A Survey of Challenges Experienced by New Learners Coding the Rorschach

Learning to code the imagery, communication, and behavior associated with Rorschach responding is challenging. Although there is some survey research on graduate students' impressions of their Rorschach training, research has not identified which coding decisions students find to be the most problematic and time-consuming. We surveyed students to identify what they struggled with most when learning coding and to quantify how difficult it is to learn how to code. Participants (n = 191) from the United States, Brazil, Denmark, Israel, and Italy rated 57 aspects of coding using a 4-point scale that encompassed both the time required to code and the subjective difficulty of doing so. Mean ratings for coding in general indicated that students considered the overall task challenging. Ratings also revealed that students struggled most with Cognitive Special Scores, Determinants, and extrapolating from the tables to code Form Quality for objects that were not specifically listed. The findings offer suggestions about how to improve the guidelines for some of the more difficult variables and where it is most necessary to focus teaching time. Taking these steps might help new students in learning the Rorschach.     

Sensitivity to Crossover Constraints During Native and Non-native Pronoun Resolution

We report the results from two experiments examining native and non-native German speakers’ sensitivity to crossover constraints on pronoun resolution. Our critical stimuli sentences contained personal pronouns in either strong (SCO) or weak crossover (WCO) configurations. Using eye-movement monitoring during reading and a gender-mismatch paradigm, Experiment 1 investigated whether a fronted wh-phrase would be considered as a potential antecedent for a pronoun intervening between the wh-phrase and its canonical position. Both native and non-native readers initially attempted coreference in WCO but not in SCO configurations, as evidenced by early gender-mismatch effects in our WCO conditions. Experiment 2 was an offline antecedent judgement task whose results mirrored the SCO/WCO asymmetry observed in our reading-time data. Taken together, our results show that the SCO constraint immediately restricts pronoun interpretation in both native and non-native comprehension, and further suggest that SCO and WCO constraints derive from different sources.     

The Semantic Processing of Motion Verbs: Coercion or Underspecification?

Underspecification and coercion are two prominent interpretive mechanisms to account for meaning variability beyond compositionality. While there is plentiful evidence that natural language meaning constitution exploits both mechanisms, it is an open issue whether a concrete phenomenon of meaning variability is an instance of underspecification or coercion. This paper argues that this theoretical dispute can be settled experimentally. The test case are standard motion verbs (e.g. walk, ride) in combination with ±telic directional phrases, for which both underspecifaction and coercion analyses have been proposed in the literature. A self-paced reading study which incorporates motion verbs, directional phrases and durative/completive temporal adverbials (1) aims at determining the aspectual value of such verbs, and (2) compares the hypotheses of the Underspecification and Coercion Accounts. The results of the reading time experiment (flanked by a corpus study and a completion study) indicate that motion verbs are aspectually underspecified. They combine with ±telic directional phrases with equal ease. The combination with a mismatching temporal adverbial is an instance of coercion, causing additional processing costs.     

I might ease your pain,but only if you’re sad: The impact of the empathized emotion in the empathy-helping association

Ample research demonstrated that empathizing with someone in need promotes helping that person. Two studies examined whether this effect of empathy on helping behavior holds across different emotional reactions expressed by a target in need. Results of Study 1 indicate that perspective taking with a sad needy target increased empathic concern which, in turn, fostered helping the individual. This relation was not found for participants taking the perspective of angry or disgusted needy targets. Study 2 provides further support for the underlying mechanism of the results of Study 1. Perspective taking with a sad needy target increased empathizers’ empathic concern because perception of target neediness was increased. Again, this pattern was not found for perspective taking with an angry needy target. The findings correspond to theorizing on the role of emotions in person perception. Hence, the current research provides insights regarding the boundary conditions of the empathy-helping association.     

Effects of Feedback on Self‐Evaluations and Self‐Regulation in Elementary School

Elementary school learners are typically highly confident when judging accuracy of their test responses, relatively independent of whether these are correct. While feedback has been shown to improve accuracy of adults' and adolescents' self‐evaluations and subsequent self‐regulation, little is known about beneficial effects for elementary school children. We investigated effects of fine‐grained feedback on fourth and sixth graders' self‐evaluations and restudy selections by presenting them the ideas they were meant to bring up in their test responses. One group received full‐definition feedback standards, whereas the other group received idea‐unit feedback standards. The two types of feedback strongly improved fourth and sixth graders' self‐evaluations for commission errors and for partially correct responses. While restudy selections before feedback were more adaptive for sixth than fourth graders, age differences disappeared after receiving feedback. Findings imply that feedback standards are a suitable tool to calibrate elementary school learners and to support effective self‐regulation.Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Fundamental Hope and Practical Identity

This article considers the question ‘What makes hope rational?’ We take Adrienne Martin's recent incorporation analysis of hope as representative of a tradition that views the rationality of hope as a matter of instrumental reasons. Against this tradition, we argue that an important subset of hope, ‘fundamental hope’, is not governed by instrumental rationality. Rather, people have reason to endorse or reject such hope in virtue of the contribution of the relevant attitudes to the integrity of their practical identity, which makes the relevant hope not instrumentally but intrinsically valuable. This argument also allows for a new analysis of the reasons people have to abandon hope and for a better understanding of non-fundamental, ‘prosaic’ hopes.     

