Revealing Ireland's “Proper” Heart: Apology,Shame, Nation

This article contributes to feminist expositions of emotion and “matters of the heart” by highlighting the gendered nature of the mobilization of shame. It focuses on the role shame plays in state apology and the desire to recover pride. Specifically, it analyzes the state apology offered to the survivors of Magdalen Laundries by Enda Kenny, the Taoiseach (prime minister) of Ireland. By drawing out how the state apology recreates the Irish nation, it traces the deployment of a potentially productive variety of the politics of shame, which comes to be subverted in the service of keeping the virtuous, feeling “heart” of Ireland—the nation's very core—intact across a temporal, moral continuum.     

Understanding orbitofrontal contributions to theory-of-mind reasoning: implications for autism

Autism is a lifelong developmental disorder that is associated with severe difficulties with "theory-of-mind"--the understanding that others' behaviors are motivated by internal mental states. Here, we raise the possibility that research examining the neural bases of theory-of-mind reasoning has the potential to inform researchers about the elusive functional neural impairments associated with autism. Evidence from our lab and others' suggests that theory-of-mind reasoning may be fractionated into at least two functionally and anatomically distinct neural circuits. Specifically, the ability to decode others' mental states from observable cues (such as facial expressions) may rely on contributions from the orbitofrontal/medial temporal circuit within the right hemisphere. In contrast, the ability to reason about others' mental states may rely left medial frontal regions. We conclude by reviewing evidence suggesting that the developmental roots of autism might lie in abnormal functioning of the orbitofrontal/medial temporal circuit which may, in turn, underlie the abnormal development of social-cognitive skills among individuals with autism.     

Self-monitoring without awareness: using mimicry as a nonconscious affiliation strategy

This research sought to extend the current conceptualization of self-monitoring by examining whether self-monitoring motives and behaviors can operate outside of conscious awareness. Two studies examined nonconscious mimicry among high and low self-monitors in situations varying in affiliative cues. Participants interacted with a confederate who shook her foot (Study 1) or touched her face (Study 2). In both studies, high self-monitors were more likely to mimic the confederate's subtle gestures when they believed the confederate to be a peer (Study 1) or someone superior to them (Study 2). Low self-monitors mimicked to the same degree across conditions. Thus, when the situation contains affiliative cues, high self-monitors use mimicry as a nonconscious strategy to get along with their interaction partner.     

Predicting aggressive and disruptive behavior in referred 6- to 12-year-old boys: prospective validation of the EARL-20B risk/needs checklist

The authors investigated the predictive and incremental validity of the Early Assessment Risk List for boys (EARL-20B; Augimeri, Koegl, Webster, & Levene, 2001), a structured clinical checklist designed for the professional judgment of risk for aggressive and disruptive behaviors and risk/needs factor-based management of this risk. Seventy-six boys consecutively referred to child psychiatric outpatient clinics in mid-Sweden were evaluated according to the EARL-20B and with independent (not EARL-20B-based) clinical evaluations. The participants were prospectively followed after 6 and 30 months. EARL- 20B-based assessments were positively and moderately associated with aggressive (reactive and proactive aggression) and disruptive behavior (conduct problems and DSM-IV Conduct Disorder) at both subsequent evaluations. Clinical evaluations made without the instrument were not as consistently associated with outcome. Incremental predictive validity over unstructured clinical evaluations and Conduct Disorder at baseline suggested promising clinical utility. The checklist might be used to support clinical decision making for referred boys at risk for continued antisocial behavior.     

Facilitating Family Communication About Predictive Genetic Testing: Probands’ Perceptions

The responsibility of informing relatives that predictive genetic testing is available often falls to the proband. Support is required during this process, however the perceived utility of genetic counseling and other strategies to facilitate communication have not been explored. We investigated the experiences of 12 individuals with hereditary nonpolyposis colorectal cancer (HNPCC) in a semistructured telephone interview. Respondents informed their immediate family about the availability of genetic testing, however many more-distant relatives were not directly informed. Respondents were mostly satisfied with the way they told family members about testing and had mixed views about the usefulness of genetic counseling. Gender differences were observed, with most men expressing a need for guidance or support in communicating to relatives. Letters and booklets were thought to enhance the quality of information but the provision of further aids is unlikely to increase the number of relatives made aware of predictive testing by the proband.     

