Significant and other: systemic family therapists on lesbians and gay men

This paper discusses a questionnaire survey done with a sample of 130 systemic family therapists, which investigated their training in, and experience of, working with lesbian and gay male clients and attitudes towards lesbians and gay men using the Index of Attitudes to Homosexuals. The findings indicate that the majority of respondents had received relatively little training in working with this client group within their systemic training. It also indicated that their attitudes towards lesbians and gay men generally may have been influenced by the degree of social, professional or familial contact that they had with them.     

Colored-Speech Synaesthesia Is Triggered by Multisensory, Not Unisensory, Perception

ABSTRACT— Although it is estimated that as many as 4% of people experience some form of enhanced cross talk between (or within) the senses, known as synaesthesia, very little is understood about the level of information processing required to induce a synaesthetic experience. In work presented here, we used a well-known multisensory illusion called the McGurk effect to show that synaesthesia is driven by late, perceptual processing, rather than early, unisensory processing. Specifically, we tested 9 linguistic-color synaesthetes and found that the colors induced by spoken words are related to what is perceived (i.e., the illusory combination of audio and visual inputs) and not to the auditory component alone. Our findings indicate that color-speech synaesthesia is triggered only when a significant amount of information processing has occurred and that early sensory activation is not directly linked to the synaesthetic experience.     

Decision-Making About Inherited Cancer Risk: Exploring Dimensions of Genetic Responsibility

Since genetic information has implications for family members, some choices about genetic risk may be influenced by perceptions of responsibility to relatives. Drawing upon 25 semi-structured interviews with test recipients in Canada, this study explored decisions about inherited breast-ovarian and colon cancer. Qualitative data analysis revealed the pervasive significance of genetic responsibility in test decisions. We highlight three dimensions of genetic responsibility: 1) to know about the self for self; 2) to know about the self for others; 3) to know about the self to oblige others to know. It is argued that these dimensions of genetic responsibility have implications for test decisions, family relationships and other family members’ desire to know (or not know) and to act (or not act) with respect to their own genetic risk. In particular, genetic responsibility may play out as a framing of a relative’s moral obligation to know their risk that could obviate any interest they might have in not knowing. We conclude that perceptions of responsibility to—and of−other family members be thoroughly explored in genetic counseling sessions.     

THE LOGICAL PROBLEM OF LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

Arguments from the Logical Problem of Language Acquisition suggest that since linguistic experience provides few negative data that would falsify overgeneral grammatical hypotheses, innate knowledge of the principles of Universal Grammar must constrain learners hypothesis formulation. Although this argument indicates a need for domain-specific constraints, it does not support their innateness. Learning from mostly positive data proceeds unproblematically in virtually all domains. Since not every domain can plausibly be accorded its own special faculty, the probative value of the argument in the linguistic case is dubious. In ignoring the holistic and probablistic nature of theory construction, the argument underestimates the extent to which positive data can supply negative evidence and hence overestimates the intractability of language learning in the absence of a dedicated faculty. While nativism about language remains compelling, the alleged Logical Problem contributes nothing to its plausibility and the emphasis on the Problem in the recent acquisition literature has been a mistake.     

On the detection of stepwise changes in a constant signal level

A stepwise change in the frequency of a continuous pure tone is taken as an element signal. The detectability of a single step is compared with the detectability of a pattern composed of two such steps in order to determine the ways in which the steps interact and how these interactions depend upon the time interval between the steps. It is shown that two positive steps separated by D msec interact by summation (d’ for two steps being greater than d’ for a single step) and that this summation is 100% even when D=100 msec. The extent of summation decreases as D is increased beyond 100 msec, leveling off at about 40% when D is near 1,000 msec. A positive step followed by a negative step (an increment) presents a more complex picture. When D=0 msec, the pattern is the null signal, and, of course, the two steps subtract completely. As D is increased, the extent of subtraction decreases, becoming zero when D is about 400 msec. Increasing D beyond 400 msec results in summation, reaching about 40% when D=2,000 msec. For D less than about 1,000 msec, the sign of the second step in a two-step signal is important: two steps of like sign summate, and two steps of unlike sign subtract. However, when the two steps are separated by about 2,000 msec, the sign of the second step is irrelevant: summation occurs, and the extent, about 40%, is the same for two steps of like sign and two steps of unlike sign. A brief theoretical discussion stresses the extant need for an information-processing theory of signal detection.     

Use of the titles Ms., Miss,or Mrs.: Does it make a difference?

In a study of sexism and language 112 persons at a shopping mall were asked to read a paragraph about an achieving woman who was either given the title Miss, Mrs., or Ms., or not given a title. Persons receiving the paragraph with the Ms. title rated the woman as less honest. No effect of the title variation was obtained on a number of other rating dimensions. The results were interpreted as reflecting public acceptance of the use of the Ms. title.     

Memory conformity: Disentangling the steps toward influence during a discussion

When two people see the same event and discuss it, one person’s memory report can influence what the other person subsequently claims to remember. We refer to this asmemory conformity. In the present article, two factors underlying the memory conformity effect are investigated. First, are there any characteristics of the dialogue that predict memory conformity? Second, is memory conformity differentially affected when information is encountered that omits, adds to, or contradicts originally encoded items? Participants were tested in pairs. The two members of each pair encoded slightly different versions of complex scenes and discussed them prior to an individual free recall test. The discussions were audiotaped, transcribed, and analyzed. Our most striking finding was that the witness initiating the discussion was most likely to influence the other witness’s memory report. Furthermore, witnesses were most likely to be influenced when an additional (previously unseen) item of information was encountered in the discussion.     

The portrayal of black people in UK television advertising: perception and reality

• Since the early 1990s, the UK advertising industry has been criticised for the relative absence of non‐whites, and for the ways ethnic minorities are depicted when they are used. Using interviews with advertising professionals and focus groups with black consumers, information on the perceptions of black people in advertising was gathered. The overwhelming message to advertisers was a simple one: ‘it isn't about quotas; it's about the way we are portrayed’. A content analysis of all advertisements shown during prime time on the three terrestrial channels over 2 weeks was then conducted. Results revealed that black people are actually over‐represented in UK television advertisements, although this is not the case for all sectors. However, the role type given to black spokespersons was found to be limited. Implications for marketing and advertising are discussed.

Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Primacy of functional knowledge in semantic representations: the case of living and nonliving things

In 3 experiments, participants decided whether sensory and functional features were true of living and nonliving concepts. In Experiments 1 and 2, concepts were presented twice: test phase followed study phase after either 3 min (Experiment 1) or 3 s (Experiment 2). At test, concepts were paired with the same feature as that at study, or a different feature from either the same modality (within-modality priming) or another modality (cross-modality priming). In both experiments functional decisions were faster than sensory decisions for living and nonliving concepts. Whilst no semantic priming occurred between study and test in Experiment 1, the shorter study-test interval of Experiment 2 did lead to test phase semantic priming. Here there was greater within- than cross-modality priming for sensory decisions, but equivalent within- and cross-modality priming for functional decisions owing to significantly greater facilitation of functional decisions from prior sensory decisions than vice versa. Experiment 3 involved a single verification phase: For half the participants the feature name preceded the concept name, and for half the concept name preceded the feature name. The functional processing advantage persisted irrespective of presentation order. Results suggest that functional information is central to the representation of all concepts: Function is processed faster than sensory information and is activated obligatorily.