Locomotor experience and use of social information are posture specific

The authors examined the effects of locomotor experience on infants' perceptual judgments in a potentially risky situation--descending steep and shallow slopes--while manipulating social incentives to determine where perceptual judgments are most malleable. Twelve-month-old experienced crawlers and novice walkers were tested on an adjustable sloping walkway as their mothers encouraged and discouraged descent. A psychophysical procedure was used to estimate infants' ability to crawl/walk down slopes, followed by test trials in which mothers encouraged and discouraged infants to crawl/walk down. Both locomotor experience and social incentives affected perceptual judgments. In the encourage condition, crawlers only attempted safe slopes within their abilities, but walkers repeatedly attempted impossibly risky slopes, replicating previous work. The discourage condition showed where judgments are most malleable. When mothers provided negative social incentives, crawlers occasionally avoided safe slopes, and walkers occasionally avoided the most extreme 50 degrees increment, although they attempted to walk on more than half the trials. Findings indicate that both locomotor experience and social incentives play key roles in adaptive responding, but the benefits are specific to the posture that infants use for balance and locomotion.     

Color-function categories that prime infants to use color information in an object individuation task

There is evidence for developmental hierarchies in the type of information to which infants attend when reasoning about objects. Investigators have questioned the origin of these hierarchies and how infants come to identify new sources of information when reasoning about objects. The goal of the present experiments was to shed light on this debate by identifying conditions under which infants’ sensitivity to color information, which is slow to emerge, could be enhanced in an object individuation task. The outcome of Experiment 1 confirmed and extended previous reports that 9.5-month-olds can be primed, through exposure to events in which the color of an object predicts its function, to attend to color differences in a subsequent individuation task. The outcomes of Experiments 2-4 revealed age-related changes in the nature of the representations that support color priming. This is exemplified by three main findings. First, the representations that are formed during the color-function events are relatively specific. That is, infants are primed to use the color difference seen in the color-function events to individuate objects in the test events, but not other color differences. Second, 9.5-month-olds can be led to form more abstract event representations, and then generalize to other colors in the test events if they are shown multiple pairs of colors in the color-function events. Third, slightly younger 9-month-olds also can be led to form more inclusive categories with multiple color pairs, but only when they are allowed to directly compare the exemplars in each color pair during the present events. These results shed light on the development of categorization abilities, cognitive mechanisms that support color-function priming, and the kinds of experiences that can increase infants’ sensitivity to color information.     

Shifting shadows: shaping dynamics in the cultural unconscious

Jung has suggested that wars, social upheavals and religions are 'but the superficial symptoms of a secret psychic attitude unknown even to the individual himself, and transmitted by no historian ...' (Jung 1964, para. 315; emphasis author's). With a focus on South Africa and some dream material, I explore this idea with particular emphasis on the cultural unconscious and the emerging theory of cultural complexes. Different cultures demand the repression of different aspects of the self and have different ways of actualizing a moral code. These repressions are part of what make up a dynamic and shifting cultural complex which inevitably plays a part in historical change. In turn, historical change plays its part in shifting these dynamics. In the analytic setting via the transference and countertransference, we are familiar with what is being repressed in relation to shadow dynamics, complexes and obsolete defences. Such dynamics relate to themes of boundary, identity and otherness which, in turn, reach back to early infantile strivings as well as forward in the service of unfolding. Central to this dynamic is the absorption of cultural attitudes--including that which must be repressed, allowed in or defended against. Major political shifts--historical change--inevitably affect cultural dynamics, 'secret psychic attitude(s)' and shifting shadows.     

Auditory and visual attention-based apparent motion share functional parallels

A perception of coherent motion can be obtained in an otherwise ambiguous or illusory visual display by directing one's attention to a feature and tracking it. We demonstrate an analogous auditory effect in two separate sets of experiments. The temporal dynamics associated with the attention-dependent auditory motion closely matched those previously reported for attention-based visual motion. Since attention-based motion mechanisms appear to exist in both modalities, we also tested for multimodal (audiovisual) attention-based motion, using stimuli composed of interleaved visual and auditory cues. Although subjects were able to track a trajectory using cues from both modalities, no one spontaneously perceived "multimodal motion" across both visual and auditory cues. Rather, they reported motion perception only within each modality, thereby revealing a spatiotemporal limit on putative cross-modal motion integration. Together, results from these experiments demonstrate the existence of attention-based motion in audition, extending current theories of attention-based mechanisms from visual to auditory systems.     

