Temporal resolution of figures and grounds

Recent studies have demonstrated that establishing figure–ground organization influences other perceptual processes. Specifically, figures undergo perceptual processing earlier than ground regions (Lester, Hecht, & Vecera, 2009), and they are processed for longer durations relative to ground regions (Hecht & Vecera, 2011). One potential consequence of figures' extended processing is degraded temporal resolution compared to ground regions. To test this hypothesis, observers completed a modified flicker-fusion task while viewing either displays that contained well-defined figures and grounds or displays that were ambiguous. As evidenced by increased sensitivity for flickering targets on the ground regions, the current results support the claim that figures have poorer temporal resolution than ground regions.     

Linkages between spouses' psychological distress and marital conflict in the home.

To elucidate the processes that underlie the established association between psychopathology and marital functioning, researchers have given attention to how symptomatic individuals manage their interpersonal contexts, particularly during the handling of disagreements. In the current study, the authors evaluate the role of marital conflict strategies in relation to wives' and husbands' psychological distress levels. A sample of 100 community-based couples completed assessments of psychological distress and diaries describing marital conflict that occurred at home during a 15-day reporting period. Findings from multilevel modeling of dyadic data revealed associations between both spouses' psychological distress and multiple behavioral and emotional conflict expressions in the home. Psychological symptoms uniquely predicted the occurrence of certain conflict expressions, even when accounting for global negative marital sentiments. The findings encourage subsequent consideration of marital conflict expressions and resolution strategies when studying processes involved in the marriage-psychological adjustment link.     

Blushing during social interactions in people with a fear of blushing

Changes in facial blood flow were investigated during an introductory conversation, delivering a speech, and listening to the speech afterwards in 16 people with a fear of blushing and 16 controls. It was hypothesized that fear of blushing would be associated with high ratings of self-reported blushing intensity and embarrassment during the tasks, and with persistence of the blushing reaction between tasks. Embarrassment and self-reported blushing intensity were greater in the fear-of-blushing group than in controls throughout the experiment. Increases in facial blood flow were similar in the two groups during each of the tasks. However, blushing dissipated more slowly after each task in the fear-of-blushing group than in controls, resulting in an incremental increase in facial blood flow over the course of the experiment. The slow recovery after an episode of blushing might result in physiological or social cues that help to maintain a fear of blushing.     

Effects of a Fluency-Building Program on the Reading Performance of Low-Achieving Second and Third Grade Students

This study evaluated the effects of a fluency-based reading program with 15 second and third grade students and 15 matched controls. Gains in oral reading fluency on untrained CBM probes were evaluated using a matched-pairs group-comparison design, whereas immediate and two-day retention gains in oral reading fluency on trained passages were evaluated using an adapted changing criterion design. Increases in WRCM due to training and number of trainings to criterion were also evaluated as a function of pre-training fluency levels. Results showed statistically significant gains on dependent measures for the treatment group, mean increases of two to three grade levels in passages mastered, and an optimal pre-training fluency range of 41-60 WRCM. Implications for fluency-based reading programs are discussed.     

Abusive supervision, intentions to quit, and employees’ workplace deviance: A power/dependence analysis

We conducted a two-study examination of relationships between abusive supervision and subordinates’ workplace deviance. Consistent with predictions derived from power/dependence theory, the results of a cross-sectional study with employees from three organizations suggest that abusive supervision is more strongly associated with subordinates’ organization deviance and supervisor-directed deviance when subordinates’ intention to quit is higher. The results also support the prediction that when intention to quit is higher, abusive supervision is more strongly associated with supervisor-directed deviance than with organization-directed deviance. These results were replicated in a second study, a two-wave investigation of people employed in a variety of industries and occupations.     

Children's early productivity with verbal morphology

Three studies using the intermodal preferential looking paradigm examined onset of productive comprehension of tense/aspect morphology in English. When can toddlers understand these forms with novel verbs and novel events? The first study used familiar verbs and showed that 26–36-month olds correctly matched a past/perfective form (-ed or irregular past) to a completed version of an event and a present/imperfective (is V-ing) to the ongoing version of the same event. The second study used novel verbs and events and found that 33-month olds failed to use tense/aspect morphology to choose between completed and ongoing versions of the same event. The third study also used novel verbs and events but simplified the processing demands of the task in several ways (using initial priming of the events and classes of meaning, using different events within test pairs). This study found that 30-month olds successfully used tense/aspect morphology to choose between ongoing and completed novel events. The results demonstrate that children have productive command of tense/aspect morphology by 30 months and have therefore begun the process of creating an abstract grammar containing this element.     

USING DIFFERENTIAL REINFORCEMENT TO DECREASE ACADEMIC RESPONSE LATENCIES OF AN ADOLESCENT WITH ACQUIRED BRAIN INJURY

The present study investigated the effects of contingency‐specifying rules and a token economy to decrease the latency to comply with academic instructions by a 16‐year‐old girl with acquired brain injury. Results showed that treatment was successful in reducing academic response latencies. These results replicate previous research in which differential reinforcement was used to decrease slow responding to academic tasks.     

THE EFFECTS OF DIFFERENTIAL REINFORCEMENT OF UNPROMPTED RESPONDING ON THE SKILL ACQUISITION OF CHILDREN WITH AUTISM

The recommendation to reserve the most potent reinforcers for unprompted responses during acquisition programming has little published empirical support for its purported benefits (e.g., rapid acquisition, decreased errors, and decreased prompt dependence). The purpose of the current investigation was to compare the delivery of high‐quality reinforcers exclusively following unprompted responses (differential reinforcement) with the delivery of high‐quality reinforcers following both prompted and unprompted responses (nondifferential reinforcement) on the skill acquisition of 2 children with autism. Results indicated that both were effective teaching procedures, although the differential reinforcement procedure was more reliable in producing skill acquisition. These preliminary findings suggest that the differential reinforcement of unprompted responses may be the most appropriate default approach to teaching children with autism.     

There's more to emotion than meets the eye: A processing bias for neutral content in the domain of emotional prosody

Research on emotion processing in the visual modality suggests a processing advantage for emotionally salient stimuli, even at early sensory stages; however, results concerning the auditory correlates are inconsistent. We present two experiments that employed a gating paradigm to investigate emotional prosody. In Experiment 1, participants heard successively building segments of Jabberwocky "sentences" spoken with happy, angry, or neutral intonation. After each segment, participants indicated the emotion conveyed and rated their confidence in their decision. Participants in Experiment 2 also heard Jabberwocky "sentences" in successive increments, with half discriminating happy from neutral prosody, and half discriminating angry from neutral prosody. Participants in both experiments identified neutral prosody more rapidly and accurately than happy or angry prosody. Confidence ratings were greater for neutral sentences, and error patterns also indicated a bias for recognising neutral prosody. Taken together, results suggest that enhanced processing of emotional content may be constrained by stimulus modality.