Stroop effects on redemption and semantic effects on confession: simultaneous automatic activation of embedded and carrier words

The present study was aimed at assessing whether focusing attention on a task-relevant part of a word prevents processing of its meaning. Participants performed a color-naming task on a prime word followed by lexical decision on a probe. Primes were words, which could contain an embedded color word (e.g., “redemption”) written in an incongruent color. Probes were either semantically related (e.g., “confession”) or unrelated (e.g., “production”) to the prime word. A Stroop effect emerged for color words appearing either in the initial or in the final position of the carrier word. A priming effect also emerged, with faster responses to probes semantically related to the prime. These results are evidence that focusing attention on part of a prime (i.e., the embedded color word) does not prevent the semantic processing of the entire word.     

What we know now that we didn’t know then: reply to critics of <Emphasis Type="Italic">The Age of Meaning</Emphasis>

Author’s response to critical essays by Brian Weatherson, Alex Byrne, and Stephen Yablo on Philosophical Analysis in the Twentieth Century, Volume 2 The Age of Meaning     

The picture-word interference effect is not a Stroop effect

A psychological refractory period (PRP) paradigm was used to isolate the locus of the picture-word interference effect along the chain of processes subtended in name production. Two stimuli were presented sequentially on each trial, separated by a varying stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA). The first stimulus, SI, was a tone that required a manual response. The second stimulus, S2, was a picture-word stimulus associated with picture naming. The distractor word was conceptually related to the picture on half of the trials, and unrelated in the other trials. A picture-word interference effect was found at long SOA, but not at short SOA. Such underadditive interaction between SOA and semantic relatedness suggests strongly that the locus of the picture-word interference effect is functionally earlier than the PRP effect locus. The results are discussed in relation to models of word production suggesting the involvement of central mechanisms in the selection of lexical output.     

Zeading and reazing: which is faster? The position of the diverging letter in a pseudoword determines reading time

We present evidence that (a) at least some components of the reading process are serial and (b) pseudoword reading is affected by lexical knowledge, even in a transparent orthographic system like Italian. Pseudowords deriving from five-letter words by changing either the first or the fourth letter were presented for reading aloud. Results showed an effect of the position of the diverging letter: Early diverging pseudowords were read more slowly than late diverging pseudowords. The dual-route cascaded (DRC) model (Coltheart, Rastle, Perry, Langdon, & Ziegler, 2001) successfully simulated the behavioural data.     

Implicit Theories About Willpower Predict Subjective Well‐Being

Lay theories about willpower—the belief that willpower is a limited versus nonlimited resource—affect self‐control and goal striving in everyday life (Job, Dweck, & Walton, 2010). Three studies examined whether willpower theories also relate to people's subjective well‐being by shaping the progress they make toward their personal goals. A cross‐sectional (Study 1) and two longitudinal studies (Studies 2 and 3) measured individuals’ willpower theories and different indicators of subjective well‐being. Additionally, Study 3 measured goal striving and personal goal progress. A limited theory about willpower was associated with lower subjective well‐being in a sample of working adults (Study 1, N = 258). Further, a limited theory predicted lower levels of well‐being at a time when students faced high self‐regulatory demands (Study 2, N = 196). Study 3 (N = 157) replicated the finding that students with a limited theory experienced lower well‐being in phases of high self‐regulatory demands and found that personal goal progress mediated this relationship. Results suggest that the belief that willpower is based on a limited resource has negative implications not only for self‐control but also for personal goal striving and subjective well‐being.     

The more (complex), the better? The influence of epistemic motivation on integrative bargaining in complex negotiation

Negotiating about a larger number of issues is often argued to enhance the potential for integrative bargaining. However, the enhanced complexity may also make negotiators more susceptible to bias, making it less likely for them to reach win–win agreements. We argue that epistemic motivation, the motivation to hold accurate perceptions of the world, provides a key to solve this paradox. In a negotiation experiment we manipulated complexity by having participants negotiate about 6 or 18 issues and we manipulated epistemic motivation by making participants process‐accountable or not. Under low complexity, there was no effect of epistemic motivation on created value. Under high complexity, however, negotiators with high epistemic motivation created more value than negotiators with low epistemic motivation. Thus, negotiating about larger numbers of issues was only beneficial for negotiators if they were motivated to think deeply and thoroughly. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Propositions as Cognitive Acts

Synthese - The paper reviews the central components of the cognitive theory of propositions and explains both its empirical advantages for theories of language and mind and its foundational...     

Processing of global and local information in memory

The experiments reported in this paper were designed to test how global and local information are processed by the memory system. When subjects are required to match a given letter with either a previously presented large capital letter or the small capital letters comprising it, (1) responses to the global level (i.e. the big letter) are faster than responses to the local level (i.e. the small letters), and (2) responses to the latter level only are affected by the consistency between the large and the small letters (Experiment 2), a pattern similar to that obtained in perception (Experiment 1). Such results obtain when subjects are required to attend to only one level with a short ISI between the first and second stimulus, but not when a longer ISI is used (Experiment 5) or when subjects are required to attend to both levels at the same time (Experiments 3 and 4). The results are discussed in the light of a model that postulates a temporal precedence of the global information over the local one at the perceptual level.