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The present study extends previous research on the folk concept of happiness by investigating people's causal attributions toward the things that make them happy. Six hundred ten Italian adults (18–55 years old) took part in a questionnaire study. Respondents were asked to report five happiness sources and to provide ratings for both the attainment of these sources and the internal and external factors potentially causing them (self, other people, luck, chance). We also measured the participants’ levels of psychological well-being. Results showed that the participants’ happiness conceptions incorporated 27 categories of happiness sources referring to four semantic domains: relational life, personal life, hedonic psychological sources, and eudaimonic psychological sources. Multilevel analyses showed that internal attributions exceeded external attributions across all these domains; moreover, internal attributions positively predicted happiness attainment, whereas the latter was negatively associated with attributions to other people. Findings were interpreted in the Italian cultural and linguistic context.

Six studies investigated people's attitudes toward uncertainty. Participants rated the attractiveness of pairs of gambles in either a gain or a loss frame. We varied the level of uncertainty, the monetary outcomes, and the evaluation mode of the gambles (i.e., joint versus separate evaluation). Experiments 1a and 1b compared a sure gain (loss) to a risky gain (loss), with both gambles having identical expected value. Experiments 2a and 2b included an almost sure (i.e., 98%) gain (loss) and risky gain (loss). When gambles entailed gains, a risky gamble became less attractive when evaluated in joint than in separate evaluation. The opposite pattern emerged when gambles entailed losses. The difference between a risky and a sure (or almost sure) gamble was weaker (or eliminated) in separate evaluation. Experiments 3a and 3b presented a risky gamble alone or with other gambles with varying probability and outcomes to be gained or lost. When gambles entailed gains (losses), a risky gamble became less (more) attractive and was chosen less (more) frequently when paired with gambles offering a higher probability of gaining (losing) smaller amounts. Overall, affective reactions and preferences for uncertain gambles depend on the decision context, and the certainty effect can disappear in separate evaluation.

A challenge in building useful artificial intelligence (AI) systems is that people need to understand how they work in order to achieve appropriate trust and reliance. This has become a topic of considerable interest, manifested as a surge of research on Explainable AI (XAI). Much of the research assumes a model in which the AI automatically generates an explanation and presents it to the user, whose understanding of the explanation leads to better performance. Psychological research on explanatory reasoning shows that this is a limited model. The design of XAI systems must be fully informed by a model of cognition and a model of pedagogy, based on empirical evidence of what happens when people try to explain complex systems to other people and what happens as people try to reason out how a complex system works. In this article we discuss how and why C. S. Peirce's notion of abduction is a best model for XAI. Peirce's notion of abduction as an exploratory activity can be regarded as supported by virtue of its concordance with models of expert reasoning that have been developed by modern applied cognitive psychologists.

Although entitlement is important for understanding antisocial behavior, personality dysfunction, and personality malevolence, little evidence exists on how entitlement relates to processes that could theoretically maintain and cultivate it. In line with a self-presentation conceptualization, we speculated that entitlement probably entails the cultivation and maintenance of various identities that generally occasion better treatment from audiences. This self-presentation conceptualization of entitlement has rarely been tested, and the evidence is inconclusive. To provide a more conclusive test, participants (N = 247) completed self-report indices of 6 entitlement features—from three different multidimensional models—and self-reported their past use of various self-presentation tactics. These self-presentation tactics are used to convey distinct identities (e.g., accomplished, threatening, superior) that generally garner better treatment from audiences. Exploratory factor analysis suggested the 6 entitlement indicators were composed of a single entitlement factor; generally, consistent with the self-presentation conceptualization, this entitlement factor related to more use of all the self-presentation tactics except benevolent tactics (apologies and exemplification) and supplication. Moreover, each entitlement indicator showed an approximately similar pattern of relations to the self-presentation tactics, suggesting they all share a similar approach to self-presentation. Hence, the findings are consistent with conceptualizing entitlement and its various features as including the strategic maintenance of identities that should occasion entitled treatment; such findings may have implications for understanding the foundations of entitlement. Supplemental materials are available here: https://files.press.uillinois.edu/journals/supplemental/ajp/hart/index.html

