distress were not correlated with anxiety.     

Change detection in the flicker paradigm: The role of fixation position within the scene

Eye movements were monitored while participants performed a change detection task with images of natural scenes. An initial and a modified scene image were displayed in alternation, separated by a blank interval (flicker paradigm). In the modified image, a single target object was changed either by deleting that object from the scene or by rotating that object 90 degrees in depth. In Experiment 1, fixation position at detection was more likely to be in the target object region than in any other region of the scene. In Experiment 2, participants detected scene changes more accurately, with fewer false alarms, and more quickly when allowed to move their eyes in the scene than when required to maintain central fixation. These data suggest a major role for fixation position in the detection of changes to natural scenes across discrete views.     

Positional character frequency and word spacing facilitate the acquisition of novel words during Chinese children's reading

Children's eye movements were recorded to examine the role of word spacing and positional character frequency on the process of Chinese lexical acquisition during reading. Three types of two-character novel pseudowords were constructed: words containing characters in positions in which they frequently occurred (congruent), words containing characters in positions they do not frequently occur in (incongruent) and words containing characters that do not have a strong position bias (balanced). There were two phases within the experiment, a learning phase and a test phase. There were also two learning groups: half the children read sentences in a word-spaced format and the other half read the sentences in an unspaced format during the learning phase. All the participants read normal, unspaced text at test. A benefit of word spacing was observed in the learning phase, but not at test. Also, facilitatory effects of positional character congruency were found both in the learning and test phase; however, this benefit was greatly reduced at test. Furthermore, we did not find any interaction between word spacing and positional character frequencies, indicating that these two types of cues affect lexical acquisition independently. With respect to theoretical accounts of lexical acquisition, we argue that word spacing might facilitate the very earliest stages of word learning by clearly demarking word boundary locations. In contrast, we argue that characters' positional frequencies might affect relatively later stages of word learning.     

Error‐monitoring in response to social stimuli in individuals with higher‐functioning Autism Spectrum Disorder

Error‐monitoring, or the ability to recognize one's mistakes and implement behavioral changes to prevent further mistakes, may be impaired in individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Children and adolescents (ages 9–19) with ASD (n = 42) and typical development (n = 42) completed two face processing tasks that required discrimination of either the gender or affect of standardized face stimuli. Post‐error slowing and the difference in Error‐Related Negativity amplitude between correct and incorrect responses (ERN_diff) were used to index error‐monitoring ability. Overall, ERN_diff increased with age. On the Gender Task, individuals with ASD had a smaller ERN_diff than individuals with typical development; however, on the Affect Task, there were no significant diagnostic group differences on ERN_diff. Individuals with ASD may have ERN amplitudes similar to those observed in individuals with typical development in more social contexts compared to less social contexts due to greater consequences for errors, more effortful processing, and/or reduced processing efficiency in these contexts. Across all participants, more post‐error slowing on the Affect Task was associated with better social cognitive skills.