Special issue on indigenising educational psychology

The Journal of Psychology in Africa (JPA) is a peer-reviewed journal co-published NISC (Pty) Ltd and Informa UK Limited (trading as Taylor & Francis Group) on behalf of Africa Scholarship Development Enterprize. It is accredited by the Department of Higher Education and Training in South Africa and indexed in the ISI Web of Science. The JPA provides an inter-disciplinary forum for the dissemination of psychological research in Africa and related regions in the context of development. Its core mission is to advance psychological research for the social-cultural and health development in Africanist settings, inclusive of the African diaspora communities around the globe. Research that addresses African heritage realities and opportunities is particularly encouraged. Contributions should attempt a synthesis of local and universal methodologies and applications, contributing to the wider body of knowledge in the applied psychological sciences.     

Detecting intra- and inter-categorical structure in semantic concepts using HICLAS

In this paper, we investigate the hypothesis that people use feature correlations to detect inter- and intra-categorical structure. More specifically, we study whether it is plausible that people strategically look for a particular type of feature co-occurrence that can be represented in terms of rectangular patterns of 1s and 0s in a binary feature by exemplar matrix. Analyzing data from the Animal and Artifact domains, we show that the HICLAS model, which looks for such rectangular structure and which therefore models a cognitive capacity of detecting feature co-occurence in large data bases of features characterizing exemplars, succeeds rather well in predicting inter- and intra-categorical structure.     

Features of graded category structure: Generalizing the family resemblance and polymorphous concept models

Many real-world categories contain graded structure: certain category members are rated as more typical or representative of the category than others. Research has shown that this graded structure can be well predicted by the degree of commonality across the feature sets of category members. We demonstrate that two prominent feature-based models of graded structure, the family resemblance (Rosch & Mervis, 1975) and polymorphous concept models (Hampton, 1979), can be generalized via the contrast model (Tversky, 1977) to include both common and distinctive feature information, and apply the models to the prediction of typicality in 11 semantic categories. The results indicate that both types of feature information play a role in the prediction of typicality, with common features weighted more heavily for within-category predictions, and distinctive features weighted more heavily for contrast-category predictions. The same pattern of results was found in additional analyses employing rated goodness and exemplar generation frequency. It is suggested that these findings provide insight into the processes underlying category formation and representation.     

Fear conditioning and extinction in anxiety- and depression-prone persons

Anxiety and depression frequently co-occur and may share similar deficits in the processing of emotional stimuli. High anxiety is associated with a failure in the acquisition and extinction of fear conditioning. Despite the supposed common deficits, no research has been conducted on fear acquisition and extinction in depression. The main aim of the present study was to investigate and compare fear acquisition and extinction in anxiety- and depression-prone participants. Non-clinical anxious, depressive, anxious-depressive and control participants performed a fear discrimination task. During acquisition, the CS+ predicted an aversive event (unconditioned stimulus, US) and the CS? safety (no US). During extinction, the CS+ was no longer followed by the US, rendering it (temporarily) into a safety signal. On each CS participants rated their US expectancy; skin conductance responses (SCRs) were measured throughout. The expectancy scores indicated that high anxiety resulted in less safety learning during acquisition and extinction; no effect of depression was observed. SCRs showed that high-anxiety persons displayed less discrimination learning (CS+ minus CS?) during acquisition than low-anxiety persons. During extinction, high-depression persons demonstrated more discriminative SCR than low-depression persons. The observed discrepancies in response patterns of high-anxiety and -depression persons seem to indicate distinctive information processing of emotional stimuli.     

The distressed (Type D) and Five-Factor Models of personality in young,healthy adults and their association with emotional inhibition and distress

The distressed (Type D) personality (the combination of negative affectivity and social inhibition traits) has been associated with adverse health outcomes. This study investigated the validity of the Type D construct against the Five-Factor Model (FFM) of personality, and its association with emotional control and distress. In total 498 university students (mean age 28.9 ± 8.4 years) completed the Type D scale (DS14), and measurements for the FFM of personality, emotional control, anxiety, depression and stress. The construct validity of the Icelandic DS14 was confirmed. The Type D components negative affectivity and social inhibition were strongly associated with neuroticism and extraversion of the FFM (r = 0.82 and r = −0.67, respectively). Negative affectivity also correlated with rehearsal/rumination (r = 0.58) and social inhibition with emotional inhibition (r = 0.54), indicative of emotional control. Type D personality (40% of sample) was associated with higher levels of anxiety, depression and stress. The Type D personality components were associated with the FFM of personality, emotional control and emotional distress. Importantly, social and emotional inhibition were closely related, providing novel information about the presence of emotional inhibition within the social inhibition trait.     

Idealness and similarity in goal-derived categories: A computational examination

The finding that the typicality gradient in goal-derived categories is mainly driven by ideals rather than by exemplar similarity has stood uncontested for nearly three decades. Due to the rather rigid earlier implementations of similarity, a key question has remained—that is, whether a more flexible approach to similarity would alter the conclusions. In the present study, we evaluated whether a similarity-based approach that allows for dimensional weighting could account for findings in goal-derived categories. To this end, we compared a computational model of exemplar similarity (the generalized context model; Nosofsky, Journal of Experimental Psychology. General 115:39–57, 1986) and a computational model of ideal representation (the ideal-dimension model; Voorspoels, Vanpaemel, & Storms, Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 18:1006-114, 2011) in their accounts of exemplar typicality in ten goal-derived categories. In terms of both goodness-of-fit and generalizability, we found strong evidence for an ideal approach in nearly all categories. We conclude that focusing on a limited set of features is necessary but not sufficient to account for the observed typicality gradient. A second aspect of ideal representations—that is, that extreme rather than common, central-tendency values drive typicality—seems to be crucial.     

Smoking cross-culturally: Risk perceptions among young adults in Denmark and the United States

Research examining smokers’ understanding of their smoking risk reveals that smokers acknowledge some risk but often deny or minimize personal risk. We examined risk perceptions of lung cancer among smokers and non-smokers in a smoking-lenient (Denmark) and a smoking-prohibitive (the United States) culture. Participants were 275 Danish students attending trade schools (mean age 22.6 years) and 297 US students attending community colleges in Florida (mean age 23.6 years). Results revealed cross-cultural differences suggesting that Danish smokers showed greater risk minimization than US smokers. In addition, in both countries the risk of a typical smoker was rated as lower by smokers than non-smokers, and smokers rated their personal risk as lower than they rated the risk of the typical smoker. Cross-cultural differences in moralization of smoking might be one explanation for these findings.