Fast and Conspicuous? Quantifying Salience With the Theory of Visual Attention

Particular differences between an object and its surrounding cause salience, guide attention, and improve performance in various tasks. While much research has been dedicated to identifying which feature dimensions contribute to salience, much less regard has been paid to the quantitative strength of the salience caused by feature differences. Only a few studies systematically related salience effects to a common salience measure, and they are partly outdated in the light of new findings on the time course of salience effects. We propose Bundesen’s Theory of Visual Attention (TVA) as a theoretical basis for measuring salience and introduce an empirical and modeling approach to link this theory to data retrieved from temporal-order judgments. With this procedure, TVA becomes applicable to a broad range of salience-related stimulus material. Three experiments with orientation pop-out displays demonstrate the feasibility of the method. A 4th experiment substantiates its applicability to the luminance dimension.     

Abducted by a UFO: prevalence information affects young children's false memories for an implausible event

This study examined whether prevalence information promotes children's false memories for an implausible event. Forty‐four 7–8 and forty‐seven 11–12 year old children heard a true narrative about their first school day and a false narrative about either an implausible event (abducted by a UFO) or a plausible event (almost choking on a candy). Moreover, half of the children in each condition received prevalence information in the form of a false newspaper article while listening to the narratives. Across two interviews, children were asked to report everything they remembered about the events. In both age groups, plausible and implausible events were equally likely to give rise to false memories. Prevalence information increased the number of false memories in 7–8 year olds, but not in 11–12 year olds at Interview 1. Our findings demonstrate that young children can easily develop false memories of a highly implausible event. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Exposure to violent video games and aggression in German adolescents: a longitudinal analysis

The relationship between exposure to violent electronic games and aggressive cognitions and behavior was examined in a longitudinal study. A total of 295 German adolescents completed the measures of violent video game usage, endorsement of aggressive norms, hostile attribution bias, and physical as well as indirect/relational aggression cross‐sectionally, and a subsample of N=143 was measured again 30 months later. Cross‐sectional results at T1 showed a direct relationship between violent game usage and aggressive norms, and an indirect link to hostile attribution bias through aggressive norms. In combination, exposure to game violence, normative beliefs, and hostile attribution bias predicted physical and indirect/relational aggression. Longitudinal analyses using path analysis showed that violence exposure at T1 predicted physical (but not indirect/relational) aggression 30 months later, whereas aggression at T1 was unrelated to later video game use. Exposure to violent games at T1 influenced physical (but not indirect/relational) aggression at T2 via an increase of aggressive norms and hostile attribution bias. The findings are discussed in relation to social‐cognitive explanations of long‐term effects of media violence on aggression. Aggr. Behav. 35:75–89, 2009. © 2008 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.     

Enhancing implicit change detection through action

Implicit change detection demonstrates how the visual system can benefit from stored information that is not immediately available to conscious awareness. We investigated the role of motor action in this context. In the first two experiments, using a one-shot implicit change-detection paradigm, participants responded to unperceived changes either with an action (jabbing the screen at the guessed location of a change) or with words (verbal report), and sat either 60 cm or 300 cm (with a laser pointer) away from the display. Our observers guessed the locations of changes at a reachable distance better with an action than with a verbal judgment. At 300 cm, beyond reach, the motor advantage disappeared. In experiment 3, this advantage was also unavailable when participants sat at a reachable distance but responded with hand-held laser pointers near their bodies. We conclude that a motor system specialized for real-time visually guided behavior has access to additional visual information. Importantly, this system is not activated by merely executing an action (experiment 2) or presenting stimuli in one's near space (experiment 3). It is activated only when both conditions are fulfilled, which implies that it is the actual contact that matters to the visual system.     

Subjective Well-Being of Beijing Taxi Drivers

This study investigates subjective well-being among a sample of Beijing taxi drivers in the lead up to the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games using the Personal Wellbeing Index (PWI). The specific aims of this study are (a) investigate the psychometric properties of the PWI in this unique population; (b) ascertain whether Beijing taxi drivers are satisfied with their lives; and (c) examine whether the responses to the PWI from participants falls within the narrow range predicted by the ‘Theory of Subjective Wellbeing Homeostasis’. The PWI demonstrated good psychometric properties and was consistent with previous studies for Western and non-Western samples. The data revealed a moderate level of subjective well-being (PWI score = 61.1). While Beijing taxi drivers work long hours for low wages, the PWI was nonetheless within the normative range predicted for Chinese societies by the ‘Theory of Subjective Wellbeing Homeostasis’. The results suggest that the homeostatic mechanism is fairly resilient, even when the individual leads relatively a hard life based on objective indicators. Specifically, for Beijing taxi drivers, it appears that external, buffers such as personal relationships and feeling part of the community, act to assist the homeostatic system.     

