The stigmatized perceiver: Exploring the implications of social stigma for cross-race face processing and memory

The human face is an important source of information, such as race or ethnicity, which can guide social interaction and outcomes. Research suggests that compared to majority and dominant group members, minority and subordinate group members tend to experience chronic stigma, resulting in more negative life outcomes (e.g., educational and occupational attainment). We argue that theory and research exploring face perception has not led to models that incorporate how the chronic experience of stigma may impact judgments, reflecting a gap with potential consequences for the validity and generalizability of the theories developed. We propose a framework for understanding how experiencing a socially stigmatized racial identity may lead perceivers to engage in face processing differently from their non-stigmatized counterparts. With a focus on the literature examining the cross-race effect, we explore the potential impact of chronic social stigma on three theorized moderators guiding processing and memory for same-versus cross-race faces. Our analysis suggests that future research focusing on stigmatized perceivers could help to explain some variation in findings, lead to novel theoretical development, and ultimately produce more generalizable research across several domains of inquiry.     

Religious Bias Among Religiously Conscious Black Christians in the United States

Research with White participants has demonstrated religious intergroup bias; however, religious identity may be different for Black Americans. Only religiously conscious Black Christians demonstrated a preference for Christian targets over Muslim and Atheist targets. Future research should consider what factors result in a person becoming conscious of other's religion.     

Objectivity and a comparison of methodological scenario approaches for climate change research

Climate change assessments rely upon scenarios of socioeconomic developments to conceptualize alternative outcomes for global greenhouse gas emissions. These are used in conjunction with climate models to make projections of future climate. Specifically, the estimations of greenhouse gas emissions based on socioeconomic scenarios constrain climate models in their outcomes of temperatures, precipitation, etc. Traditionally, the fundamental logic of the socioeconomic scenarios—that is, the logic that makes them plausible—is developed and prioritized using methods that are very subjective. This introduces a fundamental challenge for climate change assessment: The veracity of projections of future climate currently rests on subjective ground. We elaborate on these subjective aspects of scenarios in climate change research. We then consider an alternative method for developing scenarios, a systems dynamics approach called ‘Cross-Impact Balance’ (CIB) analysis. We discuss notions of ‘objective’ and ‘objectivity’ as criteria for distinguishing appropriate scenario methods for climate change research. We distinguish seven distinct meanings of ‘objective,’ and demonstrate that CIB analysis is more objective than traditional subjective approaches. However, we also consider criticisms concerning which of the seven meanings of ‘objective’ are appropriate for scenario work. Finally, we arrive at conclusions regarding which meanings of ‘objective’ and ‘objectivity’ are relevant for climate change research. Because scientific assessments uncover knowledge relevant to the responses of a real, independently existing climate system, this requires scenario methodologies employed in such studies to also uphold the seven meanings of ‘objective’ and ‘objectivity.’     

Infant behaviors influence mothers’ provision of responsive and directive behaviors

Mother–infant interactions are important to infant development because they are predictive of infants’ social, cognitive, and language development (0070 and 0150). Because maternal responsive and directive behaviors are associated with differential infant outcomes, it is important to investigate influences on mothers’ provision of responsive and directive behaviors. Yet, the dyadic interaction literature is predominantly unidirectional from maternal behavior to infant outcomes. Therefore, the current study examined infant initiating behaviors and consequent maternal responses in a sample of 26 13-month-old infants and their mothers, videotaped during 5 min of free-play. Findings revealed that infants produced a variety of initiatives, and that these different infant initiatives prompted differential patterns of maternal responsive versus directive behaviors. Further, results of analyses of divergent types of maternal directive behaviors – Responsive Directives, ReDirectives, and Intrusive Directives – also may help clarify major discrepancies in the current literature regarding the positive and negative effects of maternal directiveness.     

fMRI of parents of children with Asperger Syndrome: a pilot study

BACKGROUND: People with autism or Asperger Syndrome (AS) show altered patterns of brain activity during visual search and emotion recognition tasks. Autism and AS are genetic conditions and parents may show the 'broader autism phenotype.' AIMS: (1) To test if parents of children with AS show atypical brain activity during a visual search and an empathy task; (2) to test for sex differences during these tasks at the neural level; (3) to test if parents of children with autism are hyper-masculinized, as might be predicted by the 'extreme male brain' theory. METHOD: We used fMRI during a visual search task (the Embedded Figures Test (EFT)) and an emotion recognition test (the 'Reading the Mind in the Eyes' (or Eyes) test). SAMPLE: Twelve parents of children with AS, vs. 12 sex-matched controls. DESIGN: Factorial analysis was used to map main effects of sex, group (parents vs. controls), and sexxgroup interaction on brain function. An ordinal ANOVA also tested for regions of brain activity where females>males>fathers=mothers, to test for parental hyper-masculinization. RESULTS ON EFT TASK: Female controls showed more activity in extrastriate cortex than male controls, and both mothers and fathers showed even less activity in this area than sex-matched controls. There were no differences in group activation between mothers and fathers of children with AS. The ordinal ANOVA identified two specific regions in visual cortex (right and left, respectively) that showed the pattern Females>Males>Fathers=Mothers, both in BA 19. RESULTS ON EYES TASK: Male controls showed more activity in the left inferior frontal gyrus than female controls, and both mothers and fathers showed even more activity in this area compared to sex-matched controls. Female controls showed greater bilateral inferior frontal activation than males. This was not seen when comparing mothers to males, or mothers to fathers. The ordinal ANOVA identified two specific regions that showed the pattern Females>Males>Mothers=Fathers: left medial temporal gyrus (BA 21) and left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (BA 44). CONCLUSIONS: Parents of children with AS show atypical brain function during both visual search and emotion recognition, in the direction of hyper-masculinization of the brain. Because of the small sample size, and lack of age-matching between parents and controls, such results constitute a pilot study that needs replicating with larger samples.     

