Chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) intentional communication is not contingent upon food

Studies of great apes have revealed that they use manual gestures and other signals to communicate about distal objects. There is also evidence that chimpanzees modify the types of communicative signals they use depending on the attentional state of a human communicative partner. The majority of previous studies have involved chimpanzees requesting food items from a human experimenter. Here, these same communicative behaviors are reported in chimpanzees requesting a tool from a human observer. In this study, captive chimpanzees were found to gesture, vocalize, and display more often when the experimenter had a tool than when she did not. It was also found that chimpanzees responded differentially based on the attentional state of a human experimenter, and when given the wrong tool persisted in their communicative efforts. Implications for the referential and intentional nature of chimpanzee communicative signaling are discussed.     

A study of 60- to 89-mo.-old children's skill at writing numerals

The skill of writing numerals necessitates a certain developmental maturity. Studying the age at which children start to develop this skill and assessing problems they encounter while writing numerals should give direction to their training. From 8 schools a total of 267 children, ages 60 to 89 mo., were asked to write the numerals 1 to 9. Analysis showed that 80% of the children wrote most of the numerals correctly, 15% wrote inverted numerals, 2.0% wrote some numerals as letters, and 4% did not write certain numerals at all. In addition, 64% of children ages 60 to 65 mo. gave correct responses, and the perception of correct responses increased across age groups until 95% were correct in the group who were 84 to 89 mo. There was no significant difference between girls and boys in these writing skills.     

Emotional intelligence and social interaction

Two studies found positive relationships between the ability to manage emotions and the quality of social interactions, supporting the predictive and incremental validity of an ability measure of emotional intelligence, the Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT). In a sample of 118 American college students (Study 1), higher scores on the managing emotions subscale of the MSCEIT were positively related to the quality of interactions with friends, evaluated separately by participants and two friends. In a diary study of social interaction with 103 German college students (Study 2), managing emotions scores were positively related to the perceived quality of interactions with opposite sex individuals. Scores on this subscale were also positively related to perceived success in impression management in social interactions with individuals of the opposite sex. In both studies, the main findings remained statistically significant after controlling for Big Five personality traits.     

Using partially structured attitude measures to enhance the attitude-behavior relationship

This article recalls a classic scheme for categorizing attitude measures. One particular group of measures, those that rely on respondents' interpretations of partially structured stimuli, has virtually disappeared from attitude research. An attitude measure based on respondents' interpretation of partially structured stimuli is considered. Four studies employing such a measure demonstrate that it predicts unique variance in self-reported and actual behavior, beyond that predicted by explicit and contemporary implicit measures and regardless of whether the attitude object under consideration is wrought with social desirability concerns. Implications for conceptualizing attitude measurement and attitude-behavior relations are discussed.     

Expression influences the recognition of familiar faces

Face recognition has been assumed to be independent of facial expression. We used familiar and unfamiliar faces that were morphed from a happy to an angry expression within a given identity. Participants performed speeded two-choice decisions according to whether or not a face was familiar. Consistent with earlier findings, reaction times for classifications of unfamiliar faces were independent of facial expressions. In contrast, expression clearly influenced the recognition of familiar faces. with fastest recognition for moderately happy expressions. This suggests that representations of familiar faces for recognition preserve some information about typical emotional expressions.     

Actions blind to conceptually overlapping stimuli

Participants are worse at identifying spatial symbols (arrowheads) while performing spatially compatible manual key presses. The present experiments investigated the generality of this blindness effect to response-compatible stimuli. In Experiment 1 a left key press deteriorated the identification of left-pointing arrows, and a right key press deteriorated the perception of right-pointing arrows, independent of the hands used to press the key. Thus the blindness effect is based on codes of the distal response location rather than on the body-intrinsic anatomical connection of the hands. Experiment 2 extended the blindness effect to verbal responses and written position words (left, right, up, down). Vocalizing a position word blinded to directly compatible position words (e.g., left-left), but not to orthogonally compatible position words (e.g., left-down). This result suggests that the use of identical stimulus-response codes, and not the use of saliency-matching but distinct codes, suffices to produce blindness effects. Finally, Experiment 3 extended the blindness phenomenon beyond the spatial domain by demonstrating blindness between saying color words and perceiving color patches. Altogether, the experiments revealed action-induced blindness to be a phenomenon of broad empirical validity occurring whenever action and perception afford simultaneous access to the same conceptual codes.     

