Re‐examining Human Dignity in Literary Texts: In Seeking for a Continuous Dialogue Between the Conceptual and the Empirical Approaches

The article deals with the treatment of human dignity in three novels: The Ballad of Narayama (1956) by Shichiro Fukasawa; Never Let Me Go (2005) by Kazuo Ishiguro; and Still Alice (2007) by Lisa Genova. The article argues for a rich understanding of human dignity, an understanding that cannot be reduced to rigid principles. Cultural forms, imagination, and fantasy employed in literary fiction allow us to see this richness.     

Cognitive and behavioral rating measures of executive function as predictors of academic outcomes in children

Interrelations of two measurement methods (cognitive versus behavioral ratings) for executive function (EF) were examined and related to reading comprehension and math calculations in fourth and fifth grade students (n = 93) in the context of a diverse urban student population. Relations among measures within four EF processes (working memory, planning, inhibition and shifting) were modest; relations to academics were stronger. EF measures contributed to both academic outcomes even in the context of relevant covariates (age, language and educational program). Working memory was particularly important for reading comprehension across measurement type. Cognitive measures from all EF processes, particularly inhibition and planning, and behavioral ratings of working memory were important for math.     

Context Sensitivity in Canadian and Japanese Children’s Judgments of Emotion

Previous studies showed that East Asians are more sensitive than North Americans to contextual information, and that the cultural differences in context sensitivity emerge in preschool children. Yet, little is known about whether this generalizes to children’s emotional judgments. The present study tested Canadian and Japanese preschool children and examined cross-culturally the extent to which facial expressions of surrounding people influence judgments of a target person’s emotion. Japanese children were more likely than Canadian children to judge an emotionally-neutral target as more negative (positive) when the background emotion was negative (positive), demonstrating an assimilation effect. Canadian children, however, showed a contrast effect: judging the target person’s neutral emotion as more negative when the background emotion was positive. These data extend extant understanding of emotion recognition by illuminating nuances in perceptual processes across developmental and cultural lines.     

Facial perception of conspecifics: chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) preferentially attend to proper orientation and open eyes

This paper reports on the use of an eye-tracking technique to examine how chimpanzees look at facial photographs of conspecifics. Six chimpanzees viewed a sequence of pictures presented on a monitor while their eye movements were measured by an eye tracker. The pictures presented conspecific faces with open or closed eyes in an upright or inverted orientation in a frame. The results demonstrated that chimpanzees looked at the eyes, nose, and mouth more frequently than would be expected on the basis of random scanning of faces. More specifically, they looked at the eyes longer than they looked at the nose and mouth when photographs of upright faces with open eyes were presented, suggesting that particular attention to the eyes represents a spontaneous face-scanning strategy shared among monkeys, apes, and humans. In contrast to the results obtained for upright faces with open eyes, the viewing times for the eyes, nose, and mouth of inverted faces with open eyes did not differ from one another. The viewing times for the eyes, nose, and mouth of faces with closed eyes did not differ when faces with closed eyes were presented in either an upright or inverted orientation. These results suggest the possibility that open eyes play an important role in the configural processing of faces and that chimpanzees perceive and process open and closed eyes differently.     

Self-representation in social anxiety disorder: linguistic analysis of autobiographical narratives

Cognitive models of social anxiety disorder (SAD) posit aberrant beliefs about the social self as a key psychological mechanism that maintains fear of negative evaluation in social and performance situations. Consequently, a distorted self-view should be evident when recalling painful autobiographical social memories, as reflected in linguistic expression, negative self-beliefs, and emotion and avoidance. To test this hypothesis, 42 adults diagnosed with SAD and 27 non-psychiatric healthy controls (HC) composed autobiographical narratives of distinct social anxiety related situations, generated negative self-beliefs (NSB), and provided emotion and avoidance ratings. Although narratives were matched for initial emotional intensity and present vividness, linguistic analyses demonstrated that, compared to HC, SAD employed more self-referential, anxiety, and sensory words, and made fewer references to other people. There were no differences in the number of self-referential NSB identified by SAD and HC. Social anxiety symptom severity, however, was associated with greater self-referential NSB in SAD only. SAD reported greater current self-conscious emotions when recalling autobiographical social situations, and greater active avoidance of similar situations than did HC. These findings support cognitive models of SAD, and suggest that autobiographical memory of social situations in SAD may influence current and future thinking, emotion, and behavioral avoidance.     

