Segmentation, attention and phenomenal visual objects

Issues concerning selective attention provoke new questions about visual segmentation, and vice-versa. We illustrate this by describing our recent work on grouping under conditions of inattention, on change blindness for background events and the residual processing of undetected background changes, on modal versus amodal completion in visual search, and the differential effects of these two forms of completion on attentional processes, and on attentional modulation of lateral interactions thought to arise in early visual cortex. Many of these results indicate that segmentation processes substantially constrain attentional processes, but the reverse influence is also apparent, suggesting an interactive architecture. We discuss how the 'proto-objects' revealed by studies of segmentation and attention (i.e. the segmented perceptual units which constrain selectivity) may relate to other object-based notions in cognitive science, and we wrestle with their relation to phenomenal visual awareness.     

A Test of Three Alternative Hypotheses Regarding the Effects of Early Delinquency on Adolescent Psychosocial Functioning and Substance Involvement

This study compared alternative hypotheses (from general deviance, life course, and developmental psychopathology perspectives) regarding the effects of early adolescent delinquency on psychosocial functioning in family, school, and peer contexts, and on alcohol use. Analyses also examined parent-child negative affective quality, prosocial school orientation, and peer substance use as possible direct predictors of problem substance use. Participants in this longitudinal study, extending from age 11 to age 18, were 429 rural teens (222 girls) and their families. Path model comparisons supported the tenability of a partial mediation model that included mediating pathways and a direct effect of delinquency on alcohol use, as hypothesized by developmental psychopathology. A supplemental analysis controlling for the stability of the family, school, and peer variables revealed that delinquency had less pervasive direct effects on, and a nonsignificant indirect effect through, changes in the mediators over time. Results also showed that peer substance use was a direct positive predictor of problem use.     

Interference and negative priming effects in adolescents with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder

Three visual selective attention tasks were used to measure potential differences in susceptibility to interference and inhibitory cognitive control processes in 16 adolescents diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and 45 similar-aged controls. Susceptibility to interference was assessed using the Stroop color and word naming test. Efficiency of distractor inhibition was assessed in two conceptual negative priming tasks. The majority of studies in this area indicate that people with ADHD demonstrate higher levels of interference and lower negative priming effects in comparison with age-matched peers. However, we found that although the ADHD group was consistently slower to name target stimuli than the control group, there were no differences in interference or negative priming between the two groups.     

Transformation of avoidance response functions in accordance with same and opposite relational frames

Research on the emergence of human avoidance behavior in the absence of direct contact with an aversive event is somewhat limited. Consistent with work on derived relational responding, the present study sought to investigate the transformation of avoidance response functions in accordance with the relational frames of Same and Opposite. Participants were first exposed to nonarbitrary and arbitrary relational training and testing in order to establish Same and Opposite relations among arbitrary stimuli. The training tasks were; Same-A1-B1, Same-A1-C1, Opposite-A1-B2, Opposite-A1-C2. Next, all possible combinatorially entailed (i.e., B-C and C-B) relations were tested. During the avoidance-conditioning phase, one stimulus (B1) from the relational network signaled a simple avoidance response that cancelled a scheduled presentation of an aversive image and sound. All but one of the participants who met the criteria for conditioned avoidance also demonstrated derived avoidance by emitting the avoidance response in the presence of C1 and the nonavoidance response in the presence of C2. Control participants who were not exposed to relational training and testing did not show derived avoidance. Implications of the findings for understanding clinically significant avoidance behavior are discussed.     

Utilization of covariation knowledge in source monitoring: no evidence for implicit processes

In three experiments, a "hidden covariation" (Lewicki, in Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 12, 135-146, 1986) of nonsalient stimulus attributes and the source of stimulus information was established to test whether implicit knowledge about this correlation influences source memory judgments. The source monitoring framework (Johnson, Hashtroudi, and Lindsay, in Psychological Bulletin, 114, 3-28, 1993) postulates heuristic and strategic judgment processes in source attributions. A multinomial model analysis disentangled memory and guessing processes. While there were large strategic guessing biases involving explicit knowledge in all experiments, there was no evidence for the use of implicit covariation knowledge. Only participants who were later able to verbalize the covariation had shown corresponding biases during the source memory test, suggesting that implicit covariation knowledge plays no prominent role in the reconstruction processes in source monitoring.     

Converting interns into regular employees: The role of intern–supervisor exchange

Internship participation has undergone rapid expansion over the past three decades, to a point where today, many graduates and internship host-organisations regard internships as the preferred career entry point into a range of professional vocations. To date, however, there has been a dearth of studies examining factors that can influence the conversion of interns into regular employees with their host-organisations. This study bridges that gap as it involved the collection of data at three time intervals from 303 intern–supervisor dyads (n = 606), in order to determine the key predictors of intern conversion. Findings indicated that although intern–supervisor exchange played a strong role in influencing intern's performance, learning opportunities and satisfaction it did not play a significant role in predicting both the intern's and the supervisor's conversion intentions. Nonetheless, both intern's and supervisor's conversion intentions measured during the internship period did play a strong role in predicting actual conversion to employment at the host-organisation subsequent to the intern's graduation. Thus, this study begins to shed light on the dynamics on intern conversion, as a pivotal early juncture in an employee's career lifespan.