Contact and other‐race effects in configural and component processing of faces

Other‐race faces are generally recognized more poorly than own‐race faces. There has been a long‐standing interest in the extent to which differences in contact contribute to this other‐race effect (ORE). Here, we examined the effect of contact on two distinct aspects of face memory, memory for configuration and for components, both of which are better for own‐race than other‐race faces. Configural and component memory were measured using recognition memory tests with intact study faces and blurred (isolates memory for configuration) and scrambled (isolates memory for components) test faces, respectively. Our participants were a large group of ethnically Chinese individuals who had resided in Australia for varying lengths of time, from a few weeks to 26 years. We found that time in a Western country significantly (negatively) predicted the size of the ORE for configural, but not component, memory. There was also a trend for earlier age of arrival to predict smaller OREs in configural, but not component, memory. These results suggest that memory for configural information in other‐race faces improves with experience with such faces. However, as found for recognition memory generally, the contact effects were small, indicating that other factors must play a substantial role in cross‐race differences in face memory.     

The Role of Verbal Behavior,Stimulus Nameability,and Familiarity on the Equivalence Performances of Autistic and Normally Developing Children

The Psychological Record - The emergence of equivalence relations and the role of overall verbal competence and stimulus nameability and familiarity in this regard were investigated across 3...     

Examining the relationship between free recall and immediate serial recall: Similar patterns of rehearsal and similar effects of word length,presentation rate,and articulatory suppression

In five experiments, rehearsal and recall phenomena were examined using the free recall and immediate serial recall (ISR) tasks. In Experiment 1, participants were presented with lists of eight words, were precued or postcued to respond using free recall or ISR, and rehearsed out loud during presentation. The patterns of rehearsal were similar in all the conditions, and there was little difference between recall in the precued and postcued conditions. In Experiment 2, both free recall and ISR were sensitive to word length and presentation rate and showed similar patterns of rehearsal. In Experiment 3, both tasks were sensitive to word length and articulatory suppression. The word length effects generalized to 6-item (Experiment 4) and 12-item (Experiment 5) lists. These findings suggest that the two tasks are underpinned by highly similar rehearsal and recall processes.     

Adrenocortical Functioning in Boys with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder: Examining Subtypes of ADHD and Associated Comorbid Conditions

Disruptions to hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis function have been associated with varying forms of psychopathology in children. Studies suggesting children with ADHD have blunted HPA function have been complicated by the prevalence of comorbid diagnoses and heterogeneity of ADHD. The goals of this research were to assess the relations between waking and stress–response salivary cortisol levels and comorbid disruptive behavior (DBD) and anxiety (AnxD) disorders and problems in boys with ADHD, and to examine whether cortisol levels varied across ADHD subtypes. One hundred seventy elementary school-age boys with ADHD provided salivary cortisol at waking and in reaction to venipuncture. Parent reports were used to assess boys’ psychiatric diagnoses and severity of behavioral problems. Boys’ comorbid AnxD and anxiety problems were associated with greater cortisol reactivity, whereas boys’ comorbid DBD and oppositional problems predicted diminished adrenocortical activity. Reactive cortisol increases were greatest in boys with ADHD and comorbid AnxD, but without DBD. ADHD subtypes were not differentially associated with waking, pre-stress baseline, or reactive cortisol levels. However, comorbid DBD predicted decreased cortisol reactivity in boys with inattentive and hyperactive subtypes of ADHD, but not in boys with combined subtype of ADHD. The results clarify previous patterns of distinct and divergent dysregulations of HPA function associated with boys’ varying kinds of psychopathology.

Openness to experience, plasticity, and creativity: Exploring lower-order, high-order, and interactive effects

What are creative people like? Openness to experience is important to creativity, but little is known about plasticity, the higher-order factor that subsumes openness. College students (n = 189) completed measures of the Big Five and measures of creative cognition (fluency and quality of divergent thinking), everyday creative behaviors, creative achievement, and self-rated creativity. Latent variable models found broad effects of openness to experience and few effects of the other four domains. At the higher-order level, plasticity predicted higher scores on nearly all of the facets of creativity, and stability had several significant effects. For some creativity measures, plasticity and stability had opposing effects. Tests of latent interactions found no significant effects: plasticity and stability predict creatively independently, not jointly.     

