Abrupt luminance change pops out; abrupt color change does not

The present studies investigated whether an isoluminant color change pops out, indicating that it can be detected preattentively in parallel. The results of Experiment 1 show that an abrupt color change presented on an equiluminant background does not pop out. However, when the color change is accompanied by a small luminance change, it does pop out. The results of Experiment 2 show that the pop-out is fully due to the luminance change and not to the color change. The results of Experiments 3 and 4 show that the failure to find a pop-out at equiluminance cannot be attributed to the limited temporal resolution for chromatic stimuli. The results of Experiment 5 show that particular search strategies cannot be responsible for the obtained results. The results are in agreement with physiological findings regarding the parvo and magno systems.     

Legal and ethical issues in conducting research on alcohol and drug use with children: a reaction to Havey and Dodd

Although research pertaining to alcohol and drug use by children clearly is very important for our field, it also presents a number of difficult ethical and legal challenges. In this article we react to Havey and Dodd's research (1995, this issue), commenting specifically on their use of a passive consent procedure. Problems with this aspect of their methodology are reviewed in relationship to best research practices, the U.S. Constitution, case law, federal statutes, and the ethical codes of the American Psychological Association, the National Association of School Psychologists, and the American Educational Research Association.     

MENTAL PROCESSES INVOLVED IN RAPID LOGICAL REASONING

S medslund , J. Mental processes involved in rapid logical reasoning. Scand. J. Psychol ., 1968, 9, 187–205.—Approximate reaction times of adult subjects were recorded in three studies of addition and subtraction of units, and in one of transitive inference. Transformations such as from 'V has more than H' to 'H has less than V' were found to be important determinants of RT in additionlsubtraction. Under some conditions subjects preferred to combine the first two elements in a triad of operations first, under other conditions they seemed to select inversions (V + 1 & V−1) first. Symmetries (V + 1 & H +1) were apparently never preferred. All transitive tasks seemed to be converted into normal form (A>B ∓ B>CorA < B & B < C) before they were solved.     

Aiming at the top? Upward social comparison of abilities after failure

This study examined the effects of feedback on a task on information seeking and partner preferences as forms of social comparison. It was predicted that subjects who experienced failure and perceived control over future performance would, for reasons of self-improvement, choose more strongly upward a comparison other than subjects who experienced success or perceived no control. In the experiment, 121 college students were given either failure, average, or success feedback on a bogus test for either a stable or a controllable ability. Next, the subjects choose a comparison other whose test material they would examine, and a comparison other as a partner for writing an evaluation of the test. As predicted, the preferences for information seeking and affiliation were more strongly upward when subjects experienced failure than when subjects experienced success. Perceived control partly resulted in more strongly upward choices in information seeking for subjects experiencing failure.     

Informing Policy Priorities using Inference from Life Satisfaction Responses in a Large Community Survey

Self-reported, quantitative, subjective measures of well-being, such as satisfaction with life overall, are increasingly looked to as measures of public welfare. While this trend is visible at the international and national government levels, regional initiatives and local communities are particularly important in seeking meaningful measures of the quality of human experience and of the success of local policies. Unlike other approaches in which well-being or progress indices are constructed using arbitrary or expert-generated weights on various domains of life experience, subjective well-being can be used to evaluate empirically the relative importance of specific measurable conditions and experiences in supporting a good life. Using a new, large community well-being survey carried out across the U.S. state of Connecticut, we use this method to evaluate the relationship between life satisfaction and a range of other socioeconomic circumstances and conditions. In support of a broad existing literature, we find enormous effects of security and social engagement as compared with variations in income. We then proceed to consider the prevalence of different socioeconomic conditions, in addition to their relative importance to affected individuals, to make inferences about the benefit-costs of feasible state and local policies. There remain some conditions, like social trust and the perceived responsiveness of local government to the needs of residents, which appear very important to well-being but for which the relationship with targeted resource allocation requires further investigation or policy experimentation.