Antiegalitarians for affirmative action? When social dominance orientation is positively related to support for egalitarian social policies

Previous research has found that people high in social dominance orientation (i.e., antiegalitarians) generally oppose affirmative action policies. We propose that antiegalitarians may be less opposed to strong affirmative action policies because such policies may be perceived to ultimately strengthen racial hierarchies. Studies 1 and 2 demonstrate that antiegalitarian individuals are less opposed to affirmative action policies, as compared to egalitarian individuals, when such policies strongly weigh minority status in selection decisions. Study 3 provides evidence that antiegalitarians lessen their opposition to strong policies only when such policies are believed to enhance racial hierarchies through the recruitment of minorities that remain at the bottom of organizational hierarchies. Theoretical, political, and organizational implications are discussed.     

Is the Chinese number-naming system transparent? Evidence from Chinese-English bilingual children.

Chinese-speaking children have been shown to have an advantage over English-speaking children in a variety of mathematical areas, including counting. One possible explanation for the advantage in counting is that the Chinese number-naming system is relatively transparent, compared to English, in that number names typically are directly indicative of base-10 structure (e.g., 12 is named "ten-two" rather than "twelve"). To determine whether the transparency of the Chinese number-naming system influences counting in bilingual children, we tested 25 Chinese-English bilingual children between the ages of 3 and 5 years, both in English and in Chinese. Children were asked to count as high as they could (abstract counting) and also to count objects in small, medium, and large arrays (object counting). No evidence was found for transparency or for transfer from one language to the other. Instead, relative proficiency in the two languages influenced counting skill. These results are discussed in terms of linguistic and cultural variables that might account for cross-linguistic differences in counting.     

Associative activation of stimulus representations restores lost salience: implications for perceptual learning

In 3 experiments, rats received preexposure to presentations of a compound flavor BX. The effective salience of B was then tested by assessing its ability to interfere with the aversion controlled by another flavor or the tendency to drink a saline solution after the induction of a salt need. It was found that the effective salience of B was maintained when during preexposure, presentations of BX alternated with presentations of X alone. This was true both when BX was presented as a simultaneous compound (Experiment 1) and as a serial compound (X-->B; Experiments 2 and 3); salience was not maintained when the serial compound took the form B-->X (Experiments 2 and 3a). It was argued that the salience of B declines during preexposure but is restored when presentations of X are able to activate the representation of B by way of the associative X-B link.     

Stimulus and response chunking in the Hebb Digits task

Using the Hebb Digits task, an incidental sequential learning paradigm, the effects of chunking of both the presentation and response phases of performance were examined. In the first experiment, consistent stimulus chunking increased learning, and performance was at an equivalent level to this when consistent chunking of both stimuli and responses was present. Consistent chunking of the responses alone did not significantly improve learning over a baseline condition where neither stimuli nor responses were chunked. The disruption of response organization in a second experiment, through a random response condition, failed to impact learning in non-chunked and stimulus chunked conditions. A third experiment found that response chunking did benefit learning in a condition where stimuli were presented in random chunks. A final experiment suggested extended processing of the digits could not account for performance gains in the stimulus chunking condition. Overall, the results suggest that the enhanced effects of chunking on learning were stimulus-driven rather than response-driven, except under conditions that constrained a consistent pattern of stimulus organization.     

Mode of grasp, materials, and grooved chopstick tip on gripping performance and evaluation

This study evaluated the effects of the mode of grasping, chopstick materials, and the groove of the chopstick-tip on gripping performance of 32 participants, among whom 16 were accustomed to using chopsticks with a pliers-grasping mode and the other 16 with a scissors-grasping mode. Based on a random sequence, 8 kinds of chopsticks with different combinations (materials: bamboo, wood, plastic, and stainless steel, with and without grooves in the chopstick-tip) were used to carry out the action of gripping two different objects (peanuts and longan). The time to finish gripping 50 pieces of peanut and longan, the number which fell on the table when gripping, the subjective effort and the subjective preference were measures of efficiency of pinching for 8 kinds of chopsticks. Analysis showed that chopstick materials significantly affect time of gripping. The large object (such as longan) could be gripped more easily with the pliers-grasping mode or gripped with the grooved chopstick-tip. However, for small objects (such as peanuts), there was no significant difference in performance whether the chopstick-tip was grooved or not. A combination of bamboo chopsticks with grooved tips used with a pliers-grasping seem preferrable for more favorable gripping performance.     