An application of terror management theory in the design of social and health‐related anti‐smoking appeals

• Marketers and public policy makers continue to be plagued with the problem of creating effective communications, which can increase the probability of complying with risk avoidance behavior related to smoking. Using Terror Management Theory (TMT) as a theoretical basis, we provide a rationale as to why traditional anti‐smoking appeals focusing on negative health consequences are not impactful. We use the implications of the theory to predict and show that an appeal focusing on social exclusion should be more motivating than a health appeal to encourage smokers to quit in the short and long run. Specifically, we conduct an experiment designed to investigate the impact of mortality salience and self‐esteem on whether college‐age smokers will comply with anti‐smoking messages. We observe that social exclusion messages compared to health effect messages are particularly effective in reducing intentions to smoke for college‐age smokers who derive their self‐esteem in part from smoking. Overall, our results show that mortality salience interacts with self‐esteem in terms of influencing the probability of smoking in the short run and that social exclusion appeals have a stronger impact than health‐related appeals both in reducing long run smoking intention and emphasizing the salience of health‐related consequences of smoking.

Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Saving Bulgaria's Jews: an analysis of social identity and the mobilisation of social solidarity

This paper investigates the arguments used in public documents to mobilise Bulgarians against the deportation of Jews in World War II. We focus on the key documents relating to the first wave of mobilisation in 1940–1941 as provided by Todorov in The Fragility of Goodness ( 2001 ). We demonstrate that these documents are based on three types of argument. The first, category inclusion, treats the Jews as part of a common ingroup rather than as constituting a separate outgroup. The second, category norms, proposes that help for those under attack is a core aspect of ingroup identity. The third, category interest, suggests that the ingroup will be harmed if Jews are persecuted. In each case, the predominant category on which arguments are based is national identity (i.e. ‘we Bulgarians …’). This analysis is used to validate and extend a social identity of model of helping. The theoretical and practical implications of such an approach are considered in the discussion. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Commission errors but not critical lures decrease when you have to pay a price for them

Using the Deese-Roediger-McDermott paradigm, we explored the effect of monetary penalty on false memories. Participants were presented 6 15-word lists of semantic associates that all converged on a nonpresented critical lure. Next, half of the participants received a monetary reward (0.10 Euro; about $0.10) for each correctly recalled word, whereas they lost money (0.20 Euro; about $0.20) for each incorrect response. Compared with control participants who received a fixed financial compensation, participants in the experimental group reported fewer commissions (i.e., incorrect responses other than the critical lure). Number of hits and critical lures did not differ between the groups.     

Individual differences in white matter microstructure predict semantic control

In everyday conversation, we make many rapid choices between competing concepts and words in order to convey our intent. This process is termed semantic control, and it is thought to rely on information transmission between a distributed semantic store in the temporal lobes and a more discrete region, optimized for retrieval and selection, in the left inferior frontal gyrus. Here, we used diffusion tensor imaging in a group of neurologically normal young adults to investigate the relationship between semantic control and white matter tracts that have been implicated in semantic memory retrieval. Participants completed a verb generation task that taps semantic control (Snyder & Munakata, 2008; Snyder et al., 2010) and underwent a diffusion imaging scan. Deterministic tractography was performed to compute indices representing the microstructural properties of the inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus (IFOF), the uncinate fasciculus (UF), and the inferior longitudinal fasciculus (ILF). Microstructural measures of the UF failed to predict semantic control performance. However, there was a significant relationship between microstructure of the left IFOF and ILF and individual differences in semantic control. Our findings support the view put forth by Duffau (2013) that the IFOF is a key structural pathway in semantic retrieval.     

The ontogeny of relational memory and pattern separation

Episodic memory relies on memory for the relations among multiple elements of an event and the ability to discriminate among similar elements of episodes. The latter phenomenon, termed pattern separation, has been studied mainly in young and older adults with relatively little research on children. Building on prior work with young children, we created an engaging computer‐administered relational memory task assessing what‐where relations. We also modified the Mnemonic Similarity Task used to assess pattern discrimination in young and older adults for use with preschool children. Results showed that 4‐year‐olds performed significantly worse than 6‐year‐olds and adults on both tasks, whereas 6‐year‐olds and adults performed comparably, even though there were no ceiling effects. However, performance on the two tasks did not correlate, suggesting that two distinct mnemonic processes with different developmental trajectories may contribute to age‐related changes in episodic memory.