Constructing Gender in Chat Groups

We investigated the construction of gender in chat groups. Four unacquainted persons chatted in two gender-anonymous conditions and a non-anonymous control condition. In one anonymous condition, the gender focus was made salient. The other groups did not know about the gender focus. All participants had to guess the gender of the others and give reasons for their decisions. Results suggest that (a) overall, 2/3 of gender guesses fit the sex category of the targets, (b) gender anonymity was more comfortable for women, (c) participants used mostly gender-stereotypic cues to infer gender, however, men and women used syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic cues (with different predictive value) to different degrees, (d) conversational behavior varied depending on gender anonymity, and (e) degree of gender salience was irrelevant for the use of gender as an organizing category.     

Crossmodal attention switching: Auditory dominance in temporal discrimination tasks

Visual stimuli are often processed more efficiently than accompanying stimuli in another modality. In line with this “visual dominance”, earlier studies on attentional switching showed a clear benefit for visual stimuli in a bimodal visual–auditory modality-switch paradigm that required spatial stimulus localization in the relevant modality. The present study aimed to examine the generality of this visual dominance effect. The modality appropriateness hypothesis proposes that stimuli in different modalities are differentially effectively processed depending on the task dimension, so that processing of visual stimuli is favored in the dimension of space, whereas processing auditory stimuli is favored in the dimension of time. In the present study, we examined this proposition by using a temporal duration judgment in a bimodal visual–auditory switching paradigm. Two experiments demonstrated that crossmodal interference (i.e., temporal stimulus congruence) was larger for visual stimuli than for auditory stimuli, suggesting auditory dominance when performing temporal judgment tasks. However, attention switch costs were larger for the auditory modality than for visual modality, indicating a dissociation of the mechanisms underlying crossmodal competition in stimulus processing and modality-specific biasing of attentional set.     

Fluency and positivity as possible causes of the truth effect

Statements’ rated truth increases when people encounter them repeatedly. Processing fluency is a central variable to explain this truth effect. However, people experience processing fluency positively, and these positive experiences might cause the truth effect. Three studies investigated positivity and fluency influences on the truth effect. Study 1 found correlations between elicited positive feelings and rated truth. Study 2 replicated the repetition-based truth effect, but positivity did not influence the effect. Study 3 conveyed positive and negative correlations between positivity and truth in a learning phase. We again replicated the truth effect, but positivity only influenced judgments for easy statements in the learning phase. Thus, across three studies, we found positivity effects on rated truth, but not on the repetition-based truth effect: We conclude that positivity does not explain the standard truth effect, but the role of positive experiences for truth judgments deserves further investigation.     

Clinical, electroneurographic and neuroautonomic findings in patients with chronic renal insufficiency and following kidney transplantation

Orientation onsigns of sensomotor polyneuritis seems appropriate for monitoring the status of patients with chronic uremia. The maximum speed of motor and F-wave transmission by the N. fibularis and the mean instantaneous arrhythmia are parameters which, before clinical symptoms appear, permit the accurate assessment of motor and vegetative lesions and may be useful as a basis on which treatment can be corrected.     

Exploring temporal dissipation of attention settings in auditory task switching

Using a cued auditory task-switching variant of dichotic listening, we varied the response–cue interval (RCI) to examine temporal dissipation effects. On each trial, participants were presented with two different number words, one spoken by a female speaker and another by a male speaker (dichotic listening), that served as competing targets for a numerical judgment. The gender of the task-relevant speaker was indicated by a visual task cue prior to each trial. Experiment 1A used two different cues for each task (i.e., gender) and showed only small cue repetition benefits (same cue vs. alternate cue) but large auditory switch costs (alternate cue vs. task switch). A replication without immediate cue repetitions (Experiment 1B) showed very similar switch costs, suggesting that immediate cue repetitions play a negligible role for the size of auditory task switch costs. Moreover, switch costs were reduced when the (entirely task-irrelevant) location of the task-relevant speaker changed, relative to when it was unchanged, suggesting an episodic feature-binding component in our dichotic-listening task. Importantly, both experiments showed no effect of RCI on auditory switch costs. Because statistical power for this null effect was reasonably high across experiments (n?=?50), this finding suggests that auditory attention settings do not dissipate quickly over time.     

