The selective relationship between religious dimensions and social desirability among Polish students

This study explores the effect of the position of the religious construct-system (central vs. subordinated vs. marginal) in personality on the relationship between social desirability and structure of religiosity, emotion to God and post-critical belief. The sample comprised Polish Students (N?=?200) aged between 19 and 29 years. The Social Desirability Scale, The Structure-of-Religiosity Test and The Post-Critical Belief Scale were employed in the study. The results suggest that religiosity is not associated with social desirability.     

The Limits of Attention for Visual Perception and Action in Aging

ABSTRACT

This study aimed to investigate whether aging results in an increased attentional blink effect in older adults as compared to young adults. A rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) paradigm was employed in which participants were asked to identify two targets (dual-task condition) presented in rapid succession. These targets were separated by various intervals in a stream of stimuli. The performance for identifying the second target was normally diminished as compared to identification of a single-task target. Various combinations of tasks, such as two perceptual tasks or one perceptual and one action task, as well as different types of pointing action, such as pointing to a displaced target, pointing to a stationary target or pointing to a disappeared target, were manipulated in this study to see if aging may further impact these variables. The results of this study showed that in young adults, successful identification of the first target interfered with identifying the second target, as well as the initiation time (action planning) of pointing to the second target. However, identification of the first target did not interfere with pointing movement time and pointing accuracy, even when the target was displaced, which required online control of action. Conversely, for older adults, successful central identification not only interfered with identifying the second target and with the pointing initiation time, but also interfered with pointing movement time for a displaced target. This suggests that older adults seem to be unable to concurrently identify the first target and correct their already-initiated pointing movement compared to young adults.     

Action–effect congruence during observational learning leads to faster action sequence learning

Common coding theory suggests that any action (pressing a piano key) is intimately linked with its resultant sensory effect (an auditory musical tone). We conducted two experiments to explore the effect of varying auditory action–effect patterns during complex action learning. In Experiment 1, participants were assigned to 1 of 4 groups, watched a silent video of a hand playing a sequence on a piano keyboard with no auditory action effect (observation) and were asked to practise and perform the sequence on an identical keyboard with varying action effects (reproduction). During reproduction, Group 1 heard no auditory tones (identical to observed video), Group 2 heard typical scale-ascending piano tones with each key press, Group 3 heard fixed but out-of-sequence piano tones with each key press, and Group 4 heard random piano tones with each key press. In Experiment two, new participants were assigned to 1 of 2 groups and watched an identical video; however, the video in this experiment contained typical, scale-ascending piano sounds. During reproduction, Group 1 heard no auditory tones while Group 2 heard typical, scale-ascending piano tones with each key press (identical to observed video). Our results showed that participants whose action–effect patterns during reproduction matched those in the observed video learned the action sequence faster than participants whose action–effect patterns during reproduction differed from those in the observed video. Additionally, our results suggest that adding an effect during reproduction (when one is absent during observation) is somewhat more detrimental to action sequence learning than removing an effect during reproduction (when one is present during observation).     

Stimulus–classification and stimulus–action associations: Effects of repetition learning and durability

It has been shown that acquired stimulus–response bindings result from at least two types of associations from the stimulus to the task (stimulus–task or stimulus–classification; S–C) and from the stimulus to the motor response (stimulus–response or stimulus–action; S–A). These types of associations have been shown to independently affect behaviour. This finding suggests that they are processed in different pathways or different parts of a pathway at the neural level. Here we test a hypothesis that such associations may be differentially affected by repetition learning and that such effects may be detected by measuring their durability against overwriting. We show that both S–C and S–A associations are in fact strengthened when learning is boosted by increasing repetitions of the primes. However, the results further suggest that associations between stimuli and actions have less durable effects on behaviour and that the durability of S–C and S–A associations is independent of repetition learning. This is an important finding for the understanding of the underlying mechanisms of associative learning and particularly raises the question of which processes may affect flexibility of learning.     

Repetition in visual word identification: Benefits and costs

University students performed lexical tasks with visually presented target words after the presentation of an identical or unrelated prime, at short (80–120?ms) or longer (410–710?ms) prime–target stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs). Experiment 1 showed perceptual identification benefits in vocal responding at a short SOA that were reduced (accuracy) or reversed (latency) at a longer SOA. Experiment 2 showed a transition from a repetition benefit to a cost over 3 SOAs in a target-masked version of the lexical decision task (LDT; target displayed for only 141?ms). In Experiment 3 the repetition cost was replicated at a 530-ms SOA in the LDT with masked targets, but a repetition benefit was observed in the conventional LDT (target displayed until response). The dependence of repetition costs on target masking is more consistent with biases based on episodic confusions than refractoriness of lexical representations.     

