Contraction bias in memorial quantifying judgment: does it come from a stable compressed memory representation or a dynamic adaptation process?

A common response bias in psychophysical judgments is regression toward the mean (overestimation of small and underestimation of large values, or the response contraction bias). The same bias is observed in magnitude estimation from memorized quantities. Participants estimated alphabetic interval distances between 2 letters for different levels of interletter distances. The underestimated and overestimated values and the point of least error changed, depending on the level of alphabetic distances judged; furthermore, their estimation showed a progressively increasing tendency toward the mean, rendering the estimation progressively less accurate as the estimation task was repeated. We conclude that the regression toward the mean in memorial quantifying judgment derives from a cognitive adaptation process rather than from a permanent, compressed memory representation of the stimuli. Two opposing views on the adaptive meaning of this judgment bias are discussed.     

Orienting ourselves to the gay penguin

This article analyzes the global proliferation of discourse about gay penguins in zoos. Based on internet-based representations, we identify a directional narrative logic of “gay penguin discourses” in which the ideal gay penguin comes out as gay, falls in love, follows natural desires to parent, and may marry as a reward. This discursive chain is animated by the zoo as institutional space of captivity, which incites human subjects to become agents in its reproduction. In contests over penguin actions and morality, zookeepers, gay activists, and conservative family groups reiterate a homonormative politics of identity through talk of discrimination and rights. To identify what makes this discourse seem real, we draw on Ahmed’s Queer Phenomenology to analyze the composition of the zoo as the site of a particular “mode of address” that orients humans to adopt positions of authority, evaluation, and regulation. Three orientations—reason, emotion, and instinct—function as an assemblage whose elements connect and separate, such that when one orientation’s ability to explain penguin behaviors is exceeded, another orientation steps in or connects with the first to supply a logic that confirms the discursive chain for the ideal gay penguin and how humans can meet his needs. Locked into logics of hetero/homo, oriented through reason, instinct, and emotion, and interpellated through emotions, humans can imagine little more than an anthropocentric repetition of our own “progress.” The future, for humans and penguins, is secured.     

How similar is false recognition to veridical recognition objectively and subjectively?

Three recognition memory experiments were conducted using modified Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) and DRM paradigms. In Experiment 1, the reaction time (RT) of the false alarms to critical nonpresented words (false memory) was compared with the RT of hits to the critical presented words and with the RT of hits to the studied list words (true memory). The RT of the false alarms to the critical nonpresented words was significantly longer than that of the hits to the critical words and than that of the studied list words. In Experiment 2, in addition to RT, participants' confidence level was measured on a 4-point scale for a yes or no response. Confidence rating was significantly higher for the hits to the critical presented words and to the list words than for the false alarms to the critical non-presented words. Experiment 3 further showed that how similar false memory experience was to that of true memory was a function of retention size (number of lists of words retained in memory). In all three experiments, the participants' recognition RTs distinguished false memory from veridical memory, and in Experiments 2 and 3, so did their confidence ratings. Therefore, false memory and veridical memory differ at both the objective and the subjective levels. The results are consistent with a single familiarity dimension model of recognition memory.     

Measuring psychotherapy outcomes in routine practice: Examining Slovak versions of three commonly used outcome instruments

This study examined the Slovak mutations of three outcome measures for routine practice i.e. the Clinical Outcomes in Routine Evaluation – Outcome Measure (CORE-OM), the Outcome Questionnaire – 45 (OQ-45), the Outcome Rating Scale (ORS), and one control measure the Symptom Checklist 10 Revised (SCL-10R), with regard to their concordance or differences in outcome classification of pre-post change, when used by the same patients and when the criteria used for establishing recovery and improvement status are based on the same sample. Method: Non-clinical (252) and clinical (202) samples were used for the standardisation of all instruments. A portion of the clinical participants (N?=?140) completed all measures at the end of their treatment. Results: The CORE-OM, and the SCL-10R indicated a higher number of recovered and improved clients. With regard to the pre-post differences as expressed in the effect size, the CORE-OM showed the highest pre-post difference (pre-post effect size .98), followed by the ORS (.87), the SCL-10R (.83) and finally with the OQ-45 (.69). Conclusion: Even very similar instruments developed on the basis of similar theoretical conceptualisations and empirical findings may report different pre-post outcomes.