Teachers’ implicit view of intelligence predict pupils’ self-perception as learners

Teachers regularly make judgements about their pupils’ intelligence while interacting with them in the classroom. The main aims of this paper are to analyse the structure of teachers’ judgements of their pupils’ intelligence, and to evaluate the influence that teachers have on pupils’ judgements of their own and their peers’ intelligence. Cross-cultural comparisons between English and Portuguese pupils are considered. In total 58 children 10- to 11-year-old and two teachers from London, UK and 47 children 5- to 6-year-old and two teachers from Lisbon, Portugal participated. The children completed aptitude tests and self-perception measures for general ability, reading and mathematical ability. The teachers ranked their pupils’ academic abilities from ‘best in the class’ to ‘weakest in the class’. Results show that teachers’ implicit conceptions of intelligence reflect a view of intelligence that is similar to what IQ tests measure. In addition the results support the notion that children’s verbal ability is more highly valued than mathematical ability. Moreover, the results also suggest that teachers have a considerable impact on their pupils’ self-perception as learners. Cultural differences are also discussed.     

Associative independence revisited: competition between conflicting associations can be resolved or even reversed in one trial

In one type of association-memory paradigm, after studying pairs of the form AB, AC, participants must recall both B and C in response to A. Counterintuitively, yet often replicated, recall probabilities of B and C are typically uncorrelated (“associative independence”). This face-value independence is now understood to reflect a negative correlation due to AB and AC competing, approximately offset by a positive correlation produced by subject- and item-variability. The outcome might vary with stimulus material; for noun-pairs, and with a single study trial per pair, AB and AC have been found to be positively correlated. We replicated the positive correlation between AB and AC for noun-pairs, but this did not differ from the correlation expected for independent memory tests, suggesting that for noun pairs, AB and AC are independent on average. In Experiment 2, participants instructed to form separate images for AB and AC again produced an independence pattern, but participants instructed to combine AB and AC into an integrative image produced a facilitation pattern. Thus, the relationship between AB and AC varies, and can be influenced by study strategy. Association-memory models may need to accommodate a diverse range of AB–AC relationships, and studies that build on AB/AC learning may need to consider whether AB/AC start out with a competitive, facilitatory or independent relationship.     

The free and cued selective reminding test for predicting progression to Alzheimer's disease in patients with mild cognitive impairment: A prospective longitudinal study

Amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) patients carry a greater risk of conversion to Alzheimer's disease (AD). Therefore, the International Working Group (IWG) on AD aims to consider some cases of aMCI as symptomatic prodromal AD. The core diagnostic marker of AD is a significant and progressive memory deficit, and the Free and Cued Selective Reminding Test (FCSRT) was recommended by the IWG to test memory in cases of possible prodromal AD. This study aims to investigate whether the performance on the FCSRT would enhance the ability to predict conversion to AD in an aMCI group. A longitudinal study was conducted on 88 aMCI patients, and neuropsychological tests were analysed on the relative risk of conversion to AD. During follow‐up (23.82 months), 33% of the aMCI population converted to AD. An impaired FCSRT TR was significantly associated with the risk of conversion to dementia, with a mean time to conversion of 25 months. The FCSRT demonstrates utility for detecting AD at its prodromal stage, thus supporting its use as a valid clinical marker.     

Self-Criticism Impacts Emotional Responses to Pain

Nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI) is associated with numerous negative outcomes (e.g., suicide attempts), making it a focus of great clinical concern. Yet, mechanisms reinforcing NSSI remain unclear. The benefits and barriers model proposes that NSSI engagement is determined by both benefits of and barriers to NSSI. Benefits include mood improvement, a function reported by most who engage in NSSI; barriers include a desire to avoid pain and bodily harm. Self-criticism is generally understood as a trait lowering desire to avoid pain and bodily harm, thus decreasing that specific barrier. However, recent research demonstrated that self-criticism may also increase NSSI benefits. Highly self-critical people may view NSSI and pain in the context of feeling deserving of pain and punishment—thus, pain may improve mood for self-critical individuals. We tested whether self-criticism impacted emotional responding to pain among adult females with (n = 44) and without (n = 65) NSSI histories. After a negative mood induction, participants rated their moods before, during, and after self-administered pain. In participants with and without NSSI histories, self-criticism was positively correlated with mood improvements during pain. Thus, regardless of NSSI history, self-criticism impacted emotional responses to pain. Together, results suggest that self-criticism may not only decrease an important NSSI barrier but also enhance NSSI benefits, specifically leading to more mood improvement during pain.     

The world may not be just for you but you'd better not say it: On the social value of expressing personal belief in a just world

The expression of personal belief in a just world (PBJW) has been discussed as a criterion of excellence in social judgments. In four experimental studies we hypothesized and found that targets who express high versus low PBJW are judged as more: (i) deserving of success and (ii) suited to socio-organizational expectations. The four studies show that suitability to socio-organizational expectations mediates the relation between PBJW expressed and success deservingness, even after controlling for judgments of likability, status, rationality, optimism, and targets as victims. Studies 2 and 3 show this pattern occurs regardless of target performance appraisal. Study 4 indicates that expressing low PBJW decreases the social value of individuals, but expressing high PBJW does not increase it. We discuss the impact of PBJW expression on people's lives, namely on upward social mobility of members of low-status groups, and the influence of the negativity bias on judgments caused by PBJW expression.     

