An anti-inertial motion bias explains people discounting inertial motion of carried objects.

In this paper we propose an anti-inertial motion (AIM) bias that can explain several intuitive physics beliefs including the straight-down belief and beliefs held concerning the pendulum problem. We show how the AIM bias also explains two new beliefs that we explore - a straight-up-and-down belief as well as a straight-out/backward bias that occurs for objects traveling in one plane that are then thrown in another plane, ostensibly affording a greater opportunity for perception of canonical motion. We then show how the AIM bias in general is invariant across perceived/imagined speed of the object carrier, only altering percentages of straight-out from backward responses, and why occluding the carrier once the object is released into a second plane does not result in more veridical perception.

Narcissistic motivations to help during the COVID-19 quarantine.

We examined the extent to which trait narcissism was associated with helping behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic. We hypothesized that people higher in agentic grandiose narcissism would help during the COVID-19 quarantine for egoistic reasons and that communal grandiose narcissists would help because they care for the people in the community. Because vulnerable narcissists tend to self-protect, we expected them to be less helpful overall and report helping to either make themselves feel better or avoid social disapproval.

Effects of narcissism in essential workers during COVID-19.

We studied essential workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. We hypothesized that trait narcissists would communicate more about their work during the pandemic because their work elevated their status to "hero" and provided an opportunity to shine. We found evidence of this for grandiose, but not vulnerable narcissism.

Pedal and haptic estimates of slant suggest a common underlying representation.

It is well known that people verbally exaggerate the slant of visually perceived geographical, virtual, and man-made hills. More recently it has been shown that haptic and verbal estimates of slant result in similar exaggerations, supporting the proprioception calibration hypothesis-that similar biases exist in both verbal estimates of visually perceived slant and proprioceptively perceived hand orientation. This seems to point to a common underlying representation of slant.

Pushing people to their tipping point: Phenomenal tipping point is predicted by phenomenal vertical and intuitive beliefs.

Previous work has shown that people overestimate their own body tilt by a factor of about 1.5, the same factor by which people overestimate geographical and man-made slopes. In Experiment 1 we investigated whether people can accurately identify their own and others' tipping points (TPs) - the point at which they are tilted backward and would no longer be able to return to upright - as well as their own and others' center of mass (COM) - the relative position of which is used to determine actual TP.

Perception of objects oriented downward from a vertical position.

In the present work we investigated people's perceptions of orientation for surfaces that are conceived of as being sloped downward from vertical against a vertical reference frame. In the three conditions of Experiment 1, participants either (1) placed a ladder against a wall at what they thought was the most stable position, and then estimated its orientation; (2) gave a verbal (conceptual) estimate of what the most stable position of a ladder leaned against a wall would be; or (3) drew a line representing the most stable position of a ladder to be placed against a wall, and then gave a verbal estimate of the ladder's orientation. Ladder placement was shallower than the most stable position, as were the verbal estimations of both the positioned and drawn orientations and the verbal (conceptual) estimates of the most stable position for a ladder to be leaned against a wall, relative to the actual orientations.

The power law as behavioral illusion: reappraising the reappraisals.

Marken and Shaffer (Exp Brain Res 235:1835-1842, 2017) have argued that the power law of movement, which is generally thought to reflect the mechanisms that produce movement, is actually an example of what Powers (Psychol Rev 85:417-435, 1978) dubbed a behavioral illusion, where an observed relationship between variables is seen as revealing something about the mechanisms that produce a behavior when, in fact, it does not. Zago et al. (Exp Brain Res.

Alouatta pigra males ignore A. palliata loud calls: A case of failed rival recognition?

Objectives: When closely related species overlap geographically, selection may favor species-specific mate recognition traits to avoid hybridization costs. Conversely, the need to recognize potential same-sex rivals may select for lower specificity, creating the possibility that selection in one domain constrains evolution in the other. Despite a wealth of data on mate recognition, studies addressing rival recognition between hybridizing species are limited to a few bird species.

The power law of movement: an example of a behavioral illusion.

The curved movements produced by living organisms follow a power law where the velocity of movement is a power function of the degree of curvature through which the movement is made. The exponent of the power function is close to either 1/3 or 2/3 depending on how velocity and curvature are measured. This power law is thought to reflect biological and/or kinematic constraints on how organisms produce movements.

Free hand proprioception is well calibrated to verbal estimates of slanted surfaces.

We investigate the relationship between verbal and hand proprioception of slant. In Experiment 1 we demonstrate that verbally estimating free hand orientation produces overestimates by a factor of 1.67.

Palm board and verbal estimates of slant reflect the same perceptual representation.

People verbally overestimate the orientation of slanted surfaces, but accurately estimate or underestimate slanted surfaces using a palm board. We demonstrate a fundamental issue that explains why the two different values typically given for palm board and verbal/visual matching estimates express similar perceptual representations of slanted surfaces. The fundamental problem in studies measuring palm board and verbal estimates is that the "measure"-either (1) reproducing a verbally given angle or the orientation of a slanted surface with an unseen hand or (2) verbally or visually estimating a visually perceived surface-has always been confounded with the "surface"-either using (1) a palm board or (2) a hill or ramp.

