No evidence that alcohol intoxication impairs judgments of learning in face recognition

Alcohol use is frequently involved in crime, making it crucial to understand the role of alcohol in facial recognition to maximize correct perpetrator identifications. Although the majority of the alcohol and face recognition research has investigated recognition with retrospective confidence judgments, we examined the effects of alcohol intoxication on face recognition with prospective metacognitive judgments. Participants (N = 54 university students without a history of hazardous alcohol/substance use) consumed either alcohol (mean breath alcohol concentration of 0.06 at pretest and 0.07 at post‐test) or a non‐alcoholic placebo drink. Participants then studied unfamiliar male and female faces and made judgments of learning (JOLs) for each face (i.e., predicted the likelihood of recognizing that face on a future memory test). After a brief distractor task, participants completed an old–new recognition test on which they attempted to distinguish the studied faces from new faces. It was found that the alcohol manipulation had minimal effect on face recognition performance or judgments of learning. Our results suggest that theory‐based cues about the effects of alcohol might play a greater role in retrospective judgments than prospective judgments. Although not a primary focus of the study, face recognition was better for male faces than female faces, and this occurred for both female and male participants. Limitations and implications of the research are discussed.     

Black Mountain College: A Creative Art Space Where It Was Safe to Fail

Black Mountain College is remembered as an artistic utopian alternative to institutional learning. Its faculty and students included some of the most important creative thinkers of the 20th century. Its foundation was built on the philosophy of “learning by doing.” But what made Black Mountain such a dynamic educational environment? Today, the financial burden of higher education places a lasting strain on students that inhibits creative growth. Does the educational structure of the college system impede our learning? Black Mountain was a legendary educational experiment, which offers a model for contemporary art education.     

The Contribution of Temperamental and Cognitive Factors to Childhood Anxiety Disorder Symptoms: A Closer Look at Negative Affect,Behavioral Inhibition,and Anxiety Sensitivity

This study examined the role of anxiety sensitivity as an explanatory variable in the link between two temperamental dimensions (i.e., behavioral inhibition and negative affect) and anxiety disorder symptom severity in a sample of children with anxiety disorders. Forty-four children (52?% African American) between 8 and 12 years of age and their mothers participated in this study. An assessment battery consisting of diagnostic interviews, questionnaires, and behavioral assessment of behavioral inhibition was administered. Findings revealed that anxiety sensitivity was a significant explanatory variable linking child self-reports of behavioral inhibition and negative affect to anxiety disorder symptom severity. For parent-completed measures, only direct effects of behavioral inhibition on anxiety disorder symptom severity were found. The clinical implications of our findings, including the importance and feasibility of anxiety sensitivity and behavioral inhibition assessments as part of routine clinical care of children with anxiety disorders are discussed, along with the limitations of our study.     

Reform of statistical inference in psychology: the case of memory & cognition.

Geoffrey Loftus, Editor of Memory & Cognition from 1994 to 1997, strongly encouraged presentation of figures with error bars and avoidance of null hypothesis significance testing (NHST). The authors examined 696 Memory & Cognition articles published before, during, and after the Loftus editorship. Use of figures with bars increased to 47% under Loftus's editorship and then declined. Bars were rarely used for interpretation, and NHST remained almost universal. Analysis of 309 articles in other psychology journals confirmed that Loftus's influence was most evident in the articles he accepted for publication, but was otherwise limited. An e-mail survey of authors of papers accepted by Loftus revealed some support for his policy, but allegiance to traditional practices as well. Reform of psychologists' statistical practices would require more than editorial encouragement.     

Encouraging Intellectual Growth: Senior College Student Profiles

Researchers and educational writers provide many views on what characteristics and skills the college graduate should possess (P. D. Gardner, 1998). Given the rapidly changing nature of knowledge in all disciplines and the subjectivity of grading systems, we argue the best indicator of a successful college education is a student's ability to think complexly about difficult problems. In this paper we examine students' levels of intellectual development to inform our understanding of how college experiences affect students' abilities to think in complex ways about difficult problems. Using both qualitative and quantitative research techniques, we examine and compare the experiences of 19 senior college students who were rated at opposite ends of the Perry scheme of intellectual development. The 19 students were purposefully selected to represent the high and low ends of the Perry scale from an overall sample of 27 senior students at a large eastern university. Ten students from the original sample of 27 demonstrated the most advanced cognitive development with Perry scale ratings of 5–7. Nine students had Perry ratings below 4; this was the lowest rating represented in the sample. We examine the similarities and differences between these two sets of students' academic profiles, and their comments about their curricular experiences, and how the Perry scale reflects on these results. We then discuss how these similarities and differences relate to students' development of the desirable characteristics of a college graduate, implications for faculty and administrators, and the relationship of these results to prior studies using the Perry scheme.     

