Abstracts of the Psychonomic Society — Volume 14 — November ...

Friday Morning Papers 36–42
altruism. Hamilton, Williams, and Trivers delivered the necessary satisfaction.
But none of these authors considered in sufficient detail how
proximate constraints may constrain the evolution of particular forms
of altruism, despite their ultimate function. Here, I explore two forms
of social interaction that are evolutionarily plausible but that are either
extremely rare or absent in the animal kingdom: reciprocity and spite. I
argue that the weak comparative evidence is predicted once we consider
the requisite socioecological pressures and psychological mechanisms.
In particular, reciprocity and spite evolved in humans because of adaptive
demands on cooperation among unrelated individuals living in large
groups and because of the integrative capacities of inequity detection,
future- oriented decision making, and inhibitory control. I support these
arguments with new experiments on cotton-top tamarins and human
children.
11:25–11:45 (36)
Form and Function in Facial Expression of Emotion. ADAM K. AN-
DERSON, University of Toronto—Facial expressions are instrumental in
externalizing one’s internal emotional state and, thus, in regulating social
interactions. Over 130 years ago, Darwin hypothesized that emotional
expressions originated in a less appreciated functional role to modify
preparedness for perception and action. We provide evidence for two
of Darwin’s evolutionarily derived principles of emotional expressive
behavior in humans: (1) The principle of “serviceable associated habits”
expressions serve adaptive functions for the sender, and (2) the principle
of “antithesis” expressions with opposite functions are opposites
in form. Specifically, we show that facial expressions afford a primitive
sensory regulatory opposition to increase or decrease sensory intake. We
next examine the exaptation or co-opting of expressions for the purposes
of social communication, demonstrating how facial expression opposition
is mirrored in neural representations supporting expression recognition.
These convergent sources of evidence suggest facial expressions
are not arbitrarily shaped social signals but may have differentiated from
an underlying sensory origin.
11:45–11:55
General Discussion. SARA J. SHETTLEWORTH, University of Toronto.
Automatic Processing
Constitution Ballroom, Friday Morning, 10:00–11:55
Chaired by Philip A. Allen, University of Akron
10:00–10:15 (37)
Influence of Adult Age and Training on Dual-Task Crosswalk Performance.
PHILIP A. ALLEN, University of Akron, MEI-CHING
LIEN, Oregon State University, & ERIC RUTHRUFF, University of
New Mexico—We simulated a crosswalk within a psychological refractory
period (PRP) paradigm to determine whether attentional factors
might predispose older adults to have more pedestrian accidents. Task 1
was a walk/wait discrimination based on signal color (green/red), and
Task 2 was a pure-tone/car-horn discrimination. After a dual-task pretest,
participants received single-task training sessions on Task 1 for
6 weeks. Finally, there was a dual-task posttest. In both the pre- and
post-dual-task test, we found larger PRP effects for older adults than
for younger adults. Also, younger adults responded “wait” faster than
“walk” (Task 1) for the first session but showed similar response speed
for both stimulus types in the second session, whereas older adults
showed faster “walk” responses for both sessions. These results suggest
that older adults may have been biased to “walk,” whereas younger
adults were biased to “wait.”
10:20–10:35 (38)
Mind Wandering During Reading. CHRISTOPHER T. BALL &
K. ANDREW DeSOTO, College of William & Mary—Mind wandering
involves a shift in attention from a conscious focus on externally
directed cognitive tasks to an unfocused, internally directed series of
thoughts and mental images. Mind wandering regularly occurs during
reading, although the reasons why mind wandering happens when it
does and what effect it can have on the reading process are relatively
6
unknown. We report the results of two experiments where participants
were prompted to provide their state of awareness while reading. In the
first experiment, we compared the reader’s linguistic (verbatim recall
of sentence) and semantic (author’s purpose for sentence) processing
of sentences, and in the second experiment, we examined changes in
eye movements while sentences were read. Mind wandering during
reading resulted in significant decrements in sentence recall and comprehension.
Mind wandering also elicited significant changes in eye
movements (fixations, saccades, and regressions) during reading. The
implications of this research for understanding mind wandering and
reading are discussed.
10:40–10:55 (39)
On the Role of Spatial Attention in Visual Word Recognition. DEREK
BESNER, STEPHANIE WAECHTER, & JENNIFER A. STOLZ, University
of Waterloo—Many researchers appear to believe that attention
plays no necessary role when visually presented words are processed
(e.g., Lachter, Ruthruff, Lien, & McCann, 2008, among others). The
results of four new experiments (1) shed new light on why different laboratories
produce different results and (2) suggest that spatial attention is a
necessary preliminary to lexical processing when one reads aloud.
11:00–11:15 (40)
A Vector Model of the Simon Effect. ROBERT W. PROCTOR & MO-
TONORI YAMAGUCHI, Purdue University—Choice performance is
affected by the properties of stimulus and response sets, and effects of
these factors are not always independent. When interdependent, a joint
representation of the stimulus/response properties must be constructed.
An example of interdependence between stimulus and response properties
is the phenomenon known as the Simon effect. We propose that the
response selection processes underlying the Simon effect can be represented
by a vector model. In the model, stimuli and responses are represented,
respectively, by points in a psychological space and regions that
partition a vector. A stimulus representation is orthogonally projected
onto the vector, and a response is selected when the projected point falls
in the region corresponding to that response. We discuss relationships
between the vector model, signal detection theory, and associative network
models.
11:20–11:35 (41)
Reaching Trajectories and the Temporal Dynamics of Masked Congruence
Priming. MATTHEW S. FINKBEINER, Macquarie University—The
masked congruence priming effect (MCE) has proven valuable
in the investigation of nonconscious cognitive processes. Typically,
studies of the MCE use mean reaction times (RTs) as the dependent
measure. Although mean RTs certainly reveal an MCE, they are relatively
insensitive to the temporal properties of this effect. To investigate
the temporal dynamics of the MCE, we had participants perform a
reaching-to-touch response, and we sampled the position of their hand
multiple times during their response. The advantage of this continuous
measure was that it revealed the MCE as it emerged during the response.
In this presentation, I will report the time course of the MCE from three
experiments in which we manipulated the prime type (repeated primes
[also appeared as targets] vs. novel primes [did not appear as targets]),
spatial attention (prime attended vs. prime unattended), and prime duration
(~16.7 to ~66.7 msec).
11:40–11:55 (42)
A Polarity Correspondence Account of Comparative Number Magnitude
Judgments. ROLF REBER, University of Bergen, PASCAL
WURTZ, University of Bern, & LINN V. LERVIK & MARIT KNAP-
STAD, University of Bergen—When asked which number is greater,
participants respond faster when physical size corresponds to number
magnitude, such as in 3 7, than when the two attributes contradict each
other, such as in 3 7. This size congruence effect in comparative number
judgments is a well-documented phenomenon. We extend existing
findings by showing that this effect does not depend on physical size
of the number but can be observed with number symmetry. In addition,
we observed that symmetric numbers are judged as being smaller
than asymmetric numbers, which renders an interpretation of the number