Automatic vigilance for negative words in lexical decision and naming : comment on Larsen, Mercer, and Balota (2006)

An automatic vigilance hypothesis states that humans preferentially attend to negative stimuli, and this attention to negative valence disrupts the processing of other stimulus properties. Thus, negative words typically elicit slower color naming, word naming, and lexical decisions than neutral or positive words. Larsen, Mercer, and Balota (see record 2006-04603-006) analyzed the stimuli from 32 published studies, and they found that word valence was confounded with several lexical factors known to affect word recognition. Indeed, with these lexical factors covaried out, Larsen et al. found no evidence of automatic vigilance. The authors report a more sensitive analysis of 1011 words. Results revealed a small but reliable valence effect, such that negative words (e.g., "shark") elicit slower lexical decisions and naming than positive words (e.g., "beach"). Moreover, the relation between valence and recognition was categorical rather than linear; the extremity of a word's valence did not affect its recognition. This valence effect was not attributable to word length, frequency, orthographic neighborhood size, contextual diversity, first phoneme, or arousal. Thus, the present analysis provides the most powerful demonstration of automatic vigilance to date

Automatic vigilance for negative words is categorical and general

With other factors controlled, negative words elicit slower lexical decisions and naming than positive words (Estes & Adelman, 2008; see record 2008-09984-001). Moreover, this marked difference in responding to negative words and to positive words (i.e., between-category discontinuity) was accompanied by relatively uniform responding among negative words (i.e., within-category equivalence), thus suggesting a categorical model of automatic vigilance. Larsen, Mercer, Balota, and Strube (this issue; see record 2008-09984-002) corroborated our observation that valence predicts lexical decision and word naming latencies. However, on the basis of an interaction between linear arousal and linear valence, they claim that automatic vigilance does not occur among arousing stimuli and they purport to reject the categorical model. Here we show that (a) this interaction is logically irrelevant to whether automatic vigilance is categorical; (b) the linear interaction is statistically consistent with the categorical model; (c) the interaction is not observed within the categorical model; and (d) despite having 5 fewer parameters, the categorical model predicts word recognition times as well as the interaction model. Thus, automatic vigilance is categorical and generalizes across levels of arousa

The effects of achievement goals and feedback on performance: with a prologue on an individual search for meaning

What does it mean to be an individual? The development of an individual is not something that occurs instantaneously. Instead, over time we use our experiences and life stories to help us define and elaborate on our identities. Goals entice people toward action. Actions are given meaning, direction, and purpose by the goals we seek. Every goal is a desired outcome situated in the future. By examining goals, we better understand a person\u27s needs and their motivation for their behavior. Our needs, and thus our goals, vary based on the situations we find ourselves in throughout our lives. By identifying our traits and knowing our goals, both past and present, we are able to weave together our storied self. Our storied self is our narrative identity. It is what separates us from every single other person who is currently living, has lived, or ever will live. Along each stage of life development, we add more experiences to our life stories in the hope that by the end of our lives we will have written a story that is personally meaningful and memorable. Thus, being an individual means writing a meaningful story, having the potential to live life with purpose, and, in the author\u27s case, living to seek the magis

The Comparative Ecology of Two Populations of the Troglobitic Isopod Crustacean \u3ci\u3eLirceus Usdagalun\u3c/i\u3e (Asellidae)

Aquatic communities of two caves in Lee Co., Virginia, were compared, and an examination was made of the life history phenomena of the troglobitic isopod Lirceus usdagalun. Measurements of physical and biological parameters were made in Thompson Cedar Cave and Gallohan Cave No. l. A contagious distribution was exhibited by populations of L. usdagalun in both caves and also by the population of another troglobitic isopod, Caecidotea recurvata, in Gallohan Cave No. 1. This distribution was attributed to aggregations of individuals which were considered to occur in areas of preference or optimal habitat patches. Lirceus usdagalun exhibited a greater density in fast moving water and C. recurvata generally exhibited a greater density in slow moving water. The virtual absence of C. recurvata from Thompson Cedar Cave was presumably the result of higher stream flows than in Gallohan Cave No. 1, where it maintains a population due to a seasonal increase in density during a period of low stream flow in the summer. Other factors such as silt, detritus and fused gravel appeared to have an adverse effect on the population densities of both isopods. Crangonyx antennatus, a troglobitic amphipod, had small populations in both caves. Variations in body length, sex ratio and seasonal densities of L. usdagalun appear to be the result of varying degrees and types (lnterspecific or intraspeclfic) of competition, as well as differences in the physical environment

