Does causal action facilitate causal perception in infants younger than 6 months of age?

Previous research has established that infants are unable to perceive causality until 6¼ months of age. The current experiments examined whether infants’ ability to engage in causal action could facilitate causal perception prior to this age. In Experiment 1, 4½‐month‐olds were randomly assigned to engage in causal action experience via Velcro sticky mittens or not engage in causal action because they wore non‐sticky mittens. Both groups were then tested in the visual habituation paradigm to assess their causal perception. Infants who engaged in causal action – but not those without this causal action experience – perceived the habituation events as causal. Experiment 2 used a similar design to establish that 4½‐month‐olds are unable to generalize their own causal action to causality observed in dissimilar objects. These data are the first to demonstrate that infants under 6 months of age can perceive causality, and have implications for the mechanisms underlying the development of causal perception.     

Is there a developmental trend from integrality to separability in perception?

Some previous literature suggests that young children perceive in an integral, holistic fashion stimuli that older children perceive in a separable, dimensionalized mode. A prediction from a strong form of this position is that younger children actually may perform more rapidly a speeded classification task that requires “condensation” than a task that requires “filtering” (if the similarity relations among the wholes favor the former task). Older children should be able to take advantage of the simple unidimensional basis of the filtering task and thus accomplish it much more rapidly than the condensation task. The results are only partially in accord with the predictions. Kindergarteners (5 years of age), on size-and-brightness stimuli, show no speed advantage on either task, while second (8 years) and fifth (11 years) graders clearly show more rapid filtering. Therefore, the developmental hypothesis is in need of some revision and elaboration. Some stimuli are less separable for younger than for older children, but even five year olds can access their dimensional structure under some conditions.     

Is it in your face?: Exploring the effects of sexual dimorphism on perception of leadership potential

Perceptions of a leader in a work environment is important from 2 perspectives: the leader themselves and more importantly the external observer. But what information does the observer use when making these judgments of leadership potential? Many studies on role congruity have demonstrated that gender stereotyping and perceived leadership ability is strongly tied to gender role incongruity. The role of facial appearance has been associated with leadership status and potential and becomes essentially relevant in military settings. Thus, the manner in which an individual’s face is perceived and evaluated may impact perceptions of his or her leadership ability and subsequent success. The present study seeks to extend research on how sex and gender characteristics of an individual’s face may possibly influence the perception of leadership abilities in a military service academy. Findings indicated that participants preferred individuals with gender congruent faces, which may reflect a preference for physical prowess and abilities.     

Child proportional scaling: Is 1/3 = 2/6 = 3/9 = 4/12?

The current experiments examined the role of scale factor in children's proportional reasoning. Experiment 1 used a choice task and Experiment 2 used a production task to examine the abilities of kindergartners through fourth-graders to match equivalent, visually depicted proportional relations. The findings of both experiments show that accuracy decreased as the scaling magnitude between the equivalent proportions increased. In addition, children's errors showed that the cost of scaling proportional relations is symmetrical for problems that involve scaling up and scaling down. These findings indicate that scaling has a cognitive cost that results in decreasing performance with increasing scaling magnitude. These scale factor effects are consistent with children's use of intuitive strategies to solve proportional reasoning problems that may be important in scaffolding more formal mathematical understanding of proportional relations.     

Is it adaptive to disengage from demands of social change? Adjustment to developmental barriers in opportunity-deprived regions

This paper investigates how individuals deal with demands of social and economic change in the domains of work and family when opportunities for their mastery are unfavorable. Theoretical considerations and empirical research suggest that with unattainable goals and unmanageable demands motivational disengagement and self-protective cognitions bring about superior outcomes than continued goal striving. Building on research on developmental deadlines, this paper introduces the concept of developmental barriers to address socioeconomic conditions of severely constrained opportunities in certain geographical regions. Mixed-effects methods were used to model cross-level interactions between individual-level compensatory secondary control and regional-level opportunity structures in terms of social indicators for the economic prosperity and family friendliness. Results showed that disengagement was positively associated with general life satisfaction in regions that were economically devastated and has less than average services for families. In regions that were economically well off and family-friendly, the association was negative. Similar results were found for self-protection concerning domain-specific satisfaction with life. These findings suggest that compensatory secondary control can be an adaptive way of mastering a demand when primary control is not possible.     

