Body—object interaction ratings for 1,618 monosyllabic nouns

Body-object interaction (BOI) assesses the ease with which a human body can physically interact with a word’s referent. Recent research has shown that BOI influences visual word recognition processes in such a way that responses to high-BOI words (e.g., couch) are faster and less error prone than responses to low-BOI words (e.g., cliff ). Importantly, the high-BOI words and the low-BOI words that were used in those studies were matched on imageability. In the present study, we collected BOI ratings for a large set of words. BOI ratings, on a 1–7 scale, were obtained for 1,618 monosyllabic nouns. These ratings allowed us to test the generalizability of BOI effects to a large set of items, and they should be useful to researchers who are interested in manipulating or controlling for the effects of BOI. The body-object interaction ratings for this study may be downloaded from the Psychonomic Society’s Archive of Norms, Stimuli, and Data, www.psychonomic.org/archive.     

The price of deceptive behavior: Disliking and lying to people who lie to us

We hypothesized that frequency and quality of deception influences how people perceive those who lie to them and that people subsequently increase deceptive behavior as a consequence of being lied to. In Study 1, participants were covertly videotaped conversing with a partner. Following the conversation, participants evaluated partners, and partners reviewed the videotape, identifying deceptions that they told. Findings indicated that partner’s frequency of deception was inversely related to likeability. In Study 2, participants watched a videotape of a confederate who appeared to produce one or four exaggerated or minimized lies, and then evaluated the confederate. Participants and confederates subsequently engaged in a conversation. When participants witnessed either one exaggerated lie, one or four minimal lies, or no lies they trusted and liked the confederate more than when witnessing four exaggerated lies. Moreover, participants increased their own use of deception as a function of the severity and quantity of confederate’s lies.     

An algebra of human concept learning

An important element of learning from examples is the extraction of patterns and regularities from data. This paper investigates the structure of patterns in data defined over discrete features, i.e. features with two or more qualitatively distinct values. Any such pattern can be algebraically decomposed into a spectrum of component patterns, each of which is a simpler or more atomic “regularity.” Each component regularity involves a certain number of features, referred to as its degree. Regularities of lower degree represent simpler or more coarse patterns in the original pattern, while regularities of higher degree represent finer or more idiosyncratic patterns. The full spectral breakdown of a pattern into component regularities of minimal degree, referred to as its power series, expresses the original pattern in terms of the regular rules or patterns it obeys, amounting to a kind of “theory” of the pattern. The number of regularities at various degrees necessary to represent the pattern is tabulated in its power spectrum, which expresses how much of a pattern's structure can be explained by regularities of various levels of complexity. A weighted mean of the pattern's spectral power gives a useful numeric summary of its overall complexity, called its algebraic complexity. The basic theory of algebraic decomposition is extended in several ways, including algebraic accounts of the typicality of individual objects within concepts, and estimation of the power series from noisy data. Finally some relations between these algebraic quantities and empirical data are discussed.     

Affect is a form of cognition: A neurobiological analysis

In this paper, we suggest that affect meets the traditional definition of "cognition" such that the affect-cognition distinction is phenomenological, rather than ontological. We review how the affect-cognition distinction is not respected in the human brain, and discuss the neural mechanisms by which affect influences sensory processing. As a result of this sensory modulation, affect performs several basic "cognitive" functions. Affect appears to be necessary for normal conscious experience, language fluency, and memory. Finally, we suggest that understanding the differences between affect and cognition will require systematic study of how the phenomenological distinction characterising the two comes about, and why such a distinction is functional.     

Verbal Sexual Coercion and Perceived Victim Responsibility: Mediating Effects of Perceived Control

Verbal coercion involves unwanted sexual penetration compelled by psychological pressure. It was hypothesized that, to the degree that verbal coercion is seen as controllable, victims may be held more responsible. Two samples of US undergraduates rated perceptions of hypothetical sexual coercion scenarios. In Study 1, participants (N = 120) read scenarios of either verbal coercion or rape by a male dating partner. Participants perceived verbal coercion as more controllable than rape, which accounted for the greater responsibility attributed to verbal coercion victims. In Study 2, participants (N = 275) read scenarios involving either male-to-female or female-to-male verbal coercion. Participants perceived female-to-male coercion as more controllable, which accounted for the greater responsibility attributed to a verbally coerced man.     

