Interesting Things and Curious People: Exploration and Engagement as Transient States and Enduring Strengths

Curiosity, interest, and intrinsic motivation are critical to the development of competence, knowledge, and expertise. Without a mechanism of intrinsic motivation, people would rarely explore new things, learn for its own sake, or engage with uncertain tasks despite feelings of confusion and anxiety. This article explores two sides of interest: momentary feelings (the emotion of interest) and enduring traits (the character strength of curiosity). Recent theories in emotion psychology can explain why and when people experience feelings of interest; recent research has illuminated the role of curiosity in cultivating knowledge, meaning in life, close relationships, and physical and mental resilience. The problem for future research – and for social and personality psychology more generally – is how to bridge the dynamics of everyday experience with stable, lifespan aspects of personality.     

Measurement Reliability,the Spearman–Jensen Effect and the Revised Thorndike Model of Test Bias

The Thorndike model of test fairness has recently been revised and used to argue that cognitive ability tests are biased against certain groups of test‐takers because ability tests show larger mean differences across racial groups than do job performance measures. We discuss two critical factors that confound this new version of Thorndike's model, making it susceptible to false indications of test bias. Those factors are (a) measurement error (i.e., reliability) in both the predictor and criterion and (b) the Spearman–Jensen effect (i.e., the well‐documented effect that group differences in observed g‐saturated measures are directly proportional to the degree the manifest indicator reflects g). Finally, because the Spearman–Jensen effect is not well known within the applied literature, we present a brief simulation to better elucidate the implications of the Spearman–Jensen effect for personnel selection in general, and claims of bias in cognitive ability testing in particular.     

For whom the mind wanders, and when: an experience-sampling study of working memory and executive control in daily life

An experience-sampling study of 124 undergraduates, pretested on complex memory-span tasks, examined the relation between working memory capacity (WMC) and the experience of mind wandering in daily life. Over 7 days, personal digital assistants signaled subjects eight times daily to report immediately whether their thoughts had wandered from their current activity, and to describe their psychological and physical context. WMC moderated the relation between mind wandering and activities' cognitive demand. During challenging activities requiring concentration and effort, higher-WMC subjects maintained on-task thoughts better, and mind-wandered less, than did lower-WMC subjects. The results were therefore consistent with theories of WMC emphasizing the role of executive attention and control processes in determining individual differences and their cognitive consequences.     

Between- or within-culture variation?: Culture group as a moderator of the relations between individual differences and resource allocation preferences

Recent theoretical discussion of the influence of between- and within-culture factors on social behaviors suggests that both approaches may be useful. The present study was designed to investigate the joint influence of sociocultural (between-group) and individual (within-group) factors on resource allocation preferences. Brazilian (n=166) and European–American (n=99) children with ages ranging from 37 to 140 months were administered a resource allocation task, which consisted of distributing rewards to themselves or to an acquaintance. As expected, individualistic resource allocation preferences decreased with age, whereas competitive and cooperative resource allocation preferences increased with age. Culture group, the task-specific cognitive demands, and the gender of the child, however, moderated these age differences. For example, gender differences in resource allocation preferences were stronger among Brazilians as compared to European–Americans and stronger in the reduced cognitive demand condition. Models of cooperative and competitive behaviors that consider the role of culture group, gender, and cognitive development and applied implications are discussed.     

Abstract Conceptual Feature Ratings Predict Gaze Within Written Word Arrays: Evidence From a Visual Wor(l)d Paradigm

