Racialized physical space as cultural product

We argue for incorporating physical space into the psychological study of race. Specifically, we review historical and sociological work explaining how physical space (e.g., houses, rivers, neighborhoods, and nations) has been used to construct race and racial hierarchy, leaving physical space structurally racialized. This structural racialization, we propose, has led people to think of physical space in racial terms, creating mental images of race that include physical space characteristics. We explain how these mental images may influence race‐related psychological processes (e.g., person perception and social identity threat). We also detail evidence that these mental images of racialized space shape how people perceive and interact with space, in ways that likely reinforce its structural racialization. We therefore frame physical space as a cultural product, situating it within the mutually constitutive nature of culture and psyche. This expanded approach to studying race can facilitate a fuller understanding of all the ways in which psychological processes contribute to racial inequality.     

Making space: the natural,cultural, cognitive and social niches of human activity

This paper is in two parts. Part 1 examines the phenomenon of making space as a process involving one or other kind of legal decision-making, for example when a state authority authorizes the creation of a new highway along a certain route or of a new park in a certain location. In cases such as this, a new abstract spatial entity comes into existence – the route, the boundaries of the area to be set aside for the park – followed only later by concordant changes in physical reality. In Part 2, we show that features identified in studying this phenomenon of legal spacemaking can be detected in other spheres of human activity, for example in planning (where spacemaking is projected into the future), and in reasoning about history (where spacemaking is projected back through time). We shall see that these features display themselves in especially complex ways in our everyday use of language, and we conclude by examining the implications of this complexity for attempts to create an artificial intelligence that would enjoy a mastery of language that would be equivalent to that of human beings.

     

Dominance,aggression, and the functional use of space in institutionalized female adolescents

This is a study of an institutionalized group of female adolescents observed for a nine-week period. These girls were observed to determine the characteristics of their dominance relations and how, in turn, this aspect of their social environment was related to use of their physical environment. Correlational analyses between observational and sociometric data suggested that dominance rank was based upon the frequency of being the recipient of a dominance act. Fewer dominance acts were initiated against higher ranking girls. Dominance ranking was not based upon frequency of initiating a dominance act towards others. Higher ranking girls were the ones most frequently observed alone in their own bedroom. Bedrooms were highly desiuable areas used for grooming (eg, setting hair, ironing clothes, putting on cosmetics, resting) as girls sought to gain popularity with the institution's male population. Comparison of results with findings in similar studies on male adolescents suggest some tentative generalizations as to sex difference in dominance and territoriality.     

A modern elaboration of the ramified theory of types

The paper first formalizes the ramified type theory as (informally) described in the Principia Mathematica [32]. This formalization is close to the ideas of the Principia, but also meets contemporary requirements on formality and accuracy, and therefore is a new supply to the known literature on the Principia (like [25], [19], [6] and [7]).As an alternative, notions from the ramified type theory are expressed in a lambda calculus style. This situates the type system of Russell and Whitehead in a modern setting. Both formalizations are inspired by current developments in research on type theory and typed lambda calculus; see [3].Supported by the Co-operation Centre Tilburg and Eindhoven Universities. ¹[32], Introduction, Chapter II, Section I, p. 37.Presented by Wolfgang Rautenberg     

Male honor and female fidelity: implicit cultural scripts that perpetuate domestic violence

Two studies explored how domestic violence may be implicitly or explicitly sanctioned and reinforced in cultures where honor is a salient organizing theme. Three general predictions were supported: (a) female infidelity damages a man's reputation, particularly in honor cultures; (b) this reputation can be partially restored through the use of violence; and (c) women in honor cultures are expected to remain loyal in the face of jealousy-related violence. Study 1 involved participants from Brazil (an honor culture) and the United States responding to written vignettes involving infidelity and violence in response to infidelity. Study 2 involved southern Anglo, Latino, and northern Anglo participants witnessing a "live" incident of aggression against a woman (actually a confederate) and subsequently interacting with her.     

Effective elaboration and inferential reasoning

The present study investigated the effects of several variables on subjects’ abilities to draw inferences from two related premises. Contiguous presentation of the related sentences led to significantly higher inference scores than did noncontiguous presentation. The nature of the initial premise was also manipulated. For some subjects, the initial premise was relatively consistent with subjects’ semantic knowledge, whereas other subjects received initial premises that were somewhat arbitrary with respect to semantic knowledge. Inference scores were significantly higher for subjects who received the more consistent initial premises. This effect persists even when differential memory for the initial premises has been accounted for. The results suggest certain constraints on the nature of the knowledge one must possess in order to make appropriate inferences from material.     

Type of semantic elaboration and recall

Two experiments examined the effects of various semantic-orienting tasks on immediate and delayed recall. In Experiment 1, words modified by their core or cross-situational properties (necessary adjectives) were recalled better than words modified by more peripheral properties (arbitrary adjectives). In addition, the beneficial effects of necessary adjectives seemed to be independent of the amount of cognitive analysis required for processing these adjectives. In Experiment 2, words modified by necessary adjectives were recalled better regardless of whether the adjectives were general or specific. Overall, the results are consistent with the “core meaning” notion and indicate that the quality of semantic elaboration is an important determinant of recall.     

