Priming us and them: automatic assimilation and contrast in group attitudes

Social judgment theory holds that a person's own attitudes function as reference points, influencing the perception of others' attitudes. The authors argue that attitudes themselves are influenced by reference points, namely, the presumed attitudes of others. Whereas exposure to a group that acts as a contextual reference should cause attitude assimilation, exposure to a group that acts as a comparative reference should cause attitude contrast. In Study 1, participants subliminally primed with their political ingroup or outgroup endorsed more extreme political positions than did controls. Study 2 demonstrated that prime types known to uniquely facilitate assimilation and contrast enhanced the polarization effect in the ingroup and outgroup conditions, respectively. Study 3 established an important boundary condition for whether group salience produces attitude assimilation or contrast by showing that perceived closeness to the elderly moderates the direction and strength of the group priming effect. The results suggest that the transition from assimilation to contrast occurs when a group ceases to function as a context and becomes a comparison point. Implications for social judgment theory, assimilation and contrast research, and conflict escalation are discussed.     

A study of syntactic processing in aphasia II: neurological aspects

This paper presents the results of a study of the effects of left hemisphere strokes on syntactically-based comprehension in aphasic patients. We studied 42 patients with aphasia secondary to left hemisphere strokes and 25 control subjects for the ability to assign and interpret three syntactic structures (passives, object extracted relative clauses, and reflexive pronouns) in enactment, sentence-picture matching and grammaticality judgment tasks. We measured accuracy, RT and self-paced listening times in SPM and GJ. We obtained magnetic resonance (MR) and 5-deoxyglucose positron emission tomography (FDG PET) data on 31 patients and 12 controls. The percent of selected regions of interest (ROIs) that was lesioned on MR and the mean normalized PET counts per voxel in ROIs were calculated. In regression analyses, lesion measures in both perisylvian and non-perisylvian ROIs predicted performance. Patients who performed at similar levels behaviorally had lesions of very different sizes, and patients with equivalent lesion sizes varied greatly in their level of performance. The data are consistent with a model in which the neural tissue that is responsible for the operations underlying sentence comprehension and syntactic processing is localized in different neural regions in different individuals.     

Matters of Life and Death: Justice in Judgments of Wrongful Death1

Two experiments investigated the influence of social categories on mock juror judgments of wrongful death compensatory damages. The research also examined whether these cues—decedent race, parental status, age, and socioeconomic status—differentially affected noneconomic and economic awards and, further, the extent to which jurors' distributive justice concerns could explain the findings. Results revealed a decedent's parental status to consistently impact noneconomic awards; whereas his parental status, age, and socioeconomic status all consistently affected economic awards. Decedent race did not inform participants' judgments. These results were in close alignment with the values participants expressed (Study 2) regarding the use of social categories in compensatory damage awards. Overall, the pattern of findings supports a distributive justice account.     

Editorial on Supervision

This Editorial provides background information to inform the report from the United Kingdom (UK) and Eire Association of Genetic Nurses and Counsellors (AGNC) Supervision Working Group on Genetic Counselling Supervision. We begin by introducing the context of practice as a genetic counselor in the UK and then follow with an overview of events that have happened in our profession that led to the need and creation of the report. Genetic counseling supervision has become instrumental to our practice, training and registration as genetic counselors in the UK.     

Semantic interference and associative facilitation from words presented in rapid serial visual presentation

Semantic interference in picture naming is readily obtained when categorically related distractor words are displayed with picture targets; however, this is not typically the case when both primes and targets are words. Researchers have argued that to obtain semantic interference for word primes and targets, the prime must be shown for a sufficient duration, prime processing must be made difficult, and participants must attend to the primes. In this article, we used a novel procedure for prime presentation to investigate semantic interference in word naming. Primes were presented as the last word of a rapid serial visual presentation stream, with the target following 600-1,200 msec later. Semantic interference was observed for categorically related targets, whereas facilitation was found for associatively related targets.     

Introduction: Engaging with Nanotechnologies – Engaging Differently?

The idea of conducting upstream public engagement over emerging technologies has been gaining popularity in Europe and North America, with nanotechnologies seen as a test case for this. For many of its advocates, upstream engagement is about a re-conceptualisation of the science–society relationship in which a variety of ‘publics’ are brought together with stakeholders and scientists early in the Research and Development process to co-develop technological trajectories. However, the concept, aims and processes of upstream engagement remain ill-defined, are often misunderstood, and have undergone little critical analysis. This special issue of NanoEthics, entitled ‘Engaging with Nanotechnologies–Engaging Differently?’ takes a multi-nation, multi-case approach to explore this idea, drawing on work represented by four articles from the US and Europe, from ethnographic work in the nanotechnology lab through to analysis of a Citizens’ Jury and other attempts to move public debate ‘upstream’. An overall message from the papers is that without adequate critique ‘upstream engagement’ might end up re-producing out-dated forms of science communication or being rejected as a failed concept before it has even matured.     

The Influence of Family and Experimental Context on Cognition in Anxious Children

Examined the influence of family on anxious children's cognition. Research by Barrett, Rapee, Dadds, and Ryan (1996) found anxious children reported increased avoidance after interacting with their parents. They labelled this finding the FEAR effect—Family Enhancement of Avoidant Responses. Whilst some subsequent studies have found similar results, others have not. These contradictory findings question whether the direction of parental influence on anxious children is determined by the perceived demands of the experimental context. Anxious children (N = 101) and their parents were asked to interpret seven ambiguous situations and to discuss what their child would do if the scenario actually occurred. Study 1 found that children in the anxious group and an externalizing control group were more likely to interpret ambiguous situations as threatening than nonclinic children were. Study 2 sought to examine changes in the children's responses from pre- to postfamily discussion, and to identify variables associated with the FEAR effect in anxious families. Interestingly, anxious children whose families completed the discussion task after they (children) had been offered treatment were more likely to show a FEAR effect than anxious families who completed the task as part of assessment. Study 3 examined predictors of enhanced avoidance in anxious families. Treatment context and maternal distress were correlated with the child's increased avoidance following family discussion. Limitations of these studies and directions for future research are discussed.     

Effects of DRL and DRL combined with response cost on perseverative verbal behavior of an adult with mental retardation and obsessive compulsive disorder

Although there has been increased interest in the identification and diagnosis of obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) in people who have developmental disabilities, clinical research has been reported infrequently. The present single‐case study evaluated the effects from systematic behavioral intervention with a 26‐year‐old man who had moderate mental retardation, OCD, and exhibited perseverative verbalizations. Verbalizations were reduced when the man gained access to preferred activities contingent upon a low response frequency (DRL: differential reinforcement of low‐rate responding). The behavior was reduced further when a DRL contingency was implemented in the form of a response cost procedure. The implications of these findings for the treatment of OCD in people with developmental disabilities are discussed. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.