Do infants segment words or recurring contiguous patterns?

Eight experiments tested the hypothesis that infants' word segmentation abilities are reducible to familiar sound-pattern parsing regardless of actual word boundaries. This hypothesis was disconfirmed. in experiments using the headturn preference procedure: 8.5-month-olds did not mis-segment a consonantvowel- consonant (CVQ word (e.g., dice) from passages containing the corresponding phonemic pattern across a word boundary (C#VC#; "cold ice"), but they segmented it when the word was really present ("roll dice"). However, they did not segment the real vowel-consonant (VC) word (ice in "cold ice") until 16 months. Yet, at that age, they still did not false alarm on the straddling CVC word. Thus, infants do not simply respond to recurring phonemic patterns. Instead, they are sensitive to both acoustic and allophonic cues to word boundaries. Moreover, there is a sizable developmental gap between consonant and vowel-initial word segmentation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Conjugate‐optical retroreflector display system: Optical principles and perceptual issues

Abstract— Conjugate‐optical retroreflector (COR) display systems have the potential for providing inexpensive high‐resolution imagery in a head‐mounted display (HMD) configuration. There are several perceptual issues, however, that need to be addressed before a COR display system can be used effectively. One issue is the choice of projected‐image location relative to the retroreflective screen, which is determined by the convergence angle between the binocular channels of the COR display. Another issue involves visual half‐occlusions, which can occur when a portion of a stereoscopic image is visible to only one eye, as may occur in any HMD. If half occlusions are simulated in a COR display in a way that is inconsistent with natural viewing, undesirable perceptual effects may result. In the present paper, we first describe, the optical principles that underlie the COR display system. We then discuss the importance of binocular convergence and describe a COR display configuration that eliminates inconsistencies in the depth cues provided by displayed surface properties and halfocclusions.     

Preparatory processes in the task-switching paradigm: Evidence from the use of probability cues.

The purpose of the investigations was to dissociate processes of task preparation from task execution in the task-switching paradigm. The basic assumption was that task repetitions have 2 advantages over task shifts: an activation advantage as a result of the execution of the same task type in the pretrial, and an expectation advantage, because participants, in general, implicitly expect a repetition. In Experiments 1-3, the authors explicitly manipulated expectancies by presenting cues that announced a shift and/or a repetition with probabilities of 1.00, .75, .50, or .25. Increasing latencies with decreasing probability for shifts and repetitions show that the expectation advantage can be equalized by preparation. However, the activation advantage represented by constant shift costs between tasks of the same probability is not penetrable by preparation. In Experiments 4 and 5, the authors found evidence that preparation involves activation of the expected task and inhibition of distracting tasks. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Protestant relational ideology and (in)attention to relational cues in work settings.

M. Weber (1947) proposed that exposure to Calvinist Protestantism is associated with limited attention to relational concerns in work settings. Two experiments provide support for this proposition. Study 1 showed that Protestant European Americans raised in traditions of Calvinism were less attentive to affect in spoken words when primed with a work context relative to a nonwork context, and to participants raised as Catholics in either context. Study 2 used an unconscious mimicry paradigm to measure relational focus and showed that within a work setting, male Protestants mimicked a confederate's foot shaking less than male non-Protestants and women in either group. Within a nonwork setting, male Protestants mimicked more and did not differ from male non-Protestants. Women showed greater mimicry than men. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Repetition blindness, forward and backward.

In these experiments, 2 letters were presented sequentially to the left and right of fixation, followed by pattern masks. Report was cued by spatial location (Experiments 1a, 1b, 2, 4, and 5) or temporal position (Experiments 3, 4, and 5). In all experiments, 2 identical letters on a trial resulted in reduced accuracy of report (repetition blindness; RB) for both the 1st and 2nd presented letters. This decrement was greater for the 2nd letter if subjects expected temporal cues, but tended to be greater for the Ist letter if they expected spatial cues. Analyses of errors and responses on catch trials indicated no bias against report of repetitions, and the repetition decrement did not interact with output order. The data are inconsistent with both type-refractoriness and memory-retrieval accounts of RB. A modified version of N. G. Kanwisher's (1987) token-individuation theory is proposed to account for the results. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sex differences in audiovisual discrimination learning by Bengalese Finches (Lonchura striata var. domestica).

