Current Directions in Psychological Science
December
2008 (Volume 17, Issue 6, In Press
)
Original Articles
Spatial Representations From Perception and Cognitive Mediation: The Case of Ultrasound
Roberta L. Klatzky, Bing Wu, and George Stetten
Spatial representations can be derived not only by direct perception, but also through cognitive mediation. Conventional or ex-situ ultrasound displays, which displace imaged data to a remote screen, require both types of process. To determine the depth of a target hidden beneath a surface, ultrasound users must both perceive how deeply the ultrasound transducer indents the surface and interpret the on-screen image to visualize how deeply the target lies below the transducer. Combining these perceptual and cognitive depth components requires a spatial representation that has been called amodal. We report experiments measuring errors in perceptual and cognitively mediated depth estimates and show that these estimates can be concatenated (linked) without further error, providing evidence for an amodal representation. We further contrast conventional ultrasound with an in-situ display whereby an ultrasound image appears to float at the precise location being imaged, enabling the depth of a target to be directly perceived. The research has the potential to enhance ultrasound-guided surgical intervention.
Identity, Belonging, and Achievement: A Model, Interventions, Implications
Geoffrey L. Cohen and Julio Garcia
In this article we discuss how social or group identities affect achievement. We also present a model of identity engagement that describes how a salient social identity can trigger psychological threat and belonging concerns and how these can produce persistent performance decrements, which through feedback loops can increase over time. The character of such processes may be revealed only over time because they are recursive in nature and interact with other factors in chronically evaluative social environments. Finally, we address how this model helped in the development of successful interventions.
Mechanisms Linking Early Experience and the Emergence of Emotions: Illustrations From the Study of Maltreated Children
Seth D. Pollak
Emotions are complex processes that are essential for survival and adaptation. Recent studies of children and animals are shedding light on how the developing brain learns to rapidly respond to signals in the environment, assess the emotional significance of this information, and in so doing adaptively regulate subsequent behavior. Here, I describe studies of children and nonhuman primates who are developing within emotionally aberrant environments. Examining these populations provides new insights on the ways in which social or interpersonal contexts influence development of the neural systems underlying emotional behavior.
Understanding Sentences in Context: What Brain Waves Can Tell Us
Language comprehension looks pretty easy. You pick up a novel and simply enjoy the plot, or ponder the human condition. You strike a conversation and listen to whatever the other person has to say. Although what you’re taking in is a bunch of letters and sounds, what you really perceive—if all goes well—is meaning. But how do you get from one to the other so easily? The experiments with brain waves (event-related brain potentials or ERPs) reviewed here show that the linguistic brain rapidly draws upon a wide variety of information sources, including prior text and inferences about the speaker. Furthermore, people anticipate what might be said about whom, they use heuristics to arrive at the earliest possible interpretation, and if it makes sense, they sometimes even ignore the grammar. Language comprehension is opportunistic, proactive, and, above all, immediately context-dependent.
In Search of the Right Touch: Interpersonal Assertiveness in Organizational Life
Daniel R. Ames
Recent evidence suggests that many organizational members and leaders are seen as under- or over-assertive by colleagues, suggesting that having the “right touch” with interpersonal assertiveness is a meaningful and widespread challenge. In this article, I review emerging work on the curvilinear relation between assertiveness and effectiveness, including evidence from both qualitative descriptions of coworkers and ratings of colleagues and leaders. I discuss mediators and context effects and also explore why unhelpfully low and high levels of interpersonal assertiveness may emerge and persist. I draw implications for interventions as well as future research.
Repeated Interviews and Children’s Memory: It’s More Than Just How Many
A crucial issue in the study of eyewitness memory concerns effects of repeated interviews on children’s memory accuracy. There is growing belief that exposure to repeated interviews causes increased errors. In some situations, it may. Yet, several studies reveal increased accuracy with repeated interviewing, even when the interviews include misleading questions. We review repeated-interview research in relation to event veracity, interviewer bias, and delay. We conclude that when and how children are interviewed is at least as important for their accuracy as is how many times they are interviewed.
