Carrasco, Ling, and Read (2004) reported that involuntary attention increased perceived contrast. We replicated Carrasco et al. and then tested an alternative hypothesis: With stimuli near threshold, a peripheral cue biased observers to believe a stimulus had been presented in the cued location. Consistent with this hypothesis, the effect disappeared when we used higher-contrast stimuli. We further tested the guessing-bias hypothesis in three ways: (1) In a detection experiment, the cue affected bias, but did not increase d ; (2) when the cue followed the stimulus, we obtained the same results as when the cue preceded the stimulus; (3) in one experiment, some trials contained no stimulus, yet observers responded that the cued blank stimulus had higher contrast than the uncued blank stimulus. The results suggest that the effects of a noninformative peripheral cue are best described in terms of nonperceptual biases.

No abstract

Objective Twitter, a free social networking and micro-blogging service, offers potential for health promotion. Twitter may be a particularly appealing delivery channel for quit smoking programs given commonalities in the personality traits of heavy texters and smokers (e.g., high sensation seeking, impulsivity). This study examined the activity and popularity of Twitter quit smoking social network accounts. Design A cross-sectional analysis reviewed all Twitter accounts identified with the key words “quit or stop smoking” or “smoking cessation,” dating back to 2007, and examined recent account activity for the month of August 2010. Results A total of 153 activated Twitter quit smoking social network accounts were identified with a median of 155 followers and 82 total tweets per account; 49% of accounts had >100 tweets. Nearly half of the accounts (48%) linked to commercial sites for quitting smoking, 43% had tweets on e-cigarettes, and 26% posted automatic news alerts. Only 5% provided personal communications to support cessation and little content mapped onto clinical practice guidelines. In August 2010, 81 of the accounts (53%) were still active with a median of 23 tweets per account that month. Active accounts had more tweets overall and were more likely to have tweets on e-cigarettes compared to inactive accounts. Conclusions Study findings demonstrate interest in Twitter for building quit smoking social networks. However, many of the accounts are no longer active, and tweet content is largely inconsistent with clinical guidelines. Future research is needed to explore whether the popularity of Twitter can be leveraged for disseminating evidence-based tobacco treatment strategies on a national and global scale and to examine the effectiveness of this approach on smoking behavior.

No abstract

Uncertainty-seeking behavior is currently understood as the result of loss aversion which motivates a preference for the possibility to avoid or lessen an otherwise sure loss. However, when choosing among negative options on behalf of others, we offer responsibility aversion as another possible motive for uncertainty-seeking behavior. Within our conceptual model, responsibility aversion is defined as the preference to minimize one's causal role in outcome generation. Compared to certain options, uncertain options lessen the decision maker's causal role in outcome generation because the outcomes are partially determined by chance. The presence of chance increases indirect agency on behalf of the decision maker and lessens his or her perceived risk of responsibility. The results of five studies support a responsibility aversion motivation behind uncertainty-seeking behavior.