Search

Conflicting theoretical accounts portray need for cognitive closure and its measurement tool either as a unidimensional construct or as combining two separate dimensions that independently tap cognitive processes of freezing and seizing. A study is presented which tested structural equation models representing these two perspectives and the result supported a two-factor structure, but the two dimensions, at least as operationalized here, did not map differentially onto seizing and freezing.

Five studies are reported that test the hypothesis that inductive inferences from behaviors to traits are performed more frequently than deductive inferences from traits to behaviors, a phenomenon referred to as the Induction-Deduction Asymmetry (I.D.A.). The experiments demonstrate that I.D.A. is a very robust phenomenon, but that it only occurs for information embedded in a social context.

To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.apergo.2005.06.004 Byline: Chris Baber Abstract: Tool use has traditionally been viewed as primarily a physical activity, with little consideration given to the cognitive aspects that might be involved. In this paper, a new approach to considering tool use in terms of Forms of Engagement is presented and discussed. This approach combines notions of schema from cognitive psychology with the idea of task-specific devices to explain psychomotor aspects of using tools. From the perspective of Forms of Engagement, various aspects of craftwork and skilled tool use are considered. Author Affiliation: Electronic, Electrical & Computer Engineering, The University of Birmingham, Birmingham, B15 2TT UK Article History: Received 23 June 2004; Accepted 6 June 2005

A study is undertaken to examine in a multiple-cue judgment task if people acquire rule or exemplar knowledge as a function of learning the task lone or in dyads. The result suggests more accurate judgment by dyads, evidence for an exemplar pooling effect, but no evidence for the social abstraction effect.

The study evaluated the criterion validity of the aggregated tasks of basic cognitive processes (TBCP). Results based on the latent factors in structural equation models largely confirmed the findings based on the observed aggregates and composites.

The research examined the relation between test-retest changes on scholastic aptitude tests and g-loaded cognitive measures. Principle components analysis indicated that aptitude test change scores had the lowest loading on the g factor, whereas the aptitude test raw scores and the cognitive measures had relative high loading on the g factor.

The level of bias in subtests' g loading is tested using the single trait-correlated uniqueness CFA modeling approach. The results demonstrated that verbal intelligence subtests, particularly crystallized intelligence subjects, often remain the most dominant 'g' loading subjects controlling for differences in group-level inter-subtest covariation and differences in subtest internal consistency reliability.

The study examines the extent to which training can moderate age-related differences in dual-task performance with two discrimination tasks, as used in psychological refractory period studies. The results indicate that, even when two tasks require similar motor responses, both older and younger adults, could learn to perform the task faster and more accurately.

A study was conducted to test the hypothesis that aging-induced cognitive permeation of sensorimotor functions contributes to adult age differences in spatial navigation performance. It revealed prononounced age-related differences in navigational place learning that interacted with demands of environmental topography or cognitive processes, indicating age-related differences in reliance on spatial relational learning.

Age differences in working memory for emotional versus visual information are examined. Findings demonstrate that, despite an age-related deficit for the latter, working memory for emotion was unimpaired and older adults exhibit superior performance on positive relative to negative emotion trials, whereas their younger counterparts exhibited the opposite pattern.

Older adults recruit cognitive control processes, to strengthen positive and diminish negative information in memory. Three experiments were conducted, the first one stated that older adults engaged in more elaborative processing when retrieving positive memories than when retrieving negative memories, while the second stated that older elders who did well on tasks involving cognitive control were more likely than those doing poorly to favor positive pictures in memory.

Multiple-step arithmetic problems can be solved by diverse strategies depending on the mental representation constructed by individuals from the situation described in the text of the problem. This representation will indeed determine the organization of subgoals to be reached or in other words the order of completion of calculations. This study aims at determining the conditions under which specific strategies are set up by adults. Using a paradigm that allows us to assess when calculations are performed, we show that adults usually organize their subgoals as they are explicitly mentioned in the problem, even though a strategy that is less demanding on working memory could have been used. However, we show that increasing the difficulty of the problem leads individuals to set up more economic strategies. Moreover, these economic strategies are even more likely to be used when the cognitive cost of the construction of the representation they rely on is low.

