Apparent motion enhances visual rhythm discrimination in infancy

Many studies have demonstrated that infants exhibit robust auditory rhythm discrimination, but research on infants' perception of visual rhythm is limited. In particular, the role of motion in infants' perception of visual rhythm remains unknown, despite the prevalence of motion cues in naturally occurring visual rhythms. In the present study, we examined the role of motion in 7-month-old infants' discrimination of visual rhythms by comparing experimental conditions with apparent motion in the stimuli versus stationary rhythmic stimuli. Infants succeeded at discriminating visual rhythms only when the visual rhythm occurred with an apparent motion component. These results support the view that motion plays a role in infants' perception of visual temporal information, consistent with the manner in which natural rhythms appear in the visual world.     

Dimension-specific attention directs learning and listening on auditory training tasks

The relative contributions of bottom-up versus top-down sensory inputs to auditory learning are not well established. In our experiment, listeners were instructed to perform either a frequency discrimination (FD) task ("FD-train group") or an intensity discrimination (ID) task ("ID-train group") during training on a set of physically identical tones that were impossible to discriminate consistently above chance, allowing us to vary top-down attention whilst keeping bottom-up inputs fixed. A third, control group did not receive any training. Only the FD-train group improved on a FD probe following training, whereas all groups improved on ID following training. However, only the ID-train group also showed changes in performance accuracy as a function of interval with training on the ID task. These findings suggest that top-down, dimension-specific attention can direct auditory learning, even when this learning is not reflected in conventional performance measures of threshold change.     

The wisdom of the crowd playing The Price Is Right

In The Price Is Right game show, players compete to win a prize, by placing bids on its price. We ask whether it is possible to achieve a "wisdom of the crowd" effect, by combining the bids to produce an aggregate price estimate that is superior to the estimates of individual players. Using data from the game show, we show that a wisdom of the crowd effect is possible, especially by using models of the decision-making processes involved in bidding. The key insight is that, because of the competitive nature of the game, what people bid is not necessarily the same as what they know. This means better estimates are formed by aggregating latent knowledge than by aggregating observed bids. We use our results to highlight the usefulness of models of cognition and decision-making in studying the wisdom of the crowd, which are often approached only from non-psychological statistical perspectives.     

Aggressive reactions to abusive supervision: the role of interactional justice and narcissism

In this study, we explore personality and situational conditions in which negative leadership - specifically, abusive supervision - is associated with aggressive behavior in subordinates. That is, we examine the role that interactional justice and narcissism play in an employee's decision to respond aggressively to an abusive supervisor. We demonstrate that interactional justice mediates the relationship between perceptions of abusive supervision and subsequent employee aggression. In addition, we demonstrate that narcissism interacts with interactional justice perceptions to predict workplace aggression. We find that individuals with high levels of narcissism are the employees who are most likely to respond aggressively when they interpret their leader's behavior as abusive.     

Trauma and sex surveys meet minimal risk standards: implications for institutional review boards

Institutional review boards assume that questionnaires asking about "sensitive" topics (e.g., trauma and sex) pose more risk to respondents than seemingly innocuous measures (e.g., cognitive tests). We tested this assumption by asking 504 undergraduates to answer either surveys on trauma and sex or measures of cognitive ability, such as tests of vocabulary and abstract reasoning. Participants rated their positive and negative emotional reactions and the perceived benefits and mental costs of participating; they also compared their study-related distress with the distress arising from normal life stressors. Participants who completed trauma and sex surveys, relative to participants who completed cognitive measures, rated the study as resulting in higher positive affect and as having greater perceived benefits and fewer mental costs. Although participants who completed trauma and sex surveys reported slightly higher levels of negative emotion than did participants who completed cognitive measures, averages were very low for both groups, and outliers were rare. All participants rated each normal life stressor as more distressing than participating in the study. These results suggest that trauma and sex surveys pose minimal risk.     

All words are not created equal: expectations about word length guide infant statistical learning

Infants have been described as ‘statistical learners’ capable of extracting structure (such as words) from patterned input (such as language). Here, we investigated whether prior knowledge influences how infants track transitional probabilities in word segmentation tasks. Are infants biased by prior experience when engaging in sequential statistical learning? In a laboratory simulation of learning across time, we exposed 9- and 10-month-old infants to a list of either disyllabic or trisyllabic nonsense words, followed by a pause-free speech stream composed of a different set of disyllabic or trisyllabic nonsense words. Listening times revealed successful segmentation of words from fluent speech only when words were uniformly disyllabic or trisyllabic throughout both phases of the experiment. Hearing trisyllabic words during the pre-exposure phase derailed infants’ abilities to segment speech into disyllabic words, and vice versa. We conclude that prior knowledge about word length equips infants with perceptual expectations that facilitate efficient processing of subsequent language input.     