Four strategies for dealing with the counting anomaly in spontaneous collapse theories of quantum mechanics

A few years ago, I argued that according to spontaneous collapse theories of quantum mechanics, arithmetic applies to macroscopic objects only as an approximation. Several authors have written articles defending spontaneous collapse theories against this charge, including Bassi and Ghirardi, Clifton and Monton, and now Frigg. The arguments of these authors are all different and all ingenious, but in the end I think that none of them succeeds, for reasons I elaborate here. I suggest a fourth line of response, based on an analogy with epistemic paradoxes, which I think is the best way to defend spontaneous collapse theories, and which leaves my main thesis intact.     

Improving adolescents' standardized test performance: An intervention to reduce the effects of stereotype threat

Standardized tests continue to generate gender and race gaps in achievement despite decades of national attention. Research on “stereotype threat” (Steele & Aronson, 1995) suggests that these gaps may be partly due to stereotypes that impugn the math abilities of females and the intellectual abilities of Black, Hispanic, and low-income students. A field experiment was performed to test methods of helping female, minority, and low-income adolescents overcome the anxiety-inducing effects of stereotype threat and, consequently, improve their standardized test scores. Specifically, seventh-grade students in the experimental conditions were mentored by college students who encouraged them either to view intelligence as malleable or to attribute academic difficulties in the seventh grade to the novelty of the educational setting. Results showed that females in both experimental conditions earned significantly higher math standardized test scores than females in the control condition. Similarly, the students—who were largely minority and low-income adolescents—in the experimental conditions earned significantly higher reading standardized test scores than students in the control condition.     

Hiring you makes me look bad: Social-identity based reversals of the ingroup favoritism effect

The current research attempts to explain reversals of ingroup favoritism in terms of one of the prevalent mechanisms generally used to account for positive ingroup bias: Tajfel’s social identity theory. We propose that individuals strategically evaluate ingroup targets in order to maximize their own self-esteem and to avoid costly errors. This strategic evaluation typically results in ingroup favoritism toward an ingroup target member. However, if a positive evaluation of the target poses a significant self-esteem threat, denigration of the target will result. Two studies examined how ingroup and outgroup targets were evaluated when applicants were qualified versus unqualified (Study 1), or when the ingroup target might confirm a negative ingroup stereotype (Study 2). Study 1 results indicated that participants showed ingroup favoritism only toward qualified applicants. Study 2 demonstrated that, when a marginally qualified ingroup applicant has the potential to confirm a negative stereotype, bias against the ingroup is observed. Results of both studies both confirm and provide explanations for ingroup denigration.     

Christian Privilege: Breaking a Sacred Taboo

The author discusses the concept of privilege in terms of the benefits enjoyed by Whites and men (P. McIntosh, 1998). This article presents a new theoretical perspective focusing on religious privilege and includes a list of privileges that are enjoyed by members of the dominant religious group (i.e., Christians) in the United States. El autor discute el concepto del privilegio en cuanto a los beneficios que disfrutan los Blancos y los hombres (P. McIntosh, 1998). Este artículo presenta una nueva perspectiva teorética que enfoca al privilegio religioso e incluye una lista de privilegios que disfrutan miembros del grupo religioso dominante de los Estados Unidos, los cristianos.     

Cyber terror: Missing in action

This article discusses the limited utility of the concepts of “cyber terrorism” or “electronic Pearl Harbor.” It contrasts the absence of cyber terror incidents with the large number of terrorist attacks and computer security incidents in recent years. It suggests that this discrepancy is explained both by the low appeal of cyber weapons to terrorists and because critical infrastructures and nations are not vulnerable to computer attacks. The article calls for a more rigorous approach to data collection for cyber security incidents, and suggests cyber security should not be seen primarily as a national security issue. Before joining CSIS, he served in the U.S. Foreign Service and worked on security, intelligence, and technology issues. Lewis’s current research covers cyber security, spectrum management, authentication, and technology’s role in national security. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1984.     

Maternal speech style with prelinguistic twin infants

The mother–infant communicative speech of a group of mothers of 4‐month‐old first‐born twin infants was compared to the speech of a group of mothers of first‐born singleton infants. Maternal groups were matched on age, education level, mother–infant attachment status and infant gender, and maternal depression was assessed as a control variable. Maternal speech was coded for focus, content, complexity and syntax of mothers' utterances. The findings of earlier studies with toddler age twins, that maternal speech style was more directive and less infant‐focused, were replicated in this prelinguistic period of infancy. Compared to mothers of singletons, mothers of twins used less infant‐focused speech, were less responsive to their infants' cues, and attributed less agency to their infants. Mothers of twins also used fewer questions and requests but did not differ from mothers of singletons in their use of negatives and imperatives. These early differences in the language learning environments of twin and singleton infants may be due to the reduced opportunities that mothers of twins have to establish dyadic communicative routines with their infants and to familiarize themselves with their infants as interactive partners, and may have implications for the early language development of twins. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.