A test of the tau-dot hypothesis of braking control in the real world

A controlled experiment used instrumented vehicles in a real-world driving task to compare D. N. Lee's (1976) tau-dot hypothesis of braking control with an alternative based on the direct estimation and control of ideal deceleration (T. Yates, M. Harris, & P. Rock, 2004). Drivers braked to stop as closely as possible to a visual target from different starting speeds and times-to-contact. The data provided little support for the tau-dot hypothesis, and analysis suggested that braking in the real world is better explained by a direct deceleration strategy.     

Money as tool, money as drug: the biological psychology of a strong incentive

Why are people interested in money? Specifically, what could be the biological basis for the extraordinary incentive and reinforcing power of money, which seems to be unique to the human species? We identify two ways in which a commodity which is of no biological significance in itself can become a strong motivator. The first is if it is used as a tool, and by a metaphorical extension this is often applied to money: it is used instrumentally, in order to obtain biologically relevant incentives. Second, substances can be strong motivators because they imitate the action of natural incentives but do not produce the fitness gains for which those incentives are instinctively sought. The classic examples of this process are psychoactive drugs, but we argue that the drug concept can also be extended metaphorically to provide an account of money motivation. From a review of theoretical and empirical literature about money, we conclude that (i) there are a number of phenomena that cannot be accounted for by a pure Tool Theory of money motivation; (ii) supplementing Tool Theory with a Drug Theory enables the anomalous phenomena to be explained; and (iii) the human instincts that, according to a Drug Theory, money parasitizes include trading (derived from reciprocal altruism) and object play.     

Magnitude of cerebral asymmetry at rest: covariation with baseline cardiovascular activity

The cerebral regulation of cardiovascular functioning varies along both a lateral and a longitudinal axis. The parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous systems are lateralized to the left and right cerebral hemispheres, respectively. Further, the frontal lobes are known to be inhibitory in nature, whereas the temporal lobes are excitatory. However, no systematic investigation has been conducted to determine the nature and strength of the relationship between the left and right frontal and temporal lobes in regulating cardiovascular activity. The present investigation sought to examine these relationships by testing the hypothesis that negative correlations would be found between baseline heart rate and blood pressure and asymmetry of alpha magnitude across the frontal lobes. Further, positive correlations were hypothesized to exist across the temporal lobes. A total of 20 women were asked to relax with their eyes closed while heart rate and blood pressure as well as quantitative electroencephalography data were obtained. The results indicated that, as hypothesized, significant negative correlations existed across the frontal lobes and significant positive correlations existed across the temporal lobes. The results provide further support for a division of responsibility between the left and right frontal and temporal lobes in the regulation of heart rate and blood pressure.     

Conjunction errors, recollection-based rejections, and forgetting in a continuous recognition task

Six experiments investigated conjunction memory errors (e.g., falsely remembering blackbird after studying parent words blackmail and jailbird) in a continuous recognition procedure with a parent-conjunction lag manipulation. In 4 experiments (1A, 1B, 2A, and 2B) "recollect" judgments, which indexed recall of parent words, showed that participants can use recollection to prevent conjunction errors. "Recollect" judgments, as well as overt recall of parent words (in Experiments 2A and 2B), dropped sharply from a lag of 0 to 1 word, then stabilized from a lag of 1 to 20 words. Thus, the "recollect" responses and overt recall demonstrate a step function of forgetting over short intervals. These data generalized to cued recall in Experiments 3A and 3B with the first morpheme (e.g., black) as the cue, though recall conjunction errors occurred infrequently relative to recognition conjunction errors. Overall, the results support the idea that automatic and controlled processes contribute to memory performance.     

THE CONCEPT OF OBJECTIVE COUNTERTRANSFERENCE AND ITS ROLE IN A TWO-PERSON PSYCHOLOGY

Objective countertransference comprises those feelings the analyst experiences with the patient that are repetitions of feelings from the patient's life outside the analysis. It is viewed as being induced by the patient and is understood in the context of the patient's life, not the analyst's. The concept is used to understand the relationship of some of the analyst's feelings to recurrent interpersonal patterns in the patient's life. It has often been viewed as being incompatible with a two-person psychology. Here, in contrast, it is argued that objective countertransference is only one current within the analyst's total emotional response to the patient, and that it should be conceptualized as a component of a broader two-person psychology. However, the use of objective countertransference as a conceptual tool highlights aspects of the analytic relationship that differ from those emphasized in current two-person models. A case example is analyzed from both perspectives to illustrate their similarities and differences. Although the concept of objective countertransference can enrich the analyst's understanding of certain dimensions of the analytic relationship, it is not a theory of technique and it is not wedded to any particular style of psychoanalytic intervention.     

