Teaching Oppressive Texts

Scholars have identified the many stories in the Bible that are oppressive to women or other minoritized groups. It is remarkable how common it is that North American undergraduate students remain blind to the oppression that is depicted and that is too often the result of commonly accepted interpretations of these texts. Three brief essays collected here, originally presented as part of a panel at the Society of Biblical Literature annual meeting (Atlanta, 2010), present various teaching strategies for exposing the oppressive elements in the biblical text and showing how the oppression operates (an aspect of ideological criticism). What are good strategies for communicating these hard points to students in a way they can hear them and work with them? Why is this important to do?     

A comparison of visual and auditory representational momentum in spatial tasks

Similarities have been observed in the localization of the final position of moving visual and moving auditory stimuli: Perceived endpoints that are judged to be farther in the direction of motion in both modalities likely reflect extrapolation of the trajectory, mediated by predictive mechanisms at higher cognitive levels. However, actual comparisons of the magnitudes of displacement between visual tasks and auditory tasks using the same experimental setup are rare. As such, the purpose of the present free-field study was to investigate the influences of the spatial location of motion offset, stimulus velocity, and motion direction on the localization of the final positions of moving auditory stimuli (Experiment 1 and 2) and moving visual stimuli (Experiment 3). To assess whether auditory performance is affected by dynamically changing binaural cues that are used for the localization of moving auditory stimuli (interaural time differences for low-frequency sounds and interaural intensity differences for high-frequency sounds), two distinct noise bands were employed in Experiments 1 and 2. In all three experiments, less precise encoding of spatial coordinates in paralateral space resulted in larger forward displacements, but this effect was drowned out by the underestimation of target eccentricity in the extreme periphery. Furthermore, our results revealed clear differences between visual and auditory tasks. Displacements in the visual task were dependent on velocity and the spatial location of the final position, but an additional influence of motion direction was observed in the auditory tasks. Together, these findings indicate that the modality-specific processing of motion parameters affects the extrapolation of the trajectory.     

Attention,instruction, and response representation

A two-dimensional Simon-type task was devised to investigate the impact of task requirements and explicit instructions on spatial action coding. Subjects performed actions that were defined on two spatial dimensions: horizontal (left-right) or vertical (top-bottom). The relevant stimulus feature was nonspatial but the stimuli varied on the horizontal and the vertical dimension, so that horizontal and vertical S-R compatibility effects could be measured separately. Implicit task requirements were manipulated by having the subjects perform an unrelated task before the Simon task—a task in which only one of the two spatial dimensions was relevant. Instructions were varied by describing the responses in the unrelated priming task and/or in the Simon task in spatial terms or by referring to nonspatial features of the response keys. Priming a particular dimension increased the Simon effect on that dimension, whereas instructions had no differential effect. These findings suggest that, first, drawing attention to a particular dimension leads to a stronger contribution to event representation of those features defined on that dimension (intentional weighting) and, second, that instructions do not affect action coding if the manipulation does not change the task goal.     

Phonemic priming with words and pseudowords

Abstract

The bi-alphabetic nature of the Serbo-Croatian writing system allows unequivocal examination of phonemic similarity unconfounded with graphemic similarity. The Roman and Cyrillic alphabets are largely independent but map onto the same sounds. A lower-case context written in one alphabet bears no visual similarity to an uppercase target written in the other alphabet. One naming experiment and one lexical decision experiment investigated phonemic priming of high-frequency words and pseudowords with word and pseudoword contexts. For naming, targets that were phone-mically similar to the preceding context were named significantly faster than were phonemically dissimilar targets. This result was indifferent to the lexicality of the contexts and targets. For lexical decision, in contrast, phonemically similar word-word pairs showed inhibition, whereas phonemically similar pseudoword-word pairs showed facilitation relative to their phonemically dissimilar counterparts. These results were discussed in terms of (1) a model of visual word processing that posits a layer of phoneme units between letter units and word units, and (2) the idea that active word units inhibit one another in proportion to each one's frequency. In this account, phonemic similarity effects in naming are based on the states of the phoneme units, while phonemic similarity effects in lexical decision are based on the states of the word units. These results lend further support to the claim that, for readers of Serbo-Croatian, the visual computation of phonology is automatic and prelexical.     

Evolutionary Psychology of Facial Attractiveness

The human face communicates an impressive number of visual signals. Although adults' ratings of facial attractiveness are consistent across studies, even cross-culturally, there has been considerable controversy surrounding attempts to identify the facial features that cause faces to be judged attractive or unattractive. Studies of physical attractiveness have attempted to identify the features that contribute to attractiveness by studying the relationships between attractiveness and (a) symmetry, (b) averageness, and (c) nonaverage sexually dimorphic features (hormone markers). Evolutionary psychology proposes that these characteristics all pertain to health, suggesting that humans have evolved to view certain features as attractive because they were displayed by healthy individuals. However, the question remains how single features that are considered attractive relate to each other, and if they form a single ornament that signals mate quality. Moreover, some researchers have recently explained attractiveness preferences in terms of individual differences that are predictable. This article briefly describes what is currently known from attractiveness research, reviews some recent advances, and suggests areas for future researchers' attention.     

