Determinants of Attitudes toward Affirmative Action in a Swiss Sample

162 Swiss employees were surveyed to assess knowledge of and attitudes toward different types of affirmative action programs (AAPs) for women. Findings show that knowledge of AAPs was limited and AAPs were most frequently associated with child care measures. Attitudes toward opportunity enhancement programs, especially toward child care, were more positive than toward preferential selection and positive discriminatory programs. Women held more positive attitudes toward AAPs. However, for some attitudes, gender differences were entirely mediated by symbolic prejudice toward working women. Independently of gender, symbolic prejudice was a key predictor of all attitudes. Measures of self-view (self-esteem and gender self-concept) were largely unrelated to attitudes toward AAPs. Implications for research and organizations are discussed.

Individual Differences in the Context‐Dependent Recruitment of Cognitive Control: Evidence From Action Versus State Orientation

The ability to flexibly adapt to deviations from optimal performance is an important aspect of self‐control. In the present study, the authors present first evidence that the personality trait action versus state orientation (Kuhl, 2000) modulates the ability of adaptive control adjustments in response to experienced conflicts. Sixty‐two German individuals with extreme scores on the action‐state dimension performed a response interference task, that is, 31 extreme action‐oriented individuals (30 females; M_age = 20.35 years) and 31 extreme state‐oriented individuals (20 females; M_age = 23.23 years), respectively. Action‐oriented individuals displayed a stronger conflict adaptation effect as evidenced by a stronger reduction of interference on trials following conflict. These results were further corroborated by a correlational analysis including a sample of 105 participants: the higher the score on the action‐state dimension, the lower the interference effect following conflict (i.e., stronger conflict adaptation). The results provide evidence that even low‐level, bottom‐up‐driven processes of self‐control such as conflict adaptation are systematically moderated by individual differences in control modes and provide insights into the cognitive mechanisms underlying action versus state orientation.     

Categories in the pigeon brain: A reverse engineering approach

Pigeons are well known for their visual capabilities as well as their ability to categorize visual stimuli at both the basic and superordinate level. We adopt a reverse engineering approach to study categorization learning: Instead of training pigeons on predefined categories, we simply present stimuli and analyze neural output in search of categorical clustering on a solely neural level. We presented artificial stimuli, pictorial and grating stimuli, to pigeons without the need of any differential behavioral responding while recording from the nidopallium frontolaterale (NFL), a higher visual area in the avian brain. The pictorial stimuli differed in color and shape; the gratings differed in spatial frequency and amplitude. We computed representational dissimilarity matrices to reveal categorical clustering based on both neural data and pecking behavior. Based on neural output of the NFL, pictorial and grating stimuli were differentially represented in the brain. Pecking behavior showed a similar pattern, but to a lesser extent. A further subclustering within pictorial stimuli according to color and shape, and within gratings according to frequency and amplitude, was not present. Our study gives proof‐of‐concept that this reverse engineering approach—namely reading out categorical information from neural data—can be quite helpful in understanding the neural underpinnings of categorization learning.     

Visual selective attention is equally functional for individuals with low and high working memory capacity: Evidence from accuracy and eye movements

Selective attention and working memory capacity (WMC) are related constructs, but debate about the manner in which they are related remains active. One elegant explanation of variance in WMC is that the efficiency of filtering irrelevant information is the crucial determining factor, rather than differences in capacity per se. We examined this hypothesis by relating WMC (as measured by complex span tasks) to accuracy and eye movements during visual change detection tasks with different degrees of attentional filtering and allocation requirements. Our results did not indicate strong filtering differences between high- and low-WMC groups, and where differences were observed, they were counter to those predicted by the strongest attentional filtering hypothesis. Bayes factors indicated evidence favoring positive or null relationships between WMC and correct responses to unemphasized information, as well as between WMC and the time spent looking at unemphasized information. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that individual differences in storage capacity, not only filtering efficiency, underlie individual differences in working memory.     

Maltreated Children Use More Grammatical Negations

Many studies reveal a strong impact of childhood maltreatment on language development, mainly resulting in shorter utterances, less rich vocabulary, or a delay in grammatical complexity. However, different theories suggest the possibility for resilience—a positive adaptation to an otherwise adverse environment—in children who experienced childhood maltreatment. Here, we investigated different measures for language development in spontaneous speech, examining whether childhood maltreatment leads to a language deficit only or whether it can also result in differences in language use due to a possible adaptation to a toxic environment. We compared spontaneous speech during therapeutic peer-play sessions of 32 maltreated and 32 non-maltreated children from the same preschool and equivalent in gender, age (2 to 5 years), home neighborhood, ethnicity, and family income. Maltreatment status was reported by formal child protection reports, and corroborated by independent social service reports. We investigated general language sophistication (i.e., vocabulary, talkativeness, mean length of utterance), as well as grammatical development (i.e., use of plurals, tense, grammatical negations). We found that maltreated and non-maltreated children showed similar sophistication across all linguistic measures, except for the use of grammatical negations. Maltreated children used twice as many grammatical negations as non-maltreated children. The use of this highly complex grammatical structure shows an advanced linguistic skill, which shows that childhood maltreatment does not necessarily lead to a language deficit. The result might indicate the development of a negativity bias in the structure of spontaneous language due to an adaptation to their experiences.     

Zur rückfallprognostischen Bedeutung des Tatverhaltens bei Sexualdelinquenz

The study examined the possibility of predicting sexual recidivism within a period of 5 years in a sample of 612 male sex offenders by means of behavioural crime scene variables. A total of 20 variables were selected based on a significant bivariate correlation with sexual recidivism. Multivariate analysis was conducted to determine combined predictive accuracy. Step-wise reverse logistic regression extracted 12 variables explaining 22% of total variance in sexual recidivism. The unweighted sum score of these variables showed considerable predictive power (AUC?=?0.76; r?=?0.34). Findings were robust not only for different subgroups of sexual offenders, but also when cross-validated on an independent sample. In addition, the unweighted sum score showed significant incremental validity above and beyond common risk measures [Static99, Sexual Violence Risk- (SVR-)20], both in the original and the cross-validation sample. Thus, the potential of crime scene analysis in predicting sexual recidivism has been clearly demonstrated. Future research should provide a more accurate access to psychologically meaningful interpretations of the risk immanent in crime scene actions by adapting risk scales to certain subgroups of perpetrators.