How scenes containing visual errors affect speech fluency in young and older adults

We compared young and older adults’ speech during an error detection task, with some pictures containing visual errors and anomalies and other pictures error-free. We analyzed three disfluency types: mid-phrase speech fillers (e.g., It’s a little, um, girl), repetitions (e.g., He’s trying to catch the- the birds), and repairs (e.g., She- you can see her legs). Older adults produced more mid-phrase fillers than young adults only when describing pictures containing errors. These often reflect word retrieval problems and represent clear disruptions to fluency, so this interaction indicates that the need to form and maintain representations of novel information can specifically compromise older adults’ speech fluency. Overall, older adults produced more repetitions and repairs than young adults, regardless of picture type, indicating general age-related increases in these disfluencies. The obtained patterns are discussed in the context of the Transmission Deficit Hypothesis and other approaches to age-related changes in speech fluency.     

The Effects of a Common In‐group Prime on Intentions to Help Indigenous and Homeless Australians

The article reports on research designed to test Australian attitudes towards helping impoverished members of the Australian society, in particular, indigenous and homeless people. Australian university students completed a questionnaire to measure their attitudes towards helping homeless and indigenous people under conditions that primed a common Australian identity. The findings showed that priming an inclusive identity led to relatively stronger intentions to help indigenous Australians but not homeless people. It was also found that participants preferred to endorse more autonomy than dependency help to both indigenous and homeless Australians. Whereas the findings indicate that helping intentions towards those living with poverty may be accentuated by priming a common in‐group, they also imply that helping attitudes vary with the type of help being sought and the way people perceive the cause of someone's poverty.     

African American Couples in the 21st Century: Using Integrative Systemic Therapy (IST) to Translate Science into Practice

The complexity of the African American community in the United States continues to evolve. The growing number of professional African Americans who grew up in the postcivil rights era combined with the persistent reminders of inequity paints a complex backdrop for understanding African American relationships. The majority of our knowledge about African American couples disproportionately comes from nonclinical social science fields such as sociology and demography. Unfortunately, the scholarly literature on how to work with African American couples is relatively scant. This paper seeks to add to this limited literature by providing clinicians and scholars with a proposed set of issues to consider when conceptualizing and treating African American couples. In particular, the complexity and nuance needed to work with African American couples are best done by using an integrative model. Thus, this paper will discuss how the Integrative Systemic Therapy (IST) model is particularly well suited for working with African American couples. This paper will summarize the science on African American marriages with a focus on salient factors such as gender, SES, and trust, which will then be translated into clinical practice by utilizing a case example. The case example will be of a middle‐class couple in order to delineate the challenges and the growing heterogeneity of African Americans. The article will conclude with a commentary on the evolving heterogeneity of African Americans, which sheds light on how an integrative perspective is important for disentangling and embracing the growing complexity of African American couples.     

Economic Disadvantage at the Intersections: Contemporary Stereotypes in the Headlines

Effective multiculturally competent treatment of economically disadvantaged clients requires an awareness of the stereotypes and biases that these clients and their families face in contemporary culture—stereotypes that are so pervasive that they can subtly influence counselors’ thinking about poor and working‐class individuals. In this article, the authors apply an intersectional perspective to profile current stereotypes and biases that exist regarding low‐income groups at the intersections of race, religion, and immigration status. Implications for educators and counselors are suggested. Un tratamiento efectivo y multiculturalmente competente de clientes e conómicamente desfavorecidos requiere una conciencia de los estereotipos y prejuicios que estos clientes y sus familias enfrentan en la cultura contemporánea; estereotipos tan arraigados que pueden influir sutilmente en la forma de pensar de los consejeros sobre las personas pobres y de clase trabajadora. En este artículo, los autores aplican una perspectiva interseccional para perfilar estereotipos y prejuicios actuales que existen acerca de grupos de bajo nivel económico en las intersecciones entre raza, religión y estatus migratorio. Se sugieren implicaciones para educadores y consejeros.     

Biases in social comparative judgments: the role of nonmotivated factors in above-average and comparative-optimism effects

Biases in social comparative judgments, such as those illustrated by above-average and comparative-optimism effects, are often regarded as products of motivated reasoning (e.g., self-enhancement). These effects, however, can also be produced by information-processing limitations or aspects of judgment processes that are not necessarily biased by motivational factors. In this article, the authors briefly review motivational accounts of biased comparative judgments, introduce a 3-stage model for understanding how people make comparative judgments, and then describe how various nonmotivational factors can influence the 3 stages of the comparative judgment process. Finally, the authors discuss several unresolved issues highlighted by their analysis, such as the interrelation between motivated and nonmotivated sources of bias and the influence of nonmotivated sources of bias on behavior.     

Misperceptions in intergroup conflict. Disagreeing about what we disagree about

Two studies examined misperceptions of disagreement in partisan social conflicts, namely, in the debates over abortion (Study 1) and politics (Study 2). We observed that partisans tend to exaggerate differences of opinion with their adversaries. Further, we found that perceptions of disagreement were more pronounced for values that were central to the perceiver's own ideology than for values that were central to the ideology of the perceiver's adversaries. To the extent that partisans assumed disagreement concerning personally important values, they were also inaccurate in perceiving their adversaries' actual opinions. Discussion focuses on the cognitive mechanisms underlying misperceptions of disagreement and strategies for reducing intergroup conflict.     

Secularisation,Wales, and Islam

Islam has a long, albeit hidden history in Wales. Traditionally, studies of Welsh religion have focused on Christianity so that little has been written about non-Christian religions in Wales. Moreover, general theoretical debates about secularisation have tended to be overly Christocentric in their focus, with the experiences of non-Christian faith groups conspicuous by their absence in most studies of modern urban societies and secularisation. Similarly, most academic studies emanating from Islam, while they have much to say on liberal secular societies, have yet meaningfully to engage with the secularisation thesis. This article explores the relationship between classical theories of secularisation, historical processes of secularisation in Wales, and the contemporary experience of Muslim groups operating within a highly secularised environment. The article argues that there is a need in multi-cultural societies to develop a theory of secularisation that can incorporate a non-Christian dimension. Recent theoretical writing by Steve Bruce (Politics) and David Martin (Revised Theory) offers a promising route in this direction.