We propose that the crucial difference between human cognition and that of other species is the ability to participate with others in collaborative activities with shared goals and intentions: shared intentionality. Participation in such activities requires not only especially powerful forms of intention reading and cultural learning, but also a unique motivation to share psychological states with others and unique forms of cognitive representation for doing so. The result of participating in these activities is species-unique forms of cultural cognition and evolution, enabling everything from the creation and use of linguistic symbols to the construction of social norms and individual beliefs to the establishment of social institutions. In support of this proposal we argue and present evidence that great apes (and some children with autism) understand the basics of intentional action, but they still do not participate in activities involving joint intentions and attention (shared intentionality). Human children's skills of shared intentionality develop gradually during the first 14 months of life as two ontogenetie pathways intertwine: (1) the general ape line of understanding others as animate, goal-directed, and intentional agents; and (2) a species-unique motivation to share emotions, experience, and activities with other persons. The developmental outcome is children's ability to construct dialogic cognitive representations, which enable them to participate in earnest in the collectivity that is human cognition. Keywords: collaboration; cooperation; cultural learning; culture; evolutionary psychology; intentions; shared intentionality; social cognition; social learning; theory of mind; joint attention

The present experiments investigated how individuals' cognitive thinking styles and the influence agent's sex would affect the extent to which people mindfully respond to informational social influence. In Study 1, participants played a trivia game with an ostensible partner via computer and were presented with either real information that provided a rationale for the partner's choice or placebic information that merely restated accompanying self-confidence ratings in verbal format. As predicted, real information was more likely than was placebic information to elicit conformity (a) among high compared to low rationals, (b) when the partner expressed the highest ambiguity (50% confident), and (c) when a female compared to a male character represented the partner, albeit only among men. By employing more direct measures of information processing, reaction time and perceived validity of the partner's claims, Study 2 confirmed that greater acceptance of real rather than placebic information stemmed from more effortful message decoding. Keywords: mindlessness-mindfulness; rationality; informational social influence; sex

The nature of sparing and breakdown in non-linguistic representations of reference systems is examined to find any parallels and divergences in spatial language. The results indicate that non-linguistic spatial representations and spatial language share structure, even in cases of severe spatial impairment.

The authors review psychology's historical, competing perspectives on human motivation and propose a new comprehensive theory. The new theory is based on evolutionary principles as proposed by C. Darwin (1859) and modified by W. D. Hamilton (1964, 1996), R. L. Trivers (1971, 1972), and R. Dawkins (1989). The theory unifies biological, behavioral, and cognitive approaches to motivation. The theory is neuropsychological and addresses conscious and nonconscious processes that underlie motivation, emotion, and self-control. The theory predicts a hierarchical structure of motives that are measurable as individual differences in human behavior. These motives are related to social problem domains (D. B. Bugental, 2000; D. T. Kenrick, N. P. Li, & J. Butner, 2003), and each is hypothesized to solve a particular problem of human inclusive fitness. Key words: evolutionary psychology, motivation, motives, WE PROPOSE AN EVOLUTIONARY THEORY of human motivation, wherein motivation is defined as purposeful behavior that is ultimately directed toward the fundamental goal of inclusive fitness. We also propose that [...]

Cognitive psychology attempts to understand the nature of the human mind by using the information-processing approach. In this article, the fundamentals of the cognitive approach will be presented. It will be argued that the human mind can be described at three levels--computational, algorithmic-representational, and implementational--and that the cognitive approach has both important theoretical and practical/clinical implications. Finally, it will be suggested that the study of cognitive psychology can provide a foundation for other fields of social science, including the field of clinical psychology. Keywords: cognitive psychology; information-processing approach; human mind

Integrating the criticisms of the cognitive psychology approach offered by behavioral oriented professionals, as well as the information offered in this special issue of the Journal of Clinical Psychology, the article presents an overview of the theoretical and practical implications of the cognitive revolution on the clinical field and discusses the unique contribution of this approach beyond the contribution of the behavioral approach. Keywords: evidence-based psychology and psychotherapy; conclusions

