The effects of perceived phenotypic racial stereotypicality and social identity threat on racial minorities’ attitudes about police

This study examines the role of perceived phenotypic racial stereotypicality and race-based social identity threat on racial minorities’ trust and cooperation with police. We hypothesize that in police interactions, racial minorities’ phenotypic racial stereotypicality may increase race-based social identity threat, which will lead to distrust and decreased participation with police. Racial minorities (Blacks, Latinos, Native Americans, and multi-racials) and Whites from a representative random sample of city residents were surveyed about policing attitudes. A serial multiple mediation model confirmed that racial minorities’ self-rated phenotypic racial stereotypicality indirectly affected future cooperation through social identity threat and trust. Due to the lack of negative group stereotypes in policing, the model did not hold for Whites. This study provides evidence that phenotypic stereotypicality influences racial minorities’ psychological experiences interacting with police.     

Macaque monkeys discriminate pitch relationships

This study demonstrates that non-human primates can categorize the direction of the pitch change of tones in a sequence. Two Macaca fascicularis were trained in a positive-reinforcement behavioral paradigm in which they listened to sequences of a variable number of different acoustic items. The training of discriminating pitch direction was divided into three phases with increasing task complexity. In the first two phases, subjects learned to employ a same/different rule. In phase 1, they discriminated acoustic items of different sound quality. Subjects had to respond when there was a change from repeating noise bursts to repeating click trains or vice versa. In phase II, acoustic items differed along one physical dimension only. Subjects had to respond to a change of the frequency of a repeating series of pure tones. In phase III, sequences consisted of three series of repeating tones of different frequency. Subjects were required to respond when the frequency of the tones changed in a downward direction and to refrain from responding when the frequency remained constant or increased. After several ten thousand trials, subjects categorized pitch direction well above chance level. The discrimination was performed over a 4.5-octave range of frequencies and was largely independent of the temporal and ordinal position of the downward pitch direction within the sequence. These results demonstrate that monkeys can recognize pitch relationships and thus that monkeys have the concept of ordinal relations between acoustic items.     

Knowledge,women and gender in the adīth: a feminist interpretation

This article examines gender constructs embedded within the book on ‘Knowledge’ in Bukhārī's adīth collection. This text provides a site for exploring Islamic constructions of human nature, knowledge, rationality and authority. Out of a sum total of 136 adīths contain in Bukhārī's book on ‘Knowledge’, there are eight concerning women. These have multiple levels of meaning and interpretive possibilities. Employing a feminist hermeneutic, the article examines some of the gender ideology implicit in these formative adīths for Islamic understandings of the human person. The article's twofold approach firstly engages critically with dimensions of androcentricism and patriarchy within the texts, and secondly lifts out marginalized aspects embedded within the texts that offer counter–narratives to dominant constructions of gender. The intention of this reading is to name and illustrate both the functioning patriarchy as well as alternative liberatory positions of gender within the legacy. This represents part of an Islamic feminist approach that destabilizes patriarchal gender constructs and provides alternative approaches to the tradition informed by a religious commitment to gender justice.     

Affect consciousness or mentalization? A comparison of two concepts with regard to affect development and affect regulation

Affect consciousness refers to the ability to adequately perceive, reflect upon and express affect. The concept is used in clinical work with adults, but lacks an equivalent for children's experience of affect. This paper examines the developmental prerequisites for affect consciousness, as well as the concept's applicability to work with children. The main focus is on the development of affect regulation throughout the first 6 years of life. Special emphasis is put on the role of attachment and the unfolding of mentalization ability in this development. The role of play as an organizing factor for affective experience is discussed. Observation of play is highlighted as a strong indicator of affect consciousness in children.     

