The ontogeny of serial-order behavior in humans (Homo sapiens): representation of a list

The authors trained 3-, 4-, 7-, and 10-year-old children and adults (Homo sapiens) on a nonverbal serial-order task to respond to 5 items in a specific order. Knowledge of each item's sequential position was then examined using pairwise and triplet tests. Adults and 7- and 10-year-olds performed at high levels on both tests, whereas 3- and 4-year-olds did not. The latency to respond to the first item of a test pair or triplet was linearly related to that item's position in the training series for the 7- and 10-year-olds and adults, but not for the 3- and 4-year-olds. These data suggest that older children and adults, but not younger children, developed a well-integrated internal representation of the serial list.     

Objectivity in the eye of the beholder: divergent perceptions of bias in self versus others

Important asymmetries between self-perception and social perception arise from the simple fact that other people's actions, judgments, and priorities sometimes differ from one's own. This leads people not only to make more dispositional inferences about others than about themselves (E. E. Jones & R. E. Nisbett, 1972) but also to see others as more susceptible to a host of cognitive and motivational biases. Although this blind spot regarding one's own biases may serve familiar self-enhancement motives, it is also a product of the phenomenological stance of naive realism. It is exacerbated, furthermore, by people's tendency to attach greater credence to their own introspections about potential influences on judgment and behavior than they attach to similar introspections by others. The authors review evidence, new and old, of this asymmetry and its underlying causes and discuss its relation to other psychological phenomena and to interpersonal and intergroup conflict.     

Social anxiety in stuttering: measuring negative social expectancies

Much research has suggested that those who stutter are likely to be anxious. However, to date, little research on this topic has addressed the role of expectancies of harm in anxiety, which is a central construct of anxiety in modern clinical psychology. There are good reasons to believe that the anxiety of those who stutter is related to expectancies of social harm. Therefore, in the present study, 34 stuttering and 34 control participants completed the Fear of Negative Evaluation (FNE) Scale and the Endler Multidimensional Anxiety Scales-Trait (EMAS-T). The FNE data showed a significant difference between the stuttering and control participants, with a large effect size. Results suggested that, as a group, a clinical population of people who stutter has anxiety that is restricted to the social domain. For the EMAS-T, significant differences between groups were obtained for the two subtests that refer specifically to people and social interactions in which social evaluation might occur (Social Evaluation and New/Strange Situations) but not for the subtests that contained no specific reference to people and social interactions (Physical Danger and Daily Routines). These results were taken to suggest that those who stutter differ from control subjects in their expectation of negative social evaluation, and that the effect sizes are clinically significant. The findings also suggest that the FNE and the EMAS-T are appropriate psychological tests of anxiety to use with stuttering clients in clinical settings. The clinical and research implications of these findings are discussed, in terms of whether social anxiety mediates stuttering or is a simple by-product of stuttering. Possible laboratory explorations of this issue are suggested, and potential Cognitive Behavior Therapy packages for stuttering clients who might need them are discussed. EDUCATIONAL OBJECTIVES: The reader will be able to: (1) explain why expectancy of social threat or harm may be associated with stuttering; (2) name and describe two psychological tests that are suitable for assessment of the social threat or harm that may be associated with stuttering; and (3) explain how findings for the EMAS-T test in the present results suggest that expectancy of social threat or harm, but not other kinds of negative expectancy, are associated with stuttering.     

Detection of counter-changing contrast: second-order apparent motion without postrectification motion-energy analysis or salience mapping/feature tracking

The perception of 2nd-order, texture-contrast-defined motion was studied for apparent-motion stimuli composed of a pair of spatially displaced, simultaneously visible checkerboards. It was found that background-relative, counter-changing contrast provided the informational basis for the perception of 2nd-order apparent motion; motion began where contrast changed toward the contrast value of the background checkerboard and ended where contrast changed away from the background value. The perceived apparent motion was not attributable to either postrectification motion-energy analysis or salience-mapping/feature-tracking mechanisms. Parallel results for 1st-order, luminance-defined motion (H. S. Hock, L. A. Gilroy, & G. Harnett, 2002) suggest that counter-changing activation provides a common basis for the perception of both luminance- and texture-contrast-defined apparent motion.     

The US-preexposure effect in lithium-induced flavor-aversion conditioning is a consequence of blocking by injection cues

In 2 experiments, rats received flavor-aversion conditioning in which the unconditioned stimulus (US) was an orally consumed solution of lithium chloride (LiCl). The resulting aversion was not attenuated by giving preexposure to injections of LiCl, although such preexposure did attenuate aversions established using injected LiCl as the US (Experiment 1). This outcome suggests that blocking by injection-related cues is responsible for the US-preexposure effect observed in this situation. Experiment 2 confirmed this interpretation by showing that presenting such cues (by giving an injection of saline) at the time that the LiCl was drunk resulted in an attenuation of conditioning in animals preexposed to injections of LiCl. The US-preexposure effect obtained in these experiments can be explained solely in terms of blocking by injection cues, although other mechanisms may contribute to the effect seen in other flavor-aversion paradigms.     

Challenge point: a framework for conceptualizing the effects of various practice conditions in motor learning

The authors describe the effects of practice conditions in motor learning (e.g., contextual interference, knowledge of results) within the constraints of 2 experimental variables: skill level and task difficulty. They use a research framework to conceptualize the interaction of those variables on the basis of concepts from information theory and information processing. The fundamental idea is that motor tasks represent different challenges for performers of different abilities. The authors propose that learning is related to the information arising from performance, which should be optimized along functions relating the difficulty of the task to the skill level of the performer. Specific testable hypotheses arising from the framework are also described.     

A six-factor structure of personality-descriptive adjectives: solutions from psycholexical studies in seven languages

Standard psycholexical studies of personality structure have produced a similar 6-factor solution in 7 languages (Dutch, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Korean, Polish). The authors report the content of these personality dimensions and interpret them as follows: (a) a variant of Extraversion, defined by sociability and liveliness (though not by bravery and toughness); (b) a variant of Agreeableness, defined by gentleness, patience, and agreeableness (but also including anger and ill temper at its negative pole); (c) Conscientiousness (emphasizing organization and discipline rather than moral conscience); (d) Emotionality (containing anxiety, vulnerability, sentimentality, lack of bravery, and lack of toughness, but not anger or ill temper); (e) Honesty-Humility; (f) Intellect/Imagination/Unconventionality. A potential reorganization of the Big Five factor structure is discussed.     

Body image variability: the influence of body-composition information and neuroticism on young women's body dissatisfaction

The current studies consider the effect of body size, body composition feedback, and the moderating influence of neuroticism (N) on three measures of body dissatisfaction (BD) in young women. In Study One, normal-sized subjects who were given false feedback indicating that they were either fatter or leaner than average showed heightened BD compared to groups who received either accurate or no feedback about body size. There was no evidence of a moderating effect of N. In Study Two, thinner-than-average subjects who received accurate body-size feedback showed greater satisfaction than a control group receiving no information. For heavier than average subjects, feedback only increased BD for those low on N. Although these results show mixed support for N as a moderator, they are the first to show an effect of body composition information on BD.