Cognitive psychology has made numerous contributions to clinical psychology, and these contributions are considered especially with reference to the anxiety disorders. It is argued that there are four major contributions that can be identified. First, the cognitive approach has led to the development of complex models showing the main cognitive processes and structures of relevance to an understanding of anxiety disorders. Second, controlled laboratory studies permit a more detailed investigation of cognitive biases in anxious patients than generally is feasible in more naturalistic settings. Third, the cognitive approach provides relevant evidence with respect to the issue of whether cognitive biases play a role in the development and maintenance of anxiety disorders. Fourth, the enhanced understanding of the anxiety disorders that has arisen from the cognitive approach has had beneficial effects on therapeutic practice in a number of significant ways. In sum, it is claimed that clinical psychology has benefited considerably from cognitive theory and research. Keywords: anxiety disorders; safety-seeking behaviors; social phobia; cognitive biases

The author examines methods of teaching writing in schools and non-school environments. Topics include social interaction, writing techniques, and didactic instruction.

Byline: Philipp Gonon (1) Abstract: In German-speaking countries, John Dewey came tobe considered a school reformer, an advocate of theproject method and as the propagator of acognitivistic psychology of learning. His ideas onsocio-political reform, on the other hand, wereignored, partly intentionally, partly due to a lack offamiliarity with them in detail. His major pedagogicalwork, Democracy and Education received littleattention. In what follows, this selective view ofDewey is discussed mainly on the basis of internalpedagogical theoretical positions. Author Affiliation: (1) Universitat Trier, Germany Article History: Registration Date: 08/10/2004

Byline: Michael D. Hurd (1) Keywords: assets; anchoring; acquiescence bias Abstract: Cognitive psychology has identified and studied extensively a number of cognitive anomalies that may be important for the assessment of the economic status of individuals and households. In particular the use of brackets to elicit information about income and assets in surveys of households can interact with acquiescence bias and anchoring to cause bias in the estimates of the distributions of income and assets. This paper uses data from the Health and Retirement Study and the Asset and Health Dynamics Study to find that, as predicted by psychology, bracketing can produce bias in population estimates of assets. Author Affiliation: (1) RAND, SUNY, Stony Brook, NBER Article History: Registration Date: 28/09/2004

To investigate the effect of age and mood on saccadic function, we recorded prosaccades, predictive saccades, and antisaccades from 238 cognitively normal physically healthy volunteers aged 44 to 85 years old. Mood levels were measured using the State- Trait Anxiety Inventory and Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale inventories. Small, but significant, positive relationships with age were observed for the mean latency and associated variability of latency for all types of saccades, as well as the antisaccade error rate. Saecade velocity or accuracy was unaffected by age. Increasing levels of depression had a minor negative influence on the antisaccade latency, whereas increasing levels of anxiety raised the antisaccade error rate marginally.

Individuals scoring either High, Medium, or Low on the Homosexism Short-Form scale (Hansen, 1982) made speeded decisions to neutral (N), mildly provocative (MP), or very provocative (VP) statements regarding issues relating to homophobia. These three groups did not differ on age, education, reading rate, or vocabulary ability. It was predicted that individuals High in homophobia would produce faster reaction times to the VP sentences than those individuals scoring Medium or Low in homophobia. Results indicated the opposite pattern. Individuals scoring High in homophobia actually had slower reaction times to VP sentences than did either the Medium or Low homophobia individuals. Results are discussed within an inhibitory framework related to the High homophobia individuals' overall homophobia schema.

This study examined associations of community violence exposure and psychological well-being among 99 8-12 year old children (M = 10.7 years) using home interviews with mothers and children. Both moderators and mediators of the links between violence exposure and well-being were tested. After demographics and concurrent life stressors were controlled for, violence exposure was significantly associated with intrusive thinking, anxiety, and depression. Regression analyses indicated that intrusive thinking partially mediated associations between violence exposure and internalizing symptoms. Planned comparisons revealed that violence exposure had the strongest effect on wellbeing among children with low social support or high levels of social strains. Furthermore, children with high levels of intrusive thinking were most likely to show heightened internalizing symptoms when they had inadequate social support.

There is a gap in scientific understanding of psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia, between neurophysiological models of etiology and the behavioral expressions of the disorders. More complete cognitive models are needed to fill that gap. Such models would set neurophysiological models in a more meaningful context, would show how biological processes produce social-behavioral impairments, and would inform both biological and psychosocial treatment strategies. To be fully functional, however, cognitive models must address two key principles: diathesis-stress in the course of schizophrenia, and the nature of reciprocal causality in complex, self-regulating biosystems.

