听觉通道下负数的低水平加工引起注意的SNARC效应

采用刺激探测任务,探讨了听觉通道下负数的低水平加工能否引起注意的SNARC效应。结果表明:(1)负数的低水平加工能够产生注意的SNARC效应,即线索为绝对值小的负数时,被试对左耳目标反应更快;线索为绝对值大的负数时,被试对右耳目标反应更快。(2)负数的加工所引起听觉空间注意的转移并不依赖于负数所在的情境,而仅通过其绝对值大小与空间表征发生关联。这一结论与视觉条件下所得到的结论不一致,并支持了系统发生论假说。     

The direction of masked auditory category priming correlates with participants' prime discrimination ability

Semantic priming refers to the phenomenon that participants typically respond faster to targets following semantically related primes as compared to semantically unrelated primes. In contrast, Wentura and Frings (2005) found a negatively signed priming effect (i.e., faster responses to semantically unrelated as compared to semantically related targets) when they used (a) a special masking technique for the primes and (b) categorically related prime-target-pairs (e.g., fruit-apple). The negatively signed priming effect was most pronounced for participants with random prime discrimination performance, whereas participants with high prime discrimination performance showed a positive effect. In the present study we analyzed the after-effects of masked category primes in audition. A comparable pattern of results as in the visual modality emerged: The poorer the individual prime discrimination, the more negative is the semantic priming effect. This result is interpreted as evidence for a common mechanism causing the semantic priming effect in vision as well as in audition instead of a perceptual mechanism only working in the visual domain.     

People believe that they are prototypically good or bad

People have been shown to view their beliefs as being prototypical (modal) but their abilities as (falsely) unique (above or below average). It is possible that these two viewpoints – self as prototypical and self as unique – can be reconciled. If the distribution of ability for a given skill is skewed such that many others have high (low) ability and few others have low (high) ability, it is possible that a majority of peoples’ self-assessments can be above (below) average. Participants in 5 studies demonstrated an understanding that various skills have skewed ability distributions and their self-assessments were related to distribution shape: high when negatively skewed and low when positively skewed. Further, participants tended to place themselves near the mode of their perceived skill distribution. Participants were most likely to think that they were good at skills for which they thought that most others were also good.     

Question–behaviour effect: A randomised controlled trial of asking intention in the interrogative or declarative form

Objective: This study investigated the question–behaviour effect of measuring intention in the interrogative or declarative form combined or not with a measure of moral norm.

Design: A sample of 762 participants was randomised according to a 2?×?2 factorial design.

Main outcome measures: Cognitions were assessed at the baseline, and physical activity behaviour was self-reported three weeks later. Results: At baseline, there were no significant differences on the studied variables. An ANOVA showed a significant interaction effect between the two experimental conditions (p?=?0.04). Post-hoc contrast analyses showed that the interrogative intention-only condition significantly differed from the declarative intention-only (d?=?0.21, p?=?0.03) and interrogative intention?+?moral norm (d?=?0.22, p?=?0.03) conditions.

Conclusion: Results suggest that self-posed questions about a future action increases the likelihood of doing it when these questions are not accompanied by measures of moral norm. This provides support for using introspective self-talk to favour the adoption of behaviour.     

The Martyrdom Effect: When Pain and Effort Increase Prosocial Contributions

Most theories of motivation and behavior (and lay intuitions alike) consider pain and effort to be deterrents. In contrast to this widely held view, we provide evidence that the prospect of enduring pain and exerting effort for a prosocial cause can promote contributions to the cause. Specifically, we show that willingness to contribute to a charitable or collective cause increases when the contribution process is expected to be painful and effortful rather than easy and enjoyable. Across five experiments, we document this “martyrdom effect,” show that the observed patterns defy standard economic and psychological accounts, and identify a mediator and moderator of the effect. Experiment 1 showed that people are willing to donate more to charity when they anticipate having to suffer to raise money. Experiment 2 extended these findings to a non‐charity laboratory context that involved real money and actual pain. Experiment 3 demonstrated that the martyrdom effect is not the result of an attribute substitution strategy (whereby people use the amount of pain and effort involved in fundraising to determine donation worthiness). Experiment 4 showed that perceptions of meaningfulness partially mediate the martyrdom effect. Finally, Experiment 5 demonstrated that the nature of the prosocial cause moderates the martyrdom effect: the effect is strongest for causes associated with human suffering. We propose that anticipated pain and effort lead people to ascribe greater meaning to their contributions and to the experience of contributing, thereby motivating higher prosocial contributions. We conclude by considering some implications of this puzzling phenomenon. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Temperament and negative semantic priming in children 7 to 12 years old

