Development of the infant's hand preference for visually directed reaching: Preliminary report of a longitudinal study

The development of hand preference in infancy was investigated longitudinally by using a visually-directed reaching task. Thirty-two infants, equally divided into groups of familial right- and left-handed boys and girls, were tested every 3 weeks from 24 to 39 weeks of age and once again at 52 weeks. Group trends for the development of hand preference were differentiated by familial handedness and sex of the infant. At all ages, test object position (to the infant's right or left) strongly influenced the hand used for reaching. Marked variability both between and within infants demonstrated an instability of early hand preference, an effect that could be appreciated fully only with a prospective longitudinal design. The results thus suggest that the development of hand preference for reaching is highly variable, discontinuous, and related to the interaction of sex and familial handedness.     

Perceptual magnet and phoneme boundary effects in speech perception: do they arise from a common mechanism?

The question of whether sensitivity peaks at vowel boundaries (i.e., phoneme boundary effects) and sensitivity minima near excellent category exemplars (i.e., perceptual magnet effects) stem from the same stage of perceptual processing was examined in two experiments. In Experiment 1, participants gave phoneme identification and goodness ratings for 13 synthesized English /i/ and /e/ vowels. In Experiment 2, participants discriminated pairs of these vowels. Either the listeners discriminated the entire range of stimuli within each block of trials, or the range within each block was restricted to a single stimulus pair. In addition, listeners discriminated either one-step or two-step intervals along the stimulus series. The results demonstrated that sensitivity peaks at vowel boundaries were more influenced by stimulus range than were perceptual magnet effects; peaks in sensitivity near the /i/-/e/ boundary were reduced with restricted stimulus ranges and one-step intervals, but minima in discrimination near the best exemplars of /i/ were present in all conditions.     

Intention memory and achievement motivation: volitional facilitation and inhibition as a function of affective contents of need-related stimuli

Replicating findings of J. Kuhl and M. Kazén (1999), reduction or removal of Stroop interference was achieved after short exposure to primes eliciting positive affect. This effect was need specific: Stroop interference removal (volitional facilitation) was found with positive primes related to achievement needs but not with positive primes related to affiliation or power needs. Five studies are reported. College students and unemployed university graduates participated in 2 studies each and branch managers of a large insurance company in 1 study. Whereas Stroop interference reduction or removal was found in all groups after positive-achievement primes, the 2 groups of unemployed persons additionally showed a significant increase of Stroop interference (volitional inhibition) after exposure to primes related to negative achievement episodes. Results are discussed in the context of Kuhl's personality systems interactions theory.     

Striving for unwanted goals: stress-dependent discrepancies between explicit and implicit achievement motives reduce subjective well-being and increase psychosomatic symptoms

Three studies investigated the relevance of affect regulation, stressful life events, and congruence between explicit achievement orientation and implicit achievement motive for subjective well-being and symptom formation. According to personality systems interactions (PSI) theory, stressful life events were expected to reduce motive congruence when the ability to self-regulate affect was impaired (i.e., state orientation). Consistent with expectations, the State Orientation x Stress interaction predicted incongruence in healthy participants (Studies 1 and 3) and in patients (Study 2). Furthermore, incongruence partially mediated the direct State Orientation x Stress effect on subjective well-being (Studies 1 and 3) and the course of psychosomatic complaints over 3 months (Study 2). In Study 3, the experimental induction of threat reduced motive congruence in state-oriented participants compared with an acceptance condition. Findings underscore the importance of assessing motive congruence as a "hidden stressor" and validate a new operant multi-motive test.     

Maintaining a healthy diet: Effects of personality and self-reward versus self-punishment on commitment to and enactment of self-chosen and assigned goals

Abstract

A theory decomposing volition into four modes of central organization of executive control functions is outlined. These modes include (1) an autonomy-oriented mode (“self-regulation”) which is facilitated by challenging conditions and positive mood, (2) a self-suppressive mode oriented toward external-control (“self-control”) facilitated by negative mood and two modes associated with volitional inhibition (“state orientation”). Two experiments are reported that test predicted interactions between dispositional and situational factors in determining commitment to and actual enactment of self-chosen versus assigned activities directed at changing nutritional behavior. The results confirm the predicted disordinal interactions: The degree of commitment to and enactment of intended behavioral changes depends upon an interaction between personality (volitional styles), type of self-regulatory task (eat more healthy versus avoid unhealthy food), and instructional focus on easy versus difficult steps (Study 1) or self-reward versus self-punishment strategies (Study 2). Practical implications for designing intervention procedures according to individual personality characteristics and situational constraints are discussed.