Brightness and loudness as functions of stimulus duration

The brightness of white light and the loudness of white noise were measured by magnitude estimation for sets of stimuli that varied in intensity and duration. Brightness and loudness both grow as power functions of duration up to a critical duration, beyond which apparent magnitude is essentially independent of duration. For brightness, the critical duration decreases with increasing intensity, but for loudness the critical duration is nearly constant at about 150 msec. Loudness and brightness also grow as power functions of intensity. The loudness exponent is the same for all durations, but the brightness exponent is about half again as large for short durations as for long. The psychophysical power functions were used to generate equal-loudness and equal-brightness functions, which specify the combinations of intensity E and duration T that produce the same apparent magnitude. Below the critical duration ET equals k for equal brightness, and ET^a equals k for equal loudness. The value a is about 0.7 for threshold and about 1.25 for supraliminal loudness.     

The coregulatory effects of emotionally focused therapy

This study examined the heart rate synchrony between a single couple in emotionally focused therapy (EFT) as a method of measuring coregulatory effects over the course of treatment. A clinician who is an EFT certified therapist, supervisor, and trainer administered all eight sessions in a private practice setting. Surrogate synchrony analysis assessed heart rate synchrony between partners, indicating that significant heart rate synchrony was more likely over time. Significant heart rate synchrony was more likely during sessions that focused on clients’ sharing attachment injuries, bonds, and longings with their partner compared to sessions more focused on cognitive processing of the relationship. Additionally, there were delays in heart rate synchrony that occurred between the couple, which may be indicative of the emotional processing speed of the empathic response of each partner. Understanding the physiological synchrony patterns between dyads in treatment could clarify the potential of coregulation in the therapeutic process.     

A New Perspective on Preferential Treatment: The Role of Ambiguity and Self-Efficacy

Knowledge of being selected preferentially has been shown to have negative effects. This study examined how changing the operationalization of preferential treatment to allow for perceptions of ambiguity in the nature of the selection decision may lead to changes in research conclusions. Eighty-four female undergraduates were led to believe they were selected to perform a mathematical task based on their merit, direct preferential treatment, or a more ambiguous or indirect preferential treatment. Results indicated that participants' self-efficacy levels affected their interpretations of the manipulation and performance. Implications for the study of preferential treatment are discussed.     

The epistemic virtues of consistency

The lottery paradox has been discussed widely. The standard solution to the lottery paradox is that a ticket holder is justified in believing each ticket will lose but the ticket holder is also justified in believing not all of the tickets will lose. If the standard solution is true, then we get the paradoxical result that it is possible for a person to have a justified set of beliefs that she knows is inconsistent. In this paper, I argue that the best solution to the paradox is that a ticket holder is not justified in believing any of the tickets are losers. My solution avoids the paradoxical result of the standard solution. The solution I defend has been hastily rejected by other philosophers because it appears to lead to skepticism. I defend my solution from the threat of skepticism and give two arguments in favor of my conclusion that the ticket holder in the original lottery case is not justified in believing that his ticket will lose.     

Family enhancement of cognitive style in anxious and aggressive children

Previous research has shown that anxious adults provide more threat interpretations of ambiguous stimuli than other clinic and nonclinic persons. We were interested in investigating if the same bias occurs in anxious children and how family processes impact on these children's interpretations of ambiguity. Anxious, oppositional, and nonclinical children and their parents were asked separately to interpret and provide plans of action to ambiguous scenarios. Afterwards, Each family was asked to discuss two of these situations as a family and for the child to provide a final response. The results showed that anxious and oppositional children were both more likely to interpret ambiguous scenarios in a threatening manner. However, the two clinic groups differed in that the anxious children predominantly chose avoidant solutions whereas the oppositional children chose aggressive solutions. After family discussions, both the anxious children's avoidant plans of action and the oppositional children's aggressive plans increased. Thus, this study provides the first evidence of family enhancement of avoidant and aggressive responses in children. These results support a model of anxiety that emphasizes the development of an anxious cognitive style in the context of anxiety-supporting family processes.This research was supported by grants from The National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia, The University of Queensland, and The Myer Foundation of Australia. The authors would like to thank the families, all the anxiety project staff, and Candi Peterson for her helpful feedback in the draft of this paper.     

Effects of sequential 1-minute time trials with and without inter-trial feedback and self-correction on general and special education students' fluency with math facts

We measured the effects of two procedures for implementing 1-min time trials on the rate and accuracy with which elementary students wrote answers to single-digit math facts in two concurrent experiments in a first grade classroom and a special education classroom. On-task behavior of three students in each class was also measured. Baseline was a 10-min work period in which students were told to answer as many problems as you can. The two time trial conditions, each of which was also conducted within a 10-min period, consisted of: (1) a series of seven 1-min time trials with a 20-s rest period following each timing; and (2) two 1-min timings, each followed by a teacher-directed feedback and self-correction activity. Students in both classrooms answered correctly more problems per minute during both time trial conditions than they did during the 10-min work period, with the highest levels of fluency occurring during the two time trials with self-correction. The emphasis on going fast did not impair students' accuracy of performance. In both classrooms the percentage of attempted problems answered correctly was high during the initial baseline and increased slightly over the course of the study. On-task behavior was higher during both time trial conditions than during the 10-min work period. When asked at the study's conclusion which of the three methods for practicing math facts (1) helped you learn the most and (2) would you like to do again, the majority of the students in both classrooms chose the time trials followed by feedback and self-correction.     

Beliefs about female and male nonverbal communication

Participants (N= 441) rated from 1 to 10 how frequently or well they believed hypothetical women and men performed each of twenty nonverbal behaviors or skills. Women were believed to use more expressive and involved nonverbal behaviors than men, and to be more skilled at sending and receiving nonverbal messages. Men were believed to be louder and more interruptive, and to display more nervous, dysfluent behaviors. Ratings given to females by females were higher than were ratings in the other gender combinations for over half the variables, which may accurately describe female—female interaction. Perceived gender differences correlated positively with differences reported in observational studies, indicating that beliefs about nonverbal gender differences were generally accurate. The authors wish to thank Tom Leahy for his assistance in data collection.     

The overjustification effect: A meta-analysis

This article reports the results of a meta-analysis using 50 experimental studies (256 effect sizes) of the overjustification effect. In general, we found support for the effect across age, dependent measure, and design type in specific situations where it is predicted to occur. Findings are less supportive of the theory for situations where there should be no difference between experimental and control groups (e. g. non-contingent or unexpected reward). Suggestions for future research are made.     

Inhibitory stimulus control in concurrent schedules

Six pigeons were exposed to two keys, a main key and a changeover key. Pecking the main key was reinforced on a variable-interval 5-min schedule when the key was blue and never reinforced when the key displayed a vertical line on a blue background. Each peck on the changeover key changed the stimulus displayed on the main key. Each subject was given two generalization tests, consisting of presentations on the main key of six orientations of the line on the blue background, with no reinforcements being given. In one test changeover-key pecks changed the stimulus; in the other test the changeover key was covered and the experimenter controlled stimulus changes. Both responses to the six stimuli and time spent in the presence of the stimuli gave U-shaped gradients when the changeover key was operative. With most subjects, absolute rates of responding to each stimulus produced unsystematic gradients, whether or not the changeover key was operative.