The influence of performance feedback on goal-setting and mental effort regulation

Goal-setting and mental effort investment may be influenced by the perception of success or failure. The aim of the current study was to investigate the dynamics of motivational intensity model using false performance feedback. Forty participants performed a demanding cognitive task over five successive (5 min) blocks. Participants received performance feedback of either progressive success or progressive failure. A number of psychophysiological variables were used to index mental effort investment and emotion, including: HRV components, blood pressure, skin conductance level, EEG, and facial EMG. Subjective estimates of mood, workload and motivation were also collected alongside performance measures. The success group experienced positive affect and a less pronounced decline in subjective motivation in response to a perception of successful achievement. In contrast, feedback of failure led to adverse changes in mood/motivation, but did not lead to the absolute withdrawal of effort, although trends in the psychophysiological data suggest that participants in the failure group were on the verge of abandoning the task. The implications of these findings are discussed within the context of goal-setting and effort regulation models.     

A Preventive Coping Perspective of Individual Response to Terrorism in Canada

A plethora of studies on terrorism underscores the challenges of managing the psychological and behavioural impacts of terrorist events. This literature also emphasizes the idea that the global pending threat of terrorism, prior to the occurrence of any event, may also give rise to significant reactions among members of the public. Drawing from the literature on proactive coping, the current study presents the results of factor analyses performed on sections of a national survey that assessed appraisals of as well as actual responses to the threat of terrorism in Canada (N = 1,502). Findings revealed that items assessing individual response to terrorism were represented by three factors in this context: Individual Preparedness, Information Seeking, and Avoidance Behaviour. Further analyses demonstrated a tendency for actual preparedness behaviours to be associated with decreased psychological stress, and actual avoidance behaviours to be associated with heightened psychological stress. Furthermore, the divergent patterns of relationships of terrorism response appraisals and corresponding actual responses with psychological stress emphasized the need to distinguish different stages in the process of preventive coping with terrorism. Theoretical and practical implications of findings for individual preparedness in Canada are discussed.

When is your head at? An exploration of the factors associated with the temporal focus of the wandering mind

Two experiments employed experience sampling to examine the factors associated with a prospective and retrospective focus during mind wandering. Experiment One explored the contribution of working memory and indicated that participants generally prospect when the task does not require continuous monitoring. Experiment Two demonstrated that in the context of reading, interest in what was read suppressed both past and future-related task-unrelated-thought. Moreover, in disinterested individuals the temporal focus during mind wandering depended on the amount of experience with the topic matter—less experienced individuals tended to prospect, while more experienced individuals tended to retrospect. Together these results suggest that during mind wandering participants’ are inclined to prospect as long as the task does not require their undivided attention and raise the intriguing possibility that autobiographical associations with the current task environment have the potential to cue the disinterested mind.     

Early morphological processing is morphosemantic and not simply morpho-orthographic: A violation of form-then-meaning accounts of word recognition

Many studies have suggested that a word’s orthographic form must be processed before its meaning becomes available. Some interpret the (null) finding of equal facilitation after semantically transparent and opaque morphologically related primes in early stages of morphological processing as consistent with this view. Recent literature suggests that morphological facilitation tends to be greater after transparent than after opaque primes, however. To determine whether the degree of semantic transparency influences parsing into a stem and a suffix (morphological decomposition) in the forward masked priming variant of the lexical decision paradigm, we compared patterns of facilitation between semantically transparent (e.g., coolant—cool) and opaque (e.g., rampant—ramp) prime—target pairs. Form properties of the stem (frequency, neighborhood size, and prime—target letter overlap), as well as related—unrelated and transparent—opaque affixes, were matched. Morphological facilitation was significantly greater for semantically transparent pairs than for opaque pairs. Ratings of prime—target relatedness predicted the magnitude of facilitation. The results limit the scope of form-then-meaning models of word recognition and demonstrate that semantic similarity can influence even early stages of morphological processing. The research reported here was supported by National Institute of Child Health and Development Grant HD-01994 to Haskins Laboratories.