Both visual and auditory information are important for songbirds, especially in developmental and sexual contexts. To investigate bimodal cognition in songbirds, the authors conducted audiovisual discrimination training in Bengalese finches. The authors used two types of stimulus: an "artificial stimulus," which is a combination of simple figures and sound, and a "biological stimulus," consisting of video images of singing males along with their songs. The authors found that while both sexes predominantly used visual cues in the discrimination tasks, males tended to be more dependent on auditory information for the biological stimulus. Female responses were always dependent on the visual stimulus for both stimulus types. Only males changed their discrimination strategy according to stimulus type. Although males used both visual and auditory cues for the biological stimulus, they responded to the artificial stimulus depending only on visual information, as the females did. These findings suggest a sex difference in innate auditory sensitivity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"Preexposure and extinction effects of lithium chloride induced taste-potentiated aversions for spatially contiguous auditory food cues in rats": Correction to Ellins and von Kluge (1987).

Reports an error in "Preexposure and extinction effects of lithium chloride induced taste-potentiated aversions for spatially contiguous auditory food cues in rats" by Stuart R. Ellins and Silvia von Kluge (Behavioral Neuroscience, 1987[Apr], Vol 101[2], 164-169). The aforementioned article contains errors in the last paragraph of the Results section, none of which change the results of the experiment. The corrected paragraph sections are provided in the erratum. (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 1987-24095-001.) Taste potentiated illness-induced aversions for noisy food were studied in Sprague-Dawley rats. The rats ate from receptacles containing salty food and a contiguous tone produced by speakers under the food followed by lithium chloride injections. In preference tests, the rats then avoided noisy food in favor of quiet food followed by extinction and spontaneous recovery of the auditory aversion over repeated nonreinforced trials. Other rats were given either 4 or 10 days of exposure to the noisy food prior to taste-toxicosis treatment. None of these rats subsequently avoided noisy food. The importance of spatial contiguity and methodological variation in associating nongustatory food cues with illness is discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The inverse base-rate effect is not explained by eliminative inference.

The inverse base-rate effect is a phenomenon in which people learn about some common and some rare outcomes and in subsequent testing people predict the rare outcome for particular sets of conflicting cues, contrary to normative predictions (D. L. Merlin & S. M. Edelson, 1988). P. Juslin, P. Wennerholm, and A. Winman (2001) suggested that the effect could be explained by eliminative inference, contrary to the attention-shifting explanation of J. K. Kruschke (1996). The present article shows that the eliminative inference model exhibits ordinal discrepancies from previously published data and from data of 2 new experiments. A connectionist implementation of attentional theory fits the data well. The author concludes that people can use eliminative inference but that it cannot account for the inverse base-rate effect. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Prejudice and perception: The role of automatic and controlled processes in misperceiving a weapon.

Two experiments used a priming paradigm to investigate the influence of racial cues on the perceptual identification of weapons. In Experiment 1, participants identified guns faster when primed with Black faces compared with White faces. In Experiment 2, participants were required to respond quickly, causing the racial bias to shift from reaction time to accuracy. Participants misidentified tools as guns more often when primed with a Black face than with a White face. L. L. Jacoby's (1991) process dissociation procedure was applied to demonstrate that racial primes influenced automatic (A) processing, but not controlled (C) processing. The response deadline reduced the C estimate but not the A estimate. The motivation to control prejudice moderated the relationship between explicit prejudice and automatic bias. Implications are discussed on applied and theoretical levels. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Direct and mediated impacts of product and process characteristics on consumers’ choice of organic vs. conventional chicken

There is a lack of research into why consumers value process characteristics. In this study, we test the hypothesis that the impact of process characteristics such as organic and free-range on consumers’ choices of food products is at least partly mediated through expected eating quality or taste expectations. In other words, the process characteristics partly function as cues to (eating) quality. Using a traditional metric conjoint approach based on an additive model, four product characteristics (production method, price, size and information about farmer and rearing conditions) were varied in a fractional factorial conjoint design, creating nine profiles of whole chickens. 384 Respondents rated the nine different chickens in terms of taste expectations and willingness to buy. Since the nine records for each respondent are not independent, we used linear mixed modelling for the mediation analysis. We find that, as expected, taste expectations are a strong predictor of willingness to buy. As hypothesised, the impact of both product and process characteristics on willingness to buy is at least partly mediated through taste expectations. Hence, the study shows that process characteristics are important for consumers, not only in and off themselves, but partly because consumers make inferences about eating quality from knowledge about such process characteristics.