Intrapersonal and interpersonal risk factors for peer victimization in immigrant youth in Finland

This study (a) compared native Finns and immigrant children with respect to different forms of peer victimization and (b) tested whether intrapersonal (e.g., depression) and interpersonal (e.g., peer rejection) sample was drawn from the first phase of a large intervention evaluation project, KiVa, in Finland, composed of 4,957 native Finns (51% girls), 146 first-generation immigrants (48% girls), and 310 second-generation immigrants (53% girls) 9 to 12 years of age. The concurrent data included self- and peer reports collected via Internet-based questionnaires. Compared with native youth, first- and second-generation immigrants were more often targets of both peer- and self-reported victimization. Both immigrant groups experienced higher levels of physical, racist, and sexual victimization than natives. Furthermore, second-generation immigrants reported higher levels of property damage, threats, and cybervictimization than native Finns. Significant indirect effects were found between immigrant status and victimization. Interpersonal but not intrapersonal risk factors helped to explain these associations.     

The magic cup: great apes and domestic dogs (Canis familiaris) individuate objects according to their properties

Despite current interest in dog (Canis familiaris) cognition, very little is known about how dogs represent objects and how they compare with other species, such as the great apes. Therefore, we investigated how dogs and great apes (chimpanzees [Pan troglodytes], bonobos [Pan paniscus], orangutans [Pongo pygmaeus], gorillas [Gorilla gorilla]) individuate objects in a classical violation of expectation paradigm. We used a container (magic cup) with a double bottom that allowed us to change the type of food that subjects had seen being placed in the container. Using a 2 × 2 design, we varied whether subjects received a generally preferred food and whether the food was substituted (surprise trials) or not (baseline trials). Apes showed increased begging and looking behaviors and dogs showed increased smelling behavior. Both species stayed near the experimenter more frequently in the surprise trials compared with baseline trials. Both species reacted to positive (i.e., good food substituted for bad food) and negative (i.e., bad food substituted for good food) surprises. These results suggest that apes and dogs were able to individuate objects according to their properties or type in comparable ways. In addition, we looked for frustration and elation effects, but subjects' behaviors were not influenced by the food they saw and which they received in previous trials.     

The hyphen as a segmentation cue in triconstituent compound processing: it's getting better all the time

Bertram, R., Kuperman, V., Baayen, R. H. & Hyönä, J. (2011). The hyphen as a segmentation cue in triconstituent compound processing: It’s getting better all the time. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology 52, 530–544. Inserting a hyphen in Dutch and Finnish compounds is most often illegal given spelling conventions. However, the current two eye movement experiments on triconstituent Dutch compounds like voetbalbond“footballassociation” (Experiment 1) and triconstituent Finnish compounds like lentokenttätaksi“airporttaxi” (Experiment 2) show that inserting a hyphen at constituent boundaries does not have to be detrimental to compound processing. In fact, when hyphens were inserted at the major constituent boundary (voetbal‐bond“football‐association”; lentokenttä‐taksi“airport‐taxi”), processing of the first part (voetbal“football”; lentokenttä“airport”) turns out to be faster when it is followed by a hyphen than when it is legally concatenated. Inserting a hyphen caused a delay in later eye movement measures, which is probably due to the illegality of inserting hyphens in normally concatenated compounds. However, in both Dutch and Finnish we found a learning effect in the course of the experiment, such that by the end of the experiments hyphenated compounds are read faster than in the beginning of the experiment. By the end of the experiment, compounds with a hyphen at the major constituent boundary were actually processed equally fast as (Dutch) or even faster than (Finnish) their concatenated counterparts. In contrast, hyphenation at the minor constituent boundary (voet‐balbond“foot‐ballassociation”; lento‐kenttätaksi“air‐porttaxi”) was detrimental to compound processing speed throughout the experiment. The results imply that the hyphen may be an efficient segmentation cue and that spelling illegalities can be overcome easily, as long as they make sense.     

Post-decision consolidation in large group decision-making

Decision-makers tend to change the psychological attractiveness of decision alternatives in favor of their own preferred alternative after the decision is made. In two experiments, the present research examined whether such decision consolidation occurs also among individual group members in a large group decision-making situation. High-school students were presented with a decision scenario on an important issue in their school. The final decision was made by in-group authority, out-group authority or by majority after a ballot voting. Results showed that individual members of large groups changed the attractiveness of their preferred alternative from a pre- to a post-decision phase, that these consolidation effects increased when decisions were made by in-group members, and when participants identified strongly with their school. Implications of the findings for understanding of group behavior and subgroup relations are discussed.     

