Neighborhood frequency effects and letter visibility in visual word recognition

Two experiments are described that measured lexical decision latencies and errors to five-letter French words with a single higher frequency orthographic neighbor and control words with no higher frequency neighbors. The higher frequency neighbor differed from the stimulus word by either the second letter (e.g.,astre-autre) or the fourth letter (chope-chose). Neighborhood frequency effects were found to interact with this factor, and significant interference was observed only tochope-type words. The effects of neighborhood frequency were also found to interact with the position of initial fixation in the stimulus word (either the second letter or the fourth letter). Interference was greatly reduced when the initial fixation was on the critical disambiguating letter (i.e., the letterp inchope). Moreover, word recognition was improved when subjects initially fixated the second letter relative to when they initially fixated the fourth letter of a five-letter word, but this second-letter advantage practically disappeared when the stimulus differed from a more frequent word by its fourth letter. The results are interpreted in terms of the interaction between visual and lexical factors in visual word recognition.     

Creating new memories that are quickly accessed and confidently held

In two experiments involving a total of 542 subjects, a series of slides depicting a burglary was shown. After the initial event, subjects were exposed to one or more narratives about the event that contained some misinformation or neutral information about four critical details. Finally, subjects were tested on their memories of what they saw, and their reaction times and confidence levels were measured. When subjects took a standard test in which the misinformation item was a possible response option, they responded very quickly and confidently when making this incorrect choice. Misled subjects responded as quickly and confidently to these "unreal" memories as they did to their genuine memories. It does not seem, then, that the misinformation effect arises from a large proportion of subjects who must resolve a conflict between two memories when they are tested, a conflict that would be expected to take time. When subjects took a modified test in which the misinformation item was not a possible response, misled subjects were as accurate as were controls, but they responded more slowly, regardless of whether they ultimately chose the right or wrong option. These findings indicate that misinformation does introduce some form of interference not detected by a simple test of accuracy.     

The Additive Factor Method: A differential diagnostic tool in hyperactivity and learning disability

The Additive Factor Method assumes that task performance is the sum of sequential and independent processes. We studied the duration of the central processes (memory search and decision) and the motor decision process in hyperactive and learning-disabled children under socalled divided attention and S-R compatibility conditions. It was found that the learning-disabled were impaired in memory search and decision processes whereas hyperactives were impaired in the motor decision process.The authors wish to thank L. Leertouwer for making the drawings.     

Effects of gaze manipulation on subjective evaluation of neutral and phobia-relevant stimuli. A comment on Drake's (1987) 'Effects of Gaze Manipulation on Aesthetic Judgments: Hemisphere Priming of Affect'

Using neutral stimuli (mushrooms and flowers) and phobia-relevant stimuli (snakes and spiders), the present investigation examined the effect of gaze shifts on subjective evaluation of stimuli in female subjects (N = 29). One group of subjects had to orient to the right, whereas the other group had to orient to the left in order to see the stimuli. When left-handed subjects were excluded from the analysis, the results showed that subjects in the 'orient right' group gave a significantly more positive evaluation than subjects in the 'orient left' group. The results provide a replication of the phenomenon described by Drake (1987).     

Restrained eaters are rapidly habituating sensation seekers

Several authors have pointed to similarities between eating disorders and addictive behaviors. In earlier studies, addicts were found to score high on the Sensation Seeking Scale (SSS) and to habituate rapidly to neutral stimuli. In this study, we found experimental support for an addiction model of eating disorders: restrained eaters also scored significantly higher on the Sensation Seeking Scale and also habituated significantly quicker to a series of neutral stimuli than unrestrained eaters. No clear evidence was found for the hypothesis that restrained eaters score lower on measurements of anxiety. It is hypothesized that rapid habituation promotes sensation seeking, which may be manifested in excessive consumption of either drugs or food. Restraint may be a strategy to prevent negative consequences of sensation seeking and excessive consumption. The model is related to earlier experimental findings.     

Energy Conservation: Two Easy Ways Out1

This study investigated attitude-behavior relationships in the context of energy conservation. Results indicated that general environmental concern is a poor predictor of energy-conservation behaviors. Direct evaluative comparisions of various non-conservationist behaviors with a more conservationist alternative showed a clear relationship with behavioral preference. Non-conservationists, however, evaluated their own behavior only marginally favorably and in some cases clearly unfavorably. This was accompanied by an overestimation of the common occurrence of these behaviors among the general population and by an unwillingness to relate these behaviors to personality characteristics. It is argued that these biases (i.e., considering one's behavior as a habit that is shared by many others) could hinder behavioral change. These findings are discussed in terms of effective public policy on the issue of energy consumption.     

The effects of social motives on behavior in social dilemmas in two cultures

Subjects in Santa Barbara, California, and Groningen, The Netherlands, participated in a seven-person social dilemma game, presented in terms of a conservation of resources problem. Prior to their decision making in the social dilemma game, subject's social motive (altruistic, cooperative, individualistic, competitive) was assessed by means of two different classification procedures. On the basis of previous research findings American subjects were expected to display relatively more competitive social motives, and Dutch subjects relatively more cooperative ones. However, no indications of crosscultural differences were found neither with regard to the distribution of social motives nor with regard to the amount of resources taken for self in the social dilemma game. In both locations, competitive subjects took most resources for self, individualistic subjects took next most, cooperative subjects took less than individualists, and altruistic subjects took the least. In addition to predictive validity, indices of the convergent validity of two social motive assessment procedures were described.     

Correspondence analysis used complementary to loglinear analysis

Loglinear analysis and correspondence analysis provide us with two different methods for the decomposition of contingency tables. In this paper we will show that there are cases in which these two techniques can be used complementary to each other. More specifically, we will show that often correspondence analysis can be viewed as providing a decomposition of the difference between two matrices, each following a specific loglinear model. Therefore, in these cases the correspondence analysis solution can be interpreted in terms of the difference between these loglinear models. A generalization of correspondence analysis, recently proposed by Escofier, will also be discussed. With this decomposition, which includes classical correspondence analysis as a special case, it is possible to use correspondence analysis complementary to loglinear analysis in more instances than those described for classical correspondence analysis. In this context correspondence analysis is used for the decomposition of the residuals of specific restricted loglinear models.     

Attributional self-presentation and information available to the audience

Public ability attributions of public task performance were investigated as a function of test performance (high or low), task performance (high or low), and the availability of information about test performance to the audience (audience informed or audience not informed). The results were largely in agreement with self-presentation expectations, Ability attributions concerning public task performance addressed to an audience which was not informed about test results, were found to be strongly self-serving, although they were also influenced by consistency of test and task performance. In ability attributions directed at an informed audience, self-serving biases were completely absent, the attributions being in accordance with the consistency or inconsistency of test and task performances.