Acquired flavour preferences: contextual control of adaptation-level effects

This experiment investigated the role of context in the expression of conditioned flavour preferences. Rats were trained on a mixture of almond and sucrose and were then given intermixed exposures to almond in one context (Context A) and to sucrose in a second context (Context S). Finally, choice tests were given in both contexts, with one group given almond-versus-water tests and the other almond + sucrose-versus-sucrose tests. Preference for almond over water was greater in Context A than in Context S. Conversely, preference for almond + sucrose over sucrose was greater in Context S than in Context A. These results suggest that the perceived sweetness of a flavour depends on the context in which it is presented and confirm that expression of a flavour preference depends on the type of test employed.     

Go or no‐go? Developmental improvements in the efficiency of response inhibition in mid‐childhood

This experiment used a modified go/no‐go paradigm to investigate the processes by which response inhibition becomes more efficient during mid‐childhood. The novel task, which measured trials on which a response was initiated but not completed, was sensitive to developmental changes in response inhibition. The effect of inducing time pressure by narrowing allowable response time was also examined. While increasing time pressure did not reduce the inhibitory demands of the task for either age group, older children (aged 9 to 11 years) were able to inhibit their responses at an earlier stage of movement than younger children (aged 5 to 7 years). This shows that as children get older they become more efficient at controlling their behaviour which drives developmental improvements in response inhibition.     

Treatment of Missing Data: Beyond Ends and Means

The ethical decision making process behind the treatment of missing data has yet to be examined in the research literature in any discipline. The purpose of the current paper is to begin to discuss this decision-making process in view of a Foucauldian framework. The paper suggests how the ethical treatment of missing data should be considered from the adoption of this theoretical framework.     

Evaluating the Evaluators: Perceptions of Interviewers by Rejected Job Applicants as a Function of Interviewer and Applicant Sex1

Students who had recently had an unsuccessful job interview rated the competence of their interviewer and completed the Women As Managers Scale (WAMS; Terborg, Peters, Ilgen, & Smith, 1977 ). The results showed an impact of the sex of interviewer on judgments of interviewer competence and WAMS scores, but only for male participants. Male participants gave lower ratings of interviewer competence to female than to male interviewers, and ratings for the female interviewers were also lower than those given by female participants. Scores on the WAMS were lower for male participants who were interviewed by a female interviewer than those interviewed by a male interviewer, and were lower for male than for female participants with a female interviewer.     

It's the way that you, er, say it: hesitations in speech affect language comprehension

Everyday speech is littered with disfluency, often correlated with the production of less predictable words (e.g., Beattie & Butterworth [Beattie, G., & Butterworth, B. (1979). Contextual probability and word frequency as determinants of pauses in spontaneous speech. Language and Speech, 22, 201-211.]). But what are the effects of disfluency on listeners? In an ERP experiment which compared fluent to disfluent utterances, we established an N400 effect for unpredictable compared to predictable words. This effect, reflecting the difference in ease of integrating words into their contexts, was reduced in cases where the target words were preceded by a hesitation marked by the word er. Moreover, a subsequent recognition memory test showed that words preceded by disfluency were more likely to be remembered. The study demonstrates that hesitation affects the way in which listeners process spoken language, and that these changes are associated with longer-term consequences for the representation of the message.     

Caffeine deprivation state modulates expression of acquired liking for caffeine-paired flavours

Previous studies found that caffeine consumers acquired a liking for the flavour of novel caffeinated drinks when these drinks were consumed repeatedly in a caffeine-deprived, but not nondeprived, state. Expression of this acquired liking appeared acutely sensitive to current caffeine deprivation state, but the use of between-subjects designs confounded interpretation of those studies. The present study evaluated these findings further using a within-subject design, with one flavour paired with caffeine (CS + ) and the second with the absence of caffeine (CS-). During four CS + and four CS- training days, 32 moderate caffeine consumers alternatively consumed a novel flavoured drink a CS + paired with caffeine and a CS- flavour paired with placebo. Participants evaluated both drinks before and after training in two motivational states: caffeine deprived and nondeprived. As predicted, pleasantness ratings for the caffeine-paired flavour increased overall. However, this acquired liking was only significant when tested in a caffeine-deprived state. These data are consistent with a conditioned-flavour preference model and imply that expression of acquired liking for a novel caffeinated flavour depends on the need for the effects of caffeine at the time when the drink is evaluated.     

Fusion of auditory components: effects of the frequency of amplitude modulation

The fusion of two amplitude-modulated (AM) tones presented simultaneously was studied. Subjects were presented with an AM tone (A) followed by a copy of itself (B) which was accompanied by another AM tone (C). In different experiments, the subjects were asked either to rate how clearly they could hear Tone B in the BC mixture or whether Tone B was present or not. The stronger the fusion of Tones B and C, the harder it was to "hear out" Tone B. It was found that fusion was strongest when Tones B and C were modulated at the same rate; segregation curves were obtained for the degree of mismatch of modulation frequency.     

The effects of ingroup and outgroup homogeneity on ingroup favouritism,stereotyping and overestimation of relative ingroup size

An experiment (n = 61) investigated the effects of ingroup and outgroup homogeneity on ingroup favouritism, stereotyping and the overestimation of relative ingroup size. As predicted, outgroup homogeneity was conducive to ingroup favouritism. Ingroup homogeneity, however, failed to influence ingroup favouritism. Also unexpectedly, asymmetry in group homogeneity — irrespective of whether the ingroup or the outgroup was the more homogeneous group — led to pronounced stereotyping of both groups and to the overestimation of relative ingroup size.     

Emergence of thematic concepts in repeated listening to music

A repeated listening procedure was designed to monitor changes in listener's appreciation of thematic categories in musical compositions. Subjects listened to a recorded musical composition. Passages selected from the composition were then played in pairs, and listeners rated their similarity. The similarity data were submitted to INDSCAL, a multidimensional scaling procedure, which located the passages in an n-dimensional space. This procedure was repeated in three separate sessions, so that changes in the perceived musical structure could be observed. In Study 1, subjects heard Liszt's Sonata in b, and target passages were Theme A, Theme B, and three variations of each theme. While extrathematic dimensions dominated early acquaintance, a theme dimension emerged in the second and third sessions. Musicians gave higher weight to the theme dimension than did nonmusicians, and theme was the only dimension for experts on this sonata. Musicians were also more accurate in a final classification test, but only after repeated listening. The effect of repeated exposure on transfer to new theme exemplars was considered in Study 2. It is hoped this work will foster more naturalistic approaches to musical cognition.