Word processing in the parafoveal region

This study examined the role of words viewed in the parafoveal region during reading. In contrast to previous work, the present experiments used a reading-aloud paradigm that was postulated to encourage letter-to-sound processing, as is typical for beginning readers and for skilled readers who are reading difficult material. The three experiments in this study examined the role of orthographic and semantic information in the parafoveal region on the processing of a word in the foveal region. For this, two words, one in the foveal region and the other in the parafoveal region, were presented side by side to resemble normal reading. Participants were instructed to read aloud the word on the left side, ignoring the word on the right side. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that the presence of a word in the parafoveal region slowed naming of target words, and that this delay was attributable to linguistic interference. This pattern indicates that the information in the parafoveal region affect the processing of the target. Experiment 3 showed an effect of parafoveal semantic information on processing of the target word. In sum the results of the current study suggest that information in the parafoveal region appears to be linguistically processed but to a weaker degree than the focused word. In sum, the results of the experiments in the current study indicate that the influence of parafoveal information is quite lexical and semantic information in the parafoveal region affects processing of the target in the foveal region.     

Individualism and Collectivism: Implications for Women

This essay examines the nature and dynamics of individualism and collectivism as social and interpersonal phenomena. It considers the importance of affirming the true self as a key feature of individualism as conceived by Donald Capps. By means of cultural and gender analysis, the essay explores aspects of self-affirmation among women, especially Korean American women in both individualist and collectivist societies. It ultimately proposes a “self-affirming collectivism” that promotes the authentic individual self as imago Dei whose unique identity is expressed within community.     

The conceptual centrality of causal cycles

How do causal cycles affect judgments of conceptual centrality? Generally, a feature is central to a concept to the extent that other features in the concept depend on it, thereby rendering it immutable from the concept (Sloman, Love, &; Ahn, 1998). Previous research on conceptual centrality has focused primarily on features involved in four major types of dependency structures: simple cause-effect relations, causal chains, common-cause structures, and common-effect structures. Causal cycles are a fifth type of dependency structure commonly reported in people’s real-life concepts, yet to date, they have been relatively ignored in research on conceptual centrality. The results of six experiments suggest that previously held assumptions about the conceptual representation of cycles are incorrect. We discuss the implications of these findings for our understanding of theory-based concepts.     

Caught in the act: How extraverted and introverted friends communally cope with being recorded

This study explored how close friends who were similar or opposite on extraversion communally coped with being put on the spot to produce a recorded conversation. Participants were 50 pairs of same-sex college-age friends (54% female) who explicitly discussed the fact that their conversation was being recorded. The initial ‘on-stage’ episode emerged consistently earliest for extraverted dyads, and the majority of their episodes quickly diverted the on-stage moment. Dyads that included at least one introvert engaged in more extensive assortments of on-stage maneuvers, including research talk, soothing, and joking. In introvert–extravert dyads the extravert usually initiated and ended these episodes. Implications are discussed for understanding how personality is reciprocally implicated in managing shared everyday problems.     

Biological perspectives on the effects of early psychosocial experience

There is much current interest in how adverse experiences early in life might affect certain elements of physiological, behavioral, and psychological functioning across the lifespan. Recent conceptual frameworks for studying the effects of early experience have involved constructs such as experience-expectant, experience-dependent, and experience-adaptive plasticity. The latter construct is related to comparative models of developmental programming which posit the persistence of biological adjustments to the early caregiving environment. We briefly review such models and their translational implications. We then turn to human development and focus on the effects of large changes in children’s life courses as tests of hypotheses related to early experience effects. In particular, the effect of early institutionalization on children’s brain and behavioral development after changes to adoptive families or foster care is used as an example of a research area in which programming hypotheses have been proposed.     

Client Adherence to Asian Cultural Values,Common Factors in Counseling,and Session Outcome With Asian American Clients at a University Counseling Center

Based on data from 61 Asian American clients at a university counseling center, the study found that client‐perceived match on client‐counselor belief about problem etiology was related to counselor credibility, empathy, and cross‐cultural competence; the client‐counselor working alliance; session depth; and the likelihood of the client recommending the counselor to another client. An interaction effect showed that both strong match on belief about problem etiology and high client expectation for counseling success were associated with strong client‐counselor working alliance.     

Children prefer to learn from mind‐readers

Kim and Harris ( 2014 , J. Cogn. Dev.) showed that children selectively learned from an informant who produced apparently magical outcomes as compared to another informant who produced only ordinary outcomes in the domain of everyday physics. In the present study, we tested children's ability to differentiate between and selectively learn from informants who displayed either an extraordinary or an ordinary ability in the domain of everyday psychology. Prior studies have shown that children come to appreciate what is ordinarily involved in knowing the private mental states of other people. Drawing on this research, we asked whether 3‐ to 4‐ and 5‐ to 6‐year‐old children preferentially learned from an informant who knew another person's mind via either an ordinary or an extraordinary form of communication. As compared to younger children, older children were more likely to learn from the extraordinary informant. Moreover, children's ability to differentiate between the two informants was a better predictor of their learning from the extraordinary informant than age. We discuss the findings in the light of prior work on selective learning, children's ideas about prayer and their understanding of impossibility.     

Local News Media Cultivation of Host Receptivity in Plainstown

This message‐system and cultivation analysis investigated the influence of local news on the host receptivity of native‐born “Plainstown” residents toward immigrants. The message‐system analysis revealed that regional television and newspaper immigration coverage was more pessimistic, while local newspaper immigration coverage was more optimistic. A cultivation analysis confirmed that attention to pessimistic coverage interacted with conversations about immigration to reduce host receptivity. This research contributes to the study of cross‐cultural adaptation by constructing and validating a measure of Y. Y. Kim's (2001) concept of host receptivity. By demonstrating that second‐order cultivation is the product of on‐line cognitive processes, this research provided additional validation of Shrum's (2004) online model of second‐order cultivation. Findings suggest that optimistic immigration news frames may facilitate host receptivity.     

The Effects of Truth–Lie Base Rate on Interactive Deception Detection Accuracy

Consistent with the Park and Levine's (PL) probability model of deception detection accuracy, previous research has shown that as the proportion of honest messages increases, there is a corresponding linear increase in correct truth–lie discrimination. Three experiments (N = 120, 205, and 243, respectively) varied the truth–lie base rate in an interactive deception detection task. Linear base‐rate effects were observed in all 3 experiments (average effect r#x02009;= .61) regardless of whether the judges were interactive participants or passive observers, previously acquainted or strangers, or previously exposed to truths or lies. The predictive power of the PL probability model appears robust and extends to interactive deception despite PL's logical incompatibility with interpersonal deception theory.     

Word superiority over isolated letters: The neglected case of forward masking

Previous research shows that when briefly presented alphabetic stimuli are followed by pattern masks, letters in words are reported more accurately than are isolated letters (the “Word-Letter Phenomenon,” or WLP); however, when these masks are replaced by blank fields, the WLP disappears. These findings have led to the popular notion that the WLP reflects selective masking of ongoing stimulus processing and so critically depends on the use of poststimulus masks. Here we report three experiments which re-examine the role of masking in the WLP by contrasting the effects of postmasked displays with the effects of premasked displays in which words and isolated letters werepreceded by a pattern mask and followedby a completely blank field. Despite the critical role generally assigned to poststimulus pattern masks, similar WLPs were obtained with pre- and postmasked displays. Implications for theories of word and letter recognition are discussed.