Task effects reveal cognitive flexibility responding to frequency and predictability: Evidence from eye movements in reading and proofreading

It is well-known that word frequency and predictability affect processing time. These effects change magnitude across tasks, but studies testing this use tasks with different response types (e.g., lexical decision, naming, and fixation time during reading; Schilling, Rayner, & Chumbley, 1998), preventing direct comparison. Recently, Kaakinen and Hyönä (2010) overcame this problem, comparing fixation times in reading for comprehension and proofreading, showing that the frequency effect was larger in proofreading than in reading. This result could be explained by readers exhibiting substantial cognitive flexibility, and qualitatively changing how they process words in the proofreading task in a way that magnifies effects of word frequency. Alternatively, readers may not change word processing so dramatically, and instead may perform more careful identification generally, increasing the magnitude of many word processing effects (e.g., both frequency and predictability). We tested these possibilities with two experiments: subjects read for comprehension and then proofread for spelling errors (letter transpositions) that produce nonwords (e.g., trcak for track as in Kaakinen & Hyönä) or that produce real but unintended words (e.g., trial for trail) to compare how the task changes these effects. Replicating Kaakinen and Hyönä, frequency effects increased during proofreading. However, predictability effects only increased when integration with the sentence context was necessary to detect errors (i.e., when spelling errors produced words that were inappropriate in the sentence; trial for trail). The results suggest that readers adopt sophisticated word processing strategies to accommodate task demands.     

Aristotle's Cognitive Science: Belief,Affect and Rationality

I offer a novel interpretation of Aristotle's psychology and notion of rationality, which draws the line between animal and specifically human cognition. Aristotle distinguishes belief (doxa), a form of rational cognition, from imagining (phantasia), which is shared with non‐rational animals. We are, he says, “immediately affected” by beliefs, but respond to imagining “as if we were looking at a picture.” Aristotle's argument has been misunderstood; my interpretation explains and motivates it. Rationality includes a filter that interrupts the pathways between cognition and behavior. This prevents the subject from responding to certain representations. Stress and damage compromise the filter, making the subject respond indiscriminately, as non‐rational animals do. Beliefs are representations that have made it past the filter, which is why they can “affect [us] immediately.” Aristotle's claims express ceteris paribus generalizations, subject to exceptions. No list of provisos could turn them into non‐vacuous universal claims, but this does not rob them of their explanatory power. Aristotle's cognitive science resolves a tension we grapple with today: it accounts for the specialness of human action and thinking within a strictly naturalistic framework. The theory is striking in its insight and explanatory power, instructive in its methodological shortcomings.     

Implementation Intentions,Information, and Voter Turnout: An Experimental Study

Are citizens more likely to vote when they are asked to make plans about how they will cast their ballots? Such planning—typically described as “implementation intentions”—has been shown to increase many types of desirable behaviors, including exercising and healthy eating, receiving vaccinations, physical rehabilitation, and recycling. Important earlier work in political science suggests voter turnout can also be influenced by implementation intention interventions, whereby electors are prompted to “make a plan” to vote (Nickerson & Rogers, 2010 ), though this finding has gone largely unreplicated. At the same time, elections management bodies (EMBs) in many contexts regularly conduct informational campaigns in the period leading up to elections, though little is known about the effects of such efforts upon turnout. Using data from an online experiment conducted at the time of the 2015 Canadian Federal Election, we demonstrate that implementation intention interventions can improve voter turnout but that this effect is conditional upon electors being exposed to informational materials about how to vote in the election. When survey respondents were provided with information on voting requirements and methods, and then prompted with questions forcing them to contemplate the act of casting their ballots, we observe a sizable increase in turnout rates.     

Crisis,Biology, Ecology: A New Starting-Point for Phenomenology?

The crisis of European sciences in Husserl’s late work diagnoses Galilean science as specifically and necessarily losing touch with the intuitive evidence that would legitimate it due to its reliance on a formal-mathematical conceptual apparatus. While the vast majority of Husserl’s late work was focussed on a critique of the formal-mathematical paradigm of the physical science of nature, at several points the possibility of biology as the exemplary science is raised to suggest that the lack of a reliance on formal-mathematical conceptual language would mean that a systemic crisis would not occur in such a case. This investigation considers the grounds for the expectation that biology would not engender a crisis, suggests that a paradigmatic role for ecology would more adequately address this expectation, and finally claims that the question of the relation between a specific exemplary science and transcendental phenomenology is not fully resolved even in this case.     

Development and Initial Validation of the Five-Factor Model Adolescent Personality Questionnaire (FFM–APQ)

This research reports on the 4-phase development of the 25-item Five-Factor Model Adolescent Personality Questionnaire (FFM–APQ). The purpose was to develop and determine initial evidence for validity of a brief adolescent personality inventory using a vocabulary that could be understood by adolescents up to 18 years old. Phase 1 (N = 48) consisted of item generation and expert (N = 5) review of items; Phase 2 (N = 179) involved item analyses; in Phase 3 (N = 496) exploratory factor analysis assessed the underlying structure; in Phase 4 (N = 405) confirmatory factor analyses resulted in a 25-item inventory with 5 subscales.     

The everyday dynamics of rumination and worry: precipitant events and affective consequences

ABSTRACT

Rumination and worry are two perseverative, negatively valenced thought processes that characterise depressive and anxiety disorders. Despite significant research interest, little is known about the everyday precipitants and consequences of rumination and worry. Using an experience sampling methodology, we examined and compared rumination and worry with respect to their relations to daily events and affective experience. Participants diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD), Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD), co-occurring MDD–GAD, or no diagnosis carried an electronic device for one week and reported on rumination, worry, significant events, positive affect (PA), and negative affect (NA). Across the clinical groups, occurrences of everyday events predicted subsequent increases in rumination, but not worry. Further, higher momentary levels of rumination, but not worry, predicted subsequent decreases in PA and increases in NA. Thus, in these clinical groups, rumination was more susceptible to daily events and produced stronger affective changes over time. We discuss implications for theory and clinical intervention.     

Prospective Elementary Teachers Learning to Reason Flexibly with Sums and Differences: Number Sense Development Viewed Through the Lens of Collective Activity

I present a viable learning trajectory for prospective elementary teachers’ number sense development with a focus on whole-number place value, addition, and subtraction. I document a chronology of classroom mathematical practices in a Number and Operations course. The findings provide insights into prospective elementary teachers’ number sense development. These include the role of standard algorithms and their relationship to the evolution of classroom mathematical practices that involve reasoning flexibly about number composition, sums, and differences.     

It is written all over your face: Socially rejected people display microexpressions that are detectable after training in the Micro Expression Training Tool (METT)

Social rejection is a powerful negative emotional experience, yet rejected people often appear stoic and unmoved. That is, their macroexpressions of emotion are not accurate reflections of their emotional states. Yet, there is reason to believe that rejected people exhibit involuntary microexpressions of negative emotion. We contrasted people's macroexpressions of emotion with their microexpressions subsequent to an acceptance or rejection experience. Observers coded microexpressions after being trained with the Micro Expression Training Tool. Rejected participants expressed more sad and angry microexpressions than did accepted participants. This research demonstrates that socially rejected people display negative microexpressions that are detectable by observers trained in the Micro Expression Training Tool.