The present research assessed whether children with high and low scores on temperament traits differed in their ability to inhibit irrelevant task information in a lexical decision task. Children from 7 to 12 years old were classified based on temperament dimensions measured using a version of the Temperament in Middle Childhood Questionnaire. The participants were instructed to either attend to (and remember) or to ignore a masked prime word followed by a central probe target on which they made a lexical decision. The results revealed several notable outcomes. First of all, recognition memory was better for attended than ignored words, providing further evidence that attention instructions influenced the processing of the primes.

Secondly, although no negative priming effect was obtained in the “ignore” condition, 43% of children showed this effect. Thirdly, children scoring high on Inhibitory Control and Impulsivity showed ignored negative priming, whereas children scoring high on Inhibitory Control and low on Impulsivity ignored facilitation. Data are discussed within the framework of negative priming as a complex phenomenon that involves the interaction of different factors such as age, type of task, and certain temperament traits.     

New experimental test of strain-gradient plasticity theory: metal foil sandwich structures in flexure

Experimental tests of strain-gradient plasticity theory rely on studies of the size effect (smaller is stronger) in micromechanical testing. The plastic strain gradient is varied by varying the size of the specimen. This confounds the direct effects of the size and the effects of the strain gradient. We propose experiments on foil sandwich structures in which these parameters are separated. Preliminary results suggest that it is the foil thickness that determines the strength, not the strain gradient.     

In situ characterization of the martensitic transformation temperature of NiTi shape memory alloys via instrumented microindentation

A novel, instrumented microindentation technique was successfully used to measure the temperature associated with the martensitic transformation leading to the recovery of plastic strain in a Nickel–Titanium (NiTi) shape memory alloy. Following a standard indentation cycle, the indenter was partially unloaded such that a good contact was maintained between indenter and specimen surface. The onset and finish temperature of the martensitic transformation, the associated volume contraction, and the amount of the recovered plastic deformation were determined by quantifying the indenter displacement as a function of temperature. These experiments were compared to conventional measurements of the transformation temperature by differential scanning calorimetry and compression testing.     

Anisotropic thermal properties of single-wall-carbon- nanotube-reinforced nanoceramics

Dense single-wall-carbon-nanotube-(SWCNT)-reinforced alumina nanocomposites have been fabricated by a novel spark-plasma-sintering technique. Anisotropic thermal properties have been found in carbon nanotube composites. The introduction of ropes of SWCNTs gives rise to a decrease in the transverse thermal diffusivity with increasing carbon nanotube content while it does not change the in-plane thermal diffusivity. This is scientifically interesting and technologically important for the development of materials for novel thermal barrier coatings.     

Vertex interactions and film shapes in two-dimensional foam

A model of the structure of two-dimensional foam (cells separated by circular arcs (films) meeting at threefold vertices) is considered. Films that are so curved as to be nearly semicircular arcs are problematic for conventional foam structure computations, which aim to identify the pressures needed to achieve specified bubble areas. When the films have near semicircularity, tiny variations in pressure can lead to large changes in the computed bubble area, and hence a failure to meet the specified targets. A new algorithm for determining foam structure is presented. It is based on 'freezing' most of the system, except the nearly semicircular arcs, and then finding the particular bubble pressures associated with the latter via an analytic approximation. This procedure is shown to work well for structure relaxation in a small bubble cluster. Large relaxed bubble clusters are considered briefly at the end of the paper.