The Abstract Conceptual Feature (ACF) framework predicts that word meaning is represented within a high‐dimensional semantic space bounded by weighted contributions of perceptual, affective, and encyclopedic information. The ACF, like latent semantic analysis, is amenable to distance metrics between any two words. We applied predictions of the ACF framework to abstract words using eyetracking via an adaptation of the classical “visual word paradigm” (VWP). Healthy adults (n = 20) selected the lexical item most related to a probe word in a 4‐item written word array comprising the target and three distractors. The relation between the probe and each of the four words was determined using the semantic distance metrics derived from ACF ratings. Eye movement data indicated that the word that was most semantically related to the probe received more and longer fixations relative to distractors. Importantly, in sets where participants did not provide an overt behavioral response, the fixation rates were nonetheless significantly higher for targets than distractors, closely resembling trials where an expected response was given. Furthermore, ACF ratings which are based on individual words predicted eye fixation metrics of probe‐target similarity at least as well as latent semantic analysis ratings which are based on word co‐occurrence. The results provide further validation of Euclidean distance metrics derived from ACF ratings as a measure of one facet of the semantic relatedness of abstract words and suggest that they represent a reasonable approximation of the organization of abstract conceptual space. The data are also compatible with the broad notion that multiple sources of information (not restricted to sensorimotor and emotion information) shape the organization of abstract concepts. While the adapted “VWP” is potentially a more metacognitive task than the classical visual world paradigm, we argue that it offers potential utility for studying abstract word comprehension.     

Female Adolescents with Eating Disorders,Parental Psychopathological Risk and Family Functioning

Epidemiological studies on adolescents with eating disorders demonstrate a high prevalence of disordered eating behaviors, with a higher prevalence of eating disorders among girls. Several studies have recently demonstrated an association between female adolescents’ eating disorders, parental psychopathological risk, and an impaired family functioning with poor quality of the relationships among family members. On the basis of these premises, we conducted a cross-sectional study initially recruiting 243 families of female adolescents affected by anorexia nervosa (Group A), bulimia nervosa (Group B), and binge eating disorder (Group C) (average age 14–17) to assess their psychological profile (SCL90-R), specific representations of their family functioning (FACES-IV), and the possible effect of adolescents’ psychological profiles and parents’ psychopathological risk on family functioning. Our results indicate that adolescents and parents in Groups A, B, and C show an unequivocal psychopathological profile; in particular, adolescents with anorexia present the most severe psychopathological risk. Further, our results show that adolescents and their parents differ in their perception of their family functioning. More specifically, adolescents with anorexia perceive their family as highly disengaged, poorly interwoven, and rigid, in addition cohesion and communication qualities are perceived as low. Interestingly, parental psychopathological risk predicts adolescents’ specific perception of their family functioning. These findings may guide clinical interventions as they suggest that distinct maternal psychopathological symptoms can be associated with a variety of clinical configurations in their offspring, whereas paternal psychopathological risk may be present in adolescents suffering from all forms of eating disorders.     

Self-awareness, self-evaluation, and creativity

The present research examined when self-evaluation influences creativity. Based on objective self-awareness theory, the authors predicted that feeling able to improve would buffer against the detrimental effects of self-evaluation on creativity. Two experiments manipulated self-evaluation (varying self-awareness, Study 1; providing objective performance standards, Study 2) and perceived ability to improve potential failure on the creativity task. Self-evaluation reduced creativity (generating remote associates, finding unusual uses for a knife) in both experiments, but only when people did not expect to improve. When people felt able to improve, self-evaluation did not affect creativity. Connections between self-motives, creativity, and defensiveness are discussed.     

Processing correlates of lexical semantic complexity

This paper explores how verb meanings that differ in semantic complexity are processed and represented. In particular, we compare eventive verbs, which denote causally structured events, with stative verbs, which denote facts without causal structure. We predicted that the conceptually more complex eventive verbs should take longer to process than stative verbs. Two experiments, a lexical decision task and a self-paced reading study, confirmed this prediction. The findings suggest that (a) semantic complexity is reflected in processing time, (b) processing verb meanings involves activating properties of the event structure beyond participants' roles, and (c) more generally, lexical event structures, which subsume thematic roles, may mediate between syntactic knowledge and semantic interpretation.     

Personality is associated with perceived health and functional status in older primary care patients

Using data collected on 265 primary care medical patients 60 years of age and older, the authors examined the personality bases of subjective health (perceived health, functional status) after controlling for observer-rated depression and medical burden. Four hypotheses were tested: High Neuroticism is associated with poorer perceived health, low Extraversion is associated with poorer perceived health, low Openness to Experience is associated with worse functional status, and age moderates the relationships between personality and subjective health. Findings supported the notion that personality is associated with subjective health; moreover, this effect appeared to grow more pronounced with increasing age. This study underscores the conceptual and heuristic value of examining moderators of the links between personality variables and health.