Development of referential communication skills: How familiarity with a listener affects a speaker's production of redundant messages.

Investigated the development of sensitivity to the needs of a listener in 20 1st graders and 20 4th graders. Of interest was whether Ss would vary their production of redundant messages (saying more than the minimal necessary to be informative) as a function of sharing common experiences with a listener. Ss were asked to give messages to a fictitious listener (represented by a drawing) who was supposed to be either a stranger or a friend. Results show that both 1st and 4th graders were more likely to give redundant messages to an unfamiliar listener than to one with whom they shared common experiences. Fourth graders, however, gave a different type of redundant message, one more sensitive to a listener's needs. Fourth graders included several differentiating features in their messages, whereas 1st graders included both differentiating and nondifferentiating features. It is concluded that there were developmental differences in the type of messages given but not in the production of redundancy. (16 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Coactivation in the perception of redundant targets.

Reaction time (RT) to redundant stimuli was investigated while controlling for distraction effects and response competition. In Experiment 1, a redundancy gain was found for 2 target letters with identical features (redundant) compared to trials in which 2 different targets shared the same response assignment (compatible) indicating coactivation of stimulus inputs. No difference in RTs was found between compatible displays and displays containing 2 targets with different responses (incompatible), suggesting (with other evidence) that letters were serially processed. In Experiment 2, a redundancy gain was again found. Unlike in Experiment 1, incompatible displays produced response competition, indicating a redundancy gain with parallel processing. Three forms of redundancy gains operating under specific conditions are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Redundancy gains and costs in cognitive processing: Effects of short stimulus onset asynchronies.

In 7 experiments, the influence of varying stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs) on the processing of redundant information about words and pseudowords was investigated. All stimuli were visually presented once or twice with 2 copies of the same item flashed either simultaneously or with short SOAs between presentations. The experiments revealed a redundancy gain for words that was absent for pseudowords. Furthermore, the redundancy gain disappeared at an SOA of 50 ms, and them was a gradual performance decline at longer SOAs. However, probing SOAs of 150 and 300 ms revealed that, compared with presentation of 1 target stimulus alone, words were processed significantly faster when target and redundant copy appeared with a 150-ms lag. The results are tentatively explained in a neurocognitive framework (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Children's ability to appraise their own and another person's communication performance.

Previous research has found that younger children are less accurate communicators to a listener. In the present research, children's ability to appraise or evaluate the quality of communication performance was investigated. In Exp I, 90 2nd-, 4th-, and 6th-grade children communicated messages for 15 referents. Half of the Ss then appraised their own messages, and half appraised the messages of a yoked age-mate. In the self-appraisal condition, Ss were asked to indicate whether or not each of their messages was effective. In the other-appraisal condition, Ss indicated whether or not each of a peer's messages was effective. Results indicate that younger Ss were less accurate appraisers of performance as well as less accurate communicators. Within a particular grade level, Ss were similar in their self-appraisal and other-appraisal accuracy. Exp II controlled the quality of messages that Ss judged across grade level. 15 Ss appraised a standard set of messages half of which were effective and half of which were ineffective. Younger Ss were less accurate evaluators of good and poor messages. Results from both studies are considered in light of evidence that younger children do not compare the association of messages to referents and nonreferents. Failure to engage in comparison activity would result in poor appraisal accuracy as well as poor communication accuracy. (14 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Redundancy gain in discrimination of colored lights: effects of complexity and eccentricity

The present study investigated the redundancy gain in discrimination of colored lights. Subjects were requested to discriminate a target from 34 nontarget lights differing from the target in luminance, hue, or both, and RTs were recorded. Experimental variables were the complexity of stimulus pattern and the eccentricity of the target in visual angle. The 35 lights were arranged regularly on an imaginary grid in the low-complexity condition and were arranged randomly in the high-complexity condition. The eccentricity of target was varied from 0 degree to 16 degrees. Only when the stimulus pattern was highly complex and eccentricity was large, the combination of luminance and hue made the subject's discrimination faster than when luminance or hue individually operated as a cue for discrimination. That is, a redundant target effect was found only for a highly complex stimulus pattern and in peripheral vision.     