We investigated whether face mask wearing in a hot and humid environment would influence subjective states: motivation, affect, and the performance of cognitive tasks requiring attentional processes. Forty volunteers performed the tasks under 4 repeated conditions: in an air-conditioned (AC) room or a tropical climate (TC; hot and wet environment) while wearing a mask or not (counterbalanced). For each condition, they completed questionnaires on subjective states (affect, motivation, and attentional processes) by performing the Bells and d2 tests, and a comparison of men and women was an indirect focus of this study. Results showed that the participants had higher sensations of fatigue, thermal discomfort, and a negative affect when wearing a mask in the TC condition. Additionally, lower performance scores were noted in the Bells test when participants wore a mask in a TC compared with all other conditions. Lastly, the participants’ performance on the d2 test involving selective and sustained attention improved without a mask in AC and in TC conditions. Consequently, the results revealed that wearing a mask in a TC can induce anxiety, headaches, discomfort, and lower motivation.

This study explored differences (positive or negative) in self–other representations among Chinese social networking (Weibo) users with high or low popularity. Through the crawling program of Python software, 413 Weibo users (180 male, 43.58%) with their 5,823 microblog updates were selected as participants. The variables in this study (i.e., self-representation, other representation, relational self, and positive and negative representations) used the word frequency of the corresponding words in the microblog text as an indicator. Results indicated that for high-popularity users and low-popularity users, their expressions of self-representation and relational self were both associated with the expressions of positive emotions in general. Specifically, the association between self-representation and positive emotions was higher among low-popularity users than high-popularity users, whereas the association between relational self and positive emotions was higher in high-popularity users than low-popularity users. Practical implications and future directions of this study's findings are discussed.

The concept of perseverance has always allured researchers because of its characterization as an elementary ingredient for success in personal and professional settings. However, past studies show that perseverance has been explored primarily in combination with other constructs, curtailing its development as a standalone concept. This article aims to identify distinct research streams associated with perseverance, reveal how the research associated with the concept has evolved, and identify some ideas and directions for future research. Using bibliometric analysis, the article identifies 3 distinct research streams and a contextual shift in literature over time. Also, emerging trends in the literature are identified through diachronic analysis. The future time perspective theory is suggested to further the research on perseverance.

Among people with psychiatric disorders, those with schizophrenia are subject to high levels of stigmatization. Research is necessary to identify new strategies that may help reduce the stigma of schizophrenia. Educational strategies using cognitive accounts, particularly early maladaptive schemas (EMSs), have shown promising results in the context of depression, but they have not been evaluated in the context of schizophrenia. The present study compared the effect on the stigma of three different educational strategies, based on cognitive distortions, biogenetics, and EMSs. A total of 378 students were randomly assigned to 1 of 4 groups. Three experimental groups were presented with a vignette that introduced 1 of 3 different etiological accounts of schizophrenia (cognitive distortions, EMSs, or biogenetics). The fourth group was presented with a text unrelated to schizophrenia. The participants completed questionnaires that measured their attitudes, empathic concern, and social distance toward people with schizophrenia, before and after reading the text. The intervention using the EMS etiology account for schizophrenia was the only one that led to a significant decrease in stigma. The latter effect was driven mainly by an increase in the level of empathic concern toward people with schizophrenia. Given that similar results have been observed for depression and that the role of EMSs in many psychiatric disorders has been demonstrated, studying the effects of EMS explanations for other stigmatized disorders may be promising for reducing the stigma of psychiatric disorders.

Forgiveness, understood as reestablishing a physical and emotional relationship with the harm-doer, may sometimes be dangerous, especially when the harm-doer is not worthy of the trust. This study investigated the relation between value of the relationship with the harm-doer, future anxiety, and the motivation to forgive. In the first experiment, participants described a situation of harm depicted in one of the Thematic Apperception Test pictures. In the second experiment, participants were asked to write about an experience of harm from their own past. The Dark Future Scale to assess future anxiety and the Transgression-Related Interpersonal Motivations to assess forgiveness were used. Future anxiety was the moderator of the relation between the perception of the value of the relationship with the harm-doer and the motivation to forgive. In the case of a strong future anxiety, there was a greater positive relation between the value of the relationship with the harm-doer and the motivation to forgive than when there was weak future anxiety. The results indicate that a harmed person with strong future anxiety will try to keep close to the harm-doer despite the fact that the harm-doer acted with the intention to harm and showed no remorse. Supplemental materials for this article are available at https://files.press.uillinois.edu/journals/supplemental/ajp/sobol/index.html