Parent–Infant Synchrony: Biological Foundations and Developmental Outcomes

ABSTRACT— Synchrony—a construct used across multiple fields to denote the temporal relationship between events—has been applied to the study of mother–infant interaction and is suggested here as a framework for the study of interpersonal relationships. Defined as the temporal coordination of micro-level social behavior, parent–infant synchrony is charted in its development across infancy from the initial consolidation of biological rhythms during pregnancy to the emergence of symbolic exchange between parent and child. Synchrony is shown to depend on physiological mechanisms supporting bond formation in mammals—particularly physiological oscillators and neuroendocrine systems such as those involving the hormone oxytocin. Developmental outcomes of the synchrony experience are observed in the domains of self-regulation, symbol use, and the capacity for empathy across childhood and adolescence. Specific disruptions to the parameters of synchrony that may be observed in various pathological conditions, such as prematurity or maternal affective disorder, are detailed. A time-based, micro-analytic behavioral approach to the study of human relationship may offer new insights on intersubjectivity across the lifespan.     

Formation of visual "objects" in the early computation of spatial relations

Perceptual grouping is the process by which elements in the visual image are aggregated into larger and more complex structures, i.e., "objects." This paper reports a study of the spatial factors and time-course of the development of objects over the course of the first few hundred milliseconds of visual processing. The methodology uses the now well-established idea of an "object benefit" for certain kinds of tasks (here, faster within-object than between-objects probe comparisons) to test what the visual system in fact treats as an object at each point during processing. The study tested line segment pairs in a wide variety of spatial configurations at a range of exposure times, in each case measuring the strength of perceptual grouping as reflected in the magnitude of the object benefit. Factors tested included nonaccidental properties such as collinearity, cotermination, and parallelism; contour relatability; Gestalt factors such as symmetry and skew symmetry, and several others, all tested at fine (25 msec) time-slices over the course of processing. The data provide detailed information about the comparative strength of these factors in inducing grouping at each point in processing. The result is a vivid picture of the chronology of object formation, as objects progressively coalesce, with fully bound visual objects completed by about 200 msec of processing.     

The role of the amygdala in visual awareness

Pessoa and colleagues recently reported the novel finding that objective awareness of a negative stimulus is associated with coactivation of the amygdala and fusiform gyrus. Based on the neuroanatomical connections of the amygdala, we suggest that the amygdala is acting to increase neural activity in the fusiform gyrus, thereby increasing the likelihood that visual representations that have affective value reach awareness. The psychological consequence is that a person's momentary affective state might help to select the contents of conscious experience.     

A Case for Homogeneity of Personality at the Occupational Level

The forces of attraction–selection–attrition have been hypothesized to create homogeneity of personality within organizations, and vocational choice theory predicts that these forces lead to a ‘modal personality’ within given occupations. This study compared the homogeneity of a set of personality characteristics for 6582 incumbents from eight organizations in eight occupations. The results indicated that (1) the homogeneity hypothesis was supported both within organizations as well as within occupations; and (2) the homogeneity within occupations was higher than that found in organizations.     

Psychological contracts and their implications for commitment: A feature-based approach

Two studies were conducted to examine the link between employee perceptions of the psychological contract and their affective and normative commitments to the organization. The authors adapt a new approach to the study of psychological contracts by developing a generalizable measure of contract features (e.g., scope; time frame). In Study 1 (N = 301), the authors predicted and found that employees’ perceptions of the contract’s features contributed beyond perceptions of contract type (i.e., transactional; relational) and fulfillment to the prediction of affective and normative commitment. In Study 2 (N = 147), the features measure was refined and results from the first study were largely replicated. In both studies, affective and normative commitment were greater when employees viewed the contract as broad, trust-based, equal, negotiated, tangible, and long-term, and weaker when they saw it as unequal, imposed, and short-term. We also found evidence for patterns of features that correspond to transactional and relational contracts, as well as to recently proposed balanced contracts and I-Deals. Implications for theory and the management of psychological contracts are discussed.