A fundamental problem that organisms face in a changing environment is how to regulate dynamically the balance between stable maintenance and flexible switching of goals and cognitive sets. The authors show that positive affect plays an important role in the regulation of this stability-flexibility balance. In a cognitive set-switching paradigm,…

Phonotactic probability, neighborhood density, and onset density were manipulated in 4 picture-naming tasks. Experiment 1 showed that pictures of words with high phonotactic probability were named more quickly than pictures of words with low phonotactic probability. This effect was consistent over multiple presentations of the pictures (Experiment…

T. Trabasso and J. Bartolone (see record 2003-07955-016) used a computational model of narrative text comprehension to account for empirical findings. The authors show that the same predictions are obtained without running the model. This is caused by the model's computational setup, which leaves most of the model's input unchanged.

Strong evidence suggests that prior syntactic context affects language production (e.g., J. K. Bock, 1986). The authors report 4 experiments that used an expression-picture matching task to investigate whether it also affects ambiguity resolution in comprehension. All experiments examined the interpretation of prepositional phrases that were…

K. J. Malmberg, J. Holden, and R. M. Shiffrin (2004) reported more false alarms for low- than high-frequency words when the foils were similar to the targets. According to the source of activation confusion (SAC) model of memory, that pattern is based on recollection of an underspecified episodic trace rather than the error-prone familiarity…

Format dependence implies that assessment of the same subjective probability distribution produces different conclusions about over- or underconfidence depending on the assessment format. In 2 experiments, the authors demonstrate that the overconfidence bias that occurs when participants produce intervals for an uncertain quantity is almost…

An ambiguity disadvantage (slower responses for ambiguous words, e.g., bank, than for unambiguous words) has been reported in semantic tasks (L. R. Gottlob, S. D. Goldinger, G. O. Stone, & G. C. Van Orden, 1999; Y. Hino, S. J. Lupker, & P. M. Pexman, 2002; C. D. Piercey & S. Joordens, 2000) and has been attributed to the meaning activation…

This article discusses the promise and problems associated with integrating research on child temperament and research on childhood psychopathology. Unfortunately, these 2 extensive and influential areas of psychological research with children have largely been conducted independently of each other. This article provides a summary of the…

Comments on the study by J. G. Adair and N. Vohra (see record 2003-02034-002) of changes in the number of references and citations in psychology journals as a consequence of the current knowledge explosion. They made a striking observation of the sometimes excessive number of self-citations in psychology journals. However, after this illustration,…

Confidence-accuracy (CA) calibration was examined for absolute and relative face recognition judgments as well as for recognition judgments from groups of stimuli presented simultaneously or sequentially (i.e., simultaneous or sequential mini-lineups). When the effect of difficulty was controlled, absolute and relative judgments produced…

In the 20 years since the founding of the "Journal of Interpersonal Violence," there have been exciting new discoveries on the long-term physical health effects of family violence. As exciting as these discoveries have been, we still know little about why the experience of family violence makes people sick. Some of the most promising areas of…

Psychologists occasionally study eminent individuals, such as Nobellaureates, U.S. presidents, Olympic athletes, chess grandmasters, movie stars, and even distinguished psychologists. Studies using such significant samples may be differentiated along 7 distinct dimensions: qualitative versus quantitative, single versus multiple case, nomothetic…

The study of the neural basis of face perception is a major research interest today. This review traces its roots in monkey neuropsychology and neurophysiology beginning with the Kluver-Bucy syndrome and its fractionation and then continuing with lesion and single neuron recording studies of inferior temporal cortex. The context and consequence of…

The authors examined the evolution of cognitive and emotional responses to terror risks for a nationally representative sample of Americans between late 2001 and late 2002. Respondents' risk judgments changed in ways consistent with their reported personal experiences. However, they did not recognize these changes, producing hindsight bias in…

Previous research by J. M. Hinson, T. L. Jameson, and P. Whitney (2003) demonstrated that a secondary task in a delayed discounting paradigm increased subjects' preference for the immediate reward. J. M. Hinson et al. interpreted their findings as evidence that working memory load results in greater impulsivity. The present authors conducted a…