A prospective examination of body image and smoking cessation in women

This study prospectively examined body image in a community sample of women smokers (N = 141, 89% European–American, M age = 39.5, M BMI = 25.5) participating in a 12-week randomized smoking cessation trial. Participants completed measures assessing subjective and perceptual aspects of body image. Regression analyses showed that subjective body image was predictive of smoking rate at the end of treatment. A MANCOVA revealed that perceptual body image (body size estimation) significantly predicted smoking cessation. Quitting smoking actually worsened body image, although these results were no longer significant after controlling for weight gain. Results support the theory that a negative body image may hamper cessation attempts. In addition, weight gain during smoking cessation may adversely impact body image and lead to an increased risk for relapse.     

Removing eyebrows impairs recognition of famous faces, or doesn't, depending on how the eyebrows are removed

Matching photos of famous people's faces with their names was as fast with photos that had eyebrows masked by adhesive plaster as with unretouched original photos. But matching was slower with photos that had eyebrows erased and replaced with adjacent skin texture and colour than with original photos. The conjecture that erasure impairs recognition because it alters a face's configuration was examined by repeating the experiment with the photos shown upside down, the rationale being that because configural information is difficult to encode from inverted faces the erasure effect should diminish. With inverted faces, matching was no different for original, eyebrows-masked, and eyebrows-erased photos. Eyebrows appear to be less important for face recognition as informative parts and features than as sources of information about a face's configuration.     

Size of the neocerebellar vermis is associated with cognition in healthy elderly men

Cerebellar volumes show small positive correlations with cognitive ability in young adults, but no studies have examined this relationship in older adults. Furthermore, no studies have examined relationships between sizes of subareas of the cerebellum and cognitive ability. We hypothesized that size of the two areas of the neocerebellar vermis would correlate with a battery of eight cognitive tests in 50 men aged 65-70. Size of the neocerebellar areas of the vermis correlated positively with several cognitive tests (r's=.29-.37, p<.05), whilst sizes of other parts of the vermis did not correlate with any cognitive tests. Total cerebellar volumes correlated significantly with a test of nonverbal reasoning (r=.030, p=.42). These findings suggest a specific association of neocerebellar vermis size with variations in cognitive ability in older adults.     

Phonologically mediated priming of preexisting and new associations in young and older adults

In 2 experiments, the authors investigated phonologically mediated priming of preexisting and new associations in word retrieval. Young and older adults completed paired word stems with the first word that came to mind. Priming of preexisting associations occurred when word-stem pairs containing homophones (e.g., beech-s____) showed more completions with the target (e.g., sand) relative to unrelated pairs (e.g., batch-s____), with more priming for subordinate than for dominant homophones. Priming occurred for new associations independent of dominance such that word-stem pairs containing homophones (e.g., beech-l____ and beach-l____) were completed with the same word (e.g., laugh) more often than unrelated pairs (e.g., beech-l____ and batch-l____). No age differences in phonologically mediated priming were found for either type of association, suggesting age equivalence in the use of bottom-up phonological connections.     

The relationship between metacognitive awareness of olfactory ability and age in people reporting chemosensory disturbances

When determining how much to rely on olfactory information, accurate estimates of olfactory ability are important. Nevertheless, metacognitive errors regarding olfactory ability are common in the normal population. Are older adults less accurate at estimating olfactory ability, or do they simply tend to make a particular type of estimation error? We examined data from 203 patients, all of whom self-rated olfactory ability and then were tested with the Odorant Confusion Matrix. The patients' self-reports did not match the objective measure of olfactory ability in 42% of the cases, thus demonstrating a high level of impairment in metacognitive knowledge. Neither the cause of loss nor the patient's age was related to the inability to accurately estimate olfactory loss, but both contributed to the type of metacognitive errors patients made. Younger patients tended to underestimate their olfactory ability, thus behaving similarly to patients with "blindsight" who demonstrate residual visual function in the absence of awareness. Older patients tended to overestimate their olfactory ability, thus making the metacognitive error of deficit unawareness that is observed in a number of other clinical syndromes. These findings indicate that older patients are not necessarily more likely to make errors in estimating their olfactory ability; rather, they are more prone to a particular type of metacognitive error than are younger patients.     

An evidential support accumulation model of subjective probability

A model of cue-based probability judgment is developed within the framework of support theory. Cue diagnosticity is evaluated from experience as represented by error-free frequency counts. When presented with a pattern of cues, the diagnostic implications of each cue are assessed independently and then summed to arrive at an assessment of the support for a hypothesis, with greater weight placed on present than on absent cues. The model can also accommodate adjustment of support in light of the baserate or prior probability of a hypothesis. Support for alternatives packed together in a "residual" hypothesis is discounted; fewer cues are consulted in assessing support for alternatives as support for the focal hypothesis increases. Results of fitting this and several alternative models to data from four new multiple-cue probability learning experiments are reported.     

Rigidity in children's drawings and its relation with representational change

Four studies tested the application of to the drawing domain. In particular, we tested her claim that young children are inhibited in their attempts at changing their graphic representations (representational change) due to being constrained by the order in which the elements of the representation are drawn (procedural rigidity). The first study required 60 children (4- to 6-year-olds and an older comparison group of 8-year-olds) to make three drawings of a familiar and novel topic. From these drawings each child was measured for procedural rigidity. In a further drawing the child was asked to modify their usual representation of each topic. Regression analyses revealed procedural rigidity levels were not predictive of manipulation performance. A second study, testing 75 4- to 6-year-olds and a third study, testing 30 3- to 4-year-olds, revealed that when young children were specifically asked to manipulate rigid sub-procedures on a familiar topic they were indeed able to do so. Finally, a fourth study (testing 40 5-year-olds and 40 8-year-olds) removed the notational trace in drawing (a possible aid for procedural interruption) but this still produced no evidence of a relation between procedural rigidity and representational change. We suggest how the concept of procedural rigidity might be re-interpreted for the drawing domain so that the RR model can remain as a domain-general theory of cognitive development. We also suggest the development of information processing may be crucial for flexibility in drawing.     

Making causal judgments from the proportion of confirming instances: the pCI rule

It is proposed that causal judgments about contingency information are derived from the proportion of confirmatory instances (pCI) that are evaluated as confirmatory for the causal candidate. In 6 experiments, pCI values were manipulated independently of objective contingencies assessed by the deltaP rule. Significant effects of the pCI manipulations were found in all cases, but causal judgments did not vary significantly with objective contingencies when pCI was held constant. The experiments used a variety of stimulus presentation procedures and different dependent measures. The power PC theory, a weighted version of the deltaP rule, the Rescorla-Wagner associative learning model (R. A. Rescorla & A. R Wagner, 1972), and the deltaD rule, which is the frequency-based version of the pCI rule, were unable to account for the significant effects of the pCI manipulations. These results are consistent with a general explanatory approach to causal judgment involving the evaluation of evidence and updating of beliefs with regard to causal hypotheses.     

Instructions for Authors

Instructions for Authors

Instructions for Authors