Evaluation of the attentional capacities and working memory of early and late blind persons

Although attentional processes and working memory seem to be significantly involved in the daily activities (particularly during navigating) of persons who are blind and who use these abilities to compensate for their lack of vision, few studies have investigated these mechanisms in this population. The aim of this study is to evaluate the selective, sustained and divided attention, attentional inhibition and switching and working memory of blind persons. Early blind, late blind and sighted participants completed neuropsychological tests that were designed or adapted to be achievable in the absence of vision. The results revealed that the early blind participants outperformed the sighted ones in selective, sustained and divided attention and working memory tests, and the late blind participants outperformed the sighted participants in selective, sustained and divided attention. However, no differences were found between the blind groups and the sighted group in the attentional inhibition and switching tests. Furthermore, no differences were found between the early and late blind participants in this set of tests. These results suggest that early and late blind persons can compensate for the lack of vision by an enhancement of the attentional and working memory capacities.     

Perceived shared understanding in teams: The motivational effect of being ‘on the same page’

This study examines the role of perceived shared understanding with regard to team performance, taking into account the motivational mechanisms (i.e., group potency and team effort) involved in this relationship and the moderating role of task routineness. Using a multisource approach and a team‐level design, we collected data from 101 teams (i.e., 381 members and their 101 immediate superiors) working in a Canadian public safety organization. The results support the mediating role of group potency and team effort in the relationship between perceived shared understanding and team performance. Moreover, the results show that the relationship between team effort and team performance is moderated by task routineness, such that this relationship is stronger when task routineness is high. On the whole, the findings of this study help to better understand why and under what circumstances perceived shared understanding may enhance team performance.     

Constitutivism and the Self-Reflection Requirement

Constitutivists explicitly emphasize the importance of self-reflection for rational agency. Interestingly enough, there is no clear account of how and why self-reflection plays such an important role for these views. My aim in this paper is to address this underappreciated problem for constitutivist views and to determine whether constitutivist self-reflection is normatively oriented. Understanding its normative features will allow us to evaluate a potential way that constitutivism may meet its purported metaethical promise. I begin by showing why constitutivism, as exemplified by Korsgaard’s and Velleman’s respective views, takes self-reflection to be a constitutive feature of rational agency. Closer examination of this claim suggests three underappreciated problems for the constitutivist’s apparent reliance on self-reflection. First, we have no picture of the specific role that self-reflection plays. Second, it is unclear in what sense it is a requirement for full-fledged agency and, thereby, for self-constitution. Third, it is not clear whether it has any necessary normative features, even given the often cited moral normativity associated with constitutivism. In §1, I will address the first and second questions. §2 will be dedicated to considering the third question.     

Procedural learning,consolidation, and transfer of a new skill in Developmental Coordination Disorder

The aim of this study was to explore the differences in procedural learning abilities between children with DCD and typically developing children by investigating the steps that lead to skill automatization (i.e., the stages of fast learning, consolidation, and slow learning). Transfer of the skill to a new situation was also assessed. We tested 34 children aged 6–12 years with and without DCD on a perceptuomotor adaptation task, a form of procedural learning that is thought to involve the cerebellum and the basal ganglia (regions whose impairment has been associated with DCD) but also other brain areas including frontal regions. The results showed similar rates of learning, consolidation, and transfer in DCD and control children. However, the DCD children's performance remained slower than that of controls throughout the procedural task and they reached a lower asymptotic performance level; the difficulties observed at the outset did not diminish with practice.     

Psychosocial Stimulation: A Qualitative Study on Kenyan Mother’s Motives and Challenges to Promote Children’s Development

Interventions designed to enhance the mental and socio-emotional development of children in low and middle income countries through improving psychosocial stimulation are the subject of national and international organizations research and programs. Before new interventions can be designed and tested in low income countries, it is important to understand what psychosocial stimulation mothers are already providing, how beliefs influence the stimulation used, and what challenges are faced by mothers when trying to do this. We aimed to find out what types of stimulation are being commonly used by mothers in Kenya, alongside exploring the beliefs and associated challenges in providing psychosocial stimulation. This is a qualitative study using focus group discussions held in Kisumu, a regional urban centre in Western Kenya, with 35 mothers caring for at least one child under the age of 5 years. Mothers in this study identified four key themes of commonly employed stimulation: singing, play, dancing and story-telling. A range of challenges were raised such as ensuring their child’s basic physiological needs were met, managing marital conflict, and trusting non-familial caregivers, with mothers concerned that their child may be mistreated through accidental or purposeful harm. Findings indicate that mothers in a low income country are faced with multiple challenges when trying to provide psychosocial stimulation for their child’s development. It is important to consider these results when designing an intervention for this setting.     

Competence and confusion: How stereotype threat can make you a bad judge of your competence

Women tend to have competence doubts for masculine‐stereotyped domains (e.g., math), whereas men tend to think they can handle both feminine‐stereotyped and masculine‐stereotyped domains equally well. We suggest that perhaps women's more frequent experience with stereotype threat can partly explain why. Our results showed that when stereotype threat was primed in high school students (n = 244), there was no relationship between their performance on an academic test (the SweSAT) and their assessment of their performance (how well they did), whereas in a non‐stereotype threat condition, there was a medium‐sized relationship. The effect was similar for both men and women primed with stereotype threat. The results imply that stereotype threat undermines performance assessments.     

Neoliberal Beliefs and Perceptions of Unintended Adolescent Pregnancy after Consensual or Forced Sex

From a neoliberal perspective, young women are free to make autonomous choices and are personally responsible for the outcomes of these choices. Neoliberal ideals may appear to empower women as free sexual agents; however, an individualistic focus on self-sufficiency and personal responsibility may lead to harsh, decontextualized responses to those who experience unintended outcomes. We hypothesized that observers with stronger neoliberal beliefs would show more stigmatizing responses to an unintentionally pregnant adolescent. We also explored whether these expected associations would be moderated by whether or not the young woman chose to consent to sex. U.S. undergraduate students (n = 200) completed a measure of neoliberal beliefs and were randomly assigned to read one of two scenarios in which an adolescent became pregnant after either consensual or forced sex. As expected, participants with stronger neoliberal beliefs were more blaming toward the adolescent for becoming pregnant, felt less sympathy toward her, and had less positive attitudes about her receiving help. These associations remained after controlling for general political ideology and regardless of whether the pregnancy was due to consensual or forced sex. Our results suggest that, for the neoliberal observer, young women are held personally responsible for even uncontrollable sexual and reproductive outcomes.