To reverse or not to reverse: when is an ambiguous figure not ambiguous?

The role of bottom-up processes in our perception of reversible figures was examined. In Experiment 1 the overlapping squares figure and nonsense reversible figures were used. The effects of adapting subjects for differing durations to an unambiguous version of the figure before presentation of the traditional reversible figure were determined under conditions of varying precision of fixation. In Experiment 2 the research was expanded to other examples of reversible figures. In both experiments, results with two dependent measures (the subject's first percept and the number of reversals reported) were generally consistent with the interpretation of bottom-up processes underlying the adaptation effects. However, the crucial role of stimulus and procedural variables and the differential sensitivity of the two dependent measures was demonstrated.     

To cross or not to cross: Impact of visual and auditory cues on pedestrians’ crossing decision-making

The controlled study of pedestrians’ crossing decision-making is relevant to the search for better safety conditions for this class of vulnerable road users. Several risk factors have been identified in the literature related to the crosswalks’ surrounding environment, the socio-demographic characteristics of the pedestrians crossing the road and the place where the crosswalks are inserted, as well as situational variables, such as speed and distance of the approaching vehicle during the crossing. In this work, the roles of visual and auditory cues in crossing decisions were analysed, comparing different speeds and distances, and taking into consideration different speed patterns of the approaching vehicle, aiming to identify what can affect pedestrians’ crossing behaviour. Experiments were performed in a virtual environment. Participants were presented with 10 different stimuli featuring a vehicle approaching with different speeds and movement patterns, combined with 2 auditory conditions: one concerning a vehicle with a gasoline combustion engine and another one with no sound cues. Participants were tasked with indicating the moment they decided to cross the street when they thought it was safe to do so by pressing a response button. Percentage of crossings, response time (RT), and time-to-passage (TTP) were recorded and subsequently analysed. The results showed that lower speeds and higher distances lead to higher percentages of crossings and RTs. The auditory condition did not significantly affect participants’ responses, leading to the conclusion that participants’ crossing decision was especially based on their visual perception of the movement characteristics of the approaching vehicle, particularly its speed and distance. These results may have relevance for the development of communication strategies between the vehicles, especially the automated ones, and pedestrians.     

Correlation and explaining variance: To square or not to square?

Despite previous articles dating back 80 years, the questions of whether and when to square correlations continue to puzzle and confuse researchers. In this editorial, I point out that correlations can serve two independent purposes: they can be measures of effect size in themselves and their function as regression coefficients can be used to estimate proportion of variance in one measure for which another measure accounts. Using examples relevant to intelligence researchers, I show that the answer to the question of whether or not to square a correlation is ‘it depends.’ It depends on the purpose and it depends on the underlying theoretical model of the causal association between the variables.     

To Die or Not to Die: Zhuangzi’s Three Immortalities

While it is known that the problem of death is a central topic animating the author/s of the Inner Chapters of the Zhuangzi, leading Chinese and Western interpretations of this Chinese classic have usually focused much more on other themes and aspects. Even more problematic in the author’s view is the fact that the Zhuangzi has been closely associated with one death philosophy, the set of concepts, arguments and figures present in chapter 6. This study puts death back at the very center of the Zhuangzian philosophical project yet insisting at the same time on the difficulties of defending one philosophy of death since different passages introduce new concepts, imagery, nuances and perspectives. The Zhuangzi’s focus on death is being situated within a discussion of the “immortality” ideal––accepting a total death (“to die”) or find refuge in immortality ideals (“not to die”). Different passages from the Inner Chapters are being presented as proposing three distinct immortality projects or strategies––personal, social and cosmic––to address the problem of death. E. Becker’s reflections on the challenge of mortality and the psychological need of a “beyond” in order to cope with the consciousness of death provide the basic theoretical framework underlying the discussion of the Zhuangzi in this essay.     

Learning lyrics: To sing or not to sing?

According to common practice and oral tradition, learning verbal materials through song should facilitate word recall. In the present study, we provide evidence against this belief. In Experiment 1, 36 university students, half of them musicians, learned an unfamiliar song in three conditions. In the sung-sung condition, the song to be learned was sung, and the response was sung too. In the sung-spoken condition, the response was spoken. In the divided-spoken condition, the presented lyrics (accompanied by music) and the response were both spoken. Superior word recall in the sung-sung condition was predicted. However, fewer words were recalled when singing than when speaking. Furthermore, the mode of presentation, whether sung or spoken, had no influence on lyric recall, in either short- or long-term recall. In Experiment 2, singing was assessed with and without words. Altogether, the results indicate that the text and the melody of a song have separate representations in memory, making singing a dual task to perform, at least in the first steps of learning. Interestingly, musical training had little impact on performance, suggesting that vocal learning is a basic and widespread skill.     

To commit or not commit to human life: Children of victims and victimizers—All

The author discusses the impact of the Holocaust on both the children of victims and victimizers and reports on empirical researches conducted among Israeli student health professionals and others as to how ready they, the people of the victims, are to approve of and to participate in various programs and events which take the lives of helpless others, and reports disturbing results. He concludes that making a commitment to human life is the single most important task for all of us.     

