Easily perceived, easily remembered? Perceptual interference produces a double dissociation between metamemory and memory performance

A recent candidate for explaining metamemory judgments is the perceptual fluency hypothesis, which proposes that easily perceived items are predicted to be remembered better, regardless of actual memory performance (Rhodes & Castel Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 137:615–625, 2008). In two experiments, we used the perceptual interference manipulation to test this hypothesis. In Experiment 1, participants were presented with intact and backward-masked words during encoding, followed by a metamemory prediction (a list-wide judgment of learning, JOL) and then a free recall test. Participants predicted that intact words would be better recalled, despite better actual memory for words in the perceptual interference condition, yielding a crossed double dissociation between predicted and actual memory performance. In Experiment 2, JOLs were made after each study word. Item-by-item JOLs were likewise higher for intact than for backward-masked words, despite similar actual memory performance for both types of words. The results are consistent with the perceptual fluency hypothesis of metamemory and are discussed in terms of experience-based and theory-based metamemory judgments.     

Disaster threat and justice sensitivity: a terror management perspective

Based on terror management theory, we tested the idea that reminders of death strengthen justice sensitivity. In Study 1, we exposed participants to three different kinds of death‐related pictures (terrorism vs. natural disasters vs. graveyards) or neutral pictures. The results showed that death‐related visual material led to more justice sensitivity from three perspectives (victim, observer, and perpetrator) than neutral visual material. Likewise, Study 2 indicated that fake newspaper articles claiming that the likelihood of terrorism is very high (vs. low) strengthened these three justice sensitivity types. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

Sinnott-Armstrong,Walter, ed., Moral Psychology,Volume 1. The Evolution of Morality: Adaptations and Innateness,Cambridge, Mass: The MIT Press, 2008, pp. xix + 583, US$30.00/£17.95 (paper)

In the opening section of this paper we spell out an account of our naïve view of bodily sensations that is of historical and philosophical significance. This account of our shared view of bodily sensations captures common ground between Descartes, who endorses an error theory regarding our everyday thinking about bodily sensations, and Berkeley, who is more sympathetic with common sense. In the second part of the paper we develop an alternative to this account and discuss what is at stake in deciding between these two ways of understanding our everyday view. In the third and final part of the paper we offer an argument in favour of our alternative.     

Consciousness-Dependence and the Explanatory Gap

Contrary to certain rumours, the mind-body problem is alive and well. So argues Joseph Levine in Purple Haze: The Puzzle of Consciousness . The main argument is simple enough. Considerations of causal efficacy require us to accept that subjective experiential, or 'phenomenal', properties are realized in basic non-mental, probably physical properties. But no amount of knowledge of those physical properties will allow us conclusively to deduce facts about the existence and nature of phenomenal properties. This failure of deducibility constitutes an explanatory problem - an explanatory gap - but does not imply the existence of immaterial mental properties. Levine introduced this notion of the explanatory gap almost two decades ago. Purple Haze allows Levine to situate the explanatory gap in a broader philosophical context. He engages with those who hold that the explanatory gap is best understood as implying anti-materialist metaphysical conclusions. But he also seeks to distance himself from contemporary naturalistic philosophical theorizing about consciousness by arguing that reductive and eliminative theories of consciousness all fail. Levine's work is best seen as an attempt to firmly establish a definite status for the mind-body problem, i.e. that the mind-body problem is a real, substantive epistemological problem but emphatically not a metaphysical one. Because Levine's work is tightly focused upon contemporary Anglophone analytic philosophy of mind, there is little discussion of the broader conceptual background to the mind-body problem. My aim here is to place Levine's work in a broader conceptual context. In particular, I focus on the relationship between consciousness and intentionality in the belief that doing so will allow us better to understand and evaluate Levine's arguments and their place in contemporary theorizing about mentality and consciousness.     

On the validity of implicit association measures of personality traits

Participants (N = 200) completed self-report and implicit association (IAT) measures of Extraversion, Conscientiousness, and Emotional Stability. Peer trait ratings and supervisor ratings of job performance were also collected. Results suggested low convergence between IAT and self-report trait measures. Cognitive ability and self-positive bias both explained significant portions of the method variance expressed by IAT measures. Correlations between IAT trait measures and job performance were statistically non-significant, of similar magnitudes to their self-report counterparts, and of magnitudes consistent with past research on criterion validities of self-report trait measures. The results offer only very limited support for the use of IAT trait measures in applied assessment settings.     

Paradox lost: Understanding vague predicates

Abstract

The paper is concerned with the status of vague predicates. It is argued that they are for the most part ‘classifiers’, which are covertly comparatives and name not monadic properties but relations. The Sorites Paradox, it is claimed, is thus defused and a verdict theory of vague predicates is presented. Our practice in using vague words is described and it is contended that in our use of these predicates we always have a permanent possibility of independent demarcation. Wittgenstein's picture of the wall and the swamp is deployed to avoid the Transition Problem and it is argued against Fregeans that we need vague language for the advancement of knowledge and understanding.     

Stereotypes and stereotyping: What's the brain got to do with it?

Influential social-psychological models suggest that perceivers frequently use information-processing strategies that result in the stereotype-based construal and treatment of other people. To elucidate in greater detail when, why, and how social encounters elicit stereotyping, researchers have begun to incorporate neuroscientific tools into their repertoire of investigative methods. The current article reviews these studies and considers their significance in light of existing theories of person perception, knowledge representation, and impression formation. Finally, using the concrete example of stereotyping, benefits and pitfalls of adopting a social neuroscience approach are discussed.     

Dreading the boards: stress response to a competitive audition characterized by social-evaluative threat

The capacity of psychosocial stressors to provoke the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis has been demonstrated to vary depending upon a number of psychological factors. Laboratory stressors characterized by social-evaluative threat are proposed to be the most efficacious in the elicitation of a cortisol stress response. Salivary cortisol, cardiovascular, and subjective responses of 16 healthy adults facing a naturalistic stressor characterized by social-evaluative threat (competitive performance auditions) were examined. Audition exposure was sufficient to provoke significant cortisol, arterial blood pressure (systolic and diastolic), and subjective stress responses. Cortisol response reactivity (area under the curve with respect to increase [AUCi]) also correlated with participants' subjective rating of social-evaluative threat. The competitive performance audition context is therefore considered a promising context in which to further explore cortisol responsivity to social-evaluative threat.     

Do hands attract attention?

Social stimuli, like faces (Kanwisher, McDermott, & Chun, 1997) or bodies (Downing, Jiang, Shuman, & Kanwisher, 2001), engage specific areas within the visual cortex. Behavioural research reveals an attentional bias to these same stimuli (Ro, Friggel, & Lavie, 2007). The current study examined whether there is an attentional bias towards hands, and whether such a bias is distinct from any bias towards human bodies. In a two-alternative, forced-choice dot-probe task, participants saw two side-by-side pictures for 500 ms. A probe dot then appeared on either side and participants indicated where the dot appeared. Participants were significantly faster to respond when the probe location coincided with the location of pictures of bodies, hands, or feet, compared to dogs, starfish, hand tools, toaster ovens, inverted hands, or inverted bodies. Results suggest an attentional bias to bodies and body parts but found no evidence of a difference in attentional advantage of hands over bodies or feet.