Reconsidering research on self-humanizing: The importance of mean comparative judgments

Self-humanization is defined as the tendency to view oneself as more essentially human than others. Researchers have claimed that people attribute human nature traits more strongly to themselves than to others, but not uniquely human traits. In this article we suggest that such claims are based on the misinterpretation of results. Most studies have not presented mean comparative judgments, making it impossible to determine whether people thought they possessed characteristics less strongly or more strongly than the average person. We found that people (N = 256) in Poland, Italy, and Korea perceived themselves as possessing desirable human nature and uniquely human characteristics more than others, as possessing undesirable uniquely human traits less than others, and as similar to others in terms of undesirable human nature characteristics. It seems that being more human than others means possessing some traits more than others and possessing some traits less than others.     

On the Continuity and Origin of Identity in Distributed Ledgers: Learning from Russell's Paradox

This article studies the origin and continuity of the identity of the entities inscribed in a distributed ledger. Specifically, it focuses on the differences between the identities of the entities that exist in a distributed ledger and those of the entities that exist outside the ledger but must be represented in the ledger in order to interact with it. It suggests that a distributed ledger that contains representations of entities that exist outside the ledger can yield a continuum of interconnected existing and past identities that is constantly redefined to represent new conceptual entities. This continuum can be understood as a metasortal—or a sortal of sortals—that resembles the mathematical structure of a set of sets. Further, the article presents the dilemma that arises when representing the identities of entities in a distributed ledger, and it draws an analogy between this dilemma and Russell's Paradox.     

Development and validation of an Argentine set of facial expressions of emotion

Pictures of facial expressions of emotion are used in a wide range of experiments. The last decade has seen an increase in the number of studies presenting local sets of emotion stimuli. However, only a few existing sets contain pictures of Latin Americans, despite the growing attention emotion research is receiving in this region. Here we present the development and validation of the Universidad Nacional de Cordoba, Expresiones de Emociones Faciales (UNCEEF), a Facial Action Coding System (FACS)-verified set of pictures of Argentineans expressing the six basic emotions, plus neutral expressions. FACS scores, recognition rates, Hu scores, and discrimination indices are reported. Evidence of convergent validity was obtained using the Pictures of Facial Affect in an Argentine sample. However, recognition accuracy was greater for UNCEEF. The importance of local sets of emotion pictures is discussed.     

Electromechanical delay in ballistic movement of superior limb: comparison between karate athletes and nonathletes

The aim of the study was to analyze electromechanical delay in a ballistic movement of the superior limb. 10 male karate athletes and 9 nonathletes (without karate experience) performed a motor skill as fast and powerfully as possible, with impact on a makiwara (karate training instrument). For each participant, 10 choku-zuki performances were analyzed. Kinematics and surface electromyographic (EMG) activity of the anterior and posterior portions of deltoid, pectoralis major, latissimus dorsi, triceps brachii, and biceps brachii were recorded. Athletes had significantly shorter delay in arm flexion agonist muscles and significantly higher delay in arm flexion antagonist muscles and in forearm extension agonists. Results suggest that enhanced performance in athletes was mainly due to motor learning.     

Neural correlates of skill acquisition with a cortical brain-machine interface

Research into the development of brain-machine interfaces (BMIs) has led to demonstrations of rodents, nonhuman primates, and humans controlling prosthetic devices in real time through modulation of neural signals. In particular, cortical BMI studies have shown that improvements in performance require learning and are associated with changes in neuronal tuning properties. These studies have further shown evidence of long-term improvements in performance with practice. The authors conducted experiments to understand long-term skill acquisition with BMIs and to characterize the neural correlates of improvements in task performance. They specifically assessed long-term acquisition of neuroprosthetic skill (i.e., accurate task performance readily recalled across days). In 2 monkeys performing a center-out task using a brain-controlled (BC) computer cursor, they closely monitored daily performance trends and the neural correlates under different conditions. Importantly, they assessed BC performance using a continuous-control multistep task. The authors first conducted experiments that mimicked experimental conditions commonly used. Specifically, a large set of neurons was incorporated with daily recalibration of the transform of neural activity to BC. Under such conditions, they found evidence of variable daily performance. In contrast, when a fixed transform was applied to stable recordings from an ensemble of neurons across days, there was consistent evidence of long-term skill acquisition. Such skill acquisition was associated with the crystallization of a cortical map for prosthetic control. Taken together, the results suggest that the primate motor cortex can achieve skilled control of a neuroprosthetic device through consolidation of a cortical representation.     

