Children's face recognition memory: more evidence for the cross-race effect

It is well established that own-race faces are recognized more accurately than cross-race faces. However, there are mixed results regarding the developmental consistency of the cross-race effect White and Black kindergarten children, 3rd graders, and young adults viewed a Black and a White target individual. One day later, recognition memory for each target was tested with a 6-person lineup. The interaction of race of participant by race of target face on Ag scores was significant, demonstrating an overall cross-race effect. The 2nd-order interaction with age did not approach significance; for each age group, own-race identification was more accurate than cross-race identification. The age consistency of the cross-race effect in light of the significant main effect of age suggests quantitative but not qualitative differences in face memory processing at various ages. For children, as well as adults, own-race faces are recognized more accurately than cross-race faces.     

Perceptions of adulthood among Anglo and Latino parents

The transition to adulthood presupposes that a developing adolescent acquires a set of characteristics that enables him or her to perform expected adult behaviors. There is a gap in the literature in identifying these expected behaviors as they pertain to different cultural and racial groups. To fill this gap, parent-generated indicators of adulthood were studied, including the beliefs, behaviors, and attitudes that are either common or specific to Anglo and Latino parents. College students at an urban university in the Los Angeles area were recruited to enlist their parents to complete a questionnaire. Equal numbers from each ethnic group were surveyed. The results of this study indicate that Anglo participants defined adulthood in terms of independence significantly more often than Latino participants. Furthermore, Latino participants defined adulthood in terms of event-related markers, such as marriage, significantly more often than Anglo participants. This research points to the need to define adulthood in ways that reflect the ethnic diversity of the United States. The authors express their thanks to Russell Espinoza, Ileana Garoz, Anna Rivera, Sandra Samayoa, Gabriella Chavira, Maria Hernandez, Angel Lahr, and Kevin Kim for their invaluable assistance. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 1997 meeting of the Western Psychological Association, Seattle.     

Creativity and two modes of associative fluency: Chains and stars1

The relationship between creativity and associative fluency was reexamined in light of a proposed distinction between two modes of associative fluency, chains and stars. Chained associations were defined as a series of responses, each related to the preceding one, and star associations as a series of responses, all of which are focused on the original stimulus word. An analysis of the continuous associations produced orally by 96 university students in response to a single presentation of a stimulus word indicated that they produced associations of both types interchangeably. Chain and star fluency were found to be inversely correlated at a low order, suggesting that they are two distinct associative modes. As expected, chain fluency was highly related to creativity, as measured by a Hebrew version of Mednick's Remote Associates Test while star fluency was unrelated to it. The findings were discussed in terms of Wallach's (1970) notion of attention deployment, and directions for future research were suggested.     

The acquisition of taste aversions in humans

A written questionnaire or an interview was given to 517 undergraduates concerning their acquisition of illness-induced (taste) aversions to foods and drinks. The subjects reported 415 aversions, with 65% of the subjects reporting at least one aversion. The aversions were more likely to be reported as having been formed through forward rather than simultaneous or backward conditioning, and long-delay learning was frequent. The aversions usually formed to the taste of the foods, rather than the appearance or other aspects of the foods. Extinction appeared more effective in decreasing the aversions than did forgetting. The illness responsible for the aversion's forming was usually attributed to the subsequently aversive food, but for 21% of the reported aversions subjects were sure that something else had caused their illness. Aversions were more likely to have formed to relatively less familiar and less preferred foods. Aversions were also more likely to form between the ages of 13 and 20. Generalization of the aversions to similar foods occurred in 29% of the cases. Approximately one fourth of the aversions were to alcoholic beverages. Finally, instances of aversions forming without food or drink consumption and instances of observational learning were reported. The data were quite similar to laboratory taste aversion data collected using other species and can help in optimizing taste aversion treatments of eating and drinking disorders. Taste aversions among humans are frequent and strong.     

The Contribution of Physical Activity to Health-Related Quality of Life: New Population Estimates from National Survey Data

Sedentary lifestyles have been linked to higher rates of stroke, hypertension, depression, certain types of cancers, and cardiovascular disease, and increased risk of mortality. The link between physical inactivity and health has led to research on how physical activity (PA) interventions might improve health-related quality of life (HRQoL). Estimates of HRQoL improvements are typically focused on targeted at-risk groups, however. Given that almost half of the U.S. adult population is physically inactive, it would be helpful to broaden our understanding of how PA relates to quality of life for the population at large. In this study, we calculated the HRQoL gains attributable to PA across three nationally representative data sets that use different quality of life measures, and assessed the reliability in the results. The data sets used were the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS), the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS), and the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS). Quasi-likelihood regression modeling with a beta distribution was used to generate the estimates. We found mean HRQoL scores were very similar across the three data sets and the estimated HRQoLs gained from PA varied only slightly, suggesting that all three provide reliable estimates for the general population.

