The effect of spatial order on piecemeal shape recognition: A developmental study

Stationary shapes were displayed piecemeal by moving an aperture from one place to another around their contours. Shape recognition was poorer with an unpredictable order of display. This result is more consistent with hypothesis-testing than with either eye-movement or visual information models of shape recognition. Shape recognition was poorer for 9- and 11-year-old children than for adults.     

Understanding supervisor-targeted aggression: a within-person, between-jobs design

The authors investigated predictors of supervisor-targeted workplace aggression among 105 "moonlighters" (employed adults who work 2 jobs, each with a different supervisor), as a way of examining the relative role played by within-subject situational differences and between-subjects individual differences. Individual difference variables (self-esteem, history of aggression) explained a similar level of variance in aggression across both jobs, whereas situational factors (interactional injustice, abusive supervision) were job specific and explained proportionally more variance than did individual differences.     

Effects of reinforcement schedule on facilitation of operant extinction by chlordiazepoxide

Learning and memory are central topics in behavioral neuroscience, and inbred mice strains are widely investigated. However, operant conditioning techniques are not as extensively used in this field as they should be, given the effectiveness of the methodology of the experimental analysis of behavior. In the present study, male C57B1/6 mice, widely used as background for transgenic studies, were trained to lever press on discrete-trial fixed-ratio 5 or fixed-interval (11 s or 31 s) schedules of food reinforcement and then exposed to 15 extinction sessions following vehicle or chlordiazepoxide injections (15 mg/kg i.p., administered either prior to all extinction sessions, or prior to the final 10 extinction sessions). Extinction of operant behavior was facilitated by drug administration following training on either schedule, but this facilitation only occurred once a number of extinction sessions had taken place. The extinction process proceeded more rapidly following fixed-interval training. Resistance to extinction was equally high following training with either schedule type, and was reduced by drug administration in both cases. These phenomena were evident in individual cumulative records and in analyses of group data. Results are interpreted in terms of phenomena of operant extinction identified in Skinner's (1938) Behavior of Organisms, and by behavioral momentum theory. These procedures could be used to extend the contribution of operant conditioning to contemporary behavioral neuroscience.     

Involuntary attentional shifts due to orientation differences

We tested the ability of orientation differences to cause involuntary shifts of visual attention and found that these attentional shifts can occur in response to an orientation “pop-out” display. Texturelike cue stimuli consisting of discrete oriented bars, with either uniform orientation or containing a noninformative orthogonally oriented bar, were presented for a variable duration. Subsequent to or partially coincident with the cue stimulus was the target display of a localization or two-interval forced-choice task, followed by a mask display. Naive subjects consistently showed greater accuracy in trials with the target at the location of the orthogonal orientation compared with trials with uniformly oriented bars, with only 100 msec between the cue and mask onsets. Discriminating these orientations required a stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) of 50–70 msec. The attentional facilitation is transient, in most cases absent, with a cue-mask SOA of 250 msec. These results suggest that the preattentive character of some texture discrimination tasks with SOAs of only 100 msec is vitiated by the involuntary attentional shifts that are caused by orientation differences.     

Empowerment meets narrative: Listening to stories and creating settings

Comments on and summarizes some of the themes of a special issue on empowerment. Extends empowerment theory with the suggestion that both research and practice would benefit from a narrative approach that links process to practice and attends to the voices of the people of interest. Narrative theory and method tends to open the field to a more inclusive attitude as to what counts as data and to cross-disciplinary insights as well as citizen collaboration. Communal narratives are defined at various levels of analysis, including the community, the organizational, and the cultural. A definition of empowerment that includes a concern with resources calls attention to the fact that communal narratives and personal stories are resources. Implications for personal and social change are suggested.     

The purposes of sentencing: Public support for competing aims

With reform of the sentencing process a priority in both the United States and Canada, there has been a growth of interest in public attitudes toward the goals of sentencing. Two studies investigated the layperson's view of the appropriate purpose of sentencing offenders. Previous work on this topic has simply provided subjects with a checklist of sentencing purposes and asked them to endorse one. The present research—using both college students and members of the general public—employed a procedure that allows researchers to infer the principle underlying sentencing decisions. In the first study, subjects rated the importance of several sentencing purposes and also assigned sentences to offenders described in scenarios. Severity of assigned sentence was significantly correlated only with the seriousness of the offence. Ratings of the importance of general deterrence, incapacitation, or rehabilitation were not significantly related to severity of recommended penalties. This result contrasts with the importance ratings of these purposes provided by the subjects themselves. These findings were replicated in the second study, which employed an independent sample of subjects. In contrast to the results of opinion polls, it would appear that the public is more concerned with the principle of just deserts than with the utilitarian sentencing aims such as deterrence, incapacitation, or rehabilitation. The methodological implications of this research and the consequences of these findings for sentencing policy are discussed.     

Homemaker role experiences affect toddler behaviors via maternal well-being and parenting behavior

A model delineating the relationship between homemakers' role experiences and toddler behavior was developed, and tested using path analysis. We proposed that the relationship between homemakers' role experiences (skill use, perceived financial equity, homemaking satisfaction, and role overload) and toddler's internalizing and externalizing behaviors is mediated by maternal psychological well-being (positive mood, negative mood, and cognitive difficulties) and parenting behavior (positive, punishing, and rejecting). Using confirmatory path analysis, the proposed model fit the data [Q=73, W(34) =47.4; p >.05] obtained from a sample of 187 homemakers. The results suggest that, as for employed mothers, it is important to understand how homemakers experiencetheir role, because those experiences indirectly predict children's behavior.Portions of this research were supported by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (grant 410-88-0891) to the first author. The authors express their appreciation to Sharon Agar and E. Kevin Kelloway for assistance with this research.     

Affective orientation influences memory for emotional and neutral words

Memory is better for emotional words than for neutral words, but the conditions contributing to emotional memory improvement are not entirely understood. Elsewhere, it has been observed that retrieval of a word is easier when its attributes are congruent with a property assessed during an earlier judgment task. The present study examined whether affective assessment of a word matters to its remembrance. Two experiments were run, one in which only valence assessment was performed, and another in which valence assessment was combined with a running recognition for list words. In both experiments, some participants judged whether each word in a randomized list was negative (negative monitoring), and others judged whether each was positive (positive monitoring). We then tested their explicit memory for the words via both free recall and delayed recognition. Both experiments revealed an affective congruence effect, such that negative words were more likely to be recalled and recognized after negative monitoring, whereas positive words likewise benefited from positive monitoring. Memory for neutral words was better after negative monitoring than positive monitoring.Thus, memory for both emotional and neutral words is contingent on one's affective orientation during encoding.