Women's human rights violations: Cameroonian students' perceptions

Cameroonian university students (N = 666) assessed whether certain different societal positions that the law grants to women and men (the husband chooses the marital home, the husband wields parental power, a married woman cannot freely engage in trade, the husband administers his wife's personal property) and certain cultural practices (female genital mutilation, parents arranging their children's marriage) were seen as violations of women's human rights. Justifications for the choices were also analysed. Female genital mutilation was most often seen as a violation of women's human rights, and the husband selecting the marital home was least often seen as a violation. These differences were explained by cultural specificities. Women more often than men saw the cases as violations of rights. Respondents coming from the North saw the cases less often as violations of rights than respondents from other geocultural areas, which was in accordance with their previously observed higher collectivism. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Verbal predicates foster conscious recollection but not familiarity of a task-irrelevant perceptual feature – An ERP study

Research on the effects of perceptual manipulations on recognition memory has suggested that (a) recollection is selectively influenced by task-relevant information and (b) familiarity can be considered perceptually specific. The present experiment tested divergent assumptions that (a) perceptual features can influence conscious object recollection via verbal code despite being task-irrelevant and that (b) perceptual features do not influence object familiarity if study is verbal-conceptual. At study, subjects named objects and their presentation colour; this was followed by an old/new object recognition test. Event-related potentials (ERP) showed that a study-test manipulation of colour impacted selectively on the ERP effect associated with recollection, while a size manipulation showed no effect. It is concluded that (a) verbal predicates generated at study are potent episodic memory agents that modulate recollection even if the recovered feature information is task-irrelevant and (b) commonly found perceptual match effects on familiarity critically depend on perceptual processing at study.     

The shift in infant preferences for vowel duration and pitch contour between 6 and 10 months of age

This study investigates the influence of the acoustic properties of vowels on 6‐ and 10‐month‐old infants’ speech preferences. The shape of the contour (bell or monotonic) and the duration (normal or stretched) of vowels were manipulated in words containing the vowels /i/ and /u/, and presented to infants using a two‐choice preference procedure. Experiment 1 examined contour shape: infants heard either normal‐duration bell‐shaped and monotonic contours, or the same two contours with stretched duration. The results show that 6‐month‐olds preferred bell to monotonic contours, whereas 10‐month‐olds preferred monotonic to bell contours. In Experiment 2, infants heard either normal‐duration and stretched bell contours, or normal‐duration and stretched monotonic contours. As in Experiment 1, infants showed age‐specific preferences, with 6‐month‐olds preferring stretched vowels, and 10‐month‐olds preferring normal‐duration vowels. Infants’ attention to the acoustic qualities of vowels, and to speech in general, undergoes a dramatic transformation in the final months of the first year, a transformation that aligns with the emergence of other developmental milestones in speech perception.     

Inferring the size of a goal object from an actor's grasping movement in 6‐ and 9‐month‐old infants

The present study applied a preferential looking paradigm to test whether 6‐ and 9‐month old infants are able to infer the size of a goal object from an actor's grasping movement. The target object was a cup with the handle rotated either towards or away from the actor. In two experiments, infants saw the video of an actor's grasping movement towards an occluded target object. The aperture size of the actor's hand was varied as between‐subjects factor. Subsequently, two final states of the grasping movement were presented simultaneously with the occluder being removed. In Experiment 1, the expected final state showed the actor's hand holding a cup in a way that would be expected after the performed grasping movement. In the unexpected final state, the actor's hand held the cup at the side which would be unexpected after the performed grasping movement. Results show that 6‐ as well as 9‐month‐olds looked longer at the unexpected than at the expected final state. Experiment 2 excluded an alternative explanation of these findings, namely that the discrimination of the final states was due to geometrical familiarity or novelty of the final states. These findings provide evidence that infants are able to infer the size of a goal object from the aperture size of the actor's hand during the grasp.     

Are novice drivers overconfident? A comparison of self-assessed and examiner-assessed driver competences in a Finnish and Swedish sample

Studies of subjective driving skill have usually assessed perceived driving skill in relation to the skills of the average driver. In order to examine whether novice drivers are overconfident with respect to their actual skills, a different method was used in the present study, where specific aspects of perceived driver competence were compared with assessments made by a driver examiner. A Finnish (n = 2847) and a Swedish (n = 805) sample of driving test candidates completed self-assessments and took a practical driving test; the instruments differed between the countries. The results indicated that about 50 percent of the Finnish and between 25 and 35 percent of the Swedish candidates made realistic assessments of their competence in the areas Vehicle manoeuvring, Economical driving and Traffic safety. The proportion of those who overestimated their competence was greater among the Swedish candidates than the Finnish candidates. This might be explained by greater possibilities of practicing self-assessment in the Finnish driver education. Furthermore, the results indicate that males are not overconfident to a greater extent than females. In conclusion, when perceived competence is related to actual competence instead of the skills of the average driver, the majority of drivers are no longer found to overestimate their skills.     

