Delusions,Acceptances, and Cognitive Feelings

Psychopathological delusions have a number of features that are curiously difficult to explain. Delusions are resistant to counterevidence and impervious to counterargument. Delusions are theoretically, affectively, and behaviorally circumscribed: delusional individuals often do not act on their delusions and often do not update beliefs on the basis of their delusions. Delusional individuals are occasionally able to distinguish their delusions from other beliefs, sometimes speaking of their “delusional reality.” To explain these features, I offer a model according to which, contrary to appearances, delusions are not beliefs at all. Delusions are acceptances that are generated by pathologically powerful cognitive feelings. This model has implications for the way that we should think about non‐pathological doxastic states and emotions.     

Consumers' Affective Response to Delays at Different Phases of a Service Delivery1

A field experiment was conducted in an educational setting to investigate affective reactions occurring at different phases of the delivery of a service. An eight-minute delay caused more negative affective reactions when it occurred either before the service started (preprocess) or after the service had terminated (postprocess) than when it occurred in the middle of the service encounter (in-process). No differences were observed for positive affect. Field theory is proposed as a theoretical framework to account for the results, and practical applications for addressing the social problem of structuring waiting environments are discussed.     

Feminists Need to Look Beyond Evolutionary Psychology for Insights into Human Reproductive Strategies: A Commentary

The Sex Roles: Feminist Reappraisals of Evolutionary Psychology issue that addressed evolutionary psychology’s Sexual Strategies Theory is enlightening for feminists as well as those scholars who examine men and women’s behavior. As several articles in this issue show, there are mixed results in support of this theory. While some feminists may want to conclude that this an indication of the limited influence evolution and biology has on gendered behavior, the mixed results rather may be due to problems that are foundational to evolutionary psychology itself. For those interested in evolutionary perspectives of men and women’s behavior, they should look beyond evolutionary psychology and examine what evolutionary biology and behavioral ecology can provide to our understanding of reproductive strategies. This is evident in feminist and female evolutionists’ works that have created a new model of sexual dialectics, begun the retesting of A. J. Bateman’s foundational work that underlies parental investment theory and Sexual Strategies Theory, and provided new evidence of phenotypic and behavioral plasticity. This research has called into question past assumptions of male dominance and female passivity in mating, and continues to challenge evolutionary psychology’s claim that based on Sexual Strategies Theory, there are evolved psychological gender differences between men and women in their desire for short-term mating opportunities and sexual variety that are rooted in our evolutionary past and not very responsive to the current environments within which men and women are making these reproductive decisions.     

Resolving Power of the Perceptual-and Sensorimotor Systems in 6- to 10-Year-Old Children

Children aged 6 to 10 were tested on their ability to move accurately and to perceptually evaluate their motor response. Subjects performed a directional and an amplitude visuo-manual aiming task without vision of their moving limb. They were asked to correct their error, after completion of their movements, only if they felt they were not accurate. Terminal aiming errors and correction responses (adjustments) were analyzed, and threshold detection was determined relative to terminal aiming error. Action accuracy and evaluation of action accuracy are two abilities that do not develop synchronously. Moreover, the relationship between these abilities depends on whether accuracy and direction or amplitude are required. Amplitude undergoes more corrections than direction, suggesting that the spatial system of reference involved depends more upon the coding of the final position than on direction. Two spatial comparators, operating on the basis of two types of evaluation, seem to have a variably distinct contribution to movement and perception accuracy, according to age.     

Acquisition of lexical morphology in simple partial epilepsy.

In the study of language acquisition following early brain damage, results have been divergent. On one hand, some studies claim that language eventually resumes to normal, whereas, on the other hand, studies show lasting deficits throughout development. Discrepancies in the results could arise from different etiologies and tests used. This study attempts to determine the extent to which the development of verb production is affected in later development in children who had simple partial epilepsy (SPE). Measures of diversity and fluency of three verb types, namely main verbs, auxiliary and copula verbs, and nonfinite verbs were used on three children diagnosed as SPE and compared to control groups. Our main results show a limited production of auxiliary verbs. Further analysis of their productions suggest a telegraphic style of speech, as reflected by a superior production of nonfinite verb type compared with normal children. These findings are interpreted as reflecting long-lasting consequences of early brain damage with respect to language development.     

