Young children's preferred attentional strategies for delaying gratification.

In 4 experiments with 272 preschoolers and 48 1st–3rd graders, Ss controlled the frequency and duration of self-exposure to sets of stimuli during a delay of gratification. The stimuli included the real rewards for which they were waiting, symbolic (picture) versions of those rewards, or irrelevant objects. Previous research had shown that exposure to the real rewards hinders self-imposed delay, but viewing irrelevant stimuli or pictures of the rewards facilitated delay. In the present study, how long Ss viewed each stimulus during the delay was recorded and their verbal viewing preferences were assessed. Preschool Ss spontaneously preferred to view the real rather than the symbolic stimuli, regardless of their relevance to the rewards in the delay contingency, both when the delay was self-imposed and when it was imposed externally. This generalized preference for attending to the "real rewards" rather than to more symbolic representations helps to explain why it is so difficult for young children to tolerate voluntary delay of gratification. By attending to the real rewards, they may make such delay especially frustrative and arousing, thereby defeating their own ability to wait for what they want. In contrast, Ss in Grades 1, 2, and 3 systematically selected effective attentional strategies during delay. (20 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

How can mental models theory account for content effects in conditional reasoning? A developmental perspective

This article proposes a modification to Johnson-Laird's mental models theory applied to the interpretation of conditional statement of the form 'if ... then'. The model suggests that this interpretation is based on the construction of mental models supplied by establishing a correspondence between the semantic spaces associated with the antecedent and consequent of the statements. The construction of the models and the interpretation of the statements would depend on the nature of the semantic spaces involved, the interpretative context and the subject's knowledge and processing capacity. Three experiments show that the interpretation of conditional rules depends, for example, on whether or not the conditional rule possess binary terms (e.g. boy/girl). The developmental approach makes it possible to reveal phenomena which tend to remain hidden in studies of adult functioning. We show that the model accounts for a number of the reasoning biases described in the literature as well as for the interpretation of various conditional forms which do not have a truth-functional meaning.     

Biomechanical analysis of masticatory system configuration in Neandertals and Inuits

Johnson-Laird and Byrne (1991) present a theory of conditional inference based upon the manipulation of mental models. In the present paper, the theory is critically examined with regard to its ability to account for psychological data, principally with respect to the rate at which people draw the four basic inferences of modus ponens (MP), denial of the antecedent (DA), affirmation of the consequent (AC) and modus tollens (MT). It is argued first that the theory is unclear in its definition and in particular with regard to predictions of problem difficulty. Clarification and specification of principles are consequently provided here. Next, it is argued that there are a number of phenomena in the conditional reasoning literature for which the theory cannot account in its present form. Specifically, (a) the relatively frequency of DA and AC inferences on affirmative conditional is not as predicted by the theory, (b) differences occur between inferences on if then and only if rules beyond the capacity of the theory to explain and (c) there is no account of the "negative conclusion bias" observed when negated components are introduced into the rules. A number of revisions to the mental model theory of conditional reasoning are proposed in order to account for these findings.     

Umbrella hypotheses and parsimony in human evolution: a critique of the Aquatic Ape Hypothesis

Conventionally, anthropologists have sought to explain a multitude of unique features of modern humans as the outcome of a single adaptive breakthrough. These "umbrella hypotheses" are aesthetically appealing because they appear to be parsimonious. As internally consistent hypotheses about the past, they are very difficult to prove incorrect in an absolute sense. Anthropology has often rejected them by consensus without developing explicit reasons. This essay explores one example of these models, the Aquatic Ape Hypothesis, the proponents of which continue to argue that they have not received a fair hearing among anthropologists. The hypothesis is troubled by inconsistencies and has not been reconciled with the fossil record. More importantly, its claim to parsimony is false. The numerous "explanations" for individual anatomical traits that it generates constitute premises that are not better founded than competing terrestrial "explanations". The unifying theme of aquatic adaptation is considerably less parsimonious than the assumption that our lineage has always been terrestrial. Finally, the mosaic pattern of hominid evolution demonstrated by the fossil record will not support this or any single cause theory. Most of these criticisms have been previously voiced in one form or another, yet umbrella hypotheses ranging from mainstream science to the paranormal maintain their popularity among students, general audiences, and scholars in neighboring disciplines. One reason for this is that simple answers, however wrong, are easier to communicate and are more readily accepted than the more sound but more complex solutions. Evolutionary science must wrestle with this problem both in its own community and in the education of the public.     

Physical and psychic imprisonment and the curative function of self-cutting.

