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A study was conducted to examine task effects on which elements of the context are recruited and used to make consumer judgments. It is argued that alternative reference points are caused by differential reference point diagnosticity. A theory of why intentions and attractiveness ratings might be differentially susceptible to classic context effects is also tested.

The impacts of relational bonds on satisfaction of online customers is examined using time horizon and gender as moderating factors. Findings reveal that structural and financial bonds positively affect satisfaction. Social, structural, and financial bonds have more positive effects on female customer satisfaction.

Many factors govern conditioning effectiveness, including the intertrial interval (ITI) used during training. The present study systematically varied the training ITI during both trace and long-delay fear conditioning. Rats were trained using one of six different ITIs and subsequently tested for conditioning to the white noise conditioned stimulus (CS) and the training context. After trace conditioning, percent freezing to the CS was positively correlated with training ITI, whereas percent freezing to the context was negatively correlated with training ITI. In contrast, when rats were trained using a long-delay paradigm, freezing during the CS test session did not vary as a function of training ITI; rats exhibited robust freezing at all ITIs. The long-delay conditioned rats exhibited relatively low levels of freezing during the context test. Thus, trace is more sensitive than long-delay fear conditioning to variations in the training ITI. These data suggest that training ITI is an important variable to consider when evaluating age or treatment effects, where the optimal ITI may vary with advancing age or pharmacological treatment. Keywords: trace conditioning, freezing, intertrial interval, cue, context

This article examines the generality of citizens' views concerning racial profiling across several contexts. More specifically, the research investigated whether citizens' perceptions regarding the widespread nature of racial profiling and their belief whether this profiling is justified converged when considering the practice in diverse settings, such as during traffic stops, in retail establishments, and at airports. Using data from a nationally representative poll with an oversample of Blacks and Hispanics, the results of the structural equation model analysis supported the supposition that perceptions regarding racial profiling across contexts form one latent construct. The perceptions of airport, traffic stop, and consumer racial profiling--in the context of widespread nature and justification--form two general latent measures. These perceptions differ based on race, age, sex, and income. Keywords: consumer racial profiling; racial profiling in traffic stops; racial profiling in airports; race; public opinion; generality thesis

The effect of the environment in which sexual experience is acquired was examined on patterns of male rat copulatory behavior. Males trained in a pacing chamber with a 4-hole partition had significantly shorter ejaculation latencies compared with males trained in chambers with a 1-hole partition. Those differences persisted when males were switched into the other pacing condition, suggesting that the pattern of copulation in these males had become 'fixed.' In the second experiment, males were trained to associate an almond odor with copulation in either the 1-hole or 4-hole condition. Males ejaculated preferentially with females associated with the 4-hole pacing condition. Copulatory behavior in male rats is sensitive to female availability, and females associated with greater availability are preferred. Keywords: ejaculation, paced copulation, arousal, context

Interdependence has a positive effect on team performance as partially mediated by processes. Organizational-districts and team context as drivers for team effectiveness are examined in a longitudinal cross-level design.

Systematically incorporating the context of time in career dynamics can improve the science of job design. The role of time in how an employee perceives their job is examined.

In experiments examining the potential reconsolidation of drug-associated contextual memories, rats were given a single pairing of cocaine with a specific context, and the ability of the protein synthesis inhibitor anisomycin administered following a context-only memory retrieval trial to impair conditioned locomotor sensitization was tested. Rats receiving 150 mg/kg anisomycin immediately following a 5-min reexposure to the cocaine-conditioned context showed decreased activity compared with the vehicle control group in response to a low-dose cocaine challenge during a subsequent test for conditioned sensitization. This effect was not seen when anisomycin was administered following a 30-min reexposure to the context or when anisomycin was administered 25 min after a 5-min reexposure. These results are consistent with a growing literature suggesting that following retrieval, associative contextual memories may undergo a transient protein synthesis-dependent reconsolidation phase that normally serves to maintain memory. Keywords: reconsolidation, cocaine, sensitization, memory

The importance of including contextual factors when studying information behaviour is illustrated using findings from a recent field study in which ethnographic methods and social network theory are used to investigate the flow of human services information (HIS) among nurses, the elderly and other individuals at community-based foot clinics. Four types of contextual factors are identified: physical environment, clinic activities, the nurse's situation, and the senior's situation. While each type of factor has particular implications for the participants' information behaviour, it is shown how the interaction of multiple factors led to the conceptualization of such notions as an information ground, which may be used for guiding further research on the flow of information in community settings. This concept of an information ground is further based on a social constructionist definition of human services information. The implications of the researcher's presence at the field site as an additional contextual factor are also discussed.

