On the special status of "ego threats".

This article comments on a recent article by Heatherton, Herman, and Polivy (1991) in which they suggest that ego threats are a prerequisite to affectively induced disinhibition of food intake in restrained eaters and current dieters. In contrast, the present review suggests that mood induction procedures that involve no apparent threat (e.g., viewing a frightening film) can also prompt disinhibition in restrained eaters. Thus, any mood induction procedure that does not directly physically threaten the S may disinhibit restrained eaters. It is concluded that recommendations to focus future research on ego threats are premature and may serve to obscure the mechanisms by which changes in affective state influence food intake in dieters.     

Consensus at zero acquaintance: replication, behavioral cues, and stability.

That observers tend to agree in their ratings of a target even if they have never interacted with that target has been called consensus at zero acquaintance. The basic finding that consensus is highest for judgments concerning a target's degree of extraversion (EV) and somewhat weaker for judgments of conscientiousness is replicated. Several potential observable cues that might be used by judges when rating targets are examined. The finding that ratings of physical attractiveness correlate with judgments of EV is replicated. In Study 1, rapid body movements and smiling were also found to correlate with EV judgments. The level of consensus declined when initially unacquainted Ss interacted one-on-one (Study 2), but did not decline--and even increased--when Ss interacted in a group (Study 3). Ss judged as extraverted at zero acquaintance were also seen as extraverted after interacting with others.     

Social support, depressed mood, and adjustment to stress: a genetic epidemiologic investigation.

A survey of 821 same-sex female twin pairs from a population-based registry assessed 8 dimensions of social support and social integration. Twin analyses documented significant common environmental influences on 5 of these 8 measures and significant genetic influences on 5 of the 8. A decomposition of the multiplicative association between support and a measure of stressful life experiences in predicting depressed mood--an association typically interpreted as providing evidence for a stress-buffering effect of social support--shows clearly that it is the environmental and genetic factors that cause support, rather than support itself, that buffer the effects of stress on mood in most cases. We discuss the implications of this result for future research on the relationship between social support and psychopathology.     

Coordination of knowledge in communication: effects of speakers' assumptions about what others know.

Two pairs of studies examined effects of perspective taking in communication, using a 2-stage methodology that first obtained people's estimates of the recognizability to others of specific stimuli (public figures and everyday objects) and then examined the effects of these estimates on message formulation in a referential communication task. Ss were good at estimating stimulus identifiability but were biased in the direction of their own knowledge. The amount of information in a referring expression varied inversely with the perceived likelihood that addresses could identify the target stimulus. However, effects were less strong than anticipated. Although communicators do take others' knowledge into account, the extent to which they do so involves a trade-off with other sorts of information in the communicative situation.     

Assessing attributions in marriage: the relationship attribution measure.

A brief, simple measure of different types of attributions for partner behavior was examined in 3 studies of married couples. Reliability was established by high internal consistency and test-retest correlations. Causal and responsibility attribution scores correlated with marital satisfaction, attributions for marital difficulties, and attributions for actual partner behaviors generated by spouses. Responsibility attributions were related to (a) reported anger in response to stimulus behaviors used in the measure and (b) the amount of anger displayed by wives during a problem-solving interaction with their partner. The extent to which husbands and wives whined during their discussion also correlated with their responsibility attributions. The results address several problems with existing assessments, and their implications for the measurement of attributions in marriage are discussed.     

Information feedback and the learning multiple-degree-of-freedom activities

The influence of information feedback on the learning of a multiple-degree-of-freedom activity, the overhand throw, was investigated. During learning, feedback was presented in the form of knowledge of results, knowledge of performance, knowledge of performance with attention-focusing cues, or knowledge of performance with error-correcting transitional information. Across 12 practice sessions, performance was assessed with respect to both throwing distance and throwing form. Subjects provided with knowledge of performance along with transitional information demonstrated significant gains in throwing distance, compared with subjects receiving knowledge of performance or knowledge of results alone. Movement form ratings followed the same trend. Providing learners with cues to focus their attention on the relevant aspects of knowledge of performance or directly providing transitional information was a better aid to the acquisition of throwing form than providing knowledge of results or knowledge of performance alone. These results support the hypothesis that knowledge of results may not be the most potent form of feedback in multiple-degree-of-freedom activities and that knowledge of performance, when combined with additional information, can lead to significant gains in skill acquisition.     

