The role of task persistence in young adolescence for successful educational and occupational attainment in middle adulthood

The main purpose of the present study was to investigate the importance of task persistence in young adolescence for successful educational and occupational attainment in middle adulthood. Data from age 13 (N = 1,092) and adult age (age 43 for women, N = 569 and age 47 for men, N = 393) were taken from the Swedish longitudinal research program entitled "Individual Development and Adaptation." In line with previous research, task persistence was found to be related to changes in grades between age 13 and age 16, over and above other childhood factors. Task persistence at age 13 was also a significant predictor of both income and occupational level in middle adulthood for the men, controlling for a number of childhood factors (including intelligence), and even when educational attainment in adulthood was taken into account. Finally, task persistence was related to educational attainment in adulthood. The authors suggest that task persistence is a second fundamental factor besides general mental ability, influencing attainment within the area of working life and education. The influence of task persistence is discussed in form of personality-environment selection mechanisms.     

Language acquisition meets language evolution

Recent research suggests that language evolution is a process of cultural change, in which linguistic structures are shaped through repeated cycles of learning and use by domain-general mechanisms. This paper draws out the implications of this viewpoint for understanding the problem of language acquisition, which is cast in a new, and much more tractable, form. In essence, the child faces a problem of induction, where the objective is to coordinate with others (C-induction), rather than to model the structure of the natural world (N-induction). We argue that, of the two, C-induction is dramatically easier. More broadly, we argue that understanding the acquisition of any cultural form, whether linguistic or otherwise, during development, requires considering the corresponding question of how that cultural form arose through processes of cultural evolution. This perspective helps resolve the "logical" problem of language acquisition and has far-reaching implications for evolutionary psychology.     

Measuring consciousness: Is one measure better than the other?

What is the best way of assessing the extent to which people are aware of a stimulus? Here, using a masked visual identification task, we compared three measures of subjective awareness: The Perceptual Awareness Scale (PAS), through which participants are asked to rate the clarity of their visual experience; confidence ratings (CR), through which participants express their confidence in their identification decisions, and Post-decision wagering (PDW), in which participants place a monetary wager on their decisions. We conducted detailed explorations of the relationships between awareness and identification performance, looking to determine (1) which scale best correlates with performance, and (2) whether we can detect performance in the absence of awareness and how the scales differ from each other in terms of revealing such unconscious processing. Based on these findings we discuss whether perceptual awareness should be considered graded or dichotomous. Results showed that PAS showed a much stronger performance-awareness correlation than either CR or PDW, particularly for low stimulus intensities. In general, all scales indicated above-chance performance when participants claimed not to have seen anything. However, such above-chance performance only showed when we also observed a correlation between awareness and performance. Thus (1) PAS seems to be the most exhaustive measure of awareness, and (2) we find support for above-chance performance in the absence of subjective awareness, but such unconscious knowledge only contributes to performance when we observe conscious knowledge as well. Similarities and differences between scales are discussed in the light of consciousness theories and response strategies.     

Partial awareness distinguishes between measuring conscious perception and conscious content: Reply to Dienes and Seth

In their comment on Sandberg, Timmermans, Overgaard, and Cleeremans (2010), Dienes and Seth argue that increased sensitivity of the Perceptual Awareness Scale (PAS) is a consequence of the scale being less exclusive rather than more exhaustive. According to Dienes and Seth, this is because PAS may measure some conscious content, though not necessarily relevant conscious content, “If one saw a square but was only aware of seeing a flash of something, then one has not consciously seen a square.” In this reply, we claim that there is a difference between conscious visual experience, which may be partial, and the resulting conscious content, which is conceptual. Whereas PAS measures the first, confidence judgments and post-decision wagering measure the second.     

