God’s categories: The effect of religiosity on children’s teleological and essentialist beliefs about categories

Creationism implies that God imbued each category with a unique nature and purpose. These implications closely correspond to what some cognitive psychologists define as an essentialistic and teleological stance towards categories. This study assessed to what extent the belief in God as creator of categories is related to the mappings of these stances to categories in different domains. Israeli secular and orthodox Jewish 1st and 5th graders responded to questions assessing these three types of beliefs. The results revealed that secular children did not differ from orthodox children with respect to their essentialist beliefs about the stability of animal category membership, and their teleological construal of artifacts. In turn, secular children did differ from orthodox children with respect to their essentialist beliefs about the stability of social category membership, and their teleological construal of both animal and social categories. These findings intimate that while essentialist beliefs about animals, and teleological beliefs about artifacts do not require cultural input in order to emerge, essentialist beliefs about social categories, and teleological beliefs about both animal and social categories do.     

The development of category learning strategies: What makes the difference?

Category learning can be achieved by identifying common features among category members, distinctive features among non-members, or both. These processes are psychologically and computationally distinct, and may have implications for the acquisition of categories at different hierarchical levels. The present study examines an account of children’s difficulty in acquiring categories at the subordinate level grounded on these distinct comparison processes. Adults and children performed category learning tasks in which they were exposed either to pairs of objects from the same novel category or pairs of objects from different categories. The objects were designed so that for each category learning task, two features determined category membership whereas two other features were task irrelevant. In the learning stage participants compared pairs of objects noted to be either from the same category or from different categories. Object pairs were chosen so that the objective amount of information provided to the participants was identical in the two learning conditions. We found that when presented only with object pairs noted to be from the same category, young children (6 ? YO ? 9.5) learned the novel categories just as well as older children (10 ? YO ? 14) and adults. However, when presented only with object pairs known to be from different categories, unlike older children and adults, young children failed to learn the novel categories. We discuss cognitive and computational factors that may give rise to this comparison bias, as well as its expected outcomes.     

USING PARENTS TO MAINTAIN IMPROVED DENTAL FLOSSING SKILLS IN CHILDREN

An experimenter-administered intervention involving prompts, self-monitoring, permanent product collection, rewards for plaque reduction, and corrective feedback was used to improve the flossing skills of four 7- to 11-year-old children. Parents were subsequently trained in the reward and feedback procedures to facilitate maintenance. In a multiple baseline across subjects design, all four subjects snowed improvement in plaque between teeth during experimenter-administered intervention. Three subjects maintained low plaque levels during the 3- to 4-month parent-administered rewards and feedback follow-up condition. Improved plaque levels on nontargeted tooth surfaces also were observed. Pediatric dentistry applications are discussed.     

Ecological influences in youth crisis shelters: Effects of social density and length of stay on youth problem behaviors

For 472 consecutive days we monitored the number of youths residing in a crisis shelter for adolescents, the average length of stay for the youths residing in the shelter on each day, and the number of problem behaviors occurring within the shelter on a daily basis. We analyzed these data using a combination of time series and logistic regression techniques to fit a model that would predict the occurrence of a problem behavior on any given day. After controlling for significant time trends in the data, our results indicate that both the number of youths in the shelter and the proportion of youths who have resided in the shelter longer than 14 days are significantly associated with a problem behavior occurring on any given day. The number of youths in the shelter and the probability of a problem behavior occurring correlated significantly. However, as the proportion of youths who resided in the shelter longer than 14 days increased, the probability of a problem behavior occurring decreased.     

Cross-cultural componential analysis on affect attribution of emotion terms

One concern of studies of emotions is that of the underlying denotative components of the meanings of emotional terms, whether people are actually cognizant of them or not. In this study, we evaluated the characteristics of 10 emotional denotative components and their hierarchical ordering in attribution to 22 emotion concepts across 23 different human societies. Empirically, a quantitative model, developed by Tzeng and Osgood (1976), was used to link the relationship between affect measures of the emotion concepts and their characteristics on denotative components. It was found that the 10 denotative components functioned extremely well in predicting the affect for individual cultures and also for the 23 cultures as a whole. Cross-cultural comparisons revealed some significant differences among the components in predicting indigenous affect attributions for different cultures. Finally, the nature and dynamics of such intercultural differences were discussed in reference to the issue of independence between affect and cognition.This research was planned and carried out as a part of a cross-cultural research project of out laboratory. It was completed during Dr. Rumjahn Hoosain's visiting professorship at Purdue University School of Science at Indianapolis for his sabbatical leave from the University of Hong Kong. The authors wish to express their gratitude to our foreign colleagues who participated in the data collection for this study.     

The role of some spatial parameters of gratings on the McCollough effect

Ss were alternately adapted to vertical and horizontal gratings that consisted of black bars and colored slits. The slits of one grating were green and of the other, magenta. The widths of the black bars and the colored slits were varied independently during adaptation and testing. This design separates the relative influence of bar width, slit width, and spatial frequency on an orientation specific color aftereffect known as the McCollough effect. Black bar width had the major influence on the strength of the aftereffect, suggesting that the neurophysiological mechanism underlying the McCullough effect might consist of orientation specific units that are sensitive to both the widths of black bars and the chromatic characteristics of their surrounds.     

Can Ego-Depletion Be Helpful? Testing the Process Model Implication That Ego-Depletion Reduces Irrational Persistence

The present research investigated the effect of state self-control on irrational persistence, which refers to pursuing a course of action beyond when the effort can no longer be justified given the cost of persisting and/or probability of success. In 3 studies, ego-depletion reduced the level of irrational persistence displayed by participants. In Study 1, ego-depleted participants were less tolerant of ineffective default computer settings that wasted their time. In Study 2, ego-depleted participants solved more anagrams than nondepleted participants when given only a limited amount of time to solve anagrams that ranged from easy to difficult and skipping was allowed. Study 3 conceptually replicate the effect of Study 2 but produced a smaller effect size.