Playgroup attractiveness studied with information integration theory

Playgroup attractiveness was studied in two critical tests of information integration theory. In Experiment 1, the ratio of good to bad members in the group, and the number of toys available to the group, were varied in a 4 × 4 factorial design. The results obeyed the parallelism prediction of the theory, thereby indicating that group attractiveness was a sum or an average of the two given pieces of information. Experiment 2 provided a critical qualitative test between the adding and averaging hypotheses. The results eliminated the adding rule, supported the averaging rule. These results illustrate the potential power that integration theory provides to the experimental study of group attractiveness in children.     

Economic implications of access to daylight and views in office buildings from improved productivity

Previous research has found significant impacts of daylight and views on the cognitive function of office workers. In this study, we use scores on decision-making performance to estimate the annual economic potential of optimizing daylighting and views in U.S. offices. Cognitive scores were compared against over 100,000 previous test scores to obtain the distributional shift in cognitive performance when working in an office with optimized daylighting and views as opposed to an office with traditional blinds. These changes in performance were then compared to compensation data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Office workers shifted on average from the 52nd percentile to 65th percentile, equivalent to a $11,809 difference in salary per person per year. When conservatively accounting for the number of employees working within 15 ft of a window with blinds, optimizing daylight and views in U.S. offices has the potential to generate $352B ($240B–$464B), or 1.7% of the 2018 U.S. gross domestic product (GDP), in additional productivity. These findings suggest that building developers, architects and tenants should give additional attention to daylight design and façade technology as they consider new building construction, renovation and leasing options.     

The Three Selves of Adulthood: Cultural Conceptions of Self Among Oriya Hindu Women

This essay examines the cultural conceptions of self among Oriya Hindu women who live in the temple town of Bhubaneswar in Orissa, India. It explores the temporal dimension of these conceptions during adulthood. While Hindu understandings about the relative permeability of the human body and its potential for transformation lead to an interdependent conception of the self, each of the three phases of adulthood—young adulthood, mature adulthood and old age—produces its own particular variant. The particularity of each variant derives from the cultural meanings attached to each life-phase and the social context of these women’s lives. The critical variable appears to be the predominant goal of each life-phase. The goals of assimilation in young adulthood, dominance and centrality in mature adulthood and coherence in old age lead to an interdependent conception of the self that changes, during the course of adulthood, from ‘emergent’ to ‘encompassing’ to ‘non-interdependent’.     

Measuring Executive Function Deficits Following Head Injury: An Application of SMS Simulation Technology

The Psychological Record - Neuropsychological tests have limited sensitivity in identifying subtle residual cognitive impairments in patients with good medical recovery from head injury and...     

Not all nonwords are alike: Implications for reading development and theory

Three experiments were designed to examine children's and adults' ability to pronounce consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) nonsense words. Some of the nonwords, like tain and goach, shared their VC unit with a number of real words. Other nonwords, like goan and taich, shared their VC unit with few or no real words. Pooling across items, the very same grapheme-phoneme correspondences occurred in the two types of nonwords. First graders, good and poor third grade readers, and adults all performed better on the nonwords with the more common VC units than on the nonwords with the less common VC units. Although readers appeared to use VC units in the pronunciation of nonwords, we did not find evidence for use of initial CV units. Implications of the results for reading development, dyslexia, and models of nonword pronunciation are discussed.     

Effects of Alprazolam on Complex Human Functioning1

Benzodiazepines can reduce anxiety, can have favorable effects upon sleep, and may diminish problems that interfere with patients' quality of life. On the other hand, these drugs can generate transient anterograde amnesia and may diminish aspects of task performance. Research on the impact of alprazolam and other “tranquilizing” drugs has generally focused on tasks that remain below the complex efforts of managerial or professional personnel. Alprazolam-induced reduction of anxiety under challenging conditions might aid complex task performance, yet anterograde amnesia might interfere. In the present research, managers participated in validated complex simulation tasks. In a double-blind, dual crossover design, placebo, 0.5 mg, or 1.0 mg alprazolam was administered on 2 occasions during the task day. Drug treatment diminished performance on measures that require sequential actions but improved performance on measures less subject to short term memory but more determined by long-term style of functioning. Thus, depending on task requirements, positive or negative alteration of performance might occur.     

“Tell Me What I Need to Know”: South Asian Women, Social Capital and Settlement

This paper reports on the findings of in-depth interviews with 50 South Asian immigrant women in Toronto regarding their settlement needs and the role of social capital in meeting these needs. The main findings discussed in this paper relate to the emergence of information as the most important settlement need and the ways in which information and orientation were obtained. Participants were found to rely on informal networks of friends and relatives as the most exhaustive and specific source of information and orientation.     

The effects of spelling consistency on phonological awareness: a comparison of English and German

Within alphabetic languages, spelling-to-sound consistency can differ dramatically. For example, English and German are very similar in their phonological and orthographic structure but not in their consistency. In English the letter a is pronounced differently in the words bank, ball, and park, whereas in German the letter a always has the same pronunciation (e.g., Ball, Park, Bank). It is often argued that reading acquisition has a reciprocal effect on phonological awareness. As reading is acquired, therefore, spoken language representation may be affected differently for English and German children. Prior to literacy acquisition, however, phonological representation in English and German children should be similar due to the similar phonological structure of the two languages. We explored this hypothesis by comparing phonological awareness at the rime and phoneme levels in prereaders and beginning readers in English and German. Similar developmental effects were indeed observed in prereaders, but differential effects had emerged within the first year of reading instruction.     

Book reviews

Miles, T. R., & Miles, E. (1990). Dyslexia: A hundred years on. Milton Keynes: Open University Press. pp. 214. ISBN 0-335-09541-0. £32.50 (hardback); ISBN 0-335-09540-2. £10.99 (paperback).

Altmann, G.T.M. (Ed.) (1990). Cognitive models of Speech processing: Psycholinguistic and computational perspectives. Cambridge, MA: Bradford Books/MIT Press. Pp. 552. ISBN 0-262-01117-4. £49.50.

Watt, R. (1991). Understanding vision. London: Academic Press. Pp. 301. ISBN 012-738501-0. £18.95.

Hunt, R.W.G. (1991). Measuring Colour (second edition). Chichester: Ellis Horwood. Pp. 313. ISBN 0-13-567686-X. £55.50.

Davidoff, J. (1991). Cognition through color. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Pp. 217. ISBN 0-262-04115-4. £24.95.