A direct method for multidimensional ratio scaling

A generalization of direct ratio scaling methods to multidimensional ratio scaling is described. This method requires an observer to report the proportion of a standard percept that is contained in a given percept and vice versa. The method was developed to meet requirements for experimentation in such areas as color vision, gustation, and olfaction.This investigation was supported by research grants from the Swedish Medical Research Council and the Wallenberg Foundation. The experimental work was carried out by Mr. G. Kylén.     

Causal attribution and hindsight bias for economic developments

Hindsight bias for economic developments was studied, with particular focus on the moderating effects of attitudes and causal attributions. Participants (N = 263) rated the likelihood of several economic developments 6 months before and 6 months after the euro introduction in 2002. Hindsight bias occurred selectively for attitude-consistent economic developments: Euro supporters showed stronger hindsight bias for positive developments than for negative ones; euro opponents showed the opposite pattern. Causal attribution further moderated the hindsight bias: participants who perceived a strong connection between the euro introduction and specific economic developments showed higher attitude-consistent hindsight bias than participants who perceived those developments as unrelated to the euro. It is argued that hindsight bias serves to stabilize subjective representations of the economy.     

One-sided nonparametric tests for ordinal data

Baumgartner, Weiss, and Schindler (1998) introduced a novel non-parametric test for the two-sample comparison that is superior to commonly used tests such as the Wilcoxon rank-sum test. A modification of the novel test statistic can be used for one-sided comparisons based on ordinal data. Such comparisons frequently occur in psychological research, and the Wilcoxon test is often recommended for their analysis. Here, the two tests were compared in a simulation study. According to this study the tests have a similar type I error rate, but the modified Baumgartner-Weiss-Schindler test is more powerful than the Wilcoxon test.     

Individual characteristics associated with resilience in single-parent families

This study identified individual characteristics as a resource to enhance the resilience of a family dealing with the loss of a parent. 25 white single-parent families who had lost a parent between 1 and 4 yr. previously were identified by four postgraduate students in the Western Cape, South Africa. Each single-parent, 19 women and 6 men (M age=48 yr., SD=7.65), were asked to state the personal qualities which helped the family adapt after the loss, after the Family Attachment and Changeability Index 8 and the Ego-resiliency Scale were completed. The expected positive relationship between personal resilience and family functioning could not be confirmed. However, the qualitative results indicate that optimism, perseverance, faith, expression of emotions, and self-confidence were prominent individual characteristics of resilience viewed as resources in promoting resilience in these single-parent families.     

Anchors distort estimates of expected duration

This research explored the effect of presenting participants an anchor, which is a salient standard of comparison, before asking them to estimate the amount of time they believe they will need to complete a task (expected duration estimation). Such anchors can be assumed to be common in real-life situations, e.g., duration suggestions made by work colleagues. Participants were 32 students (M age = 23.1 yr., SD = 3.2; 28 women) who received course credit for participating. In the presence or absence of one of two anchors they had to estimate how much time they would need to work on a catalogue task. Actual time needed for the task was also measured. As predicted, analysis showed that estimates of expected duration were distorted in the direction of the anchors, i.e., estimations were assimilated into the presented anchor value. The implications for time management are discussed.     

Rewarded remembering: dissociations between self-rated motivation and memory performance

People often claim that they perform better in memory performance tasks when they are more motivated. However, past research has shown minimal effects of motivation on memory performance when factors contributing to item-specific biases during encoding and retrieval are taken into account. The purpose of the present study was to examine the generality of this apparent dissociation by using more sensitive measures of experienced motivation and memory performance. Extrinsic motivation was manipulated through competition instructions, and subjective ratings of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation were obtained before and after study instructions. Participants studied a series of words, and memory performance was assessed by content recall (Experiment 1) and source recall (Experiment 2). Both experiments showed dissociation between subjective ratings of extrinsic motivation and actual memory performance, so that competition increased self-rated extrinsic motivation but had no effects on memory performance, including source recall. Inconsistent with most people's expectations, the findings suggest that extrinsic motivation has minimal effects on memory performance.     

Parenting, achievement strategies and satisfaction in ice hockey

The aim of this study is to understand adolescent players' satisfaction as a function of parenting styles, players' achievement strategies, and their norm breaking behavior. Finnish 14- and 16-year-old ice-hockey players (n=1018) completed a questionnaire measuring their achievement strategies (SAQ; Nurmi, Salmela--Aro & Haavisto, 1995 b), as well as scales of norm breaking and satisfaction, prepared for the present study. The parents (n=979) filled in scales measuring their parenting styles (CRPR; Pulkkinen, 1996) and attitudes towards norm breaking. Results revealed that players from authoritative families who showed a high level of mastery-orientation expressed high satisfaction in playing ice hockey. Results also showed negative associations between authoritative parenting and both task irrelevant and norm breaking behavior. Parents with parental stress and those with authoritarian parenting styles showed positive attitudes to norm breaking behavior, and players from authoritarian and parental stress homes showed norm breaking behavior in ice hockey. There was no association between norm breaking behavior and player satisfaction. Our results contribute to the planning of a coaching system that serves more educational and developmental purposes, and that encourages the desire to play ice hockey as a hobby.     

Rapid serial naming: relations between different stimuli and neuropsychological factors

We report two studies on rapid serial naming (RSN). Study 1 addressed the relations among RSN tasks comprising different stimuli. Separate components for RSN of alphanumeric and non-alphanumeric stimuli, as well as for tasks in which the stimuli alternated between categories were identified. In Study 2, phonological skills, processing speed, motor dexterity, and verbal fluency were found to explain RSN performance. The studies indicate: (1) that RSN tasks vary in their properties according to the stimuli used and according to the way the tasks are arranged, and (2) that RSN tasks are multi-componented.     

Impaired verb fluency: a sign of mild cognitive impairment

We assessed verb fluency vs. noun and letter-based fluency in 199 subjects referred for cognitive complaints including Subjective Cognitive Impairment, Mild Cognitive Impairment, and Alzheimer's disease. ANCOVAs and factor analyses identified verb, noun, and letter-based fluency as distinct tasks. Verb fluency performance in Mild Cognitive Impairment differed significantly from Subjective Cognitive Impairment and Alzheimer's disease. Reduced verb fluency thus appears to be a linguistic marker for incipient dementia. One possibility is that the verb fluency deficit in Mild Cognitive Impairment results from degenerative processes known to occur in the parahippocampal region.     

Detection of sound rise time by adults with dyslexia

Low sensitivity to amplitude modulated (AM) sounds is reported to be associated with dyslexia. An important aspect of amplitude modulation cycles are the rise and fall times within the sound. In this study, simplified stimuli equivalent to just one cycle were used and sensitivity to varying rise times was explored. Adult participants with dyslexia or compensated dyslexia and a control group performed a detection task with sound pairs of different rise times. Results showed that the participants with dyslexia differed from the control group in rise time detection and a correlation was found between rise time detection and reading and phonological skills. A subgroup of participants with lower sensitivity to rise time detection characterized by low accuracy in syllable-level phonological skills was found within the dyslexic group. Short stimuli containing only one rise time produced associations with phonological skills and reading, even in a language where the perception of rise time contrasts are not crucial for the signaling of phonemic contrast.