Identity salience moderates processing of group-relevant information

When an individual is categorized as a member of a group, the individual’s social identity becomes his or her frame for perceiving the world. This research investigates how information can be perceived and processed differently when relevant social identities are salient. In two studies, participants’ individual, student, or American identities were made salient before they read strong or weak arguments in favor of the institution of comprehensive exams at their university in 10 years time. In both studies, student-salient participants analytically processed the message whereas self-salient (Study 1) and American-salient (Study 2) participants failed to agree differentially with strong and weak messages. These data suggest that social-identity salience changes the information that individuals consider relevant, providing clear support for the contention that social identities have a profound impact on the way individuals perceive and interact with the world around them.     

Implicit (and explicit) racial attitudes barely changed during Barack Obama’s presidential campaign and early presidency

As a high-status, omnipresent Black exemplar, Barack Obama and his rise to the presidency of the United States may have induced a cultural shift in implicit racial attitudes, much like controlled exposures to positive Black and negative White exemplars have done in the laboratory (Dasgupta & Greenwald, 2001). With a very large, heterogeneous sample collected daily for 2.5 years prior to, during and after the 2008 election season (N = 479,405), we observed very little evidence of systematic change in implicit and explicit racial attitudes overall, within subgroups, or for particular notable dates. Malleability of racial attitudes - implicit or explicit - may be conditional on more features than the mere presence of high-status counter-stereotypic exemplars.     

Modeling storage and retrieval processes with clinical populations with applications examining alcohol-induced amnesia and Korsakoff amnesia

Multinomial processing tree models can provide for measures of underlying cognitive processes. In this paper, the Chechile [Chechile, R. A. (2004). New multinomial models for the Chechile-Meyer task. Journal of Mathematical Psychology, 48, 364-384] 6P model is described and applied to several applications involving clinical populations. The model provides for separate measures of storage and retrieval. Monte Carlo studies were conducted to examine the relative accuracy of two methods for obtaining an overall condition estimate for the 6P model, i.e., averaging estimates found for individuals versus pooling the multinomial frequency data before estimating the model parameters. The sampling studies showed that the pooling of frequencies resulted in more accurate parameter estimates. However, psychological assessment in clinical psychology requires precise measurement on an individual basis. In order to recover information about individuals from pooled frequency information, a modified jackknife method was advanced. The jackknife method is based on a contrast between the overall pooled frequency information and the pool frequency without the observations from a single individual. Another series of Monte Carlo simulations demonstrate that the new jackknife method resulted in better recovery of the correct individual parameter values relative to estimates based on only the data from the individual. Finally, the 6P model was used to examine the data from two previously reported studies with clinical populations. One application addressed the effect of alcohol-induced amnesia, and the other application dealt with Korsakoff amnesia. In both cases the pattern of storage and retrieval measurements resulted in a clarification of the underlying storage and retrieval differences between the clinical group and the control group.     

Are children’s memory illusions created differently from those of adults? Evidence from levels-of-processing and divided attention paradigms

In two experiments, we investigated the robustness and automaticity of adults’ and children’s generation of false memories by using a levels-of-processing paradigm (Experiment 1) and a divided attention paradigm (Experiment 2). The first experiment revealed that when information was encoded at a shallow level, true recognition rates decreased for all ages. For false recognition, when information was encoded on a shallow level, we found a different pattern for young children compared with that for older children and adults. False recognition rates were related to the overall amount of correctly remembered information for 7-year-olds, whereas no such association was found for the other age groups. In the second experiment, divided attention decreased true recognition for all ages. In contrast, children’s (7- and 11-year-olds) false recognition rates were again dependent on the overall amount of correctly remembered information, whereas adults’ false recognition was left unaffected. Overall, children’s false recognition rates changed when levels of processing or divided attention was manipulated in comparison with adults. Together, these results suggest that there may be both quantitative and qualitative changes in false memory rates with age.     

“I'm Not Prejudiced,but . . .”: Compensatory Egalitarianism in the 2008 Democratic Presidential Primary

The historic 2008 Democratic presidential primary race between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton posed a difficult choice for egalitarian White voters, and many commentators speculated that the election outcome would reflect pitting the effects of racism against sexism ( Steinem, 2008 ). Because self‐reported prejudices may be untrustworthy, we used the Implicit Association Test (IAT) to assess White adults’ (1) condemnation of prejudices, and (2) attitudes toward the candidates in relation to voting decisions, as part of an online survey. Results supported the proposed compensatory egalitarianism process, such that Whites’ voting choice was consistent with their implicit candidate preference, but in an effort to remain egalitarian, participants compensated for this preference by automatically condemning prejudice toward the other candidate's group. Additional findings showed that this process was moderated by participants’ ethnicity and level of prejudice, as expected. Specifically, compensatory egalitarianism occurred primarily among Whites and individuals low in explicit prejudice. Implications for candidate support, aversive racism theory, and implicit compensation processes are discussed.     

