A dynamic, stochastic, computational model of preference reversal phenomena

Preference orderings among a set of options may depend on the elicitation method (e.g., choice or pricing); these preference reversals challenge traditional decision theories. Previous attempts to explain these reversals have relied on allowing utility of the options to change across elicitation methods by changing the decision weights, the attribute values, or the combination of this information--still, no theory has successfully accounted for all the phenomena. In this article, the authors present a new computational model that accounts for the empirical trends without changing decision weights, values, or combination rules. Rather, the current model specifies a dynamic evaluation and response process that correctly predicts preference orderings across 6 elicitation methods, retains stable evaluations across methods, and makes novel predictions regarding response distributions and response times.     

Understanding community re-entry of former prisoners with mental illness: a conceptual model to guide new research

Criminal justice, mental health, and social service professionals face a myriad of role expectations in working with prisoners with mental illness to facilitate community re-entry. These expectations include those related to law enforcement, social welfare, and administrative efficiency. The challenge for front line workers and the multiple systems that employ them is to integrate all these expectations effectively on behalf of the individual as well as the community. Current models of re-entry for individuals leaving prison with mental illness focus on the management and interaction of service systems. This paper presents a model of prisoner re-entry that incorporates a larger social context, illustrating dynamics related to both individuals with mental illness leaving prison and their interaction with the community setting. This model was generated through an interdisciplinary team effort. It was refined through a focus group process that included advocates, community members and other informants from mental health and criminal justice systems in five states. The model is designed to generate new questions for research that address both individual and community level issues.     

A vision research apparatus for broad luminance range displays

Lightness, the perceived gray shade of a surface, and the perception of self-luminous surfaces—that is, surfaces that appear to glow—have most often been studied with paper displays and computer-generated stimuli presented on CRT monitors. Although both methods are often effective, experiments that require a wide range of luminance values in the same display are often difficult to conduct with paper and computer displays alone. Also, color mode appearance is often an issue when surface color perception is the topic of research; CRT monitors are essentially light sources themselves and often appear in the luminous mode of color appearance. Here, we describe an apparatus in which the target is an undetected aperture whose luminance is adjustable. Whereas a typical CRT monitor offers a luminance range of about 100:1, much broader luminance ranges are possible with the described apparatus. Unlike a CRT monitor, the stimulus background will always appear in the surface mode of color perception, and the target(s) can appear as either surface colors or luminous colors. Apparatus modifications are possible, including the addition of a stereoscope or an embedded CRT for creating an adjustable region that is computer controlled.     

Romancing the Family: Umberto Eco’s <Emphasis Type="Italic">Baudolino</Emphasis>

Referencing Umberto Eco’s novel Baudolino, the author discusses issues concerning the authenticity of the narrative, specifically the distortions in the story presented to the audience and doubts surrounding the veracity of the tale. The act of narration is associated with the shame caused by the abuse and neglect that is an integral part of this story. The ambivalence of the protagonist—to tell his story and to keep it (and his true identity) concealed—associates narration, a creative act, with lying. Trauma generates the lies and hiddenness as a means of coping with abuse and indifference. In order to deal with the feelings of inadequacy caused by his humble birth, the traumatized protagonist lies: he romanticizes his family origins, the illusion of being the offspring of distinguished parents. His attempt to win the love of the parents, by being both good and all-knowing, is one of the motivating forces of his family romance. Telling lies makes the protagonist omniscient: he is the only one who knows if and when he is telling the truth. Paradoxically, the narrator creates and undermines that image of omniscience by revealing the thought processes of one character while leaving opaque those of the protagonist, and by denying the trueness of the tale affirmed when he presents as objective his own subjective sentiments by indirectly attributing them to the protagonist. The uncertainty that underpins the narration is indicative of the storyteller’s absence. This vacancy structures the work because it allows kindred spirits, nonjudgmental readers (listeners) who willingly suspend disbelief, to enter the world of the narrator. This uncritical participation counters the chaos of the storyteller’s reality, as they create their own new world where the split parental images are united.     