Social pressure in public and private situations.

"Fifty-two groups of two were set up experimentally, containing one genuine S and one confederate. The S received standard sets of written messages, in what was ostensibly a discussion of the merits of a picture. The Ss manifested more social influence when their final opinion was stated in 'public' to the confederate, than when stated in 'private.' It was predicted that more influence would occur when the messages had a 'rejecting' tone than when they were 'accepting.' This did not occur; various explanations are advanced. Perceived rejection was greater when rejecting messages were received. This effect was most marked in the 'private' condition." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Source memory in the absence of successful cued recall.

Five experiments were conducted to address the question of whether source information could be accessed in the absence of being able to recall an item. The authors used a paired-associate learning paradigm in which cue-target word pairs were studied, and target recall was requested in the presence of the cue. When target recall failed, participants were asked to make a source judgment of whether a man or woman spoke the unrecalled item. In 3 of the 5 experiments, source accuracy was at or very close to chance. By contrast, if cue-target pairs were studied multiple times or participants knew in advance of learning that a predictive judgment would be required, then predictive source accuracy was well above chance. These data are suggestive that context information may not play a very large role in metacognitive judgments such as feeling-of-knowing ratings or putting one into a tip-of-the-tongue state without strong and specific encoding procedures. These same results also highlight the important role that item memory plays in retrieving information about the context in which an item was experienced. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Relative deprivation and procedural justifications.

Postulated that relative deprivation-based discontent is a function of "referent cognitions" about the outcomes available if a procedure had not been changed. Given a change in procedures, a high-referent condition exists when the old procedure would have yielded outcomes better than the new one, whereas a low-referent condition consists of outcomes from the old procedure that are no better than those from the new procedure. It was hypothesized that although discontent should generally be greater under high-referent than under low-referent conditions, this tendency would be qualified by the extent to which justifications are given for the change in procedures. Specifically, the hypothesized differences in discontent should be evident only when the justifications given are inadequate. This prediction was confirmed in an experiment in which 60 female undergraduates were led to believe that a change in the scoring procedure had made them the losers in a competition for a desirable reward. (14 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Motivation and representational processes in adulthood: The effects of social accountability and information relevance.

The role of motivation in determining age differences in social representations was examined. Adults aged 20 to 83 years were given an impression formation task that attempted to manipulate motivation by varying the characteristics of the target and the extent to which participants would be held accountable for their impressions. It was hypothesized that increasing age would be associated with greater selectivity in the use of available cognitive resouces to support the construction of accurate representations. Support for this hypothesis was obtained when trait inferences and recall were examined. Specifically, older adults made more accurate trait inferences and recalled more information when the target was similar in age or they were held accountable for their impressions. In contrast, younger adults demonstrated similar levels of accuracy across conditions. The fact that these effects were observed when cognitive resources was controlled suggests a motivational effect that is independent of age differences in cognitive ability. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The letter of recommendation effect in informant ratings of personality.

In most studies using informant reports of personality, the informants are recruited by the targets. Such informants may tend to like the targets and thus portray them in specific ways (e.g., too positively). Study 1 (N = 403) demonstrated the necessity to distinguish between “liking” and “knowing” in studying the relationships between informants and targets. Informants who liked their targets better described them more positively (i.e., as being more extraverted, agreeable, open, conscientious, and less neurotic). The association between personality ratings and liking was moderated by item evaluativeness. Liked targets were also described as being more similar to each other (range restriction), which would lower correlations of informant ratings of personality with external variables. Study 2 (N = 90) used a within-subjects design to disentangle actual personality differences between targets (substance) from the informants’ specific views on the targets (style). Ninety informants were asked to nominate targets they did not like. These targets then nominated informants of their own choice. Target-nominated informants liked the targets very much and described the targets’ personalities very positively and in ways that were highly redundant with the average target’s self-rating. There was evidence that lower liking may be associated with better accuracy. Higher subjective levels of knowing were not associated with better interrater agreement but with a greater willingness to describe targets negatively. Implications for the field of recruiting are discussed. Where possible, the choice of informants and referees should be made independent of the targets’ preferences. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Learning to detect deception.

