Enduring Interest in Perceptual Ambiguity: Alternating Views of Reversible Figures.

Research favoring the so-called bottom-up and top-down classes of explanations for reversible figures that dominated the literature in last half of the 20th century is reviewed. Two conclusions are offered. First, any single-process model is extremely unlikely to be able to accommodate the wide array of empirical findings, suggesting that the "final" explanation will almost certainly involve a hybrid conceptualization of interacting sensory and cognitive processes. Second, the utility of distinguishing between 2 components of the observer's experience with reversible figures is emphasized. This distinction between the observer's ability to access multiple representations from the single stimulus pattern (ambiguity) and the observer's phenomenal experience of oscillation between those representations (reversibility) permits the literature to be segregated into useful categories of research that expose overlapping but distinctive cortical processes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The science and politics of comparing women and men.

This article considers scientific evidence relevant to 4 claims that are often made about the findings of research that has compared the sexes. These claims are that the sex-related differences demonstrated by empirical research are small, unusually unstable across studies, very often artifactual, and inconsistent with the content of gender stereotypes. The empirical status of these claims has been seriously weakened by the findings of numerous quantitative syntheses of research that have compared female and male behavior. This weakening of the evidence has jeopardized the feminist political agenda of using empirical research to disconfirm gender stereotypes to raise women's status. Consequently, comparing the sexes has become increasingly controversial among psychologists. To deal responsibly with the issues that have been raised, psychologists should consider the role that their research plays in discourse on the status of women in society. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

What has become of grief counseling? An evaluation of the empirical foundations of the new pessimism.

A pessimistic view of grief counseling has emerged over the last 7 years, exemplified by R. A. Neimeyer's (2000) oft-cited claim that "such interventions are typically ineffective, and perhaps even deleterious, at least for persons experiencing a normal bereavement" (p. 541). This negative characterization has little or no empirical grounding, however. The claim rests on 2 pieces of evidence. The 1st is an unorthodox analysis of deterioration effects in 10 outcome studies in B. V. Fortner's (1999) dissertation, usually attributed to Neimeyer (2000). Neither the analysis nor Fortner's findings have ever been published or subjected to peer review, until now. This review shows that there is no statistical or empirical basis for claims about deterioration effects in grief counseling. The 2nd piece of evidence involves what the authors believe to be ill-informed summaries of conventional meta-analytic findings. This misrepresentation of empirical findings has damaged the reputation of grief counseling in the field and in the popular media and offers lessons for both researchers and research consumers interested in the relationship between science and practice in psychology. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Is the figural aftereffect an aftereffect? A review of its intensity, onset, decay, and transfer characteristics.

It has been shown how figural aftereffects might be generated by the lateral inhibitory effects of the inspection figure, in the manner of a simultaneous illusion. The present effort reviews some evidence suggesting that a figural aftereffect is a simultaneous illusion: (1) Varying the intensity of the inducing figure affects the simultaneous illusion and figural aftereffect in similar ways. (2) Temporal characteristics—onset and decay—of light adaptation, of afterimages, and of figural aftereffects are considered. It is shown that they obey similar empirical equations and that the constants in those equations have similar values. (3) The argument that the use of an interocular presentation of inducing and test figures eliminates the possible influence of afterimages is reviewed. It is concluded that figural aftereffects are very closely related to 3 visual phenomena: simultaneous contrast (the result of lateral inhibition), light and dark adaptation, and ocular tremor. (2 p. ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Predictive implications of individual differences in attachment.

The "strange situation" is widely used as a procedure for assessing individual differences in the quality of infant–parent attachments. Strange-situation behavior is believed to reflect individual differences in the quality of early parental behavior. The popularity of the procedure rests, in part, on claims concerning the association between strange-situation behavior around 12–20 months of age and subsequent child performance. It is shown here that the empirical support for these claims is quite weak and inconsistent. Studies have been designed in such a way that causal inferences about the direction and nature of effects have been precluded. Furthermore, associations have been found only when the quality of care received (whether good or poor) was likely to have been stable, thus precluding inferences about the formative significance of early (as opposed to contemporaneous) parent–child interaction. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Reasoning and conversation.

