Ideologies of Diversity and Inequality: Predicting Collective Action in Groups Varying in Ethnicity and Immigrant Status

Ideological positions regarding social diversity and status inequality are examined as predictors of people's willingness to engage in collective action. Using social dominance theory and social identity theory, we hypothesized that the relationships between ideology, ethnic identification, and orientation toward collective action will vary depending on the position of one's group. Comparisons were made between four U.S. groups: White natives, White immigrants, Black/Latino natives, and Black/Latino immigrants. Groups differed in their endorsement of social diversity and social inequality, as well as in their orientation toward collective action and their ethnic group identification. For all groups, ethnic identity mediated the link between ideology and collective action, but the valence and magnitude of paths differed as a function of ethnicity and immigrant status. Social diversity was more critical for U.S. immigrants (White and Black/Latino); social inequality accounted for more variance in native-born U.S. groups (although in opposite directions for the two groups).     

Accessing causal relations in semantic memory

Most studies investigating semantic memory have focused on taxonomic or associative relations. Little is known about how other relations, such as causal relations, are represented and accessed. In three experiments, we presented participants with pairs of words one after another, describing events that referred to either a cause (e.g., spark) or an effect (e.g., fire). We manipulated the temporal order of word presentation and the question participants had to respond to. The results revealed that questions referring to the existence of a causal relation are answered faster when the first word refers to a cause and the second word refers to its effect than vice versa. However, no such asymmetry was observed with questions referring to the associative relation. People appear to distinguish the roles of cause and effect when queried specifically about a causal relation, but not when the same information is evaluated for the presence of an associative relation.     

Generating animal and tool names: an fMRI study of effective connectivity

The present fMRI study of semantic fluency for animal and tool names provides further evidence for category-specific brain activations, and reports task-related changes in effective connectivity among defined cerebral regions. Two partially segregated systems of functional integration were highlighted: the tool condition was associated with an enhancement of connectivity within left hemispheric regions, including the inferior prefrontal and premotor cortex, the inferior parietal lobule and the temporo-occipital junction; the animal condition was associated with greater coupling among left visual associative regions. These category-specific functional differences extend the evidence for anatomical specialization to lexical search tasks, and provide for the first time evidence of category-specific patterns of functional integration in word-retrieval.     

Does Octopus vulgaris have preferred arms?

Previous behavioral studies in Octopus vulgaris revealed lateralization of eye use. In this study, the authors expanded the scope to investigate arm preferences. The octopus's generalist hunting lifestyle and the structure of their arms suggest that these animals have no need to designate specific arms for specific tasks. However, octopuses also show behaviors, like exploration, in which only single or small groups of arms are involved. Here the authors show that octopuses had a strong preference for anterior arm use to reach for and explore objects, which points toward a task division between anterior and posterior arms. Four out of 8 subjects also showed a lateral bias. In addition, octopuses had a preference for a specific arm to reach into a T maze to retrieve a food reward. These findings give evidence for limb-specialization in an animal whose 8 arms were believed to be equipotential.     

Further exploration memory bias in compulsive washers

The aim of the present study was to replicate Radomsky and Rachman's findings on memory bias in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), using the same procedure but an increased sample size, more specific control groups, and a full analysis of contamination attribution data. Sixteen OCD-washers, 16 OCD-checkers, 16 social phobic patients and 16 non-anxious controls were presented with 50 'clean' or 'dirty' objects. After this incidental encoding phase, participants were asked to freely recall the objects, to rate their anxiety when almost touching each object, and, finally, to attribute each object to one of the two contamination conditions ('clean' or 'dirty'). Verbal episodic memory was also assessed with the California Verbal Learning Test. The results indicate that, contrary to Radomsky and Rachman's findings, OCD-washers did not differ from the other participants in their memory for 'clean' and 'dirty' objects. However, the OCD-washers recalled more accurately the 'dirty' source of contamination than the 'clean' source. This result was specific to the OCD-washers, and suggests a memory bias for contextually threatening information. The differences between our findings and those published by Radomsky and Rachman's are discussed.     

Risk and protective factors for marijuana use and problems with use in a national sample of female Ecuadorian secondary school students

This study investigated risk and protective factors for marijuana use and problems with use in Ecuadorian girls in an attempt to inform this growing problem. Female secondary school students (N = 16,310; M = 15.02, SD = 1.73 years) who completed the 2016 national survey of drug use participated. The likelihood of lifetime marijuana use, reported by 7.3% of the sample, was predicted by older age, greater perceived access to marijuana and affiliation with tobacco- and marijuana-using peers; aspects of parental monitoring and perceived physical safety in and around school were negatively related to the probability of use. Among girls reporting any marijuana use, age, frequency of past year use, ease of access and affiliation with marijuana-using peers was positively associated with marijuana use problems. These data support the roles of both parents and communities in reducing marijuana use among Ecuadorian girls and highlight the important role of peer influence.     

A direct test of the original version of regret theory

This paper reports on a direct experimental test of the original version of Regret Theory using a total of 64 subjects in three groups. The experiment, which was run on PCs, was designed to elicit from subjects' responses the two key elements in this theory: namely the basic utility function, and the regret/rejoicing function. It was also designed to provide a quick direct test of the implications of the theory. We found that the evidence refuted this original version of Regret Theory.     

Lateral specialization in unilateral spatial neglect: a cognitive robotics model

In this paper, we present the experimental results of an embodied cognitive robotic approach for modelling the human cognitive deficit known as unilateral spatial neglect (USN). To this end, we introduce an artificial neural network architecture designed and trained to control the spatial attentional focus of the iCub robotic platform. Like the human brain, the architecture is divided into two hemispheres and it incorporates bio-inspired plasticity mechanisms, which allow the development of the phenomenon of the specialization of the right hemisphere for spatial attention. In this study, we validate the model by replicating a previous experiment with human patients affected by the USN and numerical results show that the robot mimics the behaviours previously exhibited by humans. We also simulated recovery after the damage to compare the performance of each of the two hemispheres as additional validation of the model. Finally, we highlight some possible advantages of modelling cognitive dysfunctions of the human brain by means of robotic platforms, which can supplement traditional approaches for studying spatial impairments in humans.     

Recognition of facial affect in Borderline Personality Disorder

Patients with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) have been described as emotionally hyperresponsive, especially to anger and fear in social contexts. The aim was to investigate whether BPD patients are more sensitive but less accurate in terms of basic emotion recognition, and show a bias towards perceiving anger and fear when evaluating ambiguous facial expressions. Twenty-five women with BPD were compared with healthy controls on two different facial emotion recognition tasks. The first task allowed the assessment of the subjective detection threshold as well as the number of evaluation errors on six basic emotions. The second task assessed a response bias to blends of basic emotions. BPD patients showed no general deficit on the affect recognition task, but did show enhanced learning over the course of the experiment. For ambiguous emotional stimuli, we found a bias towards the perception of anger in the BPD patients but not towards fear. BPD patients are accurate in perceiving facial emotions, and are probably more sensitive to familiar facial expressions. They show a bias towards perceiving anger, when socio-affective cues are ambiguous. Interpersonal training should focus on the differentiation of ambiguous emotion in order to reduce a biased appraisal of others.