Neighbourhood density, word frequency, and spelling-sound regularity effects in naming: similarities and differences between skilled readers and the Dual Route Cascaded Computational model.

An experiment with skilled readers and a series of simulations with the Dual Route Cascaded model (Coltheart, Rastle, Perry, Langdon, & Ziegler, 2001) investigated the joint effects of stimulus quality and Neighbourhood Density (N) in nonword naming. Neighbourhood Density and stimulus quality yielded additive effects on RT for skilled readers whereas the model produced an interaction between these factors. A further set of simulations show that DRC also produces an interaction between stimulus quality and (1) word frequency, (2) spelling-sound regularity, and, (3) nonword letter length. None of these three factors interact with stimulus quality in performance by skilled readers. It is suggested that DRC's assumption of cascaded processing throughout represents a central problem. A proposal as to how the model can be modified to accommodate these and other problematic data is discussed.     

The Role of the Group in Individual Functioning: School Identification and the Psychological Well-Being of Staff and Students

Many studies have demonstrated that organisations exert a powerful impact on their members, but the mechanisms through which this occurs are not well understood. In the present paper, using social identity and self-categorisation theories as theoretical frameworks, we explore the role that social identity plays in affecting individual well-being of staff ( N = 113) and students ( N = 693) in two Australian high schools. Well-being includes positive aspects of personal functioning, such as self-esteem, positive affect, and job involvement, but also negative aspects, such as depression, anxiety, loss of emotional control, aggressive and disruptive behaviour. In line with predictions, social identification was significantly related to, and mediated the relationship between, organisational factors and individual psychological well-being. This work provides a bridge between social psychological concepts and the clinical and educational domains. It reinforces the need to integrate the role of the social self and social identity processes in understanding the (individual) psychology of the person.     

Hiding and finding: The relationship between visual concealment and visual search

As an initial step toward developing a theory of visual concealment, we assessed whether people would use factors known to influence visual search difficulty when the degree of concealment of objects among distractors was varied. In Experiment 1, participants arranged search objects (shapes, emotional faces, and graphemes) to create displays in which the targets were in plain sight but were either easy or hard to find. Analyses of easy and hard displays created during Experiment 1 revealed that the participants reliably used factors known to influence search difficulty (e.g., eccentricity, target—distractor similarity, presence/absence of a feature) to vary the difficulty of search across displays. In Experiment 2, a new participant group searched for the targets in the displays created by the participants in Experiment 1. Results indicated that search was more difficult in the hard than in the easy condition. In Experiments 3 and 4, participants used presence versus absence of a feature to vary search difficulty with several novel stimulus sets. Taken together, the results reveal a close link between the factors that govern concealment and the factors known to influence search difficulty, suggesting that a visual search theory can be extended to form the basis of a theory of visual concealment.     

Axiomatisation and decidability ofF andP in cyclical time

We present a Hilert style axiomatisation for the set of formulas in the temporal language withF andP which are valid over non-transitive cyclical flows of time.We also give a simpler axiomatisation using the slightly controversial irreflexivity rule and go on to prove the decidability of any temporal logic over cyclical time provided it uses only connectives with first-order tables.     

Trends in school psychology research: 1974–1980

Research articles appearing in five major journals from 1974 to 1980 were categorized in 1 of 16 categories as determined by the major theme of the paper. A chi-square analysis was used to determine whether years differed in relative distribution of observations across the categories. Spearman's rho correlation coefficients were calculated for the rank order of categories between each pair of years, allowing for comparison of the current data with O'Callaghan's (1974) data. Results indicate a significant change in content of articles published over the 7-year period. Articles concerning instrument development and validation account for the relatively largest percentage of total articles published in the 1974–1980 period and have continued to increase since the 1967–1973 period examined by O'Callaghan. Schools and agencies primarily contributing to this research are identified across the 7-year time span. Results are discussed in terms of the professional literature's potential reflection of the role of the school psychologist.     

Women's verbal estimation of a 40-second interval during the first week postpartum: a replication.

In this replication research 49 mothers verbally estimated a 40-sec. interval each day for the first seven days after delivery. Throughout this postpartum period mothers overestimated the time interval. Findings of this study confirmed the results of the original 1987 research.     

Comparison of positive and negative intrusive thoughts and experimental investigation of the differential effects of mood.

The similarity between positive and negative intrusive thoughts is considered for both recently occurring, personally relevant intrusions and for the same intrusions occurring during an experimental task involving self-monitoring. The results indicate that positive and negative intrusions differ in most respects. There was evidence that increasing the frequency of negative thinking is associated with a deterioration of mood. In a subsequent experiment, induced happy and sad moods were shown to differentially affect frequency of intrusions in a fashion consistent with mood congruency effects previously found in experiments on the effect of mood on memory. The implications of these findings for disorders involving the experience of intrusive thoughts such as OCD and depression are discussed.