Cooperation as a signal of genetic or phenotypic quality in female mate choice? Evidence from preferences across the menstrual cycle

Previous research highlighting the role sexual selection may play in the evolution of human cooperation has yet to distinguish what qualities such behaviours actually signal. The aim here was to examine whether female preferences for male cooperative behaviours are because they signal genetic or indirect phenotypic quality. This was possible by taking into account female participants' stage of menstrual cycle, as much research has shown that females at the most fertile stage show greater preferences specifically for signals of genetic quality than any other stage, particularly for short-term relationships. Therefore, different examples of cooperation (personality, costly signals, heroism) and the mate preferences for altruistic traits self-report scale were used across a series of four experiments to examine females' attitudes towards cooperation in potential mates for different relationship lengths at different stages of the menstrual cycle. The results here consistently show that female fertility had no effect on perceptions of cooperative behaviour, and that such traits were considered more important for long-term relationships. Therefore, this provides strong evidence that cooperative behaviour is important in mate choice as predominantly a signal of phenotypic rather than genetic quality.     

Cognitive behavioral group treatment for Chinese people with depressive symptoms in Hong Kong: participants' perspectives

This study documents the experiences of 20 Chinese people in Hong Kong who participated in group cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). They were asked to comment on the aspects of the group content and process that they found to be useful or not useful in dealing with their depressive moods. In general, they reported that the groups helped them gain awareness of their thought and behavioral patterns and learn new cognitive and behavioral strategies. Certain aspects of the group process, however, such as the outpouring of negative emotions, were considered by the participants to be counterproductive to their learning and practice of CBT.     

A Friend in Creed: Does the Religious Composition of Geographic Areas Affect the Religious Composition of a Person's Close Friends?

Numerous theories of religion rest on the assumption that the religious composition of local populations influences the religious identities of a person's close friends, but there have been few empirical tests of this assumption. Using a combination of data on the religious identity of close friends (from the 1988 and 1998 General Social Survey) and information on the religious composition of counties (from the U.S. Religious Congregations and Membership Study) we find that despite tendencies toward religious homogeneity, the religious composition of the surrounding population has an effect on the proportion of a respondent’s same‐religion friends and on the proportion of friends belonging to specific other religious groups. Local population characteristics are unrelated to the proportion of respondents’ friends known in congregational settings. Results have implications for a broad range of sociological theories of religion as well as research examining the impact of same‐congregation and same‐religion friends (e.g., health and well‐being).     

The mismeasure of morals: antisocial personality traits predict utilitarian responses to moral dilemmas

Researchers have recently argued that utilitarianism is the appropriate framework by which to evaluate moral judgment, and that individuals who endorse non-utilitarian solutions to moral dilemmas (involving active vs. passive harm) are committing an error. We report a study in which participants responded to a battery of personality assessments and a set of dilemmas that pit utilitarian and non-utilitarian options against each other. Participants who indicated greater endorsement of utilitarian solutions had higher scores on measures of Psychopathy, machiavellianism, and life meaninglessness. These results question the widely-used methods by which lay moral judgments are evaluated, as these approaches lead to the counterintuitive conclusion that those individuals who are least prone to moral errors also possess a set of psychological characteristics that many would consider prototypically immoral.     

Plasticity of human spatial cognition: spatial language and cognition covary across cultures

The present paper explores cross-cultural variation in spatial cognition by comparing spatial reconstruction tasks by Dutch and Namibian elementary school children. These two communities differ in the way they predominantly express spatial relations in language. Four experiments investigate cognitive strategy preferences across different levels of task-complexity and instruction. Data show a correlation between dominant linguistic spatial frames of reference and performance patterns in non-linguistic spatial memory tasks. This correlation is shown to be stable across an increase of complexity in the spatial array. When instructed to use their respective non-habitual cognitive strategy, participants were not easily able to switch between strategies and their attempts to do so impaired their performance. These results indicate a difference not only in preference but also in competence and suggest that spatial language and non-linguistic preferences and competences in spatial cognition are systematically aligned across human populations.     

Consistency of hand-preference across the early years: long-term relationship to verbal intelligence and reading achievement in girls

The relationship between consistency of hand preference, left hemispheric specialization, and cognitive functioning was examined in an ongoing longitudinal investigation. Children were classified as consistent or inconsistent in their hand preference across 5 assessments from ages 18 to 42 months. Findings demonstrated that (a) this early classification continued to reveal differences in cognitive functioning from 10 to 17 years but only for girls, (b) consistent girls' performances were continually higher relative to the inconsistent girls on measures of verbal intelligence and reading achievement, (c) differences between the female groups were specifically related to left-hemispheric language specialization, and (d) one factor influencing the consistent girls' development may be the amount of reading exposure received during infancy.     

Age-relevance of person characteristics: persons' beliefs about developmental change across the lifespan

The authors investigated normative beliefs about personality development. Young, middle-aged, and older adults indicated the age-relevance of 835 French adjectives by specifying person characteristics as typical for any age decade from 0 to 99 years. With this paradigm, the authors determined age-relevance (How typical is a characteristic for a given age decade?). Most characteristics were ascribed to young adulthood. The pattern differed across the lifespan, however, for positive and negative person characteristics as well as for physical, cognitive, and personal/expressive characteristics. Whereas the total number of ascribed positive characteristics peaked in young adulthood and declined thereafter, the number of ascribed negative person characteristics peaked during adolescence, remained fairly low during middle adulthood, and increased slightly in old age (70+ years). As a consequence, the most positive profile was ascribed to young olds (60 to 69 years), whereas the most negative personality profiles were ascribed to the oldest age groups (70+ years) and to adolescence (10 to 19 years). The negative profiles are primarily due to more negative physical characteristics ascribed to older adults and more negative cognitive characteristics ascribed to adolescence.     

From blooming,buzzing confusion to media literacy: The early development of television viewing

Television comprehension is a surprisingly demanding task for very young children. Based on a task analysis of television viewing and review of research, we suggest that by 6 months of age, infants can identify objects and people on screen. By 24 months they can comprehend and imitate simple actions contained in single shots and begin to integrate information across shots. Toddlers nevertheless suffer from the video deficit whereby their comprehension is less than from equivalent real life displays. During the preschool years they learn much of the grammar of filmic montage and can comprehend straightforward narrative productions. Essentially adult comprehension appears to be in place by 13 years of age.     

The role of expectation and probabilistic learning in auditory boundary perception: a model comparison

Grouping and boundary perception are central to many aspects of sensory processing in cognition. We present a comparative study of recently published computational models of boundary perception in music. In doing so, we make three contributions. First, we hypothesise a relationship between expectation and grouping in auditory perception, and introduce a novel information-theoretic model of perceptual segmentation to test the hypothesis. Although we apply the model to musical melody, it is applicable in principle to sequential grouping in other areas of cognition. Second, we address a methodological consideration in the analysis of ambiguous stimuli that produce different percepts between individuals. We propose and demonstrate a solution to this problem, based on clustering of participants prior to analysis. Third, we conduct the first comparative analysis of probabilistic-learning and rule-based models of perceptual grouping in music. In spite of having only unsupervised exposure to music, the model performs comparably to rule-based models based on expert musical knowledge, supporting a role for probabilistic learning in perceptual segmentation of music.