The Behavioral Immune System Shapes Partisan Preferences in Modern Democracies: Disgust Sensitivity Predicts Voting for Socially Conservative Parties

While there is growing interest in the relationship between pathogen-avoidance motivations and partisanship, the extant findings remain contradictory and suffer from a number of methodological limitations related to measurement and internal and external validity. We address these limitations and marshal the most complete test to date of the relationship between the behavioral immune system and partisanship, as indexed by which party people identify with and vote for. Using a unique research design, including multiple well-powered, nationally representative samples from the United States and Denmark collected in election and nonelection contexts, our study is the first to establish in cross-national data a consistent, substantial, and replicable connection between deep-seated pathogen-avoidance motivations and socially conservative party preferences across multiple validated measures of individual differences in disgust sensitivity and using large representative samples. We explore the relative contribution of the pathogen-avoidance model and sexual strategies for accounting for this relationship.     

Monuments as Commitments: How Art Speaks to Groups and How Groups Think in Art

Art can be addressed, not just to individuals, but to groups. Art can even be part of how groups think to themselves – how they keep a grip on their values over time. I focus on monuments as a case study. Monuments, I claim, can function as a commitment to a group value, for the sake of long‐term action guidance. Art can function here where charters and mission statements cannot, precisely because of art's powers to capture subtlety and emotion. In particular, art can serve as the vessel for group emotions, by making emotional content sufficiently public so as to be the object of a group commitment. Art enables groups to guide themselves with values too subtle to be codified.     

Lexical and sublexical cortical tuning for print revealed by Steady-State Visual Evoked Potentials (SSVEPs) in early readers

There are multiple levels of processing relevant to reading that vary in their visual, sublexical, and lexical orthographic processing demands. Segregating distinct cortical sources for each of these levels has been challenging in EEG studies of early readers. To address this challenge, we applied recent advances in analyzing high-density EEG using Steady-State Visual Evoked Potentials (SSVEPs) via data-driven Reliable Components Analysis (RCA) in a group of early readers spanning from kindergarten to second grade. Three controlled stimulus contrasts—familiar words versus unfamiliar pseudofonts, familiar words versus pseudowords, and pseudowords versus nonwords—were used to isolate coarse print tuning, lexical processing, and sublexical orthography-related processing, respectively. First, three overlapping yet distinct neural sources—left vOT, dorsal parietal, and primary visual cortex were revealed underlying coarse print tuning. Second, we segregated distinct cortical sources for the other two levels of processing: lexical fine tuning over occipito-temporal/parietal regions; sublexical orthographic fine tuning over left occipital regions. Finally, exploratory group analyses based on children's reading fluency suggested that coarse print tuning emerges early even in children with limited reading knowledge, while sublexical and higher-level lexical processing emerge only in children with sufficient reading knowledge.

Research Highlights

• Cognitive processes underlying coarse print tuning, sublexical, and lexical fine tuning were examined in beginning readers.
• Three overlapping yet distinct neural sources—left ventral occipito-temporal (vOT), left temporo-parietal, and primary visual cortex—were revealed underlying coarse print tuning.
• Responses to sublexical orthographic fine tuning were found over left occipital regions, while responses to higher-level linguistic fine tuning were found over occipito-temporal/parietal regions.
• Exploratory group analyses suggested that coarse print tuning emerges in children with limited reading knowledge, while sublexical and higher-level linguistic fine tuning effects emerge in children with sufficient reading knowledge.

     

Health Problems and Male Firearm Suicide

Drawing on constructs of masculinity as it relates to both gun ownership and men's health, we use a rich data set, the New Jersey Violent Death Reporting System as well as hospital discharge data, to analyze 3,413 completed male suicides between the years of 2003 and 2009. We test the hypotheses that the use of firearms is more common when physical health problems are cited as suicide circumstances, and that suicide decedents who use firearms have poorer physical health than those who used other methods. Results show that firearms are disproportionately used in male suicides when physical health is listed as a circumstance. Additionally, among suicide decedents with a hospitalization during the 3 years prior to death, those who used firearms were in poorer health than those who used other methods. These findings have implications for prevention efforts, because restricting access to lethal means is an important aspect of suicide prevention.     