Intuition beyond recognition: when less familiar events are liked more

In a laboratory experiment, we compare the relative impact of two possible determinants of intuitive evaluative judgments: ease of recognition and total value of prior encounters with a target. Participants encode daily return values of shares on the stock market while watching videotaped ads on the computer screen. This dual-task procedure ensures that participants subsequently lack relevant event memories and thus have to rely on their intuition when evaluating the targets. In the presentation, the share appearing least frequently produced the highest sum of returns. In contrast, the share appearing most frequently produced the lowest sum of returns. Evaluative judgments reveal a preference for the share with the highest sum of returns, although, as evident from recognition latencies, it was the one that was more difficult to recognize. The results provide evidence for the value-account model of implicit attitude formation (Betsch, Plessner, Schwieren, & Gütig, 2001), which predicts that intuitive evaluative judgments reflect the total value of prior encounters.     

Letter-detection patterns in German: A window to the early extraction of sentential structure during reading

Letters are more difficult to detect in function words than in content words, presumably because function words serve to cue sentential structure but recede to the background as meaning unfolds. This function disadvantage was found for the definite article in German for all three genders and all four cases, but it was more pronounced when the article appeared in a nominative noun phrase than in an object noun phrase. It was also more pronounced for the typical subject-predicate-object sentential format than for the object-predicate-subject sentential format and also when the definite article unequivocally specified the case of a phrase than when it was ambiguous. The results suggest that the structural frames established on line in reading are finely tuned to both phrase-level and sentence-level organization.     

Levels and change in autonomous and controlled work motivation in older workers—The role of proximity to retirement and sense of community at work

Previous studies suggest a preretirement disengagement process from work, which includes reduced work motivation. In this study, we investigated changes in autonomous and controlled work motivation over two years among participants of the Health, Aging and Retirement Transition in Sweden (HEARTS) study. We found stability in both types of motivation; however, those who retired after the study period showed more distinct declines in autonomous motivation. A stronger sense of community at work was related to level, but not change in autonomous motivation. Intra-individual fluctuations in the expected retirement age did not predict work motivation or vice versa. Future studies are needed to better understand the antecedents and consequences of preretirement declines in autonomous work motivation.     

Experimental Evaluation of Near‐ and Far‐Transfer Effects of an Adaptive Multicomponent Working Memory Training

An important question in cognitive science today is whether working memory training leads to transfer effects. Training studies reported no transfer as well as far transfer to untrained abilities (e.g., reasoning), but different methodological problems have not allowed reliable conclusions to be drawn. Furthermore, most samples have consisted of young adults, whereas older adults have rarely been included. This study attempted to address these limitations. Ninety‐one older adults were randomly assigned to a training group or an active or passive control group. Short‐term memory, speed, and reasoning were assessed as far‐transfer criteria. In addition, transfer to everyday life was investigated using an ambulatory assessment method. Although there were significant training effects, no transfer effects were found. Instead, the active control group showed the same increase in the near‐transfer tasks (i.e., working memory) as the experimental group indicating that unspecific factors explain the training gains of older adults. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

How personal standards perfectionism and evaluative concerns perfectionism affect the error positivity and post-error behavior with varying stimulus visibility

Error detection is required in order to correct or avoid imperfect behavior. Although error detection is beneficial for some people, for others it might be disturbing. We investigated Gaudreau and Thompson’s (Personality and Individual Differences, 48, 532?537, 2010) model, which combines personal standards perfectionism (PSP) and evaluative concerns perfectionism (ECP). In our electrophysiological study, 43 participants performed a combination of a modified Simon task, an error awareness paradigm, and a masking task with a variation of stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA; 33, 67, and 100 ms). Interestingly, relative to low-ECP participants, high-ECP participants showed a better post-error accuracy (despite a worse classification accuracy) in the high-visibility SOA 100 condition than in the two low-visibility conditions (SOA 33 and SOA 67). Regarding the electrophysiological results, first, we found a positive correlation between ECP and the amplitude of the error positivity (Pe) under conditions of low stimulus visibility. Second, under the condition of high stimulus visibility, we observed a higher Pe amplitude for high-ECP–low-PSP participants than for high-ECP–high-PSP participants. These findings are discussed within the framework of the error-processing avoidance hypothesis of perfectionism (Stahl, Acharki, Kresimon, Völler, & Gibbons, International Journal of Psychophysiology, 97, 153–162, 2015).