Relationships of parents’ and child’s general attributional styles to academic performance

This study examined the relationships among student academic performance and child’s and parents’ attributional styles. One hundred seventy-nine students (87 boys and 92 girls) who were enrolled in primary public schools in New South Wales, Australia, and their parents volunteered to participate in the study. Only English-speaking, two-parent families were included. Participants completed age-appropriate attributional style questionnaires. Academic performance was obtained from student records of course grades. The results indicated that both mothers’ and fathers’ attributions for their own positive and negative life events were related to their children’s attributions for their academic performance. We present implications of these results for research on attributions and academic performance.     

From Freud’s dream-work to Bion’s work of dreaming: The changing conception of dreaming in psychoanalytic theory

Bion moved psychoanalytic theory from Freud's theory of dream-work to a concept of dreaming in which dreaming is the central aspect of all emotional functioning. In this paper, I first review historical, theoretical, and clinical aspects of dreaming as seen by Freud and Bion. I then propose two interconnected ideas that I believe reflect Bion’s split from Freud regarding the understanding of dreaming. Bion believed that all dreams are psychological works in progress and at one point suggested that all dreams contain elements that are akin to visual hallucinations. I explore and elaborate Bion’s ideas that all dreams contain aspects of emotional experience that are too disturbing to be dreamt, and that, in analysis, the patient brings a dream with the hope of receiving the analyst’s help in completing the unconscious work that was entirely or partially too disturbing for the patient to dream on his own. Freud views dreams as mental phenomena with which to understand how the mind functions, but believes that dreams are solely the ‘guardians of sleep,’ and not, in themselves, vehicles for unconscious psychological work and growth until they are interpreted by the analyst. Bion extends Freud's ideas, but also departs from Freud and re-conceives of dreaming as synonymous with unconscious emotional thinking – a process that continues both while we are awake and while we are asleep. From another somewhat puzzling perspective, he views dreams solely as manifestations of what the dreamer is unable to think.     

Whistleblowing of bullying in professional football: To report or not to report?

Only recently has research begun to focus on workplace bullying within organizations outside of traditional white-collar industries, such as professional football. While this is an important development, there remains a lack of understanding around the reporting of bullying in professional sport. In this paper, the authors explore how the professional football workplace shapes perceptions of whistleblowing and unearths individual perceptions around reporting bullying behavior. We used a phenomenological approach to gain rich experiential data from eighteen male professional football players in the UK. Interview data were analyzed in accordance with the principles of Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. Two superordinate themes were identified from the analysis, (a) professional football’s influence on whistleblowing, and (b) the challenges of reporting bullying. These themes highlighted that the unique, institutionalized nature of professional football interacts with participants’ ability to report bullying behavior. The participants’ accounts revealed divergent perceptions around how professional football shapes the degree to which players feel they can report bullying behavior. It was apparent that the authoritarian, often abusive and intimidatory nature of professional football significantly impacts whistleblowing. Our findings demonstrate the importance of workplace context when exploring the reporting of bullying behavior. They also demonstrate the need to address organizational culture and differentiate bullying education programs to alternative workplaces.     

It’s not just what you know, it’s who you know: Testing a model of the relative importance of social networks to academic performance

Applying three mathematical modeling techniques, this study proposes and tests the fit of an academic performance model, and then estimates the relative importance of four performance predictors: academic ability, performance goal orientation, educational technology use, and social network density. Drawing on social network theory, findings from this study show that social network density is a statistically important and unique predictor of academic performance, suggesting that “who you know” matters in large classroom settings. However, this study also indicates that academic ability is the most dominant factor in the explanation of academic performance. Practical and theoretical implications for enhancing academic performance through social networks are discussed.

Women’s anger, epistemic personhood, and self-respect: an application of Lehrer’s work on self-trust

I argue in this paper that the work of Keith Lehrer, especially in his book Self-Trust has applications to feminist ethics; specifically care ethics, which has become the leading form of normative sentimentalist ethics. I extend Lehrer??s ideas concerning reason and justification of belief beyond what he says by applying the notion of evaluation central to his account of acceptance to the need for evaluation of emotions. The inability to evaluate and attain justification of one??s emotions is an epistemic failure that leads one not to act on one??s own aspirations and desires and treat those desires as if they did not exist. I argue that this is a common condition among women in patriarchal societies because patriarchy can cause women to believe that they are not worthy of their trust concerning what they accept, specifically acceptance of their anger over their own mistreatment. As a result, many women are unable to realize the self-protective role of their anger. All of this reflects a lack of what I shall call epistemic personhood, a concept based on Lehrer??s theory concerning the keystone role of self-trust in the epistemic arch of rationality, justification and knowledge. Lastly, I use this concept of epistemic personhood to develop a care ethical account of self-respect that counters the Kantian account.     

