Intersubjective model of value transmission: parents using perceived norms as reference when socializing children

What values do parents want to transmit to children? The intersubjective model of value transmission posits that parents want to transmit not only the values they personally endorse but also the values they perceive to be normatively important in the society. The present research shows support to this premise. Furthermore, Studies 1 and 2 revealed that the use of perceived norms is moderated by families' social contexts and parents' personality: It was particularly pronounced among parents who were immigrants, who had a stronger need for closure, and who were more conforming. In addition, Studies 3 and 4 demonstrated that parents' perceived norms can explain actual value transmission: Values parents perceived to be normatively important were to some extent internalized by children. The intersubjective model paves some new directions for value transmission research, contributes to the understanding of cultural transmission and cultural change, and extends the intersubjective approach to culture.     

When should I trust my gut? Linking domain expertise to intuitive decision-making effectiveness

Despite a growing body of scholarship on the concept of intuition, there is a scarcity of empirical research spotlighting the circumstances in which intuitive decision making is effective relative to analytical decision making. Seeking to address this deficiency, we conducted two laboratory studies assessing the link between domain expertise (low versus high) and intuitive decision-making effectiveness. These studies involved non-decomposable tasks across divergent expertise domains: basketball in Study 1 and designer handbag authentication in Study 2. Across both studies, and consistent with our overarching hypothesis, we found that the effectiveness of intuition relative to analysis is amplified at a high level of domain expertise. Taken together, our results demonstrate the importance of domain expertise in intuitive decision making and carry a number of theoretical and practical implications.     

Congruity influences memory and judgments of learning during survival processing

A recent line of research has suggested that memory systems evolved to encode fitness-relevant information more effectively than other types of information—a phenomenon known as the “survival processing effect” (Nairne, Thompson, & Pandeirada Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 33:263–273, 2007). However, the basis for the effect has been debated. In addition, it is unknown whether or not individuals will adjust their judgments of learning (JOLs) to reflect the survival processing effect. In three experiments, participants rated 16 words for their relevance to a survival scenario and another 16 words for their relevance to a bank robbery scenario. In Experiment 1A (with no JOLs), the survival processing effect emerged; in Experiment 1B (with JOLs), no survival processing effect emerged, but JOLs were higher in the survival condition. In both cases, these findings were confounded by higher relevance ratings in the survival condition. In Experiment 2, relevance was manipulated within each list, and the survival processing effect was eliminated. Instead, both recall and JOL magnitude were related to level of congruity between the words and type of processing. Together, these results provide further evidence for the role of congruity in the survival processing effect and JOLs.     

The closer the better: Hand proximity dynamically affects letter recognition accuracy

A growing literature has suggested that processing of visual information presented near the hands is facilitated. In this study, we investigated whether the near-hands superiority effect also occurs with the hands moving. In two experiments, participants performed a cyclical bimanual movement task requiring concurrent visual identification of briefly presented letters. For both the static and dynamic hand conditions, the results showed improved letter recognition performance with the hands closer to the stimuli. The finding that the encoding advantage for near-hand stimuli also occurred with the hands moving suggests that the effect is regulated in real time, in accordance with the concept of a bimodal neural system that dynamically updates hand position in external space.     

An exploration of attitudes toward the use of patient incentives to support diabetes self-management

Objective: To improve our understanding of the potential of incentives to enhance diabetes self-management (type 1 and type 2) and to integrate incentives into a conceptual model of diabetes self-management over time.

Design: A qualitative analysis of in-depth individual interviews with 12 patients and 9 providers.

Main outcome measures: Influence of time on patients’ needs for diabetes self-management technologies and on the use of incentives to drive behavioural changes.

Results: Ten of the 12 participants with diabetes (83%) were interested in using financial incentives to improve their diabetes self-management. We found that incentives can play two key roles in diabetes self-management: guide the learning phase during the creation of habits; and serve as an acknowledgement of efforts made in the stable phase, when providers typically only focus on the patients’ failures at self-management.

Conclusion: Patients seem receptive to the idea of financial incentives, which have the potential to support diabetes self-management through either small monetary amounts or tangible rewards. Incentives hold promise for supporting behaviour changes, especially in early stages of diabetes, but they require careful planning to avoid the undesired consequence of decreased intrinsic motivation.     

Substituting objects from consciousness: A review of object substitution masking

Object substitution masking (OSM) occurs when a sparse (e.g., four-dot), temporally trailing mask obscures the visibility of a briefly presented target. Here, we review theories of OSM: those that propose that OSM reflects the interplay between feedforward and feedback/reentrant neural processes, those that predict that feedforward processing alone gives rise to the phenomenon, and theories that focus on cognitive explanations, such as object updating. We discuss how each of these theories accommodates key findings from the OSM literature. In addition, we examine the relationship between OSM and other visual-cognitive phenomena, including object correspondence through occlusion, change blindness, metacontrast masking, backward masking, and visual short-term memory. Finally, we examine the level of processing at which OSM impairs target perception. Collectively, OSM appears to reflect the conditions under which the brain confuses two visual events for one when they are encoded with low spatiotemporal resolution, due to processing resources being otherwise occupied.     

Attending to objects: Endogenous cues can produce inhibition of return

Inhibition of Return (IOR) is effective in a wide range of experimental settings but has proven elusive under conditions of volitional (endogenous) attentional control. This result may be due to a continuing attentional bias towards the cued location. Here we ask whether IOR can be unmasked under endogenous cueing conditions when a predictive cue prevents such a bias. In Experiment 1, a central arrow directed attention endogenously to one end of a rectangular object. Attention initially radiated to an unpredicted location in the object but IOR later impaired target detection at that location. In Experiment 2, attention was directed endogenously to a dynamic object. While target detection was facilitated at a subsequent (and predicted) location of the rotating object, detection-latencies at its original location were slowed. Together the results show that it is possible to produce IOR using endogenous cues.     

Top-down control in time and space: Evidence from saccadic latencies and trajectories

Visual distractors disrupt the production of saccadic eye movements temporally, by increasing saccade latency, and spatially, by biasing the trajectory of the movement. The present research investigated the extent to which top-down control can be exerted over these two forms of oculomotor capture. In two experiments, people were instructed to make target directed saccades in the presence of distractors, and temporal and spatial capture were assessed simultaneously by measuring saccade latency and saccade trajectory curvature, respectively. In Experiment 1, an attentional control set manipulation was employed, resulting in the elimination of temporal capture, but only an attenuation of spatial capture. In Experiment 2, foreknowledge of the target location caused an attenuation of temporal capture but an enhancement of spatial capture. These results suggest that, whereas temporal capture is contingent on top-down control, the spatial component of capture is stimulus-driven.