Perceiver bias in the processing of deliberately asymmetric emotional expressions

Posers were requested to produce happy and sad emotional expressions, deliberately accentuated on the left and right sides of the face. Raters judged the emotional intensity of expressions when presented in original and mirror-reverse orientation. Left-side-accentuated sad expressions were rated as more intense than right-side-accentuated sad expressions. Raters were biased to judge expressions as more intense when the accentuated side was to their left. The findings indicated that the perceiver bias in weighting information from the side of the face in left hemispace extends to judgments of emotional intensity.     

Dissociations and dependencies between speed and accuracy: Evidence for a two-component theory of divided attention in simple tasks

Previous work has amply demonstrated divided attention “costs” both in single-task multistimulus visual processing and in performance of multiple simple tasks; however, the relationship between the two has not been clarified. This article postulates two distinct causes: (1) visual processes that commence without delays and proceed simultaneously, but show lingering mutual interference dependent upon complexity, and (2) discrete queueing of the response selection stage. The first has resource-like properties, while the second has bottleneck-like properties. Either or both can generate performance costs observed in any particular situation, accounting for a variety of previous results. To test this theory, the effects of stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) on accuracy and speed in performing dual choice tasks were examined. The first two experiments involved a choice response to a tone as a first task, and a second task requiring complex perceptual decisions (digit identification or conjunction search) with masked displays and unspeeded second responses. Reducing the SOA had negligible effects upon second-task accuracy, and performance in the two tasks was virtually independent. However, when speeded manual (Exp. 3) or vocal (Exp. 4) responses were required on the same second task, dramatic interference was observed, with strong positive dependencies between reaction times (RTs) on the two tasks. When both tasks involved complex visual displays, SOA reductions produced dramatic interference, but no dependencies between performance, whether the first task involved a speeded (Exp. 5) or unspeeded (Exp. 6) response. The results reject pure late-selection accounts and general capacity sharing models, and support the two-component theory. They also suggest that standard use of the term “attention,” suggesting a single resource or mechanism, is highly misleading.     

The impact of religion on men's blood pressure

Most clinical studies examining the relation between religion and blood pressure status have focused on church attendance, finding lower pressures among frequent attenders. The present study examines the effect on blood pressure status of a religious meaning variable, importance of religion, both by itself and together with frequency of church attendance. The relation between blood pressure, self-perceived importance of religion, and frequency of church attendance was examined among a rural sample of 407 white men free from hypertension or cardiovascular disease. The data confirmed an interaction between the effects of both religious variables on blood pressure status, with importance of religion having an even greater association with lower pressures than church attendance. Diastolic blood pressures of persons with high church attendance and high religious importance were significantly lower than those in the low attendance, low importance group. These differences persisted after adjusting the analyses for age, socioeconomic status, smoking, and weight-height ratio (Quetelet Index). The difference in mean diastolic pressures based on response to the religious importance variable alone was statistically and clinically significant, particularly among men aged 55 and over (6 mm) and among smokers (5 mm). These findings suggest that both religious attitudes and involvement may interact favorably in their effects on cardiovascular hemodynamics.     

Response cost and the aversive control of human operant behavior

The effects of cost (point-loss per response) upon human avoidance, escape, and avoidance-escape behavior maintained by PLPs (point-loss periods) were investigated. Cost had a marked but differentially suppressive effect upon responding under all schedules. The greatest number of PLPs taken under cost occurred on the escape schedule. In most instances PLPs were more frequent on the avoidance-escape schedule than on the avoidance schedule under cost. Inferior avoidance performance appeared only under cost conditions. Under no-cost, all subjects (Ss) successfully avoided all PLPs after the first hour of conditioning. These results indicate that the development and maintenance of human avoidance and escape behavior may, in part, be dependent upon response cost conditions. Aversive control of human operant behavior may be limited without an adequate specification of response-cost conditions.     

Some effects of response cost upon human operant behavior

Three experiments are reported which investigated the effects of cost (point loss per response) upon human-observer responses maintained by VI and FI schedules of reinforcement (acquisition of points via critical-signal detections). (I) Cost attenuated VI response rates without substantially disturbing the constancy of responding, regardless of the presentation sequence of the no-cost and cost conditions. (II) FI scalloping appeared only under cost conditions. Under no cost, a constant rate of responding (similar to VI performance) characterized inter-reinforcement intervals. Exposure to cost did not prevent the recovery of previously established no-cost baselines. (III) FI irregularities, analogous to those commonly observed under FI reinforcement schedules, may be produced by different temporal presentations of the no-cost and cost conditions.

The results of all three experiments emphasize the importance of cost as a factor in the maintenance of human behavior on schedules of positive reinforcement.

     

An estimation of true scores in the case of items scored on a continuous scale

For the tests in which the score on an item is not restricted to 0 and 1, but is any number on a continuous scale, a procedure for estimating an examinee's true score is given. For the case of 0, 1 item scoring this problem was considered by Lord [1959]. Following Lord, the least squares estimation procedure is used and the regression coefficient is obtained, which is compared with the generalized KR(20) and KR(21) formulas. Also, results are discussed using analysis of variance models.Now at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York.