Evidence for an error deadzone in compensatory tracking

Humans and monkeys show intermittent arm movements while tracking moving targets. This intermittency has been explained by postulating either a psychological refractory period after each movement and/or an error deadzone, an area surrounding the target within which movements are not initiated. We present a technique to detect and quantify the size of this deadzone, using a compensatory tracking paradigm that distinguishes it from a psychological refractory period. An artificial deadzone of variable size was added around a visual target displayed on a computer screen. While the subject was within this area, he received visual feedback that showed him to be directly on target. The presence of this artificial deadzone could affect tracking performance only if it exceeded the size of his intrinsic deadzone. Therefore, the size of artificial deadzone at which performance began to be affected revealed the size of the intrinsic deadzone. Measured at the subjects' eye, the deadzone was found to vary between 0.06 and 0.38 degrees, depending on the tracking task and viewing conditions; on the screen, this range was 1.3 mm to 3.3 mm. It increased with increasing speed of the target, with increasing viewing distance, and when the amplitude of the movement required was reduced. However, the deadzone size was not significantly correlated with the subjects' level of performance. We conclude that an intrinsic deadzone exists during compensatory tracking, and we suggest that its size is set by a cognitive process not simply related to the difficulty of the tracking task.     

Recovery of Locomotion in Monkeys With Spinal Cord Lesions

This study reanalyzes kinematically (via film) the pre- and postoperative locomotor behavior of 4 of the 10 monkeys with partial spinal cord lesions (T8) briefly described by Eidelberg, Walden, and Nguyen (1981). The behavior of the remaining 6 monkeys is qualitatively described. The analysis reveals that 5 of the animals initially exhibited unilateral hind limb stepping. Hind and forelimb cycle durations often differed postoperatively; the hind limbs commonly showed increased values, whereas forelimb cycle durations were reduced: ipsilateral interlimb phase values were usually inconsistent. A review of prior studies of primate spinal cord lesions indicates that sparing of the ventrolateral quadrant may not be essential for locomotor recovery (cf. Eidelberg, Walden, & Nguyen, 1981). Furthermore, this review as well as the kinematic analysis indicates that primates with very significant spinal lesions can stilI exhibit locomotor movements. Thus, although the primate's spinal cord seems less able than other mammals' to readily organize locomotor movements (Eidelberg, Walden, & Nguyen, 1981), the total absence of stepping in primates with completely transected cords is unexpected and warrants further research.     

Affect, personality, and social activity.

These studies examined relations between social activity and state and trait measures of Positive and Negative Affect. In Study 1 Ss completed scales relevant to 3-factor models of personality and a weekly mood and social activity questionnaire for 13 weeks. In Study 2 Ss completed measures of the 5-factor model of personality and a daily mood and social activity survey for 6-7 weeks. In within- and between-Ss analyses, socializing correlated significantly with state measures of Positive Affect and with trait measures of Extraversion/Positive Emotionality. These relations were relatively general across various types of positive affect and social events; however, specific types of social events also were differentially related to affect. In contrast, social activity had no consistent association with measures of Negative Affect or the other personality dimensions. The results support a temperamental view of Extraversion.     

Future-event schemas and certainty about the future: automaticity in depressives' future-event predictions.

The proposition was tested that depressives make predictions about the future based on a pessimistic future-event schema. Participants varying in depression predicted whether positive and negative events would happen to them (or to an average person) in the future by pressing yes or no at a computer terminal as quickly as possible, either under a concurrent attentional load or under no such load. As hypothesized, depressives predicted more negative events and fewer positive events than did mild depressives or nondepressives and showed greater automaticity in their predictions. That is, the attentional load did not increase depressives' response latencies for either negative or positive events, even though it did so reliably for both mildly depressed and nondepressed individuals. Depressives may thus possess a highly developed future-event schema that operates efficiently in enabling future-event predictions.