Messages about sex in the workplace: A content analysis of primetime television

Because television has the potential to shape cultural beliefs about both sexual norms and appropriate workplace behavior, it seems important to examine TV’s portrayal of “sexual etiquette” in the workplace. In a content analysis of two episodes of every primetime comedy aired on all broadcast and cable networks during fall 2000, we coded every sexual remark and behavior made in a workplace scene. Across all networks, 85 percent of programs and one in four workplace interactions contained some type of sexual content. Overall, a viewer is likely to hear eleven sexual remarks and see two to three sexual behaviors in a workplace setting per hour; this jumps to twenty-three remarks and nine behaviors on cable networks. Sexual remarks were mostly explicit, made in an office setting, by White men, and were rarely (1.4%) about sexual harassment or discrimination. Although sexual content in the workplace was generally less common on broadcast than cable networks, a broadcast network (Fox) actually had the highest overall rate, with sexual content in 38 percent of workplace scenes. Given that research suggests that TV teaches youth about sexuality and cultivates sexual attitudes and beliefs consistent with televised portrayals, it is alarming that youth may learn from television that sex in the workplace is not only commonplace, but also to be tolerated and enjoyed.     

Personality Disorders and Spinal Cord Injury: A Pilot Study

A substantial body of research has found that spinal cord injury (SCI) patients have relatively high degrees of energy, impulsivity, and risk-taking (W. Fordyce, 1964; G. P. Taylor, 1970; B. Woodbury, 1978). The present study endeavors to extend our knowledge to the personality disorder (PD) domain. Forty SCI participants and 40 matched controls were given a semistructured diagnostic interview and a self-report personality disorder instrument. Findings indicated that 27.5% of SCI patients, and a similar number of controls, have PDs. Unexpectedly, impulsive/externalizing disorders (histrionic, narcissistic, antisocial, and borderline) were not unusually high in SCI patients, and were not higher than controls. Avoidant and depressive disorders were unexpectedly high.     

The Role of School-based Group Mentoring in Promoting Resilience among Vulnerable High School Students

This study examined the role of participation in a year-long school-based group mentoring program, Project Arrive (PA), on increasing resilience during the first year of high school among students identified as being at high risk for school dropout. Participants were 114, ninth grade students taking part in one of 32 PA mentoring groups, and 71 statistically matched comparison students (53% male, 75% eligible for free/reduced-price lunch, 62% Latinx). Using a propensity score with inverse probability of treatment weighting (IPTW) to reduce selection bias, and a multi-level model to account for non-independence of data within mentoring groups, we examined changes from pre-test to program exit on seven external resilience resources (developmental supports and opportunities) and four internal resilience assets (personal strengths). At program exit, PA participants had higher adjusted means than comparisons on six external resources, including school support, school belonging, school meaningful participation, peer caring relationships, prosocial peers, and home meaningful participation. PA participants also had higher adjusted means on one internal asset, problem solving. Results point to the promise of group mentoring as an approach for increasing resilience among academically vulnerable adolescents.     

Responding to object files: Automatic integration of spatial information revealed by stimulus-response compatibility effects

Spatial information is assumed to play a central, organizing role in object perception and to be an important ingredient of object representations. Here, evidence is provided to show that automatically integrated spatial object information is also functional in guiding spatial action. In particular, retrieving nonspatial information about a previewed object facilitates responses that spatially correspond to this object. This is true whether the object is still in sight or has already disappeared. So, forming an object representation entails the integration and storage of action-related information concerning the action that the object affords.     

The Structure and Dynamics of Worry: Theory, Measurement, and Cross-National Replications

This article presents a comprehensive conceptualization of the structure of worry and the relation of worry to mental health and well-being. It is assumed that worries have two facets, namely, the object of a worry (e.g., self, close others, society, the world) and the domain of a worry (the field of life with which it is concerned). The object of a worry is presumed to be more important than its domain in determining the impact of worries on mental health. Only worries concerned with self and close others (micro worries) are expected to be related to poor mental health, whereas worries about society or the entire world (macro worries) are expected to be positively related to mental health. An instrument is introduced to study worries in accordance with the proposed structure. Its validity is tested by two confirmatory techniques (similarity structure analysis and confirmatory factor analysis) in samples from Israel, West Germany, and (the former) East Germany. Worry scores are also related to five mental health indicators. Results show that across samples micro and macro worries can validly be distinguished. Micro worries are strongly related to poor mental health, whereas macro worries are unrelated to mental health or relate marginally to positive well-being.