A DUAL-IDENTITY FRAMEWORK FOR UNDERSTANDING LESBIAN EXPERIENCE

The diverse life experiences of contemporary lesbians are shaped by women's differing ties to two social worlds, the majority heterosexual society and the minority subculture of the lesbian or sexual-minority world. This article presents a detailed conceptual analysis of a dual-identity framework that emphasizes lesbians' simultaneous affiliations with both lesbian and mainstream/heterosexual communities. The usefulness of this approach is discussed, with emphasis on implications for understanding individual differences in exposure to gay-related stress and mental health. Results from a survey of 116 lesbians showed that scores on measures of Lesbian Identity and Mainstream Identity were not significantly correlated with each other. Both lesbian and mainstream identities were significantly related to lesbians' reported experiences of discrimination, feelings of internalized homophobia, and life satisfaction. Limitations of the dual-identity framework and suggestions for future research are considered.     

The mean-integral representation of rectangles

To assess perceptual interaction between the height and width of rectangles, we used an accuracy variant of the Garner paradigm. We measured the discriminability of height and width (baseline tasks) and size and shape (correlated tasks). From thed′ values in these conditions, we estimated perceptual distances and inferred amean-integral representation in which height and width corresponded to nonindependent dimensions in a perceptual space. This model accounted well for performance in these two-stimulus conditions, and it also explained 70% –80% of the decline in performance in selective and divided attention. In a second experiment, conducted for purposes of comparison with the rectangle discrimination Experiment, we studied the discrimination of horizontal and vertical line segments connected in an L-shape. In size discrimination, observers were equally good with line pairs and rectangles, suggesting holistic perception; but in shape discrimination, they appeared to combine information from the two line-pair components of the rectangle independently. The mean-integral model was again successful in relating performance in the Garner tasks quantitatively.     

A comparison of race‐related pain stereotypes held by White and Black individuals

Pain judgments are the basis for pain management. The purpose of this study was to assess Black and White participants' race‐related pain stereotypes. Undergraduates (n = 551) rated the pain sensitivity and willingness to report pain for the typical Black person, White person, and themselves. Participants, regardless of race, rated the typical White person as being more pain sensitive and more willing to report pain than the typical Black person. White participants rated themselves as less sensitive and less willing to report pain than same‐race peers; however, Black participants rated themselves as more pain sensitive and more willing to report pain than same‐race peers. These findings highlight similarities and differences in racial stereotypic pain beliefs held by Black and White individuals.     

Effects of signaling on temporal control of behavior in response‐initiated fixed intervals

Behavior and events distributed in time can serve as markers that signal delays to future events. The majority of timing research has focused on how behavior changes as the time to some event, usually food availability, decreases. The primary objective of the two experiments presented here was to assess how behavior changes as time passes between two time markers when the first time marker was manipulated but the second, food delivery, was held constant. Pigeons were exposed to fixed‐interval, response‐initiated fixed‐interval, and signaled response‐initiated fixed‐interval 15‐ and 30‐s schedules of reinforcement. In Experiment 1, first‐response latencies were systematically shorter in the signaled response‐initiated schedules than response‐initiated schedules, suggesting that the first response was a more effective time marker when it was signaled. In Experiment 2, responding in no‐food (i.e. “peak”) trials indicated that timing accuracy was equivalent in the three schedule types. Compared to fixed interval schedules, timing precision was reduced in the signaled response‐initiated schedules and was lowest in response‐initiated schedules. Results from Experiments 1 and 2 coupled with previous research suggest that the overall “informativeness” of a time marker relative to other events and behaviors in the environment may determine its efficacy.     

Extended Cognition and Propositional Memory

The philosophical case for extended cognition is often made with reference to ‘extended‐memory cases’ (e.g. Clark & Chalmers 1998); though, unfortunately, proponents of the hypothesis of extended cognition (HEC) as well as their adversaries have failed to appreciate the kinds of epistemological problems extended‐memory cases pose for mainstream thinking in the epistemology of memory. It is time to give these problems a closer look. Our plan is as follows: in §1, we argue that an epistemological theory remains compatible with HEC only if its epistemic assessments do not violate what we call ‘the epistemic parity principle’. In §2, we show how the constraint of respecting the epistemic parity principle stands in what appears to be a prima facie intractable tension with mainstream thinking about cases of propositional memory. We then outline and evaluate in §3 several lines of response.     

Corrupting Conversations with the Marquis de Sade: On Education,Gender, and Sexuality

In this essay, the author joins a conversation started by Martin (Reclaiming the conversation: the ideal of the educated woman. Yale University Press, New Haven, 1985) regarding gender and education seeking to extend the conversation to address sexuality. To do so, the author brings a reading of the Marquis de Sade to challenge the emphasis on reproduction in education as it relates to gendered and sexual norms. The author, following Martin’s approach in Reclaiming the Conversation, reads one particular text of Sade’s—Philosophy in the Bedroom—to argue for queer possibilities that Sade brings to the conversation around gender and sexuality within twenty-first century education. The Marquis de Sade may viscerally seem an inappropriate choice to return to and use to join the conversation, but his novelic imagination incites complications in the conversation. Following in the footsteps of Martin’s re-reading of historic philosophical texts the author offers not only another layer of thinking about “female education,” but also opens up space for engaging gender and sexuality in the history and philosophy of education. As issues around gender and sexed bodies become ever more present and contested in educational discourses, does Sade continue the conversation in ways that corrupt the reproductive aims of education?     

Forum: Crafting the Introductory Course in Religious Studies

This series of short essays considers the complex choices and decision‐making processes of instructors preparing to teach, and continuing to teach, introductory courses in religious studies. In a paper originally presented in the University of Chicago's “The Craft of Teaching in the Academic Study of Religion” series, Russell McCutcheon explores a “baker's dozen” of such choices and the larger pedagogical problems with which they are entwined, ranging from classic questions of skill development and content coverage to philosophical concerns around students' identification with their topics of study and institutional concerns around governance and assessment. Aaron Hollander provides a brief introduction and four doctoral students at the University of Chicago Divinity School respond to McCutcheon's essay, widening its scope, testing its applicability, and interrogating its undergirding suppositions from the perspective of early‐career educators in the field.