Understanding proenvironmental intentions and behaviors: The importance of considering both the behavior setting and the type of behavior

To better understand the consistency of people’s proenvironmental intentions and behaviors, we set out to examine two sets of research questions. First, do people perform (1) different types of proenvironmental behaviors consistently, and (2) the same proenvironmental behavior consistently across settings? Second, are there consistent predictors of proenvironmental behavioral intentions across behavior and setting type? Participants reported four recycling and conservation behaviors across three settings, revealing significant variability in rates of behaviors across settings. Prior behavior, attitudes toward the behavior, and importance of the behaviour consistently predicted proenvironmental intentions. However, perceived behavioral control tended to predict intentions to perform proenvironmental behavior outside the home. Future research aimed at understanding and influencing different proenvironmental behaviors should carefully consider how settings affect intentions and behavior.     

Sources of interference in the attentional blink: target-distractor similarity revisited

Observers monitored streams of words or letters (10 items/sec) for one or two targets. An attentional blink (AB) effect was observed in which identification of the first target temporarily impaired identification of the second target. Target identification was impaired when the distractors were composed of either letters or false-font characters (cf. Maki, Couture, Frigen, & Lien, 1997). An asymmetrical AB effect was observed with letters and mathematical symbols; the AB effect was largest for symbol targets and letter distractors. The characters used in these experiments were rated on their meaningfulness, familiarity, and other stimulus properties. The rating data showed that pixel density best accounted for the asymmetrical target-distractor similarity effects. Modulation of the AB effect by target-distractor similarity appears to result partly from low-level masking. But masking effects may be reduced by attentional capture by target features.     

A limit on retrieval-induced forgetting

Retrieving some members of a memory set impairs later recall of semantically related but not unrelated members (M. C. Anderson, R. A. Bjork, & E. L. Bjork, 1994; M. C. Anderson & B. A. Spellman, 1995). The authors investigated whether this retrieval-induced forgetting effect would generalize to testing procedures other than category-cued recall. Although the authors demonstrated a retrieval-induced forgetting effect using a category-cued recall task, they failed to show retrieval-induced forgetting on several different memory tests that used item-specific cues, including a category-plus-stem-cued recall test, a category-plus-fragment-cued recall test, a fragment-cued recall test, and a fragment completion task.     

Presence of ε-martensite as an intermediate phase during the strain-induced transformation of SUS304 stainless steel

We have investigated the formation process of α′-martensite from the γ-phase induced by external strain using in situ synchrotron diffraction experiments, combined with Lorentz transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and high-resolution TEM observations. It is clearly demonstrated that ε-martensite with hexagonal symmetry appears as an intermediate structure during the plastic deformation of SUS304 stainless steel. In addition to stacking faults and dislocations, interfaces between the twin structures presumably play a key role in the formation of ε-martensite.     

Odor-context effects in free recall after a short retention interval: A new methodology for controlling adaptation

The present study investigated context effects of incidental odors in free recall after a short retention interval (5 min). With a short retention interval, the results are not confounded by extraneous odors or encounters with the experimental odor and possible rehearsal during a long retention interval. A short study time condition (4 s per item), predicted not to be affected by adaptation to the odor, and a long study time condition (8 s per item) were used. Additionally, we introduced a new method for recovery from adaptation, where a dissimilar odor was briefly presented at the beginning of the retention interval, and we demonstrated the effectiveness of this technique. An incidental learning paradigm was used to prevent overshadowing from confounding the results. In three experiments, undergraduates (N = 200) incidentally studied words presented one-by-one and received a free recall test. Two pairs of odors and a third odor having different semantic-differential characteristics were selected from 14 familiar odors. One of the odors was presented during encoding, and during the test, the same odor (same-context condition) or the other odor within the pair (different-context condition) was presented. Without using a recovery-from-adaptation method, a significant odor-context effect appeared in the 4-s/item condition, but not in the 8-s/item condition. Using the recovery-from-adaptation method, context effects were found for both the 8- and the 4-s/item conditions. The size of the recovered odor-context effect did not change with study time. There were no serial position effects. Implications of the present findings are discussed.     

The role of verbal labels in the judgment of orientation and location

In an earlier study it was found that judgments of right-left orientations and locations were more difficult than judgments of up-down only when spatial words were used in the tasks. Experiments are reported in which pictures of many objects were presented to eliminate the possibility that subjects in previous studies had used strategies specific to single-stimulus tasks. In experiment 1, right-left orientations were judged more slowly than up-down orientations both when the spatial words were used and when arbitrary letters replaced the spatial words. In experiment 2, judgments of the right-left locations of pictures took longer than judgments of their up-down locations only when spatial words were used in the task; the right-left difficulty was eliminated when arbitrary letters replaced the words. The differential effect of words and letters in location judgments seems to be due to the different coding strategies adopted by subjects under the two conditions. It is concluded that a right-left difficulty does not depend on the use of spatial terms: word and letter conditions yield different results only when the task permits different judgments to be made under the two conditions.