Further evidence that object-based correspondence effects are primarily modulated by object location not by grasping affordance

Tipper, Paul and Hayes found object-based correspondence effects for door-handle stimuli for shape judgments but not colour. They reasoned that a grasping affordance is activated when judging dimensions related to a grasping action (shape), but not for other dimensions (colour). Cho and Proctor, however, found the effect with respect to handle position when the bases of the door handles were centred (so handles were positioned left or right; the base-centred condition) but not when the handles were centred (the object-centred condition), suggesting that the effect is driven by object location, not grasping affordance. We conducted an independent replication of Cho and Proctor's design, but with behavioural and event-related potential measures. Participants made shape judgments in Experiment 1 and colour judgments in Experiment 2 on the same door-handle objects. Correspondence effects on response time and errors were obtained in both experiments for the base-centred condition but not the object-centred condition. Effects were absent in the P1 and N1 data, which are consistent with the hypothesis of little binding between visual processing of grasping component and action. These findings question the grasping-affordance view but support a spatial-coding view, suggesting that correspondence effects are modulated primarily by object location.     

Psychometric and Piagetian intelligences: Toward resolution of controversy

Whether “psychometric” and “Piagetian” kinds of intelligence, as measured by instruments designed to measure these constructs, are the same or different is regarded as a question of whether they have the same or different courses of development with age. While factor analysis may not be fully adequate for investigation of this question, use of this technique with variables reflecting chronological age variation must involve elimination of the age effect in order to assess relations among the constructs measured. Humphreys and Parsons (1979) were justified in partialing out age in their reanalysis of a study by Stephens, McLaughlin, Miller, and Glass (1972), to show that the two constructs are highly correlated and possibly identical in the sample studied. Reanalyses of studies by DeVries and Kohlberg (1977) and by DeVries (1974) yield somewhat conflicting results on the identity between psychometric and Piagetian intelligences. The former study does not yield a convincing separation between them, whereas the latter suggests that they can be distinguished, though substantially correlated and both loaded with a general factor. Problems in further investigating the issue are discussed.