Anxiety and Mood-congruent Autobiographical Memory: A Conceptual Failure to Replicate

This study further explored whether highly anxious participants exhibit a mood-congruent autobiographical memory bias, as was found in two previous studies (Burke & Mathews, 1992; Richards & Whittaker, 1990). The 74 high and low trait anxious participants retrieved personal memories to anxiety-related, neutral, and positive cue words, and were then asked to recall the original cue words. The study also explored how expression of emotional versus factual responses might affect a memory bias. On most dependent measures, no differences were found between anxiety groups. However, low anxious participants recalled more memories overall than high anxious participants. In addition, the emotions groups recalled more words at free recall than the facts groups. Findings fail to support previous studies that found an autobiographical memory bias to be associated with high anxiety, and cast more support for the mounting evidence against a mood-congruent memory bias in anxiety.     

Stress as a trigger for headaches: Relationship between exposure and sensitivity

Abstract

This study investigated the relationship between length of exposure to a stressor and capacity of the stressor to elicit head pain. Some 127 participants, 93 of whom suffered from regular headaches, were randomly assigned to five experimental conditions, defined by length of exposure to a stressor. Participants attended a single laboratory session divided into three phases: pre-intervention test, intervention and post-intervention test. The main finding was a significant cubic trend between length of exposure to the stressor and ratings of head pain. This trend indicated that very short exposure to the stressor increased sensitivity, whilst longer exposure decreased sensitivity, but even longer exposure increased sensitivity. These results build on earlier studies that suggest the traditional clinical advice to headache sufferers, that the best way to prevent headaches is to avoid the triggers, runs the risk of establishing an insidious sensitization process, thereby increasing headache frequency.     

Is this problem likely to be solved? A cognitive schema of effective problem solving

The present study tested the existence of a cognitive schema that guides people's evaluations of the likelihood that observed problem-solving processes will succeed. The hypothesised schema consisted of attributes that were found to distinguish between retrospective case reports of successful and unsuccessful real world problem solving (Lipshitz & Bar Ilan, 1996 Lipshitz, R. and Bar Ilan, O. 1996. How problems are solved: Reconsidering the phase theorem. Organisational Behaviour and Human Decision Processes, 45: 48–60.  [Google Scholar]). Participants were asked to evaluate the likelihood of success of identical cases of problem solving that differed in the presence or absence of diagnosis, the selection of appropriate or inappropriate solutions, and the pairing of diagnosis with appropriate or non-appropriate solutions. Consistent with the proposition, diagnosis affected perceived likelihood of success, albeit only when solution quality was held constant, and appropriate diagnosis with a compatible solution produced higher perceived likelihood of success than appropriate diagnosis with incompatible solutions. In addition, results showed that solution quality played a significant role, and that compatibility with a six-phase rational model of problem solving played no role in judging likelihood of success.     

The influence of functional social support on executive functioning in middle-aged African Americans

ABSTRACT

Social support has a positive influence on cognitive functioning and buffers cognitive decline in older adults. This study examined the relations between social support and executive functioning in middle-aged adults. A community-based sample of African Americans completed the Interpersonal Support Evaluation List, a measure of functions of social support, and two measures of executive functioning, the Stroop Color and Word Test and the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST). Hierarchical regression analyses were used to explore the hypothesis that different facets of perceived social support influence performance on measures of executive functioning. After controlling for age, gender, and education, social support facets including belonging support, selfesteem support, appraisal support, and tangible support were significant predictors of Stroop performance. In addition, tangible support significantly predicted WCST performance. These findings add to previous literature on social support and cognition; however, findings for middle-aged adults are unique and suggest that social support has a positive influence on some executive functions in African Americans prior to old age.     

Interpreter Bias on the Rorschach Test as a Function of Patients' Socioeconomic Status

Hypotheses investigated were: Rorschach interpretation would indicate more negative and pathological factors for patients with lower-class, than for patients with middle-class social histories; and experienced interpreters would be less biased than inexperienced ones. Groups of experts (Fellows of the Society for Projective Techniques) and novices (graduate students) rated the same protocols; a) blind, b) accompanied by a lower-class history, c) accompanied by a middle-class history, on 21 objective scales. Addition of social-class information significantly influences judgments in the predicted directions. Much of the effect was attributable to the novice Rorschachers but the experts were not entirely free of the biasing effect.     