A number of measurement techniques designed to assess cognitive and behavioral complexity are considered. While early measures limit their focus to interpersonal differentiation, later measures consider differentiation, integration, and, in one case, various other aspects of information processing structure. Objective paper-and-pencil measures, subjective response assessment, and simulation technology are briefly described.

A theory is described that provides a detailed model of how people recall serial lists of items. This theory is based on the Adaptive Character of Thought-Rational (ACT-R) production system (J. R. Anderson, 1993). It assumes that serial lists are represented as hierarchical structures consisting of groups and items within groups. Declarative knowledge units encode the position of items and of groups within larger groups. Production rules use this positional information to organize the serial recall of a list of items. In ACT-R, memory access depends on a limited-capacity activation process, and errors can occur in the contents of recall because of a partial matching process. These limitations conspire in a number of ways to produce the limitations in immediate memory span: As the span increases, activation must be divided among more elements, activation decays more with longer recall times, and there are more opportunities for positional and acoustic confusions. The theory is shown to be capable of predicting both latency and error patterns in serial recall. It addresses effects of serial position, list length, delay, word length, positional confusion, acoustic confusion, and articulatory suppression.

This study examined the cognitive effects of self-referencing in math word problems in 100 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders. Two types of compare problems were used: compare unknown (CU) and referent unknown (RU). The word you was placed in the problems either as the known or the unknown term. For the CU problems, self-referencing facilitated students' performance regardless of the position of the you term. When self-referencing was applied, students asked for fewer repeats and solved these CU problems faster and with greater accuracy. For the RU problems, however, students benefited from self-referencing only when the self term was placed as the compare (known) term. When the you term was placed as the referent term, the facilitative effect of self-referencing disappeared. The position of the you term in a RU problem apparently has an impact on the translation procedure required in solving the problem. Further research on the cognitive processing issues raised by these data is suggested and the educational implications of the findings are discussed.

In this study the authors examine the effects of procedures adapted from the cognitive interview of R. E. Geiselman, R. P. Fisher, D. P. MacKinnon, and H. L. Holland (1985) on children's recall following exposure to misleading suggestions. Children aged 5-7 years and 9-11 years saw a videotaped story and were presented with misleading or neutral information concerning story details. All were later given free- and cued-recall tests preceded by standard interview instructions or instructions that reinstated the encoding context and encouraged exhaustive reporting. Increased recall accuracy was found following cognitive interview instructions. Both age groups were susceptible to misleading suggestions, but susceptibility was unaffected by interview type. The authors discuss the implications for interviewing child witnesses.

Subjects performed a task that involved learning a text and then indicating, for each of a series of pairs of words, whether they belonged to the same sentence of that text. When the principle of argument overlap or causal coherence was the sole integrative factor in a text, negative response times and error rates reflected distances in the network representation predicted by the principle. When the two principles predicted conflicting representations for a text, response times and error rates reflected the predictions of the principle of argument overlap. The results were interpreted as suggesting that network connections predicted by the two principles are both present in the memory representations of texts and that causal connections are recorded at a more abstract level of representation than are argument overlap connections.

Byline: Iris M. Yob (1) Abstract: Israel Scheffler's 'In Praise of the Cognitive Emotions' (1977, 1991) extends earlier analyses of the role of emotions in rational undertakings. It shows that some emotions -- 'rational passions,' 'perceptive feelings,' 'theoretical imagination' and 'cognitive emotions' -- are essentially cognitive in origin and may serve cognitive purposes. Though it analyszes the interplay of emotion and cognition, cognition is the focus and the emotions that are examined revolve about it. This prompts us to wonder about the effect of a 'Copernican revolution.' If emotion were to be put in the center, would there also be cognitions which are essentially emotional in origin and/or serve emotional purposes? Here we explore the possibility of 'informed expression,' 'emotional cognizance' and 'emotional cognitions,' drawing primarily from aesthetic, religious, spiritual, and ethical experience. Author Affiliation: (1) P.O. Box 6595, Bloomington, IN, 47407, U.S.A Article History: Registration Date: 30/09/2004