Assessing the Connection between Students’ Justice Experience and Attitudes Toward Academic Cheating in Higher Education New Learning Environments

The present study is aimed at comprehensively assess tendency to neutralize (justify) academic cheating as a function of individual experience of teachers’ just behavior and new learning environments (NLE), while considering the Belief in a Just World (BJW) as a personal resource that has the potential to enhance those experiences. Data were collected from a sample of 193 second-year undergraduate college students. Path analysis main results showed that students who evaluated their teachers’ behavior toward them personally as just, held more positive evaluation of the learning environment, and were less inclined toward academic cheating neutralization. Personal BJW was partly associated with the perceived NLE, this connection was primarily mediated by the experience of teacher justice. Moreover, students’ evaluation of their teachers’ just behavior was a stronger negative predictor of academic cheating neutralization than perceived forms of NLE. Interpretation of these results, applications and implications for future research are discussed.     

Third-Person Perception as an Impression Management Tactic

The current research aims at broadening the motivational explanations for the third-person perception (TPP) by documenting the role of impression management motives in this perception. In two experiments that were devised to explore this possibility, participants were asked to report in public or in private on their perceptions of how various advertisements affected them and others. In addition, their level of self-monitoring was measured, and they were divided into two categories—high and low. In line with the hypotheses, participants showed a larger TPP in public than in private. Moreover, while the public nature of the situation did not affect low self-monitors, high self-monitors reported a large TPP in public but no TPP at all in private. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications of the current findings for research on the causes and consequences of the TPP.     

Mothers' Storybook Reading and Kindergartners' Socioemotional and Literacy Development

This study assessed storybook reading at home with reference to kindergartners’ empathy, socioemotional adjustment, language, and alphabetic skills. Beyond considering the frequency of storybook reading, measures included maternal expertise in choosing books. Findings indicated various relations between aspects of storybook reading and early development. Frequency of storybook reading was related to the child's language ability, whereas maternal expertise in choosing books was related to the child's empathy and socioemotional adjustment. These results suggest the need for further study of differential connections between shared reading and child development.     

Early literacy among Arabic-speaking kindergartners: The role of socioeconomic status,home literacy environment and maternal mediation of writing

We explored the sociocultural context of early literacy development among Arabic-speaking kindergartners in Israel, focusing on the nature of mother–child joint writing. Eighty-nine kindergartners and their mothers participated. Mothers were videotaped in their homes while helping their children write words. Early literacy was evaluated by alphabetic knowledge, concepts about print, phonological awareness, and vocabulary. Kindergartners’ early literacy was related to socioeconomic status (SES), home literacy environment (HLE) and maternal mediation level. Hierarchical regressions indicate that HLE predicted alphabetic knowledge, phonological awareness, and vocabulary beyond SES. Maternal mediation of writing predicted all children's early literacy measures except vocabulary, after controlling for SES and HLE. We discuss maternally mediated joint writing interactions as a possible context for early literacy enhancement among young Arabic-speaking children in Israel.     

Searching for the Right Word: Performance on Four Word-Retrieval Tasks Across Childhood

Word retrieval was assessed in 207 normally developing Hebrew-speaking children aged 8–17 through four tasks: picture naming, phonemic fluency, semantic fluency, and homophone meaning generation (HMGT). Scores on all tests correlated positively and significantly with participant age. Yet, age effects and the correlation between age and test scores were weakest for the naming test and strongest for the HMGT. We discuss the nature of the word search involved in each task and suggest that the more executive demands required by a test the steeper the slope of performance increase on this test.     

Cross-talk of instructed and applied arbitrary visuomotor mappings

Humans are able to perform any voluntary motor response to any environmental stimulus. This cornerstone of the flexibility of human behaviour has been investigated under the label of arbitrary visuomotor mapping. The focus of research has been the question as to how these mappings are executed once the subjects have been instructed appropriately. However, one question has been rather neglected thus far: what, in the first place, enables humans to instantaneously implement any arbitrary S-R mapping by mere instruction! We report an experiment assessing the cross-talk of arbitrary S-R mappings as a part of the instructed task representation, on the one hand, and the cross-talk of repetitively applied mappings, on the other hand. The results show a behavioural dissociation of the cross-talk elicited by instructed and applied mappings, suggesting that the first occurs on the level of task-set, whereas the latter occurs on the level of specific S-R associations.     

Evidentialism and pragmatic constraints on outright belief

Evidentialism is the view that facts about whether or not an agent is justified in having a particular belief are entirely determined by facts about the agent’s evidence; the agent’s practical needs and interests are irrelevant. I examine an array of arguments against evidentialism (by Jeremy Fantl, Matthew McGrath, David Owens, and others), and demonstrate how their force is affected when we take into account the relation between degrees of belief and outright belief. Once we are sensitive to one of the factors that secure thresholds for outright believing (namely, outright believing that p in a given circumstance requires, at the minimum, that one’s degree of belief that p is high enough for one to be willing to act as if p in the circumstances), we see how pragmatic considerations can be relevant to facts about whether or not an agent is justified in believing that p—but largely as a consequence of the pragmatic constraints on outright believing.

Others' anger makes people work harder not smarter: the effect of observing anger and sarcasm on creative and analytic thinking

The authors examine whether and how observing anger influences thinking processes and problem-solving ability. In 3 studies, the authors show that participants who listened to an angry customer were more successful in solving analytic problems, but less successful in solving creative problems compared with participants who listened to an emotionally neutral customer. In Studies 2 and 3, the authors further show that observing anger communicated through sarcasm enhances complex thinking and solving of creative problems. Prevention orientation is argued to be the latent variable that mediated the effect of observing anger on complex thinking. The present findings help reconcile inconsistent findings in previous research, promote theory about the effects of observing anger and sarcasm, and contribute to understanding the effects of anger in the workplace.