Correlates of self-worth and body size dissatisfaction among obese Latino youth

The current study examined self-worth and body size dissatisfaction, and their association with maternal acculturation among obese Latino youth enrolled in a community-based obesity intervention program. Upon entry to the program, a sample of 113 participants reported global self-worth comparable to general population norms, but lower athletic competence and perception of physical appearance. Interestingly, body size dissatisfaction was more prevalent among younger respondents. Youth body size dissatisfaction was associated with less acculturated mothers and higher maternal dissatisfaction with their child's body size. By contrast, although global self-worth was significantly related to body dissatisfaction, it was not influenced by mothers' acculturation or dissatisfaction with their own or their child's body size. Obesity intervention programs targeted to Latino youth need to address self-worth concerns among the youth as well as addressing maternal dissatisfaction with their children's body size.     

Animal Disenhancement and the Non-Identity Problem: A Response to Thompson

In his paper “The Opposite of Human Enhancement: Nanotechnology and the Blind Chicken problem” (Nanoethics 2:305–316, 2008) Paul Thompson argues that the possibility of “disenhancing” animals in order to improve animal welfare poses a philosophical conundrum. Although many people intuitively think such disenhancement would be morally impermissible, it’s difficult to find good arguments to support such intuitions. In this brief response to Thompson, I accept that there’s a conundrum here. But I argue that if we seriously consider whether creating beings can harm or benefit them, and introduce the non-identity problem to discussions of animal disehancement, the conundrum is even deeper than Thompson suggests.     

Aesthetic response to color combinations: preference, harmony, and similarity

Previous studies of preference for and harmony of color combinations have produced confusing results. For example, some claim that harmony increases with hue similarity, whereas others claim that it decreases. We argue that such confusions are resolved by distinguishing among three types of judgments about color pairs: (1) preference for the pair as a whole, (2) harmony of the pair as a whole, and (3) preference for its figural color when viewed against its colored background. Empirical support for this distinction shows that pair preference and harmony both increase as hue similarity increases, but preference relies more strongly on component color preference and lightness contrast. Although pairs with highly contrastive hues are generally judged to be neither preferable nor harmonious, figural color preference ratings increase as hue contrast with the background increases. The present results thus refine and clarify some of the best-known and most contentious claims of color theorists.     

Postidentification feedback affects subsequent eyewitness identification performance

Eyewitnesses sometimes view more than one lineup during an investigation. We investigated the effects of postidentification feedback following one lineup on responses to a second lineup. Witnesses (N=621) viewed a mock crime and, later, attempted to identify the culprit from an initial (target-absent) lineup and a second (target-present or target-absent) lineup. Prior to viewing the second lineup, some witnesses received accurate feedback stating that the initial lineup did not contain the culprit. A compound-decision, signal detection approach allowed the effects of feedback on identification responses to be described in terms of differences in discriminability and response bias. For witnesses who made an incorrect foil identification from the initial lineup, feedback (vs. no feedback) was associated with poorer discriminability on the second test. For witnesses who correctly rejected the initial lineup, feedback (vs. no feedback) was associated with greater discriminability on the second test. Only witnesses who received feedback after an initial correct rejection performed at a level comparable with a single-lineup control group, suggesting that an initial identification test can impair, but not enhance, performance on a second test involving the same culprit. From a theoretical perspective, the results are consistent with the idea that the way people use memorial information when making memory decisions is flexible. Analyses of preidentification confidence ratings, obtained in a follow-up study (N=133), suggested that the effects of feedback on identification performance may have operated via differences in witnesses' metacognitive beliefs.