Data-limited manipulations of T1 difficulty modulate the attentional blink.

When two targets are embedded in a temporal stream of distractors, second-target identification is initially impaired and then gradually improves as intertarget interval lengthens (attentional blink; AB). According to bottleneck models of the AB, difficulty of first-target processing should modulate the magnitude of the second-target deficit. To test this, we examined whether a data-limited manipulation of T1 difficulty (forward masking) would modulate AB magnitude. In two experiments, we show that data-limited manipulations of T1 difficulty do affect the AB, so long as T1 is not masked by an immediately trailing distractor. When such a trailing item is present, the relationship between T1 difficulty and the AB disappears.     

Openness to attitude change as a function of temporal perspective

Three studies investigated the impact of temporal perspective on people's dominant social goals and explored the implications of these goals for openness to attitude change. Participants who perceived time as limited expressed social preferences in accordance with emotion-regulation goals (Study 1), were more prone to modify their attitude to bring it into line with the attitude of an anticipated social partner (Study 2), and were more likely to go along with peer consensus opinion on a campus issue (Study 3) than were participants who perceived time as expansive. These studies demonstrate that perception of time plays a vital role in motivating social goals within the persuasion context.     

Attitude importance and the accumulation of attitude-relevant knowledge in memory

People who attach personal importance to an attitude are especially knowledgeable about the attitude object. This article tests an explanation for this relation: that importance causes the accumulation of knowledge by inspiring selective exposure to and selective elaboration of relevant information. Nine studies showed that (a) after watching televised debates between presidential candidates, viewers were better able to remember the statements made on policy issues on which they had more personally important attitudes; (b) importance motivated selective exposure and selective elaboration: Greater personal importance was associated with better memory for relevant information encountered under controlled laboratory conditions, and manipulations eliminating opportunities for selective exposure and selective elaboration eliminated the importance-memory accuracy relation; and (c) people do not use perceptions of their knowledge volume to infer how important an attitude is to them, but importance does cause knowledge accumulation.     

The treatment of hypochondriasis: exposure plus response prevention vs cognitive therapy

In this study (1) exposure in vivo plus response prevention, (2) cognitive therapy and (3) a waiting-list control condition were compared on their efficacy on the treatment of hypochondriasis. Seventy-eight patients with a DSM-IV diagnosis of hypochondriasis were randomly assigned to one of these conditions. Patients in both active treatment conditions improved significantly on all the measures, whereas the patients in the waiting-list control condition did not improve. The improvements were clinically significant. Exposure in vivo plus response prevention and cognitive therapy were equally effective. The improvements were maintained at the 7 months follow up.     

Being a non-drinking student: An interpretative phenomenological analysis

Recent research suggests that safer student alcohol consumption might be assisted by understanding how social occasions are managed by non-drinkers. In-depth, semi-structured interviews with five 19 – 22 year old non-drinking English undergraduates were subjected to interpretative phenomenological analysis. We present five inter-linked themes: ‘living with challenges to non-drinking’; ‘seeing what goes on in drinking environments’; ‘dealing with conversations about non-drinking (making excuses vs. coming out)’; ‘knowing which friends care about you’; and ‘the importance of minimising “legroom” for peer pressure’. Participants felt under persistent peer scrutiny (as a form of peer pressure) and could feel alienated in drinking environments. Talking about non-drinking was characterised by whether to ‘come out’ (as a non-drinker) or ‘fake it’ (e.g. ‘I’m on antibiotics’). Loyal friendships were reported as particularly important in this context. The decision not to drink was experienced as providing a successful buffer to peer pressure for former drinkers. Our findings unsettle traditional health promotion campaigns which advocate moderate drinking among students without always suggesting how it might be most successfully accomplished and offer tentative guidance on how non-drinking during specific social occasions might be managed more successfully. Findings are discussed in relation to extant literature and future research directions are suggested.     

Sex,Power, and Money: Prediction from the Dark Triad and Honesty–Humility

Data were collected from two undergraduate student samples to examine (i) the relations of the ‘Dark Triad’ variables (Machiavellianism, Psychopathy, and Narcissism) with the HEXACO personality dimensions, as well as (ii) the ability of the aforementioned characteristics and of the Big Five personality factors to predict outcome variables related to sex, power, and money. Results indicated that the common variance of the Dark Triad was very highly correlated with low Honesty–Humility and that the unique variance of each of the Dark Triad variables also showed theoretically meaningful relations with the other five HEXACO factors. Furthermore, the Dark Triad and Honesty–Humility were strong predictors of three domains of outcome variables—Sex (short‐term mating tendencies and sexual quid pro quos), Power (Social Dominance Orientation and desire for power), and Money (conspicuous consumption and materialism)—that were not well predicted by the dimensions of the Big Five. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Adaptive Automation for Human Supervision of Multiple Uninhabited Vehicles: Effects on Change Detection,Situation Awareness,and Mental Workload

Human operators supervising multiple uninhabited air and ground vehicles (UAVs and UGVs) under high task load must be supported appropriately in context by automation. Two experiments examined the efficacy of such adaptive automation in a simulated high workload reconnaissance mission involving four subtasks: (a) UAV target identification; (b) UGV route planning; (c) communications, with embedded verbal situation awareness probes; and (d) change detection. The results of the first “baseline” experiment established the sensitivity of a change detection procedure to transient and nontransient events in a complex, multi-window, dynamic display. Experiment 1 also set appropriate levels of low and high task load for use in Experiment 2, in which three automation conditions were compared: manual; static automation, in which an automated target recognition (ATR) system was provided for the UAV task; and adaptive automation, in which individual operator change detection performance was assessed in real time and used to invoke the ATR if and only if change detection accuracy was below a threshold. Change detection accuracy and situation awareness were higher and workload was lower for both automation conditions compared to manual performance. In addition, these beneficial effects on change detection and workload were significantly greater for adaptive compared to static automation. The results point to the efficacy of adaptive automation for supporting the human operator tasked with supervision of multiple uninhabited vehicles under high workload conditions.     

Exploring the repetition paradox: The effects of learning context and massed repetition on memory

Although repetition is generally assumed to enhance the accessibility of memory for rehearsed material, recent research has suggested that prolonged repetition might actually be detrimental under some conditions. In the present work, we manipulated repetition duration and learning condition (intentional vs. incidental) in an effort to clarify the relationship between repetition and memory. Replicating previous findings, memory for repeated items declined with increased repetition under incidental-learning conditions. However, increased repetition had the opposite effect under intentional-learning conditions. Taken together, these results provide evidence for distinctive mechanisms of memory acquisition during repetition that vary depending on learning context.     

Enjoyment of sexualization: is it different for men?

We elucidated the Enjoyment of Sexualization (ES) construct in a sample of 206 female and 118 male undergraduate students. Our male ES Scale had high reliability, and confirmatory factor analyses indicated that a univariate structure was appropriate for both men and women. ES added to the prediction of self‐esteem and number of sexual partners (but not body shame) after controlling for self‐objectification; gender did not moderate these relationships. The relationship between ES and number of sexual partners was moderated by attractiveness such that individuals who believed themselves to be more attractive had more sexual partners at high levels of ES. Furthermore, ES was distinguishable from the conceptually‐related self‐objectification construct with regard to Big Five personality. Finally, results suggested that ES might be less harmful than self‐objectification.