As self-cutting becomes prevalent in Western culture, standard psychophysiological and trauma-related conceptualizations fall increasingly short in capturing the compelling quality behind this deep, tenacious, and powerful behavior. A variety of psychoanalytic perspectives can be developed to explain why individuals cut themselves, and this article offers a current relational view that reconceptualizes the phenomenon of self-mutilation as a curative effort in the face of physical or psychic imprisonment and the suffocation of personal agency. Qualitative research data gathered from a population of women in areas of Turkey highly influenced by traditional values as well as clinical cases with 2 American patients are discussed to extract the common symbolic meanings ascribed to this act by individuals from different cultural and personal backgrounds. The Turkish participants' straightforward and concrete explanations of why they cut themselves and their accounts of the real and ongoing oppression they experience are used to shed light on Western women's subjective experience of psychic imprisonment and to understand the perhaps universal function of self-mutilation as an attempt to have an impact on the relational world and reclaim personal agency. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Accessing global causes during reading.

In 4 experiments, the authors examined whether readers accessed distant causal antecedents for consequent events when the text was locally coherent and a more recent causal antecedent was available. Participants read passages that contained 2 possible causal antecedents for a consequent event; 1 appeared early in the passage, and the other appeared late. The early causal antecedent was elaborated in half of the passages, and neither causal antecedent was elaborated in the remaining half. Experiments 1A and 1B demonstrated that when the more distant, early causal antecedent had been elaborated, both it and the more recent, late causal antecedent were active in memory following the consequent event. In Experiments 2A and 2B, both causal antecedents were backgrounded prior to reading the consequent event. When neither causal antecedent had been elaborated, only the late causal antecedent was reactivated by the consequent event. However, when the early causal antecedent had been elaborated, only it was reactivated. Results are discussed in terms of several recent models of comprehension. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

How to be sarcastic: The echoic reminder theory of verbal irony.

Positive statements, such as "A fine friend you are," can readily be used sarcastically. Negative statements, such as "You're a terrible friend," can be used sarcastically only under special circumstances. We account for this asymmetry in terms of echoic reminder theory, which asserts that listeners recognize sarcasm when they perceive that a speaker is alluding to some antecedent state of affairs. Positive statements do not require explicit antecedents because such statements may implicitly allude to societal norms and expectations, and these norms are almost invariably positive. Negative statements, however, cannot implicitly allude to such positive norms, and so they should require explicit antecedents if they are to be understood. An explicit victim of a sarcastically intended remark can provide such an antecedent and so should enable negative statements to be used sarcastically. Three experiments, involving scenarios with and without victims, provide support for this theory of sarcastic irony. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Contemporary theories of learning.

The authors indicate that "It is the purpose of this textbook for university and college students to explain the most important theories of learning in the clearest and simplest possible language, to show the relevance of each of them to the educational process, and to point out that in spite of the many conflicts between these theories they have a common ground upon which can be based an intelligible pattern of classroom procedure". Each aspect of this purpose is in itself a large and important undertaking that makes quite different demands upon the authors and requires different evaluation criteria. Two responsibilities are assumed in accomplishing the first part of their purpose: (a) to indicate their criteria for selecting material from a theory, and (&) to explain each theory accurately. As the chapters are written the student is likely to infer that the volume presents unabridged theories of seven men (Thorndike, Guthrie, Hull, Skinner, Wheeler, Tolman and Dewey) and two positions- Functionalism and Gestalt. Since no selection criteria were indicated, the authors are open to the criticism that they have promised more than they have delivered. Also, Thorpe and Schmuller have not always been accurate. A fundamental difficulty is inherent in the approach taken by the authors to accomplish their second purpose. At the present time it is not possible to apply entire systems of learning to problems because they are not highly developed, logically integrated sets of axioms and postulates. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The Psychogenesis of the Self and the Emergence of Ethical Relatedness: Klein in Light of Merleau-Ponty.

This paper presents a theory of the emergence of ethical relatedness, which is developed through a synthetic reading of the developmental theories of Melanie Klein and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Klein's theory of the paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions are found to roughly parallel Merleau-Ponty's distinction between the "lived" and the "symbolic." With the additional contributions of Thomas Ogden and Martin C. Dillon, the theories of Klein and Merleau-Ponty are refined to accommodate the insights of each developmental perspective. Implications of the paper's analysis include: Opportunities to clarify key concepts in object relations theory, including projective identification; insight into the development of self-conscious emotions such as shame, guilt, embarrassment and gratitude; the articulation of a phenomenologically oriented object relations perspective which allows for human agency and therefore genuine altruism and compassion; and, finally, a validation of previous assertions that theory cannot and should not be meaningfully distinguished from ethics. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Whites' opposition to busing: Symbolic racism or realistic group conflict?

