Repetition blindness reveals differences between the representations of manipulable and nonmanipulable objects

We used repetition blindness to investigate the nature of the representations underlying identification of manipulable objects. Observers named objects presented in rapid serial visual presentation streams containing either manipulable or nonmanipulable objects. In half the streams, 1 object was repeated. Overall accuracy was lower when streams contained 2 different manipulable objects than when they contained only nonmanipulable objects or a single manipulable object. In addition, nonmanipulable objects induced repetition blindness, whereas manipulable objects were associated with a repetition advantage. These findings suggest that motor information plays a direct role in object identification. Manipulable objects are vulnerable to interference from other objects associated with conflicting motor programs, but they show better individuation of repeated objects associated with the same action. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).     

Dissociating viewpoint costs in mental rotation and object recognition

In a mental rotation task, participants must determine whether two stimuli match when one undergoes a rotation in 3-D space relative to the other. The key evidence for mental rotation is the finding of a linear increase in response times as objects are rotated farther apart. This signature increase in response times is also found in recognition of rotated objects, which has led many theorists to postulate mental rotation as a key transformational procedure in object recognition. We compared mental rotation and object recognition in tasks that used the same stimuli and presentation conditions and found that, whereas mental rotation costs increased relatively linearly with rotation, object recognition costs increased only over small rotations. Taken in conjunction with a recent brain imaging study, this dissociation in behavioral performance suggests that object recognition is based on matching of image features rather than on 3-D mental transformations.     

The interference effect of men's handling of muscular action figures on a lexical decision task

It has been shown in previous work [Action figures and men. Sex Roles 53, 877–885] that male participants who handled extremely muscular action figures had lower body esteem than those who did not handle action figures or a Ken doll. However, the internal mechanisms that dictated this effect are unclear. Therefore, the current study extended this previous work by having male participants handle action figures of varying muscularity and completing a lexical decision task with target words that consisted of both positive and negative body words and feeling words in order to determine if males would be primed to think negatively about their bodies and self or if positive thoughts about their bodies and self would be interfered with. The results show that those participants who handled the extremely muscular action figures responded significantly more slowly to feeling positive words (e.g., content, confident) and marginally more slowly to body positive words (e.g., muscle, bicep) than those who did not handle any action figures. Overall, this suggests that the interference of positive words, not the priming of negative words, is the internal mechanism that produces the decreased body image satisfaction after exposure to muscular stimuli. Implications and future research are discussed.     

A test of the tau-dot hypothesis of braking control in the real world

A controlled experiment used instrumented vehicles in a real-world driving task to compare D. N. Lee's (1976) tau-dot hypothesis of braking control with an alternative based on the direct estimation and control of ideal deceleration (T. Yates, M. Harris, & P. Rock, 2004). Drivers braked to stop as closely as possible to a visual target from different starting speeds and times-to-contact. The data provided little support for the tau-dot hypothesis, and analysis suggested that braking in the real world is better explained by a direct deceleration strategy.     

The death of a mind: a study of Shakespeare's Richard III

Some of the most difficult aspects of our work involve our encounters with states of mind which are steeped in and spread violence. In these circumstances, we experience our best efforts to offer empathic presence and thought to avoid being assaulted and obliterated. In these instances, a figure from literature depicting the details in question may come to our aid. In the play popularly known as Richard III,William Shakespeare depicts how the state of mind which is etched by grievance and committed to revenge may impose the 'winter of (its) discontent' upon the sunny dispositions of others' healthy, integrated functioning. Shakespeare masterfully depicts Richard's cunning and malice, but he also illustrates how this vengeful state uses guile and 'changes of shape' to seduce its way past protective boundaries, utilizing the human qualities of trust, open-heartedness and longing as pathways for invasion, betrayal and emotional devastation. This paper will view excerpts of the play's text from a psychoanalytic perspective which suggests that several clear lessons about this obliterative state of mind may be gleaned: that grievance can only operate to spread grievance and destruction; that our open-hearted and trusting qualities do make us vulnerable to such invasion and betrayal, but that our humanity is also the only avenue for rescue from this plight. In addition a clear lesson is offered about the value of protected 'sanctuary', that is, mental space where our most potent tool in these circumstances, our discerning minds, might find residence.     

Elemental representations of stimuli in associative learning

This article reviews evidence and theories concerning the nature of stimulus representations in Pavlovian conditioning. It focuses on the elemental approach developed in stimulus sampling theory (R. C. Atkinson & W. K. Estes, 1963; R. R. Bush & F. Mosteller, 1951b) and extended by I. P. L. McLaren and N. J. Mackintosh (2000, 2002) and contrasts this with models that invoke notions of configural representations that uniquely code for different patterns of stimulus inputs (e.g., J. M. Pearce, 1987, 1994; R. A. Rescorla & A. R. Wagner, 1972; A. R. Wagner & S. E. Brandon, 2001). The article then presents a new elemental model that emphasizes interactions between stimulus elements. This model is shown to explain a range of behavioral findings, including those (e.g., negative patterning and biconditional discriminations) traditionally thought to be beyond the explanatory capabilities of elemental models. Moreover, the model offers a ready explanation for recent findings reported by R. A. Rescorla (2000, 2001, 2002b) concerning the way that stimuli with different conditioning histories acquire associative strength when conditioned in compound.     

Am I doing better than you? That depends on whether you ask me in English or Chinese: Self-enhancement effects of language as a cultural mindset prime

Westerners tend to judge themselves positively unless their failure relative to others is obvious, in which case they tend to distance themselves from outperforming others. Whether this tendency to self-enhance in social-comparison situations is universal or culture-bound is hotly debated. Rather than construe self-enhancement as either universal or culture-bound, we propose that its effects depend on the cultural mindset that is salient at the moment of self-reflection. A cultural mindset is a mental representation containing culture-congruent content, procedures, and goals. We focused on individual and collective mindsets, using language as an unobtrusive mindset prime and predicting that people would be more self-enhancing when an individual mindset was made salient by using English than when a collective mindset was made salient by using Chinese. Three studies supported this hypothesis. Chinese students self-enhanced (rating themselves as better than others and distancing themselves from outperforming others) more when primed with an individual mindset.