Children's judgements and emotions about social exclusion based on weight

This study examined children's judgements and emotions associated with weight‐based social exclusion using an ethnically diverse sample of one hundred and seventeen 9‐ and 13‐year‐old children. Children were interviewed about three scenarios depicting weight‐based exclusion in athletic, academic, and social contexts. Children's judgements of exclusion, emotions attributed to the excluder and excluded targets, and justifications for judgements and emotions were examined. Overall, children judged weight‐based exclusion to be wrong for moral reasons. However, they viewed weight‐based exclusion in athletic contexts as less wrong compared with academic contexts, and they used more social‐conventional reasoning to justify judgements and emotions attributed to excluders in athletic contexts compared with academic and social contexts. Children also expected excluded targets to feel negative emotions, whereas a range of positive and negative emotions was attributed to excluders. In addition, older children were more accepting of weight‐based exclusion in athletic contexts than in academic and social contexts. We discuss the results in relation to the development of children's understanding of, and emotions associated with, exclusion based on weight.     

Resource allocation for visual metaphor processing: A study of political cartoons

ABSTRACT

This paper is a study of visual metaphor processing in political cartoons, while secondary task reaction time was used to assess resource allocation when processing three types of visual metaphors, namely juxtapositions, fusions and replacements. Participants viewed a series of visual metaphors. At various intervals, they were invited to push a button whenever a probe appeared. Reaction times to detect the probes were recorded. Subsequently, participants performed recall and recognition tasks. Results showed that participants reacted faster to each successive probe, while metaphor type had no influence on reaction times. Concerning the recall task, the percentage of correctly recalled items was significantly lower for juxtapositions compared to replacements; results for fusions were in between the two. Recognition scores for juxtapositions and fusions were lower than those for replacements. These findings are discussed in the framework of visual metaphors literature, thus providing empirical support to visual metaphor processing.     

Spanish-speaking caregivers’ use of referential labels with toddlers is a better predictor of later vocabulary than their use of referential gestures

Variation in how frequently caregivers engage with their children is associated with variation in children's later language outcomes. One explanation for this link is that caregivers use both verbal behaviors, such as labels, and non-verbal behaviors, such as gestures, to help children establish reference to objects or events in the world. However, few studies have directly explored whether language outcomes are more strongly associated with referential behaviors that are expressed verbally, such as labels, or non-verbally, such as gestures, or whether both are equally predictive. Here, we observed caregivers from 42 Spanish-speaking families in the US engage with their 18-month-old children during 5-min lab-based, play sessions. Children's language processing speed and vocabulary size were assessed when children were 25 months. Bayesian model comparisons assessed the extent to which the frequencies of caregivers’ referential labels, referential gestures, or labels and gestures together, were more strongly associated with children's language outcomes than a model with caregiver total words, or overall talkativeness. The best-fitting models showed that children who heard more referential labels at 18 months were faster in language processing and had larger vocabularies at 25 months. Models including gestures, or labels and gestures together, showed weaker fits to the data. Caregivers’ total words predicted children's language processing speed, but predicted vocabulary size less well. These results suggest that the frequency with which caregivers of 18-month-old children use referential labels, more so than referential gestures, is a critical feature of caregiver verbal engagement that contributes to language processing development and vocabulary growth.

Research Highlights

• We examined the frequency of referential communicative behaviors, via labels and/or gestures, produced by caregivers during a 5-min play interaction with their 18-month-old children.
• We assessed predictive relations between labels, gestures, their combination, as well as total words spoken, and children's processing speed and vocabulary growth at 25 months.
• Bayesian model comparisons showed that caregivers’ referential labels at 18 months best predicted both 25-month vocabulary measures, although total words also predicted later processing speed.
• Frequent use of referential labels by caregivers, more so than referential gestures, is a critical feature of communicative behavior that supports children's later vocabulary learning.