Looks aren’t Everything: Pseudohomophones Prime Words but Nonwords do not

After examining literature that deals with phonological and orthographic effects associated with pseudohomophones, the current effort deviates from the norm by using fewer pseudohomophones (20) and extending the lags between primes and targets (M=8). Word and pseudohomophone primes were found to facilitate lexical decision response latencies to word targets. Response latencies to word targets were not influenced by nonword primes, however. The presence of pseudohomophone effects was demonstrated by longer response latencies and higher error rates for pseudohomophones (e.g., DREEM) that were equated in orthography to nonword controls (e.g., DROAM). Despite the frequency effect observed for base words, the pseudohomophones did not exhibit an effect of base word frequency. The results suggest that phonological codes exert an influence on lexical representation but are not frequency sensitive.     

Gender stereotypes and belonging across high school girls’ social groups: beyond the STEM classroom

Social Psychology of Education - Previous research on the impact of gender stereotypes on female adolescents’ feeling of belonging to peer groups has focused on STEM classrooms and...     

Preparing the Ground for Kant’s Highest Good in the World

Philosophia - In his new book, Rossi (2019) emphasizes the prominent role of enlightened religion in the political project of establishing perpetual peace. My paper discusses Rossi’s stance...     

A longitudinal study of factors predicting students’ intentions to leave upper secondary school in Norway

Social Psychology of Education - This article illuminates factors predicting students’ intention to leave upper secondary school. The research is anchored in an ecological theoretical...     

Exploring the relationship between Black high school students’ external regulation and intrinsic motivation

Motivation and Emotion - Self-determination theory (SDT) asserts that motivation types, ranging from controlled to autonomous, are independent forms of motivation that differentially emerge from...     

Addicts to artists: The ‘good enough mother’ in the substance abuse clinic

Psychodynamic psychotherapy has had a bad reputation in substance abuse circles. Despite widespread use of behavioral interventions, outcomes remain relatively poor. The emerging trend is to incorporate relational and other psychodynamic approaches into addiction treatment. The article describes use of Winnicott's concepts of the ‘good enough mother’ and ‘play space’ in an outpatient ‘art group’.     

Don’t Shoot the Messnger: Memory for Misspellings in Context

Misspellings in sentences are usually easy to understand by readers due to top-down influences. Although top-down processing allows for fluent reading of misspelled items, the nature of their representations in memory is not known. If representations of misspellings are distinct from representations of correctly spelled words, their influence should be seen in later recognition decisions. In this set of experiments, participants read words and misspellings embedded in sentences and were later given a recognition test. The sentences contained semantically biased or neutral contexts. In Experiment 1, misspellings were created by removing a single letter (e.g., drveway). In Experiment 2, the recognition items probes were presented in uppercase letters (e.g., DRVEWAY) to reduce the visual similarity between study and test items. In Experiment 3, the misspellings were created by substituting visually similar letters (e.g., driweway). In contrast to the previous experiments, in Experiment 4, participants were explicitly told about the memory test to see how response strategies affect performance. Overall, the results indicate that people retain surface feature information about misspellings which seem to inform their memory judgments, and that the processing of this information cannot be strategically controlled.     

Faces are special,but facial expressions aren’t: Insights from an oculomotor capture paradigm

We compared the ability of angry and neutral faces to drive oculomotor behaviour as a test of the widespread claim that emotional information is automatically prioritized when competing for attention. Participants were required to make a saccade to a colour singleton; photos of angry or neutral faces appeared amongst other objects within the array, and were completely irrelevant for the task. Eye-tracking measures indicate that faces drive oculomotor behaviour in a bottom-up fashion; however, angry faces are no more likely to capture the eyes than neutral faces are. Saccade latencies suggest that capture occurrs via reflexive saccades and that the outcome of competition between salient items (colour singletons and faces) may be subject to fluctuations in attentional control. Indeed, although angry and neutral faces captured the eyes reflexively on a portion of trials, participants successfully maintained goal-relevant oculomotor behaviour on a majority of trials. We outline potential cognitive and brain mechanisms underlying oculomotor capture by faces.     

The road to understanding is paved with the speaker’s intentions: Cues to the speaker’s attention and intentions affect pronoun comprehension

A series of experiments explore the effects of attention-directing cues on pronoun resolution, contrasting four specific hypotheses about the interpretation of ambiguous pronouns he and she: (1) it is driven by grammatical rules, (2) it is primarily a function of social processing of the speaker’s intention to communicate, (3) it is modulated by the listener’s own egocentric attention, and (4) it is primarily a function of learned probabilistic cues. Experiment 1 demonstrates that pronoun interpretation is guided by the well-known N1 (first-mention) bias, which is also modulated by both the speaker’s gaze and pointing gestures. Experiment 2 demonstrates that a low-level visual capture cue has no effect on pronoun interpretation, in contrast with the social cue of pointing. Experiment 3 uses a novel intentional cue: the same attention-capture flash as in Experiment 2, but with instructions that the cue is intentionally created by the speaker. This cue does modulate the N1 bias, demonstrating the importance of information about the speaker’s intentions to pronoun resolution. Taken in sum, these findings demonstrate that pronoun resolution is a process best categorized as driven by an appreciation of the speaker’s communicative intent, which may be subserved by a sensitivity to predictive cues in the environment.     

