Review of Arthur R. Jensen (2006)--Clocking the mind: Mental chronometry and individual differences.

Reviews the book Clocking the Mind: Mental chronometry and individual differences by Arthur Jensen (see record 2006-20276-000). Mental chronometry, as Arthur Jensen stresses, is the study of reaction time (RT) in its various guises, contexts, and applications. As with respect to much of experimental psychology (cognitive and other), there is a venerable past here lying in the background, providing a wide-ranging context in which to embed our current (that is, our 40-odd year) preoccupation with RT as a primary dependent measure in cognitive psychology. This recent book, Clocking the Mind: Mental Chronometry and Individual Differences (published by Elsevier), weds both differential psychology's concern with the measurement of individual differences in RT (e.g., Austin, Deary, Gibson, McGregor, & Dent, 1998) and experimental psychology's concern with "the effects of manipulating various external conditions on variation in the measurements of RT" (p. 1). The reader of this journal will most probably be more familiar with the latter use of RT in the literature, especially when embedded within such familiar experimental tasks as those tapping both Garner and Stroop effects (Pansky & Algom, 1999). The book should be perused with care in order to ensure the further profitable use of RT in both experimental and differential lines of research. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Conflict structure moderates associations between cardiovascular reactivity and negative marital interaction.

This study examined the role of marital conflict structure--who desires and requests change versus who responds to the change request--in spouses' cardiovascular responses to marital interactions. Forty-one couples discussed 2 marital topics: one in which the wife desired change in the husband, and one in which the husband desired change in the wife. Cardiovascular responses were assessed at 2-min intervals. Results indicated that marital conflict structure moderates cardiovascular reactivity during negative marital interactions: Husbands and wives whose interactions were characterized by high levels of negative behavior showed the most pronounced diastolic blood pressure reactivity, but only when they were in the role of desiring change in their spouses. Implications for gender differences in marital conflict physiology are considered. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Individual differences in self-assessed health: An information-processing investigation of health and illness cognition.

In 2 studies, the relation between measures of self-assessed health (SAH) and automatic processing of health-relevant information was investigated. In Study 1, 84 male and 86 female undergraduate students completed a modified Stroop task. Results indicated that participants with poorer SAH showed enhanced interference effects for illness versus non-illness words. In Study 2, 27 male and 30 female undergraduate students completed a self-referent encoding task. Results offered a conceptual replication and extension of Study 1 by confirming the specificity of the relation between SAH measures and automatic processing of health (vs negative or positive general trait) information. These studies provide evidence that individual differences in SAH are reflected in schematic processing of health-relevant information. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Psychopathy, IQ, and Violence in European American and African American County Jail Inmates.

The accuracy of the prediction of criminal violence may be improved by combining psychopathy with other variables that have been found to predict violence. Research has suggested that assessing intelligence (i.e., IQ) as well as psychopathy improves the accuracy of violence prediction. In the present study, the authors tested this hypothesis by using a contemporary measure of psychopathy, the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (R. D. Hare, 2003), in a sample of 326 European American and 348 African American male offenders. The postdictive power of psychopathy was evident for both ethnic groups and robust across most changes in the operationalization of violence and the analysis conducted, whereas the postdictive power of IQ was not. No Psychopathy x IQ interactions were identified. Implications of these results for violence prediction are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Category Norms as a Function of Culture and Age: Comparisons of Item Responses to 105 Categories by American and Chinese Adults.

Understanding how aging influences cognition across different cultures has been hindered by a lack of standardized, cross-referenced verbal stimuli. This study introduces a database of such item-level stimuli for both younger and older adults, in China and the United States, and makes 3 distinct contributions. First, the authors specify which item categories generalize across age and/or cultural groups, rigorously quantifying differences among them. Second, they introduce novel, powerful methods to measure between-group differences in freely generated ranked data, the rank-ordered logit model and Hellinger Affinity. Finally, a broad archive of tested, cross-linguistic stimuli is now freely available to researchers: data, similarity measures, and all stimulus materials for 105 categories and 4 culture-by-age groups, comprising over 10,000 fully translated unique item responses. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Defining Phonological Awareness and Its Relationship to Reading Skills in Low-Literacy Adults.

The main purpose of the study reported here was to investigate the relative importance of complexity of syllable structure and task differences in measuring phonological awareness in low-literacy adults. This study is a replication of a study with children conducted by S. A. Stahl and B. A. Murray (1994). Results indicated that the complexity of syllable structure did indeed better describe the construct of phonological awareness in low-literacy adults. At the same time, the authors also found some differences in the pattern of literacy acquisition for their Spanish adults in comparison with child literacy acquisition in English. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Elementary School Children's Ability to Distinguish Hypothetical Beliefs From Statements of Preference.

The authors examined students' understanding of hypotheses as beliefs that can be empirically verified. Thirty second graders and 30 sixth graders considered cases of disagreement about foods and colors that reflected either alternative hypotheses or different preferences. Their task was to decide whether the validity of each expressed belief could be determined and to justify their decision. Younger students considered both hypotheses and preferences as empirically verifiable, whereas older students were better able to recognize in some cases that preferences are legitimately variable. This lack of distinction may reflect limited metaconceptual ability or a deterministic epistemological view, both of which might interfere with the understanding of the hypothesis-testing process. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Working Memory Capacity and the Antisaccade Task: Individual Differences in Voluntary Saccade Control.

Performance on antisaccade trials requires the inhibition of a prepotent response (i.e., don't look at the flashing cue) and the generation and execution of a correct saccade in the opposite direction. The authors attempted to further specify the role of working memory (WM) span differences in the antisaccade task. They tested high- and low-span individuals on variants of prosaccade and antisaccade trials in which an eye movement is the sole requirement. In 3 experiments, they demonstrated the importance of WM span differences in both suppression of a reflexive saccade and generation of a volitional eye movement. The results support the contention that individual differences in WM span are not exclusively due to differences in inhibition but also reflect differences in directing the focus of attention. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Early impact of a fat-enriched diet on behavioral responses of male and female rats.

Prolonged high-fat diets have been shown to affect an organism's stress responsiveness at the neuroendocrine level. In the present study, the authors used a 7-day protocol of fat administration in adult rats of both sexes to investigate the early behavioral impact of a moderately fat (20%) diet, often used by Western societies, on rats' reaction to acute stress and novelty. Their results show that this diet can reduce the rats' active behavioral responses to subsequent stressors and influence their corticosterone secretion. Fat-fed male rats adopted a less active behavior to cope with forced swimming stress, whereas their exploratory behavior in the open field environment was rather increased compared with chow-fed males. Fat-fed female rats exhibited a less active behavioral response to both stress paradigms compared with their chow-fed counterparts. Fat diet abolished facilitation in corticosterone secretion following a subsequent stressor in both sexes. However, only in males did fat diet exaggerate corticosterone response to novelty, irrespective of the previous stress history of the rat. These data indicate that a short-term metabolic stress can modify the rats' stress coping strategy in interaction with the gender. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

基于i860的存储器子系统设计

微处理机系统中的存储器子系统设计对整个系统性能的高低有重要的影响，尤其当微处理器的主频越来越高时。本文结合实际例子，给出了一个基于ｉ８６０处理器（４０ＭＨｚ）的主存设计方案，讨论了实际中需仔细考虑的因素。该设计可为其它高性能ＲＩＳＣ系统设计提供参考。