Psychological Sciences

Many studies investigated how personality, behavior, and attitude mediate dream recall, but few distinguish between measures of dream recall frequency: the number of dreams experienced in a specified time frame and dream detail: individual ratings of vividness or detailed content of dreams. This study compared undergraduates' (n = 173) self-reported dream recall frequency, and dream detail, with behaviors, attitude toward dreaming, and scores on scales of Extraversion/Introversion and Type A/B. Dream recall frequency and dream detail manifested different patterns of association in relation to behaviors, attitude and personality. Dream recall frequency was associated with the frequency of experiencing emotionally disturbing dreams and trying to interpret dreams, while detail of dreams was associated with positive attitude toward dreaming and Type B personality. Although males and females both held positive attitudes toward dreaming, females experienced more emotionally disturbing dreams and felt unable to control their dreams. Interactions between personality and gender emerged for behaviors associated with dreaming. Researchers are encouraged to differentiate between dream recall frequency and dream detail.

This study investigated the accuracy of psychology majors’ expectations regarding careers. Psychology majors, including 101 women and 35 men ( Mage = 23 years; standard deviationage = 6.25), indicated a desired career and estimated the level of education needed and the expected annual salary for the career. Students’ expectations were compared with Bureau of Labor Statistics data. Students completed the Career Decision-Making Self-Efficacy Scale Short Form to assess the career efficacy and expectations. Students overestimated education needed for a career, but salary estimates did not differ from market statistics. Students’ confidence in career choice and expected income was related to career efficacy. Results highlight the importance of career advising and support for psychology students entering the job market.

Despite previous work showing that mothers, fathers, and siblings provide negative evidence regarding children's grammatical errors, the role of linguistic input remains controversial. Since most work in this area has concentrated on negative evidence in the mother–child dyad, this study extended prior work by comparing mothers', fathers' and siblings' corrective repetitions to children's errors across different family settings. Fourteen children (2;3) were videotaped interacting with their mothers, fathers, and siblings (4;1) in dyad, triad, and tetrad settings. Analyses revealed that mothers and fathers provided more corrective repetitions than siblings did. Although the size of the setting did not differentiate responding, when specific configurations were examined differences emerged. Analyses of individual families revealed that all children received feedback following syntax errors. These results are discussed in terms of current negative evidence research.

The recognition of individuals through vocalizations is a highly adaptive ability in the social behavior of many species, including humans. However, the extent to which nonlinguistic vocalizations such as screams permit individual recognition in humans remains unclear. Using a same-different vocalizer discrimination task, we investigated participants’ ability to correctly identify whether pairs of screams were produced by the same person or two different people, a critical prerequisite to individual recognition. Despite prior theory-based contentions that screams are not acoustically well-suited to conveying identity cues, listeners discriminated individuals at above-chance levels by their screams, including both acoustically modified and unmodified exemplars. We found that vocalizer gender explained some variation in participants’ discrimination abilities and response times, but participant attributes (gender, experience, empathy) did not. Our findings are consistent with abundant evidence from nonhuman primates, suggesting that both human and nonhuman screams convey cues to caller identity, thus supporting the thesis of evolutionary continuity in at least some aspects of scream function across primate species.

The last four decades have seen major advances in the study of the cognitive bases of animal vocal communication. The conceptual delineation of senders and receivers has led to a focus on the cognitive processes involved in call production and usage, and those concerning call perception. We review selected relevant literature and discuss how recent thought-specifically, the recognition of a distinction between acoustic variation within versus between call types-expands focus from two to four key questions, specifically, the identification of factors that influence: (1) the usage of different call types, (2) the particular acoustic structure of a vocalization, (3) receivers' responses to different call types, and (4) receivers' responses to acoustic variation within a call type. We present the findings of a case study examining the relationship between emotional arousal and the acoustics of scream classes of rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) and discuss how the findings relate to broader issues in animal vocal communication and cognition. Screams are phylogenetically widespread, generally highly emotional, and in some taxa, convey complex information about social interactions, making them a promising subject for future research addressing contemporary questions in the field.