End state copying by humans (Homo sapiens): implications for a comparative perspective on cumulative culture

It has been proposed that the uniqueness of human cumulative culture may be attributable to humans' greater orientation toward copying the process of behavior (imitation), as compared with the products (emulation), resulting in particularly high fidelity transmission. Following from previous work indicating that adult human participants can exhibit cumulative learning on the basis of product copying alone, we now investigate whether such learning involves high fidelity transmission. Eighty adult human (Homo sapiens) participants were presented with a task previously shown to elicit cumulative learning under experimental conditions, which involved building a tower from spaghetti and modeling clay. Each participant was shown two completed towers, ostensibly built by previous participants, but actually built to prespecified designs by the experimenter. This end state information was provided either in the form of photographs, or the presence of actual towers. High fidelity matching to these end states was apparent in both demonstration conditions, even for a design that was demonstrably suboptimal with regard to the goal of the task (maximizing tower height). We conclude that, although high fidelity transmission is likely to be implicated in cumulative culture, action copying is not always necessary for this to occur. Furthermore, since chimpanzees apparently copy behavioral processes and well as products, and also transmit behavior with high fidelity, the stark absence of unequivocal examples of cumulative culture in nonhumans may be attributable to factors other than imitative ability.     

Implicit effects of emotional contexts: An ERP study

Previous recognition memory experiments have demonstrated that the ERPs elicited by correctly recognized test items differ according to whether the items were encoded in an emotionally arousing or an emotionally neutral context. It is not clear, however, whether these ERP differences depend on the explicit recognition of the items. We addressed this question in the present study by contrasting the ERPs elicited by test items encoded in emotionally negative or emotionally neutral study contexts, according to whether the items were correctly recognized or misclassified as new. Recognized items associated with emotional rather than neutral contexts elicited an early positive-going and a later negative-going effect that resembled the effects reported in prior studies. Relative to unrecognized items encoded in neutral contexts, unrecognized items encoded in emotional contexts elicited a sustained, frontal-maximum, positive-going effect that onset at about 200?ms poststimulus. This effect may reflect an influence of emotional arousal on the neural correlates of implicit memory.     

Cigarette Smoking in Young Adults: Childhood and Adolescent Personality,Familial, and Peer Antecedents

Three models (independent, interdependent, and mediational) were hypothesized in this study, to examine the interrelation of personality, family, and peer determinants and their effects on tobacco use by young adults. Mothers were first interviewed about their children when they were between the ages of 1 and 10 years old. Three subsequent interviews were conducted with the children when they reached adolescence and young adulthood. Results show support for the mediational model. In accordance with family interactional framework conceptions, there was a sequence in patterning: from parenting during early adolescence; to personality and peer factors, extending to smoking in late adolescence; and culminating in smoking in adulthood. With a developmental approach, a number of psychosocial measures were related in both younger and older children. Nevertheless, some interesting developmental differences emerged. The findings suggest at least four possible targets for therapeutic or preventive intervention: the parent, the child, the adolescent, and the peer group.     

Female Shamanism and the Mapuche Transformation into Christian Chilean Farmers

This article examines the emergence of a new form of shamanism among the Mapuche of Chile during their first decades under the dominion of the Chilean state. Specifically, it links the emergence of a female shamanism with the policies implemented by the Chilean government and the Catholic Church to integrate the Mapuche into the Chilean society as Christian farmers. The material of this paper is based on historical material from 1881 to 1930.     

Enduring as Lived Experience: Exploring the Essence of Spiritual Resilience for Women in Late Life

The purpose of this study was to explore spirituality and its relationship to resilience for women in late life. Over thirty interviews with six women aged 80 and older provide a dataset allowing for the phenomenological investigation of spiritual resilience. Themes emerged illustrating the components of spiritual resilience. The components of spiritual resilience are having divine support, maintaining purpose, and expressing gratitude. These factors are essential to the women’s resilience and act as mechanisms that promote high levels of subjective well-being and an overall good quality of life. Essentially, participants articulate how their experiences of enduring hardships are informed by spiritual resilience.     

Chimpanzees demonstrate individual differences in social information use

Studies of transmission biases in social learning have greatly informed our understanding of how behaviour patterns may diffuse through animal populations, yet within-species inter-individual variation in social information use has received little attention and remains poorly understood. We have addressed this question by examining individual performances across multiple experiments with the same population of primates. We compiled a dataset spanning 16 social learning studies (26 experimental conditions) carried out at the same study site over a 12-year period, incorporating a total of 167 chimpanzees. We applied a binary scoring system to code each participant’s performance in each study according to whether they demonstrated evidence of using social information from conspecifics to solve the experimental task or not (Social Information Score—‘SIS’). Bayesian binomial mixed effects models were then used to estimate the extent to which individual differences influenced SIS, together with any effects of sex, rearing history, age, prior involvement in research and task type on SIS. An estimate of repeatability found that approximately half of the variance in SIS was accounted for by individual identity, indicating that individual differences play a critical role in the social learning behaviour of chimpanzees. According to the model that best fit the data, females were, depending on their rearing history, 15–24% more likely to use social information to solve experimental tasks than males. However, there was no strong evidence of an effect of age or research experience, and pedigree records indicated that SIS was not a strongly heritable trait. Our study offers a novel, transferable method for the study of individual differences in social learning.     

The Contingency of Creation and Modern Science

The Bible reveals a free, contingent act of the triune, personal God as the origin of the world. This paper explores the fruitfulness of taking the contingency of creation as the starting-point for our thinking about the natural world. We will see that the contingency of creation implies a conception of the natural order which is in harmony with modern science. It is the foundation for the experimental method and the use of mathematics, provides an understanding of contingent laws of nature, shows that natural order is open to historical evolution, and makes room for chance and novelty.     

Editorial: Psychosocial Aspects of AIDS

This article comprises two parts.

In the first part, some general issues related to research training are discussed, including the “Scientist-Practitioner Model,” training for basic and applied research, differences between the USA and Europe at various levels of training, and types or areas of research students should be trained for.

In the second part, seven specific objectives of research training are discussed. These objective are (a) learning to write a review of the research literature, (b) learning to critically evaluate a journal article, (c) learning to plan and carry out a specific health psychology research study, (d) learning to communicate, (e) learning to enhance co-operation of professionals in the field, (f) learning to raise funds, (g) learning to respect ethical issues.