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.     

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.     

A tutorial on hierarchically structured constructs

Many psychological constructs are conceived to be hierarchically structured and thus to operate at various levels of generality. Alternative confirmatory factor analytic (CFA) models can be used to study various aspects of this proposition: (a) The one-factor model focuses on the top of the hierarchy and contains only a general construct, (b) the first-order factor model focuses on the intermediate level of the hierarchy and contains only specific constructs, and both (c) the higher order factor model and (d) the nested-factor model consider the hierarchy in its entirety and contain both general and specific constructs (e.g., bifactor model). This tutorial considers these CFA models in depth, addressing their psychometric properties, interpretation of general and specific constructs, and implications for model-based score reliabilities. The authors illustrate their arguments with normative data obtained for the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale and conclude with recommendations on which CFA model is most appropriate for which research and diagnostic purposes.     

Anticipation from biological motion: the goalkeeper problem

People can often anticipate the outcome of another person's actions based on visual information available in the movements of the other person's body. We investigated this problem by studying how goalkeepers anticipate the direction of a penalty kick in soccer. The specific aim was to determine whether the information used to anticipate kick direction is best characterized as local to a particular body segment or distributed across multiple segments. In Experiment 1, we recorded the movements of soccer players as they kicked balls into a net. Using a novel method for analyzing motion capture data, we identified sources of local and distributed information that were reliable indicators of kick direction. In Experiments 2 and 3, subjects were presented with animations of kickers' movements prior to foot-to-ball contact and instructed to judge kick direction. Judgments were consistent with the use of distributed information, with a possible small contribution of local information.     

The Interconnected Self: The Social Individual is More Than Just Social + Individual

Although decades of research provide consistent evidence supporting the perspective that the self is divided into social and personal components each with unique and predictable motivational associations, the current paper argues that something important has been overlooked. Specifically, what has been lost is the acknowledgment that although different components of self can be activated, and can have important implications, the two aspects of self are highly interconnected. Specifically in this paper, it is argued that (i) the independent self is affected by social motivations and (ii) the social self is affected by independent motivations. Two studies are presented in support of these hypotheses. We conclude by comparing our perspective with existing theories of the self and by discussing implications for the study of the self.     

Maternal age, investment, and parent-child conflict: a mediational test of the terminal investment hypothesis

Drawing on the evolutionary terminal investment hypothesis and Trivers' (1974) parent-offspring conflict theory, we advance and evaluate a mediational model specifying why and how maternal age, via mating effort and parental investment, affects mother-child conflict. Data from a longitudinal study of 757 families indicate that (a) older maternal age predicts lower mating effort during the child's first 5 years of life, and (b) thereby, higher maternal investment in middle childhood when the child is around 10 years old. (c) Higher maternal investment, in turn, forecasts less child-perceived mother-child conflict in adolescence (age 15). These results proved robust against theoretically relevant covariates (family resources, parity, maternal education, and maternal personality characteristics) and in the context of an autoregressive model. Study limitations are noted and results are discussed in terms of the unique contributions of an evolutionary perspective to the determinants-of-parenting literature.     

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.     

Aging and perceived event structure as a function of modality

The majority of research on situation model processing in older adults has focused on narrative texts. Much of this research has shown that many important aspects of constructing a situation model for a text are preserved and may even improve with age. However, narratives need not be text-based, and little is known as to whether these findings generalize to visually-based narratives. The present study assessed the impact of story modality on event segmentation, which is a basic component of event comprehension. Older and younger adults viewed picture stories or read text versions of them and segmented them into events. There was comparable alignment between the segmentation judgments and a theoretically guided analysis of shifts in situational features across modalities for both populations. These results suggest that situation models provide older adults with a stable basis for event comprehension across different modalities of expereinces.