Gender Bender: Gender Errors in L2 Pronoun Production

To address questions about information processing at the message level, pronoun errors of second language (L2) speakers of English were studied. Some L2 pronoun errors—he/she confusions by Spanish speakers of L2 English—could be due to differences in the informational requirements of the speakers’ two languages, providing a window into the composition of the preverbal message that guides grammatical encoding during language production. To study this, Spanish and French speakers of L2 English were made to answer questions designed to elicit pronouns. Spanish speakers produced significantly more gender errors than any other type of pronoun error, and significantly more gender errors than French speakers. The results are as expected given that Spanish is a pro-drop language where many sentences would not have required gender to be encoded had they been uttered in the L1 instead of the L2. The implications for theories about the preverbal message are discussed.     

Not just semantics: Strong frequency and weak cognate effects on semantic association in bilinguals

To investigate the possibility that knowledge of two languages influences the nature of semantic representations, bilinguals and monolinguals were compared in a word association task. In Experiment 1, bilinguals produced less typical responses relative to monolinguals when given cues with a very common associate (e.g., given bride, bilinguals said “dress” instead of “groom”). In Experiment 2, bilinguals produced responses as typical as those of monolinguals when given cues with high-frequency associates, but not when given cues with lowfrequency associates. Bilinguals’ responses were also affected, to a certain extent, by the cognate status of the stimulus word pairs: They were more similar to monolinguals’ responses when the cue and its strongest associate were both cognates (e.g., minute-second is minuto-segundo in Spanish), as opposed to both being noncognates. Experiment 3 confirmed the presence of a robust frequency effect on bilingual but not on monolingual association responses. These findings imply a lexical locus for the bilingual effect on association responses and reveal the association task to be not quite as purely semantic as was previously assumed.     

When the victim is one among others: Empathy,awareness of others and motivational ambivalence

Feeling empathy for one person in need while being aware of others may increase the motivational ambivalence between the motive of helping the one and the motive of helping the others, and such motivational ambivalence may reduce the helping directed to the person in need. To test these hypotheses we carried out three studies in which participants were faced with a real case of a child in need. In Study 1, empathy, awareness of others and motivational ambivalence were allowed to occur naturally and subsequently measured. In Study 2, empathy and awareness of others were experimentally manipulated, and motivational ambivalence measured. In Study 3, we tested how empathy and motivational ambivalence influenced an actual helping decision. Taken together, the results supported our two hypotheses. The present research offers insight into processes not previously considered in the research, but which may influence decisions about assistance to others in need.     

Principles and criteria used by the National Evaluation Committee of Research Activity (CNEAI-Spain) for the assessment of scientific publications: 1989-2009

Study of the origins, philosophy and history of the criteria used to assess research activities in Spain by the CNEAI. The assessment criteria and quality evidence of publications is discussed. Results are presented on the temporal development of the criteria used, grouped by publication type (articles and books) and fields of knowledge. Between 1989-1996, assessment was based on the definition and goals set by the Spanish scientific framework and on general criteria. Between 1996-2004, the formulation of indicators began to be almost exclusively based on Journal Citation Reports (JCR). Success rates up to 2004 indicate that the evaluation criteria and publishing behaviour matched the "hard sciences", but not the Social Sciences and Economics. In 2005, the criteria used were further developed and reoriented with an eye to softening the preceding JCR-centrism by taking into consideration other databases and defining the quality criteria to be met by journals, books and conferences not included in JCR. Correspondingly, the success rates for 2007 indicate a dramatic recovery in Economics. In the last 4 years, Humanities and Social Sciences have consolidated the further opening of the criteria used with the addition of new benchmarks and the full integration of books.     

Factor structure and internal consistency of the Spanish version of the Parenting Stress Index-Short Form

The aim of this study was to analyze the psychometric properties of the Spanish version of Parenting Stress Index-Short Form. After translating the instrument from English into Spanish using the forward-backward translation method, it was administered to a sample of 129 mothers of children aged between 10 and 39 months olds. The exploratory factor analysis identified two factors: Childrearing Stress and Personal Distress, which accounted for 48.77% of the variance. The internal consistency of these factors was high (Childrearing Stress: .90 and Personal Distress: .87). Implications of these findings and suggestions for future research are discussed.