Spinoza's environmental ethics

The paper explores an apparent tension in Spinoza's thought between his treatment of man as part of nature, with no specially privileged position within it; and his treatment of morality as circumscribed by what is good for human beings. These two themes, it is argued, are in fact interconnected in Spinoza's thought. The paper goes on to consider some possible responses, from a contemporary standpoint, to Spinoza's rejection of animal rights. Finally, it is argued that the apparent tension in Spinoza's thought becomes more understandable in the light of his treatment of the importance of truth to human beings; and that this throws into relief some puzzling features of some contemporary formulations of the theme of man as part of nature.     

Replacement in Logic

We study a range of issues connected with the idea of replacing one formula by another in a fixed (linguistic) context. The replacement core of a consequence relation ? is the relation holding between a set of formulas {A ₁, ..., A _m , ...} and a formula B when for every context C(·), we have C(A ₁), ..., C(A _m ), ...???C(B). Section 1 looks at some differences between which inferences are lost on passing to the replacement cores of the classical and intuitionistic consequence relations. For example, we find that while the inference from A and B to $A \land B$ , sanctioned by both these initial consequence relations, is retained on passage to the replacement core in the classical case, it is lost in the intuitionistic case. Further discussion of these two (and some other) logics occupies Sections 3 and 4. Section 2 looks at the m?=?1 case, describing A as replaceable by B according to ? when B is a consequence of A by the replacement core of ?, and inquiring as to which choices of ? render this induced replaceability relation symmetric. Section 5 investigates further conceptual refinements— such as a contrast between horizontal and vertical replaceability—suggested by some work of R. B. Angell and R. Harrop (and a comment on the latter by T. J. Smiley) in the 1950s and 1960s. Appendix 1 examines a related aspect of term-for-term replacement in connection with identity in predicate logic. Appendix 2 is a repository for proofs which would otherwise clutter up Section 3.     

For Want of an ‘And’: A Puzzle about Non-Conservative Extension

The paper analyses Frege's approach to the identity conditions for the entity labelled by him as Sinn. It starts with a brief characterization of the main principles of Frege's semantics and lists his remarks on the identity conditions for Sinn. They are subject to a detailed scrutiny, and it is shown that, with the exception of the criterion of intersubstitutability in oratio obliqua, all other criteria have to be discarded. Finally, by comparing Frege's views on Sinn with Carnap's method of extension and intension and the method of intensional isomorphism, it is proved that these methods do not provide a criterion for the identity of Frege's Sinn, even for extensional contexts, that the concept of intension does not coincide, as stated by Carnap, in these contexts, with Frege's concept of Sinn, and that Carnap's claim that in oratio obliqua Frege's semantics leads to an infinite hierarchy of Sinn entities can be questioned at least hypothetically in the light of certain new historical facts.     

Word Memory Test Performance in Children

One-hundred and thirty-five children between the ages of 7 and 18 years were evaluated clinically. Their diagnoses included Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS) or Effects, Schizophrenia, Bipolar Mood Disorder, various neurological diseases, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Conduct Disorder, Oppositional-Defiant Disorder and learning disabilities. As part of a comprehensive neuropsychological assessment, the children were given the Word Memory Test (WMT; Green, Allen, & Astner, 1996; Green & Astner, 1995), containing various subtests which measure, respectively, effort and verbal memory. Although age and verbal intelligence are known to affect scores on most ability tests, they were not found to be significant determinants of WMT effort scores. Younger children did not score any lower on the effort subtests than older children. The children scored as well as a group of parents seeking custody of their children and they scored higher than adult patients with mild head injuries. The computerized WMT requires some basic reading skills and some children with lower than a grade 3 reading level scored at a relatively low level on the effort subtests. The current data suggest that most children with at least a grade 3 reading level can pass the WMT using the adult criteria. It is concluded that the WMT is potentially useful in the evaluation of effort during pediatric neuropsychological evaluations. Further research is needed to replicate these findings and to develop child norms for the memory subtests.     

Probabilities on Sentences in an Expressive Logic

Automated reasoning about uncertain knowledge has many applications. One difficulty when developing such systems is the lack of a completely satisfactory integration of logic and probability. We address this problem directly. Expressive languages like higher-order logic are ideally suited for representing and reasoning about structured knowledge. Uncertain knowledge can be modeled by using graded probabilities rather than binary truth values. The main technical problem studied in this paper is the following: Given a set of sentences, each having some probability of being true, what probability should be ascribed to other (query) sentences? A natural wish-list, among others, is that the probability distribution (i) is consistent with the knowledge base, (ii) allows for a consistent inference procedure and in particular (iii) reduces to deductive logic in the limit of probabilities being 0 and 1, (iv) allows (Bayesian) inductive reasoning and (v) learning in the limit and in particular (vi) allows confirmation of universally quantified hypotheses/sentences. We translate this wish-list into technical requirements for a prior probability and show that probabilities satisfying all our criteria exist. We also give explicit constructions and several general characterizations of probabilities that satisfy some or all of the criteria and various (counter)examples. We also derive necessary and sufficient conditions for extending beliefs about finitely many sentences to suitable probabilities over all sentences, and in particular least dogmatic or least biased ones. We conclude with a brief outlook on how the developed theory might be used and approximated in autonomous reasoning agents. Our theory is a step towards a globally consistent and empirically satisfactory unification of probability and logic.