The Conceptual Complexity of Central Bankers and the Asian Financial Crisis

This paper examines the impact of the conceptual complexity of central bankers on exchange rate volatility during the Asian Financial Crisis of the late 1990s. Theoretically, this paper develops a framework to study the cognitive style of individual central bankers in conjunction with the institutional features of the central banks they head. The paper also controls for a variety of other common explanations for exchange rate volatility during this time period, including the number of veto players representing the political system and underlying structural features of the Asian economies. Empirically, the cross-sectional time-series analysis finds that more conceptually complex central bankers were able to reduce exchange rate volatility during the crisis years, especially when they inhabited highly independent central banks. This paper concludes that linking the study of key individuals to macroeconomic outcomes in the global political economy is a promising area of research.     

Locus of control and affectivity by gender and occupational status: A 14 nation study

This study investigated the extent to which reported gender differences in values are attributable to differences in national culture and organizational seniority. Locus of control and affectivity scores were obtained from 4599 managers and employees in business organizations located in 14 countries. Across nations, men and those in senior positions were more internal and less affective. Gender effects were additional to those attributable to status. Respondents in nations scoring higher on an index of modernity were found to be less internal. A pan-cultural factor analysis of locus of control items yielded four subscales. Men and those in senior positions scored higher on Socio-Political Control and Effort, but no differences were found on the Luck and Active Friendship subscales. The results are contrasted with those obtained from single-nation samples using student subjects. We acknowledge receipt of ESRC Grant R 000 22 1552, which aided the completion of this study, and the helpful comments of Michael Bond and John E. Williams upon an earlier version.     

Is visual image segmentation a bottom-up or an interactive process?

Visualimage segmentation is the process by which the visual system groups features that are part of a single shape. Is image segmentation a bottom-up or an interactive process? In Experiments 1 and 2, we presented subjects with two overlapping shapes and asked them to determine whether two probed locations were on the same shape or on different shapes. The availability of top-down support was manipulated by presenting either upright or rotated letters. Subjects were fastest to respond when the shapes corresponded to familiar shapes—the upright letters. In Experiment 3, we used a variant of this segmentation task to rule out the possibility that subjects performed same/different judgments after segmentation and recognition of both letters. Finally, in Experiment 4,we ruled out the possibility that the advantage for upright letters was merely due to faster recognition of upright letters relative to rotated letters. The results suggested that the previous effects were not due to faster recognition of upright letters; stimulus familiarity influenced segmentation per se. The results are discussed in terms of an interactive model of visual image segmentation.     

Conditioned suppression of bar-pressing behavior by stimuli associated with drugs

Ten naive male albino rats were trained to press a bar under a variable-interval 30-sec schedule with water as the reinforcer in two experiments. This behavior was disrupted by chlorpromazine in Experiment I (two rats) and by lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) in both Experiment I (two rats) and Experiment II (six rats). The administration of the drug was paired with an originally neutral white light. After several pairings with either drug, the light also depressed behavior. When the light was no longer paired with drug, the depression effect extinguished much faster than is usually observed in conditioned suppression studies.     

Selective attention in young children: the relations between visual search, filtering, and priming

Previous studies of visual attention in children have used a wide variety of tasks to demonstrate that visual selectivity improves with age. A guiding assumption (often implicit) of this work is the existence of a single attentional resource that increases in capacity with development. The present study examined the relations between three components of tasks that are often used in developmental studies of attention: search, filtering, and priming. Additive factors logic was applied to a simple speeded classification task performed by subjects aged 4, 7, and 24 years. The results showed (1) improvements with age occurred in each of the three task components, (2) visual search was unrelated to filtering and priming, and (3) filtering and priming were related to one another in a capacity-sharing fashion. Implications of these results for developmental studies of attention and for theories of attention are discussed.     

Trials per problem and age as factors in learning set formation of children

Discrimination learning set performance was examined in preschool children as a function of age and number of trials per problem. Subjects 3, 4, 5, and 6 years old were trained over three 72-trial sessions. Half of the children at each age were given problems three trials in length, and half received 12-trial problems. As predicted, younger children (3 and 4-year-olds) performed significantly better for 12 than for three trials per problem, whereas no differences in performance were evident for older children. Response pattern analyses revealed that younger children, especially those receiving less exposure within problems, produced a higher proportion of stimulus alternation and position determined response sequences than did older children. These results contradict the commonly held assumption that learning set acquisition is simply a function of the total number of trials presented and indicate that the amount of exposure to individual problems is a factor in problem solution for young human subjects.     

Grounding the figure: Surface attachment influences figure-ground organization

We investigated whether the lower region effect on figure-ground organization (Vecera, Vogel, & Woodman, 2002) would generalize to contextual depth planes in vertical orientations, as is predicted by a theoretical analysis based on the ecological statistics of edges arising from objects that are attached to surfaces of support. Observers viewed left/right ambiguous figure-ground displays that occluded middle sections of four types of contextual inducers: two types of attached, receding, vertical planes (walls) that used linear perspective and/or texture gradients to induce perceived depth and two types of similar trapezoidal control figures that used either uniform color or random texture to reduce or eliminate perceived depth. The results showed a reliable bias toward seeing as “figure” the side of the figure-ground display that was attached to the receding depth plane, but no such bias for the corresponding side in either of the control conditions. The results are interpreted as being consistent with the attachment hypothesis that the lower region cue to figure-ground organization results from ecological biases in edge interpretation that arise when objects are attached to supporting surfaces in the terrestrial gravitational field.     

Flashbulb memories for September 11th can be preserved in older adults

Flashbulb memories (FMs) are vivid, long-lasting memories for the source of surprising, arousing news. Laboratory studies have consistently found that older adults, especially those with below-average frontal lobe (FL) function, are impaired in source memory relative to young. We tested memory for the source of news concerning the September 11th terrorist attacks in older adults with high or low frontal lobe function and in young people. We found no age differences in source memory a year after the event and no differences related to FL function. Flashbulb memories may be different from usual cases of source memory because of their emotional content, personal importance, or social relevance.     

Risk perceptions, worry, and attitudes about genetic testing for breast cancer susceptibility

This study assessed the unique associations of risk perceptions and worry with attitudes about genetic testing for breast cancer susceptibility. Women (general practitioner clinic attenders, university students, and first-degree relatives of breast cancer survivors; N?=?303) read information about genetic testing and completed measures assessing perceived cancer risk, cancer worry, and genetic testing attitudes and beliefs. Worry was associated with greater interest in genetic testing, stronger beliefs that testing has detrimental emotional consequences, and positive beliefs about benefits of testing and risk-reducing surgeries. Perceived risk was unrelated to interest and associated with more skeptical beliefs about emotional consequences and benefits of testing and risk-reducing surgeries. At low worry levels, testing interest increased with more positive beliefs about testing benefits; at high worry levels, interest was high regardless of benefits beliefs. The findings support Leventhal's Common-Sense Model of self-regulation delineating interactive influences of risk-related cognitions and emotions on information processing and behavior.