Aging and the use of interword spaces during reading: Evidence from eye movements

In an eye movement experiment, we assessed the performance of young (18–30 years) and older (65 + years) adult readers when sentences contained conventional interword spaces, when interword spaces were removed, or when interword spaces were replaced by nonlinguistic symbols. The replacement symbol was either a closed square (■) that provided a salient (low-spatial-frequency) cue to word boundaries, or an open square (□) that provided a less salient cue and included features (vertical and horizontal lines) similar to those found in letters. Removing or replacing interword spaces slowed reading times and impaired normal eye movement behavior for both age groups. However, this disruption was greater for the older readers, particularly when the replacement symbol did not provide a salient cue as to word boundaries. Specific influences of this manipulation on word identification during reading were assessed by examining eye movements for a high- or low-frequency target word in each sentence. Standard word frequency effects were obtained for both age groups when text was spaced normally, and although the word frequency effect was larger when spaces were removed or filled, the increases were similar across age groups. Therefore, whereas older adults’ normal eye movements were substantially disrupted when text lacked conventional interword spaces, the process of lexical access associated with the word frequency effect was no more difficult for older than for young adults. The indication, therefore, is that although older adults struggle from the loss of conventional cues to word boundaries, this is not due to additional difficulties in word recognition.     

Let Go of Your (Inflated) Ego: Caring more about Others Reduces Narcissistic Tendencies

Narcissists are known for having excessively positive self‐views, but an equally defining characteristic of narcissism may be a disregard of other people. Could encouraging people to care more about others, or feel more connected to them, reduce narcissism? We describe a series of studies demonstrating that a more communal focus on others reduces narcissistic tendencies. In particular, repeating communal self‐statements (i.e., “I am a caring person”), recalling a time when one was caring, feeling empathy, focusing on monetary expenditures (which increases a sense of dependence on others), and interdependent self‐construal all situationally reduce narcissism. These effects occur on a small scale but are significant because they establish that communal focus causes changes in narcissism. They also suggest that narcissism may have a state‐like or context‐dependent component, fluctuating across time and situations. Everyone may have the propensity to be narcissistic, but caring more about others may help to curb narcissism.     

Understanding the Relationship Between Religiousness, Spirituality, and Underage Drinking: The Role of Positive Alcohol Expectancies

Research has consistently found that religiousness and spirituality are negatively associated with underage drinking. However, there is a paucity of research exploring the mechanisms by which these variables influence this important outcome. With 344 underage young adults (ages 18–20; 61 % women), we investigated positive alcohol expectancies as a mediator between religiousness and spirituality (measured separately) and underage alcohol use. Participants completed the Religious Commitment Inventory-10, Daily Spiritual Experiences Scale, Alcohol Expectancies Questionnaire, and Drinking Styles Questionnaire. Results indicate less positive alcohol expectancies partially mediate the relationship between both religiousness and spirituality and underage alcohol use. This suggests religiousness and spirituality’s protective influence on underage drinking is partly due to their influence on expectations about alcohol’s positive effects. Since underage drinking predicts problem drinking later in life and places one at risk for serious physical and mental health problems, it is important to identify specific points of intervention, including expectations about alcohol that rise from religious and spiritual factors.     

Spirituality and Optimism: A Holistic Approach to Component-Based,Self-management Treatment for HIV

For people living with HIV (PLWH), spirituality and optimism have a positive influence on their health, can slow HIV disease progression, and can improve quality of life. Our aim was to describe longitudinal changes in spirituality and optimism after participation in the SystemCHANGE?-HIV intervention. Upon completion of the intervention, participants experienced an 11.5 point increase in overall spiritual well-being (p = 0.036), a 6.3 point increase in religious well-being (p = 0.030), a 4.8 point increase in existential well-being (p = 0.125), and a 0.8 point increase in total optimism (p = 0.268) relative to controls. Our data suggest a group-based self-management intervention increases spiritual well-being in PLWH.     

