Infant perception of a manual pick-up event

Manual pick-up of an object is a simple causal event frequently observed by infants. A habituation-recovery of looking technique with filmed stimuli is used in experiments which seek to investigate aspects of the perception and encoding of such events in infants. In the first study with 28-week-olds, it is found that ‘lateral mirror-image’ pick-ups are hardly discriminable, while a change in the contact relation of hand and object is readily discriminable. In the second, again with 28-week-olds, the discriminability of the contact relation appears to be specific to a dynamic context involving a hand (rather than another inanimate object). The results of a further experiment make it appear unlikely that the previous results were simply due to the partial occlusion of the picked-up object produced by the grasping. The implications of these results for infant perception of causality are briefly considered.     

Infant individuation and identification of objects

Recent studies of the infant's object concept have focused on the role of property information in individuation. We draw a distinction between individuation and identification. By individuation, we mean the setting up of an object representation (OR). By identification, we mean using the information stored in an OR to decide which, if any, previously individuated object is presently encountered. We investigate this distinction in experiments with 12-month-old infants. We find that for infants of this age, a shape difference between two objects has a large effect on both individuation and identification. However, a color difference between two objects has a large effect on individuation, but little or no effect on identification. This suggests that, somewhat surprisingly, information used to establish an OR may not always be incorporated into that representation.     

Immigration Law and Its Impact on the Family: What Group Therapists Need to Know

ABSTRACT

This article provides an overview of structural limitations and challenges imposed by U.S. immigration law and enforcement policies and how they specifically impact families. Our analysis draws from numerous years of experience practicing immigration law and analysis of social and legal factors that impact immigrant individuals and families. We provide historical context for the Trump administration policies that have generated so much debate, reviewing how U.S. immigration creates barriers to family unity and stress on immigrant individuals and families, and explaining how the current administration has exacerbated these problems. We aim to help group psychotherapists gain greater awareness of their immigrant patients’ experiences through an analysis of immigration law and the use of case studies.     

Countering anti-Muslim attitudes among Christian and religiously unaffiliated 13- to 15-year-old students in England and Wales: testing the contact hypothesis

ABSTRACT

Drawing on data provided by 5,811 students from schools in England, Wales, and London who self-identified as either ‘no religion’ or as Christian, this study explored the effect of the contact hypothesis (having friends who are Muslims) on scores recorded on the seven-item Scale of Anti-Muslim Attitude (SAMA), after controlling for type of school (with or without a religious character), location (England, Wales, and London), personal factors (sex and age), psychological factors (extraversion, neuroticism, and psychoticism) and religious factors (self-assigned affiliation as Christian, worship attendance, and belief in God). The data demonstrated the positive effect of having friends who are Muslim on lowering anti-Muslim attitudes. The path is then described from educational research to curriculum development in the design of resources that offer young learners vicarious experience of having friends who are Muslims.