The instrumental use of group prototypicality judgments

Recently, Waldzus et al. [Waldzus, S., Mummendey, A., Wenzel, M., & Boettcher, F. (2004). Of bikers, teachers and Germans: Groups’ diverging views about their prototypicality. British Journal of Social Psychology, 43, 385-400] have shown that ingroup members often tend to judge the ingroup as more prototypical of the superordinate group than other subgroups. In this paper, we argue that, in addition to the motivational processes that have been posited to explain this phenomenon, prototypicality judgments may vary according to instrumental considerations. In particular, those who believe their ingroup interest to be undermined by remaining part of the common group will downplay ingroup’s prototypicality as a way to sustain their separatist position. In a first study (N = 63), we found that Scottish respondents who support Scottish independence judged the Scots to be less prototypical of Britain than the English, as compared with Scots who do not support independence. In a second study (N = 191), we manipulated the rhetorical context within which prototypicality judgments were made. Results showed that the pattern found in study 1 only applied when the issue of independence was made salient. When the issue of the importance of Scottish history in Britain was made salient, the opposite pattern appeared, i.e. supporters of independence judged the Scots more prototypical than the English compared to non-supporters. These results were also interpreted in instrumental terms.     

Précis of neuroconstructivism: how the brain constructs cognition

Neuroconstructivism: How the Brain Constructs Cognition proposes a unifying framework for the study of cognitive development that brings together (1) constructivism (which views development as the progressive elaboration of increasingly complex structures), (2) cognitive neuroscience (which aims to understand the neural mechanisms underlying behavior), and (3) computational modeling (which proposes formal and explicit specifications of information processing). The guiding principle of our approach is context dependence, within and (in contrast to Marr [1982]) between levels of organization. We propose that three mechanisms guide the emergence of representations: competition, cooperation, and chronotopy; which themselves allow for two central processes: proactivity and progressive specialization. We suggest that the main outcome of development is partial representations, distributed across distinct functional circuits. This framework is derived by examining development at the level of single neurons, brain systems, and whole organisms. We use the terms encellment, embrainment, and embodiment to describe the higher-level contextual influences that act at each of these levels of organization. To illustrate these mechanisms in operation we provide case studies in early visual perception, infant habituation, phonological development, and object representations in infancy. Three further case studies are concerned with interactions between levels of explanation: social development, atypical development and within that, developmental dyslexia. We conclude that cognitive development arises from a dynamic, contextual change in embodied neural structures leading to partial representations across multiple brain regions and timescales, in response to proactively specified physical and social environment.     

A behavioral genetic study of trait emotional intelligence

Numerous models of emotional intelligence (EI) have proposed the existence of hitherto undiscovered mental abilities, competencies, and skills. The theory of trait emotional intelligence suggests that the content domains of these models invariably contain permutations of personality traits. The two studies in this article examine the heritability of trait EI scores with a view to demonstrating empirically that the construct has a similar level of genetic influence as other personality traits. Study 1 was a family design of 133 high-school students and their parents. Regressions of offspring on midparent scores suggested median upper-limit heritability estimates of .18 at facet level, .25 at factor level, and .32 at the global trait EI level. Study 2 was a twin design (213 pairs of monozygotic [MZ] twins and 103 pairs of dizygotic [DZ] twins). It yielded median heritabilities of .42 for the facets, .44 for the factors, and .42 for global trait EI. Overall, our findings are in accordance with studies of the major personality dimensions and provide further empirical support for the conceptualization of EI as a personality trait.     

Computerized procedure for analyzing hand kinematics with a peg-moving task (Sarah-Pegworks)

This article describes Sarah-Pegworks, a computerized procedure for analyzing hand kinematics based on the peg-moving task. The procedure, developed in Visual Basic 6 programming language, includes (1) processing raw data from an infrared motion-tracking system, (2) identifying movement components, and (3) analyzing and presenting hand kinematic information in numerical and graphic outputs. Fifty-five normal adults set the parameters relative to filtering and movement identification. A case was presented to illustrate the clinical value of this procedure.     

Mislocated fixations can account for parafoveal-on-foveal effects in eye movements during reading

Contrasting predictions of serial and parallel views on the processing of foveal and parafoveal information during reading were tested. A high-frequency adjective (young) was followed by either a high-frequency word(n) (child) or a low-frequency word(n) (tenor), which in turn was followed by either a correct (performing) or an orthographic illegal word(n + 1) (pxvforming) as a parafoveal preview. A limited parafoveal-on-foveal effect was observed: There were inflated fixation times on word(n) when the preview of word(n + 1) was orthographically illegal. However, this parafoveal-on-foveal effect was (a) independent of the frequency of word(n), (b) restricted to those instances when the eyes were very close to word(n + 1), and (c) associated with relatively long prior saccades. These observations are all compatible with a mislocated fixation account in which parafoveal-on-foveal effects result from saccadic undershoots of word(n + 1) and with a serial model of eye movement control during reading.     

Theta synchronizes the activity of medial prefrontal neurons during learning

Memory consolidation is thought to involve the gradual transfer of transient hippocampal-dependent traces to distributed neocortical sites via the rhinal cortices. Recently, medial prefrontal (mPFC) neurons were shown to facilitate this process when their activity becomes synchronized. However, the mechanisms underlying this enhanced synchrony remain unclear. Because the hippocampus projects to the mPFC, we tested whether theta oscillations contribute to synchronize mPFC neurons during learning. Thus, we obtained field (LFP) and unit recordings from multiple mPFC sites during the acquisition of a trace-conditioning task, where a visual conditioned stimulus (CS) predicted reward delivery. In quiet waking, the activity of mPFC neurons was modulated by theta oscillations. During conditioning, CS presentation caused an increase in mPFC theta power that augmented as the CS gained predictive value for reward delivery. This increased theta power coincided with a transient theta phase locking at distributed mPFC sites, an effect that was also manifest in the timing of mPFC unit activity. Overall, these results show that theta oscillations contribute to synchronize neuronal activity at distributed mPFC sites, suggesting that the hippocampus, by generating a stronger theta source during learning, can synchronize mPFC activity, in turn facilitating rhinal transfer of its activity to the neocortex.     

Testing intergroup concordance in ranking experiments with two groups of judges

Across many areas of psychology, concordance is commonly used to measure the (intragroup) agreement in ranking a number of items by a group of judges. Sometimes, however, the judges come from multiple groups, and in those situations, the interest is to measure the concordance between groups, under the assumption that there is some within-group concordance. In this investigation, existing methods are compared under a variety of scenarios. Permutation theory is used to calculate the error rates and the power of the methods. Missing data situations are also studied. The results indicate that the performance of the methods depend on (a) the number of items to be ranked, (b) the level of within-group agreement, and (c) the level of between-group agreement. Overall, using the actual ranks of the items gives better results than using the pairwise comparison of rankings. Missing data lead to loss in statistical power, and in some cases, the loss is substantial. The degree of power loss depends on the missing mechanism and the method of imputing the missing data, among other factors.