The theory of symbolic racism contends that White individuals' opposition to busing springs from a basic underlying prejudiced or intolerant attitudinal predisposition toward Blacks, not self-interest or realistic group conflict motives. The present research argues that realistic group conflict motives do help explain Whites' opposition to busing. Two major criticisms of the symbolic racism approach are made: (a) that the tests of symbolic racism vs group conflict explanations of opposition to busing have not been fair because of a narrow definition of group interests that ignores the role of subjectively appreciated threat and challenges to group status; and (b) that by forcing racial attitudes onto a single continuum running from prejudice to tolerance, the symbolic racism researchers overlook the importance of the perception that the civil rights movement is a threatening force. By reanalyzing the Michigan National Election Study data (2,705 voting-age citizens in the 1972 phase and 2,248 in the 1976 phase) used by D. O. Sears et al (1979, 1980), the present research broadens the notion of self-interest and operates with a multidimensional conceptualization of racial attitudes. In so doing, the data demonstrate that Whites' opposition to busing reflects group conflict motives, not simply a new manifestation of prejudice. (63 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The form and function of young children's magical beliefs.

Research and common lore suggest that children subscribe to a rich world of fantasy, including beliefs about magical entities and events. This study explores how children use magic to explain events they witness in the real world. 16 children (aged 4, 6, and 8 yrs) were asked a set of interview questions designed to assess general magical beliefs. They were then presented with physical events and were asked to predict and explain their occurrence and to state whether they believed the events were magical. The extent of Ss' magical beliefs, as measured by the interview, decreased with age. Regarding explanations of events, the availability of correct physical explanations for the events accounted for a significant portion of the variance in Ss' claims that the events were magic. Findings suggest that magic is used by children as an explanatory tool when they encounter events that both violate their expectations and elude adequate physical explanation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Repetitive symbolic play as a therapeutic process in child-centered play therapy.

Child-centered play therapy describes the therapeutic relationship between the child and play therapist as a facilitative environment that provides the child with an experience of congruence within their sense of self, promoting self-directed healing. Within this environment, the child is able to confront emotional pain imbedded in lived, relational experiences, processing and gaining mastery over it through repetitive symbolic play. However, very little research exists regarding repetitive symbolic play as a therapeutic process. This article aims to illustrate, through the use of a qualitative, interpretative case study and hermeneutic enquiry, how a 6-year-old boy's use of repetitive symbolic play assisted him toward healthier adjustment in his home and school environments. Hermeneutic analysis suggests that the child's use of repetitive symbolic play became a therapeutic process in and of itself that contributed toward self-directed change within his sense of self, which promoted healthier adjustment within his environment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Expertise effects in memory recall: Comment on Vicente and Wang (1998).

K. J. Vicente and J. H. Wang proposed a "constraint attunement hypothesis" to explain the large effects of domain expertise on memory recall observed in a number of task domains. They claimed to have found serious defects in alternative explanations of these effects, which their theory overcomes. Reexamination of the evidence shows that their theory is not novel but has been anticipated by those they criticized and that other current published theories of the phenomena do not have the defects that Vicente and Wang attributed to them. Vicente and Wang's views reflect underlying differences about (a) emphasis on performance versus process in psychology and (b) how theories and empirical knowledge interact and progress with the development of a science. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Developmental increases and decreases in solutions of conditional syllogism problems.

281 students (Grades 8, 10, and 12 and college sophomores) were given a 16-item conditional reasoning test which contained 1 each of the arguments generated by the orthogonal arrangement of (a) stating the major premise in each of the 4 combinations of positive and negative instances of the antecedent or consequent, and (b) stating the 2nd premise in each of the 4 cases of affirming or denying the antecedent or consequent. Analysis of results indicated little development after Grade 8 for the easy affirm-antecedent problems, substantial increase on the deny-antecedent and affirm-consequent problems from below chance at the 8th grade to mediocre performance levels for college sophomores and a surprising monotonic decrease in performance on the deny-consequent problems from Grade 8 to the college sophomore year. An error analysis was performed which revealed that the poor performance of younger Ss and even adults may be partially an artifact of students misinterpreting the "if, then" conditional statements as biconditional ("if and only if, then") propositions. (16 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Conditionals: A theory of meaning, pragmatics, and inference.

The authors outline a theory of conditionals of the form If A then C and If A then possibly C. The 2 sorts of conditional have separate core meanings that refer to sets of possibilities. Knowledge, pragmatics, and semantics can modulate these meanings. Modulation can add information about temporal and other relations between antecedent and consequent. It can also prevent the construction of possibilities to yield 10 distinct sets of possibilities to which conditionals can refer. The mental representation of a conditional normally makes explicit only the possibilities in which its antecedent is true, yielding other possibilities implicitly. Reasoners tend to focus on the explicit possibilities. The theory predicts the major phenomena of understanding and reasoning with conditionals. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Strategic processing during comprehension.

