2D or not 2D? An fMRI study of how dogs visually process objects

Animal Cognition - Given humans’ habitual use of screens, they rarely consider potential differences when viewing two-dimensional (2D) stimuli and real-world versions of dimensional stimuli....     

The Association Between Age and Ethics-Related Issues in Using Social Media for HIV Prevention in Peru

Little research has focused on the ethical issues around using social media for HIV prevention in low- and middle-income countries, such as Peru. This study surveyed participants from the HOPE social media HIV intervention in Peru to assess their experiences and perceptions of ethical issues in the study and the impact of age on their experiences and perceptions. This study found that, compared to younger participants, older participants were more likely to express higher levels of understanding of the consent form and trust that other participants were real. Older participants also reported being less likely to benefit from learning about their HIV status. Findings suggest that age plays a role in participants’ experiences in a social-media-based HIV intervention.     

Motivated cultural cognition: the impact of implicit cultural theories on dispositional attribution varies as a function of need for closure

The authors propose that need for closure (NFC) leads attributors to respond to an ambiguous social event by increasing reliance on implicit theories received from acculturation. Hence, the influence of NFC should be shaped by chronically accessible knowledge structures in a culture, and, likewise, the influence of culture should be moderated by epistemic motives such as NFC. The specific hypotheses drew on past findings that North American and Chinese attributors possess differing implicit social theories, North Americans conceiving of individuals as autonomous agents and Chinese conceiving of groups as autonomous. The present studies found the predicted pattern that among North American participants, NFC increased attributions to personal but not group dispositions. Among Chinese participants, NFC increased attributions to group but not personal dispositions. The findings are discussed in light of an emerging dynamic account of culture and cognition.     

Specificity of auditory implicit and explicit memory: Is perceptual priming for environmental sounds exemplar specific?

Previous research (Stuart & Jones, 1995) has suggested that identification of environmental sounds may be mediated by abstract sound recognition units. This article reports the results of four repetition priming experiments that find evidence to the contrary. Participants attempted to identify environmental sounds from the initial sound stems (Experiments 1 and 2) or when the sounds were embedded in white noise (Experiments 3 and 4). Repetition of an identical exemplar sound led to more priming than did exposure to a different exemplar, provided that the perceptual difference between the two different exemplars was sufficiently large. Such an exemplar specificity effect was independent of the depth of prior encoding. A similar exemplar specificity effect was also found in explicit stem-cued recall (Experiments 1 and 2) and recognition (Experiment 3). Depth of encoding dissociated performance on tests of repetition priming and explicit memory. These results suggest that a significant amount of specific information is remembered, both implicitly and explicitly, to characterize individual exemplars of a sound category.     

Group-serving attributions across intergroup contexts: Cultural differences in the explanation of sex-typed behaviours

This research attempted to integrate Tajfel's (1978) social identity theory with self-presentational concerns by exploring attributions about perceived group differences in behaviour. As such, it dealt with group-level rather than individual-level attributions, exploring whether bias in making such verbal attributions varied as a function of the interviewer's group identity and the presence of an ingroup audience. Undergraduate men and women at The Chinese University of Hong Kong rated the appropriateness of ingroup-favouring and outgroup-favouring explanations for male-typed and female-typed behaviors in a face-to-face interview. A group-serving bias was found for female-typed behaviours, but only when the same-sex audience was absent. A conceptual replication of the experiment was run in the United States to examine the possible cultural basis for the Chinese moderation of favouritism in the audience condition. The group-serving bias was more robust for the American undergraduates, extending across male- and female-typed behaviours and also across audience conditions, It was argued that these cultural differences in attributional bias appear to reflect the strength of the movement for women's liberation and norms surrounding the avoidance of conflict in the United States and Hong Kong.     

When modesty fails: The social impact of group-effacing attributions following success or failure

This study explored how group members perceived a fellow group member who made either group-serving or group-effacing attributions following success or failure. Forty male undergraduates from the Chinese University co-operated in pairs with a confederate on a demanding group task. After learning that their group's performance had exceeded or failed to meet a standard, the subjects heard their confederate-partner make group-effacing or group-serving attributions. As predicted, subjects evaluated the group-serving partners more highly (p < 0.05). Preference for group-enhancing members was discussed as a pancultural response arising from the interdependence of group members. Given the process of social categorization, group members rise or fall together and are therefore socialized to support their group.     

The Role of Affective Dispositions in Job Satisfaction and Work Strain: Comparing Collectivist and Individualist Societies

The individualism-collectivism dimension cuts across the East and the West. It explains the differing values and cultural breeding that are necessary in acculturating people's affective and cognitive behaviours in accordance with the culture to which they belong. Many empirical studies have investigated the effects of personality traits on job satisfaction and work strain. The personality of individuals affects how they perceive the impact of job satisfaction and work stress. Furthermore, personality traits are influenced by cultural background. This study surveyed 626 nurses from collectivist and individualist societies to find out the possible difference in the role of affective dispositions in self-reported job satisfaction and work strain between these two cultural orientations.     

Three wishes of gifted and nongifted adolescents

Three wishes of 69 gifted and 66 nongifted adolescents within the United States were solicited in a group situation. The findings indicated that personal wishes were of the most concern for both gifted and nongifted adolescents, and that male adolescents in both groups tended to value material possessions more often than did female adolescents. A significant between-groups difference revealed that gifted adolescents expressed more altruistic and fewer goal wishes than their nongifted peers. These kinds of data are one more means of describing, for teachers and counselors, a general picture of students' psychological and social orientations.     

Biases in the perceived prevalence and motives of severe acute respiratory syndrome prevention behaviors among Chinese high school students in Hong Kong

In two studies conducted in Hong Kong during and immediately after the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), participants displayed several social cognitive biases when they estimated the prevalence of and inferred the motives underlying SARS preventive behaviors. First, participants who practiced preventive behaviors (practicers) consistently estimated that more people practiced such behaviors than did non-practicers (false consensus bias). Second, for some preventive behaviors, participants believed that their own behaviors were more motivated by prosocial concerns (relative to self-interest) than were other practicers (pluralistic ignorance). Finally, non-practicers underestimated the importance of prosocial concerns underlying some preventive behaviors (actor-observer bias). We discussed the relevance of these social cognitive biases to health education and to Hong Kong people's psychological reactions to SARS.     

Exploring Factors Related to Young Children’s Word-Meaning Derivations During Read-Alouds

This study explores how child and text clues were related to 31 kindergarteners’ word-meaning derivation outcomes for 372 words presented in books read aloud to children. Data were analyzed using a multilevel, cross-classification, ordered logit model. Children showed no word-meaning derivation 40% of the time, indicating a need for instruction. Better word-meaning outcomes were related to text factors (written text clues in close proximity to the word) and child factors (literal comprehension and metacognition). Thus, using text with written clues in close proximity to the word and building children's literal comprehension and metacognition may improve word-meaning derivation.