Signaling among relatives. III. Talk is cheap

The Sir Philip Sidney game has been used by numerous authors to show how signal cost can facilitate honest signaling among relatives. Here, we demonstrate that, in this game, honest cost-free signals are possible as well, under very general conditions. Moreover, these cost-free signals are better for all participants than the previously explored alternatives. Recent empirical evidence suggests that begging is energetically inexpensive for nestling birds; this finding led some researchers to question the applicability of the costly signaling framework to nestling begging. Our results show that cost-free or inexpensive signals, as observed empirically, fall within the framework of signaling theory.     

Race is not ethnicity.

Comments on the article of J. S. Phinney (see record 83-36985) about what it means to talk about American ethnic groups. It is suggested that Phinney's advocacy of the combining of the terms ethnicity and race into a single construct in psychology presumes that ethnicity can encompass all aspects of race and culture. But, it is argued here, in psychology and American society at large, ethnicity seemingly has no real meaning apart from its status as a proxy for racial classification or immigrant status, while race has a clear meaning. Drawing on a cursory review of psychology abstracts, it is suggested that it is ill-advised to subsume the better known and more specifically defined construct under the rubric of the fuzzier construct. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Self-promotion is not ingratiating.

100 undergraduates, divided into same-sex pairs, participated in 2 unstructured conversations spaced 1 wk apart. In the 2nd session, 1 S of the pair was asked to participate either as an ingratiator or as a self-promoter. After the 2nd conversation, ingratiators were rated as more likable but no more competent, whereas self-promoters were rated as less likable but also no more competent than in 1st conversation. Naive target Ss clearly distinguished between presenters attempting to appear likable or competent. As verified by observers, ingratiators used reactive verbal and nonverbal behaviors, whereas promoters used proactive behaviors. Preparation time did not produce differential behavioral tactics. Results are discussed in terms of the use of conversational resources to produce the attributions of likability and competence. (7 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Silence is not golden.

Suggests that psychologists should testify in court concerning psychological research on eyewitness testimony. This recommendation contradicts that of M. McCloskey and H. E. Egeth (see record 1984-06612-001). Documented cases of convictions of innocent people based on faulty eyewitness accounts indicate a need for improvement in legal procedures. One improvement is to educate jurors through expert testimony. Research on the psychological factors that influence the accuracy and completeness of eyewitness accounts could be useful in clarifying commonly held misconceptions. (37 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Serendipity is not serendipitous.

Serendipitous events have been shown to affect the careers of prominent counseling psychologists. Why should this seem surprising? Unplanned events affect everyone's career. The surprise is due to the widespread but unfounded assumption that career decisions should be the logical outcome of a "true reasoning" process. Counseling psychologists need to (a) broaden their view so that the reluctance to make an occupational commitment in the face of unpredictable future events can be celebrated as open-mindedness, not denigrated as indecisiveness, (b) teach clients that unplanned events are a normal and expected part of the career development process, and (c) teach clients how to generate unplanned events that contribute to a more satisfying life. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Residual validity is not meaningful.

Comments on the article by R. J. Sternberg and W. M. Williams (see record 1997-04591-002) regarding the empirical validity of the Graduate Record Examination (GRE) in predicting graduate student performance in psychology. Sternberg and Williams claimed to have studied whether the GRE predicts meaningful success in graduate school, but they did not study GRE predictive validity for students applying to graduate school—they used students already selected for graduate school. Thus, it is argued, what Sternberg and Williams actually studied might be termed the residual validity of GRE scores—the validity remaining after some unknown amount of validity is exhausted in the admissions process. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Comparative psychology is not dead.

R. B. Lockard's (see record 1971-24449-001) premature assertion of the demise of comparative psychology is based on a misinterpretation of the normal course of the historical development of a science. A brief rebuttal is presented that is appropriate to a comparative psychology of the 1950s as described by Lockard. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Consciousness is not any thing.