What I Talk About When I Talk About Teaching and Learning

In this text I discuss two events in which I learned something important about life and about education in order to formulate in a precise manner two propositions for my pedagogical creed. In focus for both are the interrelatedness of theory and life. The stories are told through the lenses of Emmanuel Levinas’s and Jacques Rancière’s thinking, but the stories also are shown to be essential in my understanding of their thinking. The first story is about learning ethics as a consequence of meeting an old man on a remote island and the second story is about teaching, when a young girl in a situation of war taught me something important about political life. In a final section I discuss briefly what those theoretical/practical experiences and memories bring to my understanding of education.     

Fruitful plans: adding targeted mental imagery to implementation intentions increases fruit consumption

Forming implementation intentions ('If I encounter situation X, then I will perform behaviour Y!') increases the probability of carrying out goals. This study tested the hypothesis that mental imagery targeting key elements of implementation intentions further increases goal achievement. The residents of a student residence were assigned the goal of consuming extra portions of fruit every day for 7 days and randomly assigned to one of four conditions: control (active rehearsal), implementation intentions, goal intention mental imagery or mental imagery targeted to the implementation intentions. Among low fruit consumers, but not high fruit consumers, fruit consumption at follow-up was higher in the targeted mental imagery group than in the other group, with the lowest fruit consumption in the control group. The findings suggest that it may be beneficial to use targeted mental imagery when forming implementation intentions.     

Being present in more than one place at a time? Patterns of mental self-localization

Research in cognitive neuroscience and spatial presence suggests that human mental self-localization is tied to one place at a given point in time. In this study, we examined whether it is possible to feel localized at two distinct places at the same time. Participants (N = 30) were exposed to a virtual rollercoaster and they continuously judged to what extent they felt present in the immediate environment and in the mediated environment, respectively. The results show that participants distributed their self-localization to both environments, and the two values added up to closely 100% over time. In addition, even though the judgments are highly idiosyncratic, they were almost perfectly inversely related. This indicates that individuals can distribute their self over two distinct places. These findings provide important insights about understanding of the human self-localization.     

Placebo-mediated, Naloxone-sensitive suggestibility of short-term memory performance

Physiological studies of placebo-mediated suggestion have been recently performed beyond their traditional clinical context of pain and analgesia. Various neurotransmitter systems and immunological modulators have been used in successful placebo suggestions, including Dopamine, Cholecystokinin and, most extensively, opioids. We adhered to an established conceptual framework of placebo research and used the μ-opioid-antagonist Naloxone to test the applicability of this framework within a cognitive domain (e.g. memory) in healthy volunteers. Healthy men (n=62, age 29, SD=9) were required to perform a task-battery, including standardized and custom-designed memory tasks, to test short-term recall and delayed recognition. Tasks were performed twice, before and after intravenous injection of either NaCl (0.9%) or Naloxone (both 0.15 mg/kg), in a double-blind setting. While one group was given neutral information (S-), the other was told that it might receive a drug with suspected memory-boosting properties (S+). Objective and subjective indexes of memory performance and salivary cortisol (as a stress marker) were recorded during both runs and differences between groups were assessed. Short-term memory recall, but not delayed recognition, was objectively increased after placebo-mediated suggestion in the NaCl-group. Naloxone specifically blocked the suggestion effect without interfering with memory performance. These results were not affected when changes in salivary cortisol levels were considered. No reaction time changes, recorded to uncover unspecific attentional impairment, were seen. Placebo-mediated suggestion produced a training-independent, objective and Naloxone-sensitive increase in memory performance. These results indicate an opioid-mediated placebo effect within a circumscribed cognitive domain in healthy volunteers.     

Intonational phrase structure processing at different stages of syntax acquisition: ERP studies in 2-, 3-, and 6-year-old children

This study explored the electrophysiology underlying intonational phrase processing at different stages of syntax acquisition. Developmental studies suggest that children's syntactic skills advance significantly between 2 and 3 years of age. Here, children of three age groups were tested on phrase-level prosodic processing before and after this developmental phase, while their brain activity was recorded. The Closure Positive Shift (CPS), which indexes the perception of intonational phrasing in adults, served as dependent variable. The event-related brain potentials of 3- and 6-year-olds, but not of 21-month-olds, showed a CPS. These results suggest that prosodic phrase processing, as indicated by the CPS, is established only later during children's development, pointing to a close interaction of prosody and syntax acquisition.