Can Personality Be Changed? The Role of Beliefs in Personality and Change
Carol S. Dweck
Using recent research, I argue that beliefs lie at the heart of personality and adaptive functioning and that they give us unique insight into how personality and functioning can be changed. I focus on two classes of beliefs—beliefs about the malleability of self-attributes and expectations of social acceptance versus rejection—and show how modest interventions have brought about important real-world changes. I conclude by suggesting that beliefs are central to the way in which people package their experiences and carry them forward, and that beliefs should play a more central role in the study of personality.
The Evolutionary Persistence of Genes That Increase Mental Disorders Risk
Matthew C. Keller
Natural selection constantly removes those genetic variants (alleles) that even slightly decrease average reproductive success. Yet, given the high heritabilities and prevalence rates of severe mental disorders, human populations seem to be awash in deleterious alleles. Evolutionary genetics offers an illuminating framework for understanding why mental disorder risk alleles have persisted despite natural selection, and this framework can help guide future research in behavioral and psychiatric genetics.
Is Crying Beneficial?
Jonathan Rottenberg, Lauren M. Bylsma, and Ad J.J.M. Vingerhoets
Lay opinion and extensive survey data indicate that crying is a cathartic behavior that serves to relieve distress and reduce arousal. Yet laboratory data often indicate that crying exacerbates distress and increases autonomic arousal. In this article, we present a framework for explaining variations in the psychological effects of crying as a function of (a) how the effects of crying are measured, (b) conditions in the social environment, (c) personality traits of the crier, and (d) the affective state of the crier. Recognizing the heterogeneity of crying effects represents a step toward a more nuanced understanding of this behavior, including its implications for psychosocial adjustment.
Speech Perception as a Multimodal Phenomenon
Speech perception is inherently multimodal. Visual speech (lip-reading) information is used by all perceivers and readily integrates with auditory speech. Imaging research suggests that the brain treats auditory and visual speech similarly. These findings have led some researchers to consider that speech perception works by extracting amodal information that takes the same form across modalities. From this perspective, speech integration is a property of the input information itself. Amodal speech information could explain the reported automaticity, immediacy, and completeness of audiovisual speech integration. However, recent findings suggest that speech integration can be influenced by higher cognitive properties such as lexical status and semantic context. Proponents of amodal accounts will need to explain these results.
Cultured Monkeys: Social Learning Cast in Stones
Sixty years ago, the notion that animals could have culture was unthinkable to most behavioral scientists. Today, evidence for innovation, transmission, acquisition, long-term maintenance, and intergroup variation of behavior exists throughout the animal kingdom. What can the longitudinal and comparative study of monkeys handling stones tell us about how culture evolved in humans? Now in its 30th year, the systematic study of stone-handling behavior in multiple troops of Japanese macaques has shown that socially mediated learning is essential to explain the spread, persistence, and transformation of individual behavioral innovations among group members. The integrative research paradigm presented here can be applied to the study of various candidate behavioral traditions in other species.
Translating Family-Focused Prevention Science Into Effective Practice: Toward a Translational Impact Paradigm
Richard Spoth
Family-focused preventive intervention research could serve as an exemplar for the translation of science into practice on a scale that achieves public health impact. This article outlines advances in the field and translational research that still is needed, presenting these within a heuristic framework. The framework is designed to guide a broad translational research agenda fostering a shift toward a paradigm of public health impact—called a translational impact paradigm. Current advances and needed research in the subfield are mapped onto a set of four translational impact factors: effectiveness of interventions; extensiveness of their population coverage; efficiency of interventions; and engagement of eligible populations or organizations, including widespread adoption and sustained, quality implementation (the “4 Es” of intervention impact). The article then highlights key tasks required to progress in this area: improving practitioner–scientist partnership networks embedded in systems for delivery of evidence-based interventions; application of research guidelines and standards that facilitate translational impact; and policy change that supports needed research.