Preferences of infants for regular and distorted natural speech stimuli

The schema hypothesis proposed by Kagan (Science, 1970, 170, 826–832) andLewis (Developmental Psychology, 1969, 1, 75–86) was used to make predictions concerning the preferences of infants 3 to 14 months old for speech stimuli. An operant response method was used in determining the infants' preferences for inflected, monotone, and scrambled natural speech stimuli. Although the infants' preferences did not change with age as predicted, the infants produced clear preference orderings for the three stimuli. The speech preferences were interpreted as being based on stimulus variables (e.g., word order, inflection, and speech rate) in addition to the realism variables assumed by the schema hypothesis.     

Time of day effects in simple repetitive tasks: Some possible mechanisms

A brief review of the literature, and three experiments, are presented which investigated time of day effects in human performance at simple repetitive tasks (i.e. tasks involving little or no ‘working memory’ load) The goal was to differentiate between a ‘capacity’ based explanation of the effects, concerned with changes in the general rate of information processing, and a ‘strategy’ based one concerned with the amount of information processed at each decision point. The strategy based explanation appeared to be the more suitable, accounting for the surprising heterogeneity in time of day function that was found for such tasks in the literature, and for the results of the three experiments. It would appear that there might be a general tendency for people to become faster but less accurate as the day wears on.     

The Formation of Attitudes Toward New Immigrant Groups1

People often receive information about new immigrant groups prior to any direct contact with group members. However, it is not clear how this information shapes attitudes toward the groups. To explore this issue, 204 subjects were told about an unknown immigrant group that was presented as high or low in personal relevance. Subjects were then given positive or negative consensus information about the emotions that group members elicit from others, group members' personality traits, and group members' values. As expected, results indicated that the presentation of positive information about emotional reactions, personality traits, and values caused attitudes to be more favorable than did the presentation of negative information. Importantly, however, the combined impact of the emotion and personality trait information depended on whether the group was perceived to be of high or low personal relevance. Specifically, when the information about emotions and personality traits was similarly valanced (i.e., both were positive or both were negative), attitudes toward the group tended to be less favorable in the high personal relevance condition than in the low personal relevance condition. In contrast, when mixed information was presented (i.e., positive emotions and negative personality traits or negative emotions and positive personality traits), attitudes tended to be more favorable in the high personal relevance condition. In addition, attitudes, once formed, predicted further perceptions of the group and behavioral intentions toward group members. The implications of the findings for the reduction of prejudice toward new immigrant groups are discussed.     

Customer Service Behavior: The Interaction of Service Predisposition and Job Characteristics

The achievement of customer satisfaction in service operations depends to a great extent on employee customer service behavior (CSB). In this study, 123 service providers (77% response rate) responded to a survey assessing service predisposition and job characteristics. Employees also completed a behaviorally based CSB measure developed after interviewing and surveying customers (n=96). Analyses suggest that job characteristics, alone, accounted for a significant amount of CSB variance. Job characteristics did not moderate the relationship between service predisposition and CSB. In contrast to previous work, service predisposition and CSB were not correlated. A service provider typology is presented to explain these findings.     

Illness-Related Support and Negative Network Interactions: Effects on HIV-Infected Men's Depressive Symptomatology

Data collected as part of a psychosocial study of gay and bisexual men's experiences of living with HIV infection as a chronic illness were examined to investigate the psychological impact of the perceived availability of illness-related support and negative illness-related network interactions in a sample of men from this population. The sample was comprised of 144 HIV-infected non-Hispanic white, African American, and Puerto Rican men living in the New York City metropolitan area. Analyses found evidence of a conjoint (interactive) effect between perceived support and negative network interactions. There was no evidence of either perceived availability of illness-related network support buffering or negative illness-related network interactions amplifying the effect of HIV/AIDS-related physical symptomatology on depressive symptomatology.     

How do friends influence smoking uptake? Findings from qualitative interviews with identical twins

The smoking behavior of friends is a major risk factor for adolescent smoking uptake. To explore the social context of smoking experimentation and consolidation with a particular focus on friends, the authors interviewed both members of 14 young adult identical twin pairs who were discordant for smoking. The different smoking status of twins was connected to their different friendship groups and development of different identities. Smoking respondents gravitated to the behaviors and images of the peer group who smoked. Many nonsmokers felt strong pressure from their peers not to smoke and spoke about how the images conveyed by smoking were inconsistent with their peer group's image. Adolescents and young adults are aware of the messages that smoking can convey to others and exploit these images to construct a social identity.     

Internal Realism,Religious Pluralism and Ontology

Internalist pluralism is an attractive and elegant theory. However, there are two apparently powerful objections to this approach that prevent its widespread adoption. According to the first objection, the resulting analysis of religious belief systems is intrinsically atheistic; while according to the second objection, the analysis is unsatisfactory because it allows religious objects simply to be defined into existence. In this article, I demonstrate that an adherent of internalist pluralism can deflect both of these objections, and in the course of so arguing, I deploy a distinction between “conceptual-scheme targetability” and “successful conceptual-scheme targeting”.

Alexithymia and individual differences in emotional expression

Two studies examined verbal and nonverbal expression in relation to facets of alexithymia. Participants were videotaped while they talked about negative and positive events that had happened to them. Persons high in difficulty identifying feelings were less emotionally expressive, nonverbally, of positive emotion during a positive talk, and of negative emotion during a negative talk. Other facets of alexithymia were not independently related to expressiveness. Verbal expressiveness was not independently related to any facet of alexithymia. Study 2 showed that these relationships were independent of whether the participant was alone or with another. The implications for the understanding of the nature of the deficit in alexithymia, and of the effects of disclosure are discussed.