Speech rhythm alterations in Spanish-speaking individuals with Alzheimer’s disease

Rhythm is the speech property related to the temporal organization of sounds. Considerable evidence is now available for suggesting that dementia of Alzheimer’s type is associated with impairments in speech rhythm. The aim of this study is to assess the use of an automatic computerized system for measuring speech rhythm characteristics in an oral reading task performed by 45 patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) compared with those same characteristics among 82 healthy older adults without a diagnosis of dementia, and matched by age, sex and cultural background. Ranges of rhythmic-metric and clinical measurements were applied. The results show rhythmic differences between the groups, with higher variability of syllabic intervals in AD patients. Signal processing algorithms applied to oral reading recordings prove to be capable of differentiating between AD patients and older adults without dementia with an accuracy of 87% (specificity 81.7%, sensitivity 82.2%), based on the standard deviation of the duration of syllabic intervals. Experimental results show that the syllabic variability measurements extracted from the speech signal can be used to distinguish between older adults without a diagnosis of dementia and those with AD, and may be useful as a tool for the objective study and quantification of speech deficits in AD.     

Spelling development in the Spanish language

This study focused on spelling development in Spanish children from elementary grades. A sample of 1045 was selected from 2nd to 6th grade belonging to four schools in Tenerife Island with an age range between 7 and 12 years old (M = 113.8, SD = 17.6). We administered a standardized writing test that includes diverse subtests to assess spelling, ruled and not ruled, and various written composition tasks (i.e., writing a story based on vignettes, describing a character and writing a story). We calculated the average of correct spellings in each variable and school level, and we also analyzed the type of misspellings that children made across different writing tasks. We found that spelling is acquired by 4th-grade children when it is not ruled, whereas the spelling of ruled words is acquired by 5th-grade children. When we analyzed the misspellings in a dictation task, we found that the children confused spelling of the graphemes c/s/z/x. Across different writing tasks, we found that students committed more misspellings with the graphemes b/v, h y c/s/z/x before they finished the 4th elementary grade.     

Holistic processing of faces: perceptual and decisional components

Researchers have used several composite face paradigms to assess holistic processing of faces. In the selective attention paradigm, participants decide whether one face part (e.g., top) is the same as a previously seen face part. Their judgment is affected by whether the irrelevant part of the test face is the same as or different than the relevant part of the study face. This failure of selective attention implies holistic processing. However, the authors show that this task alone cannot distinguish between perceptual and decisional sources of holism. The distinction can be addressed by the complete identification paradigm, in which both face parts are judged to be same or different, combined with analyses based on general recognition theory (F. G. Ashby & J. T. Townsend, 1986). The authors used a different paradigm, sequential responses, to relate these 2 paradigms empirically and theoretically. Sequential responses produced the same results as did selective attention and complete identification. Moreover, disruptions of holistic processing by systematic misalignment of the faces corresponded with systematic and significant changes in the decisional components, but not in the perceptual components, that were extracted using general recognition theory measures. This finding suggests a significant decisional component of holistic face processing in the composite face task.     

Effects of inversion and negation on social inferences from faces

Judgments about personality and other social characteristics based on facial appearance are remarkably consistent across individuals. However, whereas the facial cues that underpin age and sex judgments are already well understood, the physical bases for judgments of characteristics such as intelligence or trustworthiness are still unknown. Inversion and photographic negation are used here to investigate the visual processes underlying social inferences from the face and to explore whether various judgments might rely on different perceptual representations. In experiment 1, the perceptions of age, sex, attractiveness, approachability, intelligence, and trustworthiness, but not distinctiveness, were affected by inversion, and all these characteristics were affected by negation. The effects of inversion and negation were independent, suggesting that they impaired the encoding of different types of information. Moreover, an independent manipulation of hue and luminance in experiment 2 showed that the effects of negation were mainly due to the reversal of luminance values. These results are consistent with the view that information about the configuration of features (the processing of which is impaired by inversion) and information about surface properties (the processing of which is impaired by brightness negation) are both used in the perception of social characteristics from faces. In addition, the fact that there was a similar pattern of impairment across most judgments suggests that there is an initial common perceptual representation of the face, from which most characteristics are inferred.     

Presence and emotions in virtual environments: the influence of stereoscopy.

This study investigates how stereoscopy (the illusion of depth and 3D imaging) affects the sense of presence and the intensity of the positive mood that users feel in virtual environments (VEs). A between-group design was used, and 40 volunteers were randomly assigned to one of two experimental conditions (stereoscopy vs. no stereoscopy) and to one of two emotional VEs (relaxation or joy). The participants' emotions were assessed before and after the VR experience. Presence was measured with two postexperiment questionnaires (ITC-SOPI and SUS). Results show that there were no differences between stereoscopic and monoscopic presentations in VEs (neither subjective sense of presence nor emotional reactions). Practical and theoretical implications of these findings are discussed herein.