Causal attributions, sanctions, and normal mood variations

The causal-locus hypothesis (CLH) asserts that persons making internal attributions for failure and external attributions for success experience more negative postoutcome moods than persons making the opposite attributions. Three experiments assessed the CLH. Although outcomes consistently affected moods and attributions, attributions did not affect moods. Significant correlations consistent with the CLH were also infrequently obtained. Another theory, the sanctioned-object hypothesis (SOH), was proposed for understanding how causal attributions lead to mood changes. This hypothesis asserts that the application of positive or negative sanctions to objects in the perceptual field is a central determinant of mood and that attributions affect mood when their content and salience activate sanctioning processes. A fourth experiment evaluated the competing theories. The results supported the SOH but not the CLH. The findings are discussed in terms of their implications for understanding mood variations and the effects that moods have on the construction of attributions and for adopting methodological alternatives that may be valuable for future laboratory research studying mood variations.     

Visual and semantic factors in recognition from long-term memory

In recognition tests, physical and semantic relationships between targets and distractors have been shown, in separate manipulations, to affect the latency of subject's decision. Recognition was tested for distractors which were visually similar or dissimilar to targets and which belonged to the target categories or to nontarget categories in order to examine the interaction of these dimensions. Rejection latency was longer for target category than for nontarget category distractors. Latency was also longer for visually similar than visually dissimilar distractors, but only when combined with target category probes. This interaction can be explained by the hypothesis that word recognition depends on the analysis of several dimensions of the probe stimulus, and rejection can occur before all such analyses have been completed.     

Sind die mathematifchen Urteile analytifch oder synthetifch?

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Analysis of timing variability in human movements by aligning parameter curves in time

The analysis of timing in human movements requires a reference with which timing can be quantified. In reactive movements this reference is given by the stimulus. However, many movements do not respond to such an external event. In throwing, for instance, the hand opening for release has to be timed to an acceleration of the throwing arm. A common approach to analyzing release-timing variability is to choose a landmark in the movement that is supposed to have a fixed temporal relation to the release. Such distinct landmarks, however, are not always well definable. Therefore, the present article describes an alternative approach analyzing timing variability on the basis of the alignment of different trials relative to their kinematic shape, by shifting the trials in the time domain. The basic assumption behind this approach is that single throwing movements are one instance of an acquired movement template, and thus show a considerable similarity. In contrast, the location of the temporal moment of release varies from trial to trial, generating imprecision regarding the release timing. In trials synchronized with respect to the release, this variability can be assessed by shifting the kinematic profiles of the throwing movements in time such that they superimpose as closely as possible. As a result, the corresponding time shifts for all trials represent a measure of the release time deviations across trials, and the standard deviation of these deviations represents the timing variability. Aside from timing analyses in such movements as throwing, the approach can be applied to very different tasks with timing demands—for example, to neurophysiological signals.     

Processing order in dual-task situations: The “first-come,first-served” principle and the impact of task order instructions

When two overlapping tasks are processed, they hit a bottleneck at a central processing stage that prevents simultaneous processing of the two tasks. Thus far, however, the factors determining the processing order of the tasks at the bottleneck are unknown. The present study was designed to (re)investigate whether the arrival times of the two tasks at the central bottleneck are a key determinant of the processing order (cf. Sigman & Dehaene, 2006). To this end, we implemented a visual–auditory dual task with a random stimulus order, in which we manipulated arrival time by prolonging the initial, perceptual processing stage (stimulus analysis) of the visual task and compared the effects of this manipulation with those of one impacting the central bottleneck stage of the visual task. Additionally, we implemented two instruction conditions: Participants were told to respond either in the order of stimulus presentation or in the order they preferred. The manipulation of the visual perception stage led to an increase in task response reversals (i.e., the response order was different from the order of stimulus presentation), whereas there was no such increase when the bottleneck stage was manipulated. This pattern provides conclusive evidence that the processing order at the bottleneck is (at least in part) determined by the arrival times of the tasks at that point. Reaction time differences between the two instruction conditions indicated that additional control processes are engaged in determining task processing order when the participants are expressly told to respond in the order of stimulus presentation.     

