Timing during interruptions in timing

Duration and location of breaks in time interval production were manipulated in various conditions of stimulus presentation (Experiments 1-4). Produced intervals shortened and then stabilized as break duration lengthened, suggesting that participants used the break as a preparatory period to restart timing as quickly as possible at the end of the break. This interpretation was supported in Experiment 5, in which similar results were obtained with a reaction time response executed at the end of the break. In all experiments, produced intervals lengthened as the break occurred later during the interval. The authors conclude that varying break location and duration reveal, respectively, the influence of attentional time-sharing before the interruption and of preparatory processes taking place during the break.     

How many variables can humans process?

The conceptual complexity of problems was manipulated to probe the limits of human information processing capacity. Participants were asked to interpret graphically displayed statistical interactions. In such problems, all independent variables need to be considered together, so that decomposition into smaller subtasks is constrained, and thus the order of the interaction directly determines conceptual complexity. As the order of the interaction increases, the number of variables increases. Results showed a significant decline in accuracy and speed of solution from three-way to four-way interactions. Furthermore, performance on a five-way interaction was at chance level. These findings suggest that a structure defined on four variables is at the limit of human processing capacity.     

Psychological and stress hormone correlates in early life: a key to HPA-axis dysregulation and normalisation

Substantial recent research has focused on examining hormone indicators of psychosocial stress and on how relationships between stress and hormone changes might be linked to chronic illness. Particular attention has been paid to disease progression in cancer and HIV/AIDS. This focus has generated a plethora of research which has contributed both theoretically and clinically to the understanding of disease experience and the rate of disease progression. Measurement of salivary cortisol levels and diurnal variation has substantially advanced research methodology. Applying the unifying concept of allostasis and accumulated lifetime stress, this review attempts to assess the relevance of psychological and stress hormone correlates to disease resistance and health, through an examination of such correlates on the experience and outcomes of stress during childhood. Focus is on the role and importance of naturalistic social stress experiences such as school transition in healthy children, with emphasis on salivary cortisol as an endocrine marker of HPA-axis activation. It is argued that differing research perspectives offer valuable insight into the often assumed but largely unexplored links between early life experience and subsequent physical health outcomes in adulthood. Longitudinal studies incorporating measures of acute physical health outcome and of learning and memory are clearly needed.     

A psychometric comparison of the Beck Depression Inventory-II in English and Spanish

The Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II; A. T. Beck, R. A. Steer, & G. K. Brown, 1996) is a widely used measure of depressive symptomatology originally authored in English and then translated to Spanish. However, there are very limited data available on the Spanish translation. This study compared the psychometric characteristics of the BDI-II in Spanish and English in a sample of 895 college students. The instrument was administered twice with a 1-week interval, either in the same language on both occasions or in a different language on each occasion. Results show strong internal consistency and good test-retest reliability in both languages. Confirmatory factor analysis demonstrated that the published English-language factor structure showed good fit with data from the Spanish instrument. Among bilingual participants who took the BDI-II in both languages, there was no significant language effect. These data provide initial evidence of comparable reliability and validity between the English and Spanish BDI-II in a nonclinical sample.     

Neurocognitive insights into substance abuse

Cognitive studies are revealing key aspects of how drug abusers monitor and respond to negative feedback differently from non-abusers, and in doing so are adding an important piece to the conceptual puzzle that must be solved to understand, treat, and prevent drug abuse. In this review, we bring together two quite different lines of research, one addressing the selection of gambles in a risky decision task, and the other focused on imaging neural systems related to the detection and processing of errors. We suggest that diminished behavioural control, which is a cardinal feature of drug abuse, may be linked to alterations in the psychological and neural mechanisms that detect error signals and which, in turn, lead to optimization of behavioural responses.     

