An examination of the lateralized abstractive/form specific model using MiXeD-CaSe primes

CaSe AlTeRnAtIoN effects on the two cerebral hemispheres were studied in a lateralized visual lexical decision task with 32 right-handed participants. The study aimed to compare two well-known lateralization theories, the two processing modes and the abstractive/form-specific theories, that differ in the predictions regarding case alternation effects on the hemispheres. The experiment employed the masked priming paradigm, where prime and target words were presented in mixed case. The results of the experiment demonstrated no hemispheric differences in priming size when prime and target were similar in (mixed) case, thus were in line with the two modes theory. However, a new interpretation to the abstractive/form-specific model may also account for the results.     

Is the Generality Problem too General?

Reliabilism holds that knowledge is true belief reliably caused. Reliabilists should say something about individuating processes; critics deny that the right degree of generality can be specified without arbitrariness. It is argued that this criticism applies as well to processes mentioned in scientific explanations. The gratuitous puzzles created thereby show that the "generality problem" is illusory.     

Fear‐then‐relief,mindlessness, and cognitive deficits

The assumption that mindlessness underlies the effectiveness of the ‘fear‐then‐relief’ social influence technique has been verified in four studies. The first two experiments indicated that compliance of those experiment participants who were made to function on the thoughtful level under a ‘fear‐then‐relief’ condition decreases to the level observed in the control group. The other two experiments were to analyze the cognitive functioning of people who at first experience fear and then a sudden and unexpected relief. The first of these experiments indicated that the amount of time needed to detect the expression of emotion on other persons' faces is prolonged, and the second of these latter two experiments that the participants' arithmetical abilities are impaired (mental addition and subtraction of three two‐digit numbers). Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Psychodynamik und neurophysiologischer Befund bei einem Patienten mit einer zwanghaften Lesestörung

The present single case study is aimed to investigate neuro-physiological correlates of checking and ordering compulsions in a 40 years old patient suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) by means of the functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) method. After the presentation of the psychogenesis and psychodynamic of the OCD case, the cardinal symptom, a compulsive reading disturbance, is described in detail. Based on the symptom analysis eight different texts, hierarchically arranged by their degrees of difficulty were composed and presented to the patient for reading during fMRI. The results of the fMRI during symptom provocation display significant increase of activation in fronto-thalamic-cortical neural circuits with the occurence of compulsive reading disturbances compared with unproblematic texts and with the reading of a control subject. The findings are discussed in relation to the neurobiologic literature as well as to an object-psychological model of the OCD.     

Self‐Disclosure and the Liking of Participants in Reality TV

Reality TV shows are characterized by the very intimate self‐disclosure of their participants early on in the shows. In everyday interactions, however, such intimate self‐disclosure is welcomed only when it evolves gradually. This discrepancy between reality shows and real life apparently contradicts previous research documenting the similarity between real relationships and relationships with media characters. The current research explores this apparent contradiction by examining whether the relationship between self‐disclosure and liking and the rules about the timing of self‐disclosure that apply in everyday interactions apply in reality TV. Study 1 shows that viewers prefer characters who make early intimate disclosures, and Study 2 shows that they prefer this disclosure to evolve gradually and become more intimate, as in real relationships.     

The Effect of Genetic Counseling on Knowledge and Perceptions Regarding Risks for Breast Cancer

In 1994, a clinic for cancer risk counseling was opened at Hadassah University Hospital in Jerusalem. Most of the counselees have been women who had breast cancer and/or a relative with breast cancer. In order to evaluate the effect of this counseling on women's knowledge and perceptions regarding the risks for breast cancer, a questionnaire was given before and after the counseling session to 60 healthy women who came to the clinic because they have relatives with breast cancer. According to the genetic counselors' estimations, most of these women had a significantly increased risk (compared to the general population) of developing cancer. Before counseling, the women overestimated the population risk for breast cancer, the contribution of heredity to morbidity of cancer, and their own risks to get cancer. After counseling session, they gave reduced estimates, closer to the real ones. The subjective perceptions regarding these risks were reduced after counseling, except for the perceptions regarding their relativerisks which have not changed after the counseling. About 90% of the women who came to the clinic wanted to be tested for genetic predisposition to cancer. For most of these women, the expectations that the test can rule out a genetic predisposition to cancer became more realistic after the counseling. The option to first test an affected relative was offered to all families, and a test was actually conducted in 75% of the families.     

All employees are equal,but some are more equal than others: dominance,agreeableness, and status inconsistency among men and women

Status inconsistency is a situation in which there is an objective or subjective mismatch between, for example, a person’s education and his/her income. This mismatch may transform into status enhancement, wherein rewards exceed one’s human capital, or into status detraction, wherein one’s human capital exceeds one’s rewards. Although status inconsistency affects employees’ attitudes and behaviours, little is known about individual differences in this variable. The current study investigates whether the relationships of agreeableness and dominance—with objective and subjective status inconsistency vary by gender. We analysed objective and subjective input and return statuses among a sample of 375 employees. We found that men who expressed a gender-non-congruent trait, namely agreeableness, experienced an objective backlash effect compared with dominant men, whereas women who expressed a gender-non-congruent trait, namely dominance, did not experience a backlash effect compared with agreeable women. In addition, our results show that agreeable employees, both men and women, perceive themselves as status-enhanced when in fact they are not. Finally, we show that objective status inconsistency mediates the relationships of agreeableness and dominance with subjective status inconsistency.     

Auditioning the distinctiveness account: Expanding the production effect to the auditory modality reveals the superiority of writing over vocalising

The production effect (PE) documents the advantage in memory performance for words that are read aloud during study, rather than words that are read silently. Until now, the PE was examined in the visual modality, as the participants read the study words. In the present study, we extended the PE phenomenon and used the auditory modality at study. This novel methodology provides a critical test of the distinctiveness account. Accordingly, the participants heard the study words and learned them by vocal production (saying aloud) or by writing, followed by a free recall test. The use of the auditory modality yielded a memory advantage for words that were written during study over words that were vocally produced. We explain this result in light of the encoding distinctiveness account, suggesting that the PE is determined by the number of different encoding processes involved in learning, emphasising the essential role of active production.     

Right visual-field advantage in the attentional blink: Asymmetry in attentional gating across time and space

When two targets are presented in a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP), recognition of the second target (T2) is usually reduced when presented 150–500 ms after the first target, demonstrating an attentional blink (AB). Previous studies have shown a left visual-field (LVF) advantage in T2 recognition, when T2 was embedded in one of two streams, demanding top-down attention for its recognition. Here, we explored the impact of bottom-up saliency on spatial asymmetry in the AB. When T2 was spatially shifted outside from the RSVP, creating an abrupt onset of T2, right T2s showed a right visual-field (RVF) advantage. In lag-1 trials, right T2s were not only better recognized, but also showed a low T1-T2 order error rate. In contrast, recognized left T2s exhibited high order error rate. Without abrupt onset, symmetrical AB was found and order error rate was similarly low in both sides. Follow-up experiments showed that, while RVF advantage was related to bottom-up saliency, order errors were affected by T1 mask. The discrepancy between LVF and RVF advantage in the AB could be resolved in terms of two mechanisms of attentional gating: top-down attentional gating, which is biased towards LVF, and bottom-up attentional gating, which is biased towards RVF.