In the modern era of psychology, researchers have used experiments to increase understanding of human memory, leading to the discovery of many memory phenomena. One example is the generation effect, where self-generating information often improves later memory for that information compared to reading. However, general assertions about memory such as the generation effect are often limited by boundary conditions, or situations where these effects no longer hold true (e.g., generating does not lead to better memory than reading). These boundary conditions indicate that memory is context sensitive, yet too often contextual experimental factors are neglected when researchers are designing studies and interpreting empirical data. In this article, we develop a contextual framework of the generation effect that describes experimental conditions that lead to increased or decreased memory performance by considering the interactions between four key experimental factors: encoding task, memory test, materials used in the experiment, and subject abilities. We present testable predictions generated by the framework, highlight the flexibility of this framework, and discuss avenues for future research. Overall, we argue that this framework can more fully account for a wide range of findings on the generation effect by expanding on existing multifactor theories attempting to explain the effect and its boundary conditions. This framework illuminates the need to investigate higher-order interactions between 4 key experimental factors to advance our understanding of the complex nature of the generation effect and human memory.

It has been argued that in order to study both the positive and negative impact of social media usage holistically, we must focus on identity development. The current study examined social media usage in relation to identity development, identity distress, and peer attachment. We collected data through an online anonymous survey from 849 young adults recruited from a large metropolitan university in the southeastern United States. Although social media usage was related to higher levels of identity distress, lower levels of identity development, and less peer attachment, results varied by sex and reasons for spending time on social media. Using it to avoid face-to-face contact or to create false identities was related to problematic development, whereas using it to post photos was related to positive development. The use of avatars was particularly negative for women, associated with lower identity development and greater identity distress. In addition to using gross measures of social media usage such as time spent, research might benefit from further investigating the “why” and “how” social media is used. This might yield important avenues for intervention and prevention programs aimed at positive youth development.

A major interest of research in face recognition lies in explaining the face inversion effect, in which the recognition of an inverted face is less successful than that of an upright face. However, prior research has devoted little effort to examining how the cognitive system handles comparison between inverted and upright faces. The results of a preparatory experiment and two following experiments support the conclusion that the comparison is based more on visual similarity than on a mental rotation of the inverted face to an upright face. Visual similarity is based on certain elements mutual to the two faces, which resist the transformation of inversion. These elements are symmetric or salient components of the face, such as round eyes or thick lips.

In 1933, two factors resulted in Florene Mary Young (1903–1994) and Margaret May Zeigler (1882–1976) concurrently becoming the first female tenured faculty members in the Department of Psychology at the University of Georgia (UGA). The first was the onset of the Great Depression in 1929, and the second was the legislative creation of the Board of Regents in 1932, established to oversee the University System of Georgia legislatively in 1933. For financial reasons the Regents closed the Georgia State Teachers College, where Young and Zeigler were employed, in Athens, also home of UGA. Young and Zeigler were offered and accepted tenured faculty positions at UGA.Before presenting biographical information about Young and Zeigler, I will present an overview of the history of psychology at UGA before their arrival and the status of women as students and faculty members at UGA before their arrival to provide useful background and context. Young was 21 years younger than Zeigler, earned the PhD in 1938, and had 36 years at UGA. Far more biographical information is available about Young than about Zeigler. Before the Closing Remarks I will consider Young and Zeigler in the context of other women psychologists of their generation.