     

Dream recall and the full moon

There is ongoing debate on whether the full moon is associated with sleep and dreaming. The analysis of diaries kept by the participants (N = 196) over 28 to 111 nights showed no association of a full moon and dream recall. Psychological factors might explain why some persons associate a full moon with increased dream recall.     

Pursuing Academic Interests: The Role of Implicit Theories

Students can believe that their academic interests are fixed (entity theory) or malleable (incremental theory). A measure of implicit theories of academic interests was developed to examine how such theories influence students' decisions to retain or change their majors. As hypothesized, entity theorists who believed that they were not doing well in their majors were more likely to choose a new major than were all other groups. This result is consistent with previous findings that entity theorists tend to give up in the face of adversity.     

What do Patients Prefer: Informed Consent Models for Genetic Carrier Testing

The recent increased number of conditions for which patients can undergo genetic carrier testing raises the question of how best to obtain pre-test informed consent. Clinical approaches vary from a minimalist model to a model where patients are given detailed information about all conditions to be screened for. Few data exist as to patient preferences, or how information impacts decision-making. Eight high-literacy focus groups were conducted to assess the knowledge and preferences of pregnant patients and their male partners. Most groups indicated that some balance between details and brevity was optimal, recognizing that anxiety can occur when patients are provided with too much information and that the wide range of tests offered during pregnancy often led to confusion. Critical areas for the informed consent process included (1) details about the conditions and risk of being a carrier, (2) logistics of testing, (3) next steps if the test is positive, and (4) prognosis, options and resources if the child were to be affected with a disorder. It will be useful to develop model consent programs and prospectively assess their impact on informed consent and patient satisfaction, both when positive and negative results are received.     

What we know about what we have never heard: evidence from perceptual illusions

Are speakers equipped with preferences concerning grammatical structures that are absent in their language? We examine this question by investigating the sensitivity of English speakers to the sonority of onset clusters. Linguistic research suggests that certain onset clusters are universally preferred (e.g., bd>lb). We demonstrate that such preferences modulate the perception of unattested onsets by English speakers: Monosyllabic auditory nonwords with onsets that are universally dispreferred (e.g., lbif) are more likely to be classified as disyllabic and misperceived as identical to their disyllabic counterparts (e.g., lebif) compared to onsets that are relatively preferred across languages (e.g., bdif). Consequently, dispreferred onsets benefit from priming by their epenthetic counterpart (e.g., lebif-lbif) as much as they benefit from identity priming (e.g., lbif-lbif). A similar pattern of misperception (e.g., lbif-->lebif) was observed among speakers of Russian, where clusters of this type occur. But unlike English speakers, Russian speakers perceived these clusters accurately on most trials, suggesting that the perceptual illusions of English speakers are partly due to their linguistic experience, rather than phonetic confusion alone. Further evidence against a purely phonetic explanation for our results is offered by the capacity of English speakers to perceive such onsets accurately under conditions that encourage precise phonetic encoding. The perceptual illusions of English speakers are also irreducible to several statistical properties of the English lexicon. The systematic misperception of universally dispreferred onsets might reflect their ill-formedness in the grammars of all speakers, irrespective of linguistic experience. Such universal grammatical preferences implicate constraints on language learning.     

Automatic emotion regulation during anger provocation

Individuals frequently have to regulate their emotions, especially negative ones, to function successfully. However, deliberate emotion regulation can have significant costs for the individual. Are there less costly ways to achieve emotion regulatory goals? In two studies, we test the hypothesis that more automatic types of emotion regulation might provide the benefits of deliberate emotion regulation without the costs. Study 1 introduces a priming technique that manipulates automatic emotion regulation. Using this priming technique, we show that relative to priming emotion expression, priming emotion control leads to less anger experience in response to a laboratory anger provocation. Study 2 examines the experiential and physiological consequences of automatic emotion regulation. Results suggest that relative to priming emotion expression, priming emotion control reduces negative emotion experience without maladaptive cardiovascular responding. Together, these findings suggest that automatic emotion regulation may provide an effective means of controlling powerful negative emotions.