Both temporary and long-term sources of construct accessibility have been found to play an important role in person perception and memory. Yet the two effects heretofore have been studied in isolation from each other. We examined the joint influence of long-and short-term sources of accessibility on impression formation. Subjects with or without a long-term, chronically accessible construct for either kindness or shyness were exposed subliminally to either 0 or 80 trait-related words in a first task. Next, subjects read a behavioral description that was ambiguously relevant to the primed trait dimension, and they then rated the target on several trait scales. For both the kind and the shy trait conditions, both chronic accessibility and subliminal priming reliably and independently increased the extremity of the impression ratings. The results supported a model in which long-and short-term sources of accessibility combine additively to increase the likelihood of the construct's use. Moreover; the subliminal priming effect appeared to be a quite general and pervasive phenomenon, insofar as it occurred for both an evaluatively positive and an evaluatively neutral trait dimension and for subjects without as well as with a chronically accessible construct for the primes. Implications of these findings for the nature of construct accessibility and the generality of automatic influences on social perception are discussed.A mainstream of social cognition research has focused on the nature of the mechanism by which people interpret social stimuli. In their seminal works, Kelly (1955) andBruner (1957) argued that people develop mental constructs, or categories, out of the necessity to cope effectively and adaptively with an overabundance of complex information. An important difference between Kelly's and Bruner's conceptualizations of social categories is the duration of category influences with which they mainly were concerned. Bruner (1957) focused on temporary differences in the likelihood that a specific category would be used: what he termed its accessibility. Categories that were used recently, or that were relevant to current goals or needs, were said to be more likely than others to "capture" an input as an instance of the construct. Given the ambiguity and multiple implications of most social information, Bruner argued, an accessible category may well be used to interpret behaviors or events that are actually more relevant for other, but less accessible, categories (see also Bruner, 1951;Postman, 1951).

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Patients with ET have deficits in specific aspects of neuropsychological functioning, particularly those thought to rely on the integrity of the prefrontal cortex, which suggests involvement of frontocerebellar circuits in this disease.

Models of Person X Situation influences on social behavior and judgment have invoked two distinct mechanisms: a personality disposition and a situational press. In this study we conceptualized both influences in terms of a single underlying mechanism, construct accessibility. We pitted the characteristic ways that individuals perceive others against situational influences on accessibility (i.e., contextual priming) and tracked over time the relative power of these competing influences on the outcome of an impression-formation task. Subjects possessed either a chronically accessible (chronics) or an inaccessible (nonchronics) construct for either outgoing or inconsiderate behavior. As predicted, as the delay since the priming event lengthened (from 15 to 180 s), chronics were progressively more likely to use the chronically accessible construct instead of the primed alternative construct to categorize an ambiguous target behavior, whereas nonchronics' relative use of the primed and alternative constructs did not change as a function of postpriming delay.

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between lesion location and clinical outcome following globus pallidus internus (GPi) pallidotomy for advanced Parkinson's disease. Thirty-three patients were prospectively studied with extensive neurological examinations before and at 6 and 12 months following microelectrode-guided pallidotomy. Lesion location was characterized using volumetric MRI. The position of lesions within the posteroventral region of the GPi was measured, from anteromedial to posterolateral along an axis parallel to the internal capsule. To relate lesion position to clinical outcome, hierarchical multiple regression analysis was used. The variance in outcome measures that was related to preoperative scores and lesion volume was first calculated, and then the remaining variance attributable to lesion location was determined. Lesion location along the anteromedial-to-posterolateral axis within the GPi influenced the variance in total score on the Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale in the postoperative 'off' period, and in 'on' period dyskinesia scores. Within the posteroventral GPi, anteromedial lesions were associated with greater improvement in 'off' period contralateral rigidity and 'on' period dyskinesia, whereas more centrally located lesions correlated with better postoperative scores of contralateral akinesia and postural instability/gait disturbance. Improvement in contralateral tremor was weakly related to lesion location, being greater with posterolateral lesions. We conclude that improvement in specific motor signs in Parkinson's disease following pallidotomy is related to lesion position within the posteroventral GPi. These findings are consistent with the known segregated but parallel organization of specific motor circuits in the basal ganglia, and may explain the variability in clinical outcome after pallidotomy and therefore have important therapeutic implications.