Several predictions of the habituation hypothesis of conditioned drug effects were tested by looking at contextual sensitization to apomorphine-induced climbing in mice (Mus musculus). Mice were first sensitized to that effect after 9 daily injections of 0.4 mg/kg apomorphine in the test context. Other mice received the same treatment outside the test context. On Day 10, all mice were challenged with either saline (conditioned drug effects test) or apomorphine (contextual sensitization test). On both tests, the levels of climbing of mice that received apomorphine paired with the test context during the intermittent treatment were significantly higher than those of mice that were experiencing the test context for the first time (unexposed mice). Also, the rate of extinction in conditioned mice did not parallel the rate of habituation in the unexposed mice. Results contradict the habituation hypothesis of conditioned drug effects and contextual sensitization.

Isolation for several hours after fear conditioning reduces contextual but not auditory-cue fear conditioning (J. W. Rudy, 1996). This isolation effect is reversed by both. centrally and peripherally acting opioid receptor antagonists. As in isolation, systemically administered morphine given immediately after conditioning also reduces contextual fear conditioning. Morphine's effect is also reversed by both centrally and peripherally acting opioid receptor antagonists. Exposure to the conditioning context has been shown to eliminate the effect of isolation on contextual fear conditioning (J. W. Rudy, 1996). Context preexposure also eliminated the effect of morphine on contextual fear conditioning. These results imply that opioids released in the periphery play an important role in producing the isolation effect and that they do so by disrupting the postconditioning memory consolidation processes.

Three different types of framing based on a priori distinctions between different sets of operational definitions were identified, namely, risky choice framing, attribute framing and goal framing. The typology developed distinguished between the standard risky choice framing effect, which affects willingness to take a risk; attribute framing, which affects the evaluation of object or event characteristics; and goal framing, which affects the persuasiveness of a communication. Several examples of each framing type and likely theoretical mechanisms underlying each are presented.

Prior research has shown that the context in which a commercial message is presented can have important effects on how the message is processed and its success in the marketplace. The authors examine the impact of context-induced moods on the processing of embedded television advertisements. Mood was manipulated naturally by varying the program context in which the stimulus ads were embedded, and its effects on ad processing were observed. The results indicate that ads placed in programs that induce negative moods are processed less systematically than ones placed in programs that put viewers in positive moods. Moreover, mood was found to influence attitudes toward the advertisements both by affecting the number of cognitions the audience generates about the ads and by modifying the effect of those cognitions on [A.sub.ad]', How characteristics of the programming or editorial environment influence the effectiveness of advertising is a question of widespread interest to the field of marketing (e.g., Kennedy 1971; McClung, Park and [...]

Individuals within a work environment not only react to the work situation as they perceive it, but also act to create that situation. For example, in a work group, an [...]

Framing is perceived to have the ability to affect decisions with an end impact on either money or human life. However, data showed that the predicted frame by arena actions for human life rather than monetary purposes. Prospect theory was supported since female subjects chose riskier paths when outcomes were framed negatively than positively. But men did not follow this pattern since they made the same risky decisions with or without framing.

Statistical analysis was performed to test the relationship between context, cognition and verbal protocol. A set of questionnaires designed to test positive, negative and neutral context of fairness judgments, representing process control, against cognition by the 'thinking aloud' and 'silence' method was performed to mimic an organization gathering employee attitude and opinion on changes. Test results show that differences in fairness judgments could be traced in positive contexts.

The researchers argue that a previous computational account of hippocampal region function in associative learning (M. Gluck & C. Myers, 1993) has emergent implications that accurately describe the role of the hippocampal region in contextual processing. This article unifies 2 seemingly conflicting views of contextual processing: It accords contextual cues no special representational status (e.g., R. Rescorla & A. Wagner, 1972), yet it also allows context to stand in a superordinate relationship to the cues it contains (e.g., L. Nadel & J. Willner, 1980). As a result, the account correctly expects that context can develop occasion-setting properties and that context shifts can weaken learned responses or attenuate latent inhibition. The article also explains data suggesting that hippocampal lesions reduce contextual sensitivity. It may help unify several previous theoretical accounts of the hippocampal region's role in contextual processing.

Associations to a contextual cue were contrasted with those of an advertised object when the cognitive resources devoted to message processing were substantial and when the categories to which the contextual cue and the advertised object belonged displayed low overlap. The absence of either of these factors prompted assimilation. A two-factor theory is offered to explain these outcomes. (Reprinted by permission of the publisher.)

