Compared to what? Effects of categorization on hedonic contrast

Test stimuli are rated less “good” following very good context stimuli than when presented either alone or following neutral context stimuli. This diminution in rating is calledhedonic contrast. In two experiments, the degree of hedonic contrast depended on how subjects were instructed to categorize context and test stimuli. Contrast was substantially attenuated if context and test stimuli were said to belong to different categories. The effect was demonstrated for beverages (Experiment 1) and birds (Experiment 2). Stimuli’s hedonic ratings were far less affected by other stimuli declared to belong to a different category than by stimuli declared to belong to a common category.     

Carryover effects of feeling socially transparent or impenetrable on strategic self-presentation

The authors proposed that social orientations, such as feeling transparent or impenetrable, that are created in one context can carry over and interact with elements in a different context to influence strategic self-presentation. Participants in 2 experiments wrote narratives that made them feel transparent or impenetrable. Later, they believed they would discuss problems from a social intelligence test with other group members and believed they could do well or poorly on the problems on the basis of practice test feedback. Self-presentations of social intelligence revealed the hypothesized interactions. When transparent, participants adjusted their self-presentations to how well or poorly they expected to perform, but when impenetrable, they presented themselves positively regardless of performance expectations. These results mimic effects obtained when performance is actually made publicly accessible or inaccessible, broaden the conceptualization of strategic self-presentation, and call into question long-held assumptions surrounding public versus private manipulations.     

Correlated and coupled cognitive change in older adults with and without preclinical dementia

Common factor aging theories state that correlations among cognitive age effects signify a single underlying causal process. The logic underlying this proposition was evaluated by examining correlated cognitive change in a sample of 391 initially nondemented older adults who were tested annually for up to 16 years. Between-person correlations among rates of change (range = .56-.61) were partly attributable to model misspecification and the aggregation of heterogeneous groups of individuals. Correlated within-person cognitive change was much stronger in the cases (.45-.51) than in the noncases (.07-.18). These results demonstrate that correlated change may either signify causal commonality or the cumulative effects of multiple age-related conditions that can affect multiple cognitive systems.     

PET activation studies comparing two speech tasks widely used in surgical mapping

"Automatic" speech, especially counting, is frequently preserved in aphasia, even when word production is severely impaired. Although brain sites and processes for automatic speech are not well understood, counting is frequently used to elicit fluent speech during preoperative and intraoperative cortical mapping for language. Obtaining both behavioral and functional brain imaging measures, this study compared counting with a word production task (generation of animal names), including non-verbal vocalizations and quiet rest as control states, in normal and aphasic subjects. Behavioral data indicated that normal and aphasic groups did not differ in counting or non-verbal vocalizations, but did differ significantly in word production ("naming" animals). Functional brain imaging results on normal subjects using partial least squares analysis of PET rCBF images revealed three significant latent variables (LVs): one for naming and vocalizing, identifying bilateral anterior areas, with left predominating over right; a second LV for naming, identifying left and right frontal and temporal areas. For the third, only marginally significant LV, which was associated with automatic speech alone (counting), right and subcortical sites predominated. For patients, two LVs emerged, identified with naming and vocalization, and corresponding to a variety of cerebral sites; the analysis failed to find a specific latent variable for counting. A comparison between group data for normal subjects and patients suggested that the naming, counting, and vocalization tasks were performed differently by the two groups. These results suggest that word generation as a verbal task is more likely to elicit activity in classical language areas than counting. Further studies are suggested to better understand differences between neurological substrates for non-propositional and automatic speech.     

Illusory Correlations in Perceptions of Obese and Hypertensive Patients’ Noncooperative Behaviors1

This research investigated perceived medical noncompliance between obese and hypertensive patients. An illusory correlation formed between obese patients and their noncooperative behaviors. Participants overestimated the frequency with which obese patients did not cooperate with their physician's advice when these patients appeared infrequently. When hypertensive patients appeared infrequently, however, participants were accurate in their estimates of noncooperation for these patients. These findings suggest that stigmatized patients suffer more from an illusory correlation bias than do nonstigmatized patients, and this effect is exacerbated when people have infrequent contact with stigmatized patients.     

Real-Time Processing Implications of Enriched Composition at the Syntax–Semantics Interface

This study reports results on the real-time consequences of aspectual coercion. We define aspectual coercion as a combinatorial semantic operation requiring computation over and above that provided by combining lexical items through expected syntactic processes. An experiment is described assessing whether or not parsing of a string requiring coercion—in addition to syntactic composition—is more computationally costly than parsing a syntactically transparent counterpart, a string that provides for an interpretable representation via syntactic composition alone. The prediction of a higher computational cost for this process is borne out by the results.     

Psychometric appraisal of Eysenck's revised Psychoticism scale: a cross-cultural study

Psychometric characteristics of Eysenck's revised P scale were studied in a cross-cultural research. The Spanish version of the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire-Revised (EPQ-R) was administered to a Spanish sample of 527 males and 583 females. Maximum-likelihood factor analyses of the item intercorrelations and Direct Oblimin rotations of the extracted factors were carried out separately for males and females. The results revealed four factors identified as psychoticism (P), extraversion (E), neuroticism (N) and dissimulation/conformity (L). Internal consistency and test–retest reliability coefficients were satisfactory and very similar to the ones found in the original study. Skewness and kurtosis of the P scale distribution were closer to normal than on the original British revised P scale.     

Comparing the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire and the Child Behavior Checklist: Is Small Beautiful?

The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) is a brief behavioral screening questionnaire that can be completed in 5 minutes by the parents or teachers of children aged 4 to 16; there is a self-report version for 11- to 16-year-olds. In this study, mothers completed the SDQ and the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) on 132 children aged 4 through 7 and drawn from psychiatric and dental clinics. Scores from the SDQ and CBCL were highly correlated and equally able to discriminate psychiatric from dental cases. As judged against a semistructured interview, the SDQ was significantly better than the CBCL at detecting inattention and hyperactivity, and at least as good at detecting internalizing and externalizing problems. Mothers of low-risk children were twice as likely to prefer the SDQ.     

A Developmental Approach to Prevention Research: Configural Antecedents of Early Parenthood

A developmental framework emphasizing the combined impact of correlated constraints within and without the individual was applied to a prospective longitudinal study of early parenthood. The purpose was to use a person-approach to the analysis of longitudinal data to clarify risk for early parenthood and to generate hypotheses about potentially useful intervention strategies. Respondents were 475 youth who were assessed annually from seventh grade through the end of high school and, again, at ages 20 and 24. The risk patterns associated with parenthood were the same for both sexes. Individuals with a middle-school configuration of low socioeconomic status, high aggression, low academic skills, low popularity, and prior grade failure were most likely to become parents by early adulthood. Risk for early parenthood increased substantially for respondents who dropped out of school early, regardless of their initial risk status.