Quasi-miracles,typicality, and counterfactuals

If one flips an unbiased coin a million times, there are 2^1,000,000 series of possible heads/tails sequences, any one of which might be the sequence that obtains, and each of which is equally likely to obtain. So it seems (1) ‘If I had tossed a fair coin one million times, it might have landed heads every time’ is true. But as several authors have pointed out, (2) ‘If I had tossed a fair coin a million times, it wouldn’t have come up heads every time’ will be counted as true in everyday contexts. And according to David Lewis’ influential semantics for counterfactuals, (1) and (2) are contradictories. We have a puzzle. We must either (A) deny that (2) is true, (B) deny that (1) is true, or (C) deny that (1) and (2) are contradictories, thus rejecting Lewis’ semantics. In this paper I discuss and criticize the proposals of David Lewis and more recently J. Robert G. Williams which solve the puzzle by taking option (B). I argue that we should opt for either (A) or (C).     

Stereotypes and social judgment: the effects of typicality and group heterogeneity

Two experiments showed that when subjects believed a group to be heterogenous, they based their liking for a particular group member on their liking for the group as a whole, independently of and in addition to the target's behavior, and regardless of the target's typicality. When they believed the group to be homogenous, however, they treated the target's typicality as a favorable or unfavorable attribute, which affected their evaluation. The latter subjects used their group stereotype as a standard of comparison in judging the implications of the target's behavior for a trait to which it was relevant. All subjects' stereotypes had a positive influence on judgments of stereotyped-related traits for which the target's behavior was uninformative. A conceptualization is proposed to account for these findings.     

Group status,group size and attitude polarization

The influence of group status and group size on intergroup attitude differentiation was investigated. Hypothesized was that members of high status groups would polarize their attitudes more than members of low status group, and that minorities would show greater sensitivity to status differences than majorities. The results show that status affected intergroup differentiation as predicted, while group size did not.     

Naming practices,typicality, and underextension in child language

Preschool children (3 to 5 years of age) in an initial study underextended superordinate labels. The labels (e.g., food) were not applied to category instances that were rated as atypical by adults (e.g., ketchup). In a second experiment, mothers seldom used a superordinate term in referring to pairs of the same atypical instances, but they did label pairs of typical instances with a superordinate. A third experiment demonstrated the effects of several word-referent modeling conditions on young children's comprehension of a superordinate term. The results were viewed as suggesting that the child undergeneralizes superordinate labels because adult naming practices are such that category instances having certain functional or perceptual attributes may be labeled with a superordinate, while other, dissimilar instances are almost always labeled with subordinate names instead of a superordinate.     

Early experience,relative plasticity,and cognitive development

This paper examines the roles of early experience and relative plasticity in the cognitive development of animals and humans. It is concluded that: (a) long-term effects of early experience variables can be found in the animal and human literature; (b) there are age differences in the relative susceptibility to environmental influences during development; (c) despite qualitative differences in the mechanisms underlying the dependent variables studied in the early experience literature, there are generally applicable principles involving the intensity of environmental stimulation and the buffering ability of the organism which are crucial in affecting the outcome of organism-environment interactions; (d) a variety of models is required to adequately describe the mediation of environmental effects in the early experience literature.     

Illegitimacy, child abuse and neglect, and cognitive development

This study explored the relationship between illegitimate birth and cognitive development among 513 boys on probation. Prior research has shown that being part of a single-parent household leads to diminished verbal capacities and often puts a child in greater danger of abuse and neglect. Frequent abuse is thought to lead to the enhancement of visual and spatial skills relative to verbal skills through a process of "frozen watchfulness". I hypothesized that illegitimate boys from one-parent homes would have greater verbal-performance discrepancy scores than would boys from other combinations of birth status and family structure. These boys had the lowest verbal IQ and highest performance IQ scores and, hence, the largest discrepancy. These boys also suffered the highest degree of abuse and neglect of all four birth status/family structure combinations studied.     