The contextual specificity of the conditioned response (CR) and latent inhibition (LI) was examined in rats with selective hippocampal lesions. Acquisition of the CR to a novel conditioned stimulus (CS) was equally rapid in control and hippocampal rats (Experiments 1 and 2), and CS preexposure disrupted acquisition, (i.e., produced LI) to an equal extent in both groups (Experiment 2). In control subjects, however, the CR established in one context transferred incompletely to a second context (Experiment 1), and LI was attenuated when CS preexposure and conditioning occurred in different contexts (Experiment 3). This context specificity of the CR and LI was not apparent in hippocampal rats - the CR and LI transferred readily from one context to another. In addition, hippocampal rats were impaired in a spatial learning task (Experiment 2) but were unimpaired in learning a Pavlovian contextual discrimination (Experiment 3). These results suggest that a common contextual retrieval process underlies the contextual dependence of the CR and of LI and that this process is mediated by the hippocampus.

Twenty-eight male Wistar rats were placed in a novel and distinctive environment. Eighteen of these received an intense startle-eliciting white noise stimulus. Animals that experienced a 60-s delay between placement and the startle stimulus demonstrated significant freezing in the context, both poststartle (Session 1) and on a later startle-free test (Session 2). Animals that received immediate startle, however, did not differ on either occasion from animals that did not experience the startle stimulus. The amplitude of the startle response was not affected by this manipulation, which indicates a dissociation between freezing and startle responses with immediate- versus delay-startle presentation. The findings are consistent with Fanselow's (1986) conditioned stimulus-based associative explanation of the immediate-shock freezing deficit.

Rabbits (Oryctolagus cuniculus) with lesions to either the hippocampus or overlying neocortex and unoperated controls underwent acquisition of the classically conditioned nictitating membrane response to a tone conditioned responses in any block of 10 trials. They were then returned to their cages. On the next day, they were either placed in the same context in which they underwent initial conditioning or switched to a new context that distinctly differed along olfactory, visual, and tactile dimensions. In relation to unswitched controls, rabbits with lesions to the neocortex and unoperated controls showed a disruption of conditioning when contexts were switched. In contrast, rabbits with lesions to the hippocampus performed at the same levels as unswitched controls. The results are discussed in terms of the possible role of hippocampus in coding context in classical conditioning.

Classical conditioning produces frequency-specific plasticity of receptive fields (RFs) of single neurons in cat auditory cortex (Diamond & Weinberger, 1986). In this article we show that although plasticity may be observed during both training trials and determination of RFs, it is usually expressed in a qualitatively different form (e.g., decreased response during conditioning vs. increased response to this same conditioned stimulus in the postconditioning RF). This differential expression of learning-induced plasticity provides evidence for a role of context in neurophysiological mechanisms of learning in auditory cortex. A model of cortical neurons functioning within a mosaic of influences is presented. The Functional Mosaic model views the induction and expression of plasticity as separate processes.

Individuals tend to be more competitive in making decisions over social dilemmas that involve economic context, than those who are confronted with noneconomic decisions. An analysis involving 195 undergraduate students revealed that people are likely to compete and cooperate more during events when prior contenders competed unexpectedly in the same situation. It was further established that competitive behavior manifested in noneconomic decisions generates considerable effect on subsequent behavior.

Charismatic leadership is widely regarded as a plausible explanation for radical individual and organizational change, which is one of the reasons why it has found growing favor in recent years [...]

SCIENCE, JUST LIKE art, is subject to big shifts in the way we think about ourselves. For the past two decades, psychology has favored 'inside' explanations of behavior: Who we [...]

Six-month-olds rely on surprisingly specific aspects of their incidental surroundings--such as the color or design of a crib liner -- to retrieve memories of a simple learned task, according to [...]

The effects of ibotenic lesions of the hippocampus on conditioning to contextual cues during classical fear conditioning in rats were evaluated by (a) the amount of freezing elicited by contextual cues and (b) the relative avoidance of a shock compartment. In Experiment 1, lesions to the hippocampus had no effect on contextual freezing and marginally affected avoidance after repeated sessions. Experiment 2 showed that lesions to the hippocampus disrupted avoidance when tested after a single conditioning session, while leaving unaffected the acquisition of contextual freezing. Experiment 3 indicated that these lesions decreased the acquisition of contextual freezing when higher footshock intensity was used but had no effect on avoidance after repeated conditioning sessions. These results show that freezing and avoidance do not quantify context conditioning similarly. They further indicate that lesions to the hippocampus may disrupt the expression of these behaviors used as measures of context conditioning but not the acquisition of context conditioning per se.

Variables other than semantic manipulation influence the subjective framing of organizational issues. This was gleaned from an investigation of conditions under which contextually activated information affects strategic decision-making. Context information belonging to the same category as the target may be used as a reference frame and result in contrast. However, when context and target are categorically dissimilar, context information cannot be a comparison standard and is more likely to serve as an interpretation frame, leading to assimilation.