Risk avoidance: Graphs versus numbers

There have long been speculations that graphical and numerical presentations of risk statistics differ in their impact on people’s willingness to pursue actions that could harm or even kill them. But research has been unclear about the processes whereby the pictorial character of graphical displays per se might affect those risky decisions or even whether such effects actually occur. In two studies, we demonstrate that the pictorial nature of a graphical risk display can, indeed, increase risk avoidance. This increase is associated with a heightened impression of the riskiness of less safe alternatives. The results suggest that this picture-driven, intensified sense of riskiness, in turn, rests on two kinds of mechanisms: one cognitive, the other affective. Cognitively, pictorial presentations impose weaker upper bounds on people’s internal representations of the chances that riskier alternatives will bring about actual harm. Affectively, pictures ignite stronger, more aversive negative associations with riskier options and their outcomes.     

Emotion facilitates perception and potentiates the perceptual benefits of attention

Does emotion affect how people see? We investigated the effects of emotion and attention, as well as their conjoint effect, on contrast sensitivity, a dimension of early vision. We manipulated the emotional valence and the attentional distribution of cues preceding a target stimulus and asked observers to judge the orientation of the target as contrast varied. This study provides the first behavioral evidence that (a) emotion enhances contrast sensitivity irrespective of attention and (b) emotion potentiates the effect of attention on contrast sensitivity.     

Suicidality in bipolar I disorder

People with bipolar disorder are at high suicide risk. The literature suggests that suicidality is predicted by higher symptom severity and less use of pharmacological agents, but few studies have examined the joint contributions of these variables. The present study examines the conjoint contribution of symptom severity and pharmacological treatment to suicidal ideation and behavior among participants with bipolar disorder. The model was able to account for 53% of the variance in suicidality scores. Depression, mixed state, and hopelessness were significantly associated with suicidality. All other variables were nonsignificant once symptom severity had been controlled. Implications for future research are described.     

Anti-Judaism in the Gospels According to Matthew,Mark, Luke,John, and Mel

Mel Gibsons film, The Passion of the Christ, has elicited great response, both positive and negative. The purpose of this article is to explore one controversial aspect of the movie, anti-Judaism. After addressing problems inherent in the term, anti-Judaism, the article highlights elements of the New Testament gospels that have been interpreted as anti-Jewish, offers an analysis of Gibsons interpretation of the role of the Jews in the death of Jesus, and closes with a discussion of the implications of Gibsons presentation of the Jews on contemporary Jewish/Christian relations.     

Phonological neighbors speed visual word processing: evidence from multiple tasks

The author investigated the role of phonological neighborhood on visual word recognition. Using a lexical decision task, the author showed in Experiment 1 that words with large phonological neighborhoods were processed more rapidly than those with smaller phonological neighborhoods. This facilitative effect was obtained even when the nonword fillers had the same number of phonological neighbors as the words. This finding indicates that phonological neighbors speed processing within the phonological system. In the next 2 experiments, this claim was further tested using the naming and semantic categorization tasks. In both experiments, the effect of phonological neighborhood was found to be facilitative. The results across all 3 experiments indicate that phonology is central to visual word recognition and that phonological neighborhood provides a reliable measure of phonological processing.     

Interactions between orientation and contrast modulations suggest limited cross-cue linkage

Recent studies of texture segmentation and second-order vision have proposed very similar models for the detection of orientation modulation and contrast modulation (OM and CM). From the similarity of the models it is tempting to assume that the two cues might be processed by a single generalised texture mechanism; however, recent results (Kingdom et al, 2003 Visual Neuroscience 2 65-76) have suggested that these cues are detected independently, or at least in a mechanism that is able to maintain an apparent independence between the cues. We tested new combinations of OM and CM and found that CM at 0.4 cycle deg(-1) facilitates the detection of OM at 0.2 cycle deg(-1) when the peaks of contrast align with the extremes of orientation. There is also some evidence of weak facilitation of CM by OM under the same conditions. Further, this facilitation can be predicted by filter--rectify--filter channels optimised for the detection of each cue, adding weight to the argument that texture cues are processed in a single generalised mechanism that nonetheless achieves cue independence or near-independence in many circumstances. We also found that the amount of suprathreshold masking produced by an orientation cue depends on the overall percept formed by that cue.     

Family Context and Five-Year-Old Children’s Attitudes Toward Literacy When They are Learning to Read

This study explored associations in the family context, conceptualized as comprising parent–child practices and parental expectations, and five-year-old children's attitudes toward literacy. A total of 94 children from four primary schools and their parents participated in the study. Each child completed an individually administered Literacy Attitude Scale that assessed her enjoyment in reading-related activities. Parents completed a questionnaire about aspects of their family context. The results revealed a high level of positive attitudes toward literacy by beginning readers, with no gender difference. Frequency of parent–child everyday interactions and parental expectations had significant relationships with children's attitude toward literacy. This study highlights the importance of looking beyond parent–child literacy activities when examining children's attitudes toward literacy.     

The dark side of technologies: Technostress among users of information and communication technologies

This paper tests the structure and the predictors of two psychological experiences of technostress associated with the use of information and communication technologies (ICT), i.e., technostrain (users report feelings of anxiety, fatigue, scepticism and inefficacy beliefs related to the use of technologies) and technoaddiction (users feel bad due to an excessive and compulsive use of these technologies). The study included a sample of 1072 ICT users (N = 675 nonintensive ICT users and N = 397 intensive ICT users). Results from multigroup confirmatory factor analyses among non‐intensive and intensive ICT users showed, as expected, the four‐factor structure of technostrain in both samples. Secondly, and also as expected, confirmatory factorial analyses revealed that technostress experiences are characterized not only by technostrain but also by an excessive and compulsive use of ICT. Moreover, multiple analyses of variance showed significant differences between non‐intensive and intensive ICT users (1) in the dimensions of technostress and (2) in specific job demands and job/personal resources. Finally, linear multiple regression analyses revealed that technostrain is positively predicted by work overload, role ambiguity, emotional overload, mobbing and obstacles hindering ICT use, as well as by lack of autonomy, transformational leadership, social support, ICT use facilitators and mental competences. Work overload, role ambiguity and mobbing, as well as the lack of emotional competences, positively predict technoaddiction. Theoretical and practical implications, in addition to future research, are discussed.