Group risk-taking and group polarization

There are two aims to this paper; to report in brief preliminary form a number of studies on group risk-taking that have been carried out in Bristol in the past two years, and to relate these studies to an explanation of group risk-taking phenomena primarily in terms of group polarization. The paper has five sections. The first section supplies some background material regarding basic phenomena and previous attempts at explanations. The second section relates to initial individual decisions and the third section to decisions following group discussion and consensus. In the fourth section a tentative explanation of group risk-taking effects is proposed in terms of group polarization processes, together with something like an overall value for risk. Group polarization itself is discussed in terms of normative and informational aspects of social influence. The final section deals with two implications of the proposed explanation, one relating to the role of individual familiarization and the other to the generality of group polarization processes.     

Social marking,socio-cognitive conflict and cognitive development

This study is concerned with assessing whether social marking, i.e. the correspondence between the cognitive solution of a task and the social relation expressed in the material, is a mechanism of cognitive progress which depends on specific forms of socio-cognitive conflict or on presence of familiar social relations in the material. In the first experiment 5-6-year-old non-conserver children were selected during a pre-test that comprised three spatial transformation tasks. During the test phase, 56 children worked on spatial transformation tasks with an adult partner in four socially marked conditions in which the correctness of the adult model varied. All subjects were individually post-tested on the same tasks with unmarked content. Results showed that, under the same marked conditions in the test phase, more progress took place, at the post-test phase, when subjects had interacted with an incorrect adult model than when they had interacted with a correct one. In the second experiment the hypothesis of an interaction between the nature of the material and the kind of social interaction was examined by means of a factorial design in which the factors were adult versus child partner and marked versus unmarked material. The procedures in the pre- and post-test phase were carried out in the same way as in Experiment I. In the test phase 61 non-conserver children interacted with partners who presented completely incorrect model. The results of post-test phase indicated that there was a main effect of social marking although findings of a condition in which children interact with another child on unmarked material also have shown a certain amount of progress. The findings are discussed with respect to the psycho-social model of cognitive development.     

Phonological typicality and sentence processing

In studies of language, it is widely accepted that the form of a word is independent of its meaning and syntactic category. Thus, the relationship between phonological form and grammatical class would not be expected to affect reading time. However, Farmer et al. have now shown that the phonological typicality of a noun or verb influences how rapidly it is read. This finding has implications for both sentence processing and the interpretation of fixation patterns in reading.     

Social identity as social glue: the origins of group loyalty

In 3 experiments, the authors investigated the role of social identity in fostering group loyalty, defined as staying when members can obtain better outcomes by leaving their group. In Experiment 1, high (vs. low) identifiers expressed a stronger desire to stay in the group in the presence of an attractive (vs. unattractive) exit option. Experiments 2 and 3 replicated this basic finding and tested several explanations. The results suggest that high identifiers' group loyalty is better explained by an extremely positive impression of their group membership (group perception) than by a justification of previous investments in the group (self-perception) or their adherence to a nonabandonment norm (norm perception). Hence, social identity seems to act as social glue. It provides stability in groups that would otherwise collapse.     

Interrelations among gender-role conflict, typicality of occupations, and self-esteem

The present study was conducted with 549 women and men who were employed in gender-typical occupations or who were in vocational training, further qualification, or retraining for one of these job. We examined whether a gender-typical occupation is related to gender-role conflicts of women and men in work settings and whether self-esteem moderates the experiences of conflict. Generally, we cannot confirm influence of gender-typical jobs on experience of conflict. The results, however, supply evidence for the fact that women experience higher gender-role conflicts than men in all occupations. Women and men of low self-esteem engaged in typically female occupations experience especially high gender-role conflict.     

Group evaluations as self-group distancing: Ingroup typicality moderates evaluative intergroup bias in stigmatized groups

Outgroup favoritism among members of stigmatized groups can be seen as a form of self-group distancing. We examined how intergroup evaluations in stigmatized groups vary as a function of ingroup typicality. In Studies 1 and 2, Black participants (N = 125,915; N = 766) more strongly preferred light-skinned or White relative to dark-skinned or Black individuals the lighter their own skin tone. In Study 3, overweight participants (N = 147,540) more strongly preferred normal-weight relative to overweight individuals the lower their own body weight. In Study 4, participants with disabilities (N = 35,058) more strongly preferred non-disabled relative to disabled individuals the less visible they judged their own disability. Relationships between ingroup typicality and intergroup evaluations were at least partially mediated by ingroup identification (Studies 2 and 3). A meta-analysis across studies yielded an average effect size of r = .12. Furthermore, higher ingroup typicality was related to both ingroup and outgroup evaluations. We discuss ingroup typicality as an individual constraint to self-group distancing among stigmatized group members and its relation to intergroup evaluations.     

