Moral education for the elite of democracy: the classe de philosophie between sociology and philosophy

In this article, I address the issues at stake in the relationship between sociology and philosophy in the second half of the nineteenth century by focusing on a debate between two parties: Emile Durkheim, who was attempting to found an independent scientific sociology, and the editors and collaborators of the Revue de métaphysique et de morale (RMM), one of the central philosophical journals of the period. This debate focused on the role of philosophy in secondary school education, but at its heart, this was a struggle between two disciplines over which ought to direct the formation of good citizens for Third Republic France.     

Disentangling dimensions in the dimensional change card-sorting task

The dimensional change card-sorting task (DCCS task) is frequently used to assess young children's executive abilities. However, the source of children's difficulty with this task is still under debate. In the standard DCCS task, children have to sort, for example, test cards with a red cherry or a blue banana into two boxes marked with target cards showing a blue cherry and a red banana. Typically, 3-year-olds have severe problems switching from sorting by one dimension (e.g. color) to sorting by the other dimension (e.g. shape). Three experiments with 3- to 4-year-olds showed that separating the two dimensions as properties of a single object, and having them characterize two different objects (e.g. by displaying an outline of a cherry next to a red filled circle on the card) improves performance considerably. Results are discussed in relation to a number of alternative explanations for 3-year-olds' difficulty with the DCCS task.     

Extinction-induced immobility in the water maze and its neurochemical concomitants in aged and adult rats: a possible model for depression?

Extinction of escape behavior in the water maze due to the removal of the platform, was hypothesized to induce a negative state, including the development of immobility, which is held to reflect a state of "despair" when measured in the forced swimming test. 27 aged and 8 adult animals (26 and 3 months old Wistar rats, respectively) were tested in the water maze during nine days with a platform hidden, followed by 7 days of extinction trials with the platform absent. As expected, both age groups developed immobility over the extinction trials, with the aged showing more than the adults. To examine whether the age difference in immobility was related to performance differences during acquisition, the aged were subdivided into superior, intermediate and inferior learners (n = 9 per group) on the basis of overall times to platform during acquisition, and compared with each other and the adults. Results showed that the aged inferior learners displayed the highest levels of immobility among the aged. Immobility scores were then correlated with post-mortem neurotransmitter contents in the hippocampus and ventral striatum. In the ventral striatum, levels of immobility were correlated with levels of acetylcholine, dopamine and the metabolite dihydroxyphenylacetic acid in the aged, and with norepinephrine in the adults. The data support the hypothesis that multiple extinction trials in the water maze result in immobility that may indicate "behavioral despair," and that striatal neurotransmitter systems correlate with the degree of its expression. The concept of extinction-induced despair is held to provide the promise of a conceptual and empirical model of human depression that is the consequence of loss of reinforcers.     

Does inconsistency always lead to negative affect? The influence of need for closure on affective reactions to cognitive inconsistency

We present an experiment showing that need for closure (NFC)—defined as the epistemic desire for certainty—can moderate individuals' affective reactions to cognitive inconsistency. Informed by Kruglanski and colleagues' new theory, that cognitive inconsistency elicits negative affect particularly under certain circumstances, we find that NFC (i.e. the desire for certain, stable and unambiguous knowledge) influences the strength of consistency effects and resulting negative affect. More specifically, we find that individuals who are high on NFC experience more negative affect upon encountering an inconsistent (vs. consistent) cognition. However, when individuals are low on NFC, inconsistency is irrelevant, and their affect depends on whether the ultimate outcome of the cognition is positive or negative. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of this research.     

The Effect of Praise, Positive Nonverbal Response, Reprimand, and Negative Nonverbal Response on Child Compliance: A Systematic Review

Lack of compliance has both short- and long-term costs and is a leading reason why parents seek mental health services for children. What parents do to help children comply with directives or rules is an important part of child socialization. The current review examines the relationship between a variety of parenting discipline behaviors (i.e., praise, positive nonverbal response, reprimand, negative nonverbal response) and child compliance. Forty-one studies of children ranging in age from 1? to 11?years were reviewed. Reprimand and negative nonverbal responses consistently resulted in greater compliance. Praise and positive nonverbal responses resulted in mixed child outcomes. The findings are discussed based on theory and populations studied. The authors propose a mechanism that may increase children’s sensitivity to both positive and negative behavioral contingencies.     

