Training to Improve Calibration and Discrimination: The Effects of Performance and Environmental Feedback

This study investigated whether calibration and discrimination are distinct or related aspects of probability judgment accuracy by examining the effects of two different training techniques. Participants received either performance feedback or environmental feedback, and we measured their improvement in calibration and discrimination as a function of feedback type. Whereas performance feedback reduced participants' overconfidence and environmental feedback improved discrimination, neither type of feedback led to an improvement on the other component. In fact, environmental feedback led to an increase in overconfidence. We take these results as evidence that calibration and discrimination are dissociable abilities that require separate training techniques for improvement.     

Strength of visual percept generated by famous faces perceived without awareness: effects of affective valence, response latency, and visual field

Participants who were unable to detect familiarity from masked 17 ms faces (Stone and Valentine, 2004 and Stone and Valentine, in press-b) did report a vague, partial visual percept. Two experiments investigated the relative strength of the visual percept generated by famous and unfamiliar faces, using masked 17 ms exposure. Each trial presented simultaneously a famous and an unfamiliar face, one face in LVF and the other in RVF. In one task, participants responded according to which of the faces generated the stronger visual percept, and in the other task, they attempted an explicit familiarity decision. The relative strength of the visual percept of the famous face compared to the unfamiliar face was moderated by response latency and participants' attitude towards the famous person. There was also an interaction of visual field with response latency, suggesting that the right hemisphere can generate a visual percept differentiating famous from unfamiliar faces more rapidly than the left hemisphere. Participants were at chance in the explicit familiarity decision, confirming the absence of awareness of facial familiarity.     

Evidential Atheism

Here is a new version of the Evidential Problem of Evil.Theists claim that it is reasonable for atheists to believethat if God did exist, suffering would look just as it does now. I endorse this claim, however it cannot be deployedagainst my argument without the following epistemic principle:what we see makes p likely only if it is reasonable tobelieve it would be discernibly different if p were false. I demonstrate that this principle is mistaken. The paperalso responds to objections from Alvin Plantinga and PeterVan Inwagen that Gods existence is compatible with pointlessnatural evil. In particular, I argue that appeals to vaguenessdo not support the compatibility claim.     

Response to Difficult Patients in Group Analysis: The Personification of I:A/M

The author focuses on the application of Hopper's proposal of an additional basic assumption (I:A/M) using a model of clinicians' theories: bridging theory, psychological theory, and clinical theory (Michels, 1999). This paper will describe the potential for advances in understanding particular group formations seen in clinical practice and other settings.     

Face recognition and emotional valence: processing without awareness by neurologically intact participants does not simulate covert recognition in prosopagnosia

Covert face recognition in neurologically intact participants was investigated with the use of very brief stimulus presentation to prevent awareness of the stimulus. In Experiment 1, skin conductance response (SCR) to photographs of celebrity and unfamiliar faces was recorded; the faces were displayed for 220 msec and for 17 msec in a within-participants design. SCR to faces presented for 220 msec was larger and more likely to occur with familiar faces than with unfamiliar faces. Face familiarity did not affect the SCR to faces presented for 17 msec. SCR was larger for faces of good than for faces of evil celebrities presented for 17 msec, but valence did not affect SCR to faces displayed for 220 msec. In Experiment 2, associative priming was found in a face familiarity decision task when the prime face was displayed for 220 msec, but no facilitation occurred when primes were presented for 17 msec. In Experiment 3, participants were able to differentiate evil and good faces presented without awareness in a two-alternative forced-choice decision. The results provide no evidence of familiarity detection outside awareness in normal participants and suggest that, contrary to previous research, very brief presentation to neurologically intact participants is not a useful model for the types of covert recognition found in prosopagnosia. However, a response based on affective valence appears to be available from brief presentation.     

Can one ever be too wealthy or too chaste? Searching for nonlinearities in mate judgment

In 3 studies, the authors searched for nonlinearities as possible clues to context-sensitive mechanisms involved in mating decisions. Participants judged targets' sexual desirability, marital desirability, or social status on the basis of information about income or number of past sexual partners. Because one cannot know in advance where nonlinearities occur or measure all values of independent variables, a "zoom and focus" method was used. The authors began by sampling a wide range of values, followed by successively more focused examination of potentially interesting regions. Across studies, income and desirability were linked exponentially, particularly for male targets and marriage partners. Sexual partners and desirability were sometimes linked nonmonotonically, with more partners first increasing, then decreasing, desirability. The authors discuss how nonmonotonic functions may suggest competing underlying processes.     

Putting the elephant back in the herd: elephant relative quantity judgments match those of other species

The ability to discriminate between quantities has been observed in many species. Typically, when an animal is given a choice between two sets of food, accurate performance (i.e., choosing the larger amount) decreases as the ratio between two quantities increases. A recent study reported that elephants did not exhibit ratio effects, suggesting that elephants may process quantitative information in a qualitatively different way from all other nonhuman species that have been tested (Irie-Sugimoto et al. in Anim Cogn 12:193-199, 2009). However, the results of this study were confounded by several methodological issues. We tested two African elephants (Loxodonta africana) to more thoroughly investigate relative quantity judgment in this species. In contrast to the previous study, we found evidence of ratio effects for visible and nonvisible sequentially presented sets of food. Thus, elephants appear to represent and compare quantities in much the same way as other species, including humans when they are prevented from counting. Performance supports an accumulator model in which quantities are represented as analog magnitudes. Furthermore, we found no effect of absolute magnitude on performance, providing support against an object-file model explanation of quantity judgment.     

Centre–surround inhibition is a general aspect of famous-person recognition: Evidence from negative semantic priming from clearly visible primes

A centre–surround attentional mechanism was proposed by Carr and Dagenbach (Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 16: 341–350, 1990) to account for their observations of negative semantic priming from hard-to-perceive primes. Their mechanism cannot account for the observation of negative semantic priming when primes are clearly visible. Three experiments (Ns = 30, 46, and 30) used a familiarity decision with names of famous people, preceded by a prime name with the same occupation as the target or with a different occupation. Negative semantic priming was observed at a 150- or 200-ms SOA, with positive priming at shorter (50-ms) and longer (1,000-ms) SOAs. In Experiment 3, we verified that the primes were easily recognisable in the priming task at an SOA that yielded negative semantic priming, which cannot be predicted by the original centre–surround mechanism. A modified version is proposed that explains transiently negative semantic priming by proposing that centre–surround inhibition is a normal, automatically invoked aspect of the semantic processing of visually presented famous names.     

Is variability in mate choice similar for intelligence and personality traits? Testing a hypothesis about the evolutionary genetics of personality

This study tests the hypothesis presented by Penke, Denissen, and Miller (2007a) that condition-dependent traits, including intelligence, attractiveness, and health, are universally and uniformly preferred as characteristics in a mate relative to traits that are less indicative of condition, including personality traits. We analyzed between-culture mean standard deviations of preference ratings and rankings provided by nearly 10,000 people in 37 cultures for 18 characteristics in a potential mate. Contrary to the hypothesis, preferences for traits indicating agreeableness and conscientiousness were not more variable than preferences for intelligence, and preferences for traits indicating low neuroticism were more uniform than preferences for intelligence. Discussion addresses implications of these results for hypotheses about the evolutionary genetics of intelligence and personality.