The effects of speech production and speech comprehension on simulated driving performance

We performed two experiments comparing the effects of speech production and speech comprehension on simulated driving performance. In both experiments, participants completed a speech task and a simulated driving task under single‐ and dual‐task conditions, with language materials matched for linguistic complexity. In Experiment 1, concurrent production and comprehension resulted in more variable velocity compared to driving alone. Experiment 2 replicated these effects in a more difficult simulated driving environment, with participants showing larger and more variable headway times when speaking or listening while driving than when just driving. In both experiments, concurrent production yielded better control of lane position relative to single‐task performance; concurrent comprehension had little impact on control of lane position. On all other measures, production and comprehension had very similar effects on driving. The results show, in line with previous work, that there are detrimental consequences for driving of concurrent language use. Our findings imply that these detrimental consequences may be roughly the same whether drivers are producing speech or comprehending it. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Secret Lives of Liberals and Conservatives: Personality Profiles,Interaction Styles,and the Things They Leave Behind

Although skeptics continue to doubt that most people are “ideological,” evidence suggests that meaningful left‐right differences do exist and that they may be rooted in basic personality dispositions, that is, relatively stable individual differences in psychological needs, motives, and orientations toward the world. Seventy‐five years of theory and research on personality and political orientation has produced a long list of dispositions, traits, and behaviors. Applying a theory of ideology as motivated social cognition and a “Big Five” framework, we find that two traits, Openness to New Experiences and Conscientiousness, parsimoniously capture many of the ways in which individual differences underlying political orientation have been conceptualized. In three studies we investigate the relationship between personality and political orientation using multiple domains and measurement techniques, including: self‐reported personality assessment; nonverbal behavior in the context of social interaction; and personal possessions and the characteristics of living and working spaces. We obtained consistent and converging evidence that personality differences between liberals and conservatives are robust, replicable, and behaviorally significant, especially with respect to social (vs. economic) dimensions of ideology. In general, liberals are more open‐minded, creative, curious, and novelty seeking, whereas conservatives are more orderly, conventional, and better organized.     

Realism,Reliabilism, and the ‘Strong Programme’ in the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge

In this essay, I respond to Tim Lewens’s proposal that realists and Strong Programme theorists can find common ground in reliabilism. I agree with Lewens, but point to difficulties in his argument. Chief among these is his assumption that reliabilism is incompatible with the Strong Programme’s principle of symmetry. I argue that the two are, in fact, compatible, and that Lewens misses this fact because he wrongly supposes that reliabilism entails naturalism. The Strong Programme can fully accommodate a reliabilism which has been freed from its inessential ties to naturalism. Unlike naturalistic epistemologists, the Strong Programme’s sociologistic reliabilist insists that all scientific facts are the product of both natural and social causal phenomena. Anticipating objections, I draw on Wittgenstein’s rule‐following considerations to explain how the sociologistic reliabilist can account for standard intuitions about the objective elements of knowledge. I also explain how the Strong Programme theorist can distinguish between a belief’s seeming reliable and its being reliable.

?Ich setzte

?den Fuß in die Luft,

?und sie trug.

?(Hilde Domin)     

Episodic and semantic memory influences on picture naming in Alzheimer's disease

This study investigated the relationship between semantic and episodic memory as they support lexical access by healthy younger and older adults and individuals with Alzheimer's disease (AD). In particular, we were interested in examining the pattern of semantic and episodic memory declines in AD (i.e., word-finding difficulty and impaired recent memory) vis-à-vis more preserved remote memories. We administered a picture naming task in which the episodic period of the pictures and whether the pictured items were unique to one period or commonly used across periods were varied. Groups of younger adults (N=40), healthy older adults (N=20) and older adults with AD (N=18) were asked to name drawings of objects in four conditions: dated unique, contemporary unique, dated common, and contemporary common. The results indicated that all participants named items that were common to both episodic periods more successfully than items unique to one period. An interaction was observed such that the healthy older and AD groups were more successful in retrieving names of objects presented in the dated compared to contemporary unique conditions, whereas the younger adults showed the reverse pattern. These results indicate that naming ability is affected both by the cumulative frequency of using an item over a lifetime and by when an item was first acquired. The findings support a theoretical stance which proposes an enduring reciprocal link between semantic and episodic memory. This theoretical relationship has practical implications for the development of intervention strategies when interacting with persons who have AD.     

To Practice What We Preach: The Use of Hypocrisy and Cognitive Dissonance to Motivate Behavior Change

When people fail to practice what they preach, their act of hypocrisy can induce cognitive dissonance and the motivation to change their behavior. The current paper examines the evidence for this assumption by reviewing and analyzing the research that has used the hypocrisy procedure to influence the performance of pro‐social behaviors related to health, the environment, and interpersonal relations. The first section looks at the evidence for the claim that hypocrisy motivates behavior change as opposed to other forms of dissonance reduction such as attitude change. We then review studies that suggest that the induction of hypocrisy exerts its greatest effect on behavior change when people publicly advocate the importance of the target course of action and are then privately reminded of their own recent personal failures to perform the target behavior. A third section discusses the limitations to the current body of work and important directions for future research. Finally, the paper concludes with a discussion of how the hypocrisy procedure relates to other contemporary models of behavior change.     

Self‐Esteem: A Human Solution to the Problem of Death

Terror management theory (TMT) posits that the need for self‐esteem develops out of the socialization process in which children learn to abide by parental and, eventually, societal standards of ‘goodness’ to feel securely embedded in a cultural belief system. According to TMT, feeling safely immersed in a meaningful conception of reality (i.e., the cultural worldview) ultimately functions to protect people from anxiety due to the uniquely human capacity to be cognizant of their eventual death. After presenting the basic tenets of this perspective, we review several lines of research supporting it and then address some common questions and criticisms of the theory such as how is a TMT view of anxiety consistent with evolutionary principles, why do people commit suicide, and how is self‐esteem pursued in non‐Western, self‐effacing cultures? Finally, we discuss some implications of TMT for understanding social problems and for pursuing meaning and self‐esteem in healthier, more socially productive ways.     

Stimulus-response compatibilities during top-bottom discriminations.

Participants indicated whether a small dot was located near the top or bottom pole of a rotated object. Response times increased as a function of object orientation more for top trials than for bottom trials. The interaction between orientation and response was shown to be due to a relationship between response times and the dot's height on the screen. The orientation effect was influenced, positively and negatively, by a vertical arrangement of the response keys depending on whether the upper or lower key was used for the top response. Horizontal key placement produced an intermediate orientation effect, with asymmetries of about 180 degrees depending on which hand was used for top responses. This task appears to reflect spatial stimulus-response compatibilities more than object processing.