Computer games: Paradigms of opportunity

Computer games offer unique opportunities to apply unobtrusive constraints to action that permit meaningful analysis without destroying the integrity of the game itself. To a much greater extent than most traditional laboratory tasks, computer games represent holistic, meaningful, and natural human activity. Considerable concern about the appropriate analysis and interpretation of results, however, remains. One strategy that addresses these concerns involves the adoption of separate but convergent analytic perspectives. This article suggests that three such perspectives (viz., the objective, the subjective, and the empirical) can be combined to provide the necessary logical leverage to allow meaningful research. Alternative analyses of data collected from the playing of a particular arcade-type computer game are used to illustrate this point.     

Color-based inhibition of return

The inhibition of return of visual attention based on stimulus color was examined in three experiments. In the first experiment, a discrete trial paradigm showed that subjects were slower to detect a color patch if the color matched that of a patch presented earlier in the same location. Experiment 2 showed that the inhibition only occurs if a neutral, nontarget distractor color is presented between presentation of the initial color cue and the subsequent target patch—explaining the previous failures to detect the phenomenon. Experiment 3 extended the results to a different combination of colors. Taken together, the results have important implications for the processing of stimulus attributes such as spatial location and color, and for the conditions necessary for producing inhibition of return.     

Prenatal gender preference of mothers of feminine and masculine boys: Relation to sibling sex composition and birth order

A mother's (prenatal) wish for a girl has, at times, been implicated as an etiological factor for boyhood femininity or its DSM-III-R diagnostic equivalent, the Gender Identity Disorder of Childhood. In one sample of 52 feminine and 52 nonclinical control boys from Los Angeles, the proportion of mothers who recalled a wish for a girl during the pregnancy did not differ significantly between groups (26.9% vs. 19.2%, respectively); however, in both groups, the maternal wish for a girl was significantly more common in sibships in which all of the proband's older siblings were male. In a second sample of 103 feminine boys from Toronto, the maternal wish for a girl was significantly higher than that found in the Los Angeles sample (43.7% vs. 26.9%), but a control group was not available; as in the Los Angeles sample, the maternal wish for a girl was significantly more common in sibships in which all of the proband's older siblings were male. Implications of these findings for further study of maternal influences on boyhood femininity are discussed.     

Aggressivity,inattention, hyperactivity,and impulsivity in boys at high and low risk for substance abuse

Aggressivity, inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity are cardinal dimensions of externalizing behavior problems of childhood. They are diagnostic and clinical features of childhood disorders, and are thought to be linked to the subsequent development of adult disorders such as substance abuse (SA). Little is known, however, about the convergent and discriminant validity of these four constructs. We used multiple measures to develop indices of aggressivity, inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity in a sample of 10- to 12-year-old boys (N=183) with and without a family history of SA. Data were taken from mother reports, child reports, teacher reports, and laboratory tasks. The study aims were (1) to test the convergent and discriminant validity of aggressivity, inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity; (2) to examine whether the data were consistent with a model specifying the four constructs as indicators of one superordinate factor; and (3) to differentiate boys with and without a family history of SA in construct scores. The results supported the convergent and discriminant validity of the four constructs. Although discriminable, the constructs covaried strongly and were consistent with a model specifying them as indicators of a single superordinate factor. Boys with a family history of substance abuse scored higher than control boys on aggressivity, inattention, and impulsivity scores, but the groups did not differ on hyperactivity scores. The results are discussed in terms of the role of childhood behavior problems in vulnerability to SA.This work was supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse grant No. DA 05605.     

The mediating role of anxiety in self-reported somatic complaints of depressed adolescents

This study examined the mediating role of anxiety in the self-reports of somatic complaints in 96 depressed adolescent inpatients. Sixty-four subjects with major depressive episodes and comorbid anxiety disorders (MDE-A) determined from the Diagnostic Interview for Children and Adolescents-Revised (DICA-R) reported significantly more somatic complaints than 32 adolescents having major depressive episodes without comorbid anxiety (MDE). An analysis of covariance demonstrated that, with anxiety symptoms controlled, MDE and MDE-A groups did not differ significantly in somatic complaints. A hierarchical multiple-regression analysis revealed that, with demographic and anxiety symptoms controlled, depressive symptoms did not contribute to the explanation or prediction of somatic complaints. The results suggest that anxious, but not depressive symptoms, are independently associated with somatic complaints. The results are discussed in light of new affective models of psychopathology.     

Judging others in the shadow of suspicion

Previous research has found that when perceivers have reason to be suspicious of the motives underlying an actor's behavior, they are likely to draw inferences about the actor's true disposition that reflect a relatively sophisticated style of attributional processing. The present research was designed to examine some of the negative consequences that suspicion can have on perceivers' judgments. In each of the three studies reported, some subjects were made suspicious about the motives of an actor on the basis of contextual information surrounding the actor's behavior, rather than the behavior itself. Results of these studies suggest that, particularly when perceivers believe that the actions or motives of the actor could affect them, suspicion may cause perceivers to see the actor in a more negative light, even if the perceivers are not convinced that the actor's behavior was indeed affected by ulterior motives.The authors thank Patrick Carver and Gilbert Fein for their assistance with the stimulus materials for Study 1, and Jessica Cross, Thomas Tomlinson, and Amy Elmore for their assistance with Studies 2 and 3.     

Effect of Skill on Visual Laterality: Now You See It - Now You Dont (Comments on Clancy and Hoyer, 1993)

Clancy and Hoyer (1993) have recently investigated the effects of domain-specific expertise and hemispheric asymmetry on detecting featural differences in visual patterns. Based on the pattern of reaction time results, they concluded that there is a left-hemisphere advantage for making difficult, domain-relevant visual discriminations in skilled experts but not in unskilled control subjects. However, response accuracy data from the same experiment contradict their conclusions about the relationship of skill to the pattern of hemispheric asymmetry and favor an alternative interpretation in terms of the specific aspects of visual information needed to make different types of discrimination.     

Converging measures of speech segmentation in preverbal infants

Two studies using novel extensions of the conditioned head-turning method examined contributions of rhythmic and distributional properties of syllable strings to 8-month-old infants' speech segmentation. The two techniques introduced exploit fundamental, but complementary, properties of representational units. The first involved assessment of discriminative response maintenance when simple training stimuli were embedded in more complex speech contexts; the second involved measurement of infants' latencies in detecting extraneous signals superimposed on speech stimuli. A complex pattern of results is predicted if infants succeed in grouping syllables into higher-order units. Across the two studies, the predicted pattern of results emerged, indicating that rhythmic properties of speech play an important role in guiding infants toward potential linguistically relevant units and simultaneously demonstrating that the techniques proposed here provide valid, converging measures of infants' auditory representational units.     

Adding elder care to women's multiple roles: A critical review of the caregiver stress and multiple roles literatures

Sex Roles - Research on the effect of multiple roles on women's well-being has focused almost exclusively on the employment and child rearing roles of younger women, and has overlooked the...