Administered a lie detection test—a videotape presenting the faces and voices of senders delivering truthful and deceptive messages—to 191 undergraduates. For each message, Ss were asked to judge whether the sender was lying or telling the truth. Information identifying messages as truthful or deceptive was given to some Ss (learning conditions) but not to others (control). The information was provided either after Ss recorded their judgment on a particular item (post-message) or before the item itself was presented (premessage). The number of items for which information was provided was also varied. Accuracy of lie detection was calculated for all experimental conditions (when premessage information was given). In general, the more information (either pre or post) about deceivers' messages, the more accurate the detection of lies enacted by the same deceivers. However, the increase in accuracy did not generalize to accuracy of detecting lies enacted by other deceivers. (13 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effects of age in four alternative forced-choice item and associative recognition tasks.

Seventy-three young and 84 older adults were taught interactive imagery as a strategy for learning word pairs. In the control condition, participants viewed word pairs 1 at a time and formed an interactive image for each. In the experimental condition, participants first formed individual mental images for both the cue and the target and then formed an interactive image for the pair. Participants in both conditions then completed 4 alternative forced-choice item and associative recognition tasks that avoid influences of age differences in retrieval strategies such as recall-to-reject. Unlike findings with typical yes–no recognition tests, associative recognition was superior to item recognition in the control condition. This effect was attenuated in the experimental condition. Older adults had poorer recognition memory for both associative and item tests, with a larger age difference for recognizing new associations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Redundancy deficit in the reaction time of normal subjects under standard and meprobamate-impaired conditions.

Assessed latency and redundancy deficit, which reliably show impairment in process schizophrenics, using 20 normal Ss (mean age 30.4 yrs) with no psychiatric history. Ss were tested under standard/optimal and drug-impaired conditions to evaluate whether an expected increase in latency would be accompanied by a correlated increase in redundancy deficit. Ss completed RT trials in which they depressed and released a key in response to slides and a buzzer. Meprobamate was administered for the 2nd series of trials. In other research, the redundancy deficit index has been found to be independent of latency and has shown promise as a marker of schizophrenic information processing difficulty. The present findings confirm the independence of these 2 markers in that no increased redundancy deficit was observed despite a significant increase in latency. Findings also reveal a greater degree of redundancy deficit in normals under the optimal conditions than had been expected. A methodological problem with trial arrangements is discussed, and a review of studies that tested redundancy deficit in normal Ss is presented. (French abstract) (33 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

基于自适应双冗余的TTE调度方法及性能分析

针对TTE (time-triggered Ethernet, TTE) 网络对业务安全性与对业务实时性要求高的问题, 提出了一种自适应双冗余的网络结构, 设计冗余报文的时间标签, 自适应恢复传输, 并设计了TTE网络中的混合流量(TT (time-triggered) 流, RC (rateconstrained) 流, BE (best-effort) 流) 调度规划方法, 根据报文的重要性, 发送端自适应的对网络报文进行分类, 其中, TT信息双网备份传输, RC、BE信息在双网分散传输.此外, 基于确定性网络分析方法, 推导了自适应双冗余调度方法下RC流的闭式延迟界, 并仿真验证了在极限网络、确定网络以及排队论仿真模型下所提方法减小网络延迟的效果, 满足TTE网络在保障业务安全性的情况下对业务实时性的要求.      

