Hedy White

Semantic priming in young and older adults: Evidence for age constancy in automatic and attentional processes.

Automatic and attentional components of semantic priming and the relation of each to episodic memory were evaluated in young and older adults. Category names served as prime words, and the relatedness of the prime to a subsequent lexical decision target was varied orthogonally with whether the target category was expected or unexpected. At a prime-target stimulus-onset asynchrony (SOA) of 410 ms, target words in the same category had faster lexical decision latencies than did different category targets. This effect was not significant at a 1,550-ms SOA and was attributed to automatic processes. Expected category targets had faster latencies than unexpected category targets at the 410-ms SOA, and the magnitude of the effect increased at the 1,550-ms SOA. This effect was attributed to attentional processes. These patterns of priming were obtained for both age groups, but in a surprise memory test older adults had poorer recall of primes and targets. We discuss the implications of these results for the hypothesis that older adults suffer deficits in selective attention and for the related hypothesis that attentional deficits impair semantic processing, which causes memory decrements in old age.

Sex Differences in Attitudes Toward Suicide: Do Males Stigmatize Males?

This study compares female and male reactions to troubled female and male target figures. The results replicate the findings of four earlier studies that showed that females are move sympathetic than males toward suicidal target figures. Unlike previous studies, however, by using a non-suicidal comparison condition, this study also shows that female sympathy ratings were not influenced by whether or not target figures were suicidal. Male ratings did show such an influence: males were most sympathetic to non-suicidal male targets and least sympathetic to suicidal male targets. Results are discussed in the light of sex-role stereotyping of males.

Ageism and sexism in suicide attitudes

Abstract This study was designed to measure attitudes toward suicide by sex and age. The SAVE-A scale was used to measure attitudes toward suicidal adolescents. A new inventory (the SAVE-L scale) was created to measure attitudes toward elderly suicidal people. The SAVE-L scale was found to possess good levels of internal consistency, to correlate in the expected direction with two concurrent validity measures and to break into the same three unitary factors found for the SAVE-A scale: sympathy, empathy, and agreement. Significant differences were found on each factor. Old suicidal females received the least sympathy from all age and sex subjects while young females received the most. With the exception of old female subjects, who empathized the most with old female target figures, the same pattern emerged on the factor of empathy. All subject groups showed higher agreement with suicide attempts for old females than for any other target group. The suggestion is made that devaluing of elderly females might ...

Feminist Humor: Who Appreciates it and Why?:

Despite popular-media claims that feminists lack a sense of humor, there has been little actual research investigating feminist humor and peoples reactions to it. Three experiments investigated reactions to humorous feminist slogans that subjects classified into thematic categories. Subjects in Experiment 1 were females and males, over 30 years old, who considered themselves feminists or strongly sympathetic toward feminism. Experiment 2 used female and male undergraduates, under 30 years old, with varying levels of sympathy towards feminism. Subjects in Experiment 3 were students enrolled in the 6th, 8th, and 10th grades of a summer enrichment program for academically gifted students. The females in Experiment 1 gave the highest humor ratings, while the females in the second experiment gave the lowest ratings. In Experiment 3, sex differences in humor ratings were not reliable, but ratings of the extent to which subjects agreed with the slogans were higher for females than for males. The results of the three experiments suggest that both gender and feminist sympathy influence reactions to feminist humor.

Hemispheric asymmetries in interpreting forms vs colors in ambiguous patterns

Prior to receiving briefly lateralized presentations of ambiguous visual patterns (Rorschach inkblots), 28 normal right-handed males heard two words, each describing a different interpretation of the pattern, e.g., one word might describe an interpretation based on attending to shapes or forms (form choices) and the other might describe an interpretation based on attending to chromatic color (e.g., color choices). Color choices were more frequent than form choices on left-hemisphere (LH) presentations of the patterns, and form choices were more frequent than color choices on right-hemisphere (RH) presentations. These results were interpreted as consistent with the theory that the LHs favored mental representation is semantic (i.e., frequent choices of concepts associated with names of colors in the patterns) and the RHs favored representation is imaginal (i.e., frequent choices of concepts associated with difficult-to-label forms in the patterns).

Semantic congruity and expectancy as separate processes

In two experiments, we investigated the role of expectancy in producing congruity effects in comparative judgment. In Experiment 1, instructions to choose the larger or smaller term either preceded pairs for comparative judgment or preceded individual words for lexical decision. If expectancy in interpreting the comparative judgment terms accounts for the congruity effect, the lexical decision task also should show a congruity effect. However, there were large congruity effects in comparative judgment but not in lexical decision. In this experiment, we used an infiniteset design to make sure that semantic information was needed on comparative judgment trials. In Experiment 2, comparative judgment pairs were preceded by a prime word that either was or was not a category label for the terms in the pairs. There were both congruity and priming effects, with no interaction between the two. This result implies that expectancy and the semanticcongruity effect come from separate processes.

Remembering details in stories about childhood sexual abuse.

Abstract Under this heading are brief reports of studies providing data that substantiate, disprove, or refine what we think we know. These Notes consist of a summary of the studys procedure and as many details about the results as space allows. Additional details concerning the results can be obtained by communicating directly with the author.

Laterality effects in symbolic judgment: The influence of semantic congruity on hemispheric processing

In two experiments, we used lateralized versions of the comparative judgment paradigm to investigate the effects of semantic congruity on hemispheric processing of symbolic information. When the comparative adjectives used in instructions were congruent with the scale end from which stimulus terms were drawn, reaction times were shorter when the hemisphere to which the terms were lateralized also controlled the hand used to register the response than when instructions and stimuli were semantically incongruent. These laterality-effect patterns suggest that hemispheric cooperation increases processing efficiency.

Hemispheric resource limitations in comprehending ambiguous pictures

Ambiguous pictures (Roschach inkblots) were lateralized for 100 msec vs. 200 msec to the right and left hemispheres (RH and LH) of 32 normal right-handed males who determined which of two previously presented words (an accurate or inaccurate one) better described the inkblot. Over the first 32 trials, subjects receiving each stimulus exposure duration were less accurate when the hemisphere receiving the stimulus also controlled the hand used to register a keypress response (RH-left hand and LH-right hand trials) than when hemispheric resources were shared, i.e., when one hemisphere controlled stimulus processing and the other controlled response programming. These differences were eliminated when the 32 trials were repeated.

The Development of Combinatorial Reasoning: The Role of Cognitive Capacity

ABSTRACT This study investigated the effects of information-processing demands on the performance of 56 second through fifth-graders on combinatorial ordering problems. Children were tested on Piagetian colored token problems after they had practiced producing orderings in one of four experimental conditions. The four conditions resulted from a factorial arrangement of two techniques. The first was hypothesized to reduce information-processing demands by requiring children to use counting principles to order elements from a well-learned and meaningful series (for example, of digits). The second technique was intended to encourage children to recognize for themselves the need for an efficient system by requiring them to predict problem solutions. Results suggested that successful performance on a combinatorial problem may depend upon the tasks information-processing demands not exceeding the childs cognitive capacity.