Action Dynamics in Intertemporal Choice Reveal Different Facets of Decision Process

Two experiments were conducted to examine decision process in intertemporal choice with spatial and temporal action dynamic measures generated from cursor movement. The effects of the context valence (gain and loss) and magnitude of the payoffs (small and large) were investigated. Other factors examined were differences between decisions made at versus away from the indifference point and response variability dependent on what was selected (delayed versus non‐delayed/less‐delayed payoff). Using principal components analysis, decision process is described with three orthogonal components. General decision difficulty is encompassed by two components: (1) Conflict, depicted by Idle time and deviations from a direct choice path, and (2) decision uncertainty or Wavering, described by left‐right directional flips. A general Locomotion factor was also present. In Experiment 1, Conflict was best at capturing the gain/loss and magnitude context effects. Greater Conflict was observed in the loss context and the small magnitude condition. When choices were closer to the indifference point, Wavering was most salient. In Experiment 2, when selecting larger, delayed payoffs, both Conflict and Wavering increased suggesting that controlling the temptation of selecting the sooner, smaller reward entails effort. By analyzing trajectories, the study advances knowledge of the construct validity of different action dynamic measures and supports the distinction of decision uncertainty and decision conflict. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

What Provides Justification for Cheating—Producing or Observing Counterfactuals?

When people can profit financially by lying, they do so to the extent to which they can justify their lies. One type of justification is the observation and production of desirable counterfactual information. Here, we disentangle observing and producing of desired counterfactuals and test whether the mere observation is sufficient or whether one actually needs to produce the information in order to justify lying. By employing a modified version of the Die‐Under‐Cup task, we ask participants to privately roll a die three times and to report the outcome of the first die roll (with higher values corresponding to higher payoffs). In all three conditions, participants produce (roll the die) and observe the first die roll, which is relevant for pay. We manipulate whether participants produce and observe versus only observe the second and third die roll outcomes, which are both irrelevant for pay. Results reveal that people lie to the same extent—when producing and observing the counterfactuals, and when merely observing them. It seems that merely observing counterfactual information is sufficient to allow people to use this information to justify their lies. We further test whether creativity and moral disengagement are associated with dishonesty and replicate the finding showing that unethical behavior increases with creativity. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Disequilibrium and Loss of Narrative Coherence in Identity Construction: A Piagetian Perspective on Trauma in Adolescent Victims of Sexual Abuse

Previous authors have presented contradictory views of trauma as either the over- or under-elaboration of experience. This article provides a new theoretical perspective on trauma by incorporating Piagetian constructivism. On a theoretical level, it argues that both forms of narrative disruption following a traumatic episode are not contradictory. Rather, both over- and under-elaboration indicate disequilibrium and loss of narrative coherence in the construction of personal identity. Results are presented from an empirical study of the autobiographies of 15 adolescent victims (between the ages of 12 and 17) of sexual assault. Participants were enrolled in the initial stage of a psychotherapeutic treatment program for abuse in Santiago, Chile, at the time of study. Analysis of participant autobiographies reveals multiple forms of disorganization. The majority of adolescent narratives referred to predominance of traumatic experiences, whereas a small number of cases excluded traumatic experiences altogether. Discussion of study results shows that both forms of narrative disorganization indicate disequilibrium and loss of narrative coherence. Piagetian constructivist theory provides insight into this phenomenon by supporting and advancing understandings of trauma from a constructivist perspective. Implications for therapeutic treatment of sexual abuse, which may help generate clinical guidelines, are presented.     

Sex differences in dogs’ social learning of spatial information

We used a modified version of the Do as I Do paradigm to investigate dogs’ preference and flexibility in the acquisition of different types of spatial information in social learning situations. When required to match the location of the demonstration, dogs (N = 16) preferentially relied on allocentric information, i.e., the relationship between the location of the demonstration and the various objects surrounding it. However, when allocentric cues were inadequate to solve the task, dogs learned to rely on egocentric information, i.e., the direction—left/right—taken by the human demonstrator. The ease of resorting to the non-preferred egocentric strategy was sex-dependent with males acquiring the egocentric strategy in fewer trials than females. This study shows that dogs rely preferentially on allocentric cues when recalling socially acquired spatial information. However, they are impressively flexible in switching to egocentric strategies according to the task requirements. Whether preference for the allocentric strategy in processing spatial information is embedded in the nature of social learning or restricted to our paradigm is an open question. This study also supports the idea that sex differences in cognitive domains are widespread among mammals and calls for further investigations aimed at shedding light on the evolution, function and mechanisms of such differences.