Memory for text is represented at 3 levels: the surface form, textbase, and situation model. Although prior research has shown that these levels of representation can be differentially emphasized at the time of encoding, the influence of retrieval instructions on the use of these levels has not been tested. Moreover, there has been no assessment of how this influence might change over time. We assessed memory under both verbatim- and consistency-based instructions. For the verbatim instructions, people indicated whether probe sentences were actually read in the text. For consistency instructions, people responded based on whether probe sentences were consistent with what had been read earlier. A transitory influence view suggests that instructions at retrieval would guide the information used immediately, but not after a delay, when some levels of representation have faded. In contrast, a stable influence view suggests that retrieval instructions would guide the information used both immediately and after a delay. The results revealed that the verbatim instructions emphasized surface form and textbase measures, but consistency instructions emphasized situation model measures. This pattern shifted somewhat over a 1-week delay, with surface form memory becoming equivalent but the differences at the other 2 levels remaining.

The use of lethal force is a combination of threat perception and individual judgment that sometimes warrants a behavioral response. This simplified description implicates perceptual factors and individual differences in lethal force decision making, which ongoing research continues to address. However, personality-based factors have been less explored as to how they might affect either threat perception or behavioral responses in a lethal force decision. The current investigation examined multiple personality traits with the potential to influence lethal force decision making, including aggression, impulsivity, and the Big Five traits. These measures were compared to threat perception and behavioral responses made to a variety of lethal force stimuli broadly categorized as clear threats, ambiguous threats, and clear nonthreats. Samples were recruited from combat-trained infantry, military recruits, and the civilian community to control for prior lethal force training. Although there was a strong omnibus relationship between threat perception and the likelihood of a behavioral response, neither military training nor personality differences had any impact on threat perception or a binary (e.g., shoot/don't-shoot) behavioral response. Therefore, we conclude that perception dominates personality in lethal force decision making when the threat assessment decision is limited to factors such as weapon presence or posture rather than emotion.

Age-related changes in attention ability and differences by gender in the rates of change from middle age were investigated. Digit Cancellation Test (D-CAT1 and D-CAT3 conditions, which involve low and high cognitive load, respectively) scores and individually calculated decline rates (DRs) in 10-year follow-up among four age groups (40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s) were examined. Performance in both D-CAT conditions declined with increasing age from the 50s to the 70s, whereas there was no difference between the 40s and 50s, and a gender difference (with the women showing an advantage) was demonstrated in the 40s and 50s groups on the D-CAT3. In the D-CAT1 condition, the DR remained stable from the 40s to the 50s but increased from the 50s and to the 60s and then remained the same. In the D-CAT3 condition, the DR became larger even after the 70s. The DRs did not differ between men and women from middle age onward. Although DRs showed no gender difference, D-CAT performance showed a gender difference, with men being about 20% less capable by the age of 40. We suggest that data showing concrete declines in attentional performance after middle age may be used to reduce accidents encountered in the daily life of older adults.

Cognitive tools (e.g., calculators) provide all users with the same potential. Yet when people use such cognitive tools, interindividual variations are observed. Previous findings have indicated that 2 main factors could explain these variations: intrinsic cognitive skills (i.e., the “non–tool use” cognitive skills associated with the task targeted) and metacognitive beliefs about one's performance with tool use. In this study we sought to reproduce these findings and to investigate in more detail the nature of the relationships (i.e., linear vs. exponential) between tool use performance and intrinsic cognitive skills. In Experiment 1, 200 participants completed 2 cognitive tasks (calculation and geography) in 2 conditions (non–tool use vs. tool use). In Experiment 2, 70 participants performed a geography task in 2 conditions (non–tool use vs. tool use) and estimated their performance in each condition before completing the task. Results indicated that intrinsic cognitive skills and, to a lesser extent, metacognitive beliefs improved tool use performance: The higher the intrinsic cognitive skills and the higher participants estimated their tool use performance, the higher this tool use performance was. The nature of the relationship between tool use performance and intrinsic cognitive skills appeared to be linear rather than exponential. These findings extend previous research showing a strong impact of intrinsic cognitive skills on the performance associated with the use of cognitive tools or external aids.

The purpose of the present study was to examine the effect of different levels of exercise intensity on mental rotation performance in gymnasts versus nongymnasts. A group of elite gymnasts and a group of nongymnasts performed a mental body rotation task at rest and then performed the same task preceded by short bouts of intense exercise at 60%, 80%, 100%, and 120% of their maximum aerobic speed. The analyses of response times showed that gymnasts performed the mental rotation task faster after bouts of intense exercise than in rest condition, but nongymnasts performed equally in rest and after exercise. This finding highlights the specific physical expertise as a variable that can affect the influence of exercise on cognitive processing.

