Reference-frame misalignment and cardinal direction judgments: group differences and strategies

In 3 experiments, the authors examined how misalignment of egocentric and exocentric reference frames affects cardinal direction judgments. Experiments 1 and 2 demonstrated large differences in the accuracy and speed with which 104 less experienced and 7 experienced navigators made cardinal direction judgments. Reference-frame misalignment was associated with large performance decrements. The extent of these decrements diminished as ability and experience increased: however, even experienced navigators showed decrements when reference frames were misaligned. In Experiment 3, the authors used 55 college students to examine the individual subtasks of a common strategy for cardinal direction judgments and to isolate the effects of reference-frame misalignment to a particular subtask of this strategy. The tasks and strategies studied in this article can be applied in the development of navigational training and interfaces.     

Universal sex differences in the desire for sexual variety: tests from 52 nations, 6 continents,and 13 islands

Evolutionary psychologists have hypothesized that men and women possess both long-term and short-term mating strategies, with men's short-term strategy differentially rooted in the desire for sexual variety. In this article, findings from a cross-cultural survey of 16,288 people across 10 major world regions (including North America, South America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Southern Europe, Middle East, Africa, Oceania, South/Southeast Asia, and East Asia) demonstrate that sex differences in the desire for sexual variety are culturally universal throughout these world regions. Sex differences were evident regardless of whether mean, median, distributional, or categorical indexes of sexual differentiation were evaluated. Sex differences were evident regardless of the measures used to evaluate them. Among contemporary theories of human mating, pluralistic approaches that hypothesize sex differences in the evolved design of short-term mating provide the most compelling account of these robust empirical findings.     

Vicarious traumatisation of counsellors and effects on their workplaces

The literature on therapists' reactions to clients' traumatic material is Critically reviewed. The various attempts within this relatively new literature to conceptualise this phenomenon include countertransference, compassion fatigue and vicarious traumatisation. The limited research evidence is evaluated and found to support anecdotal accounts by trauma therapists. Empathic engagement with trauma survivors is necessary for effective psychotherapeutic intervention. However, empathic engagement also makes therapists vulnerable to the detrimental effects of vicarious trauma, with consequent negative effects on individual counsellor effectiveness and organisational dynamics in the workplace.     

Stimulus-governance and the hyperkinetic syndrome

The hypothesis that hyperkinetic children are stimulusgoverned was tested. In a sample of 39 nonmedicated hyperkinetic boys 26 were found to be stimulus-governed. In a control sample of 20 nonmedicated boys 6 were found to be stimulus-governed. An association was found between the hyperkinetic syndrome and stimulusgovernance. The hypothesis is raised that response to methylphenidate is related to stimulusgovernance. Several issues raised by the research are discussed.This research was supported in part by a grant from Bloemendaal Psychiatric Hospital, The Hague, The Netherlands. The authors wish to thank Mr. E. M. Ockhorst, for constructing the KFA-testing equipment, and Mr. R. Reyneart, for helping with the computer analysis. An earlier draft of the paper was presented at the European Conference of Neuropsychology, sponsored by the International Neuropsychology Society, at Oxford University, England.     

Clues to aural discrimination

Five measures of the items of the Multiple-Choice Intelligibility Test were obtained: apparent aural similarity of the four words available to a listener on hearing a stimulus, interconsonantal differences among the prevocalic portions of these words, phonemic discrepancies among these words, distinctive feature differences among these words, and the pooled discrimination score of the four words that were available to the responder on hearing the stimulus. The last score was made the target in a multiple correlation problem, and the relative contribution, combined and separately, of the four remaining measures to the target measure was determined. These four measures accounted for approximately 45% of the variance among the scores of discrimination. The strongest contributors were apparent aural similarity of the available responses and the phonemic discrepancy among the available responses.     

Cognitive efficiency modes in old age: performance on sequential and coordinative verbal and visuospatial tasks

In an experiment using a large set of verbal and spatial tasks requiring low or high degrees of executive control, 3 distinct age-related effects were found. The smallest effect (no slowing) was tied to lexical tasks with low executive involvement, the largest deficit (age-related slowing factor of 2.2) was tied to visuospatial tasks with high executive involvement, an intermediate level of deficit (slowing factor of 1.7) was found for visuospatial tasks with low executive load and verbal tasks with high executive load. These age-related dissociations were incompatible with any "common cause" formulation. The mechanism responsible for the dissociation between verbal and visual tasks, and between low and high executive load remains to be determined. The latter may reflect capacity limits.