Foundations of Representation: Where Might Graphical Symbol Systems Come From?

It has been suggested that iconic graphical signs evolve into symbolic graphical signs through repeated usage. This article reports a series of interactive graphical communication experiments using a 'pictionary' task to establish the conditions under which the evolution might occur. Experiment 1 rules out a simple repetition based account in favor of an account that requires feedback and interaction between communicators. Experiment 2 shows how the degree of interaction affects the evolution of signs according to a process of grounding. Experiment 3 confirms the prediction that those not involved directly in the interaction have trouble interpreting the graphical signs produced in Experiment 1. On the basis of these results, this article argues that icons evolve into symbols as a consequence of the systematic shift in the locus of information from the sign to the users' memory of the sign's usage supported by an interactive grounding process.     

Risk Assessment and Genetic Counseling for Hereditary Breast and Ovarian Cancer: Recommendations of the National Society of Genetic Counselors

These cancer genetic counseling recommendations describe the medical, psychosocial and ethical implications of identifying at-risk individuals for hereditary breast and ovarian cancer (HBOC) through cancer risk assessment, with or without genetic susceptibility testing. They were developed by members of the Practice Issues Subcommittee of the National Society of Genetic Counselors’ Familial Cancer Risk Counseling Special Interest Group. The information contained in this document is derived from extensive review of the current literature on cancer genetic risk assessment as well as the professional expertise of genetic counselors with significant experience in education and counseling regarding hereditary breast and ovarian cancer. Critical components of the process include the ascertainment of medical and family histories, determination and communication of cancer risk, assessment of risk perception, education regarding the genetics of HBOC, discussion of molecular testing for HBOC if appropriate (including benefits, risks and limitations) and any necessary follow-up. These recommendations do not dictate an exclusive course of management or guarantee a specific outcome. Moreover, they do not replace the professional judgment of a health care provider based on the clinical situation of a client.     

Atypicalities in sleep and semantic consolidation in autism

Sleep is known to support the neocortical consolidation of declarative memory, including the acquisition of new language. Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is often characterized by both sleep and language learning difficulties, but few studies have explored a potential connection between the two. Here, 54 children with and without ASD (matched on age, nonverbal ability and vocabulary) were taught nine rare animal names (e.g., pipa). Memory was assessed via definitions, naming and speeded semantic decision tasks immediately after learning (pre‐sleep), the next day (post‐sleep, with a night of polysomnography between pre‐ and post‐sleep tests) and roughly 1 month later (follow‐up). Both groups showed comparable performance at pre‐test and similar levels of overnight change on all tasks; but at follow‐up children with ASD showed significantly greater forgetting of the unique features of the new animals (e.g., pipa is a flat frog). Children with ASD had significantly lower central non‐rapid eye movement (NREM) sigma power. Associations between spindle properties and overnight changes in speeded semantic decisions differed by group. For the TD group, spindle duration predicted overnight changes in responses to novel animals but not familiar animals, reinforcing a role for sleep in the stabilization of new semantic knowledge. For the ASD group, sigma power and spindle duration were associated with improvements in responses to novel and particularly familiar animals, perhaps reflecting more general sleep‐associated improvements in task performance. Plausibly, microstructural sleep atypicalities in children with ASD and differences in how information is prioritized for consolidation may lead to cumulative consolidation difficulties, compromising the quality of newly formed semantic representations in long‐term memory.     

A rejecting baby in a twin set

The notion of a “rejecting” baby has not received much attention in the research literature. One member of a pair of twins which came to our attention provided a good example of a “rejecting” baby. This baby avoided eye contact with all people at close proximity. It is possible that the notion of “rejecting” babies should be attended to by parents, doctors and others involved with the welfare of young children. Perhaps they do not know what to look for in the early phases of this expression. It is possible these early omissions mask detection of later behavioral difficulties, by which time such children have acquired distinctive interactive styles increasingly resistent to modification.     

Religious Experience,Religious Worldviews,and Near-Death Studies

The tense relation prevailing between representatives of conservative religion and other near-death researchers may be illumined by a look at the different functions religion has fulfilled in the past. Religion may be seen as centering on the meaningfulness of the world, on spiritual experience, or on salvation. In this essay, I sketch the place of these themes in the Great Religions. These themes have inherent mutual tensions that in the case of Christianity cannot necessarily be settled by appeal to the Bible, because different Christian groups have somewhat differing views of the source of authority. Furthermore, the Bible's authority is challenged by the results of modern scholarship. In light of these reflections, I see Michael Sabom's Light & Death (1998) as showing valuable data and insights but failing to respond to significant challenges.     

Harm that does not hurt: Humour in coping with self-threat

We examined the affective and cognitive impact of humour on coping with self-threat. Research was based on an incongruity concept of humour that specifies humour as a state resulting from appraising an aversive incident as both harmful and as acceptable. An appraisal related procedural priming paradigm was used to induce humour. In Study 1 (N = 41 female students) the impact of humour on positive and negative affect following self-threat was examined. In Study 2 (N = 52 students; 94% women) we investigated the consequences of humour for a self-serving interpretation of failure, the awareness of harm, and subsequent performance. Relative to the control condition, humour increased positive affect, while not exclusively affecting negative affect, and increased the tendency for an external attribution of failure, while harm was clearly recognized. However, humour led to poorer subsequent performance, suggesting that humour may also have its costs.     

The interactive evolution of human communication systems

This paper compares two explanations of the process by which human communication systems evolve: iterated learning and social collaboration. It then reports an experiment testing the social collaboration account. Participants engaged in a graphical communication task either as a member of a community, where they interacted with seven different partners drawn from the same pool, or as a member of an isolated pair, where they interacted with the same partner across the same number of games. Participants' horizontal, pair-wise interactions led "bottom up" to the creation of an effective and efficient shared sign system in the community condition. Furthermore, the community-evolved sign systems were as effective and efficient as the local sign systems developed by isolated pairs. Finally, and as predicted by a social collaboration account, and not by an iterated learning account, interaction was critical to the creation of shared sign systems, with different isolated pairs establishing different local sign systems and different communities establishing different global sign systems.     

Bridging pure cognitive research and cognitive enrichment

Animal Cognition - Cognitive enrichment is a growing subset of environmental enrichment for captive animals. However, it has been difficult for practitioners to design, implement, and evaluate...     

When proactivity produces a power struggle: how supervisors’ power motivation affects their support for employees’ promotive voice

Previous research informs us about facilitators of employees’ promotive voice. Yet little is known about what determines whether a specific idea for constructive change brought up by an employee will be approved or rejected by a supervisor. Drawing on interactionist theories of motivation and personality, we propose that a supervisor will be least likely to support an idea when it threatens the supervisor’s power motive, and when it is perceived to serve the employee’s own striving for power. The prosocial versus egoistic intentions attributed to the idea presenter are proposed to mediate the latter effect. We conducted three scenario-based studies in which supervisors evaluated fictitious ideas voiced by employees that – if implemented – would have power-related consequences for them as a supervisor. Results show that the higher a supervisors’ explicit power motive was, the less likely they were to support a power-threatening idea (Study 1, N = 60). Moreover, idea support was less likely when this idea was proposed by an employee that was described as high (rather than low) on power motivation (Study 2, N = 79); attributed prosocial intentions mediated this effect. Study 3 (N = 260) replicates these results.