Musical stem completion: humming that note

This study looked at how people store and retrieve tonal music explicitly and implicitly using a production task. Participants completed an implicit task (tune stem completion) followed by an explicit task (cued recall). The tasks were identical except for the instructions at test time. They listened to tunes and were then presented with tune stems from previously heard tunes and novel tunes. For the implicit task, they were asked to sing a note they thought would come next musically. For the explicit task, they were asked to sing the note they remembered as coming next. Experiment 1 found that people correctly completed significantly more old stems than new stems. Experiment 2 investigated the characteristics of music that fuel retrieval by varying a surface feature of the tune (same timbre or different timbre) from study to test and the encoding task (semantic or nonsemantic). Although we did not find that implicit and explicit memory for music were significantly dissociated for levels of processing, we did find that surface features of music affect semanticjudgments and subsequent explicit retrieval.     

Promoting and protecting youth mental health through evidence-based prevention and treatment

For decades, empirically tested youth interventions have prevented dysfunction by addressing risk and ameliorated dysfunction through treatment. The authors propose linking prevention and treatment within an integrated model. The model suggests a research agenda: Identify effective programs for a broadened array of problems and disorders, examine ethnicity and culture in relation to intervention adoption and impact, clarify conditions under which programs do and do not work, identify change mechanisms that account for effects, test interventions in real-world contexts, and make tested interventions accessible and effective in community and practice settings. Connecting the science and practice of prevention and treatment will be good for science, for practice, and for children, adolescents, and their families.     

Inattentional blindness for a noxious multimodal stimulus

Previous research has shown that people can miss salient stimuli outside the focus of their attention. This phenomenon, called inattentional blindness, typically is observed when people are given a task requiring them to focus their attention on one aspect of a complex visual scene. While participants are doing this task, an unexpected stimulus appears, and participants' awareness of it is tested shortly thereafter. In the present experiments, noxious bimodal stimuli were used as a test case to measure the strength of inattentional blindness. We tested whether participants would notice a person enter a scene and scratch her fingernails down a chalkboard (thus making a sound called a "gride"). A large proportion of participants failed to detect this event even when the noxious audio associated with it was strengthened and isolated in time from surrounding noises.     

Psychology at the intersection of work and family: recommendations for employers, working families, and policymakers

Demographic data show that major changes have been occurring in the everyday lives of families over the last generation, with the majority of mothers of young children in the workforce and an increasing number of men and women assuming caregiving responsibilities for older relatives. Thus, the 2 primary identities of most adults, defined by their multiple family and work roles, need to be coordinated in ways that promote positive family outcomes, returns on investments for employers, and societal values. Despite changes in the workforce, the world of work is still largely organized for a family model that is increasingly rare--one with a stay-at-home caregiver. Recommendations based on psychological and other social science research are offered to align the needs of working families and employers.     

Anxiety-related differences in affective categorizations of lexical stimuli

Effects of emotional valence on attention have been shown to occur even when stimuli are presented outside awareness. The impact of negative valence on stimulus processing has been demonstrated to be particularly salient in anxiety. Therefore, it has been hypothesized that compared to nonanxious individuals, anxious individuals have an enhanced ability to detect the valence of negative stimuli. However, it remains unclear whether anxious individuals are better at identifying the valence of threatening stimuli or, rather, more likely to label ambiguous stimuli as threatening. To investigate these hypotheses, high and low anxious participants categorized lexical stimuli as "safe" or "dangerous." Stimuli were presented at durations that allowed for both conscious (unmasked) and nonconscious (masked) processing. Results show that on masked trials, anxious individuals evidenced an enhanced ability to correctly classify threatening information, whereas nonanxious participants demonstrated an enhanced ability to correctly classify neutral or positive information. Signal detection analyses indicated results were explained by a response bias, whereby anxious individuals were more likely than nonanxious individuals to categorize masked words as threatening and nonanxious individuals were more likely to categorize masked words as nonthreatening. No group differences for nonword stimuli emerged, suggesting that anxiety-related response bias tendencies are activated only after detection of a weak semantic signal.