Motivational and cognitive determinants of control during conflict processing

Previous studies suggest that both reward anticipation and expected or experienced conflicts activate cognitive control. The present study investigated how these factors interact during conflict processing. In two experiments, participants performed a variant of the Stroop task, receiving performance-dependent monetary rewards in some blocks. In addition, we manipulated the level of conflict-triggered reactive and expectancy-driven proactive control: In Experiment 1, we compared the Stroop effect after previously congruent and incongruent trials to examine the conflict adaptation effect (reactive control). We found that the level of motivation did not interact with conflict adaptation. In Experiment 2, we varied the proportion of congruent and incongruent trials to manipulate conflict expectancy (proactive control). The data suggest the effects of motivation to be less pronounced under conditions of high conflict expectancy. We conclude that the interaction of motivation with cognitive determinants of control depends on whether these activate proactive or reactive control processes.     

Implications of search accuracy for serial self-terminating models of search

In two experiments, the data from a total of 35 participants was compared to predictions from two competing serial search models, one with perfect memory and one with no memory. Reaction times were collected from an unlimited exposure duration, 4-alternative, target identification search task with array sizes of 8, 12, or 16 items. From the linear function relating RT to number of distractors a hypothetical “inspection time/item” was computed under the assumption of SSTS. Target identification accuracy was obtained from the same participants using the same displays, but with pre- and post-masks used to limit total inspection time (to 120, 180, 300, and 540 ms). Neither the memoryful nor memoryless model provided a good enough fit to the data to support the assumption that serial inspection is the primary process determining search time. Despite direct evidence for serial allocation of attention in visual search, these results suggest that scholars should seriously consider the possibility of hybrid search models in which serial and parallel strategies operate jointly.     

Extending Autonomy for Health Care Preferences in Late Life

Mechanisms for extending autonomy in financial and health care decisions (e.g., advanced directives) are being utilized more frequently. This study examined the hierarchy of documents completed, the characteristics of people completing these documents, the choice of surrogate decision-maker for health care decisions, and with whom health care decisions were being discussed in a sample of 661 persons 65 years of age and older. Comparison between people with and without documents in place suggested that cognitive impairment, level of education, and age were related to preparation of documents. Women were typically chosen as surrogate decision-makers, except in a sample of unmarried men. Surprisingly, participants reported discussing preferences for health care decisions with someone other than their preferred surrogate. There appears to be a need to promote discussion of health care preferences between care-receivers and preferred surrogates.     

Effects of extensive dual-task practice on processing stages in simultaneous choice tasks

Schumacher et al. Psychological Science 12:101–108, (2001) demonstrated the elimination of most dual-task costs (“perfect time-sharing”) after extensive dual-task practice of a visual and an auditory task in combination. For the present research, we used a transfer methodology to examine this practice effect in more detail, asking what task-processing stages were sped up by this dual-task practice. Such research will be essential to specify mechanisms associated with the practice-related elimination of dual-task costs. In three experiments, we introduced postpractice transfer probes focusing on the perception, central response-selection, and final motor-response stages. The results indicated that the major change achieved by dual-task practice was a speed-up in the central response-selection stages of both tasks. Additionally, perceptual-stage shortening of the auditory task was found to contribute to the improvements in time-sharing. For a better understanding of such time-sharing, we discuss the contributions of the present findings in relation to models of practiced dual-task performance.     

A Defining Presidential Moment: 9/11 and the Rally Effect

Public approval ratings of George W. Bush surged after the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks. This study used a quasi–experimental, within–respondents design to investigate the relative contribution of five factors to this classic rally effect: the stimulus event itself, Bush's speech that evening, media exposure, partisan support, and gender effects. Respondents were pretested on the morning of the attacks; one group was posttested immediately after the speech, another group 41 hours later. Stability of effects was examined through an additional study of Bush's 20 September 2001 speech to a joint session of Congress. The findings indicate that Bush's 11 September speech was the critical factor in this rally effect; none of the other factors contributed significantly.     

The effect of gaze on gaze direction while looking at art

In highly controlled cuing experiments, conspecific gaze direction has powerful effects on an observer’s attention. We explored the generality of this effect by using paintings in which the gaze direction of a key character had been carefully manipulated. Our observers looked at these paintings in one of three instructional states (neutral, social, or spatial) while we monitored their eye movements. Overt orienting was much less influenced by the critical gaze direction than what the cuing literature might suggest: An analysis of the direction of saccades following the first fixation of the critical gaze showed that observers were weakly biased to orient in the direction of the gaze. Over longer periods of viewing, however, this effect disappeared for all but the social condition. This restriction of gaze as an attentional cue to a social context is consistent with the idea that the evolution of gaze direction detection is rooted in social communication. The picture stimuli from this experiment can be downloaded from the Psychonomic Society’s Archive of Norms, Stimuli, and Data, www.psychonomic.org/archive.     

Loving and angry? Happy and sad? Understanding and reporting of mixed emotions in mother–child relationships by 6‐ to 12‐year‐olds

The Evaluative Space Model of emotions allows for the coactivation of positive‐appetitive and negative‐avoidant systems, but few studies have examined mixed emotions in child development. Existing research suggests children's understanding of opposite valence emotion combinations emerges by approximately 11 years of age. However, it is not yet clear whether various opposite valence combinations are understood at different ages, nor whether children can understand them in others before they have experienced such mixed emotions themselves. Semi‐structured interviews with 97 children investigated whether they regarded six combinations of opposite valence mixed emotions as possible, could provide reasons for them, and report their own experience of each in the context of mother–child relationships. Both understanding that such combinations are possible and ability to provide reasons for them increased after age 6 and up to age 11, but were still incomplete in 12‐year‐olds. Understanding of different opposite valence combinations developed at different rates. At each age, fewer children who showed understanding of these combinations in others reported having had a similar experience themselves. The findings suggest a need to systematically examine a range of mixed emotions in order to develop a comprehensive theory of the development of mixed emotion understanding. They also suggest extending research into adolescence.     

Philosophical Methodology and Conceptions of Evil Action

There is considerable philosophical dispute about what it takes for an action to be evil. The methodological assumption underlying this dispute is that there is a single, shared folk conception of evil action deployed amongst culturally similar people. Employing empirical research the authors undertook, this article suggests that this assumption is false. There exist, amongst the folk, numerous conceptions of evil action. Hence, the authors argue, philosophical research is most profitably spent in two endeavours. First, in determining which (if any) conception of evil action we have prudential or moral (or both) reason to deploy and, second, in determining whether we could feasibly come to adopt that conception as the single shared conception given our psychological make‐up and the content of the conceptions currently deployed.