Islamic identity and its role in the lives of young Swedish Muslims

This paper concerns the level of wellbeing experienced by Swedish Muslim youths and young adults as well as the ways in which this is influenced both positively and negatively by their sense of Islamic religious identity. Taking Akerlof and Crantons’ Treatise on “identity economics” as its point of departure, the paper explores, discusses and analyses the following two questions: (1) what are the contexts in which identification with Islam tends to facilitate the wellbeing of Swedish Muslim youths and young adults; and (2) what are the contexts in which identification with Islam tends to destabilize (or increase the sociocultural discomfort of) this same group. Here, the notion of Islam as a “resource” is important, since this underlines its potential to resolve the types of existential dilemmas that are often found to confront the young and undermine their sense of wellbeing. The paper bases its assessments on the results of a questionnaire concerning life, values, relations, leisure time activities and religion that was distributed to a total of 4,000 young Swedes, a certain number of whom identified themselves as “Muslims”. Apart from studying the survey’s Muslim-specific results, I have conducted a number of additional interviews with young Muslim respondents, aiming to extend our understanding beyond the strictly quantitative findings of the material. The survey indicates that, much like their Christian counterparts, a majority of the Muslim respondents considered their belief in Islam to be a private, personal matter; one-third described themselves as “seekers”—an identification that previous research has found to be associated primarily with secular majority youth. The results further indicate that a majority of Muslim youths have a low level of confidence in religious leaders and that very few are actively involved in mosque activities and the like; on the contrary, they prefer to spend their leisure hours earning money, being with friends and/or “working out” at the gym. While the survey found that the vast majority of Muslim respondents looked upon the social and spiritual dimensions of Islam as a positive resource, the interviews indicate that the ability of young Muslims to appropriately shift between different forms of cultural belonging is highly advantageous as well.     

Mental Practice or Spontaneous Play? Examining Which Types of Imagery Constitute Deliberate Practice in Sport

Imagery use was examined within the deliberate practice framework (Ericsson, Krampe, & Tesch-Römer, 1993 Ericsson, K., Krampe, R. and Tesch-Römer, C. 1993. The role of deliberate practice in the acquisition of expert performance. Psychological Review, 100: 363–406. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). Athletes (N = 150) from three competitive levels (recreational, intermediate, and elite) completed an adapted version of the Sport Imagery Questionnaire (SIQ; Hall, Mack, Paivio, & Hausenblas, 1998 Hall, C., Mack, D., Paivio, A. and Hausenblas, H. 1998. Imagery use by athletes: Development of the sport imagery questionnaire. International Journal of Sport Psychology, 29: 73–89. [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). Each SIQ item was scored for frequency, deliberation, relevance, concentration, and enjoyment. Eight SIQ items were deemed to be deliberate practice: five cognitive-specific images, two cognitive-general images, and one motivational general-mastery image. Motivational-specific imagery instead resembled deliberate play (Côté, Baker, & Abernethy, 2003 Côté, J., Baker, J. and Abernethy, B. 2003. “From play to practice: A developmental framework for the acquisition of expertise in team sports”. In Expert performance in sports: Advances in research on sport expertise, Edited by: Starkes, J. L. and Ericsson, K. A. 89–114. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics.  [Google Scholar]). Elite and intermediate athletes used imagery more frequently and deliberately and perceived imagery to be more relevant and requiring more concentration than recreational athletes. Differences also existed regarding how deliberately the athletes engaged in various imagery types. The findings may inform applied practitioners regarding differences in imagery use between competitive levels and differences in the characteristics of imagery types.     

Using Motivational General-Mastery Imagery to Improve the Self-efficacy of Youth Squash Players

The current study examined whether an individualized motivational general-mastery MG-M imagery intervention consisting of daily imagery practice and weekly one-on-one guided imagery sessions could enhance self-efficacy in youth squash athletes (N = 5; M _age = 10.80; SD = 1.93). A single-subject multiple-baseline design was employed spanning 13–18 weeks. Measures included the Sport Imagery Questionnaire for Children (Hall, Munroe-Chandler, Fishburne, & Hall et al., 2009) and a squash-specific self-efficacy questionnaire. Results indicated improvements in self-efficacy for 3 of the 5 athletes. The results from this study help inform researchers and practitioners regarding the use of MG-M imagery as a means to improve young athletes’ self-efficacy.     

Psychoanalytic Healing,Love, Life,and Death: Commentary on Paper by Sheldon Bach

In his seminal clinical writings on psychoanalysis, Sheldon Bach transcends the limiting confines of individual and parochial schools of psychoanalysis. Both in “On Digital Consciousness” and in his 2006 Getting From There to Here: Analytic Love, Analytic Process, we see a strong relational dimension in Bach's work (see also Bach 1985 Bach, S. 1985. Narcissistic states and the therapeutic process, Northvale, NJ: Aronson.  [Google Scholar] and 1994), though he comes from firmly within the psychoanalytic mainstream. Bach's writings speak to clinicians across schools of thought, are clinically near to experience and are often moving. While he makes occasional mention of his contemporaries, Bach is grounded in more traditional references and only hints at his intellectual connection to relational and intersubjective theorists. One purpose of this commentary is to reflect on Bach's contribution to contemporary psychoanalysis and to draw out the connections between his work and the work of those within the broader relational and intersubjective community of psychoanalysis.