What does it mean to be an ally?: The perception of allies from the perspective of people of color

Allies are frequently studied from the viewpoint of dominant group members. Three studies took a different perspective by investigating how people of color perceive both White allies and allies of color. Study 1 used content analysis of qualitative data from 80 people of color to describe eight major themes of ally perception. With samples of 182 and 195 people of color, Studies 2 and 3 employed exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis to identify two subscales, informed action and affirmation, based on the themes. Both independent and paired samples t tests showed that people of color rating a White ally versus an ally of color perceived significantly less willingness to engage racial issues. Findings are discussed in relation to existing allies research.     

Is perception informationally encapsulated? The issue of the theory‐ladenness of perception

Fodor has argued that observation is theory neutral, since the perceptual systems are modular, that is, they are domain-specific, encapsulated, mandatory, fast, hard-wired in the organism, and have a fixed neural architecture. Churchland attacks the theoretical neutrality of observation on the grounds that (a) the abundant top-down pathways in the brain suggest the cognitive penetration of perception and (b) perceptual learning can change in the wiring of the perceptual systems. In this paper I introduce a distinction between sensation, perception, and observation and I argue that although Churchland is right that observation involves top-down processes, there is also a substantial amount of information in perception which is theory-neutral. I argue that perceptual learning does not threaten the cognitive impenetrability of perception, and that the neuropsychological research does not provide evidence in favor of the top-down character of perception. Finally, I discuss the possibility of an off-line cognitive penetrability of perception.     

Is it always fallacious to derive values from facts?

Since the time of David Hume, many philosophers have held that there is a logical Is/Ought gap. According to the doctrine of the Is/Ought gap, there are no valid (i.e., non-fallacious) arguments from purely factual premises about whatis the case to moral or normative conclusions about whatought to be. Occasionally, this doctrine has been challenged, but frequently it has been accepted without argumentation. Charles Pigden has recently argued for a logical Is/Ought gap on the grounds of the conservativeness of logic. I offer a counter-example which shows that Pigden's argument is unsound and that there need be no logical gap between Is-premises and an Ought-conclusion. My counter-example is an argument which is logically valid, has only Is-premises and an Ought-conclusion, and does not purport to violate the conservativeness of logic. Moreover, my argument does not rely, as other alleged counter-examples do, on controversial assumptions from Aristotelian biology about natures or ends, or about institutions such as promise-making.     

Reconfiguration of task-set: Is it easier to switch to the weaker task?

Switching between two tasks afforded by the same stimuli results in slower reactions and more errors on the first stimulus after the task changes. This “switch cost” is reduced, but not usually eliminated, by the opportunity to prepare for a task switch. While there is agreement that this preparation effect indexes a control process performed before the stimulus, the “residual” cost has been attributed to several sources: to a control process essential for task-set reconfiguration that can be carried out only after the stimulus onset, to probabilistic failure to engage in preparation prior to the stimulus, and to two kinds of priming from previous trials: positive priming of the now-irrelevant task set and inhibition of the now-relevant task-set. The main evidence for the carry-over of inhibition is the observation that it is easier to switch from the stronger to the weaker of a pair of tasks afforded by the stimulus than vice versa. We survey available data on interactions between task switching and three manipulations of relative task strength: pre-experimental experience, stimulus-response compatibility, and intra-experimental practice. We conclude that it is far from universally true that it is easier to switch to the weaker task. Either inhibition of the stronger task-set is a strategy used only in the special case of extreme inequality in strength, or its consequences for later performance may be masked by slower post-stimulus control operations for more complex tasks. Inhibitory priming may also be stimulus specific. Received: 31 March 1999 / Accepted: 23 July 1999     

Scoring Biodata: Is it rational to be quasi‐rational?

Five quasi‐rational biodata scales were developed by empirically keying biodata items to predict scores on a measure of the Big Five dimensions of personality. The criterion‐related validities of the quasi‐rational scales were compared to empirical and rational biodata keying methods using supervisory ratings of job performance as the criterion. Empirical keying outperformed the quasi‐rational and rational methods (which had similar validities).     