The human ability to tell apart reality from fiction is intriguing. Through a range of media, such as novels and movies, we are able to readily engage in fictional worlds and experience alternative realities. Yet even when we are completely immersed and emotionally engaged within these worlds, we have little difficulty in leaving the fictional landscapes and getting back to the day-to-day of our own world. How are we able to do this? How do we acquire our understanding of our real world? How is this similar to and different from the development of our knowledge of fictional worlds? In exploring these questions, this article makes the case for a novel multilevel explanation (called BLINCS) of our implicit understanding of the reality–fiction distinction, namely that it is derived from the fact that the worlds of fiction, relative to reality, are bounded, inference-light, curated, and sparse.

Excessive daytime sleepiness is associated with reduced cognitive functioning in children and adolescents. The present study was an initial examination of direct and indirect associations between sleep and recall via strategic and nonstrategic memory processes in a sample of 66 participants from grades 1, 3, 5, and college. Stimuli varied in familiarity and presence of a strategy prompt. Strategy use during encoding and during recall were measured separately. The present study predicted that alertness would be associated with both strategic and nonstrategic factors related to memory, alertness would predict recall indirectly via strategic and nonstrategic factors (controlling for grade and gender), and this indirect path would be moderated by grade. The first 2 hypotheses were partially supported; the third was not. Self-reported alertness associated weakly with speed of tapping and with strategy use during encoding on the first trial (familiar words, no strategy cue). Analysis indicated an indirect effect via strategy use during encoding on Trial 1 but via speed of tapping on Trial 3. Tests of moderated mediation were not significant on any trial, indicating that the indirect pathways were not moderated by grade. Alertness may influence recall via strategic or nonstrategic processes, and its role may depend on familiarity and availability of strategy cues. Several proposed research directions are suggested for future exploration.

The relation between recall and recognition has been debated in various contexts, and researchers have asked whether these tasks lie on a single continuum depending on the type of retrieval cues or whether they represent distinctly different processes. In the current experiment, we considered the continuity hypothesis, which states that recall and recognition are different only in cue information available, and we asked whether retrieval experience during various tests can further inform the nature of this relationship. Participants studied lists of 5-letter words and were tested with either no overt cues (free recall) or with the first 2 letters, first 3 letters, first 4 letters, or all 5 letters (recognition) of a word as retrieval cues. We used the remember/know/guess paradigm and asked participants to report their retrieval experience to infer the underlying experiences of recollection and familiarity. Accuracy increased continuously as the number of letter cues increased. This continuity was reflected in experiences of recollection, but familiarity increased nonlinearly across cue conditions. Our results show some support for the continuity hypothesis; however, recall and recognition do differ in that recall relies more heavily on recollection, whereas recognition relies on both recollection and familiarity.

J. Piaget described how children first elaborate elementary, then empirical and finally logical deductions. A. R. Luria was one of the first to show that illiterate adults of premodern cultures exhibit no understanding of the syllogisms that presuppose logical deductions. He listed the explanatory factors that Piaget had also listed. An American research group led by M. Cole and S. Scribner repeated the syllogistic studies Luria had conducted. Although the results were replicated in different developmental regions and were consistent with Piaget and Luria's considerations, Cole and Scribner interpreted the results differently. They first confirmed the validity of the explanatory approach of Piaget and Luria. But then, in a second step, they withdrew this confirmation. According to their view, the test subjects did not want to deal with the logical problems because they considered other things to be more important. Finally, Cole and Scribner interpreted the answers in such a way that they might contain the same logical, abstract, and theoretical ability that is found in the answers that express an understanding of syllogisms. The present article reconstructs the argumentations of these three schools and criticizes the latter one.

