The flashing green light paradox

The traffic engineering literature shows that flashing-green intervals at the end of the green interval do not increase safety at signalized intersections, although these intervals were introduced to provide additional information that would help drivers make safe stopping or crossing decisions. The present research evaluates, in light of the engineering literature, Israeli drivers’ perceptions of the flashing green interval, knowledge of the legal meaning of flashing green, perceived safety implications of the flashing green, and behavior in its presence. The study also explores differences between Israel’s two main ethnic groups in terms of these issues. A survey was conducted among 670 Israeli drivers in order to investigate three hypotheses. The results show that, in agreement with the literature, Israeli drivers exhibit great variance in their reaction to the flashing green. As was hypothesized, it seems that most drivers support the flashing green interval despite the fact that it seems to reduce safety. The implications of these findings are discussed.     

Temporal texture of associative encoding modulates recall processes

Binding aspects of an experience that are distributed over time is an important element of episodic memory. In the current study, we examined how the temporal complexity of an experience may govern the processes required for its retrieval. We recorded event-related potentials during episodic cued recall following pair associate learning of concurrently and sequentially presented object-picture pairs. Cued recall success effects over anterior and posterior areas were apparent in several time windows. In anterior locations, these recall success effects were similar for concurrently and sequentially encoded pairs. However, in posterior sites clustered over parietal scalp the effect was larger for the retrieval of sequentially encoded pairs. We suggest that anterior aspects of the mid-latency recall success effects may reflect working-with-memory operations or direct access recall processes, while more posterior aspects reflect recollective processes which are required for retrieval of episodes of greater temporal complexity.     

Helping behaviour and moral judgement among adolescents

This study examined the development of helping behaviour and moral judgement during adolescence. Adolescents of three age groups, 12–13, 14–15 and 16–17 years, were asked to fill out a moral judgement questionnaire and were later asked to volunteer to help old people under three helping conditions: when tangible reward was promised in return for their help; when social reward was promised; and when no reward was promised. The volunteers who arrived at the appointed hour on the set date were asked by the experimenter to explain in writing why they had decided to help. The results showed that the older the adolescents, the less they expressed their willingness to help. Helping conditions had a differential effect on behaviour and influenced the three age groups differently. Finally, the results showed that the older the adolescents, the more altruistic the motives expressed and the more relativistically oriented they were. These results are explained within the framework of adolescents' social-developmental psychology.     

An analysis of aftereffects in the measurement of the correction effect

Ss, under prismatic viewing, aligned a spot of light to the apparent straightahead first in the dark and then under illumination. Ss made these judgments either by controlling the spot themselves or by directing E in moving it. For both types of alignment procedures, judgments were significantly more veridical in the illuminated room (correction effect). Aftereffects, measured after both the spot alignment in the dark and in the light, were found to be significant only when S moved the stimulus. These results contradict the argument that the egocentric localization processes involved in the production of the correction effect itself are the basis of the aftereffects obtained.     

The missing link? Testing a schema account of unitization

Unitization refers to the creation of a new unit from previously distinct items. The concept of unitization has been used to explain how novel pairings between items can be remembered without requiring recollection, by virtue of new, item-like representations that enable familiarity-based retrieval. We tested an alternative account of unitization – a schema account – which suggests that associations between items can be rapidly assimilated into a schema. We used a common operationalization of “unitization” as the difference between two unrelated words being linked by a definition, relative to two words being linked by a sentence, during an initial study phase. During the following relearning phase, a studied word was re-paired with a new word, either related or unrelated to the original associate from study. In a final test phase, memory for the relearned associations was tested. We hypothesized that, if unitized representations act like schemas, then we would observe some generalization to related words, such that memory would be better in the definition than sentence condition for related words, but not for unrelated words. Contrary to the schema hypothesis, evidence favored the null hypothesis of no difference between definition and sentence conditions for related words (Experiment 1), even when each cue was associated with multiple associates, indicating that the associations can be generalized (Experiment 2), or when the schematic information was explicitly re-activated during Relearning (Experiment 3). These results suggest that unitized associations do not generalize to accommodate new information, and therefore provide evidence against the schema account.