Psychological entitlement: interpersonal consequences and validation of a self-report measure

Nine studies were conducted with the goal of developing a self-report measure of psychological entitlement and assessing its interpersonal consequences. The Psychological Entitlement Scale (PES) was found to be reliable and valid (Study 1, 2), not associated with social desirability (Study 2), stable across time (Study 3), and correlated negatively with two of the Big Five factors: agreeableness and emotional stability (Study 4). The validity of the PES was confirmed in studies that assessed willingness to take candy designated for children (Study 5) and reported deservingness of pay in a hypothetical employment setting (Study 6). Finally, the PES was linked to important interpersonal consequences including competitive choices in a commons dilemma (Study 7), selfish approaches to romantic relationships (Study 8), and aggression following ego threat (Study 9). Psychological entitlement has a pervasive and largely unconstructive impact on social behavior.     

Action verbal fluency normative data for the elderly

An emerging body of literature points to the prominent role of the frontal lobes in the retrieval of verbs, whereas production of common and proper nouns arguably is mediated primarily by posterior and anterior temporal regions, respectively. Although the majority of studies examining the neuroanatomic distinctions between verb and noun retrieval have relied on action naming tasks (naming depicted activities, e.g., running) as indicators of verb retrieval abilities, recent studies have utilized an action (verb) verbal fluency measure, the Action Fluency Test (AFT), to assess verb retrieval. Findings from these studies suggest that action fluency is sensitive to the integrity of fronto-subcortical neural circuitry and that it is a valid measure of executive and language functions. The AFT is an easily administered executive function measure, but no normative data for the AFT or other action fluency tasks has been published. This study was undertaken to provide initial AFT normative data for a sample of 145 healthy elderly subjects. As education is significantly correlated with AFT scores, the normative data are stratified by educational level.     

Self-serving judgments about winning the lottery

Although myths and stereotypes about lottery winners tend to be negative (e.g., winners become extravagant), people continue to spend billions of dollars buying lottery tickets in the hope of winning. The authors applied findings from the self-enhancement literature to understand this paradox. Eighty college students received class credit for their participation, in which they read a scenario that asked them to imagine that they, or a target other, had won a lottery. Participants' responses to a 34-item questionnaire displayed a self-serving bias, such that changes to the self were expected to be more positive than changes to the other. For several items, this effect was moderated by the participant's gender. The present research indicates that the pervasive tendency to display self-serving biases can apply to future-oriented processing, an under-researched topic.     

Responses of white-faced capuchins (Cebus capucinus) to naturalistic and experimentally presented food-associated calls

In the context of foraging, many animal species produce specific calls that attract others. Researchers hypothesize that these vocalizations function to inform others about food; however, few studies have investigated whether food-associated calls alone are sufficient to cause individuals to respond as if they have been informed about food. Playback experiments on white-faced capuchins (Cebus capucinus) investigated whether listeners could infer the presence of food merely by hearing food-associated calls. Recipients looked significantly longer toward the call source and approached the speaker more often after hearing food-associated calls, as compared with control calls. Because these responses are not indicative of feeding, it is unclear whether listeners associated the calls with food. Nonetheless, these responses, specific to food-associated calls, may increase individuals' chances of finding food.     

A test of the generality of perceptually based categories found in infants: attentional differences toward natural kinds by New World monkeys

A preference to novelty paradigm used to study human infants (Quinn, 2002) examined attention to novel animal pictures at subordinate, basic and superordinate levels in tamarins. First, pairs of pictures were presented in phases, starting with a monkey species (subordinate level) and ending with mammal and dinosaur sets (superordinate levels). After each phase, tests paired novel pictures from the familiarized set with a novel broader category. Look rates toward each picture were coded. Tamarins looked significantly longer at a novel species after being familiarized with a monkey species, a species-specific effect. Subjects attended equivalently to novel primate species after habituation to four monkey species, but looked significantly longer at pictures of mammals, marking a more global-level inclusion and exclusion. Superordinate testing revealed that more novel and diverse sets were differentiated attentionally. The evidence implies that natural categorical representation occurs at an attentional level in primates in ways similar to human infants, and is affected by recent exposure and category variability.