Age differences and the identity negative priming effect: an updated meta-analysis

A recent meta-analysis (P. Verhaeghen & L. De Meersman, 1998a) revealed that older adults show a reliable but significantly reduced negative priming effect compared with young adults. The present study provides an updated quantitative review on the effect of aging on the magnitude of the negative priming effect in identity tasks. This analysis demonstrated that the negative priming effect was not significantly different between young and old adults. This result differs from P. Verhaeghen and L. De Meersman's study. The implications of this finding for inhibitory-based theories of cognitive aging are discussed.     

Context effects in evaluative conditioning of implicit evaluations

Propositional models of evaluative conditioning postulate that the impact of stimulus pairings on liking should depend not on the pairings themselves but on what the pairings imply about the relation between stimuli. Hence, context manipulations that change the implications of stimulus pairings should moderate evaluative conditioning. We manipulated context by varying the way in which context cues were paired with affective outcomes while keeping the pairings between target cues and affective outcomes constant. All participants saw one target cue compound that was followed by a positive outcome (XF+) and another target cue compound that was followed by a negative outcome (YG?). In condition Same, each context cue was consistently paired with a positive or negative outcome, regardless of whether it was presented alone or in compound with another cue (A+, B+, AB+; C?, D?, CD?). In condition Opposite, however, a context cue was paired with a certain outcome when presented alone and with an outcome of the opposite valence when presented in a compound with another cue (A+, B+, AB?; C?, D?, CD+). Employing several implicit measures, we assessed the implicit evaluations of the target cues X and Y. In all three studies, the outcome of the measurement procedure differed between conditions. In condition Same, the positively paired cue X was evaluated more positively than the negatively paired cue Y. In condition Opposite, however, this preference was not present. This pattern of results suggests that EC is determined not only by the objective pairings but also by the context in which these pairings occur. Implications for models of evaluative conditioning are discussed.     

Mood-congruent free recall bias in anxious individuals is not a consequence of response bias

The status of mood-congruent free recall bias in anxious individuals was evaluated following incidental encoding of target words. Individuals with high and low levels of trait anxiety completed a modified Stroop task, which revealed an attentional bias for threat-related stimuli in anxious individuals. This group was significantly slower in naming the colour in which threat-related words were displayed compared to neutral words. In a subsequent free recall test for the words used in the modified Stroop task, anxious individuals recalled more threat-related words compared to low-anxious people. This difference was significant even when controlling for the false recall of items that had not been presented during study. These results support the view put forward by Russo, Fox, Bellinger, and Nguyen-Van-Tam (2001) that mood-congruent free recall bias in anxious individuals can be observed if the target material is encoded at a relatively shallow level. Moreover, contrary to Dowens and Calvo (2003), the current results show that the memory advantage for threat-related information in anxious individuals is not a consequence of response bias.     

Markovian processes with identifiable states: General considerations and application to all-or-none learning

It often happens that a theory specifies some variables or states which cannot be identified completely in an experiment. When this happens, there are important questions as to whether the experiment is relevant to certain assumptions of the theory. Some of these questions are taken up in the present article, where a method is developed for describing the implications of a theory for an experiment. The method consists of constructing a second theory with all of its states identifiable in the outcome-space of the experiment. The method can be applied (i.e., an equivalent identifiable theory exists) whenever a theory specifies a probability function on the sample-space of possible outcomes of the experiment. An interesting relationship between lumpability of states and recurrent events plays an important role in the development of the identifiable theory. An identifiable theory of an experiment can be used to investigate relationships among different theories of the experiment. As an example, an identifiable theory of all-or-none learning is developed, and it is shown that a large class of all-or-none theories are equivalent for experiments in which a task is learned to a strict criterion.This research was supported in part by the National Science Foundation under grant GB-319.     

Another look at physicians' treatment of men and women with common complaints

A recent study of San Diego patients found that men received more extensive and appropriate diagnostic workups than women did for five common complaints (Armitage, K. J., Schneiderman, L. J., & Bass, R. A. Journal of the American Medical Association 1979, 241 2186–2187). This article is a broader analysis of medical care given to men and women for those complaints (fatigue, headache, vertigo/dizziness, chest pain, back pain), and it uses a national survey of ambulatory-care visits. We find that medical care is usually similar for men and women. When significant sex differences do appear, they often show that women receive more medical care during a visit. To some extent, differential care stems from different medical needs that men and women with a complaint have; when some medically relevant factors are controlled, half of the significant sex differences disappear. But half persist, and this suggests that psychosocial factors also underlie differential care for men and women. These may originate with patients (for example, their requests for particular services) or with physicians (for example stereotypes of men and women patients). In contrast to the San Diego study, the national data show that (1) women sometimes receive more diagnostic workups for the five complaints, and (2) when medical factors are controlled, sex differences in the extent and content of workups disappear. The only exception is that men with vertigo/dizziness receive more appropriate workups.     

The timing of shifts of head postures during conservation

The timing of shifts of head postures in relation to speech during conservation was investigated by continuously monitoring, with a polarised light goniometer, the head movement of four subjects engaged in conservation.Postural shifts (PSs), defined as wide, linear movements, were found to occur primarily towards the initiation of speech, be it between speaking turns, or between syntactic boundaries inside speaking turns. This suggested that PSs are involved in regulating turn taking and marking syntactic boundaries inside speaking turns.Also, PSs usually started prior to and continued till after speech onset. This suggested a possible involvement in speech production, probably in helping to regulate the complex motor processes of beginning to speak.It is suggested that interactive, linguistic and speech productive functions may combine together to create a movement pattern by mutually constraining head movement.     

Sex roles and fertility in college women

A study was conducted to examine the relationship of sex-role acceptance to actual and desired fertility. Two samples of women (105 undergraduates and 40 members of a women's organization) were administered the Bem Sex-Role Inventory and a questionnaire which assessed the women's behavioral acceptance of traditional female sex roles. The behavioral measures were sex-typed college major for the undergraduates and employment status for the women's organization sample. In addition, vocational interests were measured and related to fertility for the women's organization sample. Multiple regression analyses indicated that behavioral measures of sex-role acceptance accounted for more variance in predicting desired and actual fertility than did the Bem Sex-Role Inventory.     

On Legal Order: Some Criticism of the Received View

The author discusses a number of topics related to the concept of legal order and the structure of legal orders. In particular, the following theses are challenged: (1) legal orders are sets of rules; (2) the criterion of membership to such sets is validity; (3) legal orders are dynamic sets; (4) legal orders are provided with a hierarchical configuration; (5) legal orders are coherent and consistent sets.