How are cognitive and physical difficulty compared?

Tasks that require less physical effort are generally preferred over more physically demanding alternatives. Similarly, tasks that require less mental effort are generally preferred over more mentally demanding alternatives. But what happens when one must choose between tasks that entail different kinds of effort, one mainly physical (e.g., carrying buckets) and the other mainly mental (e.g., counting)? We asked participants to choose between a bucket-carrying task and a counting task. Our participants were less likely to choose the bucket task when it required a long reach rather than a short reach, and our participants were also less likely to choose the bucket task the smaller the final count value. We tested the hypothesis that subjective task durations provided a common currency for comparing the difficulties of the two kinds of tasks. We found that this hypothesis provided a better account of the task choice data than did an account that relied on objective task durations. Our study opens the door to a new problem in the study of attention, perception, and psychophysics—judging the difficulty of different kinds of tasks. The approach we took to this problem, which relies on two-alternative forced choice along with modeling the basis for the choice, may prove useful in future investigations.     

<Emphasis Type="Italic">Access</Emphasis> denied: a reply to Rickabaugh and McAllister

In their recent paper, Brandon Rickabaugh and Derek McAllister object to Paul Moser’s rejection of natural theology on the grounds that Moser is committed to a principle, Seek, which commits Moser to another principle, Access. Access in turn can be rationally motivated for at least some nonbelievers only by the arguments of natural theology. So Moser is in fact committed to the epistemic usefulness of natural theology. In this paper, we show that Seek by itself does not commit one to Access, and that even if Moser is committed to Access, he is not thereby committed to the epistemic usefulness of natural theology for all nonbelievers. While we find this argument offered by Rickabaugh and McAllister lacking, we do not deny their conclusion that natural theology is epistemically useful to all nonbelievers.     

Moving the Arm at Different Rates: Slow Movements are Avoided

Qualitative and quantitative changes characterize locomotion and rhythmic interlimb coordination at different speeds. Legs and hands do not move more or less quickly; they also adopt different relative coordination patterns. In the present article, the authors asked whether similar transitions occur for unimanual hand movements when speed is slowed below the preferred speed. Participants moved a handheld dowel back and forth between 2 large circular targets in time with a metronome at periods between 370 ms and 1667 ms. The authors analyzed the kinematics of participants’ movements at each period and found that proportional dwell time and number of peaks in the velocity profile increased as driving periods increased. Path lengths and peak velocities remained relatively constant for driving periods exceeding 800 ms. Participants made only gradual changes to their movement parameters, so that they went from a continuous mode to a more discrete mode of behavior for longer driving periods. Thus, unlike for rhythmic bimanual movements or locomotory patterns, there are quantitative but no clear qualitative changes for unimanual movements. The results suggest that participants tried to move close to their preferred tempo at different rates, and that they avoided moving slowly.     

Deception Within Adolescent Sexual Conduct

Deception is presented as a “design to defeat a design” (Thompson 1986, p 64) where one actor purposefully changes the environment with the intention on generating a less adaptive response from another actor. The shared context combined with the indeterminacy of meanings makes deception not only possible, but also an important strategy for adaptation. In this regard not all deception temporarily causes individuals to reorganize their meaning making hierarchy around the changes made by the other party. Different uses of deceptions are explored with regards to adolescent sexual conduct, as their complex and quickly changing representations necessitate social recognition and adaptation.     

A method for obtaining psychophysical estimates of movement costs

Although researchers generally accept the proposition that movement costs are taken into account in the planning of voluntary movements, there is no established psychophysical method for estimating such costs. The authors tested and introduce a possible method. Participants were given every possible pair of tasks from a set of tasks that varied along one or more dimensions. In each trial, they indicated which task was easier to perform. The authors used participants' probability of preferring any given task over others to estimate the judged relative cost (JRC) of that task, and they used the JRCs of all the tasks to quantify the relation between task preference and task properties. The method was applied in 3 experiments in which university students (Experiment 1, N = 20; Experiment 2, N = 40; Experiment 3, N = 20) chose which spatial target to move to in carrying an object from one position to another. The data were consistent with the hypothesis that the JRC of moving an object increases with the degree to which the object must be translated and rotated. The simplicity of the method encourages its application to a wide range of questions about motor behavior.     

Treating bruxism with the habit-reversal technique

The habit-reversal technique developed by Azrin and Nunn (1973, 1977) was used in treating four clients with bruxism. Following a single treatment session, marked reductions in the frequencies of this behavior were obtained in each case. Subsequently, relaxation and stress management techniques were conducted with two of these clients who had facial pain. These procedures were associated with decreased pain ratings and medications for one client and a further decrease in bruxism and cessation of pain for the second. These results remained consistent over 6- and 12-month follow-ups. Each of the components of habit-reversal appeared to be related to its effectiveness, and methods for performing component analyses of this technique are described.     

Fathers,Sons, and Aggression: A Path Model

This study developed and tested a path model that examined the purported relationships between college males’ perceptions of their fathers’ rejection and traditional masculine ideology endorsement, and their own self-reported aggression. The model included participants’ traditional masculine ideology endorsement, masculine gender role stress, self-esteem, shame-proneness, and anger as mediating variables. The results indicated that college-age males’ perceptions of their fathers as rejecting and hypermasculine predicted aggression in the final path model. There was also support for the mediating roles of the son’s traditional masculine ideology endorsement, masculine gender role stress, self-esteem, and anger. It is concluded that fathers could play an integral role in the development of male aggressive behavior. Implications and future research are discussed.     

Subjective Well-Being in Adolescence: The Role of Self-Control,Social Support,Age, Gender,and Familial Crisis

Focusing on adolescents’ subjective well-being, the present study comprised three parts. The first examined the role of two coping mechanisms, self-control and social support, in predicting subjective well-being. The second related to the role of age and gender in predicting adolescents’ subjective well-being. The third raised the question of whether exposure to familial crisis would predict adolescents’ subjective well-being and whether self-control and social support would moderate the link between crisis and adolescents’ subjective well-being. Participants included 380 adolescents ages 13–17 years (M = 15.32, SD = .98; 194 boys, 176 girls, 10 unspecified), from six integrative junior-high and high schools in central Israel. All schools served a heterogeneous Jewish student population. Based on responses to a questionnaire identifying adolescents who reported experiencing a severe life crisis during the last year (e.g., severe illness in family, parent death or separation/divorce), the sample was divided into two groups: exposure to familial crisis (n = 96) and no exposure to familial crisis (n = 284). Outcomes revealed that both self-control and social support predicted adolescents’ subjective well-being. As expected, older adolescents presented lower levels of subjective well-being than younger ones. In contrast to the hypothesis, gender did not predict subjective well-being. Although exposure to crisis did not predict higher negative affect or lower positive affect, an interaction emerged between self-control and crisis in predicting positive affect. Thus, among adolescents who experienced crisis, better self-control skills predicted higher levels of positive affect.