Children's use of gaze and limb movement cues to infer deception

A sample of 96 children from kindergarten, 2nd, 4th, and 6th grades judged the truthfulness of peers who varied in gaze and limb movement while providing verbal communications. Results indicated that children attributed greater lying to the peers who displayed indirect rather than direct gaze and active rather than nonactive limb movement. The use of these cues was more evident in 4th- and 6th-grade children than it was in kindergarten and 2nd-grade children. Pilot studies indicated that adults and children as young as 5-6 years of age associated indirect gaze and active limb movement with anxiety. The findings are discussed with respect to children's theory of mind, concepts of lying, understanding of display rules, and learning of physiological cues associated with deception.     

Retroactive semantic priming in a lexical decision task

The present study reports two experiments that required subjects to name target items preceded by a masked prime. Additionally, and subsequent to the naming task, subjects were required to indicate whether or not the prime was a word, along with a confidence rating of their lexical decision. Experiment 1 demonstrates that the processing of masked primes is facilitated by related targets when such targets are presented either 100 or 200 msec after the onset of the prime. Experiment 2 extends the finding of “retroactive” priming to a 1000=msec separation in prime-target presentation (SOA). The extent of retroactive priming is not dependent on SOA between prime and target, nor is it affected by the prime-mask SOA, which varied from 10 to 180 msec. Priming of targets was also independent of prime-target and prime-mask SOA, providing that primes had been classified as words. For word primes classified as non-words there was no semantic priming on target naming reaction time. Implications of these findings with respect to the nature of retroactive priming and the current controversy concerning subliminal priming effects were discussed.     

Necessity, Sufficiency, and Perspective Effects in Causal Conditional Reasoning

A growing body of research indicates that in causal conditional reasoning, the conclusion that P is necessary for Q is suppressed where alternative conditions for Q are available. Similarly, the conclusion that P is sufficient for Q is suppressed where disabling conditions for P or additional requirements for Q are available. This paper describes experiments in which these factors were used to produce 'perspective effects' in causal contexts that appear identical to the perspective effects found in previous research with deontic tasks. It is therefore proposed that deontic perspective effects are themselves also attributable to the influence of pragmatic factors upon perceived necessity and sufficiency. A generalized theory based on a modification of the mental model theory of deontic reasoning is presented, which accounts for perspective effects across the two domains.     

Perception of cross-situational consistency

Eighty-eight undergraduates rated the degree of relation in each of 21 pairs of items that described behavior in the domains of conscientiousness, friendliness, and extraversion. In these three domains, estimates of relations by the average subject correlated, respectively, with actual empirical relations, .63, .58, and .40. Relations corresponding to correlations between .10 to .20 could be significantly distinguished by subjects from relations in the range of .00 to .10 in two of the three domains. The confidence that individuals placed in their perceptions varied directly with the accuracy of their judgments against the empirical criterion. In addition, subjects were more confident of what they perceived to be extreme relations in both directions than of intermediate relations, and they also tended to be more confident of their judgments of strong positive relations than of zero relations. They exhibited an intuitive awareness of the effect of aggregation over occasions and items of behavior on the magnitude of cross-situational relations and the demonstration of traits. They also reported using reasonable strategies in arriving at decisions. Far from being inveterate trait believers, as some have suggested, subjects' intuitions paralleled psychometric principles in several important respects when assessing relations between real-life behaviors.     

Is there anything out there? A study of distal attribution in response to vibrotactile stimulation

Patterns of vibrotactile stimulation were delivered to the index fingertips of naive blindfolded subjects. The attributions made by these subjects when they were allowed to experience transformations of vibrotactile stimulation correlated with self-movement were assessed. Although the subjects became aware of the relationship between self-movement and stimulation transformation, they never developed the hypothesis of distal attribution, ie the hypothesis that the ultimate cause of their vibrotactile experience was an encounter with an object in the environment. It is proposed that further investigations of the course of acquisition of distal attribution in the situation described may be instructive in the study of externalization in other modalities.     

Same-sex patterns and sex differences in the trust-value basis of children's friendship

Thirty-six children in fourth grade were required (a) to report the secret-sharing, secret-keeping, promise-making, and promise-keeping behaviors of classroom peers; and (b) to judge those classmates on trust and friendship. Teachers provided observations of the children's friendship interaction. Same-sex patterns were found in observed friendship, friendship ratings, trust, secrets shared, proportion of secrets kept, and promises made. These were less frequent/lower for opposite-sex peers than for same-sex peers. As expected, males tended to share fewer secrets with same-sex peers than did females. The expected associations were found among proportion of secrets kept, proportion of promises kept, trust, and rated or observed friendship in females but with one exception in males. The findings supported the conclusion that same-sex friendship patterns are maintained by same-sex trust patterns through (a) infrequent secret sharing with opposite-sex peers and (b) the perception that opposite-sex peers break secrets more frequently than same-sex peers. The findings also supported the conclusion that there are some sex differences in the intimacy/trust basis of friendship.     

On the nature of neutral primes in a lexical decision task

Summary Research concerned with semantic priming has used a neutral prime as a benchmark for measuring the amount of facilitation for related targets and the amount of inhibition for unrelated targets. Recently, de Groot, Thomassen, and Hudson (1982) have reported that lexical decisions to targets are faster when preceded by the neutral prime BLANK as compared to a neutral prime consisting of a string of X's. Additionally, Antos (1979) has reported that an X neutral prime induces an inhibitory effect when the stimulus-onset-asynchrony (SOA) is short. The present experiment manipulated class of neutral prime, SOA, and practice. The results failed to support the observation by Antos. However, the results did support the finding by de Groot et al. at shorter SOA's (200 and 550 ms). At a longer (1000 ms) SOA the effect of the two neutral primes as well as the effect of the unrelated primes were equivalent. Practice had no differential effect on either of the neutral primes as compared to the unrelated priming conditions. These results were interpreted to mean that the difference between the two neutral primes at a brief SOA were perceptual in origin and that an unrelated word prime is neutral with respect to the target in the absence of strategic priming effects.     

Assessment of suitability for low-fee control psychoanalysis: some theoretical and technical considerations

In the assessment of suitability for low-fee control analysis, various factors may interfere with successful referral, evaluation, and disposition. Variables within the referring analyst, patient, candidate, and supervisor are examined in their interaction with the circumstances of the assessment enterprise. Issues of competence, self-esteem, and oedipal rivalry, as well as guilt feelings, concerns about rejection, and other conflicts may be mobilized and may prevent a successful outcome. Clinical data from three assessments are presented and discussed. The concept of an assessment process, analogous to the psychoanalytic process, is proposed. In this process, manifestations of the patient's intrapsychic life and indicators of potential transferences emerge in the context of the analysis of the patient's reactions to the assessment. Potential sources of interference with the assessment process are identified, and measures to avoid them are suggested.