Nussbaum: Love and Respect

This article details how Martha Nussbaum has heightened the potential tension between love and respect, flagged by Kant, by strengthening what each requires. She elaborates the particularism and disruptiveness of love while insisting on a cosmopolitanism of respect. The article suggests that dealing with this tension will require developing a more detailed theory of institutional justice, one that can extend to the international arena.     

Spatial knowledge acquisition from maps and from navigation in real and virtual environments

In this study, the nature of the spatial representations of an environment acquired from maps, navigation, and virtual environments (VEs) was assessed. Participants first learned the layout of a simple desktop VE and then were tested in that environment. Then, participants learned two floors of a complex building in one of three learning conditions: from a map, from direct experience, or by traversing through a virtual rendition of the building. VE learners showed the poorest learning of the complex environment overall, and the results suggest that VE learners are particularly susceptible to disorientation after rotation. However, all the conditions showed similar levels of performance in learning the layout of landmarks on a single floor. Consistent with previous research, an alignment effect was present for map learners, suggesting that they had formed an orientation-specific representation of the environment. VE learners also showed a preferred orientation, as defined by their initial orientation when learning the environment. Learning the initial simple VE was highly predictive of learning a real environment, suggesting that similar cognitive mechanisms are involved in the two learning situations.     

Right Hemisphere Involvement in Processing Later-Learned Languages in Multilinguals

In two experiments, multilingual Papua New Guinean subjects were tested using a divided visual field technique designed to determine hemispheric laterality for English and for Tok Pisin. Various factors including age of acquisition, proficiency, mode of instruction, and number of years that the language had been used were considered in relation to language laterality. Only age of acquisition proved to be a significant contributor to the laterality effects obtained; older acquirers of both English and Tok Pisin showed greater right hemisphere involvement than early acquirers. Although proficiency did not seem to be related to language laterality, it too was systematically affected by acquisition age. Older acquirers of English performed significantly poorer than younger acquirers on all four of the language-usage tests given. The strong influence of acquisition age on cerebral laterality for language and proficiency is interpreted as supporting a critical period for language learning.     

The Relationship of the Racial Identity Attitudes of Black Men to Perceptions of “Parallel” Counseling Dyads

The perceptions that Black men (N = 52) have of “parallel” dyads involving a Black male client and a White male counselor were examined in a vicarious participation analogue design. As defined by Helms (1984b), parallel dyad involves a client and counselor who share similar racial identity attitudes (i.e., attitudes about themselves relative to Blacks and Whites as reference groups). Multiple regression analyses were used to investigate whether racial identity attitudes predicted participants' reactions to the session and their perceptions of the counselors' cross-cultural competence and credibility. The results of the study indicated that racial identity attitudes significantly predicted participants' immediate reactions to the counselor. We used Helms's (1984b) interaction model to discuss the results and their implications for counseling practice and research.     

Public opinion and the tax evasion trial of Reverend Moon

This paper presents the results of a survey of a random sample of 1,000 people taken from the Southern Judicial District of New York to measure the amount of knowledge about and bias toward the Reverend Moon prior to his trial on tax evasion charges. The survey was completed as part of the pretrial preparation by Reverend Moon, and was used to support his motion for a bench trial, instead of having the case tried before a jury. The survey revealed very high levels of knowledge about the Church and Reverend Moon, as well as a strong negative bias toward both. Implications of these results and the outcome of the actual trial for the jury system and for religion and religionists is discussed.     

Evaluation of a course in sex roles for secondary school students

As powerful socializing agents, schools can be important facilitators in changing social norms of gender-role expectations. This research study was designed to determine the impact of an interdisciplinary course in the effects of sex-role stereotyping on awareness and attitudes of the participants. The high school students in the experimental program increased their awareness of the stereotyping process and the effects of narrowly defined sex roles. These students perceived the roles of males and females in a more socially androgynous context than did students who did not take the course.     

The effect of the size of the test environment on behavior under two temporally defined schedules

The effect of the size of the floor area of the operant test chamber on behavior was tested using a standard-size test chamber and a test chamber with one-fourth of the floor area of the standard chamber. Two groups of pigeons were tested under a differential-reinforcement-of-low-rate 15-sec schedule or a variable-interval 60-sec schedule. Both groups of pigeons had higher response rates while in the smaller floor area. Pigeons under the differential-reinforcement-of-low-rate schedule also showed a decrease in rate of reinforcement, an increase in ratio of responses to reinforcements, and an alteration in interresponse-time-per-opportunity distributions when tested in the reduced floor-area condition. These effects are similar to those found under physical restraint, indicating that amount of floor space available for locomotion interacts with schedule behavior and that physical restraint may be regarded as the lower limiting value of amount of floor area available for locomotion.     

Imagery, concreteness, and lexical complexity

Both imageability and lexical complexity are shown to be influential in determining performance in free recall. However, both features may be confounded with an item's concreteness, and all three factors are controlled in a second experiment. Lexical complexity is shown not to have any effect on recall when imageability and concreteness are both controlled. Further, imageability is found to have an effect in the case of abstract words, but not in the case of concrete words. This result is replicated using English nominalizations. It is suggested that concreteness is a feature which is to be distinguished from imageability.