Use of temporal and spatial information in estimating event completion time

In this research, we investigated how students use temporal and spatial information to estimate the time to fill a tank. In Experiment 1, we evaluated the usefulness of a digital clock to calibrate temporal information and of an overflow tank to calibrate spatial information and investigated how component skills, such as judging volume, judging time, and performing mental calculations, correlate with estimation accuracy. In Experiment 2, we compared the usefulness of static and animated displays in order to test the prediction that static displays would be more useful when the fill rate remained constant but animated displays would be more useful when the fill rate changed. The findings, when combined with verbal reports, provide evidence regarding the use of four strategies that differ in their perceptual and arithmetic demands.     

Brief residential treatment for nicotine addiction: a five-year follow-up study.

Relapse is a major problem with nicotine addiction. This study investigated the long-term abstinence rate and effectiveness of a five-day residential nicotine treatment program. Questionnaires were mailed to all clients who completed the program between 1991 and 1996. 47% of the questionnaires were returned. Of these, 65% of respondents reported being abstinent from nicotine for an average period of 120 weeks. Of this group, 15% reported at least one relapse before a sustained abstinence. The primary relapse triggers for both the abstinent and nonabstinent groups were coping with "strong emotional feelings". Over 50% of the sample was comorbid for other addictions, depression or anxiety disorders.     

Developing cognitions about race: White 5‐ to 10‐year‐olds' perceptions of hardship and pain

White American adults assume that Blacks feel less pain than do Whites, but only if they believe that Blacks have faced greater economic hardship than Whites. The current study investigates when in development children first recognize racial group differences in economic hardship and examines whether perceptions of hardship inform children's racial bias in pain perception. Five‐ to 10‐year‐olds (N = 178) guessed which of two items (low versus high value) belonged to a Black and a White child and rated the amount of pain a Black and a White child would feel in 10 painful situations. By age 5, White American children attributed lower‐value possessions to Blacks than Whites, indicating a recognition of racial group differences in economic hardship. The results also replicated the emergence of a racial bias in pain perception between 5 and 10. However, unlike adults', children's perceptions of hardship do not account for racial bias in pain perception.     

Perspectives on Engagement Barriers and Alternative Delivery Formats from Non-completers of a Community-Run Parenting Program

The purpose of our study was to learn about barriers to participation faced by families who had signed up for but not completed a community-based parenting program that was not part of a research project. We also sought to gauge interest in alternative, web-based methods of delivering a parent training intervention. Semi-structured phone interviews were conducted with 27 parents who had signed up for but not completed a community-based parenting program. Results indicated that practical reasons such as scheduling were the most common barrier faced by parents. Results also suggested substantial interest in alternative web-based and hybrid models of program delivery. Hybrid models would allow participants to move between face-to-face small group classes and web-based classes; allowing for easy make-up of missed small-group sessions. Interventions designed by community organizations and researchers should consider using alternative methods, including hybrid models, of program delivery in order to reach a larger number of individuals.     

Constraints on Multiple Object Tracking in Williams Syndrome: How Atypical Development Can Inform Theories of Visual Processing

The ability to track moving objects is a crucial skill for performance in everyday spatial tasks. The tracking mechanism depends on representation of moving items as coherent entities, which follow the spatiotemporal constraints of objects in the world. In the present experiment, participants tracked 1 to 4 targets in a display of 8 identical objects. Objects moved randomly and independently (moving condition), passed behind an invisible bar (occluded condition), or momentarily disappeared by shrinking (implosion condition). Scholl and Pylyshyn (1999) found that adults can track entities under the moving and occluded conditions, but not under implosion. This finding suggests that the tracking mechanism is constrained by the spatiotemporal properties of physical objects as they move in the world. In the present study, we adapt these conditions to investigate whether this constraint holds for people with severe spatial impairments associated with Williams syndrome (WS). In Experiment 1, we compare the performance of individuals with WS and typically developing (TD) adults. TD adults replicated Scholl and Pylyshyn’s findings; performance was no different between the moving and occluded conditions but was worse under implosion. People with WS had reduced tracking capacity but demonstrated the same pattern across conditions. In Experiment 2, we tested TD 4-, 5-, and 7-year-olds. People with WS performed at a level that fell between TD 4- and 5-year-olds. These results suggest that the multiple object tracking system in WS operates under the same object-based constraints that hold in typical development.     

The meaning of ‘life’ and other abstract words: Insights from neuropsychology

There are a number of long‐standing theories on how the cognitive processing of abstract words, like ‘life’, differs from that of concrete words, like ‘knife’. This review considers current perspectives on this debate, focusing particularly on insights obtained from patients with language disorders and integrating these with evidence from functional neuroimaging studies. The evidence supports three distinct and mutually compatible hypotheses. (1) Concrete and abstract words differ in their representational substrates, with concrete words depending particularly on sensory experiences and abstract words on linguistic, emotional, and magnitude‐based information. Differential dependence on visual versus verbal experience is supported by the evidence for graded specialization in the anterior temporal lobes for concrete versus abstract words. In addition, concrete words have richer representations, in line with better processing of these words in most aphasic patients and, in particular, patients with semantic dementia. (2) Abstract words place greater demands on executive regulation processes because they have variable meanings that change with context. This theory explains abstract word impairments in patients with semantic‐executive deficits and is supported by neuroimaging studies showing greater response to abstract words in inferior prefrontal cortex. (3) The relationships between concrete words are governed primarily by conceptual similarity, while those of abstract words depend on association to a greater degree. This theory, based primarily on interference and priming effects in aphasic patients, is the most recent to emerge and the least well understood. I present analyses indicating that patterns of lexical co‐occurrence may be important in understanding these effects.     

A Comparison of the Nomological Networks Associated With Forced-Choice and Likert Formats of the Narcissistic Personality Inventory

The Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI) is one of the most popular measures of narcissism. However, its use of a forced-choice response set might negatively affect some of its psychometric properties. The purpose of this research was to compare a Likert version of the NPI, in which only the narcissistic response of each pair was given, to the original NPI, in 3 samples of participants (N = 1,109). To this end, we compared the nomological networks of the forced-choice and Likert formats of the NPI in relation to alternative measures of narcissism, narcissistic personality disorder, entitlement, self-esteem, general personality traits (reported by self and informants), interpersonal styles, and general pathological traits included in the DSM–5. The Likert format NPI—total and subscales—manifested similar construct validity to the original forced-choice format across all criteria with only minor differences that seem to be due mainly to the increased reliability and variability found in the Likert NPI Entitlement/Exploitativeness subscale. These results provide evidence that a version of the NPI that employs a Likert format can justifiably be used in place of the original.     

Blocking in category learning

Many theories of category learning assume that learning is driven by a need to minimize classification error. When there is no classification error, therefore, learning of individual features should be negligible. The authors tested this hypothesis by conducting three category-learning experiments adapted from an associative learning blocking paradigm. Contrary to an error-driven account of learning, participants learned a wide range of information when they learned about categories, and blocking effects were difficult to obtain. Conversely, when participants learned to predict an outcome in a task with the same formal structure and materials, blocking effects were robust and followed the predictions of error-driven learning. The authors discuss their findings in relation to models of category learning and the usefulness of category knowledge in the environment.