Staying Together: A Bidirectional Delay–Coupled Approach to Joint Action

To understand how individuals adapt to and anticipate each other in joint tasks, we employ a bidirectional delay–coupled dynamical system that allows for mutual adaptation and anticipation. In delay–coupled systems, anticipation is achieved when one system compares its own time‐delayed behavior, which implicitly includes past information about the other system’s behavior, with the other system’s instantaneous behavior. Applied to joint music performance, the model allows each system to adapt its behavior to the dynamics of the other. Model predictions of asynchrony between two simultaneously produced musical voices were compared with duet pianists’ behavior; each partner performed one voice while auditory feedback perturbations occurred at unpredictable times during live performance. As the model predicted, when auditory feedback from one musical voice was removed, the asynchrony changed: The pianist’s voice that was removed anticipated (preceded) the actions of their partner. When the auditory feedback returned and both musicians could hear each other, they rapidly returned to baseline levels of asynchrony. To understand how the pianists anticipated each other, their performances were fitted by the model to examine change in model parameters (coupling strength, time‐delay). When auditory feedback for one or both voices was removed, the fits showed the expected decrease in coupling strength and time‐delay between the systems. When feedback about the voice(s) returned, the coupling strength and time‐delay returned to baseline. These findings support the idea that when people perform actions together, they do so as a coupled bidirectional anticipatory system.     

Understanding the central processing limit in consistent-mapping visual search tasks

Effects of load (i.e., the number of stimuli in the display) have been observed in multiple-frame studies using a consistent mapping of stimuli to responses (e.g., Fisher, 1982, 1984). In a series of four experiments, it is shown that these effects are not the consequence of differences across the high- and low-load conditions in either decision noise or peripheral masking. Additionally, it is shown that of two modes of limited capacity (a limited-channel and divided-capacity model) considered as possible explanations of load effects in tasks where subjects are required to locate a target, only one--the limited-channel model--is consistent with the results from all three location tasks. Finally, it is argued that the limited-channel model predicts not only the behavior observed in the four consistent-mapping experiments reported in this article but also the behavior observed in several related consistent-mapping tasks (Kleiss & Lane, 1986; Shiffrin & Gardner, 1972).     

Mass media treatment of violence in sports and its effects

There appears to be a strong relationship between mass media portrayals of violence and real-life violence itself. This article reviews the available literature on the effects of media treatment of sports violence; analyzes the theoretical explanations for this treatment; and makes proposals on how the problems of both sports violence and its media coverage may be remedied, with a particular focus on amateur hockey in Canada.     

The association between teacher attitudes, behavioral intentions, and smoking and the prevalence of smoking among seventh-grade students.

Seventh-grade students and teachers from twenty-three middle and junior high schools were surveyed to determine the association between teacher attitudes, behavioral intentions, and smoking behavior and the prevalence of student smoking. Teacher attitudes toward smoking policies were found to be strongly related to the current smoking behavior of the teacher but not consistently related to student smoking. In addition, teacher likelihood of intervening showed a modest association with teacher smoking status, with current smokers generally indicating being the least likely to intervene for student possession or use of cigarettes. Teacher intentions to intervene were strongly associated with the prevalence of smoking among boys but not girls.     

Some Ethical Issues In Applied Social Psychology: The Case of Bilingual Education and Self-esteem

Ideas and theories from social psychology are often put to practical use. Sometimes these borrowed concepts and theories are carefully implemented, sometimes they are not. Education is a practical area where social psychology is often applied, sometimes without much care. As an example of the problem, this article examines how educators used self-esteem to justify bilingual education programs for language minority students and whether this application of social psychology is warranted. We find that the postulated effect of bilingual educations on self-esteem does not occur. Also, self-esteem research and theory are misapplied in attempting to justify bilingual education with respect to its supposed effects on self-esteem. Finally, we raise the question of what responsibility the field of social psychology has to correct misapplication of theory and concepts.     

Context-dependent variation in social stereotyping 1: The effects of intergroup relations as mediated by social change and frame of reference

During the 1990-1991 Persian Gulf conflict an experiment was conducted with Australian university students (N = 200) to investigate whether the social stereotyping of Americans varied with social contextual manipulations related to the hostilities. The study, conducted in two phases at the start and end of the conflict, examined how the assignment of standard stereotypical traits to Americans was affected (a) by the large-scale social change constituted by the war and (b) by variation in the frame of reference provided by relevant comparison groups. The elicited stereotypes were sensitive to both of these contextual variables, demonstrating significant variation and fluidity. Overall, stereotypes of Americans were relatively negative. They were significantly more negative (a) at the end of the war than at the beginning in the restricted frame (when Australia and Britain were comparison groups) and (b) in the first phase of the conflict when the frame was extended to include Iraq as a comparison group. The findings were in line with expectations derived from self-categorization theory (Turner, 1985) that the social categorization of self and other into ingroup and outgroup is inherently variable, comparative and context-dependent. They question the long-held view of stereotypes as fixed, rigid and resistant to change.