Teachers’ burnout, depression, role ambiguity and conflict

The present study investigates issues associated with teachers’ burnout in primary education as related to depression and role conflict–ambiguity. At the time of the study the participants (562 teachers) were working in seventy nine (79) Primary Education State Schools in Greece (Athens and two prefectures in the southern part of the country). The results showed that of the three factors comprising the Burnout inventory (MBI, Maslach and Jackson, MBI: Maslach Burnout Inventory; manual research edition, 1986), (i.e., Emotional exhaustion, Personal accomplishment, Depersonalization) Emotional Exhaustion showed a statistically significant (positive) correlation with the factors that comprise: (a) the Scale of Depression (CES-D: Ensel, in: Lin et al. (eds.) Social support, life events and depression, 1986; Radloff, Applied Psychological Measurement 1: 385–401, 1977) such as Depressed affect, Somatic retarded activity and (b) Degree of Role Conflict (Role Conflict and Role Ambiguity Scale, Rizzo et al., Administrative Science Quarterly, 15:150–163, 1970, adapted in Greek by Koustelios and Kousteliou, Psychological Reports, 82:131–136, 1998); similarly, Positive affect (CES-D) and Degree of Role Clarity (Role Conflict and Role Ambiguity Scale) showed a statistically significant (negative) correlation with the same factor (Emotional exhaustion). Furthermore, a regression analysis performed with Personal accomplishment as the dependent variable showed that the (combined) factors of Role Ambiguity, Positive Affect and Somatic Retarded Activity contributed significantly to the prediction of the dependent variable; A third regression analysis performed with Depersonalization as dependent variable showed that Somatic Retarded Activity, Role Conflict, Positive Affect, Interpersonal Affect and Role Ambiguity contributed significantly to the prediction of this variable. Overall, the results showed that Greek teachers experience low-moderate levels of Burnout, Depression, Role conflict and Role ambiguity.     

‘Peace in a Thatched Hut—that is Happiness’: Subjective Wellbeing Among Peasants in Rural China

Existing research about subjective wellbeing (SWB) in China is confined to student and urban samples, even though 60% of the population reside in rural areas. It is reasonable to predict that there could be a rural-urban difference in SWB as there is a marked difference in objective (socio-economic) measures of wellbeing. The present study measured SWB within a sample of Chinese peasants living in a remote farming village. The results show that despite their relatively low socioeconomic conditions, the rural residents’ satisfaction levels were within the normative range for the Chinese population, and generally did not differ significantly from a previously published study in an affluent Chinese region (Hong Kong). In-depth interviews with participants revealed that the lower living conditions in the rural area are not adverse to drive SWB below the normative range.

Regulatory fit as a determinant of sport performance: How to succeed in a soccer penalty-shooting

ObjectivesAccording to regulatory focus theory, goal pursuit can be achieved by either keeping a promotion or a prevention focus [Higgins, E. T. (1997). Beyond pleasure and pain. American Psychologist, 52, 1280–1300; Higgins, E. T. (2000). Making a good decision: value from fit. American Psychologist, 55, 1217–1230]. Moreover, it has been assumed that people experience fit when they pursue a goal in a manner that sustains their chronic orientation and that fit has a positive impact on performance. In two studies, we investigated the significance of regulatory focus and fit in the realm of sports performance, such as the success rate in a soccer penalty-shooting task.Methods and ResultsIn a pilot study, we assessed the chronic regulatory orientation of 211 athletes from different sports. Among others, we found more promotion focus with attackers than with defenders. In the main study, we assessed the chronic regulatory orientation of 20 soccer players who took part in a penalty-shooting task. For half of them, the task was described in terms of promotion, for the others in terms of prevention. We found a positive impact of regulatory fit on scoring performance.ConclusionsOur findings demonstrate a great potential of regulatory focus theory for the understanding and enhancement of sport performance. The assessment of athletes' chronic regulatory orientation could be of importance for the selection of athletes, the adjustment of tactics and strategies, and coaches' framing of instructions.