This study addresses 3 questions: How flexible are readers when reading strategically? How is strategic processing affected by properties of the text? and Do some strategies lead to better text retention than others? Participants read short narratives and thought aloud with an instruction to either explain, predict, associate, or understand. The think-aloud protocols were used to predict sentence reading times for other participants who read silently with the same strategies. The results indicated that readers are capable of strategically controlling the inferences that they generate. However, strategic control comes at some cost in that it limits the resources devoted to other inferences. Furthermore, strategic processing is heavily constrained by a text. Text-based explanations occurred when there was an identifiable causal antecedent in the prior text. Knowledge-based inferences occurred when there were no antecedents and when new characters and objects were introduced. These effects occurred across reading strategies. Reading to explain led to better memory, but only when reading silently. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Modeling conceptual structure.

Reviews the book, Categories and Concepts by Edward E. Smith and Douglas L. Medin (1981). This book presents a detailed analysis of three types of models of conceptual structure. The main focus is on object concepts, such as bird, animal, chair, etc., and how these concepts are represented in the human mind. The first model considered is the classical view of concepts that goes back to Aristotle and was presupposed by most researchers in the field of concept attainment from 1920 to 1970. Seven criticisms of the classical view are presented. Although this is an excellent book, certain ways in which it might have been even better did occur to this reviewer, two of which will be mentioned here. First, the authors might have defined explicitly and succinctly what they mean by "concept" and "natural concept." Second, the authors rely primarily on categorization studies to draw inferences about concepts. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Signal detection by human observers: a cutoff reinforcement learning model of categorization decisions under uncertainty

Previous experimental examinations of binary categorization decisions have documented robust behavioral regularities that cannot be predicted by signal detection theory (D.M. Green & J.A. Swets, 1966/1988). The present article reviews the known regularities and demonstrates that they can be accounted for by a minimal modification of signal detection theory: the replacement of the "ideal observer" cutoff placement rule with a cutoff reinforcement learning rule. This modification is derived from a cognitive game theoretic analysis (A.E. Roth & I. Erev, 1995). The modified model reproduces all 19 experimental regularities that have been considered. In all cases,it outperforms the original explanations. Some of these previous explanations are based on important concepts such as conservatism, probability matching, and "the gambler's fallacy" that receive new meanings given the current results. Implications for decision-making research and for applications of traditional signal detection theory are discussed.     

The value of value congruence.

Research on value congruence has attempted to explain why value congruence leads to positive outcomes, but few of these explanations have been tested empirically. In this article, the authors develop and test a theoretical model that integrates 4 key explanations of value congruence effects, which are framed in terms of communication, predictability, interpersonal attraction, and trust. These constructs are used to explain the process by which value congruence relates to job satisfaction, organizational identification, and intent to stay in the organization, after taking psychological need fulfillment into account. Data from a heterogeneous sample of employees from 4 organizations indicate that the relationships that link individual and organizational values to outcomes are explained primarily by the trust that employees place in the organization and its members, followed by communication, and, to a lesser extent, interpersonal attraction. Polynomial regression analyses reveal that the relationships emanating from individual and organizational values often deviated from the idealized value congruence relationship that underlies previous theory and research. The authors’ results also show that individual and organizational values exhibited small but significant relationships with job satisfaction and organizational identification that bypassed the mediators in their model, indicating that additional explanations of value congruence effects should be pursued in future research. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The rules of interpersonal complementarity: Does hostility beget hostility and dominance, submission?

Examines the evidence for interpersonal complementarity according to the theories of R. C. Carson (1969), D. J. Kiesler (see record 1983-30243-001), T. Leary (1957), and J. S. Wiggins (1982). It is contended that the only prediction found to be regularly supported is that friendly–dominant and friendly–submissive behaviors are complementary. A repeated finding, not predicted by any theory, is that hostile–dominant acts are frequently responded to with further hostile–dominant behavior. There is also evidence that hostile–submissive behavior is frequently met with friendly–dominance. Conceptual and methodological problems with this research are discussed. It is suggested that the theory of interpersonal complementarity based on the idea of a shared definition of the encounter needs to be modified to take greater account of the factor of defense of status. Theory and research should also accommodate the influence of setting, status difference, and time in relationship, as well as cognitive and emotional processes that intervene between antecedent and consequent acts. (40 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)