Children's emotional reactivity to interadult nonverbal conflict expressions

The authors investigated children's responses to nonverbal expressions of conflict. Reactions of 3 groups of children (ranging in age from 6 to 16 years) to multiple forms of nonverbal conflict behaviors expressed in videotaped simulations of interadult disputes were examined. Results indicated that children make few discriminations between different forms of nonverbal conflict behaviors and that their reactions to nonverbal conflict are similar to their reactions to verbal conflict. Adults' expressions of fear elicited the most negative emotional responses from children, suggesting that children react to the meaning of conflict expressions and that expressions of fear may represent the greatest emotional security risks to children. Implications of these results for a theoretical model of the effects of forms of marital conflict on children are discussed (P. T. Davies & E. M. Cummings, 1994).     

Programming of endogenous and exogenous saccades: evidence for a competitive integration model

Participants were required to make a saccade to a uniquely colored target while ignoring the presentation of an onset distractor. The results provide evidence for a competitive integration model of saccade programming that assumes endogenous and exogenous saccades are programmed in a common saccade map. The model incorporates a lateral interaction structure in which saccade-related activation at a specific location spreads to neighboring locations but inhibits distant locations. In addition, there is top-down, location-specific inhibition of locations to which the saccade should not go. The time course of exogenous and endogenous activation in the saccade map can explain a variety of eye movement data, including endpoints, latencies, and trajectories of saccades and the well-known global effect.     

Causal conditional reasoning and semantic memory retrieval: a test of the semantic memory framework

This study tested and refined a framework that proposes a mechanism for retrieving alternative causes and disabling conditions (Cummins, 1995) during reasoning. Experiment 1 examined the relation between different factors affecting retrieval. The test revealed high correlations between the number of possible alternative causes or disabling conditions and their strength of association and plausibility. Experiment 2 explored the hypothesis that due to a more extended search process, conditional inferences would last longer when many alternative causes or disabling conditions were available. Affirmation of the consequent (AC) and modus ponens (MP) latencies showed the hypothesized pattern. Denial of the antecedent (DA) and modus tollens (MT) inferences did not show latency effects. The experiment also identified an effect of the number of disabling conditions on AC and DA acceptance. Experiment 3 measured efficiency of disabler retrieval by a limited time, disabler generation task. As predicted, better disabler retrieval was related to lower acceptance of the MP and MT inferences.     

Derivation by prefixation in Slovenian: two aphasia case studies

The present study is concerned with two Slovenian-speaking patients who were asked to produce, in various tasks, verbs, nouns, and adjectives derived by prefixation with prepositions. Despite differences due to their specific linguistic difficulties, both patients' performance was characterized by the differential processing of prefixes and remaining components of complex words. Prepositions in prefixation were mostly preserved, and less frequently substituted, regardless of the numerous errors produced in the remaining portion of the words. These errors seem clearly determined by the morphological structure of the words and therefore appear to be authentic morphological errors. These findings contribute to the theoretical debate on mental lexical representation, speaking in favor of a morphological decomposition in processing of prefixed complex words at different processing levels.     

Factors contributing to the implicit dynamic quality of static abstract designs

Participants rated the dynamic quality of a set of twelve-element nonrepresentational or abstract visual designs each composed of one of four types of triangles or four types of quadrilaterals. We investigated the contribution to the perceived or implicit dynamics of the design of the four factors edge alignment of compositional elements, physical weight distribution about the horizontal axis, activity directions within the designs, and type of compositional element. It was found that edge alignment of elements was the most influential factor contributing to the dynamics both of triangle and of quadrilateral designs. In addition, dynamics was found to be positively correlated with the number of perceived activity directions within both types of stimuli. Triangle designs, but not quadrilateral ones, with greater structural weight above the horizontal axis were rated as more dynamic. Results suggest that implicit dynamics of nonrepresentational designs arises from a percept based on a global spatial analysis of the stimulus characteristics studied.     

Measuring differences in preactivation on the Internet: the content category superiority effect

Preactivation of particular content categories in memory yields latency differences in a visual recognition task. Two Internet studies demonstrate this content category superiority effect (CCSE). Target words are repeatedly flashed for 400 ms and then masked for 200 ms. Experiment 1 shows that differences in pre-activated memory content, related to participants' use of computer operating systems, influence z-scored visual word recognition latencies. Experiment 2 shows that this influence is susceptible to instruction. Participants expecting to find positive words recognized those words faster, whereas participants expecting to find negative words were faster on negative words. The CCSE provides a basis on which new measures of implicit memory content can be founded. Two such applications are discussed--the Motive Superiority Measure of implicit motives, and a latency-based measure of self-focused attention.     

Influence of social motives on integrative negotiation: a meta-analytic review and test of two theories

A meta-analysis of 28 studies examined support for the Theory of Cooperation and Competition (M. Deutsch, 1973) and Dual Concern Theory (D. G. Pruitt & J. Z. Rubin, 1986). Effects of social motive (prosocial vs. egoistic) and resistance to yielding (high vs. low vs. unknown) on contenting, problem solving, and joint outcomes were examined. Consistent with Dual Concern Theory, results showed that negotiators were less contentious, engaged in more problem solving, and achieved higher joint outcomes when they had a prosocial rather than egoistic motive, but only when resistance to yielding was high (or unknown) rather than low. The authors also explored the moderating effects of study characteristics and found effects for participation inducement (class exercise, participant pool), for publication status, and for treatment of no-agreement dyads.