Effects of competition on video-task performance in monkeys (Macaca mulatta)

The effects of competition on performance of a video-formatted task were examined in a series of experiments. Two rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) were trained to manipulate a joystick to shoot at moving targets on a computer screen. The task was made competitive by requiring both animals to shoot at the same target and by rewarding only the animal that hit the target first each trial. The competitive task produced a significant and robust speed-accuracy trade-off in performance. The monkeys hit the target in significantly less time on contested than on uncontested trials. However, they required significantly more shots to hit the target on contested trials in relation to uncontested trials. This effect was unchanged when various schedules of reinforcement were introduced in the uncontested trials. This supports the influence of competition qua competition on performance, a point further bolstered by other findings of of behavioral contrast presented here.     

Violence prevention: Program effects on urban preschool and kindergarten children

This study compares the effectiveness of a violence prevention program with young, at-risk children in two settings. Preschool and kindergarten students, residing in Chicago public-housing developments, participated in a 28-session intervention. Knowledge, behavior problems, and social skills were assessed at pretest and posttest, based on child interviews, teacher ratings, and behavioral observations. Findings suggest that both preschool and kindergarten children demonstrated significant gains in knowledge, based on interview scores, and significant decreases in problem behaviors, based on behavioral observations; however, teacher ratings did not change significantly across time. The discrepancy in findings is explored and implications are discussed.     

Empirical support for the gender‐as‐culture hypothesis.

This investigation provided a test of the gender‐as‐culture, or ‘two cultures’, hypothesis proposed by Maltz and Borker (1982) to explain male/female differences in language use. Analysis of previous empirical investigations located 16 language features that had consistently been shown to indicate communicator gender and these were tested within the framework of the four dimensions of intercultural style proposed by Gudykunst and Ting‐Toomey (1998): direct versus indirect, succinct versus elaborate, personal versus contextual and instrumental versus affective. Study 1 provided preliminary evidence supporting the hypothesized language‐feature‐by‐dimension relationships (e.g., male directives were rated more direct and female uncertainty verbs more indirect). In Study 2, respondents rated multiple exemplars of the 16 language features, as well as 16 contrasting foil sentences, on all four dimensions, finding that nearly all of the variables fell on the hypothesized intercultural dimensions. In Study 3, respondents rated four sets of naturally occurring target sentences and matching foil sentences, representing all language variables, on their appropriate intercultural dimensions in order to establish dimensional polarity. Results across the three studies supported the hypothesized language feature‐by‐stylistic dimension relationship for 15 of the 16 variables: The 6 male language features were rated as more direct, succinct, personal, and instrumental, whereas 9 of the 10 female features were perceived as more indirect, elaborate, and affective. The findings demonstrate that gender preferences for language use function in ways that are consistent with stylistic preferences that distinguish national cultures.     

Effects of the Positive Action programme on problem behaviours in elementary school students: a matched-pair randomised control trial in Chicago

This study examined the effects of the Positive Action (PA) programme in Chicago Public Schools on problem behaviours among a cohort of elementary school students from grade three through grade five. Using a matched-pair, randomised control design with 14 elementary schools, approximately 510 fifth-graders self-reported lifetime substance use, serious violence-related behaviour, and current bullying and disruptive behaviours. Three-level (i.e. students nested within schools within school pairs) overdispersed Poisson models were used to examine programme effects on the number of items endorsed for each of the four outcomes. Findings indicated that students in the intervention endorsed 31% fewer substance use behaviours (incidence rate ratio [IRR] = 0.69), 37% fewer violence-related behaviours (IRR = 0.63) and 41% fewer bullying behaviours (IRR = 0.59), respectively, compared to students in the control schools. Reduction in reported disruptive behaviours was of a similar magnitude (27%, IRR = 0.73), but was not statistically significant. These results replicate findings of an earlier randomised trial of the PA programme and extend evidence of its effectiveness to youth attending large urban school systems.     

Anticipatory Processing and Post‐Event Processing in Social Anxiety Disorder: An Update on the Literature

Two repetitive thinking processes that have been proposed in prominent maintenance models of social anxiety disorder (SAD) are anticipatory processing and post‐event processing. Research into these two processes has steadily increased over the last 20 years. This review highlights the main lines of existing research on anticipatory processing and post‐event processing, including studies on the nature of these processes, their association with social anxiety, the predictors, and consequences of these processes, as well as how these processes respond to treatments for SAD. The review also highlights some of the conceptual and methodological issues that have prevented the literature on anticipatory processing and post‐event processing from being more integrated and focused. Finally, the review draws together some new directions in terms of theory and research to further advance the field.     

The Stroop effect at 80: The competition between stimulus control and cognitive control

For more than 80 years, researchers have examined the interference between automatic processing of stimuli, such as the meaning of color words, on performance of a controlled‐processing task such as naming the color in which words are printed. The Stroop effect and its many variations provide an ideal test platform for examining the competition between stimulus control and cognitive control of attention, as reflected in behavior. The two experiments reported here show that rhesus monkeys, like human adults, show interference from incongruous stimulus conditions in a number‐Stroop task, and that the monkeys may be particularly susceptible to influence from response strength and less able, relative to human adults, of using executive attention to minimize this interference.     

A transcranial Doppler sonography study of shoot/don’t-shoot responding

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between changes in cerebral blood-flow velocity and performance on a speeded shoot/don’t-shoot task. Brain activity as indicated by cerebral blood-flow velocity (hemovelocity) was recorded using the transcranial Doppler ultrasonography. A shoot/don’t-shoot decisionmaking task presented participants with threat/nonthreat stimuli in the form of bull’s-eye images of various colors. Participants were required to shoot threat targets using a laser-modified handgun. Results support a vigilance decrement in both the performance measures and hemovelocity. Performance, as measured by reaction time, number of hits, and marksmanship, decreased across the length of the vigil. Hemovelocity slowed across the left and right hemispheres as the task progressed, and hemovelocity was slower in the right hemisphere than in the left hemisphere.     

Rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) adaptively monitor uncertainty while multi-tasking

As researchers explore animals’ capacity for metacognition and uncertainty monitoring, some paradigms allow the criticism that animal participants—who are always extensively trained in one stimulus domain within which they learn to avoid difficult trials—use task-specific strategies to avoid aversive stimuli instead of responding to a generalized state of uncertainty like that humans might use. We addressed this criticism with an uncertainty-monitoring task environment in which four different task domains were interleaved randomly trial by trial. Four of five macaques (Macaca mulatta) were able to make adaptive uncertainty responses while multi-tasking, suggesting the generality of the psychological signal that occasions these responses. The findings suggest that monkeys may have an uncertainty-monitoring capacity that is like that of humans in transcending task-specific cues and extending simultaneously to multiple domains.