Intersecting identities of elite female boxers: Stories of cultural difference and marginalization in sport

ObjectivesThe project responds to calls for research that attends to issues of cultural diversity within sport and that facilitates expanded understandings of socially constructed identities. The intersecting identities of elite female boxers are explored in terms of how they shape experiences of marginalization and well-being within sport. Focus is on constructions of race and ethnicity, language, and religion.DesignAn intersectional lens grounded in social constructionism was integrated with a cultural sport psychology approach to espouse the complexity, fluidity, and multi-dimensionality of the athletes’ identities as the product of intersecting narratives.MethodsMandala drawings and conversational interviews were employed as open-ended data collection processes that enabled the participants to share their identities. Portrait vignettes were then developed as creative nonfiction to elucidate how identities dynamically intersect and shape sport experiences.ResultsFive portrait vignettes layer together to show issues of identity expression, oppression and White privilege within the boxing context. The stories provide contextual insight into the ways in which athletes continually construct and negotiate identities in relation to dynamics of difference and sameness. They move fluidly between identities that are valued and identities that are marginalized, moments of open expression and moments of concealment.ConclusionsThe research contributes to social justice missions within sport by illuminating how certain identities result in individuals being dis/advantaged, socially excluded, and discriminated against. Possibilities are revealed for challenging social inequalities and facilitating more inclusive sport spaces that resonate with who athletes are as holistic, multifaceted people.     

The use of color for the secondary elaboration of the dream

Freud's term sekund?re Bearbeitung has been translated as both "secondary revision" and "secondary elaboration." In keeping with a distinction made by Silber (1973), the term secondary elaboration is used in this paper to indicate the process by which further dream modification occurs after dream recall in order to deepen the disguise of the manifest content for the analyst. Clinical cases are presented in an attempt to demonstrate the sole use of color for the alteration of dreams subsequent to their initial recall. Secondary elaboration in these cases is attributed to resistance to transference. Further, the clinical material indicates that the secondary elaboration simultaneously serves a communicative function.     

Hierarchical elaboration in the conceptual structures of vietnam combat veterans

Abstract

Sixty male Vietnam combat veterans, 30 hospitalized for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and 30 with no PTSD or other psychiatric disorder, sorted and labeled their life events into numeric matrices (repertory grids). Through hierarchical-classes analysis of a subject's matrix, we could compare the hierarchical level (elaboration) of the subject's constructs of a negative combat event with the hierarchical levels of other subjects' constructs of negative combat events and with the subject's precombat life event construction. As predicted, the level of construct elaboration was virtually identical for the two groups for precombat non-trauma-related events but was reduced in the PTSD group for the negative combat event. In addition, the Pythagorean distance scores of the PTSD group indicated less conceptual distance between the negative combat event and negative life events after Vietnam compared with the non-PTSD group's scores. Patients with PTSD rated negative life events more extremely (fewer “shades of gray” ratings) than did the non-PTSD group, especially life events that occurred after Vietnam.     

The effects of elaboration on recognition memory

Two experiments were conducted to examine the effects of elaboration on recognition memory. Subjects were given either simple or complex sentences to learn and were tested for recognition of either an individual target word or the entire sentence. Complex sentences supported better recognition performance only when the test item allowed the subject to easily redintegrate the initial encoding context, either by re-presenting the encoded sentence as the test item or by constructing sentences such that the component words of the sentence could be easily redintegrated from an individual target item. It was suggested that complex, elaborate encoding established a richer trace, but that this richness can be utilized to enhance recognition only when the test conditions permit a reinstatement of the original encoding context.     

Social justice, federal paternalism, and feminism: breast implants in the cultural context of female beauty.

In April 1992 the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced it was restricting the availability of silicone gel-filled breast implants to women enrolled in clinical trials. All candidates for breast reconstruction, but only a "very limited" number of augmentation candidates, would have access to the implants. This policy has been criticized as paternalistic, sexist, and unjustified by scientific data. I examine these charges and conclude that controversy surrounding the scientific data weakens the FDA's paternalistic mandate and that its policy of treating reconstruction and augmentation candidates differently results in increased social injustice and perpetuates cultural biases concerning female beauty and women's rights to control their bodies. I also argue that these cultural biases shape women's subjective experience of their physical selves and should not, contrary to some feminist arguments, be viewed as precluding their giving informed consent to breast surgery.     

The role of emotional elaboration in the creation of false memories

Two experiments employed an eyewitness suggestibility paradigm to examine the effects of emotional elaboration on the creation of false memories for suggested events. The results of both experiments converge in showing that reflectively elaborating on the emotional consequences of suggested events increases both false belief and false memory in having witnessed the suggested events. Moreover, the results also showed that emotional elaboration leads to higher false memory than other types of meaningful elaboration, thus providing evidence that the emotional content of the elaboration plays a role in promoting false memory development. The results have several real‐world implications for forensic and therapeutic interviews. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The effects of autobiographical elaboration on noun recall

Four experiments demonstrate that autobiographical elaboration is a rich and powerful encoding process. Autobiographical elaboration was induced by using a modified free-association procedure. Subjects were presented stimulus words and were instructed to think of a personal experience that the words reminded them of and to date the remembered experience on a 7-point temporal-category scale (i.e., minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, never). Unexpected free recall of the stimulus words showed a recency effect (Experiments 1, 3, and 4), autobiographical orienting produced better noun recall than either a semantic or a structural orienting task (Experiments 2 and 3), and the recency effect observed in Experiments 1, 3, and 4 appears to have been due to differences in autobiographical elaboration (Experiment 4).