Recall norms of common spaces and activities of college students

To collect normative data on familiar spaces and behaviors of college students, two recall tasks were performed. In Experiment 1, 219 undergraduates recalled spaces where they spend time. In Experiment 2,155 undergraduates recalled the kinds of activities they do in familiar spaces. The norms provided here include 40 spaces and 123 different behaviors. Gender differences and transituational behaviors are also reported.     

Traumatic stress, life events, and emotional support in women with metastatic breast cancer: cancer-related traumatic stress symptoms associated with past and current stressors.

This study examined levels of intrusion and avoidance symptoms and their relationships to past life stress, current emotional support, disease-related variables, and age in 125 women with metastatic breast cancer. The results indicate that a sizable proportion of these women experienced clinically significant levels of intrusion and avoidance symptoms related to their cancer, particularly those with both more stressful past life events and higher current levels of aversive emotional support. Additionally, both types of symptoms were associated with shorter time since recurrence, and avoidance symptoms were associated with smaller emotional support networks. These results indicate that metastatic breast cancer is an emotionally traumatic event for a significant proportion of women, particularly those with past life stressors and unsupportive social environments.     

Couple-responsible therapy process: positive proximal outcomes

Therapist-couple struggle vs. cooperation is linked to clinical outcome. This research conceptualizes and investigates treatment process as it relates to the occurrence of struggle versus cooperation. Models of couple-responsible and therapist-responsible process in couple therapy were developed. Couple-responsible process consists of enactments, accommodation, and inductive process. Therapist-responsible process consists of primary therapist-couple interaction, therapist interpretation, and direct instruction. In counterbalanced order, 25 couples were exposed to couple-responsible and therapist-responsible episodes during one therapy session. Couples reviewed videotapes of the episodes and completed measures of responsibility, struggle, and cooperation. Perceived responsibility was higher and struggle was lower during couple-responsible episodes. No difference in cooperation was found. Presence or absence of a contrast condition, where couples reported on one therapist process after already experiencing its opposite, led to main effects for responsibility and struggle, and mediated effects of struggle and cooperation. Generally speaking, responsibility was even higher during couple-responsible episodes and even lower during therapist-responsible episodes when contrast was present. Similarly, struggle was even lower during couple-responsible episodes and even higher during therapist-responsible episodes when contrast was present. For both couple-responsible and therapist-responsible episodes, cooperation was negatively affected by a shift from the prior, opposite therapist process. Significant proportions of the variance in responsibility, struggle, and cooperation, however, were not accounted for by therapist process alone.     

Appetitive behavior, compulsivity, and neurochemistry in Prader-Willi syndrome

Advances in genetic research have led to an increased understanding of genotype-phenotype relationships. Excessive eating and weight gain characteristic of Prader-Willi syndrome (PWS) have been the understandable focus of much of the research. The intense preoccupation with food, lack of satiation, and incessant food seeking are among the most striking features of PWS. It has become increasingly clear that the behavioral phenotype of PWS also includes symptoms similar to obsessive compulsive disorder, which in all probability interact with the incessant hunger and lack of satiation to engender the intense preoccupation and food seeking behavior that is characteristic of this disorder. Several lines of evidence suggest that genetic material on chromosome 15 may alter synthesis, release, metabolism, binding, intrinsic activity, or reuptake of specific neurotransmitters, or alter the receptor numbers and/or distribution involved in modulating feeding. Among the likely candidates are GABAnergic, serotonergic, and neuropeptidergic mechanisms. This review summarizes what is known about the appetitive behavior and compulsivity in PWS and discusses the possible mechanisms underlying these behaviors. MRDD Research Reviews 2000;6:125-130.     

Individual differences in word recognition latency

Previous studies of the effects of word characteristics on word recognition have used orthogonal combinations of word variables and have failed to consider individual differences. The present study examined word naming (Experiment 1) and lexical decision (Experiment 2) tasks using an unrestricted set of words and a correlational analysis. Individual differences were considered using a measure of the subjects’ knowledge of the English vocabulary. The results of Experiment 1 indicated that log (RT) for word naming is affected by word length, word frequency, and the number of syllables in the word; the results of Experiment 2 confirmed the effects of length and frequency but also showed that log (RT) is a function of the age at which the word is introduced to a child’s reading vocabulary. Subjects with a high vocabulary score were more rapid in Experiment 1 but were slower in Experiment 2, compared to subjects with a low vocabulary score. More importantly, high-vocabulary subjects, in both studies, were less affected by word length than the low-vocabulary subjects. The results suggest that subjects do differ in their reading strategy and that word length and word frequency may affect different stages in the word recognition process.     

Visual discrimination of shape by humans

Reaction times to tachistoscopic exposure and a card-sorting task are the two methods by which visual discrimination of shape is studied. The results of experiments using both methods tally, i.e. the order of difficulty of the following shapes was: (1) (easiest) circle vs. triangle; (2) circle vs. square; (3) square vs. triangle; (4) (most difficult) triangle vs. diamond. These results are compared with those obtained by Sutherland, using octopus, and it is concluded that it should be possible to establish to what extent the system of visual analysis in humans differs from that postulated for both octopus and rat.     

The influence of affective statements on performance on implicit and explicit memory tasks

Consumers are often exposed to brand names presented concurrently with information such as brand claims and warnings, prior to making product choices. As implicit memory has been implicated in the consumer choice process, two experiments were conducted to assess the influence of additional information, namely simple positive and negative statements, on implicit and explicit memory tasks. In Experiment 1, the mere presence of additional statements at study significantly reduced performance on a two‐alternatives forced recognition task. However, the same manipulation had no effect on implicit preference judgement task performance. The valence of the accompanying information had no effect on either task. In Experiment 2, using modified implicit and explicit choice tasks, performance on the former was unaffected by statement valence, whereas the latter task was. Hence, positive priming was obtained for brand names previously shown with negative information. The results of the experiments are discussed in relation to both implicit memory and consumer choice. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Fixation identification in centroid versus start-point modes using eye-tracking data

Fixation-identification algorithms, needed for analyses of eye movements, may typically be separated into three categories, viz. (i) velocity-based algorithms, (ii) area-based algorithms, and (iii) dispersion-based algorithms. Dispersion-based algorithms are commonly used but this application introduces some difficulties, one being optimization. Basically, there are two modes to reach this goal of optimization, viz., the start-point mode and the centroid mode. The aim of the present study was to compare and evaluate these two dispersion-based algorithms. Manual inspections were made of 1,400 fixations in each mode. Odds ratios showed that by using the centroid mode for fixation detection, a valid fixation is 2.86 times more likely to be identified than by using the start-point mode. Moreover, the algorithm based on centroid mode dispersion showed a good interpretation speed, accuracy, robustness, and ease of implementation, as well as adequate parameter settings.