Reciprocal Markov Modeling of Feedback Mechanisms Between Emotion and Dietary Choice Using Experience-Sampling Data

With intensively collected longitudinal data, recent advances in the experience-sampling method (ESM) benefit social science empirical research, but also pose important methodological challenges. As traditional statistical models are not generally well equipped to analyze a system of variables that contain feedback loops, this paper proposes the utility of an extended hidden Markov model to model reciprocal the relationship between momentary emotion and eating behavior. This paper revisited an ESM data set (Lu, Huet, &; Dube, 2011 Lu, J., Huet, C., &; Dubé, L. (2011). Emotional reinforcement as a protective factor for healthy eating in home settings. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 94(1), 254–261. http://dx.doi.org/10.3945/ajcn.110.006361[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) that observed 160 participants' food consumption and momentary emotions 6 times per day in 10 days. Focusing on the analyses on feedback loop between mood and meal-healthiness decision, the proposed reciprocal Markov model (RMM) can accommodate both hidden (“general” emotional states: positive vs. negative state) and observed states (meal: healthier, same or less healthy than usual) without presuming independence between observations and smooth trajectories of mood or behavior changes. The results of RMM analyses illustrated the reciprocal chains of meal consumption and mood as well as the effect of contextual factors that moderate the interrelationship between eating and emotion. A simulation experiment that generated data consistent with the empirical study further demonstrated that the procedure is promising in terms of recovering the parameters.     

Role of proprioceptive information in movement programming and control in 5 to 11-year old children

The role of proprioceptive inputs in the control of goal-directed movements was examined, by means of the tendon vibration technique, in 5 to 11-year old children performing a serial pointing task. Children pointed, with movements of various amplitudes and at various positions, by alternating wrist flexions and extensions. Tendon vibration was applied to both agonist and antagonist muscles to perturb relevant muscular proprioceptive inputs during the static or dynamic phase of the task, i.e., during stops on targets or during movement execution. Constant and variable amplitude errors as well as constant position error were evaluated. Vibratory perturbation applied during movement execution resulted in a similar reduction in movement amplitude, yielding an increased constant error in all age groups and a systematic position error in the direction of the movement starting point. Perturbing proprioception during static phases preceding movement resulted in an age-related increase in the variable amplitude error, which was maximal in 5-year old children performing extension movements. The results were interpreted in terms of the use of proprioceptive information in the feedforward and feedback based components of movement control in children. In particular, the results indicated (1) developmental changes in the relative weighting of each component, (2) an increased capacity to move from one strategy to the other, depending on the availability of information, and (3) developmental changes from an alternated to an integrated control of amplitude and position in serial pointing.     

Racial Stereotypes and Gender in Context: African Americans at Predominantly Black and Predominantly White Colleges

In this study, relationships among stereotype expectations, gender, and academic self-concept and performance of African American students in predominantly White and predominantly Black college contexts were examined. Stereotype expectations are students' perceptions of biased treatment and evaluation within their major classroom settings (SE). Findings indicated that students' majors were related to stereotype expectations, as well as to their academic competence. Our results also provide evidence of gender and institutional interactions in the relationships between stereotype expectations and academic outcomes. Results are discussed in terms of the need to examine issues of race and gender in the academic experiences of African Americans, as well as how their specific school and classroom contexts may influence their experiences.     

The Evolution of Gendered Political Behavior: Contributions from Feminist Evolutionists

This commentary discusses Rebecca Hannagan’s article “Gendered Political Behavior: A Darwinian Feminist Approach,” an interdisciplinary examination of how human female social and political behaviors are unique and have impacted the evolution of human societies. She reexamines the anthropological literature on egalitarian foraging societies to focus on female autonomy and leadership, and connects women’s evolved skills with their contemporary leadership experiences. As Hannagan’s work demonstrates, Darwinian feminists challenge sexist stereotypes from a variety of sub-disciplines that use evolutionary perspectives, build upon and expand the earlier ground-breaking work of other feminist evolutionists, and blaze new trails using the latest technology and models to gain further understanding of human behavior that will help promote greater equality and opportunities for women.