Selective attention in social phobia and the moderating effect of a concurrent depressive disorder

Studies using the modified Stroop colour naming task have provided results consistent with the hypothesis that social phobia is associated with an attentional bias towards negative social-evaluative words. However, these results could also have arisen as a consequence of non-attentional processes. For this reason, the present study uses a modified version of MacLeod et al.'s (J. Abnorm. Psychol. 95 (1986) 15) dot-probe task, which provides a more direct measure of attention. Patients with social phobia (n=28), patients with social phobia and a concurrent depressive disorder (n=33), and non-patients (n=40) were presented with word pairs each consisting of a neutral word and a threat word. The results indicated that patients with social phobia show an attentional bias towards social-threat words while non-patients tend to avoid social-threat words. Patients with social phobia and a concurrent depressive disorder behaved like non-patients, indicating that concurrent depression abolishes the attentional bias. Physical threat words were also included in the study. The main analysis indicated that social phobia is also associated with an attentional bias to physical threat. However, a post hoc analysis (which requires replication) suggested that the physical threat bias might have arisen because some social phobia patients also had another anxiety disorder in which physical concerns are likely to have been prominent. Overall, the results emphasise the importance of assessing comorbidity when investigating attentional biases.     

Time and resource limits on working memory: cross-age consistency in counting span performance

This longitudinal study separated resource demand effects from those of retention interval in a counting span task among 100 children tested in grade 2 and again in grades 3 and 4. A last card large counting span condition had an equivalent memory load to a last card small, but the last card large required holding the count over a longer retention interval. In all three waves of assessment, the last card large condition was found to be less accurate than the last card small. A model predicting reading comprehension showed that age was a significant predictor when entered first accounting for 26% of the variance, but counting span accounted for a further 22% of the variance. Span at Wave 1 accounted for significant unique variance at Wave 2 and at Wave 3. Results were similar for math calculation with age accounting for 31% of the variance and counting span accounting for a further 34% of the variance. Span at Wave 1 explained unique variance in math at Wave 2 and at Wave 3.     

The developmental course of processing speed in children with and without learning disabilities

This study contrasted the development of processing speed in children with and without learning disabilities. We examined whether the same global mechanism presumed to be responsible for the normal developmental improvement in processing speed might also be associated with the processing speed deficiencies observed in children with learning impairments. One hundred and twenty-two children with learning disabilities in reading and/or math and 206 non-disabled community controls participated. There were no differences in relation of age to the development of processing speed for children with and without learning disabilities. We interpreted these results as suggesting that the underlying etiologies for the normal developmental change in processing speed and for the relative deficiencies in processing speed seen among children with learning disabilities were different.     

Methodological issues in judgment and decision-making research: Concurrent verbal protocol validity and simultaneous traces of process

This paper examines two dimensions of concurrent verbal protocol validity. First, whether verbalization affects process and outcome (reactivity) was examined by comparing concurrent verbal protocol traces with those from a computer search process tracing method, the latter being a complete trace of information acquisition from experimental materials. Earlier findings that verbalization affects time were confirmed. However, verbalization did not affect amount and pattern of acquisition or accuracy of judgments. Second, whether concurrent verbal protocols are complete was examined by comparing concurrent verbal protocol and computer traces that were simultaneously obtained in a treatment in which subjects verbalized as they acquired information from the computer. The verbal traces less completely captured information acquisition behavior than computer search. This suggests that, although concurrent verbal protocols provide greater insight into decision behavior than computer search, the latter is a more reliable information-acquisition trace. Thus, if information acquisition is of primary interest and if computer search activities can be naturally integrated into performing the primary task, computer search is preferred to concurrent verbal protocols. However, if information use or retrieval from long-term memory is of primary interest, concurrent verbal protocols are preferred to computer search. Finally, this paper examined whether the simultaneous use of concurrent verbal protocols and computer search provides traces of information acquisition and use that are as complete as when each method is independently applied. Although computer search tended to limit subjects verbalizations of evaluative operators, this effect may be eliminated by practice on the computer prior to collecting data.     

The differences between cerebral dominance patterns in the speed and accuracy of information processing among university students

IntroductionThe subject of cerebral dominance has received great attention by researchers; however, there is a paucity of studies that have examined its relationship to information processing.ObjectiveThe current study aims to reveal the differences between the cerebral dominance patterns (left cerebral dominance, right cerebral dominance, integrated parallel cerebral dominance) in the speed and accuracy of information processing.MethodA sample of (182) volunteers university students, (mean age ± SD, 19.92 ± 2.76 years; range, 18–24 years; 68 male, 114 females). The Human Information processing survey was applied to the participants. Each subject was exposed to two elementary cognitive tasks (Stroop task and Eriksen flanker task). Each task included two experimental conditions: first, the congruent condition that reflects the automatic processing of information; second, the incongruent condition that reflects the controlled processing of information.ResultsThe results of the study revealed that there were no differences between the patterns of cerebral dominance in the speed and accuracy of information processing.ConclusionAlthough the relationship between cerebral dominance and information processing is not significant, we need more studies to examine this relationship in other samples and in other experimental conditions.     

