Naming the color of a word: is it responses or task sets that compete?

Subjects named the colors in which high- and low-frequency words and pronounceable nonwords, otherwise matched, were displayed. Color naming was slower for all three item types than for visually equivalent strings of nonalphanumeric symbols but was no slower for words than for nonwords, nor for high-frequency words than for low-frequency words. Unpronounceable letter strings had intermediate color-naming latencies. However, frequency and lexical status had large effects on latency for reading the same words and pseudowords aloud. Interference is thus predicted not by the strength of association between a letter string and its pronunciation but by the presence of word-like constituents. We argue that the interference from an unprimed noncolor word is due to, and isolates, one of two components of the classic Stroop effect: competition from the whole task set of reading. The other component, response competition, occurs only when lexical access is sufficiently primed.     

Does placebo response mediate runner's high?

It is proposed that runner's high is mediated by increased endorphin release as induced by placebo responses arising from subjective expectancies and setting.     

Sympathy

In this article I examine an example of sympathy -- the actions of one woman who rescued Jews during their persecution in Nazi Europe. I argue that this woman's account of her actions here suggests that sympathy is a primitive response to the suffering of another. By primitive here I mean: first, that these responses are immediate and unthinking; and second, that these responses are explanatorily basic, that they cannot be explained in terms of some more fundamental feature of human nature -- such as some particular desire or sentiment that we possess. My conclusion is then that our sympathetic responses are themselves partially constitutive of our conception of what is to be a human being.     

Effects of manual versus voice-activated dialing during simulated driving

We measured driving performance (lane-keeping errors, driving times, and glances away from the road scene) in a video driving simulator for 24 volunteers who each drove alone on a 10.6-km multicurved course while simultaneously placing calls on a mobile phone subscribed to a voice-activated dialing system. Driving performance also was measured for the same distance while participants manually dialed phone numbers and while they drove without dialing. There were 22% fewer lane-keeping errors (p<.01) and 56% fewer glances away from the road scene (p<.01) when they used voice-activated dialing as compared to manual dialing. Significantly longer driving times in both of the dialing conditions as compared to the No Dialing condition are discussed in terms of the hypothesis that drivers decrease driving speed to compensate for the demands of the secondary phone tasks.     

Family Unification with Reactive Attachment Disorder Children: A Brief Treatment

This is a case study of a family with a child (age eight) with reactive attachment disorder and the subsequent individual and family therapy. Treatment of choice for the child was Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) and supportive educational counseling for the parents and family. Qualitative evaluation of the process demonstrated that the parents observed an instant change in the child's attitude. The child reported that she felt better about family, school, and truthfulness, and stated about the therapy: It opened a window for me. A 12-month evaluation demonstrated continued positive effects.     

Biobehavioral responses to stress in females: tend-and-befriend, not fight-or-flight

The human stress response has been characterized, both physiologically and behaviorally, as "fight-or-flight." Although fight-or-flight may characterize the primary physiological responses to stress for both males and females, we propose that, behaviorally, females' responses are more marked by a pattern of "tend-and-befriend." Tending involves nurturant activities designed to protect the self and offspring that promote safety and reduce distress; befriending is the creation and maintenance of social networks that may aid in this process. The biobehavioral mechanism that underlies the tend-and-befriend pattern appears to draw on the attachment-caregiving system, and neuroendocrine evidence from animal and human studies suggests that oxytocin, in conjunction with female reproductive hormones and endogenous opioid peptide mechanisms, may be at its core. This previously unexplored stress regulatory system has manifold implications for the study of stress.     

“Aha” effects in the generation of pictures

An "aha" effect in memory was first reported by Auble, Franks, and Soraci (1979). They demonstrated that recall was greater for sentences that were initially incomprehensible but which were eventually comprehended, as compared with sentences that were understood from the outset. The present studies extend this "aha" effect to memory for pictorial stimuli. In Experiment 1, a recall advantage for pictures encoded by connecting the dots as compared with those encoded by tracing or visual scanning occurred only in the absence of foreknowledge of the picture (i.e., an "aha" effect). In Experiment 2, we replicated this finding and obtained evidence that conceptually based, verbal foreknowledge does not function in a similar manner as does pictorial foreknowledge in suppressing the "aha" recall advantage. These results place important constraints on previous research on generation effects for visual stimuli and attest to the cross-modal generalizability of the "aha" effect.