Reviews

Land of Crosses: The Struggle for Religious Freedom in Lithuania, 1939–1978 by Michael Bourdeaux, Augustine Publishing Company, Chulmleigh, Devon, 1977, xx+ 339 pp., £3.00. (Keston Book No. 12).

The Catholic Church, Dissent and Nationality in Soviet Lithuania by V. Stanley Vardys, East European Quarterly, Boulder, distributed by Columbia University Press, New York, 1978 xiii + 336 pp., $22.50.

Muslim National Communism in the Soviet Union: a Revolutionary Strategy for the Colonial World by Alexandre A. Bennigsen and S. Enders Wimbush, Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Publication No. 11, University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 1979, xxii + 267 pp., $7.95.

The Unknown Homeland translated by Marite Sapiets, Mowbrays, London and Oxford, 1978, vii+ 247 pp., £4.95 (Keston Book No. 13)

Detente and Papal‐Communist Relations, 1962–1978 by Dennis J. Dunn, Westview Press, Boulder, Colorado, 1979, 216 pp., £12.15.     

Enactment effects and integration processes in younger and older adults’ memory for actions

The present study investigates the mental processes that are applied to previously attended items of working memory. In an object-switching task, participants counted the number of sequentially presented objects. In Experiment 1 the processing time increased when the object category switched from the prior trial compared to a repetition. More importantly, the further in the past the last instance of a current category was presented, the more processing time was necessary—an observation suggesting passive decay rather than inhibition of previously attended items. However, results differed when only two object categories were employed. Experiment 2 suggests that the lack of a clear indication of decay with small numbers of categories was due to participants’ expectancy of category switches rather than repetitions. Taken together, the results suggest that working memory items become less accessible the longer they have not been attended to, when strategic processes are controlled.     

Interactive Effects of Mood and Task Framing on Creative Generation

ABSTRACT

This study introduced a motivational compatibility account for the influence of mood on creative generation. Building upon the feelings-as-information framework, it was proposed that positive moods signal to individuals that they are safe, motivating them to take advantage of this presumed safety by seeking stimulation and incentives (i.e., having fun), whereas negative moods signal to individuals that there are problems at hand, motivating them to solve these problems. Based on these assumptions, it was predicted that positive and negative moods should enhance effort on creative generation tasks construed as compatible with the motivational orientations they respectively elicit. Specifically, positive, relative to negative, moods were predicted to enhance effort on tasks construed as fun and silly, whereas negative, relative to positive, moods were predicted to bolster effort on tasks construed as serious and important. Evidence for this model, and several of its underlying assumptions, was adduced in 3 experiments in which mood was manipulated and participants completed creative generation tasks that were framed as either fun or serious. Results are discussed with an eye toward addressing alternative theoretical explanations.     

Creativity in Its Social Context: The Interplay of Organizational Norms,Situational Threat,and Gender

Past research has frequently made the assumptions that creativity is an individual, rather than social, behavior; that the factors shaping creative behavior influence everyone in the same way; and that these factors always have the same influence regardless of the situation. This research challenges all 3 of these assumptions. In an experiment, participants (n = 187) assumed the role of members of a business organization with either individualist or collectivist norms that was either under competitive threat or not. Results indicated that, when threat was absent, men exhibited more divergent thinking under individualist than collectivist norms. However, the reverse was true for women when threat was absent and for both sexes when their organization was under threat. Thus, a group norm emphasizing individuality can sometimes enhance divergent thinking performance. However, this influence is moderated by other situational factors such as competitive threat, and, possibly for reasons of differing socialization, does not appear to affect men and women equally.     

Self-Portraits: Possible Selves in European-American,Chilean, Japanese and Japanese-American Cultural Contexts

Possible selves of students from European-American (EA), Chilean (CH), Japanese-American (JA), and Japanese (JN) cultural contexts were analyzed, revealing differences in the emphasis given to various content themes. EA possible selves focus on intrapersonal themes (i.e., “fear being dependent”), consistent with cultural emphases on uniqueness and independent development. In JN, JA and CH contexts, career and education themes dominate possible selves, consistent with particularly strong cultural emphasis on professional and academic accomplishments. The cultural contexts also differ in their predominant configurations of possible selves—EA and CH possible selves often show balance (expected and feared selves of similar theme but opposing valence, i.e., “expect to graduate from college” and “fear dropping out of college”) while JN and JA selves more frequently match (expected and feared selves of similar thematic content and valence, i.e., “expect to be idle” and “fear being idle”).     

