A decentralized computer network for supervision of multiple psychological laboratories

The computer network described was designed to optimize the use of a number of independent minicomputers as a single integrated system for process control of several research laboratories. The implementation of the network required both the development of a special purpose interprocessor interface and the design of a software support system to direct network operations. The network was designed according to the familiar “star” configuration, with the exception that the central computer in the star does not exercise exclusive supervisory control over the system. Rather, each computer on the system “sees” the central computer as a peripheral similar in characteristics to a medium speed I/O device. This design allows each computer to serve not only as a node in the network, but also as an entirely independent process controller.     

Brutality of assault in political cartoons affecting humor appreciation

Political cartoons depicting a presidential candidate undergoing an aggressive assault were manipulated to assess the effect on humor appreciation of variations in the degree of brutality of the aggressive tactics (minimal, intermediate, extreme). The identity of the depicted candidate (Richard Nixon vs George McGovern) was also manipulated. Humor-appreciation ratings were given to these cartoons by student subjects during the week preceding the 1972 presidential elections. Attitudes toward the depicted candidates were assessed in a postexperimental questionnaire. Neither degree of brutality nor affect toward the victim exerted a significant main effect, but a significant transverse interaction between the two variables was observed. When the assault involved minimal levels of brutality, the victimization of a rejected candidate was appreciated significantly more than that of a favored one; when intermediate levels of brutality were depicted, assaults against rejected candidates did not differ appreciably from attacks upon favored candidates in the level of mirth they elicited; when the brutality was extreme, aggression against rejected candidates was appreciated less than assaults against favored candidates, although nonsignificantly so. Of the various theoretical notions which were advanced to predict the results, a rationale involving the decoder's motivation to favor or object to the manner in which the aggressive agent is characterized as well as his motivation to enjoy or dislike the communication's projected outcome was considered to account best for the findings.     

Note on Carroll's analytic simple structure

A method for computing the transformation matrix for Carroll's analytic simple structure (1) is presented. The procedure involves successively finding the smallest latent root and associated vector of symmetric matrices.     

Psychological variables underlying political orientations in an old and a new democracy: A comparative study between Sweden and Latvia

This study examines in detail the psychological variables underlying ideological political orientation, and structure and contents of this orientation, in Sweden and Latvia. Individual political orientation is conceptualized on two dimensions: acceptance vs. rejection of social change and acceptance vs. rejection of inequality. Swedish (N = 320) and Latvian (N = 264) participants completed measures of political orientation, Social Dominance Orientation (SDO), Right Wing Authoritarianism (RWA), self vs. other orientation, tolerance for ambiguity, humanism and normativism, core political values, system justification, as well as moral foundations questionnaire and portrait values questionnaire. The results showed that the relation among the measured variables was similar in both samples. Swedish participants showed stronger endorsement of egalitarian attitudes and social values, whereas we found more self‐enhancing and socially conservative values and attitudes among the Latvian participants.     

Young Children Prefer and Remember Satisfying Explanations

Research with preschool children has shown that explanations are important to them in that they actively seek explanations in their conversations with adults. But what sorts of explanations do they prefer, and what, if anything, do young children learn from the explanations they receive? Following a preliminary study with adults (N = 67) to establish materials for use with children, we addressed this question using a seminaturalistic methodology. Four- and 5-year-olds (N = 69) were dissatisfied when receiving nonexplanations to their explanatory questions, but they were satisfied when receiving explanations, and their satisfaction varied appropriately across several levels of explanatory information. Moreover, using recall as a measure of learning, whereas children typically failed to recall nonexplanations, their recall of explanatory information was consistently high and also varied appropriately across differing levels of information provided. These results confirm that children not only actively seek informative explanations in their everyday conversational interactions with adults, but they selectively retain the answers they receive.     

Statistical Learning Is Not Affected by a Prior Bout of Physical Exercise

This study examined the effect of a prior bout of exercise on implicit cognition. Specifically, we examined whether a prior bout of moderate intensity exercise affected performance on a statistical learning task in healthy adults. A total of 42 participants were allocated to one of three conditions—a control group, a group that exercised for 15 min prior to the statistical learning task, and a group that exercised for 30 min prior to the statistical learning task. The participants in the exercise groups cycled at 60% of their respective O₂max. Each group demonstrated significant statistical learning, with similar levels of learning among the three groups. Contrary to previous research that has shown that a prior bout of exercise can affect performance on explicit cognitive tasks, the results of the current study suggest that the physiological stress induced by moderate‐intensity exercise does not affect implicit cognition as measured by statistical learning.     

Self-relevance enhances susceptibility to false memory

Eyewitness testimony serves as important evidence in the legal system. Eyewitnesses of a crime can be either the victims themselves—for whom the experience is highly self-referential—or can be bystanders who witness and thus encode the crime in relation to others. There is a gap in past research investigating whether processing information in relation to oneself versus others would later impact people's suggestibility to misleading information. In two experiments (Ns = 68 and 122) with Dutch and Chinese samples, we assessed whether self-reference of a crime event (i.e., victim vs. bystander) affected their susceptibility to false memory creation. Using a misinformation procedure, we photoshopped half of the participants' photographs into a crime slideshow so that they saw themselves as victims of a nonviolent crime, while others watched the slideshow as mock bystander witnesses. In both experiments, participants displayed a self-enhanced suggestibility effect: Participants who viewed themselves as victims created more false memories after receiving misinformation than those who witnessed the same crime as bystanders. These findings suggest that self-reference might constitute a hitherto new risk factor in the formation of false memories when evaluating eyewitness memory reports.