We conducted a conceptual replication of Chi and Koeske (1983) and Gobbo and Chi's (1986) studies on children's knowledge acquisition. One hundred elementary school students (86 through 159 months of age, in school grades 1 through 7) were asked to recall information about Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, the first of the books in the Harry Potter series. A quantitative measure of expertise was derived by a summation of factor loadings that were drawn from a free response and trivia task and from the number of Harry Potter books and movies a child reported having read or watched. Different measures of expertise were strongly intercorrelated but were only moderately correlated with age or grade. Although there was a significant correlation between age or grade and knowledge acquisition and expertise, nearly every other measure that correlated with expertise maintained statistical significance, even when we controlled for age or grade. Furthermore, regardless of age or grade, children with higher knowledge acquisition and expertise scores sorted characters more cohesively, with more sophistication, and used more categories that require a deep understanding of the Harry Potter domain. These results reinforce the idea that expertise is an aspect of knowledge that can be separated from a child's level of cognitive development and is associated with a deeper and richer knowledge base.

Research suggests that viewing successful or fortunate others’ social media portrayals may promote a more negative hedonic experience via social comparison tendencies, but this notion has rarely been tested experimentally. Here, we tested the possibility that viewing fortunate and unfortunate social media portrayals (vs. neutral portrayals) may also promote a negative hedonic experience. In Experiment 1, participants indicated their positive and negative affect before and after viewing either fortunate, unfortunate, or mundane (neutral) social media portrayals. Inconsistent with conventional theorizing, only participants who viewed the unfortunate portrayal reported more negative affect balance than participants who viewed the neutral portrayal. Experiment 2 provided conceptually similar results, indicating that participants viewing an unfortunate (vs. fortunate) portrayal indicated more negative affect balance. Although somewhat inconsistent with conventional wisdom, the findings suggest negative hedonic experiences can spread on social media.

In psychology, the topics of the self and social perception in nonverbal interaction have been intensively examined but have so far been limited to certain aspects of their interdependence. The self is conceived mostly as a bundle of functions and personality traits that predominantly resist integration, except in the form of mental representations that do not allow conscious access to the processes that generate them. Similarly, in nonverbal interaction, the sending and receiving of particular social cues via different modalities are considered and usually traced back to subpersonal, especially neuronal processes. Because this does not allow the full potential of conscious self-development in social interaction to be exploited, the nexus between the two topics is examined in this study via an empirical first-person method with qualitative and quantitative aspects. A hypothesis about introspectively observable mental activity occurring in dyadic nonverbal interaction is developed and experimentally investigated. The results show that previous theoretical models can be supplemented by a sublayer of potentially conscious mental interaction that, because of its invariance regarding partial personality aspects, suggests a holistic and dynamic concept of the self.

This study introduces the concept of felt love as the monadic experience of love, a parallel of dyadic love, and presents a study examining the relationships between daily felt love and sleep quality across 28 days. Before beginning the daily protocol, participants answered 60 questions assessing common situations that may make people feel loved. These questions were used to establish a consensus on the meaning of felt love for the specific participants under study. During the daily life study, participants (N = 52) provided self-reports via smartphone surveys for 28 days. Each morning upon waking, participants assessed their subjective sleep quality, and each evening positive affect was assessed with a set of 5 questions. Participants also rated how much they felt loved at 6 semirandom times throughout the day. Felt love measures were aggregated to obtain daily means and individual means across the study. Variability in felt love was quantified by calculating within-day and between-day standard deviations. Multilevel modeling was used to account for repeated measurements for each participant across the study, and the final model includes age, sex, positive affect, and felt love as predictors of sleep quality. Participants who reported higher positive affect and higher within-day felt love variability reported better overall sleep quality. However, overall mean levels of felt love did not significantly predict sleep quality, nor were there effects at the daily level. These results suggest that experiencing a range of felt love intensities within an average day is associated with better sleep quality.

The past 30 years of research in intelligence has produced a wealth of knowledge about the causes and consequences of differences in intelligence between individuals, and today mainstream opinion is that individual differences in intelligence are caused by both genetic and environmental influences. Much more contentious is the discussion over the cause of mean intelligence differences between racial or ethnic groups. In contrast to the general consensus that interindividual differences are both genetic and environmental in origin, some claim that mean intelligence differences between racial groups are completely environmental in origin, whereas others postulate a mix of genetic and environmental causes. In this article I discuss 5 lines of research that provide evidence that mean differences in intelligence between racial and ethnic groups are partially genetic. These lines of evidence are findings in support of Spearman’s hypothesis, consistent results from tests of measurement invariance across American racial groups, the mathematical relationship that exists for between-group and within-group sources of heritability, genomic data derived from genome-wide association studies of intelligence and polygenic scores applied to diverse samples, and admixture studies. I also discuss future potential lines of evidence regarding the causes of average group differences across racial groups. However, the data are not fully conclusive, and the exact degree to which genes influence intergroup mean differences in intelligence is not known. This discussion applies only to native English speakers born in the United States and not necessarily to any other human populations.

