A survey of women's social representations of aging and rejuvenation

The goal of this work was to analyze the social representations that women of three different age groups had about aging, rejuvenating, and methods of rejuvenation. The research was performed in S?o Paulo between 2004 and 2005. The participants of this research were three groups of women of different ages: 19 to 24 years, 25 to 35 years, and over 60 years. The data were collected by the focus group technique. Data was analyzed using the lexical analysis software ALCESTE 4.5. The main results show a social representation of aging centered on losses and gains. The subjects appraised the possibility of using rejuvenating methods only when it was extremely necessary, because of the health risks that most of them involve. The three groups agreed about natural methods of rejuvenating instead of resorting to invasive methods.     

Action planning with two-handed tools

In tool use, the intended external goals have to be transformed into bodily movements by taking into account the target-to-movement mapping implemented by the tool. In bimanual tool use, this mapping may depend on the part of the tool that is operated and the effector used (e.g. the left and right hand at the handle bar moving in opposite directions in order to generate the same bicycle movement). In our study, we investigated whether participants represent the behaviour of the tool or only the effector-specific mapping when using two-handed tools. In three experiments, participants touched target locations with a two-jointed lever, using either the left or the right hand. In one condition, the joint of the lever was constant and switching between hands was associated with switching the target-to-movement-mapping, whereas in another condition, switching between hands was associated with switching the joint, but the target-to-movement-mapping remained constant. Results indicate pronounced costs of switching hands in the condition with constant joint, whereas they were smaller with constant target-to-movement mapping. These results suggest that participants have tool-independent representations of the effector-specific mappings.

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Does the intention to communicate affect action kinematics?

The aim of the present study was to investigate the effects of communicative intention on action. In Experiment 1 participants were requested to reach towards an object, grasp it, and either simply lift it (individual condition) or lift it with the intent to communicate a meaning to a partner (communicative condition). Movement kinematics were recorded using a three-dimensional motion analysis system. The results indicate that kinematics was sensitive to communicative intention. Although the to-be-grasped object remained the same, movements performed for the ‘communicative’ condition were characterized by a kinematic pattern which differed from those obtained for the ‘individual’ condition. These findings were confirmed in a subsequent experiment in which the communicative condition was compared to a control condition, in which the communicative exchange was prevented. Results are discussed in terms of cognitive pragmatics and current knowledge on how social behavior shapes action kinematics.     

Spoken and gestural production in a naming task by young children with Down syndrome

Lexical production in children with Down syndrome (DS) was investigated by examining spoken naming accuracy and the use of spontaneous gestures in a picture naming task. Fifteen children with DS (range 3.8-8.3 years) were compared to typically developing children (TD), matched for chronological age and developmental age (range 2.6-4.3 years). Relative to TD children, children with DS were less accurate in speech (producing a greater number of unintelligible answers), yet they produced more gestures overall and of these a significantly higher percentage of iconic gestures. Furthermore, the iconic gestures produced by children with DS accompanied by incorrect or no speech often expressed a concept similar to that of the target word, suggesting deeper conceptual knowledge relative to that expressed only in speech.     

Programming tool-use actions

When humans plan to execute a tool-use action, they can only specify the bodily movement parameters by taking into account the external target or goal of the tool-use action and the target-movement mapping implemented by the tool. In this study, the authors used the movement precuing method to investigate how people prepare for actions made with tools. More specifically, they asked whether people would be able to specify the spatial target and the target-movement mapping of the tool-use action independently of each other, and to what degree they would be able to prepare these components in advance. In 3 experiments, they precued either the target or the target-movement mapping of tool-use actions involving either a compatible or an incompatible target-movement mapping. Results indicate that participants benefit from partial advance information about the target-movement mapping, whereas no significant effects were found for precuing the spatial target of the action. These results occurred regardless of whether the target-movement mapping was compatible or incompatible and provide evidence for the notion that the target-movement mapping of a tool-use action is part of its cognitive representation.     

Changing men's male gender-role attitudes by applying the elaboration likelihood model of attitude change

The traditional male gender role has been associated with a host of psychological and physical problems. In this study, 118 male university students viewed one of two videotaped interventions based on R. E. Petty and J. T. Cacioppo's [(1986) Communication and Persuasion: Central and Peripheral Routes to Attitude Change, New York: Springer-Verlag) elaboration likelihood model of attitude change (ELM) or were in a control group. One intervention was designed to create less traditional male gender-role attitudes, the other to enhance participants' attitudes toward seeking psychological help. Both interventions significantly changed male gender-role attitudes on Brannon Masculinity Scale scores, but not their Gender Role Conflict Scale—I scores, and neither influenced help-seeking attitudes. The overall pattern of scores suggests that men's attitudes about the male role may be less resistant to change than attitudes about one's own gender role or one's fear of femininity.     

Common reasoning about admissibility

We analyze common reasoning about admissibility in the strategic and extensive form of a game. We define a notion of sequential proper admissibility in the extensive form, and show that, in finite extensive games with perfect recall, the strategies that are consistent with common reasoning about sequential proper admissibility in the extensive form are exactly those that are consistent with common reasoning about admissibility in the strategic form representation of the game. Thus in such games the solution given by common reasoning about admissibility does not depend on how the strategic situation is represented. We further explore the links between iterated admissibility and backward and forward induction.     

The Analytic Truth and Falsity of Disjunctions

Disjunctive inferences are difficult. According to the theory of mental models, it is because of the alternative possibilities to which disjunctions refer. Three experiments corroborated further predictions of the mental model theory. Participants judged that disjunctions, such as Either this year is a leap year or it is a common year are true. Given a disjunction such as Either A or B, they tended to evaluate the four cases in its ‘partition’: A and B, A and not‐B, not‐A and B, not‐A and not‐B, as ‘possible’ or ‘impossible’ in ways that bore out the difference between inclusive disjunctions (‘or both’) and exclusive disjunctions (‘but not both’). Knowledge usually concerns what is true, and so when participants judge that a disjunction is false, or contingent, and evaluate the cases in its partition, they depend on inferences that yield predictable errors. They tended to judge that disjunctions, such as follows: Either the food is cold or else it is tepid, but not both, are true, though in fact they could be false. They tended to infer ‘mirror‐image’ evaluations that yield the same possibilities for false disjunctions as those for true disjunctions. The article considers the implications of these results for alternative theories based on classical logic or on the probability calculus.