Social Beliefs and Visual Attention: How the Social Relevance of a Cue Influences Spatial Orienting

We are highly tuned to each other's visual attention. Perceiving the eye or hand movements of another person can influence the timing of a saccade or the reach of our own. However, the explanation for such spatial orienting in interpersonal contexts remains disputed. Is it due to the social appearance of the cue—a hand or an eye—or due to its social relevance—a cue that is connected to another person with attentional and intentional states? We developed an interpersonal version of the Posner spatial cueing paradigm. Participants saw a cue and detected a target at the same or a different location, while interacting with an unseen partner. Participants were led to believe that the cue was either connected to the gaze location of their partner or was generated randomly by a computer (Experiment 1), and that their partner had higher or lower social rank while engaged in the same or a different task (Experiment 2). We found that spatial cue‐target compatibility effects were greater when the cue related to a partner's gaze. This effect was amplified by the partner's social rank, but only when participants believed their partner was engaged in the same task. Taken together, this is strong evidence in support of the idea that spatial orienting is interpersonally attuned to the social relevance of the cue—whether the cue is connected to another person, who this person is, and what this person is doing—and does not exclusively rely on the social appearance of the cue. Visual attention is not only guided by the physical salience of one's environment but also by the mental representation of its social relevance.     

Accuracy and repeatability of the Yale physical activity survey in assessing physical activity of older adults.

The purpose of this study was to extend the initial evaluation of the Yale Physical Activity Survey to assess physical activity in older adults. The survey yields three indicators of physical activity reflecting activities performed during a typical week of the previous month (Total Time, Total Energy Expenditure) and the past month (Total Activity Summary Index). Questionnaire validity was studied in 56 men and women, ages 56 to 86 years, by comparing the average of 3- or 7 day 24-hr. physical activity records (n=56), predicted maximal oxygen consumption (VO2 max) (n = 23) and the sum of three skinfold measurements. Two-week repeatability was estimated by calculating an intraclass coefficient using an analysis of variance with repeated measures. Spearman rhos were used to study questionnaire validity. Analysis showed the survey was easily administered and scored and exhibited moderate-to-good repeatability. For the first administration the Total Energy Expenditure Index was significantly associated with the physical activity diary (r = .27). On the second administration, correlations were significant for the physical activity diary with the Total Energy Expenditure Index (r = .30), the Total Activity Summary Index (r = .36), and the Total Time Index (r = .27), and for VO2 max and the Total Time Index (r = .49) and Total Activity Summary Index (r = .64). Relative to the criterion measures used in this study, some validity was evident for the second administration in this relatively active and healthy sample of older adults.     

Conscientiousness and achievement motivation predict performance

A prospective survey was conducted to identify predictors of university students' grade point average (GPA) using separate samples of female (N = 472) and male (N = 142) students over 9 months. Big five personality traits and achievement motivation were measured. Correlations show that conscientiousness (C) and achievement motivation explained variation in GPA. Latent variable structural equation modelling showed that the effect of C on GPA is fully mediated by achievement motivation for both female and male students. Invariant factor and structural mediation models across the female and male groups are also reported. Finally, the mediation model is shown to remain significant after scholastic achievement is controlled. The findings are interpreted within the framework of Neo‐Socioanalytic theory. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Argumentation in School Science: Breaking the Tradition of Authoritative Exposition Through a Pedagogy that Promotes Discussion and Reasoning

The value of argumentation in science education has become internationally recognised and has been the subject of many research studies in recent years. Successful introduction of argumentation activities in learning contexts involves extending teaching goals beyond the understanding of facts and concepts, to include an emphasis on cognitive and metacognitive processes, epistemic criteria and reasoning. The authors focus on the difficulties inherent in shifting a tradition of teaching from one dominated by authoritative exposition to one that is more dialogic, involving small-group discussion based on tasks that stimulate argumentation. The paper focuses on how argumentation activities have been designed in school science. Examples of classroom dialogue where teachers adopt the frameworks/plans are analysed to show how argumentation processes are scaffolded. The analysis shows that several layers of interpretation are needed and these layers need to be aligned for successful implementation.     

Further Support for Multidimensionality Within the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale

Although the Rosenberg Self Esteem Scale is one of the most widely used measures of global self esteem, the underlying measurement structure of the items is still debated. In this study the dimensionality of a six item version of the Rosenberg Self Esteem Scale included in the National Population Health Survey of Canada was examined using nested confirmatory factor analyses. The results indicate that the six items measure two correlated dimensions of global self esteem. The first dimension appears to represent a measure of self competence, and the second is interpreted as a measure of self liking. Subsequent tests of predictive power and discriminant validity supported the two dimension interpretation. The two dimensions had substantially different relationships with theoretically related measures of anxiety, negative affect and happiness. In addition to these different correlations, latent variable regressions indicated that the self-competency factor consistently suppressed irrelevant variance in the self liking factor when predicting anxiety, negative affect and happiness.     

