The pyeTribe: Simultaneous eyetracking for economic games

The recent introduction of inexpensive eyetrackers has opened up a wealth of opportunities for researchers to study attention in interactive tasks. No software package has previously been available to help researchers exploit those opportunities. We created “the pyeTribe,” a software package that offers, among others, the following features: first, a communication platform between many eyetrackers to allow for simultaneous recording of multiple participants; second, the simultaneous calibration of multiple eyetrackers without the experimenter’s supervision; third, data collection restricted to periods of interest, thus reducing the volume of data and easing analysis. We used a standard economic game (the public goods game) to examine the data quality and demonstrate the potential of our software package. Moreover, we conducted a modeling analysis, which illustrates how combining process and behavioral data can improve models of human decision-making behavior in social situations. Our software is open source.     

The interaction between emotion and executive control: Comparison between visual,auditory, and tactile modalities

The reciprocal connections between emotion and attention are vital for adaptive behaviour. Previous results demonstrated that the behavioural effects of emotional stimuli on performance are attenuated when executive control is recruited. The current research studied whether this attenuation is modality dependent. In two experiments, negative and neutral pictures were presented shortly before a visual, tactile, or auditory target in a Simon task. All three modalities demonstrated a Simon effect, a conflict adaptation effect, and an emotional interference effect. However, the interaction between picture valence and Simon congruency was found only in the visual task. Specifically, when the Simon target was visual, emotional interference was reduced during incongruent compared to congruent trials. These findings suggest that although the control-related effects observed in the Simon tasks are not modality dependent, the link between emotion and executive control is modality dependent. Presumably, this link occurs only when the emotional stimulus and the target are presented in the same modality.     

Psychometric Evaluation of the Meaningful Life Measure

The 23-item Meaningful Life Measure (Morgan and Farsides 2008) comprises five subscales, each designed to assess a distinct component of personal meaning: purposeful life; valued life; accomplished life; principled life; and exciting life. In addition to providing a comprehensive composite meaning measure, this instrument presents the possibility of measuring these components separately in future research applications. To demonstrate the utility of their separate measurement, the present study therefore aimed to show differential patterns of correlation between these five subscales and meaning correlates identified in the literature. The MLM’s factor structure and internal reliability were replicated on the present sample. Evidence was then provided for the MLM’s convergent validity, and it was demonstrated that its five subscales were indeed differently predicted by the meaning correlates from the literature. Findings attest to the practical utility of a five-factor conceptualisation of meaning in life. In addition to identifying people who score low and high on different factors of meaning in life, the MLM facilitates the further investigation of specific antecedents and consequences of different meaning components.

Prejudiced learning: A connectionist account

Connectionist simulation was employed to investigate processes that may underlie the relationships between prior expectancies or prejudices and the acquisition of attitudes, under conditions where learners can only discover the valence of attitude objects through directly experiencing them. We compared contexts analogous to learners holding either false negative expectancies (‘prejudices’) about a subclass of objects that were actually good or false positive expectancies about objects that were actually bad. We introduced expectancy‐related bias either by altering the probability of approach, or by varying the rate of learning following experience with good or bad objects. Where feedback was contingent on approach, the false positive expectancies were corrected by experience, but negative prejudices resisted change, since the network avoided objects deemed to be bad, and so received less corrective feedback. These findings are discussed in relation to the effects of intergroup contact and expectancy‐confirmation processes in reducing or sustaining prejudice.     

Instructional manipulation checks: Detecting satisficing to increase statistical power

Participants are not always as diligent in reading and following instructions as experimenters would like them to be. When participants fail to follow instructions, this increases noise and decreases the validity of their data. This paper presents and validates a new tool for detecting participants who are not following instructions - the Instructional manipulation check (IMC). We demonstrate how the inclusion of an IMC can increase statistical power and reliability of a dataset.     

Similarity and rules United: similarity- and rule-based processing in a single neural network

A central controversy in cognitive science concerns the roles of rules versus similarity. To gain some leverage on this problem, we propose that rule- versus similarity-based processes can be characterized as extremes in a multidimensional space that is composed of at least two dimensions: the number of features (Pothos, 2005) and the physical presence of features. The transition of similarity- to rule-based processing is conceptualized as a transition in this space. To illustrate this, we show how a neural network model uses input features (and in this sense produces similarity-based responses) when it has a low learning rate or in the early phases of training, but it switches to using self-generated, more abstract features (and in this sense produces rule-based responses) when it has a higher learning rate or is in the later phases of training. Relations with categorization and the psychology of learning are pointed out.     

How to get “kissably close”: Examining how advertisers appeal to consumers’ sexual needs and desires

This paper explores the nature of sexual appelas—sex-related promises or benefits—in mainstream advertising by describing types of sex appeals and findings from a sex-benefit content analysis. Overall, our findings reveal that sex is used to appeal to women and men, although a higher proportion of sexual ads appear in men’s (12%) compared to women’s magazines (6%). In addition, a variety of sex appeals are directed toward women (attractiveness, behavior, esteem), whereas most appeals directed toward men emphasize more and better sex. Last, male-only images are relatively absent in sexual ads compared to female-only (45%) and couples (47%) images. These findings, observations, and directions for future research are discussed.     

The Role of Police Perceptions and Practices in the Development of “Public Disorder”1,2

Recent studies suggest that crowd conflict needs to be understood as an interaction between the crowd and out‐groups such as the police. This paper describes a questionnaire survey in which 80 police officers from 2 United Kingdom forces were asked about their perceptions of crowds, appropriate “public order” policing methods, and attributions of responsibility for crowd conflict. As predicted, police officers saw the composition of crowds as mixed; yet they also constructed a dichotomy between a powerful minority, capable of exerting influence in the service of disorder, and a majority, who are unable to resist this influence. Police officers did not clearly endorse the view that crowds pose a homogeneous threat. They recommended control and quick intervention to prevent the escalation of crowd violence but denied that such methods might themselves contribute to conflict. Path analysis provides suggestive evidence that these perceptions of the crowd are related as part of a coherent ideology. Overall, these results offer support for the elaborated social identity model of crowd behavior as a dynamic intergroup process.     

A review of recent developments in research and theories on human contingency learning

Over the past 20 years, human contingency learning has resurfaced as an important topic within experimental psychology. This renewed interest was sparked mainly by the proposal that associative models of Pavlovian conditioning might also apply to human contingency learning--a proposal that has led to many new empirical findings and theoretical developments. We provide a brief review of these recent developments and try to point to issues that need to be addressed in future research.     

The Social Relations of Rural African American Early Adolescents and Proximal Impact of the School Engagement Project

This paper reports on the social relations of rural African American early adolescents and the initial impact of a multilevel universal intervention program aimed at enhancing the productive school engagement of at-risk youth. Students' school social relations were assessed with social cognitive mapping procedures that yield information on peer group membership and social network centrality (i.e., prominence in the social structure). Risk status was determined by cluster analysis of teacher ratings of students' adjustment on multiple dimensions including aggression, academic competence, and popularity. Four subgroups were identified: Model, Aggressive, Troubled, and Below Average. Differences among clusters were found in network centrality and patterns of peer affiliations. In addition, boys in the Below Average and Troubled configurations showed an increase in social prominence after the initial intervention phase.