汉字认知过程中整字对部件的影响

英文研究中,"字优效应"是单词促进字母加工的一个重要依据。但中文研究中还存在一些争议。本研究通过两个实验考查了汉字的部件认知中,汉字整体对局部(部件)的影响。实验刺激材料分为三种,即左右结构或上下结构的真字、假字与部件字。目标部件为既能够放置于三种字符的左侧,又能放置于右侧(上部或下部)的汉字部件。实验一采用Reicher-Wheeler实验任务,先呈现刺激材料350ms,掩蔽后再呈现需要判断的目标部件,被试对目标部件进行按键反应。实验二中采用部件判断实验任务,先呈现需要判断的目标部件,再呈现刺激材料,被试对刺激材料中是否包含目标部件进行按键反应。记录反应时与正确率。27位健康女性大学生参与本实验。结果显示:(1)不论是Reicher-Wheeler实验任务还是部件判断实验任务,均显示部件字的部件认知判断速度最快。真字与假字相比,无"字优效应"。真字与部件字相比,存在着"字劣效应"。这些结果表明,汉字整字对汉字部件认知加工起到抑制作用;(2)两个实验任务均表现出汉字结构方式效应,即对左右结构的汉字的部件认知比上下结构的汉字更快;(3)部件的空间位置对部件识别存在影响。实验一中对下部件分辨最困难,分辨时间最长;实验二中发现对左部件的反应最快。字符结构方式效应与部件空间位置效应既存在于真字中,也存在于假字中。     

Children’s (in)ability to recover from garden paths in a verb-final language: Evidence for developing control in sentence processing

An eye-tracking study explored Korean-speaking adults’ and 4- and 5-year-olds’ ability to recover from misinterpretations of temporarily ambiguous phrases during spoken language comprehension. Eye movement and action data indicated that children, but not adults, had difficulty in recovering from these misinterpretations despite strong disambiguating evidence at the end of the sentence. These findings are notable for their striking similarities with findings from children parsing English; however, in those and other studies of English, children were found to be reluctant to use late-arriving syntactic evidence to override earlier verb-based cues to structure, whereas here Korean children were reluctant to use late-arriving verb-based cues to override earlier syntactic evidence. The findings implicate a general cross-linguistic pattern for parsing development in which late-developing cognitive control abilities mediate the recovery from so-called “garden path” sentences. Children’s limited cognitive control prevents them from inhibiting misinterpretations even when the disambiguating evidence comes from highly informative verb information.     

Evidence for knowledge of the syntax of large numbers in preschoolers

The aim of this study was to provide evidence for knowledge of the syntax governing the verbal form of large numbers in preschoolers long before they are able to count up to these numbers. We reasoned that if such knowledge exists, it should facilitate the maintenance in short-term memory of lists of lexical primitives that constitute a number (e.g., three hundred forty five) compared with lists containing the same primitives but in a scrambled order (e.g., five three forty hundred). The two types of lists were given to 5-year-olds in an immediate serial recall task. As we predicted, the lists in syntactic order were easier to recall, suggesting that they match some knowledge of the way lexical primitives must be ordered to express large numerosities.     

Influences of information processing and disengagement in infants' looking behaviour

The present study considers the joint influences of information processing and disengagement in looking behaviour within a habituation paradigm. Six‐month‐old infants were habituated, during which their heart rate (HR) was measured. A parametric model of habituation yielded for each infant parameter estimates of their habituation performance. These parameters were interpreted as assessing information processing and disengagement. Corresponding measures were obtained from the HR data. The HR measures and habituation model parameter estimates were significantly correlated, as predicted. In addition, an attention getter, presented prior to each habituation trial, influenced indicators of information processing, but not of disengagement. Results confirmed the advantages of a modelling approach. In addition, and more importantly, findings led to the conclusion that both information processing as well as disengagement are involved in infants' looking behaviour in visual habituation. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

一种混合型前瞻记忆的加工机制

通过两个实验, 对以往研究忽略的一种基于事件进行反应、且具有时间线索的混合型前瞻记忆的加工过程进行考察。结果表明, 这种混合型的前瞻记忆可以通过控制加工或自动加工提取, 还可能两种加工交替存在, 被试在执行过程中, 根据时间信息, 有选择地、动态地将注意资源投入于不同时间段, 现有理论不能解释这种现象。对多重加工理论进行补充, 使之能够解释这种混合型前瞻记忆的加工机制。