The influence of facial characteristics on children's age perceptions.

To examine the impact of age-related variations in facial characteristics on children's age judgments, two experiments were conducted in which craniofacial shape and facial wrinkling were independently manipulated in stimulus faces as sources of age information. Using a paired-comparisons task, children between the ages of 2 1/2 and 6 were asked to make age category as well as relative age judgments of stimulus faces. Preschool-aged children were able to use variations in craniofacial profile shape, frontal face feature vertical placement, or facial wrinkling to identify the age category of a stimulus person. Children were also able to identify the older, but not the younger, of two faces on the basis of facial wrinkling, a finding consistent with previously demonstrated limitations in young children's use of relative age terms. The results were discussed in the context of research which reveals parallel effects of craniofacial shape and wrinkling on the age judgments of adults.

Adulthood age differences in causal attributions for cognitive, physical, and social performance.

Past research has revealed an unflattering pattern of attributions for the performance of the elderly. More specifically, poor performance by the elderly is attributed to internal and stable factors such as inability, whereas poor performance by the young is attributed to external and unstable factors such as bad luck. In the present study, 42 young (M age = 19.18 years) and 39 elderly (M age = 74.90 years) men and women made causal attributions for their own or for another person's hypothetical performance in the cognitive, physical, and social domains. When attributions for the same performance by young and elderly adults were compared, the results presented an unflattering view of the elderly, similar to the pattern in previous research. In contrast, when attributions for good versus poor performance by the elderly were compared, a more favorable picture emerged: The elderly were more likely to be given credit for their good performance than to be blamed for their poor performance. These findings give reason to question the pervasiveness of the negative view of the elderly that has been presented in previous studies.

Individual differences in cue utilization on spatial tasks.

Two studies examined individual differences in cue utilization for spatial tasks. Study 1 investigated sex and weight differences in the use of proprioceptive and tactile cues for negotiating a finger maze while blindfolded. The results indicate that females and overweight persons were more likely to use a tactile cue than a proprioceptive one, while the reverse was true for males. Also, the 16 females were more likely to use a tactile cue and less likely to use a proprioceptive cue than the 16 males were. These individual difference reflected an attentional bias on the part of male subjects and a response bias on the part of female and overweight subjects. Study 2 investigated sex differences in congenitally blind subjects' use of proprioceptive and exteroceptive cues when giving directions to get from one place to another. The results showed that the 5 males provided more proprioceptive than exteroceptive cues, while a trend in the opposite direction was observed for the 5 females.

Weight differences in emotional responsiveness to proprioceptive and pictorial stimuli.

Two studies were conducted to investigate weight differences in emotional responsiveness to proprioceptive and pictorial stimuli. Contrary to past evidence that overweight persons are more emotional than normals, the emotional state of normal-weight subjects fluctuated with manipulations of their facial expression, whereas that of overweight subjects did not respond to these proprioceptive cues. Furthermore, whereas past research employing affectively loaded pictures had found overweight persons to be more emotionally responsive than normals to these external stimuli, no weight differences were obtained in the present studies, which employed less polarized pictures. Implications of these findings for generalizations about weight differences in emotionality are discussed.

Perceptions of an aggressive encounter as a function of the victim's salience and the perceiver's arousal.

Two studies were conducted to investigate the effects of a victim's physical salience and perceivers' arousal on perceptions of a verbally aggressive interaction. Based upon evidence that there is a tendency to attribute causality to salient stimulus persons and to form more evaluatively extreme impressions of such persons, it was predicted that an aggressor's behavior would be attributed more to causes in a physically salient than a nonsalient victim and that the behavior of a salient victim would be evaluated more extremely than that of a nonsalient victim. Based upon Easterbrook's hypothesis that arousal narrows the focus of attention to the most salient cues in the situation, it was further predicted that aroused perceivers would manifest both a stronger tendency to attribute causality to a physically salient victim of aggression and more extreme ratings of the stimulus persons than would nonaroused perceivers. The results supported all of the experimental hypotheses except one: The tendency to attribute the aggressor's behavior more to a physically salient than a nonsalient victim was not greater for aroused than for nonaroused perceivers.

Field dependent eating and perception as a function of weight and sex.

It was hypothesized that the greater influence of external cues on obese than on normal individuals' eating behavior is a manifestation of a generalized sensitivity to external cues. Responsivity of nut consumption to the external cue of shells on the nuts and responsivity of judgment of verticality to the external cue of a tilted visual field were assessed for male and female, obese and normal-weight subjects. As predicted, both obese subjects' nut consumption and their judgments of verticality were more influenced by external cues than were those of normals. Females' judgments of verticality were more influenced by external cues than males' were, but the sex differences in eating behavior were not statistically significant. A significant correlation between the field dependence of subjects' eating behavior and their judgments of verticality suggests that a single cause may generate sensitivity to external cues in these two diverse situations.