Associations between the developmental trajectories of visual scanning and disengagement of attention in infants

The relation between the developmental trajectories of visual scanning and disengagement of attention and gaze were examined throughout early infancy. A sample of 10 infants carried out a scanning and a disengagement task with the same visual stimuli six times between 6 and 26 weeks of age. Frequency and latency measures were analyzed using multivariate multilevel models and Monte Carlo analyses. The results suggest that the ability to scan a face or an abstract stimulus evolves slightly earlier than the ability to shift gaze to a newly appeared target in the periphery. This is consistent with the account that the parvocellular stream becomes functional slightly before the magnocellular stream. The study revealed no indications of a positive association between the development of scanning and disengagement on the level of the individual infant. Scanning and disengagement change scores contrasted more with one another than could be expected on the basis of chance. This implies that the magnocellular and the parvocellular stream develop rather independently up to the age of 26 weeks.     

Psychopathy, aggression, and the processing of emotional stimuli in non-referred girls and boys

Research shows that individuals with psychopathic traits differ in how they process negative emotional stimuli. However, it is unclear whether these differences are specific to certain types of negative emotional stimulus and whether they are more strongly associated with psychopathic traits or aggression. Further, it is not clear whether or not deficits in emotional processing generalize to females and ethnic minority individuals with psychopathic traits. In this study, we examined the emotional processing of visual stimuli using a dot-probe task in 50 non-referred girls and boys (mean age of 9.30; SD = 2.00). Overall, there was a significant association between proactive aggression and reduced responsiveness to distressing stimuli. In addition, the predicted association between psychopathic traits and reduced responsiveness to distressing stimuli was only found for children high on aggression. Also, the associations among aggression, psychopathic traits, and responsiveness to distressing stimuli did not differ for boys and girls.     

Is the Brain a Quantum Computer?

We argue that computation via quantum mechanical processes is irrelevant to explaining how brains produce thought, contrary to the ongoing speculations of many theorists. First, quantum effects do not have the temporal properties required for neural information processing. Second, there are substantial physical obstacles to any organic instantiation of quantum computation. Third, there is no psychological evidence that such mental phenomena as consciousness and mathematical thinking require explanation via quantum theory. We conclude that understanding brain function is unlikely to require quantum computation or similar mechanisms.     

The classification of violence risk

The Classification of Violence Risk (COVR) is an interactive software program designed to estimate the risk that a person hospitalized for mental disorder will be violent to others. The software leads the evaluator through a chart review and a brief interview with the patient. At the end of this interview, the software generates a report that contains a statistically valid estimate of the patient's violence risk-ranging from a 1% to a 76% likelihood of violence-including the confidence interval for that estimate, and a list of the risk factors that the program took into account to produce the estimate. In this article, the development of the COVR software is described and several issues that arise in its administration are discussed.     

Unit bias. A new heuristic that helps explain the effect of portion size on food intake

ABSTRACT— People seem to think that a unit of some entity (with certain constraints) is the appropriate and optimal amount. We refer to this heuristic as unit bias. We illustrate unit bias by demonstrating large effects of unit segmentation, a form of portion control, on food intake. Thus, people choose, and presumably eat, much greater weights of Tootsie Rolls and pretzels when offered a large as opposed to a small unit size (and given the option of taking as many units as they choose at no monetary cost). Additionally, they consume substantially more M&M's when the candies are offered with a large as opposed to a small spoon (again with no limits as to the number of spoonfuls to be taken). We propose that unit bias explains why small portion sizes are effective in controlling consumption; in some cases, people served small portions would simply eat additional portions if it were not for unit bias. We argue that unit bias is a general feature in human choice and discuss possible origins of this bias, including consumption norms.