Are We Agents at All? Helen Steward's Agency Incompatibilism

In A Metaphysics for Freedom (Steward, Helen. A Metaphysics for Freedom. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012) and related papers, Helen Steward advances a new argument for incompatibilism. Though she concedes that the luck objection is persuasive with regard to existing versions of libertarianism, she claims that agency itself is incompatible with determinism: we are only agents at all if we are able to settle matters concerning our movements, where settling something requires that prior to our settling it lacked sufficient conditions. She argues that genuine agents settle very fine-grained aspects of their movements: when and how they move, even when and how their neurons fire. In this paper, I advance two linked arguments against agency incompatibilism. I argue, first, that we do not exercise direct control over the fine-grained aspects of our movements. Rather, we control these movements indirectly, by intentionally engaging in broadly individuated action types (regarding which Steward concedes that the compatibilist has a plausible story to tell). Second, I argue that these aspects of our movements are lucky for us and, since this is true, they cannot play the role of grounding our agency.     

Recognition memory for foreign language lexical stress

This study investigated whether English speakers retained the lexical stress patterns of newly learned Spanish words. Participants studied spoken Spanish words (e.g., DUcha [shower], ciuDAD [city]; stressed syllables in capital letters) and subsequently performed a recognition task, in which studied words were presented with the same lexical stress pattern (DUcha) or the opposite lexical stress pattern (CIUdad). Participants were able to discriminate same- from opposite-stress words, indicating that lexical stress was encoded and used in the recognition process. Word-form similarity to English also influenced outcomes, with Spanish cognate words and words with trochaic stress (MANgo) being recognized more often and more quickly than Spanish cognate words with iambic stress (soLAR) and noncognates. The results suggest that while segmental and suprasegmental features of the native language influence foreign word recognition, foreign lexical stress patterns are encoded and not discarded in memory.     

Mastery of the logic of natural numbers is not the result of mastery of counting: evidence from late counters

To master the natural number system, children must understand both the concepts that number words capture and the counting procedure by which they are applied. These two types of knowledge develop in childhood, but their connection is poorly understood. Here we explore the relationship between the mastery of counting and the mastery of exact numerical equality (one central aspect of natural number) in the Tsimane’, a farming‐foraging group whose children master counting at a delayed age and with higher variability than do children in industrialized societies. By taking advantage of this variation, we can better understand how counting and exact equality relate to each other, while controlling for age and education. We find that the Tsimane’ come to understand exact equality at later and variable ages. This understanding correlates with their mastery of number words and counting, controlling for age and education. However, some children who have mastered counting lack an understanding of exact equality, and some children who have not mastered counting have achieved this understanding. These results suggest that understanding of counting and of natural number concepts are at least partially distinct achievements, and that both draw on inputs and resources whose distribution and availability differ across cultures.     

Perception of emotional expression in musical performance

Expression in musical performance is largely communicated by the manner in which a piece is played; interpretive aspects that supplement the written score. In piano performance, timing and amplitude are the principal parameters the performer can vary. We examined the way in which such variation serves to communicate emotion by manipulating timing and amplitude in performances of classical piano pieces. Over three experiments, listeners rated the emotional expressivity of performances and their manipulated versions. In Experiments 1 and 2, timing and amplitude information were covaried; judgments were monotonically decreasing with performance variability, demonstrating that the rank ordering of acoustical manipulations was captured by participants' responses. Further, participants' judgments formed an S-shaped (sigmoidal) function in which greater sensitivity was seen for musical manipulations in the middle of the range than at the extremes. In Experiment 3, timing and amplitude were manipulated independently; timing variation was found to provide more expressive information than did amplitude. Across all three experiments, listeners demonstrated sensitivity to the expressive cues we manipulated, with sensitivity increasing as a function of musical experience.