Action,the foundation for cognitive development

It is argued that action constitutes the foundation for cognitive development. Action is a principal component of all aspects of cognitive development including social understanding. It reflects the motives of the child, the problems to be solved, the goals to be attained, and the constraints and possibilities of the child’s body and sensory‐motor system. Actions are directed into the future and their control is based on knowledge of what is going to happen next. The child’s sensory‐motor system is especially designed to facilitate the extraction of this knowledge. In addition, the infant is endowed with motives that ensure that these innate predispositions are transformed into a system of knowledge for guiding actions. By acting on the world, infants develop their cognition.     

German norms for semantic typicality, age of acquisition, and concept familiarity

The present study introduces the first substantial German database with norms for semantic typicality, age of acquisition, and concept familiarity for 824 exemplars of 11 semantic categories, including four natural (ANIMALS, BIRDS, FRUITS,: and VEGETABLES: ) and five man-made (CLOTHING, FURNITURE, VEHICLES, TOOLS: , and MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS: ) categories, as well as PROFESSIONS: and SPORTS: . Each category exemplar in the database was collected empirically in an exemplar generation study. For each category exemplar, norms for semantic typicality, estimated age of acquisition, and concept familiarity were gathered in three different rating studies. Reliability data and additional analyses on effects of semantic category and intercorrelations between age of acquisition, semantic typicality, concept familiarity, word length, and word frequency are provided. Overall, the data show high inter- and intrastudy reliabilities, providing a new resource tool for designing experiments with German word materials. The full database is available in the supplementary material of this file and also at www.psychonomic.org/archive .     

Effects of contrasting category,conjoint frequency and typicality on categorization

Two experiments were conducted to investigate whether (a) experience with a contrasting category, (b) conjoint frequency of dimensional values, (c) range of typicality of values, and (d) type of information administered during learning influenced subsequent test performance. Each experiment began with an observational category learning task, employing faces as stimuli. This was followed by a classification test task and by pairwise comparisons of faces. Influence of a contrasting category was studied in experiment 1 by varying frequency of values of the contrasting category, and in experiment 2 by either including or not including a contrasting category in the learning task. Results indicated that (a) categorization is influenced by experience with a contrasting category, (b) conjoint frequency enhances the importance of values to a category, (c) broad typicality range experience reduces typicality differences among exemplars of a category, whereas small range experience diminishes differences in a contrasting category, and (d) information on representativeness of exemplars does not facilitate subsequent test performance. The implications of the results for categorization models are discussed.     

Group climate and group development in a community meeting on a short-term inpatient psychiatric unit

Group climate and group development of the community meeting on a short-term inpatient psychiatric unit are examined. The Group Climate Questionnaire (GCQ) was administered to all staff and patients present at the weekly community meeting on an acute treatment unit in a teaching hospital over a 12-week period. Results show that staff and patients perceive the community meetings in relatively similar ways, that the group climate of a community meeting can attain a positive working state, and that, at times, the meeting can progress through developmental stages of group process. Behavioral observations support the GCQ as a measure of group interaction.The authors gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Mary Pat Donnelly with the statistical analyses and the cooperation of all staff and patients who participated in this study.     

Comparative cognitive development

This paper aims to compare cognitive development in humans and chimpanzees to illuminate the evolutionary origins of human cognition. Comparison of morphological data and life history strongly highlights the common features of all primate species, including humans. The human mother-infant relationship is characterized by the physical separation of mother and infant, and the stable supine posture of infants, that enables vocal exchange, face-to-face communication, and manual gestures. The cognitive development of chimpanzees was studied using the participation observation method. It revealed that humans and chimpanzees show similar development until 3 months of age. However, chimpanzees have a unique type of social learning that lacks the social reference observed in human children. Moreover, chimpanzees have unique immediate short-term memory capabilities. Taken together, this paper presents a plausible evolutionary scenario for the uniquely human characteristics of cognition.