Region-based shielding of visual search from salient distractors: Target detection is impaired with same- but not different-dimension distractors

Shielding visual search against interference from salient distractors becomes more efficient over time for display regions where distractors appear more frequently, rather than only rarely Goschy, Bakos, Müller, & Zehetleitner (Frontiers in Psychology 5: 1195, 2014). We hypothesized that the locus of this learned distractor probability-cueing effect depends on the dimensional relationship of the to-be-inhibited distractor relative to the to-be-attended target. If the distractor and target are defined in different visual dimensions (e.g., a color-defined distractor and orientation-defined target, as in Goschy et al. (Frontiers in Psychology 5: 1195, 2014), distractors may be efficiently suppressed by down-weighting the feature contrast signals in the distractor-defining dimension Zehetleitner, Goschy, & Müller (Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 38: 941–957, 2012), with stronger down-weighting being applied to the frequent- than to the rare-distractor region. However, given dimensionally coupled feature contrast signal weighting (cf. Müller J, Heller & Ziegler (Perception & Psychophysics 57:1–17, 1995), this dimension-(down-)weighting strategy would not be effective when the target and the distractors are defined within the same dimension. In this case, suppression may operate differently: by inhibiting the entire frequent-distractor region on the search-guiding master saliency map. The downside of inhibition at this level is that, although it reduces distractor interference in the inhibited (frequent-distractor) region, it also impairs target processing in that region—even when no distractor is actually present in the display. This predicted qualitative difference between same- and different-dimension distractors was confirmed in the present study (with 184 participants), thus furthering our understanding of the functional architecture of search guidance, especially regarding the mechanisms involved in shielding search from the interference of distractors that consistently occur in certain display regions.

     

The importance of context information for the spatial specificity of gaze cueing

In three experiments, we investigated the spatial allocation of attention in response to central gaze cues. In particular, we examined whether the allocation of attentional resources is influenced by context information—that is, the presence or absence of reference objects (i.e., placeholders) in the periphery. On each trial, gaze cues were followed by a target stimulus to which participants had to respond by keypress or by performing a target-directed saccade. Targets were presented either in an empty visual field (Exps. 1 and 2) or in previewed location placeholders (Exp. 3) and appeared at one of either 18 (Exp. 1) or six (Exps. 2 and 3) possible positions. The spatial distribution of attention was determined by comparing response times as a function of the distance between the cued and target positions. Gaze cueing was not specific to the exact cued position, but instead generalized equally to all positions in the cued hemifield, when no context information was provided. However, gaze direction induced a facilitation effect specific to the exact gazed-at position when reference objects were presented. We concluded that the presence of possible objects in the periphery to which gaze cues could refer is a prerequisite for attention shifts being specific to the gazed-at position.     

Constructing desirable identities--self-presentation in psychotherapy and daily life: comment on Kelly (2000)

A. E. Kelly's (2000) thesis that psychotherapy clients benefit from withholding negative information is considered in light of current social-psychological theory and research. Positive illusions about oneself are associated with indexes of mental health; this is consistent with treating therapy as positive identity development. Self-presentation can shape self-concept, even apart from the feedback that an audience might provide; the social construction of identity is a powerful process, suggesting that withholding negative and presenting only positive information is adaptive. However, evidence concerning the level of identification of one's actions suggests complexities in understanding ways clients might deal with disclosing negative information; the authors argue that the impact on self-concept is probably more complex than A. E. Kelly's characterization and that the implications are of a broader scope than indicated so far.     

Pilfering ravens, Corvus corax, adjust their behaviour to social context and identity of competitors

Like other corvids, food-storing ravens protect their caches from being pilfered by conspecifics by means of aggression and by re-caching. In the wild and in captivity, potential pilferers rarely approach caches until the storers have left the cache vicinity. When storers are experimentally prevented from leaving, pilferers first search at places other than the cache sites. These behaviours raise the possibility that ravens are capable of withholding intentions and providing false information to avoid provoking the storers' aggression for cache protection. Alternatively, birds may refrain from pilfering to avoid conflicts with dominants. Here we examined whether ravens adjust their pilfer tactics according to social context and type of competitors. We allowed birds that had witnessed a conspecific making caches to pilfer those caches either in private, together with the storer, or together with a conspecific bystander that had not created the caches (non-storer) but had seen them being made. Compared to in-private trials, ravens delayed approaching the caches only in the presence of storers. Furthermore, they quickly engaged in searching away from the caches when together with dominant storers but directly approached the caches when together with dominant non-storers. These findings demonstrate that ravens selectively alter their pilfer behaviour with those individuals that are likely to defend the caches (storers) and support the interpretation that they are deceptively manipulating the others' behaviour.This contribution is part of the special issue “Animal Logics” (Watanabe and Huber 2006).