Actors and actions: The role of agent behavior in infants' attribution of goals

Twelve-month-old infants attribute goals to both familiar, human agents and unfamiliar, non-human agents. They also attribute goal-directedness to both familiar actions and unfamiliar ones. Four conditions examined information 12-month-olds use to determine which actions of an unfamiliar agent are goal-directed. Infants who witnessed the agent interact contingently with a human confederate encoded the agent's actions as goal-directed; infants who saw a human confederate model an intentional stance toward the agent without the agent's participation, did not. Infants who witnessed the agent align itself with one of two potential targets before approaching that target encoded the approach as goal-directed; infants who did not observe the self-alignment did not encode the approach as goal-directed. A possible common underpinning of these two seemingly independent sources of information is discussed.     

Achievement goals and improvement following failure: moderating roles of self-compassion and contingency of self-worth

We examined whether mastery goals promote greater score improvement on a cognitive test than performance goals and whether self-compassion and contingency of self-worth moderated the effect. Participants received either mastery or performance goals manipulation, failed on a difficult test, and took the test again after receiving the correct answers. Those with mastery goals showed a greater score improvement than those with performance goals, although post-failure state self-esteem did not differ between the two conditions. Moreover, the goals had a greater effect among (a) those with low rather than high self-compassion and (b) those with high rather than low competition contingency of self-worth. The findings suggest that by framing the task as a challenge rather than a threat, mastery goals encourage people to learn from failure more so than performance goals, especially when under high ego-threat.     

Similarity-guided depth of retrieval: constraining at the front end.

Lee Brooks has done important work to show that categorization often reflects reliance on specific instances rather than on an abstract representation. His work on the advantages of using a diagnostic hypothesis to search medical stimuli has demonstrated how constraining what one looks for influences clinical reasoning. Similarly, cognitive control can be accomplished by constraining memory retrieval in ways that influence interpretation of a memory probe. Here, we report two experiments in which the similarity of study items constrained how test items were interrogated for an immediate memory test and thereby produced differences in the depth of retrieval. A novel procedure that tests foil memory was used to diagnose differences in similarity-guided retrieval depth.     

Roots of smile: a preterm neonates' study

Twenty-two preterm neonates were observed 1 h per neonate in the NICU. Ninety-five spontaneous smiles were recorded. Younger and smaller neonates showed more and longer spontaneous smiles than older and larger. The youngest neonate was 200 days from conception on the observational day. She was 511 g. This infant showed spontaneous smiles. The roots of spontaneous smiles are discussed.     

Testing response-stimulus equivalence relations using differential responses as a sample

This study tested the notion that an equivalence relation may include a response when differential responses are paired with stimuli presented during training. Eight normal adults learned three kinds of computer mouse movements as differential response topographies (R1, R2, and R3). Next, in matching-to-sample training, one of the response topographies was used to select a comparison stimulus B (B1, B2, or B3) conditionally upon presentation of sample stimulus A (A1, A2, or A3), and to select stimulus D (D1, D2, or D3) conditionally upon presentation of stimulus C (C1, C2, or C3). After two sample-comparison-response relations (ABR and CDR) were established, 18 sample-comparison relations were tested (BA, DC, RA, RB, RC, RD, AC, CA, AD, DA, BC, CB, BD, DB, AA, BB, CC, and DD). In the RA, RB, RC, and RD tests, the differential responses (R1, R2, and R3) were used as sample stimuli. All subjects made class-consistent comparison selections in the tests. This study provides evidence that responses may become members of an equivalence class.     

Visual discrimination in an orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus): measuring visual preference

Although previous studies have confirmed that trained orangutans visually discriminate between mammals and artificial objects, whether orangutans without operant conditioning can discriminate remains unknown. The visual discrimination ability in an orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus) with no experience in operant learning was examined using measures of visual preference. Sixteen color photographs of inanimate objects and of mammals with four legs were randomly presented to an orangutan. The results showed that the mean looking time at photographs of mammals with four legs was longer than that for inanimate objects, suggesting that the orangutan discriminated mammals with four legs from inanimate objects. The results implied that orangutans who have not experienced operant conditioning may possess the ability to discriminate visually.     

Mistaking the recent past for the present: false seeing by older adults

Results of three experiments revealed that older, as compared to young, adults are more reliant on context when "seeing" a briefly flashed word that was preceded by a prime. In a congruent condition, the prime was the same word as flashed (e.g., DIRT dirt) whereas in an incongruent condition, the prime differed in a single letter from the word that was flashed (DART dirt). Following their attempt to identify the flashed word, participants were asked to report whether they had "seen" the flashed word or, instead, had responded on some other basis (knowing or guessing). Older adults showed dramatically higher false seeing by reporting the prime on incongruent trials and claiming to have seen it flashed. This was true even though a titration procedure was used to equate the performance of young and older adults on baseline trials which did not provide a biasing context. Results of Experiment 3 related age differences in false seeing to willingness to respond when given the option to withhold responses. Convergence of results with those showing higher false memory and false hearing are interpreted as evidence that older adults are less able to avoid misleading effects of context. That lessened ability may be associated with decline in frontal lobe functioning.