Brexit or Bremain? A person and social analysis of voting decisions in the EU referendum

The period following UK's European Union referendum in 2016 foreshadows significant social and political change in the UK. The current research draws on social psychological theories to empirically examine the drivers of voting decisions during the referendum. We report the results of a prospective study using structural equation modelling with data (N = 244) collected just before, and self‐reported voting behaviour immediately following (N = 197), the European Union referendum. We employ a person and social approach to examine the additive roles of worldview, conservatism, social identity, and intergroup threat as predictors of voting intentions and behaviour. Results showed that person factors (worldview and conservatism) predicted voting intentions through social factors (European identity and realistic threat) and that intentions predicted behaviour. The results highlight the importance of addressing threat‐based intergroup rhetoric and the potential of common in‐group identity to mitigate psychological threat.     

Beyond the broom cupboard: teaching assistants’ reflections upon the wider impact of their specialist dyslexia training

Whilst the government-commissioned Rose Report (2009) on provision and support for dyslexic learners in England called for the deployment of more specialist dyslexia teachers in mainstream schools, the reality seems to be that the job of teaching literacy to children with dyslexia is falling to teaching assistants (TAs). As a result, specialist training courses for TAs have been developed in England. Using the Coldwell and Simkins Training Impact Framework, the present study examines TAs participants’ perceptions of the impact of two such local authority-based training programmes, not just in terms of the impact upon their individual practice, but also in terms of their perceptions of the wider impact of their status as a trained ‘expert’ upon their schools’ policies, culture and practice. ‘Enabling’ and ‘blocking’ factors influencing this wider impact are identified, and implications for the deployment of specialist TAs and the design of their training courses are discussed.     

Do complex models increase prediction of complex behaviours? Predicting driving ability in people with brain disorders

Prediction of complex behavioural tasks via relatively simple modelling techniques, such as logistic regression and discriminant analysis, often has limited success. We hypothesized that to more accurately model complex behaviour, more complex models, such as kernel-based methods, would be needed. To test this hypothesis, we assessed the value of six modelling approaches for predicting driving ability based on performance on computerized sensory-motor and cognitive tests (SMCTests?) in 501 people with brain disorders. The models included three models previously used to predict driving ability (discriminant analysis, DA; binary logistic regression, BLR; and nonlinear causal resource analysis, NCRA) and three kernel methods (support vector machine, SVM; product kernel density, PK; and kernel product density, KP). At the classification level, two kernel methods were substantially more accurate at classifying on-road pass or fail (SVM 99.6%, PK 99.8%) than the other models (DA 76%, BLR 78%, NCRA 74%, KP 81%). However, accuracy decreased substantially for all of the kernel models when cross-validation techniques were used to estimate prediction of on-road pass or fail in an independent referral group (SVM 73-76%, PK 72-73%, KP 71-72%) but decreased only slightly for DA (74-75%) and BLR (75-76%). Cross-validation of NCRA was not possible. In conclusion, while kernel-based models are successful at modelling complex data at a classification level, this is likely to be due to overfitting of the data, which does not lead to an improvement in accuracy in independent data over and above the accuracy of other less complex modelling techniques.     

Completeness and Decidability Results for Some Propositional Modal Logics Containing “Actually” Operators

The addition of actually operators to modal languages allows us to capture important inferential behaviours which cannot be adequately captured in logics formulated in simpler languages. Previous work on modal logics containing actually operators has concentrated entirely upon extensions of KT5 and has employed a particular model-theoretic treatment of them. This paper proves completeness and decidability results for a range of normal and nonnormal but quasi-normal propositional modal logics containing actually operators, the weakest of which are conservative extensions of K, using a novel generalisation of the standard semantics.     

Phonological context in speech perception

Speech perception can be viewed in terms of the listener’s integration of two sources of information: the acoustic features transduced by the auditory receptor system and the context of the linguistic message. The present research asked how these sources were evaluated and integrated in the identification of synthetic speech. A speech continuum between the glide-vowel syllables /ri/ and /li/ was generated by varying the onset frequency of the third formant. Each sound along the continuum was placed in a consonant-cluster vowel syllable after an initial consonant /p/, /t/, /s/, and /v/. In English, both /r/ and /l/ are phonologically admissible following /p/ but are not admissible following /v/. Only /l/ is admissible following /s/ and only /r/ is admissible following /t/. A third experiment used synthetic consonant-cluster vowel syllables in which the first consonant varied between /b/ and /d and the second consonant varied between /l/ and /r/. Identification of synthetic speech varying in both acoustic featural information and phonological context allowed quantitative tests of various models of how these two sources of information are evaluated and integrated in speech perception.     

Perceptions of stranger and acquaintance rape: the role of benevolent and hostile sexism in victim blame and rape proclivity

In Studies 1 and 2, after reading an acquaintance-rape but not a stranger-rape scenario, higher benevolent sexist but not hostile sexist participants blamed the victim significantly more. In Study 2, higher hostile sexist but not benevolent sexist male participants showed significantly greater proclivity to commit acquaintance (but not stranger) rape. Studies 3 and 4 supported the hypothesis that the effects of benevolent sexism and hostile sexism are mediated by different perceptions of the victim, as behaving inappropriately and as really wanting sex with the rapist. These findings show that benevolent sexism and hostile sexism underpin different assumptions about women that generate sexist reactions toward rape victims.