How attention enhances spatial resolution: evidence from selective adaptation to spatial frequency

In this study, we investigated how spatial resolution and covert attention affect performance in a texture segmentation task in which performance peaks at midperiphery and drops at peripheral and central retinal locations. The central impairment is called the central performance drop (CPD; Kehrer, 1989). It has been established that attending to the target location improves performance in the periphery where resolution is too low for the task, but impairs it at central locations where resolution is too high. This is called the central attention impairment (CAI; Yeshurun & Carrasco, 1998, 2000). We employed a cuing procedure in conjunction with selective adaptation to explore (1) whether the CPD is due to the inhibition of low spatial frequency responses by high spatial frequency responses in central locations, and (2) whether the CAI is due to attention's shifting sensitivity to higher spatial frequencies. We found that adaptation to low spatial frequencies does not change performance in this texture segmentation task. However, adaptation to high spatial frequencies diminishes the CPD and eliminates the CAI. These results indicate that the CPD is primarily due to the dominance of high spatial frequency responses and that covert attention enhances spatial resolution by shifting sensitivity to higher spatial frequencies.     

‘Goals’ are not an integral component of imitation

Several theories suggest that actions are coded for imitation in terms of mentalistic goals, or inferences about the actor’s intentions, and that these goals solve the correspondence problem by allowing sensory input to be translated into matching motor output. We tested this intention reading hypothesis against general process accounts of imitation using the pen-and-cups task. The task has three components: participants place a pen in one of two cups, using their right or left hand, and one of two grips. Previous research has revealed a colour minimum error pattern; when one of the components is differentially coloured (e.g., one cup is red and the other blue), accuracy is greatest on the coloured dimension. We found the colour minimum error pattern, not only in the standard version of the task, where participants imitate the actions of a human model, but also in three novel variants of the task, in which participants responded on the basis of spatial or arbitrary stimulus–response mappings to ‘geometric’, non-biological stimuli. These stimuli do not afford the attribution of intentions, and therefore our results support generalist theories of imitation by showing that the colour minimum error pattern is due, not to intention reading, but to the operation of task-general processes of perception, attention and motor control.     

Seeing Where the Stone Is Thrown by Observing a Point-Light Thrower: Perceiving the Effect of Action Is Enabled by Information,Not Motor Experience

People are very adept at perceiving biological motion (e.g., Johansson, 1973 Johansson, G. (1973). Visual perception of biological motion and a model for its analysis. Perception & Psychophysics, 14(2), 201–211.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). This ability has been an essential life skill to members of this social species. The human niche during the ice age was socially coordinated hunting for big game. Being able to judge the location targeted by the throw of a conspecific would be a valuable perceptual ability that we now study to investigate 2 competing theories of biological motion perception: Common Coding (CC; Prinz, 1997 Prinz, W. (1997). Perception and action planning. European Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 9(2), 129–154.[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) and Kinematic Specification of Dynamics (KSD; Runeson & Frykholm, 1983 Runeson, S., & Frykholm, G. (1983). Kinematic specification of dynamics as an informational bias for person-and-action perception: Expectation, gender recognition, and deceptive intent. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 112, 585–615.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). The 2 theories diverge in attributing perceptual ability to either motor or visual experience, respectively. To test predictions of the CC theory, we performed 3 experiments to manipulate observers' specific motor experience while they judged the targeted location of throwing by watching point-light displays. In Experiment 1, we tested whether the identity of the thrower in the display mattered. In Experiment 2, we tested whether the motor expertise of the observer mattered. In Experiment 3, we tested whether the gender/style of throwing demonstrated by the point-light thrower mattered. The combined results failed to support CC theory, suggesting that motor experience is not required for the perception of action. Because all participants judged the target location of throwing quite well, KSD theory suggests that the kinematic information available in the displays may have enabled the perception. We performed Experiment 4 to analyze the information. We found that the judgment pattern exhibited by the observers in both Experiments 1 and 2 was well predicted by the KSD theory. Thus, we concluded that the perception of biological motion is enabled by visual information and improved by visual experience.     

The Clinic and the Tearoom

Although the clinical and the sexual are commonly treated as antithetical realms of experience, queer commentary teaches that the clinic is a positively sexual space and that clinical intimacy is a creative form of sexual intimacy. Contrary to writers such as Engelhardt, the clinic is a space where queer publics are forged, and the barriers between moral friends and moral strangers potentially dissolve, but only to the extent that one is disposed to allow oneself to enjoy experiences of identification that confound the ideals of human dignity typically invoked in writings about sexual ethics on the one hand and clinical medical ethics on the other hand.