This article investigates the effect of emotion on destination memory. Participants were asked to tell neutral, positive, and negative information to neutral, positive, and negative faces. Afterward, participants were asked to remember to whom each piece of information was previously told. Results demonstrated high destination memory when the positive face was associated with negative information than with positive information. Results also demonstrated high destination memory when the negative face was associated with positive information than with negative information. These findings are attributed to the emotional incongruence between information and its destination. When positive or negative information is presented, one may expect that the listener would experience the same emotional state. Violation of this expectation seems to result in a high retention of the context in which the violation has occurred and consequently in a high destination memory.

According to ideomotor theory, we select actions by recalling and anticipating their sensory consequences, that is, their action effects. Compelling evidence for this theory comes from response–effect compatibility (REC) experiments, in which a response produces an effect with which it is either compatible or incompatible. For example, pressing a left/right response key is faster if it is predictably followed by an action effect on the same, compatible side compared with the other, incompatible side, even though the effect itself appears only after response time is measured. Recent studies investigated this effect with continuous responses (i.e., computer mouse movements) and reported an REC effect in a forced-choice but not in a free-choice task. From the keypressing literature, the opposite result pattern or no differences would have been expected. To clarify this issue, we report 3 experiments with mouse movement responses. Experiment 1 used a simpler scenario than in prior studies and found a similar result: The REC effect was evident in a forced- but not in a free-choice task. Also, sequential modulations of the REC effect were exploratorily analyzed and replicated with higher power in Experiment 2. However, Experiment 3 demonstrated that at least part of the REC effect with mouse movements can be attributed to stimulus–response compatibility (SRC), with a much smaller compatibility effect evident with a procedure for which SRC was reduced. We conclude that a sequentially modulated compatibility effect can be observed with mouse movements, but previous studies may have underestimated the contribution from SRC. The results are also discussed in terms of why the compatibility effect was observed in forced- but not free-choice tasks with mouse movement responses.

This study uses point light displays both to investigate the roles of global and local motion analyses in the perception of dynamic facial expressions and to measure the information threshold for reliable recognition of emotions. We videotaped the faces of actors wearing black makeup with white dots while they dynamically produced each of 6 basic Darwin/Ekman emotional expressions. The number of point lights was varied to systematically manipulate amount of information available. For all but one of the expressions, discriminability (d′) increased approximately linearly with number of point lights, with most remaining largely discriminable with as few as only 6 point lights. This finding supports reliance on global motion patterns produced by facial muscles. However, discriminability for the happy expression was notably higher and largely unaffected by number of point lights and thus appears to rely on characteristic local motion, probably the unique upward curvature of the mouth. The findings indicate that recognition of facial expression is not a unitary process and that different expressions may be conveyed by different perceptual information, but in general, basic facial emotional expressions typically remain largely discriminable with as few as 6 dynamic point lights.

Does second-language (L2) syntactic influence on first-language (L1) reflect long-term changes to L1 syntax or occur only as a result of retrieval difficulties during time-constrained tasks? To evaluate L2 influence on L1 representation of animacy constraints (an element at the syntax–semantics interface) and word order (narrow syntax), we asked Korean–English bilingual speakers to judge sentences for grammaticality under both speeded and unspeeded conditions (Study 1) and to choose the more acceptable sentence of pairs that contained one grammatical and one ungrammatical sentence (Study 2). We found evidence for L2 influence on L1 animacy constraints in all cases and potential L2 influence on L1 word order in Study 1. These results indicate that L2 influence on L1 syntax can be observed even in conditions that reduce retrieval difficulty, implicating changes to underlying L1 representations. They also support the notion of greater susceptibility to change at the syntax–semantics interface.