Validation of an italian version of the oxford happiness inventory in adolescence

An Italian adaptation of the Oxford Happiness Inventory was administered to 782 adolescents. Exploratory structural equation modeling (ESEM) was used to examine the first- and second-order factorial structure of the scale and its invariance across gender; internal consistency and construct validity were also investigated. ESEM underlined a 5-factor structure (mastery and self-fulfillment, satisfaction with life, vigor, social interest, and social cheerfulness) that measures positive psychological functioning. These dimensions form a single latent construct of general psychological well-being. The scale showed adequate internal consistency values and strong measurement invariance across gender. Finally, regarding convergent validity, both total scale and subscales were positively correlated with extraversion and self-esteem, were negatively correlated with neuroticism, and displayed no correlation with psychoticism.     

The learning of visually guided action: An information-space analysis of pole balancing

In cart-pole balancing, one moves a cart in 1 dimension so as to balance an attached inverted pendulum. We approached perception-action and learning in this task from an ecological perspective. This entailed identifying a space of informational variables that balancers use as they perform the task and demonstrating that they improve by traversing the space to the loci of more useful variables. We presented a novel information space-including fractional derivatives of pendulum angle (e.g., halfway between angle and angular velocity)-as possible information for balancing. Fourteen college students tried to meet a criterion of balancing the pole for 30 s on 3 of 5 successive trials, up to a maximum of 150 attempts. Loci in the fractional derivative space predicted the time series of force production well. Systematic differences were seen in loci as a function of success, and systematic changes in locus were seen with learning. The fractional derivatives were shown to predict pole angles a short time interval into the future, allowing balancers to prospectively control the action and thereby nullify visuomotor delay. In addition to loci in the information space, we analyzed loci in a calibration space, reflecting the gain relating force to information. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).     

The gender role self‐concept of men in female‐dominated occupations: does it depend on how they see their jobs?

In this study, we investigated the masculinity of men in female‐dominated occupations. Our assumptions that token status, masculine task redefinition, and job control are related to masculinity were supported by results of segmented and hierarchical regressions with data from 213 men in female‐dominated occupations. A comparison with 98 men from male‐dominated occupations revealed that these results are specific for men in female‐dominated occupations. Moderated regression did not support the assumption that the relation between masculine task redefinition would be stronger under low job control. Instead, the opposite pattern was found. Under high job control, the choice of tasks and their redefinition as masculine may be easier. Job control is discussed as a precondition for redefinition processes.     

The Influence of Avoidance Temperament and Avoidance‐Based Achievement Goals on Flow

In the present research, we conducted two studies designed to examine the joint influence of avoidance temperament and avoidance‐based achievement goals on the experience of flow on a creativity task. In both a laboratory study (N = 101; M_age = 22.61, SD_age = 4.03; 74.3% female) and a naturalistic study (N = 102; M_age = 16.23, SD_age = 1.13; 48% female), participants high in avoidance temperament were shown to experience greater flow when performance‐avoidance goals were induced; no differences were found in any of the other three achievement goal conditions from the 2 × 2 achievement goal framework. These findings reveal a short‐term benefit for a disposition‐goal match grounded in avoidance motivation, and point to the need for more research on both avoidance‐based matches and the short‐term versus long‐term implications of such matches.     

The role of working memory in inferential sentence comprehension

Existing literature on inference making is large and varied. Trabasso and Magliano (Discourse Process 21(3):255–287, 1996) proposed the existence of three types of inferences: explicative, associative and predictive. In addition, the authors suggested that these inferences were related to working memory (WM). In the present experiment, we investigated whether WM capacity plays a role in our ability to answer comprehension sentences that require text information based on these types of inferences. Participants with high and low WM span read two narratives with four paragraphs each. After each paragraph was read, they were presented with four true/false comprehension sentences. One required verbatim information and the other three implied explicative, associative and predictive inferential information. Results demonstrated that only the explicative and predictive comprehension sentences required WM: participants with high verbal WM were more accurate in giving explanations and also faster at making predictions relative to participants with low verbal WM span; in contrast, no WM differences were found in the associative comprehension sentences. These results are interpreted in terms of the causal nature underlying these types of inferences.