“Socializing” Achievement Goal Theory: The Need for Social Goals

Cultures shape the types of goals that students pursue in the classroom. However, research in achievement goal theory seems to have neglected this cultural aspect with its exclusive focus on individualistically-based goals such as mastery and performance goals. This emphasis on mastery and performance goals may reflect Western individualist psychological thinking. Thus, social goals, which may be more salient in collectivist cultures, are relatively neglected. There is a dearth of studies investigating the role of social goals in academic motivation, and the few studies that did explore them are somewhat problematic. This paper reviews research done within the achievement goal theory, considers the need for more studies on social goals, and concludes with the argument that social goals are important in understanding student motivation especially in collectivist cultures.     

Relationship between emotional intelligence and organizational citizenship behavior

This study evaluated hypothesized positive linkages between organizational citizenship behavior and the emotional intelligence dimensions of perception, using emotion, understanding emotion, and management of emotion, involving two samples. Sample 1 comprised 334 employed college students, 52% male, with a mean age of 23.4 yr., who worked an average of 29.6 hr. per week. Sample 2 comprised 72 professors, 81% female, with a mean age of 47 yr. Measures were the Emotional Intelligence Scale and the Organizational Citizenship Behavior Scale. Results of hierarchical multiple regressions indicated a positive link between organizational citizenship behavior and emotional intelligence. There were differences between the samples. In Sample 1, each of the emotional intelligence dimensions were positively linked to citizenship behavior: using and managing emotion were the greatest contributors. In Sample 2, managing emotion was the only contributor. Emotional intelligence had the strongest relationship with citizenship behavior directed at individuals.     

Spirituality and religiosity as predictors of depression and suicidal ideation: an exploratory study

In a sample of 149 undergraduate students, measures of religiosity and spirituality were positively associated with measures of depression, mania, and past suicidal ideation.     

Reliability of the Ego-Grasping Scale

Research using Knoblauch and Falconer's Ego-Grasping Scale is reviewed. Using a sample of 695 undergraduate students, the scale had moderate reliability (Cronbach alpha, odd-even numbered items, and test-retest), but a principal-components analysis with a varimax rotation identified five components, indicating heterogeneity in the content of the items. Lower Ego-Grasping scores appear to be associated with better psychological health. The scale has been translated and used with Korean, Kuwaiti, and Turkish students, indicating that the scale can be useful in cross-cultural studies.     

Religious Diversity in Mexico: Socioeconomic Attainment and Family Structure

Mexico has experienced dynamic changes in its religious landscape, but relatively little is known about the ways in which the affiliates of the diverse religious groups differ in their socioeconomic and family characteristics. This paper examines religious group differences in key demographic indicators of socioeconomic status and family structure using the 2000 Mexican Census. The changing patterns of religious affiliation in Mexico signal increasing religious, socioeconomic and familial diversity. Non-Christians and Mormons stand out for having higher scores on education and the wealth index relative to other religious groups. Most groups have lower rates of consensual unions and higher rates of marriage than do Catholics. These same groups also tend to have larger families and lower divorce/separation. These trends seem inconsistent with the Catholic teachings about marriage, divorce and contraception. Apparently, new groups are attracting adherents who have family orientations that differ from main-stream Mexican society.     

Confusion and dependence in uses of history

Many people argue that history makes a special difference to the subjects of biology and psychology, and that history does not make this special difference to other parts of the world. This paper will show that historical properties make no more or less of a difference to biology or psychology than to chemistry, physics, or other sciences. Although historical properties indeed make a certain kind of difference to biology and psychology, this paper will show that historical properties make the same kind of difference to geology, sociology, astronomy, and other sciences. Similarly, many people argue that nonhistorical properties make a special difference to the nonbiological and the nonpsychological world. This paper will show that nonhistorical properties make the same difference to all things in the world when it comes to their causal behavior and that historical properties make the same difference to all things in the world when it comes to their distributions. Although history is special, it is special in the same way to all parts of the world.     

Effective choice in all the symmetric 2 × 2 games

Solution concepts for game play implicitly assume what information is relevant for choosing moves. Maximin and Eliminating Dominated Strategies use payoff order; mixed strategies and Harsanyi??s risk dominance use payoff values. ??Cooperative?? strategies use previous choices, ignoring payoffs altogether. We first define the 12 symmetric 2 × 2 games as a continuous payoff space then use this space to evaluate strategies based on different types of information. Strategic success is shown to be sensitive to actual payoffs and seldom consistent for all games of an ordinally defined category such as Chicken. A new hybrid strategy using both payoff and choice information is introduced and shown to produce efficient outcomes in all symmetric 2 × 2 games when employed by both players. It does well in evolutionary tournaments against strategies of other types, especially in the difficult distribution games including Battle-of-the-Sexes.     

Expressivism and the Layer Cake Picture of Discursive Practice

Robert Brandom defends the intelligibility of the notion of a fully discursive practice that does not include any kind of logical vocabulary. Logical vocabulary, according to his account, should be understood as an optional extra to discursive practice, not as a necessary ingredient. Call this the Layer Cake Picture of the relation of logical to non-logical discursive practices. The aim pursued in this paper is to show, by way of an internal critique, that the Layer Cake Picture is in fact incompatible with the most central claims of Brandom’s philosophy. A way is sketched how to give up the Layer Cake Picture and still hold on to a position that is central to Brandom’s philosophical outlook, namely his expressivism about logic.     

Dissociating linguistic and non-linguistic gesture processing: electrophysiological evidence from American Sign Language

A fundamental advance in our understanding of human language would come from a detailed account of how non-linguistic and linguistic manual actions are differentiated in real time by language users. To explore this issue, we targeted the N400, an ERP component known to be sensitive to semantic context. Deaf signers saw 120 American Sign Language sentences, each consisting of a “frame” (a sentence without the last word; e.g. BOY SLEEP IN HIS) followed by a “last item” belonging to one of four categories: a high-close-probability sign (a “semantically reasonable” completion to the sentence; e.g. BED), a low-close-probability sign (a real sign that is nonetheless a “semantically odd” completion to the sentence; e.g. LEMON), a pseudo-sign (phonologically legal but non-lexical form), or a non-linguistic grooming gesture (e.g. the performer scratching her face). We found significant N400-like responses in the incongruent and pseudo-sign contexts, while the gestures elicited a large positivity.     

A neurally plausible parallel distributed processing model of event-related potential word reading data

The Parallel Distributed Processing (PDP) framework has significant potential for producing models of cognitive tasks that approximate how the brain performs the same tasks. To date, however, there has been relatively little contact between PDP modeling and data from cognitive neuroscience. In an attempt to advance the relationship between explicit, computational models and physiological data collected during the performance of cognitive tasks, we developed a PDP model of visual word recognition which simulates key results from the ERP reading literature, while simultaneously being able to successfully perform lexical decision—a benchmark task for reading models. Simulations reveal that the model’s success depends on the implementation of several neurally plausible features in its architecture which are sufficiently domain-general to be relevant to cognitive modeling more generally.