Face detection differs from categorization: Evidence from visual search in natural scenes

In this study, we examined whether the detection of frontal, ¾, and profile face views differs from their categorization as faces. In Experiment 1, we compared three tasks that required observers to determine the presence or absence of a face, but varied in the extents to which participants had to search for the faces in simple displays and in small or large scenes to make this decision. Performance was equivalent for all of the face views in simple displays and small scenes, but it was notably slower for profile views when this required the search for faces in extended scene displays. This search effect was confirmed in Experiment 2, in which we compared observers’ eye movements with their response times to faces in visual scenes. These results demonstrate that the categorization of faces at fixation is dissociable from the detection of faces in space. Consequently, we suggest that face detection should be studied with extended visual displays, such as natural scenes.     

Tracking multiple objects across abrupt viewpoint changes

The reported experiment tested the effect of abrupt and unpredictable viewpoint changes on the attentional tracking of multiple objects in dynamic 3-D scenes. Observers tracked targets that moved independently among identically looking distractors on a rectangular floor plane. The tracking interval was 11 s. Abrupt rotational viewpoint changes of 10°, 20°, or 30° occurred after 8 s. Accuracy of tracking targets across a 10° viewpoint change was comparable to accuracy in a continuous control condition, whereas viewpoint changes of 20° and 30° impaired tracking performance considerably. This result suggests that tracking is mainly dependant on a low-level process whose performance is saved against small disturbances by the visual system's ability to compensate for small changes of retinocentric coordinates. Tracking across large viewpoint changes succeeds only if allocentric coordinates are remembered to relocate targets after displacements.     

Agent-causation and agential control

According to what I call the reductive standard-causal theory of agency, the exercise of an agent's power to act can be reduced to the causal efficacy of agent-involving mental states and events. According to a non-reductive agent-causal theory, an agent's power to act is irreducible and primitive. Agent-causal theories have been dismissed on the ground that they presuppose a very contentious notion of causation, namely substance-causation. In this paper I will assume, with the proponents of the agent-causal approach, that substance-causation is possible, as I will argue against that theory on the ground that it fails as a theory of agency. I will argue that the non-reductive agent-causal theory fails to account for agency, because it fails to account for agential control: it cannot explain why the stipulated irreducible relation between the agent and an action constitutes the agent's exercise of control over the action. This objection, I will argue, applies to the agent-causal theory in particular, and to the non-reductive approach in general.     

Effects of acute psychosocial stress exposure on endocrine and affective reactivity in college students differing in the 5-HTTLPR genotype and trait neuroticism

Enhanced stress vulnerability has been implicated in the pathogenesis of affective disorders. Although both genetic (5-HTTLPR) and cognitive (neuroticism) factors are known to increase stress vulnerability, no experimental study has investigated the interaction between these two factors on psychobiological reactivity following acute stress exposure. This study used a balanced experimental design to examine the interaction between the 5-HTTLPR genotype and trait neuroticism in neuroendocrine and affective stress responses. From a large group of 771 students, 48 carriers of the short/short (S/S) allele and 48 carriers of the long/long (L/L) allele with the lowest and the highest neuroticism scores (77 females, 19 males; mean age?±?SD: 20.6?±?2 years) were selected and exposed to an acute psychosocial stressor. Mood was assessed before and after the stressor, and salivary cortisol concentrations were measured before and at 20, 30, and 60?min after stressor onset. Acute stress increased salivary cortisol concentration regardless of either 5-HTTLPR genotype or neuroticism, but it caused a less profound negative mood change in L/L compared to S/S-allele carriers with the lowest neuroticism scores. The 5-HTTLPR genotype influences affective reactivity to acute stress conditional upon neuroticism, improving resilience to acute stress in L/L-allele carriers if they do not already possess high cognitive-affective (neuroticism) vulnerability.