Empathy as a cognitive inhibitor of interpersonal aggression

The studies presented in this paper examined empathy, especially perspective taking, as a potential inhibitor of interpersonal aggression. The theoretical rationale for these investigations derived from Zillmann's [(1988): Aggressive Behavior 14: 51–64] cognitive excitation model. Study 1 revealed that dispositional empathy correlates negatively with self-reported aggression and with conflict responses that reflect little concern for the needs of the other party. Empathy also was positively related to constructive responses to interpersonal conflict (i. e., those that do involve concern for the needs of the other party). In Study 2, perspective taking was manipulated with instructions to subjects prior to participation in a reaction-time task designed to measure aggression. When threat was relatively low, subjects who were instructed to take the perspective of the target responded less aggressively than did those who had been instructed to focus on the task. Study 3 examined the effect of dispositional perspective taking on verbal aggression. Threat was manipulated in terms of the combination of provocation and gender of the interactants. As predicted, perspective taking related to aggression inhibition under conditions of moderate threat–for males under low provocation and females under high provocation. These effects were predicted and explained in the context of the cognitive-excitation model. © 1994 Wiley-Liss, Inc.     

Predictors of aggressive behavior

A multiple factor approach was used to test additive and multiplicative models as well as to isolate a best predictive model of physical aggression. The variables of aggressive learning history, provocation, sex of target, sex of subject, sex-role orientation, and aggressive tendencies were selected. Eighty-three males and 117 females participated in the experimental session. Multiple regression analyses indicated that multiple predictor models were able to account for significantly more variance than were single predictor models; however, multiplicative models were unable to increase predictive efficacy. A model composed of sex of target, masculinity, and aggressive tendencies was established as the best predictive model for unprovoked aggression; provocation, masculinity, and aggressive tendencies made up the best predictive model of provoked aggression. © 1992 Wiley-Liss, Inc.     

Can low-cost motion-tracking systems substitute a Polhemus system when researching social motor coordination in children?

Functionally stable and robust interpersonal motor coordination has been found to play an integral role in the effectiveness of social interactions. However, the motion-tracking equipment required to record and objectively measure the dynamic limb and body movements during social interaction has been very costly, cumbersome, and impractical within a non-clinical or non-laboratory setting. Here we examined whether three low-cost motion-tracking options (Microsoft Kinect skeletal tracking of either one limb or whole body and a video-based pixel change method) can be employed to investigate social motor coordination. Of particular interest was the degree to which these low-cost methods of motion tracking could be used to capture and index the coordination dynamics that occurred between a child and an experimenter for three simple social motor coordination tasks in comparison to a more expensive, laboratory-grade motion-tracking system (i.e., a Polhemus Latus system). Overall, the results demonstrated that these low-cost systems cannot substitute the Polhemus system in some tasks. However, the lower-cost Microsoft Kinect skeletal tracking and video pixel change methods were successfully able to index differences in social motor coordination in tasks that involved larger-scale, naturalistic whole body movements, which can be cumbersome and expensive to record with a Polhemus. However, we found the Kinect to be particularly vulnerable to occlusion and the pixel change method to movements that cross the video frame midline. Therefore, particular care needs to be taken in choosing the motion-tracking system that is best suited for the particular research.     

‘You Are What You Read:’ Is selective exposure a way people tell us who they are?

Selective exposure is the tendency to gather viewpoint-congenial versus viewpoint-uncongenial information. Extant models of selective exposure suggest this tendency occurs because people anticipate reading congenial (vs. uncongenial) information will cause more favourable intrapersonal consequences. However, these models ignore the notion that people's information choices are, in part, symbolic gestures designed to convey identity-relevant beliefs to an audience through information display. Drawing from perspectives that emphasize human consumption as symbolic and a way to signal one's identity, we suggest that selective exposure pertains not only to information processing but also to conveying identity through information display. Experiment 1 showed that people characterize information display as a way to communicate their views to an audience. Experiments 2–4 showed that people are averse to displaying uncongenial versus congenial information (without processing the information), anticipate feeling more uncomfortable and more inauthentic merely displaying (without processing) uncongenial versus congenial information, and that people's intentions to engage in selective exposure in daily life are a function of their belief that selective-exposure displays convey their identity. None of these studies or findings can be generated from extant selective-exposure theories. Thus, selective-exposure theories are likely incomplete because they ignore people's beliefs and goals regarding information display.     

Judicial gatekeeping and the social construction of the admissibility of expert testimony

Content analysis of 192 U.S. District Court cases was conducted to investigate judges' evaluations of expert characteristics and evidence characteristics for toxicology, psychological/psychiatric, and damages testimony. Judges evaluated more expert characteristics, but not more evidence characteristics, as the number of months post-Daubert increased (Hypotheses 1 and 2). More evidence characteristics were evaluated when evidence was quantitatively rather than qualitatively based (Hypothesis 3). The greatest number of evidence characteristics examined was for toxicology evidence (Hypothesis 4). Fewer expert characteristics were evaluated for admissible evidence, but more evidence characteristics were evaluated for inadmissible evidence (Hypothesis 5). All analyses were significant at .05. Implications for judges, attorneys, and experts are discussed.