Song type variations of Louisiana Waterthrush (Parkesia motacilla) and their geographic distributions.

Louisiana Waterthrush (Parkesia motacilla) is a familiar singer in the Western Hemisphere family Parulidae, yet apparent geographic variations in its song and potentially related causal mechanisms have not received detailed examination in previously published studies. Here, we analyzed song pattern variations of 651 Louisiana Waterthrush singers in audio spectrogram recordings obtained from our field work and publicly accessible bioacoustics archives. Visual and auditory assessment of the introductory note sequence of each song identified three distinct song types (A, B, and C) and most of the songs were assigned to one of these types. Linear Discriminant Analysis and Random Forest methods were used to verify the assignments and showed strong agreement for Type A with slightly less agreement on Types B and C. User error rates (proportion of the Linear Discriminant Analysis classifications that were incorrect) were low for Types A and B, and somewhat higher for Type C, while producer error rates (proportion of the song type for which the Linear Discriminant Analysis was incorrect) were somewhat higher for Types A and C than the minimal levels achieved for Type B. Our findings confirmed that most between-individual variation was in the number of notes and note sequence duration while most within-individual variation resulted from the percent of downstrokes. The location of each singer was plotted on a map of the breeding range and results suggested the song types have large-scale discrete geographic distributions that co-occur in some regions but not range-wide. Evaluation of the distributions provided tentative support for a hypothesis that two of the song types may independently exhibit congruence with the geographic extent of Pleistocene glacial boundaries and the third song type may be distinguished by a lack of congruence, but further investigation is needed to elucidate whether the song variations represent subpopulations with three separate evolutionary histories.

Conformity effects in memory for actions.

The goal of this research was to examine whether memories for actions can be affected by information reported by another person. In two studies, pairs of participants performed 48 of a set of 96 actions. In Study 1, both members of the pairs performed the same actions, and in Study 2, they performed different actions. One week later, the members of the pairs were questioned together about whether they had or had not done all 96 actions. What one person reported greatly influenced what the other person reported for both correct and incorrect responses. This influence was maintained when the participants were later tested individually, and the participants described having pictorial memories for doing many of the actions that they had not done but had merely been suggested.

Violated expectations and acculturative stress among U.S. Hispanic immigrants.

Expectancy violation theory (EVT) was tested with 112 Hispanic immigrants living in the United States by determining whether discrepancies between their retrospectively recalled pre-migration expectations about life in the United States and their post-migration (actual) experiences in the United States would predict their levels of acculturative stress. Discrepancies were assessed in 4 domains (ability to communicate with English speakers, perceiving their communities and the United States as safe, obtaining adequate employment, and experiencing racism). Overall, the results indicated that discrepancies between pre-migration expectations and post-migration experiences were associated significantly with acculturative stress, although some of the findings were counter to EVT. Also, on the basis of a hierarchical regression analysis, the discrepancies significantly, albeit modestly, contributed to the prediction of acculturative stress beyond the predictive ability of general demographic variables and post-migration experiences. Implications for clinical interventions and research opportunities with EVT and Hispanic immigrants are discussed.