Age-based discrimination of rival males in western bluebirds

Adaptive social behavior frequently involves discriminating between classes of individuals such as relatives versus non-relatives, older versus younger individuals, or individuals of different status. In the absence of spatial cues, this discrimination may be based on signals that correlate with fitness-related traits (e.g., older or high-status males may sing higher performance songs) or with identity, for example, when receivers distinguish and classify signalers based on their unique signal structure. Here, we examine vocal age-based discrimination in western bluebirds (Sialia mexicana), a North American songbird in which older males have a significant advantage in obtaining extra-pair fertilizations, and therefore pose a significantly higher threat to paternity than younger males. We asked whether western bluebird males showed a higher response to playback of songs of older males compared to younger males relative to their own age. We prepared song stimuli by removing three potential signals of age that have been identified as important in other species: (1) note consistency (which was achieved by playing a single instance of each note repeatedly), (2) note repertoire size, and (3) singing rate (the latter two were equalized across conditions). Even in the absence of these potential signals of age, young males responded more strongly to playback of older males’ songs than to young males’ songs, suggesting that they are able to discriminate between age classes relative to the threat they pose. Further research is required to determine whether this discrimination is based on individual recognition or signal features that are correlated with age.     

Anomalous experiences and schizotypy: which comes first? The Hermit Crab syndrome hypothesis

This study confirms findings of previous research as they state that some triggering events or anomalous experiences can give rise to a disruption of cognitive processes and emotional changes in a predisposed person. Furthermore, our research states that the cognitive process and change of world view (paradigm shift (PS)) accompanying some paranormal experiences (PEs) could facilitate the development of a schizotypal personality structure. For the purposes of this study, 675 young people aged between 13 and 25 years old (M?=?16.8, SD?=?1.9) completed the Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire, the Revised and Modified Paranormal Belief Scales, the measurement of eight kinds of PE and a self-reported measurement of change of world view. The results confirm the mediating role of PS between paranormal practices and schizotypy as the cognitive process contributing to symptom formation as well as to symptom maintenance. The said results also confirm the existence of cognitive–emotional stages, also called Hermit Crab syndrome, in the process of the “paranormalisation” of reality.     

Jazz Redux: a reply to Möller

This paper is a response to Niklas Möller’s (Philosophical Studies, 2013) recent criticism of our relational (Jazz) model of meaning of thin evaluative terms. Möller’s criticism rests on a confusion about the role of coordinating intentions in Jazz. This paper clarifies what’s distinctive and controversial about the Jazz proposal and explains why Jazz, unlike traditional accounts of meaning, is not committed to analycities.     

ATTACHMENT IN INFANTS WITH CLEFT LIP AND/OR PALATE: MARGINAL SECURITY AND ITS CHANGES OVER TIME

This study examines the attachment quality and how this changed over time among infants who had cleft lip and palate (CLP), by conducting a prospective longitudinal study addressing the effects of this type of perinatal event on the parent–infant relationship and the emotional development of the infants. At 12 months of age, the Strange Situation Paradigm (SSP; M. Ainsworth, M.C. Blehar, E. Waters, & T. Wall, 1978) was administered to a sample of 38 CLP infants (born between 2003 and 2010) and 17 healthy controls. At 4 years of age, the Attachment Story Completion Task (ASCT; I. Bretherton, D. Ridgeway, & J. Cassidy, 1990) was administered to 32 individuals from the CLP sample and 14 from the control group. As reported in the literature, CLP infants display secure attachment behaviors as frequently as do control infants (55%). However, a more detailed analysis of the attachment scales revealed that CLP infants show more avoidance and less proximity seeking. In addition, a closer examination of the subcategories of attachment styles revealed that most CLP infants (71%) displayed distal attachment strategies such as the B1/B2 or A1/A2 subcategories. At 4 years old, CLP infants clearly displayed more deactivation and less security than did the control sample. Moreover, when detailing the evolution of attachment individually, almost 60% of the CLP children showing distal strategies at 12 months became deactivated or disorganized when they reached 4 years. Indeed, subtle differences in attachment behaviors at 12 months old—which can be considered marginally secure at that age—may reveal attachment vulnerabilities, which seem to be more apparent over the course of development.     

DEPLOYMENT STATUS: A DIRECT OR INDIRECT EFFECT ON MOTHER–CHILD ATTACHMENT WITHIN A CANADIAN MILITARY CONTEXT?

