Gender and health on the kibbutz

Gender differences in health status and illness behavior have been explained in terms of sex roles and gender-related personality traits. It may be hypothesized that in a community that is committed to gender-negating ideology, where men and women alike participate in public life, and housework and child care largely collectivized, gender health differences will disappear. The kibbutz movement is committed to the ideology of the emancipation of women: women fully participate in the labor force and decision making. Nonetheless, women on the kibbutz are responsible for the housework and are concentrated in feminine occupations. The kibbutz, then, allows us to test the relationship between gender ideology and participation in public life vs. gender roles and tasks, and health. The health behavior, health status, and illness behavior of 230 members of two kibbutzim, one religious and one secular, were studied. Men and women report similar health status and illness behavior; parental status is not related to health; and marital status is related to psychological distress only. Similar patterns were observed for the secular kibbutz and the religious one despite the more traditional division of labor in the latter.Medical student, supported by the National Fund for Medical Education, 35 Kneeland Street, Boston, MA 02111.     

Social transmission of food preferences in Japanese monkeys (Macaca fuscata) after mere exposure or aversion training

In Experiment 1, 3 mother-child pairs of Japanese monkeys (Macaca fuscata) were given simultaneous choice tests between raisins and popcorn. The mothers and offspring showed different choice patterns. Cofeeding opportunities were then alternated with individual choice tests. In Experiment 2,2 other pairs were added. Each animal was again offered simultaneous choice tests between marshmallows and almonds. Food aversion conditioning was used to create different choice patterns for mothers and offspring. After cofeeding and choice tests, the differences in choice patterns disappeared in both experiments. The changes after contact with the other's eating pattern during cofeeding was as follows: foods consumed by either came to be eaten by both; foods consumed by both continued to be eaten by both; and foods consumed by neither continued to be ignored. The results provide evidence for social transmission of food preferences in this species.     

The Antinomies of Collective Political Trauma: A Pre-Theory

Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's assassination has less of a lasting impact on the Israeli public's political values, beliefs and attitudes than might have been anticipated from the magnitude of the event and intensity of the immediate responses. Why did the assassination have such a short-lived effect? This article considers the puzzle as a specific case of the broader phenomenon of collective political trauma and its consequences for values, beliefs and attitudes held by the mass public toward issues that it associates with the traumatic event. The article offers six deductively inferred hypotheses that describe, explain and link affective, cognitive and behavioral aspects of collectively experienced trauma. These hypotheses form a pre-theory explaining the perseverence of core political cognitions, even in the face of a considerable challenge to their validity and relevance.     

Cortical maps for hearing and egocentric selection for self-organization

The auditory cortex of the mustached bat shows complex multiple frequency maps, because cortical neurons in several areas are tuned to particular combinations of signal elements. Different types of combination-sensitive neurons form computational maps in which information-bearing parameters for echolocation (biosonar) are represented systematically. Neuronal response properties and multiple-frequency and computational maps were considered to be created solely by divergent-convergent interactions of neurons in the 'ascending' system. However, we have found that the 'corticofugal' system also plays an important role. Neurons in an iso-best frequency (or echo delay) 'minicolumn' of the auditory cortex augment the auditory responses of subcortical neurons tuned to that frequency (or echo delay) and sharpen their tuning. At the same time, they reduce the response and shift the tuning of subcortical neurons tuned to other frequencies (or echo delays) away from the best frequency (or delay) of the cortical neurons. Cortical neurons mediate a highly focused positive feedback, incorporated with widespread lateral inhibition, via corticofugal projections. This 'egocentric selection' is expected to play an important role in self-organizing the central auditory system.     

Zhuangzi and relativistic scepticism

Chad Hansen is one of the strongest proponents of the view that the important second chapter of Zhuangzi's Inner Chapters (The Qi Wu Lun) reveals Zhuangzi to be a relativistic sceptidst. Hansen argues that Zhuangzi is a sceptic because he is first and foremost a relativist. Hansen's argument is essentially that Zhuangzi's perspectivism, his belief that one's linguistic and conceptual perspective determines what one claims to know, makes him a thorough going relativist and sceptic. I agree that Zhuangzi is a perspectivist, but disagree with Hansen's portrayal of him as a relativistic sceptic. I first show that there is an important ambiguity in Hansen's argument. I then proceed to argue that important passages in the Qi Wu Lun (in particular the butterfly dream passage,) reveal serious problems with Hansen's interpretation of Zhuangzi's philosophical stance, I maintain that Zhuangzi is neither a sceptic nor a perspectival relativist. He is rather a perspectival realist.     

Towards an Interactive Acculturation Model: A Social Psychological Approach

The first part of this paper proposes a continuum of ideological premises that seeks to account for the broad range of immigrant integration policies adopted by Western democratic states. In the second part, a review of Social Psychological models of immigrant acculturation strategies demonstrates the need to explain more clearly the interactive nature of immigrant and host community relations. The Interactive Acculturation Model (IAM) presented next proposes that relational outcomes are the product of the acculturation orientations of both the host majority and immigrant groups as influenced by state integration policies. The model makes predictions regarding the acculturation combinations most likely to produce consensual, problematic, and conflictual relational outcomes between immigrants and members of the host community. Social psychological research is needed to test the validity of the IAM model empirically.     

Motor skill acquisition and retention as a function of average feedback, summary feedback, and performance variability

Summary feedback involves withholding feedback from subjects until the last trial in a block is completed, and then presenting feedback about each trial. A variation of this method, called average feedback (Young & Schmidt, 1992), presents subjects with only the mean of the trial block. We investigated whether these methods have similar effects on acquisition and retention of a simple motor skill. Five groups of subjects (n = 16 per group) performed 60 acquisition trials of an aiming task involving both spatial and temporal accuracy. We presented average and summary feedback based on either 5-trial blocks or 15-trial blocks and compared these schedules with every-trial feedback. During acquisition, all groups improved with practice, with a slight tendency for the every-trial condition to have less absolute error than the longer summary and average conditions. Analysis of delayed no-feedback retention tests, however, revealed a strong advantage for the 5-trial summary and average conditions compared with the every-trial condition. In addition, we found that for long blocks of acquisition trials without augmented feedback, the performance variability of those trials was associated with retention performance. Results are discussed in terms of how these different manipulations may make feedback less useful during acquisition, but foster the use of certain information processing activities that enhance overall learning.