Do we access meaning when we name Arabic digits? Electrophysiological evidence

In this study, we evaluated whether the naming of Arabic digits required access to semantic information. Participants named pictures and Arabic digits blocked by category or intermixed with exemplars of other categories while behavioural and electrophysiological measures were gathered. Pictures were named slower and Arabic digits faster in the blocked context relative to the mixed context. Around 350–450 ms after the presentation of pictures and Arabic digits, brain waves were more positive in anterior regions and more negative in posterior regions when the blocked context was compared with the mixed context. The pattern of electrophysiological results suggests that pictures and Arabic digits are both processed semantically and they are subject to repetition effects during the naming task.     

The anticipated belief differences theory of prejudice: Analysis and evaluation

The main supporting evidence for Rokeach's theory of prejudice (the Anticipated Belief Differences Theory of Prejudice) comes from the strong belief effects obtained in a simple Race/Belief manipulation. Analysis shows that the theory is unfalsifiable with this paradigm and is therefore neither tested nor confirmed by the many studies purporting to do so. The Belief-undefined/Belief-partially-defined manipulation of Stein, Hardyck and Smith (1965) does test the theory. However, these authors' conclusion that favourable evidence was obtained is incorrect owing to the use of an inappropriate statistic. Although race effects can be incorporated within a theory of belief prejudice it is equally possible to incorporate belief effects within any theory of prejudice which is contingent on an initial categorization into in-group and out-group. An empirical distinction between Rokeach's theory and other theories of prejudice can be made using a Belief-undefined/Belief-partially-defined manipulation. Finally the theoretical adequacy of Rokeach's theory is discussed in terms of more general characteristics of prejudice.     

Associations of ethnic discrimination with symptoms of anxiety and depression among Hispanic emerging adults: a moderated mediation model

Background and Objectives: Emerging adulthood is often marked with elevated symptoms of anxiety and depression. Hispanic emerging adults may face cultural stressors such as ethnic discrimination that further increase levels of anxiety and depression symptoms. The study aims were to examine if (a) self-esteem mediated effects of ethnic discrimination on symptoms of anxiety and depression, and (b) if gender moderated the indirect effects of discrimination. Design: The study design was cross-sectional self-report. Method: Two moderated mediation models were tested, with 1084 Hispanic emerging adults (ages 18–25) enrolled in institutions of post-secondary in the United States. Results: Results indicated that (a) higher ethnic discrimination was associated with higher anxiety symptoms (β?=?.05, p?=?.04), higher depression symptoms (β?=?.06, p?=?.02), and lower self-esteem (β?=??.30, p?Conclusions: Findings suggest that the mediating effects of self-esteem linking ethnic discrimination with symptoms of anxiety and depression vary between genders.     

Arrow Logic and Infinite Counting

We consider arrow logics (i.e., propositional multi-modal logics having three -- a dyadic, a monadic, and a constant -- modal operators) augmented with various kinds of infinite counting modalities, such as 'much more', 'of good quantity', 'many times'. It is shown that the addition of these modal operators to weakly associative arrow logic results in finitely axiomatizable and decidable logics, which fail to have the finite base property.     

Seeing behind the surface: communicative demonstration boosts category disambiguation in 12‐month‐olds

In their first years, infants acquire an incredible amount of information regarding the objects present in their environment. While often it is not clear what specific information should be prioritized in encoding from the many characteristics of an object, different types of object representations facilitate different types of generalizations. We tested the hypotheses that 1‐year‐old infants distinctively represent familiar objects as exemplars of their kind, and that ostensive communication plays a role in determining kind membership for ambiguous objects. In the training phase of our experiment, infants were exposed to movies displaying an agent sorting objects from two categories (cups and plates) into two locations (left or right). Afterwards, different groups of infants saw either an ostensive or a non‐ostensive demonstration performed by the agent, revealing that a new object that looked like a plate can be transformed into a cup. A third group of infants experienced no demonstration regarding the new object. During test, infants were presented with the ambiguous object in the plate format, and we measured generalization by coding anticipatory looks to the plate or the cup side. While infants looked equally often towards the two sides when the demonstration was non‐ostensive, and more often to the plate side when there was no demonstration, they performed more anticipatory eye movements to the cup side when the demonstration was ostensive. Thus, ostensive demonstration likely highlighted the hidden dispositional properties of the target object as kind‐relevant, guiding infants’ categorization of the foldable cup as a cup, despite it looking like a plate. These results suggest that infants likely encode familiar objects as exemplars of their kind and that ostensive communication can play a crucial role in disambiguating what kind an object belongs to, even when this requires disregarding salient surface features.     

Doctoral theses production of the more productive Spanish psychology professors in the Web of Science

The purpose of the present study is to analyze the scientific production of the more productive Psychology faculty member of Spain through advised doctoral theses in the data base TESEO. The sample consisted of the 100 more productive professors of each one of the areas of Spanish Psychology. We reviewed a total of 4036 records of which 2339 belong to the 610 professors who conformed the sample. The results reveal that the percentage of professors who have not directed any thesis accounts for 24%. On the other hand, the proportion of thesis by professor by areas oscillates in a range of between 5.25 and 2.50, being Personality, Evaluation and Psychological Treatment the highest of this rank and Behavioral Sciences Methodology the last. In the last 7 years, the most productive professors have duplicated their theses direction. Finally, there is a rising trend in terms of theses read in every area, reaching the greater frequency in the years of 2003 and 2005. We discuss the considerations that represent the doctoral thesis direction for professors as criterion in their evaluation.