Putnam on what isn’t in the head

In “The Meaning of ‘Meaning’” Putnam argues, among other things, that “‘meanings’ just ain’t in the head”. Putnam’s central arguments in favor of this conclusion are unsound. The arguments in question are the famous intra-world Twin Earth arguments, given on pages 223–227 of the article in question. Each of these arguments relies on a premise to the effect that this or that Twin Earth scenario is both logically possible and one in which certain individuals are in the same overall “psychological [state] in the narrow sense”. The problem is that none of the scenarios are as advertised; that is, none of them are logically possible situations in which the relevant individuals are in the same overall “psychological [state] in the narrow sense”.     

Modeling indicators and outcomes of students’ perceived teacher relatedness support in high school physical education

Research based in self-determination theory has demonstrated the importance of social agents for motivational processes in school-based physical education (PE). To focus more closely on the relational processes that underpin students’ motivation in PE, there have been calls for researchers to explore the specific teacher behaviors that facilitate students’ relatedness in PE. Our aim was to test a higher-order measurement model comprising distinct relatedness-supportive teacher behaviors, and to explore the ways in which students’ perceptions about their teacher directly and/or indirectly predict relatedness need satisfaction and motivation in PE. To test our higher-order model (Study 1), 656 high-school PE students reported the extent to which their teachers engaged in relatedness-supportive behaviors. In Study 2, 570 high-school PE students reported their motivational regulations for PE, as well as the extent to which their teacher engaged in relatedness-supportive behaviors, and satisfied their need for relatedness. We found support for the higher-order relatedness support model, and observed predictive pathways that were consistent with theory. Students reported satisfaction of their need for relatedness when they felt relatedness support from their teachers (β = 0.52, p < 0.001) and relatedness need satisfaction was in turn positively related to intrinsic (β = 0.51, p < 0.001), identified (β = 0.49, p < 0.001), and introjected (β = 0.25, p < 0.001) regulations for PE. These findings demonstrate the importance of relatedness-supportive teaching in PE, and implications of these data are discussed.     

Predicting adolescent pedestrians’ behavioral intentions to follow the masses in risky crossing situations

Adolescent pedestrians are a major population at risk of being killed or injured in traffic accidents, especially in developing countries. In the current study, we examined the effects of age, gender, sensation seeking, and conformity tendency on Chinese adolescent pedestrians’ intention to cross the road against a traffic signal. A sample of 510 adolescents, aged 12–19 years, completed a series of questionnaires comprising (1) a demographic questionnaire, (2) scales which measured their tendency towards social conformity and sensation seeking, and (3) a questionnaire based on the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), which measured their intention to cross the road in two different traffic scenarios. One scenario depicted a situation where the crossing was consistent with other pedestrians’ behavior (Conformity scenario). In the second scenario, the road crossing was inconsistent with other pedestrians (Non-conformity scenario). Along with behavioral intentions, attitudes towards the behavior, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control, anticipated affect, moral norms, and perceived risk were also assessed. In general, adolescent participants reported greater likelihood in crossing the road when other pedestrians were crossing the road as well (Conformity with the masses) and adolescents in middle school were more likely to cross than those in high school. A hierarchical regression model explained 30% of the variance in behavioral intention in the Non-conformity scenario and 40% of the variance in the Conformity scenario. For both scenarios, attitude, subjective norm, perceived behavioral control, and anticipated affect emerged as common predictors. The theoretical and practical implications for these results are discussed.     

School in our memory: do we remember our time in middle and high school differently?

ABSTRACT

The present study investigated autobiographical memories of school. While previous works have shown that most memories relating to school are social as opposed to academic, there are still strong theoretical arguments for the presumed prevalence of educationally oriented memories from at least some parts of the school period. The goal of the study was to replicate previous studies while addressing some of their limitations. In our study, only memories of high school were more socially and less educationally oriented. Also, memories of high school were more positive and emotionally intense. We discuss the further implications of these effects.     

Victimization in the school and the workplace: Are there any links?

We examine whether reported roles in school bullying, and victimization in the workplace, are connected; the influence of victim coping strategies at school; and sex differences. A questionnaire was completed by 5,288 adults from various workplace venues in Great Britain. We analysed two questions on school experiences (participant role; coping strategies if bullied) and questions on workplace bullying (experiences of being bullied). We found a significant relationship between reported roles in school bullying, and experience of workplace victimization. The highest risk of workplace victimization was for those who were both bullies and victims at school (bully/victims), followed by those who were only victims. An analysis of relative risk of workplace bullying, given being a victim at school plus using various coping strategies, revealed an increased risk for the strategies ‘tried to make fun of it’, and ‘did not really cope’. Women were at slightly higher risk of getting bullied at work, but there were no interactions with roles at school, and only one interaction with coping strategies. This is the first study to report an association between school and workplace bullying. Victims at school are more at risk of workplace victimization, but the especial risk for ‘bully/victims’ supports other indications that this particular category of school pupils should be a focus of concern. The findings also suggest that school pupils who consistently cannot cope with bullying, or try to make fun of the bullying, are more at risk for later problems in the workplace. However, associations are modest; many victims of school bullying are not being victimized in later life, and the results also suggest important contextual or environmental effects on risks of victimization.     

Novice school counselors’ role in closing the achievement gap with low-income adolescents

We explored 10 novice school counselors’ experiences working to close the achievement gap with low-income adolescents through interpretative phenomenological analysis. Results suggest that school counselors experienced their role in closing the achievement gap with low-income adolescents as one of (a) systemic discouragement, (b) interactions with students’ home environment, and (c) parallel process advocacy. Implications for school counselors, counselor educators, and future research are included.