On Reasons,Evidence of Oughts,and Morally Fitting Motives

In a series of papers, Stephen Kearns and Daniel Star defend the following general account of reasons: R: Necessarily, a fact F is a reason for an agent A to Φ iff F is evidence that an agent ought to Φ. In this paper, I argue that the reasons as evidence view will run afoul of a motivational constraint on moral reasons, and that this is a powerful reason to reject the reasons as evidence view. The motivational constraint is as follows: M: For some consideration C to be a moral reason for an agent to Φ it must be possible for C to figure as part of the agent’s motivation for Φing without thereby undercutting (either partially or wholly) the positive moral evaluation of the agent in acting as she does. M presents a problem for Kearns and Star’s view because there will be cases where some consideration is evidence that an agent ought to Φ, but where if an agent was motivated by that consideration the agent’s action would thereby be worse from a moral perspective for that very reason. Further, I argue that this problem will likely arise on any moral theory that evaluates the motivation of an agent as a component of assessing the moral status of acts.     

Catching nonconscious goals in the act of decision making

Research has consistently found that goals triggered by environmental cues can influence decision making processes outside of conscious awareness. This lack of awareness led naturally to the presumption that decision makers could not report the activation level of nonconsciously primed goals. This paper shows that goal activation levels can be reported, so long as the report is made during the decision process on a continuous goal activation scale. These results indicate that default lack of awareness is less a limitation of the cognitive system and more a function of the method used to recover goals during a decision process.     

You detect while I search: examining visual search efficiency in a joint search task

Numerous factors impact attentional allocation, with behaviour being strongly influenced by the interaction between individual intent and our visual environment. Traditionally, visual search efficiency has been studied under solo search conditions. Here, we propose a novel joint search paradigm where one individual controls the visual input available to another individual via a gaze contingent window (e.g., Participant 1 controls the window with their eye movements and Participant 2 – in an adjoining room – sees only stimuli that Participant 1 is fixating and responds to the target accordingly). Pairs of participants completed three blocks of a detection task that required them to: (1) search and detect the target individually, (2) search the display while their partner performed the detection task, or (3) detect while their partner searched. Search was most accurate when the person detecting was doing so for the second time while the person controlling the visual input was doing so for the first time, even when compared to participants with advanced solo or joint task experience (Experiments 2 and 3). Through surrendering control of one’s search strategy, we posit that there is a benefit of a reduced working memory load for the detector resulting in more accurate search. This paradigm creates a counterintuitive speed/accuracy trade-off which combines the heightened ability that comes from task experience (discrimination task) with the slower performance times associated with a novel task (the initial search) to create a potentially more efficient method of visual search.     

Education as ethics: Emmanuel Levinas on Jewish schooling

For Levinas, the moment of real meaning is in the relation sustained with alterity. This relation is difficult or impossible to characterize philosophically, however, because to render it in comprehensive or objective terms would reduce the relation to one of comprehension and make it commensurate with the ego. Thus philosophy has an ambivalent status with respect to transcendence and ethics; but Levinas is convinced of the essentially transcendent or ethical meaning of Judaic practice: Talmudic exegesis, but also Jewish ritual and the keeping of the sabbath; and these elements are included within a conception of Jewish educational practices. Thus to what extent transcendent meaning can be discussed in philosophical terms and evinced in philosophical work (theoretical and practical)—or rather, to what extent transcendent meaning is possible at all—may be clarified by a sketch of Levinas’ broad approach to Jewish practice, particularly in terms of education. This essay shows how Jewish education is essential for transcendence and ethics for Levinas. Reference is made to several untranslated texts that Levinas published for intellectual but nonacademic French-Jewish journals, in which he explains his own pedagogical vocation. This offers an invaluable perspective on his philosophical and Judaic writings; and above all it gives an indication of his vision of the quotidian and life-long educational practices through which ethics and the transcendent relation between human beings are possible. Finally it raises the question of whether a secular or philosophical education could offer this as well.     

The Phenomenology of Early Psychosis Elicited in an Occupational Therapy Expressive Evaluation

Expressive assessments facilitate sharing, and the therapeutic understanding of youth. The experiences of nine young adults seeking help for psychosis were explored with an arts-based, occupational therapy expressive evaluation. The study used participant-observation methods. Data analysis drew on hermeneutic phenomenology. The findings illustrate the challenges these participants have in feeling connected to a shared world of doing, and in locating themselves within the temporal flow of time. Of significance was the potential to read the unfolding of creation in clay media as an acted narrative to tap into “constellations of meaning.” Implications for clinical practice and professional reasoning are highlighted.