Neural and behavioral correlates of emotion recognition in children and adults.

Event-related potentials (ERPs), accuracy scores, and reaction times were used to examine the recognition of emotional expressions. Adults and 7-year-old children saw upright and inverted chromatic slides of the facial expressions of happiness, fear, surprise, and anger, and were asked to press a button for either "happy" or "angry" faces. A positive-going waveform (P300) was apparent at parietal scalp (Pz) and at left and right temporal scalp. Although the behavioral data were similar for both children and adults (e.g., both had more difficulty recognizing angry expressions than happy ones, and angry expressions were more difficult to recognize upside-down than were happy faces), the ERPs indicated that children responded differently than adults did to happy and angry expressions. Adults showed greater P300 amplitude to happy faces, while children showed greater P300 amplitude to angry faces. In addition, for adults, but not children, there were greater P300 amplitude responses at right vs. left temporal scalp.     

The effect of object alignment on the representation of depth in young children's drawings.

Light and Humphreys (1981, Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 31, 521-530) provided evidence that young children's drawings, despite infrequently showing view-specific occlusion, do systematically reflect spatial relations within an array. The present research tested the hypothesis that young children's preferences for canonical "best views" interact with array-faithful tendencies to increase early uses of occlusion. Forty-three children between 4 and 7 years of age drew arrays like Light and Humphreys' end-to-end alignments, with end-on views of objects in depth, and arrays aligned side-to-side, with canonical side-views of objects in depth. Significantly fewer single-object, view-specific occlusions were produced for end-to-end than for side-to-side alignments. Nevertheless, the former reveal that more children are able to use the vertical dimension to depict multiple objects in depth. Other comparisons suggest an interaction in multiple-object depictions of canonicality with spatial dimension and graphic complexity.     

Some perceptual and cognitive factors in mirror tracing: their limits.

Three mirror tracing experiments were conducted to investigate the connection between perception and motor behavior. In the first experiment, some subjects traced a hex-maze, other subjects traced a hex-maze after observing a model trace, others traced a hex-maze after reading instructions on mirror images, and others traced a hex-maze after having observed a model and heard the instructions. There were no significant differences between the groups' error scores, but their time scores differed significantly, although not always in the predicted direction. In Experiment 2, the subjects were to trace selected letters of the alphabet. Error scores for the second experiment did not differ much from those for the first experiment. In Experiment 3, the experimenter gave each subject commands for the correct directions of movement, using the subject's body as a frame-of-reference. There was little improvement in motor performance. These results suggest that the visual information presented in the mirror captured the subjects' attention and blocked their motor tracing program.     

Moderated regression analysis and Likert scales: too coarse for comfort.

One of the most commonly accepted models of relationships among three variables in applied industrial and organizational psychology is the simple moderator effect. However, many authors have expressed concern over the general lack of empirical support for interaction effects reported in the literature. We demonstrate in the current sample that use of a continuous, dependent-response scale instead of a discrete, Likert-type scale, causes moderated regression analysis effect sizes to increase an average of 93%. We suggest that use of relatively coarse Likert scales to measure fine dependent responses causes information loss that, although varying widely across subjects, greatly reduces the probability of detecting true interaction effects. Specific recommendations for alternate research strategies are made.     

Cognitive Biases in Playing the Lottery: Estimating the Odds and Choosing the Numbers

Three experiments were conducted to examine the operation of the representativeness and anchoring and adjustment heuristics in lottery play. Subjects in Experiments 1 and 2 indicated their chances of winning a lottery with an objective probability of 1 in 10. Consistent with the anchoring and adjustment heuristic, subjects (in both experiments) perceived their chances of winning to be greater when the lottery was based on a single event than when it was based on a disjunctive event. Subjects in these two experiments also selected numbers to play in a pick-3 (Experiment 1) or pick-4 (Experiment 2) lottery. Consistent with the representativeness heuristic, subjects in Experiment 2 demonstrated a preference for numbers without repeating digits. This also occurred in Experiment 3 wherein the numbers actually played in the Indiana daily Pick-3 lottery were examined.     

Prejudice Against a Progay Man in an Everyday Situation: A Scenario Study1

A scenario study was performed to investigate whether people in the street would be less likely to respond positively to a stranger's request for a small favor if the stranger wore a T-shirt bearing a progay slogan. One hundred and eighteen female and 112 male participants were each presented with six scenarios, all of which asked them to imagine being approached by a person requesting change for a banknote. The dependent variable in the study was the participant's judgment, on a 7-point scale, of how likely he or she would be to help. Five of the scenarios were included as distractors. In the critical scenario, the requester was described as wearing a plain T-shirt or one with either a progay or a control slogan printed on it. The male participants in the progay condition showed a significantly lower level of help than those in either of the control groups. The antigay pattern, however, was not obtained in the responses of the female participants. The results are discussed with reference to other findings in the literature, and their implications for people's responses to progay persons in everyday life are considered.     

Declines in Major League Batting Performance as a Function of Game Pressure: A Drive Theory Analysis1

Zajonc's (1965) drive theory explanation argues that greater arousal tends to impair performance on difficult tasks. The hypothesis that arousal generated by “pressure situations” during major league baseball games would hinder batting performance—a difficult task—was tested by examining such performance during the 1989 season. Six “pressure situations” were identified, some occurring during the late innings of close games and others occurring throughout the game when there were two outs. Two measures of batting performance (batting average and slugging average) were employed. Results indicated broad support for the hypothesis. Reasons for this pattern are discussed, as are possible alternative explanations for these findings.