Informal arguments take place when individuals exchange views on whether it is worthwhile to believe some assertion or take some action. Debates between friends or family members, classroom sparring about an idea, scientific exchanges about empirical results or theories, and critical discussions and responses in many fields can all be instances of arguments. This article describes the structure of these arguments in terms of the conversational moves that participants can make within them—for example, asking for a justification, giving a reason, offering an objection, or conceding a point. The central part of the article proposes a model for the way people determine to which of the argument's claims each participant is committed. According to the model, commitment is the result of rules defined over the sequence of conversational moves. A participant's commitment to claims that occur later in the argument has well-defined implications for commitment to claims that occurred earlier. Predictions from the model compare well with people's judgments of commitment over a range of argument types. The analysis of argument commitment also illuminates concepts such as burden of proof that are difficult to define within current reasoning theories that treat just a single side of an issue. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Top-down versus bottom-up and the Ruritanian bean bug

In a recent article, Hunter uses the late George Varley and George Gradwell's long-term data on the winter moth (Operophtera brumata) and green tortrix (Tortrix viridana) populations to propose a method of quantifying the relative importance of top-down effects (because of natural enemies) and bottom-up effects (because of resource competition) in influencing population dynamics. We believe this approach is deeply flawed. Using Varley and Gradwell's winter moth study, we show that the problems with Hunter's analysis lie in his misinterpretation of the population dynamics and his inappropriate use of statistical techniques. We also emphasize the importance of distinguishing clearly between two quite different things: firstly, top-down and bottom-up regulation of populations and secondly, the much simpler task of categorizing factors affecting changes in population density as either top-down or bottom-up processes.     

The grammar of action and reversal errors in children's printing.

36 left-handed and 36 right-handed kindergarten children were asked to print after seeing a series of reversible letters and numbers presented individually on slides or flash cards. Regardless of handedness, both groups of Ss found the left–right orientation cues of the same letters and numbers difficult to recall. This challenges a proposal expressed in the "grammar of action" that claims that certain reversal errors in children's printing result from the inappropriate application of the horizontal motor rule, because although left- and right-handed children use this rule, they do so in different ways and therefore should have produced different errors. Another sample of 86 right-handed children from nursery school through Grade 1 was given the same printing task. Findings from this 2nd sample provide an additional challenge to the grammar of action by showing that reversals of the letter N, which are also thought to result from a misapplication of motor rules, decrease in frequency along with reversals of other letters and numbers, instead of increasing as predicted, during the developmental period when the motor rules that are said to be responsible for reversals of this particular letter become more strongly established. (21 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Lack of flexibility in visual grouping in patients with schizophrenia.

The study attempted to distinguish automatic grouping processes from top-down processes in a visual perceptual task in 30 patients with schizophrenia and 30 matched controls. Participants decided whether 7 figures were all different or whether 2 adjacent figures were identical. The distance between figures was manipulated to produce 3 separated pairs of figures, the targets belonging to either the same pair (within-group trials) or different pairs (between-groups trials). As controls, patients benefited from proximity for grouping. Top-down processes were explored by manipulating the proportion of within-group and between-groups trials in 3 experimental blocks. In patients, response times (RTs) decreased for within-group trials when within-group trials were more frequent, indicating that performance was correctly adapted to the type of block. Unlike controls, however, this RT decrease was not accompanied by a cost for between-groups trials. Ocular movement recordings revealed that controls were able to focus on between-groups regions selectively when between-groups trials were more frequent, whereas patients were unable to do so. The authors suggest that top-down processes allowing the construction of a selective representation of between-groups regions are impaired in patients with schizophrenia. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The siren song of implicit change detection.

Although change blindness could suggest that observers represent far less of their visual world than their conscious experience leads them to believe, they could fail to detect changes even if they fully represent all details. Reports of implicit change detection in the absence of awareness are consistent with the notion that observers' representations are more complete than previously thought. However, to provide convincing evidence, studies must separate implicit detection from explicit processes. This article reexamines the 3 primary claims of implicit change detection and, after replicating original findings, provides theoretical and empirical support for alternative, explicit explanations. Even if observers do represent more of the scene than previously thought, change detection might occur only through explicit comparisons. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Much ado about something: Violent video game effects and a school of red herring: Reply to Ferguson and Kilburn (2010).

In this article we reply to C. J. Ferguson and J. Kilburn’s (2010) critique of our meta-analysis on violent video game effects (C. A. Anderson et al., 2010). We rely on well-established methodological and statistical theory and on empirical data to show that claims of bias and misinterpretation on our part are simply wrong. One should not systematically exclude unpublished studies from meta-analytic reviews. There is no evidence of publication or selection bias in our data. We did not purposely exclude certain studies; we included all studies that met our inclusion criteria. Although C. J. Ferguson and J. Kilburn believe that the effects we obtained are trivial in size, they are larger than many effects that are deemed sufficiently large to warrant action in medical and violence domains. The claim that we (and other media violence scholars) are attempting to create a false crisis is a red herring. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The formative method for adapting psychotherapy (FMAP): A community-based developmental approach to culturally adapting therapy.

