Assumed policy similarity and voter preference

The effects of attitude similarity on voters' preferences were examined. Using secondary analyses, the authors created measures of assumed similarity across 6 issues between voters and U.S. presidential candidates (in 1972). Greater similarity was associated with greater attraction (operationalized in terms of voters' presidential preferences). In 2 independent analyses, perceived similarity resulted in predictive accuracy of 84% to 88%. In a 3rd analysis, the predictive efficiency of each of 6 similarity measures was determined and used to develop a model that accurately predicted voters' actions in a hold-out sample. Findings demonstrate the importance of perceived attitude similarity in determining voter preferences and suggest the utility of earlier similarity-attraction research for the development of models of policy choice behavior.     

An approach for practice administration and interpretation of the MMPI-2

This paper discusses one teaching approach for practice administration and interpretation of the MMPI-2 in a graduate course on personality assessment. After graduate students practice scoring and interpreting the MMPI-2 inventory completed with specific response sets and practice interpreting MMPI-2 profiles of cases prepared for teaching and practice in interpretation, students practice administering and interpreting the MMPI-2 for volunteer test-takers who complete the inventory with a simulated stress response set. The simulated stress response set approach may be helpful in providing skill-building practice in the early phases of learning the MMPI-2 with volunteer test-takers, while minimizing some of the ethical concerns raised regarding actual administrations with nonclient volunteers in the early phases of training in assessment.     

Pragmatic communication skills in patients with Parkinson's disease

BACKGROUND: Pragmatic communication abilities may depend on intact frontal lobe systems. Independent evidence suggests that some persons with Parkinson's disease (PD) are impaired on measures of frontal lobe function. HYPOTHESIS: We therefore hypothesized in Study 1 that pragmatic communication skills would be impaired in some persons with PD and would be linked to frontal dysfunction in these patients. In Study 2 we hypothesized that PD patients would be unaware of their pragmatic communication deficits. METHODS: In Study 1 we administered tests of pragmatic abilities and frontal lobe functioning to twenty-two persons with Parkinson's disease (PD) and 10 healthy controls. In Study 2 we obtained self-ratings of pragmatic abilities from 11 PD patients and then checked these self-ratings against ratings of these same abilities by the patient's spouses. RESULTS: We found in Study 1 that patients with PD were: (a) significantly impaired on measures of pragmatic communication abilities, especially in the areas of conversational appropriateness, turn-taking, prosodics and proxemics, and that this impairment was significantly related to measures of frontal lobe function. In study 2 we found that PD patients overestimated their own abilities relative to spousal ratings of those abilities and thus were unaware of the extent of their problems with pragmatic social communication skills. CONCLUSION: We conclude that pragmatic social communication skills are impaired in PD and that this impairment may be related to frontal lobe dysfunction.     

Experimental tests of an attitudinal theory of the gender gap in voting

This research examined the hypothesis that gender gaps in voting stem from differences in the extent to which men and women agree with candidates' issue stances. Two initial experiments portraying candidates by their sex and attitudes and a third experiment that also included information about political party produced the predicted attitudinal gender-congeniality effect: Participants of each sex reported greater likelihood, compared with participants of the other sex, of voting for the candidate who endorsed positions typically favored more by their own sex than the other sex. In addition, this gender-congeniality effect was present among Republican and independent participants but absent among Democratic participants because Democratic men as well as women favored candidates who advocated the positions typically favored by women. Interpretation invoked the importance of group interest based on gender as an influence on women's voting.     

Assessing the age-related effects of proactive interference on working memory tasks using the Rasch model

Inhibition-reduction theory (L. Hasher & R. Zacks, 1988) hypothesizes that the age-related decline in working memory (WM) span is a result of a decrease in the ability to inhibit irrelevant information in WM. Using the Rasch psychometric model, this study found that later trials on 2 WM span tasks were more difficult for older adults than for younger adults, consistent with inhibition-reduction theory's hypothesis that older adults are more susceptible to the effects of proactive interference (PI). Furthermore, after accounting for differential susceptibility to the effects of PI, age-related variance in WM span was reduced by about half. These results suggest that differential susceptibility to PI may account for a substantial portion, although not all, of the age-related decline in WM span.     

Uncertainty in pigeons

Pigeons classified a display of illuminated pixels on a touchscreen as sparse or dense. Correct responses were reinforced with six food pellets; incorrect responses were unreinforced. On some trials an uncertain response option was available. Pecking it was always reinforced with an intermediate number of pellets. Like monkeys and people in related experiments, the birds chose the uncertain response most often when the stimulus presented was difficult to classify correctly, but in other respects their behavior was not functionally similar to human behavior based on conscious uncertainty or to the behavior of monkeys in comparable experiments. Our data were well described by a signal detection model that assumed that the birds were maximizing perceived reward in a consistent way across all the experimental conditions.     

Scoring reliability on the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Third Edition (WAIS-III)

Nineteen psychologists and 19 graduate students scored two Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Third Edition patient protocols. Mean IQs and indexes were similar across groups, but the ranges for Verbal IQ (VIQ), Performance IQ (PIQ), and Full Scale IQ (FSIQ) on one protocol were 25, 22, and 11 points, respectively. For both protocols taken together, percentages of agreement with the "actual" IQs for psychologists were only 26.3 for VIQ, 36.8 for PIQ, and 42.1 for FSIQ. For students, percentages were 15.8 for VIQ, 23.7 for PIQ, and 31.6 for FSIQ. The percentages of FSIQs that fell within +/- 1 standard error of measurement of the actual IQs were 89.5 for psychologists and 76.3 for students. Scoring error also had a negative impact on index scores. Both groups were confident about their scoring accuracy.     

A cross-modal interference effect in grasping objects

The aim of the present paper was to investigate how the kinematics of a hand reaching toward a visual target would be influenced by haptic and proprioceptive input from an unseen distractor actively grasped in the other, nonreaching hand. The main results were that the amplitude of maximum grip aperture was smaller and the time to maximum grip aperture was earlier when the distractor was smaller than the target. The interference effect from the distractor was similar for both hands as they reached. Furthermore, results from a vibrating-distractor condition for passive tactile input revealed that the interference effects were evident only when the distractor was actively grasped. We suggest that neural processing of proprioceptive and tactile information relevant to distractor size produced the observed interference effects. We also emphasize the importance of active manipulation of the distractor stimulus in eliciting such interference effects.     

Strategic aspects of numerosity judgment: the effect of task characteristics

In previous investigations we documented that people use several strategies to determine different numerosities of blocks that are presented in a square grid. One of these strategies is the clever subtraction strategy, wherein the number of empty squares in the grid is subtracted from the total number of squares in the grid. In the present study we investigated participants' flexibility in strategy use when varying the shape of the grid. Analysis of the results in terms of the theoretical framework of Lemaire and Siegler (1995) regarding strategic change shows that this contextual variable affected the frequency, execution time, and accuracy of subjects' use of the subtraction strategy. The usefulness of this framework for analyzing the nature of the adaptation to contextual variations is discussed. From a methodological point of view, this study documents the potential of Beem's (1993, 1999) segmented linear regression models for assessing subjects' strategy use in cognitive tasks.