Variability and correlated noise in the discharge of neurons in motor and parietal areas of the primate cortex

We analyzed the magnitude and interneuronal correlation of the variability in the activity of single neurons that were recorded simultaneously using a multielectrode array in the primary motor cortex and parietal areas 2/5 in rhesus monkeys. The animals were trained to move their arms in one of eight directions as instructed by a visual target. The relationship between variability (SD) and mean of the discharge rate was described by a power function with a similar exponent ( approximately 0.57), regardless of the cortical area or the behavioral condition. We examined whether the deviation from mean activity between target onset and the end of the movement was correlated on a trial-by-trial basis with variability in activity during the hold period before target onset. In both cortical areas, for about a quarter of the neurons, the neuronal noise of these two periods was positively correlated, whereas significant negative correlations were seldom observed. Overall, neurons with higher signal correlation (i.e., similar directional pattern) showed higher noise correlation in both cortical areas. On the other hand, when the data were divided according to the distance between the electrode tips from which the neurons were recorded, a consistent relationship between the signal and noise correlations was found only for pairs of neurons recorded through the same electrode. These results suggest that nearby neurons with similar directional tuning carry primarily redundant messages, whereas neurons in separate cortical columns perform more independent processing.     

Capacity limitations in visual word processing.

The ability of subjects to process English words in a spatially parallel manner was examined in several redundant-target detection tasks. When redundant targets were identical in a given display, processing limitations were evident in a task that required subjects to make semantic categorizations of words. However, parallel processing of identical redundant target words was exhibited in a lexical decision task that required a structural analysis of letter strings, but not an analysis of word meaning. The difference in performance in the two tasks suggests that the capacity for semantic processing is limited. Analyses designed to examine whether the redundancy gain in Experiment 2 could be attributed to limited capacity processing in conjunction with positional preferences provided evidence against this possibility. In addition, these analyses suggested that the processing times for the redundant targets in Experiment 2 might be positively correlated. In the third and fourth experiments, the redundant-target displays contained two different words. Processing interference, in the form of a redundancy loss, was evident in the lexical decision task, but not in the semantic categorization task, confirming a difference in the mode of processing between the two tasks. The results provide evidence against the unlimited-capacity, parallel processing hypothesis of late selection theories of attention. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Unitary alcoholism factor and its personality correlates.

Administered a 135-item alcohol behavior questionnaire and the short-form MMPI to 160 new admissions to a state hospital. The alcohol questionnaire was constructed with substantial item redundancy so that specific factors could be defined. Factor analysis of the 135 items revealed 1 large alcoholism factor plus 10 small specific factors that were not essential features of alcoholism. A principal components analysis of the 42 items most highly related to the single major alcoholism factor povided scoring weights. Item analysis techniques were used to identify the MMPI items which were most discriminating between Ss with high and low alcohol-abuse scores. 49 MMPI items were found to relate highly to the alcohol-abuse factor scores. The 49 items were found to contribute most to scoring of HS, D, Hy, and Pt clinical scales, while the contribution to Pd was substantially lower. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Radiological observations in the colon of Nigerians with chronic enema abuse

Barium enema examination performed on the indigenes of Calabar community (the Efiks) demonstrated redundancy (dolichocolon) in various segments of the colon in a high proportion (71%) of habitual enema abusers compared to non-abusers (19%). Comparatively, the descending colon appeared the most vulnerable segment of the gut. The typical features of enema colitis was not found in any of the subjects probably because of the non-corrosive nature of the concoctions they used in clearing their gut. It is concluded that prolonged stimulation of the colon with enema together with the instruments used to deliver the concoction results in the redundancy. To enhance accurate radiological evaluation of colonic lesions amongst Nigerians of Efik origin, chronic enema abuse should be considered.     

Syntactic form, semantic complexity, and short-term memory: Influences on children's acquisition of new linguistic structures.

30 children at 5 age levels (2–6 yrs) were exposed to novel actions involving 1, 2, or 3 semantic features. Simultaneously, they were taught novel labels for these actions. The labels marked the semantic features syntactically, with either a suffix, a prefix, or both a suffix and a prefix. In posttests Ss had to either supply the appropriate label for an action or produce an appropriate action for a label. Results show that (a) semantic complexity affected the difficulty of producing actions but not labels, (b) syntactic complexity affected the difficulty of producing labels but not actions, (c) there was an age below which little learning was evident on either test, (d) short-term memory (STM) was a better predictor of performance than was age, and (e) the STM value associated with each item corresponded approximately to the number of features, syntactic or semantic, that had to be processed to produce the form in question. (14 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)