Conditional tonic stimulus control of nonspecific arousal

Subjects performed a reaction time (RT) task in the presence of colored indirect lighting which had previously been associated with either sporadic electric shock (Unsafe context) or no shock (Safe context). Autonomic and cortical processes were influenced by the visual context in two ways. Nonspecific arousal was elevated in the Unsafe context as compared with the Safe context (larger SCR and more accelerative HR change elicited by the RT warning stimulus, and retarded habituation of the middle component of the slow cortical potential during the warning stimulus). In addition, information processing may have been impaired in the Unsafe as compared to the Safe context, since the earliest component of the SCR and the N100 component of the auditory evoked potential were both reduced. Higher frequency of unelicited SCR was observed following changes from a Safe to an Unsafe context than with reverse changes, during the association of these contexts with shock, but this was the only evidence of direct tonic conditioning. In general, the results demonstrate the degree to which psychophysiological processes may be influenced by tonic environmental conditions.     

The topics in medieval logic

The topics is a theory of argumentation based upon topoi or in Latin loci. The medieval logicians used works by Aristotle and Boethius as their sources for this doctrine, but they developed it in a rather original way. The topics became a higher-level analysis of arguments which are non-valid from a purely formal point of view, but where it is none the less legitimate to infer the conclusion from the premiss(es). In this connection the topics give rise to a number of discussions about the form and the matter of arguments. Further the topic contribute to the elaboration of the important doctrine of the second intentions, i.e. higher-level concepts of the particular things. In some respects the topics may be said to form a link between formal and informal logic. The topics vanished as a part of logic at the end of the Middle Ages, perhaps because the medieval logicians never got rid of Boethius' claim to have compiled a complete list of the loci, which was an unlucky one. The topics does not have an exact parallel in modern formal logic, but some reflections on non-formal argumentation by recent authors contain certain resemblances to it.     

Influence of Peers’ Types of Trust on Trust Repair: The Role of Apologies

This study aims to answer the question how previous trust experiences contextualize trust repair efforts. The concepts of calculus-based and relational trust are utilized to show the influence of the kind of trust on trust repair tactics, specifically apologies. We focus on a neglected referent of trust, that is trust between peers, and elucidate apology and its complements that might be effective between peers. We propose that the effectiveness of apologies and its specific complements depend not only on trust breach but also on the type of trust prior to a breach. Specifically, we claim that when apology is complemented with compensation or external attributions, these tactics repair trust more effectively in calculus-based trust. But, when apology is complemented with empathy, acknowledgment of violated norms, and extensive involvement, these tactics can effectively repair trust in relational trust. The paper aims to contribute to our understanding of apologies and the effectiveness of it under different conditions.     

A set of 150 pictures with morphologically complex English compound names: Norms for name agreement,familiarity, image agreement,and visual complexity

We present a set of 150 pictures with morphologically complex English compound names. The pictures were collected from various sources and were standardized to appear as grayscale line drawings of a fixed size. All the compounds had two constituents and were primarily of the noun–noun type. Following previous studies, we collected name agreement (percentage and H), familiarity, image agreement, and visual complexity norms, as well as frequency estimates for the whole compound word and its first and second constituents. These pictures and their corresponding norms (available from the Psychonomic Society's supplemental archive) are a valuable tool in the study of the morphological representation of complex words in language processing.     

Homophonic context effects when naming Japanese kanji: evidence for processing costs?

The current study investigated the effects of phonologically related context pictures on the naming latencies of target words in Japanese and Chinese. Reading bare words in alphabetic languages has been shown to be rather immune to effects of context stimuli, even when these stimuli are presented in advance of the target word (e.g., Glaser & Düngelhoff, 1984 ; Roelofs, 2003 ). However, recently, semantic context effects of distractor pictures on the naming latencies of Japanese kanji (but not Chinese hànzì) words have been observed (Verdonschot, La Heij, & Schiller, 2010 ). In the present study, we further investigated this issue using phonologically related (i.e., homophonic) context pictures when naming target words in either Chinese or Japanese. We found that pronouncing bare nouns in Japanese is sensitive to phonologically related context pictures, whereas this is not the case in Chinese. The difference between these two languages is attributed to processing costs caused by multiple pronunciations for Japanese kanji.     

Different selection principles of freestanding and bound morphemes in language production

Freestanding and bound morphemes differ in many (psycho)linguistic aspects. Some theorists have claimed that the representation and retrieval of freestanding and bound morphemes in the course of language production are governed by similar processing mechanisms. Alternatively, it has been proposed that both types of morphemes may be selected for production in different ways. In this article, the authors first review the available experimental evidence related to this topic and then present new experimental data pointing to the notion that freestanding and bound morphemes are retrieved following distinct processing principles: freestanding morphemes are subject to competition, bound morphemes not.     

Learning to achieve perfect timesharing: architectural implications of Hazeltine, Teague, and Ivry (2002)

E. Hazeltine, D. Teague, and R. B. Ivry have presented data that have been interpreted as evidence against a central bottleneck. This article describes simulations of their Experiments 1 and 4 in the ACT-R cognitive architecture, which does possess a central bottleneck in production execution. The simulation model is capable of accounting for the emergence of near-perfect timesharing in Experiment 1 and the detailed data on the distribution of response times from Experiment 4. With practice, the central bottleneck in ACT-R will be reduced to a maximum of 50 ms (1 production cycle) and can often be much less, depending on timing of stages and variability in their times. The authors also show, with a mathematical analysis of E. Hazeltine et al.'s Experiment 2, that the expected dual costs for these kinds of highly practiced tasks will be small in many circumstances, often under 10 ms.     

Modeling parallelization and flexibility improvements in skill acquisition: from dual tasks to complex dynamic skills

Emerging parallel processing and increased flexibility during the acquisition of cognitive skills form a combination that is hard to reconcile with rule-based models that often produce brittle behavior. Rule-based models can exhibit these properties by adhering to 2 principles: that the model gradually learns task-specific rules from instructions and experience, and that bottom-up processing is used whenever possible. In a model of learning perfect time-sharing in dual tasks (Schumacher et al., 2001), speedup learning and bottom-up activation of instructions can explain parallel behavior. In a model of a complex dynamic task (Carnegie Mellon University Aegis Simulation Program [CMU-ASP], Anderson et al., 2004), parallel behavior is explained by the transition from serially organized instructions to rules that are activated by both top-down (goal-driven) and bottom-up (perceptually driven) factors. Parallelism lets the model opportunistically reorder instructions, leading to the gradual emergence of new task strategies.     

Measurement of Depressive Symptoms in Women With Breast Cancer and Women With Clinical Depression: A Differential Item Functioning Analysis

Differential item functioning (DIF) analyses of the Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II) were conducted on samples of 267 women with breast cancer and 294 women with clinical depression. Patterns of items in which there was significant and nonsignificant DIF were identified using statistical tests and measures of DIF effect size. At the most general level, 15 of 21 BDI-II items were associated with nontrivial DIF suggesting that the item responses of these samples do not reflect the same underlying construct. Factor analyses of the BDI-II using a psychometrically defensible method for item level factor analysis supported the conclusions from the DIF analyses. These findings suggest that researchers and practitioners should apply caution when interpreting self-report depression symptoms in breast cancer patients.