The effect of presentation rate on implicit sequence learning in aging

Implicit sequence learning is thought to be preserved in aging when the to-be learned associations are first-order; however, when associations are second-order, older adults (OAs) tend to experience deficits as compared to young adults (YAs). Two experiments were conducted using a first (Experiment 1) and second-order (Experiment 2) serial-reaction time task. Stimuli were presented at a constant rate of either 800 milliseconds (fast) or 1200 milliseconds (slow). Results indicate that both age groups learned first-order dependencies equally in both conditions. OAs and YAs also learned second-order dependencies, but the learning of lag-2 information was significantly impacted by the rate of presentation for both groups. OAs showed significant lag-2 learning in slow condition while YAs showed significant lag-2 learning in the fast condition. The sensitivity of implicit sequence learning to the rate of presentation supports the idea that OAs and YAs different processing speeds impact the ability to build complex associations across time and intervening events.     

Action: a bridge between vocational and mental health counselling*

A theory of goal-directed action is proposed as a conceptual link between vocational and mental health counselling. Originally emerging from the vocational counselling field, contextual action theory is presented as a critical conceptual link not only between mental health and occupational life but also between counselling practices in these domains. This specific application of goal-directed action to vocational and mental health counselling is addressed by describing counselling as goal-directed action, the five tasks of counselling it invites, and tools for supporting client goals, such as the self-confrontation interview.     

Categories of Large Numbers in Line Estimation

How do people stretch their understanding of magnitude from the experiential range to the very large quantities and ranges important in science, geopolitics, and mathematics? This paper empirically evaluates how and whether people make use of numerical categories when estimating relative magnitudes of numbers across many orders of magnitude. We hypothesize that people use scale words—thousand, million, billion—to carve the large number line into categories, stretching linear responses across items within each category. If so, discontinuities in position and response time are expected near the boundaries between categories. In contrast to previous work (Landy, Silbert, & Goldin, 2013) that suggested only that a minority of college undergraduates employed categorical boundaries, we find that discontinuities near category boundaries occur in most or all participants, but that accurate and inaccurate participants respond in opposite ways to category boundaries. Accurate participants highlight contrasts within a category, whereas inaccurate participants adjust their responses toward category centers.     

How Well Do We Know Our Inner Daredevil? Probing the Relationship Between Self‐Report and Behavioral Measures of Risk Taking

To measure a person's risk‐taking tendency, research has relied interchangeably on self‐report scales (e.g., “Indicate your likelihood of engaging in the risky behavior”) and more direct measures, such as behavioral tasks (e.g., “Do you accept or reject the risky option?”). It is currently unclear, however, how the two approaches map upon each other. We examined the relationship between self‐report likelihood ratings for risky choice in a monetary gamble task and actual choice, and tested how the relationship is affected by task ambiguity (i.e., when part of the information about risks and benefits is missing) and age. Five hundred participants (aged 19–85 years) were presented with 27 gambles, either in an unambiguous or an ambiguous condition. In a likelihood rating task, participants rated for each gamble the likelihood that they would accept it. In a separate choice task, they were asked to either accept or reject each gamble. Analyses using a signal‐detection approach showed that people's likelihood ratings discriminated between accept and reject cases in their choices rather well. However, task ambiguity weakened the association between likelihood ratings and choice. Further, older adults' likelihood ratings anticipated their choices more poorly than younger adults'. We discuss implications of these findings for existing approaches to the study of risk‐taking propensity, which have often relied on self‐reported risk tendency for ambiguous activities. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

What did Popper learn from Lakatos?

The canonical version of the history of twentieth century philosophy of science tells us that Lakatos was Popper’s disciple, but it is rarely mentioned that Popper would have learned anything from Lakatos. The aim of this paper is to examine Lakatos’ influence on Popper’s philosophical system and to argue that Lakatos did have an important, yet somewhat unexpected, impact on Popper’s thinking: he influenced Popper’s evolutionary model for ‘progress’ in science. And Lakatos’ influence sheds new light on why and how Popper continually revised one of the central claims of his philosophy of science: the evolutionary account of scientific theory change.     

解释水平视角下的乐观偏差效应

研究基于解释水平理论,考查心理距离对乐观偏差效应的影响。实验从心理距离的事件概率维度、时间距离维度、空间距离维度入手,采用自编的材料对677名被试进行测量,探讨心理距离的远近对乐观偏差产生的影响。结果表明,被试对未来生活事件的判断存在总体上的乐观偏差。在较远的心理距离条件下,被试表现出更大的乐观偏差;而在较近的心理距离中,乐观偏差效应明显减小。但在时间距离维度以及消极事件的概率维度上,表现出与总体乐观偏差不一致的现象。     

The Automaticity of Affect for Political Leaders, Groups, and Issues: An Experimental Test of the Hot Cognition Hypothesis

We report the results of three experimental tests of the "hot cognition" hypothesis, which posits that all sociopolitical concepts that have been evaluated in the past are affectively charged and that this affective charge is automatically activated within milliseconds on mere exposure to the concept, appreciably faster than conscious appraisal of the object.
We find support for the automaticity of affect toward political leaders, groups, and issues; specifically:

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  Most Ss show significantly faster reaction times to affectively congruent political concepts and significantly slower response times to affectively incongruent concepts;

       

Psychological correlates of peer victimisation in preschool: social cognitive skills,executive function and attachment profiles

Most research into peer victimisation has focussed on children aged 8 years and above and has included a study of the correlates of victimisation, including cognitive and social skills, and attachment profiles. Recent research has started to investigate aggression and victimisation in younger groups and has found that the nature of aggression differs from that in older children in terms of the types of victimisation involved and the stability of the roles. This study investigated some of the correlates of roles taken in victimisation in 104 children aged 4–6 years, using a cartoon methodology to elicit peer nominations for aggressor, victim, and defender. It examined the social cognitive abilities, executive function skills, and attachment profiles of aggressors, victims, and defenders. Victims did not exhibit poor performance on the social cognitive tasks or have insecure attachment qualities as has been found with victims during middle childhood. Aggressors did not perform highly on the social cognitive tasks in contrast to older aggressors and bullies. Defenders were found to perform above average (although not significantly different from other groups) on the social cognitive tasks. These findings are related to the nature of aggression and victimisation at this age, and a developmental change hypothesis is proposed to accommodate them. Aggr. Behav. 00:1–18, 2005. © 2005 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.