An inkblot for attitudes: affect misattribution as implicit measurement

Misattributions people make about their own affective reactions can be used to measure attitudes implicitly. Combining the logic of projective tests with advances in priming research, the affect misattribution procedure (AMP) was sensitive to normatively favorable and unfavorable evaluations (Experiments 1-4), and the misattribution effect was strong at both fast and slow presentation rates (Experiments 3 and 4). Providing further evidence of validity, the AMP was strongly related to individual differences in self-reported political attitudes and voting intentions (Experiment 5). In the socially sensitive domain of racial attitudes, the AMP showed in-group bias for Black and White participants. AMP performance correlated with explicit racial attitudes, a relationship that was moderated by motivations to control prejudice (Experiment 6). Across studies, the task was unaffected by direct warnings to avoid bias. Advantages of the AMP include large effect sizes, high reliability, ease of use, and resistance to correction attempts.     

Children use whole-part juxtaposition as a pragmatic cue to word meaning

When parents label novel parts of familiar objects, they typically provide familiar whole-object terms before offering novel part terms (e.g., "See this cup? This is the rim."). Such whole-part juxtaposition might help children to accurately interpret the meaning of novel part terms, but it can do so only if they recognize the conjunction as a potential cue to part meaning. Two studies examined (a) whether 3- to 4-year-olds use whole-part juxtaposition to accurately interpret novel part terms and (b) how they might do so. Study 1 confirmed that children indeed use juxtaposition to guide learning of novel part terms. Furthermore, 2 control conditions clarified that children's use of juxtaposition was not simply due to memory effects, such as the facilitation of lexical access, nor to recognition of the grammatical frame that typically accompanies juxtaposition. Study 2 revealed that children readily use juxtaposition in a novel, gestural format. Such flexibility in recognizing and utilizing novel variants of juxtaposition strongly suggests that pragmatic understanding lies at the heart of children's sensitivity to whole-part juxtaposition.     

Neural correlates of theory-of-mind reasoning: an event-related potential study

Everyday understanding of human behavior rests on having a theory of mind—the ability to relate people's actions to underlying mental states such as beliefs and desires. It has been suggested that an impaired theory of mind may lie at the heart of psychological disorders that are characterized by deficits in social understanding, such as autism. In this study, we employed the event-related potential methodology to index the activity of neural systems that are engaged during theory-of-mind reasoning in adults. Specifically, neural activity elicited by tasks that required thinking about mental as compared with nonmental representations (i.e., beliefs vs. photographs) was characterized by a focally enhanced positivity over left frontal areas, which was diminished over left parietal areas. These findings provide an important perspective on both children's theory-of-mind development and the neurobiology of disorders in which theory of mind seems to be impaired.     

The psychology of hate: Moral concerns differentiate hate from dislike

We investigated whether any differences in the psychological conceptualization of hate and dislike were simply a matter of degree of negativity (i.e., hate falls on the end of the continuum of dislike) or also morality (i.e., hate is imbued with distinct moral components that distinguish it from dislike). In three lab studies in Canada and the United States, participants reported disliked and hated attitude objects and rated each on dimensions including valence, attitude strength, morality, and emotional content. Quantitative and qualitative measures revealed that hated attitude objects were more negative than disliked attitude objects and associated with moral beliefs and emotions, even after adjusting for differences in negativity. In Study 4, we analysed the rhetoric on real hate sites and complaint forums and found that the language used on prominent hate websites contained more words related to morality, but not negativity, relative to complaint forums.     

Breaking Down the Bilingual Cost in Speech Production

Bilinguals have been shown to perform worse than monolinguals in a variety of verbal tasks. This study investigated this bilingual verbal cost in a large‐scale picture‐naming study conducted in Spanish. We explored how individual characteristics of the participants and the linguistic properties of the words being spoken influence this performance cost. In particular, we focused on the contributions of lexical frequency and phonological similarity across translations. The naming performance of Spanish‐Catalan bilinguals speaking in their dominant and non‐dominant language was compared to that of Spanish monolinguals. Single trial naming latencies were analyzed by means of linear mixed models accounting for individual effects at the participant and item level. While decreasing lexical frequency was shown to increase naming latencies in all groups, this variable by itself did not account for the bilingual cost. In turn, our results showed that the bilingual cost disappeared when naming words with high phonological similarity across translations. In short, our results show that frequency of use can play a role in the emergence of the bilingual cost, but that phonological similarity across translations should be regarded as one of the most important variables that determine the bilingual cost in speech production. Low phonological similarity across translations yields worse performance in bilinguals and promotes the bilingual cost in naming performance. The implications of our results for the effect of phonological similarity across translations within the bilingual speech production system are discussed.