How is psychotherapy culturally adapted for ethnic minorities? Although there has been growing interest in doing so, few therapy adaptation frameworks have been developed. The majority of these frameworks take a top-down theoretical approach to adapting psychotherapy. This article introduces a community-based developmental approach to modifying psychotherapy for ethnic minorities. The formative method for adapting psychotherapy (FMAP) is a bottom-up approach that involves collaborating with consumers to generate and support ideas for therapy adaptation. It involves 5 phases that target developing, testing, and reformulating therapy modifications. These phases include (a) generating knowledge and collaborating with stakeholders, (b) integrating generated information with theory and empirical and clinical knowledge, (c) reviewing the initial culturally adapted clinical intervention with stakeholders and revising the culturally adapted intervention, (d) testing the culturally adapted intervention, and (e) finalizing the culturally adapted intervention. Application of the FMAP is illustrated using examples from a study adapting psychotherapy for Chinese Americans, but it can also be readily applied to modifying therapy for other ethnic groups. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Studies on organosulfur compounds. XV. Substituent effects on 2-(2-pyridyl)-3-substituted-phenyl-4(3H)-quinazolinone cyclization (author''s transl)

The recovery process of HeLa continuous cells after prolonged storage at nitrogen liquid temperature (--196 degrees C) has been analysed. The karyologic analysis evidence indicates a high stock cell karyostability. A study of cell division, generation cycle parameters and DNA synthesis by autoradiography demonstrated cell adaptation to a continuous passage to be due to the increase of proliferative pool and to the intensitification of generation processes in the multiplicated population. Cell structure changes during adaptation were reversible.     

Interventions for children of divorce: Toward greater integration of research and action.

A number of child-, family-, and system-focused interventions have been designed to prevent or reduce the negative effects of divorce on children. This article critically evaluates these intervention efforts by examining (1) their relation to basic research on the processes proposed to mediate children's postdivorce adjustment and (2) evaluation studies assessing the effectiveness of various programs. Although interventions address some of the factors proposed to mediate children's adaptation to divorce, the interplay between interventions and basic research on children's postdivorce adaptation is limited. Moreover, some intervention efforts appear to be beneficial but most lack empirical documentation of their efficacy. This analysis leads to several recommendations for basic and applied research and for improving the response of the mental health field to the problems experienced by many children from divorcing families. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Expression theory and the preference reversal phenomena.

Previous research has confounded judgment versus choice with the response scale used to express preference. When these factors are crossed in a 2?×?2 design, 6 pairs of preference reversals are possible. Experiment 1 demonstrates that all of these reversals exist in one-outcome gambles. We then develop expression theory, which assumes that the basic evaluation of a gamble is expressed on various scales via a subjective interpolation process. A quantitative model is developed that accounts for both the magnitude and direction of the various reversals. In Experiment 2, the model correctly predicts that the strength of reversals is weakened using two-outcome gambles. Nevertheless, 5 of the 6 reversals are still significant. In Experiment 3, empirical violations of dominance are demonstrated and the results are shown to be consistent with expression theory. In Experiment 4, the model is used to predict ratings from prices and vice versa. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Modeling distributions of immediate memory effects: No strategies needed?

Many models of immediate memory predict the presence or absence of various effects, but none have been tested to see whether they predict an appropriate distribution of effect sizes. The authors show that the feature model (J. S. Nairne, 1990) produces appropriate distributions of effect sizes for both the phonological confusion effect and the word-length effect. The model produces the appropriate number of reversals, when participants are more accurate with similar items or long items, and also correctly predicts that participants performing less well overall demonstrate smaller and less reliable phonological similarity and word-length effects and are more likely to show reversals. These patterns appear within the model without the need to assume a change in encoding or rehearsal strategy or the deployment of a different storage buffer. The implications of these results and the wider applicability of the distributionmodeling approach are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Race, evolution, and behaviour: A life history perspective.