Manual anchoring biases in slant estimation affect matches even for near surfaces.

People verbally overestimate hill slant by ~15°-25°, whereas manual estimates (e.g., palm board measures) are thought to be more accurate.

Measuring stress responses in female Geoffroy's spider monkeys: Validation and the influence of reproductive state.

Fecal glucocorticoid metabolites are increasingly used to investigate physiological stress. However, it is crucial for researchers to simultaneously investigate the effects of reproductive state because estradiol and placental hormones can affect circulating glucocorticoid concentrations. Reports on the relationships between glucocorticoids and reproductive state are inconsistent among females.

Anchoring in action: manual estimates of slant are powerfully biased toward initial hand orientation and are correlated with verbal report.

People verbally overestimate hill slant by approximately 15° to 25°, whereas manual estimates (e.g., palm board measures) are thought to be more accurate.

Receivers in American football use a constant optical projection plane angle to pursue and catch thrown footballs.

In the present work we test how well two interceptive strategies, which have been proposed for catching balls hit high in the air in baseball and cricket, account for receivers in American football catching footballs. This is an important test of the domain generality of these strategies as this is the first study examining a situation where the pursuer's locomotor axis is directed away from the origin of the ball, and because the flight characteristics of an American football are far different from targets studied in prior work. The first strategy is to elicit changes in the ball's lateral optical position that match changes in the vertical optical position so that the optical projection plane angle, psi, remains constant, thus resulting in a linear optical trajectory (LOT).

Chasin' choppers: using unpredictable trajectories to test theories of object interception.

Three theories of the informational basis for object interception strategies were tested in an experiment where participants pursued toy helicopters. Helicopters were used as targets because their unpredictable trajectories have different effects on the optical variables that have been proposed as the basis of object interception, providing a basis for determining the variables that best explain this behavior. Participants pursued helicopters while the positions of both pursuer and helicopter were continuously monitored.

Blind(fold)ed by science: a constant target-heading angle is used in visual and nonvisual pursuit.

Previous work investigating the strategies that observers use to intercept moving targets has shown that observers maintain a constant target-heading angle (CTHA) to achieve interception. Most of this work has concluded or indirectly assumed that vision is necessary to do this. We investigated whether blindfolded pursuers chasing a ball carrier holding a beeping football would utilize the same strategy that sighted observers use to chase a ball carrier.

Modeling relationships among active components in black raspberry (Rubus occidentalis L.) fruit extracts using high-resolution (1)H nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy and multivariate statistical analysis.

A process was developed to ascertain the bioactive components of black raspberry (Rubus occidentalis L.) fruit extracts by relating chemical constituents determined by high-field nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy to biological responses using partial least-squares regression analysis. To validate our approach, we outlined relationships between phenolic signals in NMR spectra and chemical data for total monomeric anthocyanin (TMA) content and antioxidant capacity by the ferric-reducing antioxidant power (FRAP) and 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) assays.

Parental divorce, sibship size, family resources, and children's academic performance.

Using data from 19,839 adolescents from the National Education Longitudinal Study, this study investigates whether the effects of parental divorce on adolescents' academic test performance vary by sibship size. Analyses show that the negative effect of divorce on adolescent performance attenuates as sibship size increases. On the other side of the interaction, the inverse relationship between sibship size and test performance is weaker in disrupted than in two-biological-parent families.

Parents' marital disruption and its uneven effect on children's academic performance--a simulation model.

Although a substantial amount of social science research has examined the consequences of various life events, much less has been done to examine how the effect may be unevenly distributed. The present research takes children's experiences of parents' marital disruption as an example and demonstrates how a contaminated-distribution model may simulate a scenario in which the effect of parents' marital disruption on children's academic performance is unevenly distributed. Using test performance data from a nationally representative sample of 10,045 American adolescents, the study partitions the overall performance distribution among adolescents of divorce into an unaffected and a severe-effect distribution.

Trends in attention to complementary and alternative medicine in the American medical literature.

For decades, complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) has been a topic of discussion within American medical journals. This research examines trends in the amount of coverage CAM receives in top professional journals in US medicine in order to ascertain if the timing of this discussion is linked to demographic, economic or political changes occurring in US society and affecting organized medicine. Pooled time series analyses of the number of published documents in five prestigious American medical journals between 1965 and 1999 were conducted, and findings of models with unlagged and lagged variables are presented.

Naive beliefs in baseball: systematic distortion in perceived time of apex for fly balls.

When fielders catch fly balls they use geometric properties to optically maintain control over the ball. The strategy provides ongoing guidance without indicating precise positional information concerning where the ball is located in space. Here, the authors show that observers have striking misconceptions about what the motion of projectiles should look like from various perspectives and that they estimate when the physical apex of a fly ball occurs to be far later than actual, irrespective of baseball experience.