Does attention follow the motion in the “shooting line” illusion?

When a line is presented in the vicinity of a recent luminance change (peripheral cue), it is perceived to be drawn over time away from its “cued” end even though the line is actually presented all at once. This study was designed to determine whether attention, exogenously attracted to the cue, would come under the exogenous control of this illusory motion and follow the drawing motion from the cued end to its terminus. Each trial began with the display of four small squares at the corners of an imaginary square centered about fixation. On the critical trials, one of the four squares brightened briefly, after which a horizontal line was presented joining either the two upper or the two lower squares. Shortly thereafter, the distribution of attention was determined by asking the observer to indicate the nature of a change that was equally likely to occur to one of the squares. Responses to targets presented at a noncued location that was at the end of an illusorily drawn line were as fast as those to targets at the cued location and were much faster than those to targets at the remaining noncued locations. This pattern was not shown when the line preceded the cue, strongly suggesting that attention follows the motion in this illusion.     

Monotonicity in Practical Reasoning

Classic deductive logic entails that once a conclusion is sustained by a valid argument, the argument can never be invalidated, no matter how many new premises are added. This derived property of deductive reasoning is known as monotonicity. Monotonicity is thought to conflict with the defeasibility of reasoning in natural language, where the discovery of new information often leads us to reject conclusions that we once accepted. This perceived failure of monotonic reasoning to observe the defeasibility of natural-language arguments has led some philosophers to abandon deduction itself (!), often in favor of new, non-monotonic systems of inference known as `default logics'. But these radical logics (e.g., Ray Reiter's default logic) introduce their desired defeasibility at the expense of other, equally important intuitions about natural-language reasoning. And, as a matter of fact, if we recognize that monotonicity is a property of the form of a deductive argument and not its content (i.e., the claims in the premise(s) and conclusion), we can see how the common-sense notion of defeasibility can actually be captured by a purely deductive system.     

The Impact of Adolescent Suicide on Siblings and Parents: A Longitudinal Follow-Up

The psychiatric sequelae of loss of a family member to suicide were evaluated in parents and siblings of adolescent suicide victims and controls, who were followed up to 3 years after the suicide. Siblings did not show an increased risk for the development of depression, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), or other conditions over the course of follow-up, despite showing a prolonged elevated level of grief symptomatology. Mothers showed an increased rate of recurrence of depression over follow-up, whereas fathers did not show an increased incidence of disorder compared to fathers of controls. The interrelationship of bereavement and depression for siblings, parents, and others exposed to suicide is discussed.     

Blood donation is an act of benevolence rather than altruism.

OBJECTIVES: Blood donation is described as an archetypal altruistic behavior, and recruitment/retention campaigns emphasize altruism. Here, a benevolence hypothesis for blood donation (both the donor and recipient benefit) rather than the altruism hypothesis (only the recipient gains) is proposed. DESIGN: Three United Kingdom-based studies contrasted benevolence and altruism: (a) a 6-month prospective study of blood donor behavior (Study 1: N = 957), (b) a cross-sectional study of blood donors' intentions (Study 2: N = 333), and (c) an experimental study examining the effect of benevolent and altruistic messages on willingness to help across high- and low-cost helping behaviors for committed and noncommitted blood donors (Study 3: N = 200). MAIN OUTCOME: Donor behavior and intentions-willingness. MEASURES: Beliefs in personal and societal benefit (Time 1) and actual donations (Time 2) were assessed in Study 1; beliefs in benevolence, altruism, hedonism, and kinship along with donation intentions were assessed in Study 2; and empathy, donor commitment, and willingness to donate blood, money, fund-raise, and staff a telephone helpline were assessed in Study 3. RESULTS: Beliefs in personal rather than societal benefit predicted actual future donation. A path model showed that only beliefs in benevolence were associated with intentions to donate. Committed blood donors were more willing to donate blood when exposed to a benevolent message rather than an altruistic one. This effect was not observed for other forms of helping. CONCLUSIONS: The benevolence hypothesis is supported, suggesting that blood donor motivation is partly selfish. Blood donation campaigns should focus on benevolent rather than purely altruistic messages.     

Predicting future blood donor returns: past behavior, intentions, and observer effects.

A prospective design was used to explore the efficacy of 6 factors (e.g., intentions) to predict the number of future blood donations in an initial sample of 630 blood donors. Differential predictions are made for the roles of past behavior and intentions with respect to occasional (4 or fewer previous blood donations) and regular (5 or more previous blood donations) blood donors. Intentions were predictive for occasional donors, and past behavior was predictive for regular donors. Furthermore, for regular donors only, an inverted U-shaped curve explained the relationship between past behavior and future behavior. Finally, it is reported that observing others fainting produces a reduction in the number of future donations for occasional donors. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.     

Cupid: A program for computations with probability distributions

This article describes Cupid, a program that performs computations with univariate probability distributions. Cupid can be useful in stochastic modeling and simulation, hypothesis testing, and examination of statistical procedures. The program runs on IBM-PC compatibles under the DOS operating system, and it is free for educational and noncommercial use.     

The five factor model of personality: Openness a distinct but related construct

It has been argued that the Openness (O) dimension from the five factor model (FFM) of personality may in fact be an associate of the ability domain more than the personality domain. This paper explores this hypothesis using a sample of 101 managers. Participants completed the NEO-FFI and a measure of ability assessing the construct as typical performance. This measure was an occupational specific measure of typical intellectual engagement (TIE), termed the “problem solving through challenge” PSC scale. A combination of LISREL CFA and hierarchical multiple linear regression (HMLR) indicated that in fact O was a distinct but related construct to the other four dimensions of the FFM (N, E, A and C), but that O was more strongly correlated with PSC than the other dimensions. These results are taken to indicate that O, while associated with personality, assesses something to do with problem solving as a personality trait. Further the results suggest that E linked O to the other personality scales.     

Positive priming: Locations containing relevant information are labeled accordingly

Individuals engaged in a location task where the relevancy status [relevant (stimulus) vs irrelevant (distractor) information] of these locations was reversed from one trial (prime) to the next (probe). The results produced by these reversals (Distractor-to-Stimulus and Stimulus-to-Distractor) indicated that both stimulus and distractor items are given relevancy status labels which participate in the future processing at the labeled locations. These findings support the view that selective processing involves both `facilitatory' and `inhibitory' components. Further, unlike identity tasks, the data indicated that neither the formation nor the subsequent use of these `location' labels (stimulus or distractor) is related to the presence of a response conflict.PsycINFO classification: 2330; 2340