You better stop! Binding “stop” tags to irrelevant stimulus features

We investigated whether the basic process of integrating stimuli (and their features) with simultaneously executed responses transfers to situations in which one does not respond to a stimulus. In three experiments, a stop-signal task was combined with a sequential priming paradigm to test whether irrelevant stimulus features become associated with a “stop” tag. Stopping a simple response during the prime trial delayed responding and facilitated stopping in the probe if the same irrelevant stimulus feature was repeated in the probe. These repetition priming effects were independent of the relation between the to-be-executed (or to-be-stopped) responses in the prime and probe, indicating that “stop” tags are global (“stop all responses!”) rather than being response-related (e.g., “stop left response!”).     

Stimulus–response compatibility for mixed mappings and tasks with unique responses

For two stimulus locations mapped to two keypresses, reaction time is shorter when the mapping is compatible than when it is not (the stimulus–response compatibility, SRC, effect). A similar result, called the Simon effect, occurs when stimulus location is irrelevant, and colour is relevant. When compatibly mapped trials are intermixed with incompatibly mapped trials or Simon task trials, the compatibility effect is eliminated, and the Simon effect is influenced by the location mapping. In five experiments, we examined whether similar mixing effects occur when the two spatial mappings or location-relevant and location-irrelevant tasks use distinct keypresses on the left and right hands. Mixing had considerably less influence on the SRC and Simon effects than it does when the intermixed trial types or tasks share the same responses, even though response time was lengthened to a similar extent. Mixing two tasks for which stimulus location was irrelevant yielded no within-task Simon effect, but the effect was also absent when four stimuli were assigned to two responses on a single hand. The relative lack of influence of mixing on the SRC and Simon effects when the tasks have unique responses implies that suppression of direct activation of the corresponding response occurs primarily when the tasks share responses.     

When old and frail is not the same: Dissociating category and stimulus effects in four implicit attitude measurement methods

It is not always clear whether implicit attitude measures assess the attitude towards single stimuli or the attitude towards categories. Nevertheless, this is important to know—both for interpreting implicit attitude effects and for selecting the test that is most appropriate for individual research aims. We investigated this for four implicit measures: the standard Implicit Association Test (IAT), the IAT-recoding free (IAT-RF), and two versions of the Extrinsic Affective Simon Task (EAST, identification (ID)-EAST). Effects in the standard IAT reflect evaluations of categories and single stimuli, whereas the IAT-RF measures attitudes towards categories only. Both versions of the EAST measure evaluations of single stimuli independently from the evaluation of categories. Three different effect sources are distinguished: attitudes towards single stimuli (IAT; EAST and ID-EAST), attitudes towards target categories (IAT and IAT-RF), and processes of recoding (IAT), which do not necessarily reflect attitudes.     

Peer Relationships and Emotional Well-Being of Children with Sickle Cell Disease: A Controlled Replication

This study investigated the effects of stimulus presentation modality on working memory performance in elementary school-age children ages 7–13. The experimental paradigm implemented a multitrial learning task incorporating three presentation modalities: Auditory, Visual, and simultaneous Auditory plus Visual. The first experiment compared the learning and memory performance of older and younger elementary school children. The second experiment compared verbal learning and memory performance in elementary school children with major depressive disorder (MDD) to the performance of nondepressed children. All participants benefited from the pictorial presentation of information during learning and recall of information as compared to the auditory presentation alone. Both age and socioeconomic status affected working memory performance in typically developing children. Children with depression demonstrated a more passive learning style during the auditory list acquisition. The present study supports the pictorial superiority hypothesis in verbal learning tasks and the theory that working memory matures during elementary school years. Furthermore, current results indicate that complex working memory measures are not entirely independent of previous experience.     

The Many Faces of Malingering and Participant Response Strategies: New Methodologies in the Attachment and Clinical Issues Questionnaire (ACIQ)

Four studies created malingering and response bias scales for a new test battery, the Attachment and Clinical Issues Questionnaire (ACIQ). In the first calibration study, a new approach to identifying fake good and fake bad respondents was outlined. In Study 2, this scale was cross validated in a within-subjects design that also found only weak correlations between the scales of the ACIQ and measures of social desirability. The third study developed a method violator scale (one who responds randomly to the content of the scales due to carelessness, low IQ, etc.). It was tested by Monte Carlo and empirical studies. The fourth study combined the two cross validation studies to offer clear cutoffs for the practitioner. These studies successfully led to the creation of malingering and response bias scales for the ACIQ and also introduced new methods that could be adapted to other instruments.