Reconsidering the role of movement in perceiving action-scaled affordances

Many locomotor tasks require actors to choose among different categories of action, such as when deciding whether to cross the street in front of an approaching vehicle or wait until it passes. In such cases, the actor’s locomotor capabilities partly determine which actions are possible, and therefore must be taken into account. The present study was designed to re-evaluate the claim that people do not know their locomotor capabilities until they begin moving because they rely entirely on information that is picked up “on the fly” (Oudejans, Michaels, Bakker, & Dolné, 1996). Three experiments were conducted in which participants judged while stationary or moving whether it was within their capabilities to catch a fly ball or pass through a shrinking gap. The main finding was that judgments were equally accurate regardless of whether participants were stationary or allowed to move for a brief period. We conclude that stationary and moving actors know their locomotor capabilities equally well, and that actors do not rely entirely on information that is picked up on the fly.     

The Relation between Sovereignty and Guilt in Nietzsche's Genealogy

This paper interprets the relation between sovereignty and guilt in Nietzsche's Genealogy. I argue that, contrary to received opinion, Nietzsche was not opposed to the moral concept of guilt. I analyse Nietzsche's account of the emergence of the guilty conscience out of a pre‐moral bad conscience. Drawing attention to Nietzsche's references to many different forms of conscience and analogizing to his account of punishment, I propose that we distinguish between the enduring and the fluid elements of a ‘conscience’, defining the enduring element as the practice of forming self‐conceptions. I show that for Nietzsche, the moralization of the bad conscience results from mixing it with the material concepts of guilt and duty, a process effected by prehistoric religious institutions by way of the concept of god. This moralization furnishes a new conception of oneself as a responsible agent and holds the promise of sovereignty by giving us a freedom unknown to other creatures, but at the price of our becoming subject to moral guilt. According to Nietzsche, however, the very forces that made it possible have spoiled this promise and, under the pressures of the ascetic ideal, a harmful notion of responsibility understood in terms of sin now dominates our lives. Thus, to fully realize our sovereignty, we must liberate ourselves from this sinful conscience.     

Beyond cumulative risk: distinguishing harshness and unpredictability as determinants of parenting and early life history strategy

Drawing on life history theory, Ellis and associates' (2009) recent across- and within-species analysis of ecological effects on reproductive development highlighted two fundamental dimensions of environmental variation and influence: harshness and unpredictability. To evaluate the unique contributions of these factors, the authors of present article examined data from a national sample 1364 mothers and their children participating in the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development. Harshness was operationalized as income-to-needs ratio in the first 5 years of life; unpredictability was indexed by residential changes, paternal transitions, and parental job changes during this same period. Here the proposition was tested that these factors not only uniquely predict accelerated life-history strategy, operationalized in terms of sexual behavior at age 15, but that such effects are mediated by change over the early-childhood years in maternal depression and, thereby, observed maternal sensitivity in the early-elementary-school years. Structural equation modeling provided empirical support for Ellis et al.'s (2009) theorizing, calling attention once again to the contribution of evolutionary analysis to understanding contemporary human parenting and development. Implications of the findings for intervention are discussed.     

The perception and representation of orientations: A study in the haptic modality

This research examines the haptic perception of orientations in the frontal plane in order to identify the nature of their representation. Blindfolded participants inserted the tip of the index finger into a thimble mounted on the extremity of a haptic interface and manually explored the orientation of a "virtual rod". After a short delay, participants had to reproduce the scanned orientation with the same hand without the guidance of the virtual rod. The analysis of the systematic errors showed that the recalled orientations were markedly biased toward the nearest diagonal in each quadrant with the exception of the orientations nearest to the vertical, which were biased toward the vertical. The variable error was greater for the oblique orientations than for the horizontal or vertical orientation. These results are interpreted with the Category-Adjustment model, which posits that orientations are categorically represented. We show that it is necessary to assume the existence of vertical and horizontal categories in addition to the previously postulated oblique categories to predict the error patterns observed in the present and former studies. The similarity of the error patterns in the visual and haptic modalities suggests that a common mechanism is at play in perceiving and reproducing orientations in both sensory modalities.     

Working memory and situation model updating

Situation model updating requires managing the availability of information as a function of its relevance to the current situation. This is thought to involve some aspect of working memory. The present study assesses the relation between updating ability and various measures of working memory span or capacity. In addition, a primitive general measure of situation model processing, a situation model identification test, and its relation to updating ability was also assessed. The present experiment used a version of a paradigm developed by Glenberg, Meyer, and Lindem (1987) to assess updating. Although updating was observed in both anaphoric reading time and recognition test accuracy measures, the reading time measure was relatively weak. Importantly, the updating effect on the recognition test was unrelated to working memory capacity. In contrast, updating was related to performance on the situation model identification task. Specifically, people who were good at model processing were better able to keep associated objects available than were people who were less adept. There were no differences in the maintenance of dissociated objects. These results suggest that the relationship between situation model processing and working memory capacity is relatively weak.     

On rejecting emotional lures created by phonological neighborhood activation

The authors conducted 2 experiments to assess how phonologically related lures are rejected in a false memory paradigm. Some phonological lures were emotional (i.e., taboo) words, and others were not. The authors manipulated the presence of taboo items on the study list and reduced the ability to use controlled rejection strategies by dividing attention and forcing a short response deadline. The results converge on the idea that participants reduce false alarms to emotional lures by setting more stringent recognition criteria for these items based on their expected memorability. Additionally, emotional lures are less familiar than nonemotional lures because emotional lures have affective and semantic features that mismatch studied nonemotional items.     

Norms on the gender perception of role nouns in Czech,English, French,German, Italian,Norwegian, and Slovak

We collected norms on the gender stereotypicality of an extensive list of role nouns in Czech, English, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, and Slovak, to be used as a basis for the selection of stimulus materials in future studies. We present a Web-based tool (available at https://www.unifr.ch/lcg/) that we developed to collect these norms and that we expect to be useful for other researchers, as well. In essence, we provide (a) gender stereotypicality norms across a number of languages and (b) a tool to facilitate cross-language as well as cross-cultural comparisons when researchers are interested in the investigation of the impact of stereotypicality on the processing of role nouns.     

Building a research base for community services for children and families: What we know and what we need to learn

We examine the knowledge base for community-based mental health services for youth and their families. A brief historical perspective on the development of community services is presented, and the fundamental components of a comprehensive child mental health service system are described. Outcome studies for service components as well as the service system as a whole are summarized. Research related to the context of treatment, i.e., service setting, cost, is presented. The authors conclude that a research base for child and family services is emerging, but there is still a paucity of well designed studies that address the complexities of a community-based system as well as the critical outcome questions that need to be addressed. Finally, promising service system developments are described and recommendations for future research are presented.