Why some are perceived as more confident and more insecure, more reckless and more cautious, more trusting and more suspicious, than others: Enriched and impoverished options in social judgment

In line with the principle of compatibility, when making social judgments, people tend to focus on personality attributes compatible with the trait under consideration. Better known, orenriched, personages are more likely to present attributes that are compatible with a particular trait than are personages about whom little is known. As a result, enriched personages are more likely to have various, sometimes even conflicting, traits attributed to them. This hypothesis is supported by a number of studies that compare the frequency with which some people are chosen as being better described by opposite trait adjectives than are others. Celebrities more often have both of a pair of opposing adjectives ascribed to them than do less well known figures. Similarly, subjects judge themselves to be better described by either of a pair of opposite adjectives than is a person who is relatively unknown in their lives. The implications for social judgment and for everyday decisions are discussed.     

Reductions in criminality subsequent to group, individual, and family therapy in adolescent residential and day treatment settings.

The complete population of adolescents in a residential and day-treatment program over a 4-year period, 532 youths, served in two studies. Along with residential and day-treatment settings, predictive variables of interest were the number of hours spent in group, individual, and family therapy. A total of 227 adolescents qualified for Study 1 which found a reduction of rates of criminal charges from pre- to posttreatment. Study 1 also found that hours in group therapy explained the most variance in the reduction in rates of criminal charges, followed closely by hours in individual therapy. Hours in family therapy was not a significant predictor. A total of 430 adolescents qualified for Study 2, which found that residential treatment was associated with greater reductions in adult correctional commitments than day treatment. Implications stress the need for further research examining the relationships between therapeutic components of residential treatment and behavioral outcomes.     

Stimulus Equivalence and The Blocking Effect

The Psychological Record - The purpose of this experiment was to examine the blocking effect within the context of a stimulus equivalence paradigm. Ten subjects were provided with a prior history...     

Neurons in Human Temporal Cortex Active with Verbal Associative Learning

In neuronal activity recorded from human middle temporal gyrus during learning of associations between word pairs, a population was identified that had greater activity for associations that were learned rapidly during initial encoding compared to those learned slowly or not at all by an individual subject. This population can be separated from other neurons by the combination of inhibition during word reading when no learning is required and excitation during recent memory for words. These neurons are present in both hemispheres, predominately in deeper layers of cortex. During initial encoding, the increased activity appears at presentation of all word pairs but persists for several seconds only for the rapidly learned pairs, likely reflecting rehersal of items being learned. Human associative learning is related to activity of this specific population of “association” neurons, identified here for the first time.     

Mommy and Daddy like you best: perceived family favouritism in relation to affect, adjustment and family process

Perceived family favouritism and disfavouritism were explored in relation to college students' adjustment, affect and family process. The participants included 127 males and females and 62 of their siblings (age range 18–32 years). Sixty-five per cent of the participants reported favouritism in their families; 24% reported disfavouritism. There was modest sibling agreement on the presence of family favouritism/disfavouritism as well as on who in the family was doing the favouring or disfavouring. The presence of disfavouritism was found to relate to lower family cohesion, higher family disengagement and higher family conflict. Participants who perceived themselves to be disfavoured also reported more frequent shame and more intense fear. Participants who perceived themselves to be favoured reported less frequent shame. Results are discussed in the context of the empirical and clinical literature on sibling and family interaction and the differential treatment of siblings by parents. A clinical case example is provided to illustrate the results and to highlight the implications for family therapy.     

Embodied AI, Creation, and Cog

This is a reply to comments on my paper Cog, a Humanoid Robot, and the Questions of the Image of God ; one was written by Mary Gerhart and Allan Melvin Russell, and another one by Helmut Reich. I will start with the suggested analogy of the relationship between God and us and the one between us and the humanoid robot Cog and will show why this analogy is not helpful for the dialogue between theology and artificial intelligence (AI). Such a dialogue can succeed only if both our fascination for humanoids and our fear of them are equally accepted. Any avoidance of these emotions, as well as any rejection of the possibility that Cog might one day be humanlike, destroy the dialogue. The interpretation of both scientific theories and religious metaphors as stories replaces seemingly "rational" arguments with the confession of the respective commitments to a body of stories and opens up a space for exchange and friendship between AI-researchers and theologians—an option that usually remains closed.