Direct evidence for a role of working memory in the attentional blink

Theories of selective attention often have a central memory component, which is commonly thought to be limited in some way and is thereby a potential bottleneck in the attentional process. There have been only a few attempts to validate this assertion, and they have produced mixed results. This study presents a specific examination of the link between working memory and attention by engaging active rather than passive memory operations. Two experiments are reported that provide evidence for the involvement of working memory in the attentional blink (AB) phenomenon. Memory loads of increasing size had a detrimental effect on attentional performance within the blink-sensitive interval, but not beyond. Speeded response requirements proved to modulate the AB, but were independent from the memory load effect. Theoretical implications for current models of selective attention are discussed.     

A Typology of Stages of Adherence to Exercise Behavior: A Cluster Analysis

The aim of the study was to report the results of a cluster analysis of current exercise behavior and of intention to exercise in the next year. A sample of 22,286 individuals was recruited over 4 successive 3-month periods. Each individual was asked to complete a self-administered questionnaire assessing exercise behavior in the last 3 months and intention, attitudes, perceived social norms, and perceived behavioral control with respect to exercising in the coming year. The Beale's pseudo F statistic clearly suggests that there are 4 stages of adherence to exercise: unconcerned, ambivalent, optimistic, and active. Finally, MANOVAs and univariate tests indicated that the 4 clusters differed in attitude, subjective norm, and perceived behavioral control ( p < 0001). These results support the appropriateness of combining intention and behavior to identify stages of adherence to exercise.     

The narcissistic difficulties presented to the observer by the psychosomatic problem1

Dealing with psychosomatic realities often generates narcissistic neurotic resistances in the observer that form an obstacle to carrying out scientific work. The tendencies towards schematization and the enforced investigation of arbitrarily defined objects of study, such as they appear in some theoretical standpoints, are aspects of these resistances. The self-destruction evoked by the problem of the ‘death drives’ in its superficial dimension constitutes an obstacle of the same kind.     

The formation of structurally relevant units in artificial grammar learning

A total of 78 adult participants were asked to read a sample of strings generated by a finite state grammar and, immediately after reading each string, to mark the natural segmentation positions with a slash bar. They repeated the same task after a phase of familiarization with the material, which consisted, depending on the group involved, of learning items by rote, performing a shortterm matching task, or searching for the rules of the grammar. Participants formed the same number of cognitive units before and after the training phase, thus indicating that they did not tend to form increasingly large units. However, the number of different units reliably decreased, whatever the task that participants had performed during familiarization. This result indicates that segmentation was increasingly consistent with the structure of the grammar. A theoretical account of this phenomenon, based on ubiquitous principles of associative memory and learning, is proposed. This account is supported by the ability of a computer model implementing those principles, PARSER, to reproduce the observed pattern of results. The implications of this study for developmental theories aimed at accounting for how children become able to parse sensory input into physically and linguistically relevant units are discussed.     

Situational consistency in behavioral patterns of aggressive boys: Methodological considerations on observational measures

The issue of situational consistency is of great interest for early intervention with aggressive boys, but efforts to show behavior stability across settings have been unsuccessful to date, due principally to methodological problems. It is argued here that a more appropriate matching of response form, interaction partner, and situations should increase the situation consistency of observed behavior. The results support this proposition in that, more crosssetting behavior consistency was found in the pairing of situations where aggressive boys (age 6–7 years) were interacting with an adult female (mother/child versus baby-sitter/child) than in the pairing of situations where the boys were interacting with an adult male (mother/child versus father/child) or with the teacher in a nondyadic situation (classroom). The implications of using an extreme group are also discussed.This research program was funded by Le Conseil Québécois de la Recherche Sociale, the Quebec Government's FCAR research program, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Canadian Ministry of Employment and Immigration, and the University of Montreal FDR program.     

Antialiasing: A technique for smoothing jagged lines on a computer graphics image—an implementation on the Amiga

Images displayed on computer graphics displays often suffer from the presence of aliasing artifacts that give a jagged appearance to lines or polygon edges displayed on the screen. This paper details the problems associated with these artifacts and presents a method for drawingantialiased lines—ones in which the artifacts have been considerably reduced. The line-drawing routine is further developed to incorporategamma correction, to take into account the nonlinear relationship between the intensity of the light emission from the phosphor of the monitor and the grayscale values used to control the intensity on the screen.     

Sous un même toit: Canada's Functional-Structural Approach to the Unity of Psychology

Among the factors which may be useful to an assessment of unity/diversity, several are germane to the historic and contemporary evolution of psychology in Canada. Culture-based variables, economic and political factors, and the emergence of clearly scientific and professional streams are all pertinent to Canadian psychology. Within this context, Rosenzweig's (this issue) conceptualization of internal/external unifying/diversifying forces facilitates a better understanding of the realities which confront Canadian psychologists. By adopting a collaborative, collegially oriented approach with diverse groups spawning the full spectrum of psychological science and practice, the groundwork has been laid for a confederal system of functionally based cooperation which may be sufficient to maintain cohesion within the Canadian context.     

Effet de l'intensité sur la catégorisation des prototypes émotionnels faciaux chez l'enfant et l'adulte

This study examines whether the intensity of facial emotional prototypes influences the process of their categorization in children and young adults. Two facial prototypes, one of happiness and one of disgust, including action units of three different intensities, were shown to 30 children and 30 adults who were submitted to a categorization task. As predicted, categorization accuracy was found to increase, in general, as a function of the intensity of action units. Adults were better than children but only for the categorization of disgust when the action unit intensity was weak. The happiness prototype was better categorized than the disgust prototype, and two types of errors were clearly more frequent than the others in the categorization of the disgust prototype: disgust/anger and disgust/sadness. The results are discussed in relation to the regulative processes involved in the socialization of emotion.