The measurement of response force during a lever-press shock-escape procedure in rats

Three albino rats were given extensive exposure to an escape procedure in which shocks were scheduled to occur 30 sec apart. The amount of downward force exerted on the lever was continuously recorded and compared with traditional discrete measurement in which only responses above an arbitrary force threshold were recorded. Subjects typically remained in contact with the lever throughout the shock-free intertrial interval. Shock onset reliably occasioned a brief lurch from and return to the lever, which resulted in a lever-press escape response being recorded. Lever contact, which occupied an average of 90% of session time, showed great stability in force after a brief (e.g., 5-sec) period of instability after each shock terminated. In general, continuous measurement revealed considerably different results than discrete measurements of on-lever behavior. For example, continuous lever contact fluctuating near response threshold was often recorded as discrete responding, and sustained lever contact occurring below response threshold was omitted from discrete measurement.     

Categorical perception of nonspeech sounds by 2-month-old infants

According to recent investigations, adult listeners perceive rise-time differences in both speech and nonspeech stimuli in a categorical manner (Cutting & Rosner, 1974). Adults labeled sawtooth-wave stimuli as either plucked or bowed. The present study uses the high-amplitude sucking technique to explore the 2-month-old infant’s perception of rise-time differences for sawtooth stimuli. Infants discriminated rise-time differences which marked off the different nonspeech categories, but did not discriminate equal differences within either category. Thus, the present study shows that infants, like adults, can perceive nonspeech stimuli in a categorical manner.     

A bottleneck in face identification: repetition priming from flanker images

There is evidence that face processing is capacity-limited in distractor interference tasks and in tasks requiring overt recognition memory. We examined whether capacity limits for faces can be observed with a more sensitive measure of visual processing, by measuring repetition priming of flanker faces that were presented alongside a face or a nonface target. In Experiment 1, we found identity priming for face flankers, by measuring repetition priming across a change in image, during task-relevant nonface processing, but not during the processing of a concurrently-presented face target. Experiment 2 showed perceptual priming of the flanker faces, across identical images at prime and test, when they were presented alongside a face target. In a third Experiment, all of these effects were replicated by measuring identity priming and perceptual priming within the same task. Overall, these results imply that face processing is capacity limited, such that only a single face can be identified at one time. Merely attending to a target face appears sufficient to trigger these capacity limits, thereby extinguishing identification of a second face in the display, although our results demonstrate that the additional face remains at least subject to superficial image processing.     

Male or Female Athletic Director? Exploring Perceptions of Leader Effectiveness and a (Potential) Female Leadership Advantage with Intercollegiate Athletic Directors

We investigated whether transformational leadership was associated with more positive perceptions of outcomes among intercollegiate athletic directors in the U.S. Also, we examined whether leader gender influenced perceptions of participants, and if there was an interaction between leadership style and leader gender in predicting organizational outcomes. Division I and II male participants (n?=?99) evaluated either a male or female transactional or transformational leader on extra effort, satisfaction, and effectiveness. MANOVA and post hoc analyses were used in our evaluation. Findings indicated transformational leadership was related to more positive organizational outcomes, that there was no difference between male and female leaders on attaining these outcomes, and that there was no interaction between leadership style and leader gender.     

Aggressive reactions to abusive supervision: the role of interactional justice and narcissism

In this study, we explore personality and situational conditions in which negative leadership - specifically, abusive supervision - is associated with aggressive behavior in subordinates. That is, we examine the role that interactional justice and narcissism play in an employee's decision to respond aggressively to an abusive supervisor. We demonstrate that interactional justice mediates the relationship between perceptions of abusive supervision and subsequent employee aggression. In addition, we demonstrate that narcissism interacts with interactional justice perceptions to predict workplace aggression. We find that individuals with high levels of narcissism are the employees who are most likely to respond aggressively when they interpret their leader's behavior as abusive.     

Dissociating positive and negative influences of verbal processing on the recognition of pictures of faces and objects

Four experiments investigated the role of verbal processing in the recognition of pictures of faces and objects. We used (a) a stimulus-encoding task where participants learned sequentially presented pictures in control, articulatory suppression, and describe conditions and then engaged in an old-new picture recognition test and (b) a poststimulus-encoding task where participants learned the stimuli without any secondary task and then either described or not a single item from memory before the recognition test. The main findings were as follows: First, verbalization influenced picture recognition. Second, there were contrasting influences of verbalization on the recognition of faces, compared with objects, that were driven by (a) the stage of processing during which verbalization took place (as assessed by the stimulus-encoding and poststimulus-encoding tasks), (b) whether verbalization was subvocal (whereby one goes through the motions of speaking but without making any sound) or overt, and (c) stimulus familiarity. During stimulus encoding there was a double dissociation whereby subvocal verbalization interfered with the recognition of faces but not objects, while overt verbalization benefited the recognition of objects but not faces. In addition, stimulus familiarity provided an independent and beneficial influence on performance. Post stimulus encoding, overt verbalization interfered with the recognition of both faces and objects, and this interference was apparent for unfamiliar but not familiar stimuli. Together these findings extend work on verbalization to picture recognition and place important parameters on stimulus and task constraints that contribute to contrasting beneficial and detrimental effects of verbalization on recognition memory.