From the Psychology of Race to the Issue of Skin Color for People of African Descent

In the aftermath of Western domination, the significance of skin color among peoples of African descent has been trivialized. Regrettably, research by psychologists the world over emphasizes race in the study of human social conditions. Despite the fact that race is increasingly irrelevant, Western psychologists continually adhere to it and are at a severe disadvantage. Oblivious to the implications of skin color, their attempts to comprehend stereotypes, discrimination, and various issues attributed to race vis-a-vis African peoples is an exercise in futility. It is not compulsory to discard Western perspectives at the expense of social fact, but psychologists should familiarize themselves with African perspectives as a critical point of reference to the social issues of African-descended people. Sustaining the integrity and prestige of the profession will require concepts and a perspective less confined to Western domination.     

Whose self is it anyway? Self-aspect control moderates the relation between self-complexity and well-being

Greater self-complexity refers to the extent that one’s self-concept is comprised of many and relatively differentiated self-aspects. Although some research has found that those greater in self-complexity fare better physically (e.g., fewer illnesses) and psychologically (e.g., less depression) when experiencing stress, other studies have reported another pattern of data (e.g., greater self-complexity predicts greater depression). In the current work, two studies found support for a moderating variable in this latter pattern, self-aspect control. Specifically, for those who perceived relatively little control over their self-aspects, being greater in self-complexity predicted worse physical and psychological outcomes. Study 2 tested alternative explanations and supported an interpretation that perceptions of control over one’s multiple selves, in particular, moderated the relation between self-complexity and well-being.     

Longitudinal Changes in Intellectual Development in Children with Fragile X Syndrome

Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to examine the development of intellectual functioning in 145 school-age pairs of siblings. Each pair included one child with Fragile X syndrome (FXS) and one unaffected sibling. All pairs of children were evaluated on the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Third Edition (WISC-III) at time 1 and 80 pairs of children received a second evaluation at time 2 approximately 4 years later. Compared to their unaffected siblings, children with FXS obtained significantly lower percentage correct scores on all subtests of the WISC at both time points. During the time between the first and second assessments, the annual rate of intellectual development was approximately 2.2 times faster in the unaffected children compared to the children with FXS. Levels of the fragile X mental retardation protein (FMRP) were highly associated with intellectual ability scores of the children with FXS at both time points (r=0.55 and 0.64 respectively). However, when gender, age, and the time between assessments were included as covariates in the structural equation model, FMRP accounted for only 5% of the variance in intellectual ability scores at time 1 and 13% of the variance at time 2. The results of this study suggest that slower learning contributes to the low and declining standardized IQ scores observed in children with FXS.     

Perceptual processing of partially and fully assimilated words in French

Models of speech perception attribute a different role to contextual information in the processing of assimilated speech. This study concerned perceptual processing of regressive voice assimilation in French. This phonological variation is asymmetric in that assimilation is partial for voiced stops and nearly complete for voiceless stops. Two auditory-visual cross-modal form priming experiments were used to examine perceptual compensation for assimilation in French words with voiceless versus voiced stop offsets. The results show that, for the former segments, assimilating context enhances underlying form recovery, whereas it does not for the latter. These results suggest that two sources of information -- contextual information and bottom-up information from the assimilated forms themselves -- are complementary and both come into play during the processing of fully or partially assimilated word forms.     

Analysis of the role of associative inhibition in perceptual learning by means of the same-different task

In Experiment 1a, participants were exposed, over a series of trials, to separate presentations of 2 similar checkerboard stimuli, AX and BX (where X represents a common background). In one group, AX and BX were presented on alternating trials (intermixed), in another, they were presented in separate blocks of trials (blocked). The intermixed group performed to a higher standard than the blocked group on a same-different test. A superiority of intermixed over blocked exposure was also evident in a within-subject design (Experiment 1b) and when the test required discrimination between a preexposed stimulus and the background (e.g., AX vs. X), even if the background changed between preexposure and test (AY vs. Y) (Experiment 2). In Experiment 3, the intermixed/blocked effect was observed when, in preexposure, stimulus presentations were alternated with the background alone (e.g., AX/X). This suggests that the perceptual learning effect is not the consequence of inhibitory associations between unique features but to increased salience of those features. Experiment 4 confirmed this finding and also ruled out an account of the effect in terms of trial spacing.     

The intermixed-blocked effect in human perceptual learning is not the consequence of trial spacing

A robust finding in humans and animals is that intermixed exposure to 2 similar stimuli (AX/BX) results in better discriminability of those stimuli on test than does exposure to 2 equally similar stimuli in 2 separate blocks (CX_DX)--the intermixed-blocked effect. This intermixed-blocked effect may be an example of the superiority of spaced over massed practice; in the intermixed, but not the blocked exposure regime, each presentation of a given stimulus (e.g., AX) is separated from the next by the presentation of its partner (BX). Two experiments with human participants replicated the intermixed-blocked effect and showed that the effect was not due to the spacing of exposure trials. A mechanism for the intermixed-blocked effect is proposed, which combines theories from associative learning and memory.