Sampling in research on interpersonal aggression

The aim of this study was to investigate the usefulness of convenience samples in research on interpersonal aggression among adults. It was hypothesised that convenience sampled targets of aggression differs from targets in general with regards to both demographic characteristics and degree of aggression exposed to. A convenience sample comprising support-seeking targets of workplace bullying was compared with a representative sample of Norwegian targets of bullying. The results showed that the two samples differed significantly on all demographic variables investigated, except gender. A far higher percentage of the convenience sample had blown the whistle on illegal, immoral or illegitimate practice at their workplace, whereas they also reported significantly more frequent and more intense exposure to aggression. The findings confirm that convenience samples have low external validity when generalising to the general population. Such samples should therefore mainly be used to investigate tendencies in, and the phenomenology of, interpersonal aggression, in studies where generalisability is not the principal objective.     

The earliest electrophysiological correlate of visual awareness?

To examine the neural correlates and timing of human visual awareness, we recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) in two experiments while the observers were detecting a grey dot that was presented near subjective threshold. ERPs were averaged for conscious detections of the stimulus (hits) and nondetections (misses) separately. Our results revealed that hits, as compared to misses, showed a negativity around 180-350 ms at occipital and posterior temporal sites. It was followed by a positive wave after 400-500 ms, peaking at parietal sites. These correlates were not affected by a manipulation of attention. The early negativity, called 'visual awareness negativity' (VAN), may be a general, primary electrophysiological correlate of visual awareness. The present data show that it can be observed in response to appearance of a stimulus in visual awareness and that it generalizes across different manipulations of stimulus visibility.     

An fMRI study of phonological and spatial working memory using identical stimuli

The aim of the present fMRI study was to localize brain areas that were uniquely activated for phonological versus spatial working memory. Previous studies have reported inconsistent results, most likely because of methodological heterogeneity varying both stimuli and instructions in the same study. Here, identical consonant-vowel-consonant non-words were visually presented to the subjects in a 2-back paradigm under two different instructions; the subjects either had to memorize the non-words per se or their location. The results give evidence for a hemispheric organization of working memory, with dominance for processing of phonological information in the left hemisphere and frontal cortex, and spatial information in the right hemisphere and parietal cortex. The results also reflect a certain overlap between the neuronal network for working memory and processing of verbal and spatial material. These findings are discussed with regard to processing specificity and the extent that activated areas also may reflect perceptual processes.     

Internal imagery training in active high jumpers

The main purpose of this study was to examine whether the use of internal imagery would affect high jumping performance for active high jumping athletes. Over a period of six weeks, a group of active high jumpers were trained with an internal imagery program for a total of 72 minutes. This group was compared to a control group consisting of active high jumpers that only maintained their regular work-outs during the same time period. Four variables were measured; jumping height, number of failed attempts, take-off angle, and bar clearance. There was a significant improvement on bar clearance for the group that trained imagery (p < 0.05) but not for the control group. No other differences were found. The results suggest that internal imagery training may be used to improve a component of a complex motor skill. Possible explanations and future recommendations are discussed.     

The diagnostic accuracy of questions about past experiences of being mechanically restrained in a population of psychiatric patients

Information about stressful life experiences obtained from patients during diagnostic interviews is an important foundation for clinical decision making. In this study self-reports from 115 committed psychiatric patients of experiences of mechanical restraint were compared with medical records. The sensitivity of patient self-reports was 73% (11/15) and the specificity was 92% (92/100). No clear relationship between psychiatric symptoms and reliability of self-reports was identified. The results highlight the subjective qualities of narratives about past experiences.     

The use of heuristics in intuitive mathematical judgment

Anecdotal evidence points to the use of beauty as an indication of truth in mathematical problem solving. In the two experiments of the present study, we examined the use of heuristics and tested the assumption that participants use symmetry as a cue for correctness in an arithmetic verification task. We manipulated the symmetry of sets of dot pattern addition equations. Speeded decisions about the correctness of these equations led to higher endorsements for both correct and incorrect equations when the addend and sum dot patterns were symmetrical. Therefore, this effect is not due to the fact that symmetry facilitates calculation or estimation. We found systematic evidence for the use of heuristics in solving mathematical tasks, and we discuss how these findings relate to a processing-fluency account of intuition in mathematical judgment.