Reducing the effects of the stereotype threat that girls perform less well than boys in mathematics: the efficacy of a mixed debate in a real classroom situation

The present research aims at testing the effects of the mixed debate in a classroom situation on reducing the stereotype threat according to which girls perform less well than boys in mathematics. Our work is based on studies conducted on stereotype threat (Steele and Aronson in J Person Soc Psychol 69:797–811. https://doi.org/10.1037//0022-3514.69.5.797, 1995), as well as those aiming to reduce the impact of stereotype threat on stereotyped populations (Huguet and Régner in J Educ Psychol 99(3):545–560. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-0663.99.3.545, 2007; Marx and Roman in Personal Soc Psychol Bull 28:1185–1197. https://doi.org/10.1177/01461672022812004, 2002; Spencer et al. in J Exp Soc Psychol 35:4–28. https://doi.org/10.1006/jesp.1998.1373, 1999). We will more particularly study Smith and Postmes' (Br J Soc Psychol 50(1):74–98. https://doi.org/10.1348/014466610X500340, 2010) work on small group discussions used to reduce the influence of the threat. Results indicate that having a debate as such reduces the impact of the stereotype threat in girls. Possible interpretations of the results and future research perspectives will be put forward.

     

Dispositional aspects of body focus and idiopathic environmental intolerance attributed to electromagnetic fields (IEI‐EMF)

Body focus is often considered an undesirable characteristic from medical point of view as it amplifies symptoms and leads to higher levels of health anxiety. However, it is connected to mindfulness, well‐being and the sense of self in psychotherapy. The current study aimed to investigate the contribution of various body focus related constructs to acute and chronic generation and maintenance of medically unexplained symptoms (MUS). Thirty‐six individuals with idiopathic environmental intolerance to electromagnetic fields (IEI‐EMF) and 36 controls were asked to complete questionnaires assessing negative affect, worries about harmful effects of EMFs, health anxiety (HA), body awareness, and somatosensory amplification (SSA), and to report experienced symptoms evoked by a sham magnetic field. Body awareness, HA, SSA, and EMF‐related worries showed good discriminative power between individuals with IEI‐EMF and controls. Considering all variables together, SSA was the best predictor of IEI‐EMF. In the believed presence of a MF, people with IEI‐EMF showed higher levels of anxiety and reported more symptoms than controls. In the IEI‐EMF group, actual symptom reports were predicted by HA and state anxiety, while a reverse relationship between symptom reports and HA was found in the control group. Our findings show that SSA is a particularly important contributor to IEI‐EMF, probably because it is the most comprehensive factor in its aetiology. IEI‐EMF is associated with both a fear‐related monitoring of bodily symptoms and a non‐evaluative body focus. The identification of dispositional body focus may be relevant for the management of MUS.     

A Cross-Sectional Analysis of Coaches’ Observed Emotion-Behavior Profiles and Adolescent Athletes’ Self-Reported Developmental Outcomes

This investigation explored the relationship between coaches’ emotions and adolescent athletes’ psychosocial development. Participants were 9 male soccer coaches and their female athletes (N = 134, M_age = 14.54). Systematic observation was used to assess coaches’ emotions during practice and athletes completed questionnaires evaluating developmental outcomes. Cluster analyses revealed 2 groups: “calm, inquisitive coaches” (n = 6) and “intense, hustle coaches” (n = 3). Athletes of calm, inquisitive coaches reported significantly more prosocial behaviors and less antisocial behaviors directed toward opponents than athletes of intense, hustle coaches. Thus, coaches’ emotions during practice may be associated with young athletes’ moral behaviors.     

Comparing species decisions in a dichotomous choice task: adjusting task parameters improves performance in monkeys

In comparative psychology, both similarities and differences among species are studied to better understand the evolution of their behavior. To do so, we first test species in tasks using similar procedures, but if differences are found, it is important to determine their underlying cause(s) (e.g., are they due to ecology, cognitive ability, an artifact of the study, and/or some other factor?). In our previous work, primates performed unexpectedly poorly on an apparently simple two-choice discrimination task based on the natural behavior of cleaner fish, while the fish did quite well. In this task, if the subjects first chose one of the options (ephemeral) they received both food items, but if they chose the other (permanent) option first, the ephemeral option disappeared. Here, we test several proposed explanations for primates’ relatively poorer performance. In Study 1, we used a computerized paradigm that differed from the previous test by removing interaction with human experimenters, which may be distracting, and providing a more standardized testing environment. In Study 2, we adapted the computerized paradigm from Study 1 to be more relevant to primate ecology. Monkeys’ overall performance in these adapted tasks matched the performance of the fish in the original study, showing that with the appropriate modifications they can solve the task. We discuss these results in light of comparative research, which requires balancing procedural similarity with considerations of how the details of the task or the context may influence how different species perceive and solve tasks differently.     