To believe or not to believe? The joint impact of faultlines and pro-diversity beliefs on diplomats’ performance

Diversity faultlines can have a detrimental impact on team performance. To test whether this impact depends on leaders’ and members’ pro-diversity beliefs, we examined 41 leaders and 219 members of teams working for the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Findings indicated that the negative impact of diversity faultlines on team performance was weakest when leaders and members held strong pro-diversity beliefs. However, we did not find support for the assumed two-way interactions between faultline strength and leaders’ or members’ pro-diversity beliefs or the mediating effect of Leader-Member Exchange. Our results highlight the joint impact of leaders’ and members’ pro-diversity beliefs for attenuating the negative consequences of diversity faultlines on team performance.     

‘Between the woods and frozen lake’: a child psychotherapist’s experiences of developing a grant application for an RCT feasibility study

Drawing on the six stages identified by Henton and Midgley (2012) in the narratives of five child psychotherapists involved in the IMPACT study on their evolving attitudes towards participation in outcome research, this paper explores another child psychotherapist’s internal and external world experiences of writing a National Institute of Health Research grant application for a randomised controlled trial feasibility study. It makes use of the key associations that came to mind on first reading Henton and Midgley’s article, outlines the practical and emotional stages of developing the grant proposal and briefly considers some of the wider implications of this kind of work on a personal, organisational and professional level.     

2 B kreativ’ or not to be creative: Textisms and texters’ creativity

IntroductionText messages are particularly popular among young people. Studies have focused on the links between writers’ unconventional spelling and literacy skills. Creativity gives the possibility to cope with the numerous changes people have to face.ObjectiveThe present research aimed to examine the relation between the creative potential of texters (text-message writers) and their use of textisms (a change in a word's orthographic form as compared to traditional writing).MethodTwo corpora were compiled: one of 285 elicited text messages and one of 580 naturalistic text messages produced in daily-life situations by undergraduates (n = 29, 20–23 years of age). Two types of textisms were measured: those consistent with traditional written code and those breaking with traditional written code. Four scores of creative potential were considered: graphic divergent thinking, verbal divergent thinking, graphic integrative thinking and verbal integrative thinking.ResultsThe results showed negative correlations between the level of creativity and the density of textisms. Overall, texters who were creative in divergent thinking produced fewer textisms breaking with traditional written code.ConclusionThe results of our study are discussed with regard to the texters’ flexibility and ability to adapt or appropriately address their interlocutor.     

To act or not to act? Student-athlete perceptions of social justice activism

Issues related to social justice and activism have always permeated sports, but recently, due to the high profile cases of several elite-level athletes (i.e., Colin Kaepernick, Megan Rapinoe), these issues have become much more prominent in the contemporary sporting climate. Even though these highly visible actions are publicized in today’s media environment, little is known about how collegiate student-athletes perceive engaging in social justice activism. Therefore, the current study surveyed 2,092 collegiate student-athletes on their attitudes toward activism engagement using a theory of planned behavior framework with particular attention paid to how gender and ethnicity/race influenced these relationships. A series of MANOVAs indicated that female student-athletes, in relation to male student athletes, and student-athletes of color, in comparison to White student-athletes, held higher perceptions on most of the subscales related to activism. A hierarchical multiple regression analysis indicated attitudes, perceived behavioral control, and subjective norms were significant predictors of athletes’ intention to engage in activism. In addition, interactions of the three predictors with race and gender influenced the final regression model indicating the strength of each predictor was impacted by athlete race and gender. Future research directions and implications for programming in relation to study findings are discussed.     

To Preserve or Enhance Life? Nietzsche’s Perspectivist Understanding of Life and Morality

Instead of denouncing sincere Christianity, as it is often assumed, Nietzsche inveighs vehemently against insincere Christianity that interpreters take as evidence for his nihilism. This essay argues that Nietzsche’s perspectivism affirms the positive value of Christian morality as an instrument for life preservation, which is a relative standard for judging various perspectives on life. It also analyzes the negative value of Christian morality as the impediment to life enhancement, which is the absolute standard for evaluating those perspectives. As this study finally argues, it remains to the Overman to once and for all overcome the impediments to life brought on by Christian morality in the creation of a new morality, if in fact what the Overman creates is indeed a new morality.     

The speed of metacognition: Taking time to get to know one’s structural knowledge

The time course of different metacognitive experiences of knowledge was investigated using artificial grammar learning. Experiment 1 revealed that when participants are aware of the basis of their judgments (conscious structural knowledge) decisions are made most rapidly, followed by decisions made with conscious judgment but without conscious knowledge of underlying structure (unconscious structural knowledge), and guess responses (unconscious judgment knowledge) were made most slowly, even when controlling for differences in confidence and accuracy. In experiment 2, short response deadlines decreased the accuracy of unconscious but not conscious structural knowledge. Conversely, the deadline decreased the proportion of conscious structural knowledge in favour of guessing. Unconscious structural knowledge can be applied rapidly but becomes more reliable with additional metacognitive processing time whereas conscious structural knowledge is an all-or-nothing response that cannot always be applied rapidly. These dissociations corroborate quite separate theories of recognition (dual-process) and metacognition (higher order thought and cross-order integration).