Reviews the book, Race, evolution, and behaviour: A life history perspective (2nd special abridged edition) by J. Philippe Rushton (2000). In 1995, Philippe Rushton wrote Race, evolution and behavior, which summarized his ideas about race and racial differences. Rushton assumes that the major racial groupings of humankind represent a deep biological and evolutionary reality, and that there are important racial differences caused by evolutionary differences in reproductive strategies. Rushton claims that Blacks are less intelligent, more sexually precocious and promiscuous, less involved in parenting, and more likely to engage in criminal behaviour than "Mongoloids." "Caucasoids" fall between the two other groups in all those characteristics. The book caused considerable controversy. Rushton has defended abridgements of his book as simply providing briefer, more accessible editions of it. Most of the scientific claims made by Rushton, in either the 1995 book or its subsequent revisions, have been roundly criticized, but Rushton continues to present these same claims as if the criticisms did not exist. In many cases, Rushton's review of the evidence is highly selective. Although space precludes examining all of Rushton's claims about racial differences, Rushton hardly provides a balanced scientific account of the evidence. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Carnosine: its properties, functions and potential therapeutic applications

Carnosine and related dipeptides such as anserine are naturally-occurring histidine-containing compounds. They are found in several tissues most notably in muscle where they represent an appreciable fraction of the total water-soluble nitrogen-containing compounds. The biological role of these dipeptides are conjectural but they are believed to act as cytosolic buffering agents. Numerous studies have demonstrated, both at the tissue and organelle level, that they possess strong and specific antioxidant properties. Carnosine and related dipeptides have been shown to prevent peroxidation of model membrane systems leading to the suggestion that they represent water-soluble counterparts to lipid-soluble antioxidants such as alpha-tocopherol in protecting cell membranes from oxidative damage. Other roles ascribed to these dipeptides include actions as neurotransmitters, modulation of enzymic activities and chelation of heavy metals. Many claims have been made in respect of therapeutic actions of carnosine and histidine-containing dipeptides. These include antihypertensive effects, actions as immunomodulating agents, wound healing and antineoplastic effects. Many of these claims have not been convincingly documented nor subject to rigorous clinical evaluation. Nevertheless, there are examples where studies have shown considerable promise. One is the treatment of senile cataract in dogs and another is in acceleration of healing of surface wounds and burns to the skin. It is clear from this review that many of the effects of these histidine-containing dipeptides, especially in regard to claims for their therapeutic effects, need to be subjected to critical experimental and clinical examination. Several applications do, however, show clear evidence of being useful therapeutic agents.     

"A clash of bottom-up and top-down processes in visual search: The reversed letter effect revisited": Correction to Zhaoping and Frith (2011).

Reports an error in "A clash of bottom-up and top-down processes in visual search: The reversed letter effect revisited" by Li Zhaoping and Uta Frith (Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, np). The authors have requested a number of corrections. The corrections are given in the erratum. (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 2011-09719-001.) It is harder to find the letter “N” among its mirror reversals than vice versa, an inconvenient finding for bottom-up saliency accounts based on primary visual cortex (V1) mechanisms. However, in line with this account, we found that in dense search arrays, gaze first landed on either target equally fast. Remarkably, after first landing, gaze often strayed away again and target report was delayed. This delay was longer for target “N” We suggest that the delay arose because bottom-up saliency clashed with top-down shape recognition. Thus, although gaze landed accurately and quickly to the distinctive feature in the target shape (the orientation of the diagonal bar in “N” or “И”), the identical zigzag shape of target and distractors was registered, leading to temporary confusion. In sparser search arrays with smaller set sizes, top-down target shape recognition occurs earlier and bottom-up saliency is weaker. The clash in this case causes search asymmetry even before target location at first gaze landing. Our findings rule out previous suggestions that search asymmetry stems from stronger preattentive salience for the reversed target and/or faster rejection of familiar distractors. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Attention During Adaptation Weakens Negative Afterimages.

The effect of attention during adaptation on subsequent negative afterimages was examined. One of 2 overlapped outline figures was attended during a 7-10-s adaptation period. When the figures were readily perceptually segregated (on the basis of color or motion), the subsequent afterimages were initially weaker for the previously attended figure. This effect was confirmed by demonstrations that the onset of a single afterimage was delayed when an afterimage inducer was attended during adaptation compared with when a central digit stream or an overlapped (brightness-balanced) figure that did not generate an afterimage was attended. The attention effect was further confirmed using a criterion-independent (dot-integration) paradigm. The fact that selective attention during adaptation weakened or delayed afterimages suggests that attention primarily facilitates the adaptation of polarity-independent processes that modulate the visibility of afterimages rather than facilitating the adaptation of polarity-selective processes that mediate the formation of afterimages. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)