Is it Too Soon to Meet? Examining Differences in Geosocial Networking App Use and Sexual Risk Behavior of Emerging Adults

Location-based geosocial networking smartphone applications (GSN apps) have become a popular way to meet romantic and casual sex partners. Although first used primarily by men who have sex with men (MSM), GSN apps are now commonly used in the population at large, particularly among emerging adults. Although, these apps may potentially contribute to increases in STI/HIV incidence, previous research linking GSN app use to sexual risk behavior has been mixed, with some suggesting app users report greater sexual risk behavior and others suggesting less. The present paper details findings of two studies with independent samples of emerging adults. The first, a pilot study, examined GSN app use among young MSM (n = 64) to identify possible within-group factors relating dating app use to sexual risk behavior. Results indicated that the time app users spent talking to each other through the app before meeting in person (time before meeting) was related to engagement in sexual risk behavior. Those who talked less before meeting in person engaged in more sexual risk behaviors than those who spent more time talking before meeting in person. The second study sought to expand upon this finding in a more representative sample of GSN app users (n = 129) and compared sexual risk behavior and impulsivity to non-users (n = 88). There were no differences in sexual risk behavior between GSN app users and non-users. However, when examining app users by time before meeting, those with a shorter time before meeting were more impulsive and more likely to report sexual risk behavior. These findings highlight the importance of understanding GSN app use in the spread of STIs/HIV among emerging adults.     

Correction to: Is it still worth it? Applying expectancy-value theory to investigate the intraindividual motivational process of forming intentions to drop out from university

Motivation and Emotion - An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via the original article.     

Statisticism in personality psychologists’ use of trait constructs: What is it? How was it contracted? Is there a cure?

‘Statisticism’ is meant to characterize a way of thinking in psychology that invests virtually boundless trust in the aptness of statistical concepts and methods to reveal the ‘lawfulness’ of human psychological functioning and behavior. In the article, I discuss how statisticism came to infect the thinking of mainstream 20th century personality investigators and how – if at all – the discipline might be cured. Unfortunately, mainstream thinking within the sub-discipline of personality psychology has long sanctioned an understanding of the statistical findings issuing from studies of individual differences in personality traits that is faithful to neither of the so-called ‘frequentist’ or ‘subjectivist’ traditions. Instead, such findings are widely regarded as a scientifically acceptable warrant for claims to knowledge about objective states of affairs existing for individuals within the samples one has studied. I suggest that the prospects for eradicating dubious fruits of this form of statisticism will hinge importantly on (a) the ability of theoretically and philosophically-oriented psychologists to re-instill within the discipline a healthy respect for the power of conceptual analysis more generally, and, following this, (b) concern within the discipline for the fact that the deep and abiding conceptual problem described above in fact does exist.     

Is it Possible and Desirable for Theologians to Recover from Kant?

Kant marks a watershed in the history of theology, after which the anxious questions, “Can we speak of God? How can we?” have continually haunted modern theologians, insisting on being addressed before any others. Feeling compelled not to say about God what they want to say without first establishing that they are justified or entitled in saying those things, theologians have experienced both frustration and anxiety. However, the widespread assumption that one must experience the Kantian agony in order to be a modern theologian is challenged. Wolterstorff contends that one can move beyond Kant by rejecting the mental representationalist picture required by the latter’s account of intuitions and concepts. Conceiving of our intuitions as ’inputs’ which are then mentally represented according to concepts, is not only unnecessary but misleading. Theologians are better off rejecting the assumption that awareness always represents input and adopting instead the view that perceptual awareness, for example, is not so much an input but an action – the actualization of one of our human powers. Such an alternate pathway (opened up by Thomas Reid) would allow modern theologians to appropriate Kant without being appropriated by Kant.     

Is there an auditory analogue to Fechner's paradox in binaural loudness perception?

In binocular brightness perception a phenomenon called Fechner's paradox can be observed. This paradox implies non-monotonicities in the psychometric functions of binocular brightness. Lehky (1983) proposed a model that describes such non-monotonicities. He suggested that Fechner's paradox also exists in binaural loudness perception. However, until now no sufficient data have been collected to test this hypothesis. Therefore, an experiment was conducted in which 36 psychometric functions were obtained using binaural stimuli in the range of intensities in which Fechner's paradox supposedly occurs. As a result, no significant non-monotonicities were found. However, it is shown that jnds derived from the psychometric functions contradict predictions derived from the limited binaural additivity model of Gigerenzer and Strube (1983).