Residential mobility and conditionality of group identification

In three studies, we found that residential mobility accounts for cross-national, regional, and individual differences in the conditionality of identification with a group. In Study 1, participants from a mobile nation (US) showed more conditional identification with other group members than did participants from a stable nation (Japan). In Study 2, we found within-nation, regional variation in this tendency. Specifically, in residentially stable Japanese cities, the attendance to home baseball games was higher when the team was performing well than when it was performing poorly. In contrast, the attendance to the home games was not associated with the team’s performance. Finally, in Study 3 we found individual differences in the conditionality of group identification, such that frequent movers identified with the school more than non-movers did when the school was described favorably, whereas they distanced themselves from the school more than non-movers when their school was described unfavorably. These findings illustrate the role of residential mobility in individual, regional, and cross-national differences in the conditionality of group identification.     

Effects of L1 orthographic representation on L2 phonological coding strategies

The study investigated L1 orthographic impact on cognitive processing involved in L2 reading. In a cross-linguistic experiment with four orthographically diverse groups (Arabic, English, Japanese, and Spanish), the effects of two types of phonological encoding interference (phonological similarity and unpronounceability) on short-term memory recall performance in English were compared. Data demonstrate that (a) STM recall performance of all four groups was seriously impaired when phonological encoding interference was present, (b) the two types of interference had differential effects on STM performance between phonographic (Arabic, English, and Spanish) and morphographic (Japanese) readers, and (c) phonological coding strategies used in L1 and L2 are consistent. These results seem to indicate, first, that a phonological code is dominantly used in the STM encoding process regardless of the language background: second, that different phonological coding strategies are used among subjects with contrasting orthographic backgrounds; and, third, that strategies used in L1 processing are transferred to L2 processing. Hence, the findings of the study suggest that there is a strong relationship between orthography and cognition.     

An evaluation scale of family environment for identification of children at risk of school failure

This study describes the development of the Home Environment Resources Scale, a Brazilian measure for families with children ages 6 to 12 years. The scale measures aspects of support for school achievement, made available to the child at home. A first version of the measure with 11 subscales was administered to 100 mothers or guardians of children with poor school achievement in a clinical setting. Analysis of the items in the first version resulted in a final version comprising 8 subscales with acceptable indices of internal consistency. Two validity studies were conducted. One aimed at verifying to what extent the Home Environment Resources Scale could discriminate the home environment of students referred to a mental health clinic on account of poor school performance. The sample included mothers of 53 referred and 23 nonreferred children. The two groups differed significantly in home resources and on four subscales. The other study assessed the validity, i.e., prediction of the academic outcome of children entering Grade 1. 70 children and their mothers participated. Results indicate that school achievement and social competence at school are mediated by family support.     

Semantic priming effect of metaphor constituent terms

Camac and Glucksberg reported there was no priming effect between constituent terms of a metaphor and argued that there was no prior similarity or association between the constituents. However, their study had several limitations. An important one was that they neglected the asymmetry of metaphor constituent terms. The purpose of this study is to replicate their experiment under the condition in which one of the constituents preceded the other. The experiment was conducted with Japanese participants using Japanese metaphoric sentences as stimuli. The results showed that the decision was facilitated if the vehicle served as prime and the topic served as target. In contrast, if the topic preceded the vehicle, no priming effect was found. These results are discussed in terms of the class inclusion model proposed earlier by Glucksberg and Keysar.