Three-month-olds, but not newborns, prefer own-race faces

Adults are sensitive to the physical differences that define ethnic groups. However, the age at which we become sensitive to ethnic differences is currently unclear. Our study aimed to clarify this by testing newborns and young infants for sensitivity to ethnicity using a visual preference (VP) paradigm. While newborn infants demonstrated no spontaneous preference for faces from either their own- or other-ethnic groups, 3-month-old infants demonstrated a significant preference for faces from their own-ethnic group. These results suggest that preferential selectivity based on ethnic differences is not present in the first days of life, but is learned within the first 3 months of life. The findings imply that adults' perceptions of ethnic differences are learned and derived from differences in exposure to own- versus other-race faces during early development.     

Effects of chlorpromazine on lateralization, cued reaction time, and dichotic listening

In a double-blind cross-over design sixteen subjects took 50 mg of chlorpromazine or placebo in tablet form 2 hours prior to completing a dichotic listening and simple reaction time task with and without warnings. In the simple reaction time task, blocks of 80 stimuli were presented to each ear with and without warning cue under drug and placebo conditions. On the dichotic listening task the expected right ear advantage for reporting digits was obtained. While the drug had no main effect on the number of errors, there were more trials on which an ear advantage was present than in the placebo condition. In the reaction time task there were main effects of drug, warning cue and foreperiod: warnings facilitated reaction; chlorpromazine retarded reaction; and reaction times were most facilitated by warning foreperiods in excess of 1200ms. Several findings were of interest: On uncued trials, with placebo, right ear responses were faster than those for stimuli presented to the left ear. Drug also interacted with foreperiod duration. These results were interpreted in the light of Tucker and Williamson’s (1984) review of the role of Pribram and McGuinness’s Arousal and Activation sytems in lateralized behavior.     

Theology,Metaphysics, and Realism about Truth

This essay examines the theological grounds for rejecting metaphysics and the correspondence theory of truth, and argues that while there are good grounds for rejecting a certain kind of metaphysically oriented theology, metaphysics per se is neither objectionable nor avoidable in Christian theology. In the process, it also defends a realist conception of truth against some recent theological criticisms, and argues that a commitment to a modest version of metaphysical realism and realism about truth is not only philosophically tenable, but also theologically preferable to non‐realist views.     

Age effects shrink when motor learning is predominantly supported by nondeclarative, automatic memory processes: evidence from golf putting

Can motor learning be equivalent in younger and older adults? To address this question, 48 younger (M = 23.5 years) and 48 older (M = 65.0 years) participants learned to perform a golf-putting task in two different motor learning situations: one that resulted in infrequent errors or one that resulted in frequent errors. The results demonstrated that infrequent-error learning predominantly relied on nondeclarative, automatic memory processes whereas frequent-error learning predominantly relied on declarative, effortful memory processes: After learning, infrequent-error learners verbalized fewer strategies than frequent-error learners; at transfer, a concurrent, attention-demanding secondary task (tone counting) left motor performance of infrequent-error learners unaffected but impaired that of frequent-error learners. The results showed age-equivalent motor performance in infrequent-error learning but age deficits in frequent-error learning. Motor performance of frequent-error learners required more attention with age, as evidenced by an age deficit on the attention-demanding secondary task. The disappearance of age effects when nondeclarative, automatic memory processes predominated suggests that these processes are preserved with age and are available even early in motor learning.     

Sexual distractors boost younger and older adults' visual search RSVP performance

Do sexual words have high attentional priority? How does the ability to ignore sexual distractors evolve with age? To answer these questions, two experiments using Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP) were conducted. Experiment 1 showed that both younger and older participants were better at identifying a target (the name of a colour) when it was preceded by 336 ms by a sexual word rather than by a musical word. Strikingly, the sexual‐word advantage was more pronounced for older adults than for younger adults. Experiment 2 showed that introducing a variable delay between the distractor and the target eliminated the sexual‐word advantage. This finding suggests that the sexual‐word advantage found in Experiment 1 was due to learning to utilize the sexual word as a temporal cue with a fixed duration between the distractor and the target. Contrary to previous research [Arnell et al., 2007, Emotion, 7, 465), neither experiment showed that sexual words produce an attentional blink.     

Intentions vs. resemblance: Understanding pictures in typical development and autism

Research has debated whether children reflect on artists’ intentions when comprehending pictures, or instead derive meaning entirely from resemblance. We explore these hypotheses by comparing how typically developing toddlers and low-functioning children with autism (a population impaired in intentional reasoning) interpret abstract pictures. In Experiment 1, both groups mapped familiar object names onto abstract pictures, however, they related the same representations to different 3-D referents. Toddlers linked abstract pictures with intended referents they did not resemble, while children with autism mapped picture-referent relations based on resemblance. Experiment 2 showed that toddlers do not rely upon linguistic cues to determine intended referential relations. Experiment 3 confirmed that the responding of children with autism was not due to perseveration or associative word learning, and also provided independent evidence of their intention-reading difficulties. We argue that typically developing children derive meaning from the social-communicative intentions underlying pictures when resemblance is an inadequate cue to meaning. By contrast, children with autism do not reflect on artists’ intentions and simply relate pictures to whatever they happen to resemble.