Suggests that the analysis of consciousness by T. Natsoulas (see record 1979-22877-001) (1) fails to consider factors that have contributed to the reification of consciousness by science, (2) underestimates the seriousness and ubiquity of this reification, and (3) is ultimately similarly guilty of reifying consciousness by espousing a basically physicalist form of phenomenology. The author suggests an approach that incorporates more fully a phenomenological or dialectical perspective. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Head Start is not child care.

Comments on S. Scarr's (see record 1997-38813-002) defense of cheap, minimally regulated child care. The author responds to Scarr's comments on Head Start. Scarr dismisses Head Start without acknowledging the comprehensive nature of its intervention in the lives of poor children and their families. Head Start does more than child care aspires to do: Head Start makes sure that poor children get medical and dental care, helps their families gain access to social services, offers volunteer and paid employment to parents, involves parents in governance, serves nutritious meals, provides intellectual stimulation, and above all, helps children develop the social competence necessary to succeed in school. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Scientific freedom is not the only issue.

Comments on the R. A. Bjork (see record 2000-05933-001) discussion of the editorial policy of American Psychological Association (APA) journals and the independence of scientific publishing. S. J. Ondersma notes that the influence science has is indeed a "frightening responsibility' (Bjork, 2000), one that does require the vigorous defense of scientific freedom. It also requires objectivity, protection against misuse, and openness to valid criticism. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sexism in research is not only sexism.

Problems of gender bias and sexism in research cited by F. Denmark et al (see record 1988-34553-001) illustrate violations of general principles of sound scientific formulation, data collection, data analysis, interpretation, and reporting. Social bias is the content of these violations rather than their substance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Unfortunately, psychosis is not a myth.

Responds to J. E. Teahan's (1982) criticism of the present author's (1969, 1982) study of a schizophrenic woman and her Rorschach record. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Frequency encoding is not inevitable and is not automatic: A reply to Hasher and Zacks.

Replies to the suggestion by L. Hasher and R. T. Zacks (see record 1985-27168-001) that frequency of occurrence (fundamental information) is automatically processed. A discussion of (a) instructional effects, (b) substantial disruption from reduction in capacity, and (c) the need for substantial methodological care includes data that indicate patterns of instruction or strategy effect in the estimation of frequency. Data further show the disruption of frequency encoding when resources are withdrawn from the frequency estimation task. (10 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Implicit memory is not immune to interference.

Does interference, a primary source of forgetting in explicit memory, also affect implicit memory? Several early and highly influential studies have suggested that implicit memory is immune to interference. In contrast, a number of subsequent investigations have reported evidence for interference. As well, amnesic patients, whose performance relies primarily on implicit memory, often show interference effects. A review of methods, materials, and findings suggests that interference occurs on implicit tests when targets and nontargets are similar and so compete as potential responses to the memory cue. Further, there is some evidence that the degree of interference on implicit tasks is affected by the number of competing items and their strength relative to the target. Interference effects in implicit memory seem to parallel those in explicit memory, and the authors consider the implications of this conclusion for theoretical concepts of memory and the brain. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Repetition priming is not purely episodic in origin.

The sufficiency of similarity among surface attributes of prime-target pairs to account for the pattern of facilitation obtained in the repetition priming paradigm was evaluated. In Experiment 1, morphological primes were singular, inflected case forms of Serbo-Croatian words, and visual similarity of prime and target was manipulated by alternating the two alphabets in which the Serbo-Croatian language is written. Results indicated that the magnitude of facilitation in the alphabetically alternating condition was not reduced relative to the nonalternating condition ({rupi}–{rupi} vs. {p}–{rupi}) which suggested that visual similarity is not a necessary condition for facilitation in the present task. In Experiment 2, related pairs included (a) base forms with diminutives, a class of highly productive and semantically predictable derivations marked in Serbo-Croatian by suffixes and (b) base words with morphologically unrelated monomorphemic words whose orthographic pattern encompassed the target in initial position and a sequence of letters in final position that elsewhere functions as a diminutive suffix. Collectively, the experiments suggested that structural similarity of prime and target is not a sufficient condition for facilitation in the repetition priming paradigm. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)