Comparison and contrast in perceptual categorization

People categorized pairs of perceptual stimuli that varied in both category membership and pairwise similarity. Experiments 1 and 2 showed categorization of 1 color of a pair to be reliably contrasted from that of the other. This similarity-based contrast effect occurred only when the context stimulus was relevant for the categorization of the target (Experiment 3). The effect was not simply owing to perceptual color contrast (Experiment 4), and it extended to pictures from common semantic categories (Experiment 5). Results were consistent with a sign-and-magnitude version of N. Stewart and G. D. A. Brown's (2005) similarity-dissimilarity generalized context model, in which categorization is affected by both similarity to and difference from target categories. The data are also modeled with criterion setting theory (M. Treisman & T. C. Williams, 1984), in which the decision criterion is systematically shifted toward the mean of the current stimuli

The unexplained nature of reading.

The effects of properties of words on their reading aloud response times (RTs) are 1 major source of evidence about the reading process. The precision with which such RTs could potentially be predicted by word properties is critical to evaluate our understanding of reading but is often underestimated due to contamination from individual differences. We estimated this precision without such contamination individually for 4 people who each read 2,820 words 50 times each. These estimates were compared to the precision achieved by a 31-variable regression model that outperforms current cognitive models on variance-explained criteria. Most (around 2/3) of the meaningful (non-first-phoneme, non-noise) word-level variance remained unexplained by this model. Considerable empirical and theoretical-computational effort has been expended on this area of psychology, but the high level of systematic variance remaining unexplained suggests doubts regarding contemporary accounts of the details of the mechanisms of reading at the level of the word. Future assessment of models can take advantage of the availability of our precise participant-level database

Interdisciplinary capstone design: Architects, structural engineers, and construction managers

The College of Architecture and Environmental Design at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo is the only college in the nation that has departments of Architecture, Architectural Engineering, Construction Management and Landscape Architecture in the same college. The institution has a 60 year tradition of collaboration between the engineering, architecture and construction disciplines, particularly at the lower division level. To enhance this collaboration, the college committed to providing an upper division, interdisciplinary experience to every student in the form of a project based, team oriented five unit studio laboratory that every student would take. The course is now in its third year and requires small teams of architecture, engineering, construction and landscape architecture students to complete the schematic level design of an actual building for a real client. The challenges in creating and executing such a course fall into three major areas: institutional, logistical and pedagogical. Institutional issues include university support and concurrence from four different department heads. Logistical issues range from finding open time within the four schedules to offer the course and securing physical locations for small and large group meeting areas to the seemingly mundane tasks of ensuring all students are in the correct location and finding common times for the instructors to meet. Pedagogically, the course needs a unified and integrated approach that must be agreed to and implemented by all professors. Traditionally professors work as individuals and team teaching of this magnitude is a paradigm shift that requires significant time, a flexible mindset and a commitment to collaborate. This paper reports on the progress of this course using survey assessment data and direct performance indicators. These same data provide valuable support to the 3 a-k ABET program criteria. The variety of projects undertaken to date illustrates the flexibility of this course. The paper describes how the challenges listed above have been overcome particularly concerning the role of the faculty in the course and the merging of very different department cultures. Finally, the future of the course and the suggested improvements are highlighted

Identifying the Effects of Religious Participation on the Therapeutic Treatment of the Mentally Ill

This study is concerned with identifying the effects of religious participation in the therapeutic treatment of the mentally ill