Research has suggested that military spouses experience increased depressive symptoms and parenting stress during a military member's deployment. A relationship between maternal depressive symptoms, parenting stress, and child attachment security has been found in the general population, as has an indication that social support may provide a buffering effect. While there appears to be an association between the emotional well‐being of military spouses and child emotional well‐being during deployment, data are limited regarding the association between maternal emotional well‐being and child attachment security. The current study explores the association between deployment status and child attachment to the nonmilitary parent (i.e., the mother in this study) in a sample of 68 Canadian military families. Results revealed a significant impact of deployment status on maternal depressive symptoms and on quality of child attachment. The impact of deployment status on attachment was not mediated through the maternal variables, and despite a main effect of social support on the maternal variables, there was no moderating effect. Thus, our results suggest that deployment may affect child attachment independently of maternal well‐being.     

Multitasking in the military: Cognitive consequences and potential solutions

Multitasking—the performance of several tasks at the same time—is becoming increasingly prevalent in workplaces. Multitasking is known to disrupt performance, particularly in complex and dynamic situations, which is exactly what most military occupations entail. Because military errors can be consequential, the detrimental impact of multitasking on cognitive functioning in such contexts should be taken seriously. This review pertains to high‐consequence military occupations that require strong multitasking skills. More specifically, it highlights cognitive challenges arising from different forms of multitasking and discusses their underlying cognitive processes. Because such challenges are not expected to diminish, this review proposes context‐relevant solutions to decrease occupational workload, either by reducing the cognitive load ensuing from the to‐be‐performed tasks or by improving soldiers' multitasking abilities. To ensure effective implementation of these solutions, we stress the need to design context‐adapted tools and procedures, and to guide human resource managers in developing particular strategies.     

Digging beneath the surface: Results from stage one of a qualitative analysis of factors influencing the well-being of trans youth in Quebec

ABSTRACT

Background: The literature on trans youth has been dominated by etiological studies interested in trans experience as a medical phenomenon. An emerging body of literature has begun to document that trans youth are a diverse, vulnerable, yet resilient population, and to investigate the role of various sites of support such as the family, peer groups, institutions, and community spaces in contributing to or impeding trans youth's well-being.

Method: This article presents the results of Stage One of interviews (n = 24) conducted for a Community-Based Participatory Action Research (CBPAR) qualitative research project based in Quebec. It studies the factors that enhance trans youth's well-being as well as the factors of oppression that negatively affect it. This paper offers a brief overview of the anti-oppressive methodology used for this project, emphasizing how CBPAR was combined with Grounded Theory (GT) methods to encourage the direct involvement of communities and the translation of knowledge into action.

Results: We present preliminary categories emerging through the ongoing axial coding process. These categories address trans youth's experiences in and perceptions of various “sites”: 1) healthcare services both for gender-related and general care, 2) other institutional spaces, 3) the family and other social circles, and 4) community spaces.

Conclusion: While much of this study's results support existing evidence on trans youth's experiences, they also provide a more nuanced portrayal of the complex ways in which recognition, as well as non-, mis-, or mal-recognition, influence trans youth's well-being at different sites. We also argue that recognition itself must be considered through the lens of intersectionality.     

Procura-PALavras (P-PAL): A Web-based interface for a new European Portuguese lexical database

In this article, we present Procura-PALavras (P-PAL), a Web-based interface for a new European Portuguese (EP) lexical database. Based on a contemporary printed corpus of over 227 million words, P-PAL provides a broad range of word attributes and statistics, including several measures of word frequency (e.g., raw counts, per-million word frequency, logarithmic Zipf scale), morpho-syntactic information (e.g., parts of speech [PoSs], grammatical gender and number, dominant PoS, and frequency and relative frequency of the dominant PoS), as well as several lexical and sublexical orthographic (e.g., number of letters; consonant–vowel orthographic structure; density and frequency of orthographic neighbors; orthographic Levenshtein distance; orthographic uniqueness point; orthographic syllabification; and trigram, bigram, and letter type and token frequencies), and phonological measures (e.g., pronunciation, number of phonemes, stress, density and frequency of phonological neighbors, transposed and phonographic neighbors, syllabification, and biphone and phone type and token frequencies) for ~53,000 lemmatized and ~208,000 nonlemmatized EP word forms. To obtain these metrics, researchers can choose between two word queries in the application: (i) analyze words previously selected for specific attributes and/or lexical and sublexical characteristics, or (ii) generate word lists that meet word requirements defined by the user in the menu of analyses. For the measures it provides and the flexibility it allows, P-PAL will be a key resource to support research in all cognitive areas that use EP verbal stimuli. P-PAL is freely available at http://p-pal.di.uminho.pt/tools.