An ethnographic study of issues surrounding the provision of sport opportunities to young men from a western Canadian inner-city

ObjectivesThe purpose of this study was to examine issues surrounding the provision of sport opportunities to young men from inner-city areas of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. More specifically, the research question was: What are the benefits, constraints, and opportunities associated with providing sport programs to young men from inner-city areas?DesignEthnography.MethodsData were collected via 15 months of participant observation and interviews with 12 youth workers who were responsible for the provision of various sport programs to young inner-city dwellers. Analysis was framed around personal, social, and structural issues.ResultsAt a personal level sport provided young men with an outlet for overcoming boredom and a temporary reprieve from the conditions of their daily lives. At a social level sport provided opportunities for relationship building between the youth workers and the young men. However, enduring structural constraints associated with economic and social inequality and the lack of a coordinated approach to the delivery of services restricted the influence that sport could have in the lives of the young men.ConclusionThis study provided some precise understandings of the benefits, constraints, and opportunities associated with providing sport programs to members of specific populations in certain inner-city circumstances. Findings, therefore, have the potential to inform public health policy concerning the use of sport-for-development programming in such contexts.     

The role of preparation and cue-modality in crossmodal task switching

The present study examined the effects of cue-based preparation and cue-target modality mapping in crossmodal task switching. In two experiments, we randomly presented lateralized visual and auditory stimuli simultaneously. Subjects were asked to make a left/right judgment for a stimulus in only one of the modalities. Prior to each trial, the relevant stimulus modality was indicated by a visual or auditory cue. The cueing interval was manipulated to examine preparation. In Experiment 1, we used a corresponding mapping of cue-modality and stimulus modality, whereas in Experiment 2 the mapping of cue and stimulus modalities was reversed. We found reduced modality-switch costs with a long cueing interval, showing that attention shifts to stimulus modalities can be prepared, irrespective of cue-target modality mapping. We conclude that perceptual processing in crossmodal switching can be biased in a preparatory way towards task-relevant stimulus modalities.     

Response-repetition effects in task switching with and without response execution

Previous research into the mechanisms of task switching has shown that repeating the same response in a different task context is associated with costs. To investigate whether such response-repetition costs occur even when the first of the two responses is not overtly executed, we used a variant of the change-signal paradigm. Subjects responded to a first stimulus by pressing a left or right response key. In half of the trials, a second stimulus occurred after a variable, adaptively adjusted delay, indicating to abandon the first response, and only respond to the second stimulus using another set of left and right response keys. In Experiment 1, different tasks had to be performed with the first and second stimulus (task-switch condition); in Experiment 2, the same task had to be performed with both stimuli (task-repetition condition). Response-repetition costs were obtained in Experiment 1, and response-repetition benefits in Experiment 2. Importantly, these costs and benefits were obtained even when the first of the two responses had not been overtly executed. The data support the idea that interference of task-specific response codes occurs at the level of abstract response codes. Interference of such response codes occurs even when the responses are not overtly executed.     

Electrophysiologic studies of patients with neural muscular atrophy

Various nerve conduction velocities, the terminal latency (TL) of facial nerve, the trigeminofacial reflex and fast auditory evoked potentials (FAEP) were investigated in 26 patients with peroneal muscular atrophy (22 with HMSN I and 4 with HMSN II). With the brain nerve status revealing no clinical abnormalities, 85.7% of HMSN I patients showed a longer-than-normal TL of the facial nerve, 66.6% had a prolonged early reflex component of trigeminofacial reflex and 22.7% pathological FAEPs. Normal neurophysiologic findings were obtained for brain nerves of HMSN II subjects. Subclinical involvement of the mid-group of brain nerves did not at all correlate with the impairment of extremity nerves and the duration of the disease. The present results reflect the heterogeneity of HMSN.