Lossy-Context Surprisal: An Information-Theoretic Model of Memory Effects in Sentence Processing

A key component of research on human sentence processing is to characterize the processing difficulty associated with the comprehension of words in context. Models that explain and predict this difficulty can be broadly divided into two kinds, expectation-based and memory-based. In this work, we present a new model of incremental sentence processing difficulty that unifies and extends key features of both kinds of models. Our model, lossy-context surprisal, holds that the processing difficulty at a word in context is proportional to the surprisal of the word given a lossy memory representation of the context—that is, a memory representation that does not contain complete information about previous words. We show that this model provides an intuitive explanation for an outstanding puzzle involving interactions of memory and expectations: language-dependent structural forgetting, where the effects of memory on sentence processing appear to be moderated by language statistics. Furthermore, we demonstrate that dependency locality effects, a signature prediction of memory-based theories, can be derived from lossy-context surprisal as a special case of a novel, more general principle called information locality.     

Eye movements and spoken language comprehension: effects of visual context on syntactic ambiguity resolution

When participants follow spoken instructions to pick up and move objects in a visual workspace, their eye movements to the objects are closely time-locked to referential expressions in the instructions. Two experiments used this methodology to investigate the processing of the temporary ambiguities that arise because spoken language unfolds over time. Experiment 1 examined the processing of sentences with a temporarily ambiguous prepositional phrase (e.g., "Put the apple on the towel in the box") using visual contexts that supported either the normally preferred initial interpretation (the apple should be put on the towel) or the less-preferred interpretation (the apple is already on the towel and should be put in the box). Eye movement patterns clearly established that the initial interpretation of the ambiguous phrase was the one consistent with the context. Experiment 2 replicated these results using prerecorded digitized speech to eliminate any possibility of prosodic differences across conditions or experimenter demand. Overall, the findings are consistent with a broad theoretical framework in which real-time language comprehension immediately takes into account a rich array of relevant nonlinguistic context.     

Chances and frequencies in probabilistic reasoning: rejoinder to Hoffrage,Gigerenzer, Krauss,and Martignon

Do individuals unfamiliar with probability and statistics need a specific type of data in order to draw correct inferences about uncertain events? Girotto and Gonzalez (Cognition 78 (2001) 247) showed that naive individuals solve frequency as well as probability problems, when they reason extensionally, in particular when probabilities are represented by numbers of chances. Hoffrage, Gigerenzer, Krauss, and Martignon (Cognition 84 (2002) 343) argued that numbers of chances are natural frequencies disguised as probabilities, though lacking the properties of true probabilities. They concluded that we failed to demonstrate that naive individuals can deal with true probabilities as opposed to natural frequencies. In this paper, we demonstrate that numbers of chances do represent probabilities, and that naive individuals do not confuse numbers of chances with frequencies. We conclude that there is no evidence for the claim that natural frequencies have a special cognitive status, and the evolutionary argument that the human mind is unable to deal with probabilities.     

Post-choice information processing by pigeons

In a conditional discrimination (matching-to-sample), a sample is followed by two comparison stimuli, one of which is correct, depending on the sample. Evidence from previous research suggests that if the stimulus display is maintained following an incorrect response (the so-called penalty-time procedure), acquisition by pigeons is facilitated. The present research tested the hypothesis that the penalty-time procedure allows the pigeons to review and learn from the maintained stimulus display following an incorrect choice. It did so by including a penalty-time group for which, following an incorrect choice, the sample changed to match the incorrect comparison, thus providing the pigeons with post-choice misinformation. This misinformation group acquired the matching task significantly slower than the standard penalty-time group (that had no change in the sample following an error). Furthermore, acquisition of matching by a control group that received no penalty time fell midway between the other two groups, suggesting that the pigeons did not merely take more care in making choices because of the aversiveness of penalty-time. Thus, it appears that in the acquisition of matching-to-sample, when the stimulus display is maintained following an incorrect choice, the pigeons can review or acquire information from the display. This is the first time that such an effect has been reported for a nonhuman species.     

Information repetition in evaluative judgments: Easy to monitor,hard to control

The sampling approach [Fiedler, K. (2000a). Beware of samples! A cognitive-ecological sampling approach to judgment biases. Psychological Review, 107(4), 659–676.] attributes judgment biases to the information given in a sample. Because people usually do not monitor the constraints of samples and do not control their judgments accordingly, systematic judgment biases occur. Three experiments demonstrate this for an obvious sampling constraint, the emptiness of merely repeated information. When evaluating stock market shares, participants did not correct for the repetition of positive or negative information about a share. Although original and repeated information was reliably distinguished in estimates of occurrence (successful monitoring), preferences were misled by mere repetition of success and failure reports (unsuccessful control). This effect could even override a share’s actual success rate. Explicit instructions to ignore repetitions provided no remedy; however, a cognitive load manipulation reduced repetition’s undue influence. Possible reasons for and benefits of this lack of direct metacognitive control are discussed.