Perceiving action identity: how pianists recognize their own performances

Can skilled performers, such as artists or athletes, recognize the products of their own actions? We recorded 12 pianists playing 12 mostly unfamiliar musical excerpts, half of them on a silent keyboard. Several months later, we played these performances back and asked the pianists to use a 5-point scale to rate whether they thought they were the person playing each excerpt (1 = no, 5 = yes). They gave their own performances significantly higher ratings than any other pianist's performances. In two later follow-up tests, we presented edited performances from which differences in tempo, overall dynamic (i.e., intensity) level, and dynamic nuances had been removed. The pianists' ratings did not change significantly, which suggests that the remaining information (expressive timing and articulation) was sufficient for self-recognition. Absence of sound during recording had no significant effect. These results are best explained by the hypothesis that an observer's action system is most strongly activated during perception of self-produced actions.     

Avoidance and depression: the construction of the cognitive-behavioral avoidance scale

Previous research has demonstrated a relationship between avoidance and depression, although the nature of this relationship has been confused by inconsistent definitions of avoidance. Following a review of the construct of avoidance and an examination of past research, a new multidimensional measure of avoidance was developed and validated using an undergraduate student sample (245 females and 146 males). Four reliable factors reflecting combinations of cognitive/behavioral and social/nonsocial dimensions of avoidance were obtained from the factor analysis of the new scale, entitled the "Cognitive-Behavioral Avoidance Scale" (CBAS). The scale showed the predicted relationships with convergent and divergent measures used for construct validation. As predicted, subscales of the CBAS, as well as the overall scale score, were significantly related to the depression and anxiety criterion measures. The findings from this study suggest that avoidance may be an important construct in the psychosocial conceptualization of depression. In addition, this integrated measure of avoidance has potential utility for depression researchers. Suggestions for further scale development and research are provided.     

Effects of redundant visual stimuli on temporal order judgments

Four experiments were conducted in order to compare the effects of stimulus redundancy on temporal order judgments (TOJs) and reaction times (RTs). In Experiments 1 and 2, participants were presented in each trial with a tone and either a single visual stimulus or two redundant visual stimuli. They were asked to judge whether the tone or the visual display was presented first. Judgments of the relative onset times of the visual and the auditory stimuli were virtually unaffected by the presentation of redundant, rather than single, visual stimuli. Experiments 3 and 4 used simple RT tasks with the same stimuli, and responses were much faster to redundant than to single visual stimuli. It appears that the traditional speedup of RT associated with redundant visual stimuli arises after the stimulus detection processes to which TOJs are sensitive.     

You’ll see what you mean: Students encode equations based on their knowledge of arithmetic

This study investigated the roles of problem structure and strategy use in problem encoding. Fourth-grade students solved and explained a set of typical addition problems (e.g., ) and mathematical equivalence problems (e.g., or ). Next, they completed an encoding task in which they reconstructed addition and equivalence problems after viewing each for 5 s. Equivalence problems of the form overlap with a perceptual pattern found in traditional arithmetic problems (i.e., answer blank in final position), and students’ encoding was poorest on problems of this type. Individual differences in encoding the equivalence problems were related to variations in strategy use. Some students solved blank-final equivalence problems using the standard arithmetic strategy of performing all given operations on all given numbers. These students made more errors in encoding problem structure, but fewer errors in encoding the numbers, than did students who solved the problems using correct or other incorrect strategies. Moreover, students who expressed many strategies for solving the blank-final equivalence problems made fewer errors in encoding problem structure, but more errors in encoding the numbers, than did students who expressed only a single strategy. Results highlight that encoding is intended to guide action and that prior experience can simultaneously facilitate and interfere with accurate encoding.