Social influence on metacognitive evaluations: The power of nonverbal cues

Metacognitive evaluations refer to the processes by which people assess their own cognitive operations with respect to their current goal. Little is known about whether this process is susceptible to social influence. Here we investigate whether nonverbal social signals spontaneously influence metacognitive evaluations. Participants performed a two-alternative forced-choice task, which was followed by a face randomly gazing towards or away from the response chosen by the participant. Participants then provided a metacognitive evaluation of their response by rating their confidence in their answer. In Experiment 1, the participants were told that the gaze direction was irrelevant to the task purpose and were advised to ignore it. The results revealed an effect of implicit social information on confidence ratings even though the gaze direction was random and therefore unreliable for task purposes. In addition, nonsocial cues (car) did not elicit this effect. In Experiment 2, the participants were led to believe that cue direction (face or car) reflected a previous participant's response to the same question—that is, the social information provided by the cue was made explicit, yet still objectively unreliable for the task. The results showed a similar social influence on confidence ratings, observed with both cues (car and face) but with an increased magnitude relative to Experiment 1. We additionally showed in Experiment 2 that social information impaired metacognitive accuracy. Together our results strongly suggest an involuntary susceptibility of metacognitive evaluations to nonverbal social information, even when it is implicit (Experiment 1) and unreliable (Experiments 1 and 2).     

When pursuing bad goals for good reasons makes it even worse: a social value approach to performance-avoidance goal pursuit

Consistently in achievement goal research, pursuing performance-avoidance goals has been associated with a decrease in achievement. Less is known to what extent this effect depends on the reasons underlying these goals’ endorsement. The present research uses a social value approach to assess how do performance-avoidance goals’ effects on achievement depend on the reasons anchored in social utility (goal endorsed in order to succeed) and in social desirability (goal endorsed in order to please one’s teachers). Based on five correlational samples meta-analyzed in Study 1, results showed that perceiving performance-avoidance goals as socially useful increased the negative effect of these goals on achievement. This moderating effect was replicated experimentally in Study 2. These findings support the relevance of studying achievement goal complexes and illustrate that performance-avoidance goals may lead to deleterious consequences even when endorsed for seemingly good reasons.

     

Inquisitive Heyting Algebras

In this paper we introduce a class of inquisitive Heyting algebras as algebraic structures that are isomorphic to algebras of finite antichains of bounded implicative meet semilattices. It is argued that these structures are suitable for algebraic semantics of inquisitive superintuitionistic logics, i.e. logics of questions based on intuitionistic logic and its extensions. We explain how questions are represented in these structures (prime elements represent declarative propositions, non-prime elements represent questions, join is a question-forming operation) and provide several alternative characterizations of these algebras. For instance, it is shown that a Heyting algebra is inquisitive if and only if its prime filters and filters generated by sets of prime elements coincide and prime elements are closed under relative pseudocomplement. We prove that the weakest inquisitive superintuitionistic logic is sound with respect to a Heyting algebra iff the algebra is what we call a homomorphic p-image of some inquisitive Heyting algebra. It is also shown that a logic is inquisitive iff its Lindenbaum–Tarski algebra is an inquisitive Heyting algebra.

     

Different kinds of bilinguals: different kinds of brains: the neural organisation of two languages in one brain

The aim of this study was to determine whether the type of bilingualism affects neural organisation. We performed identification experiments and mismatch negativity (MMN) registrations in Finnish and Swedish language settings to see, whether behavioural identification and neurophysiological discrimination of vowels depend on the linguistic context, and whether there is a difference between two kinds of bilinguals. The stimuli were two vowels, which differentiate meaning in Finnish, but not in Swedish. The results indicate that Balanced Bilinguals are inconsistent in identification performance, and they have a longer MMN latency. Moreover, their MMN amplitude is context-independent, while Dominant Bilinguals show a larger MMN in the Finnish context. These results indicate that Dominant Bilinguals inhibit the preattentive discrimination of native contrast in a context where the distinction is non-phonemic, but this is not possible for Balanced Bilinguals. This implies that Dominant Bilinguals have separate systems, while Balanced Bilinguals have one inseparable system.