Social role effects on gender stereotyping in Germany and Japan

Social role theory postulates that gender stereotypes are restrained for men and women observed in the same social role. Cultural differences in the valuation of communal attributes might moderate this effect. To examine this possibility, 288 participants (144 German, 144 Japanese) estimated the communal and agentic attributes of an average man or woman described in a male‐dominated role, a female‐dominated role, or without role information. We hypothesized and found that in Germany and Japan, participants perceived men as more agentic than women without role information and as similarly agentic in the same role. However, for communion, German and Japanese participants reacted differently. German participants perceived women as more communal than men without role information and in male‐dominated roles and perceived men as more communal than women in female‐dominated roles. Japanese participants perceived all targets as similarly communal, regardless of role or gender, suggesting that communion is generally expected in Japan.     

Reduced audiovisual integration in synesthesia – evidence from bimodal speech perception

Recent research suggests synesthesia as a result of a hypersensitive multimodal binding mechanism. To address the question whether multimodal integration is altered in synesthetes in general, grapheme‐colour and auditory‐visual synesthetes were investigated using speech‐related stimulation in two behavioural experiments. First, we used the McGurk illusion to test the strength and number of illusory perceptions in synesthesia. In a second step, we analysed the gain in speech perception coming from seen articulatory movements under acoustically noisy conditions. We used disyllabic nouns as stimulation and varied signal‐to‐noise ratio of the auditory stream presented concurrently to a matching video of the speaker. We hypothesized that if synesthesia is due to a general hyperbinding mechanism this group of subjects should be more susceptible to McGurk illusions and profit more from the visual information during audiovisual speech perception. The results indicate that there are differences between synesthetes and controls concerning multisensory integration – but in the opposite direction as hypothesized. Synesthetes showed a reduced number of illusions and had a reduced gain in comprehension by viewing matching articulatory movements in comparison to control subjects. Our results indicate that rather than having a hypersensitive binding mechanism, synesthetes show weaker integration of vision and audition.     

A teacher‐centered exploration of the relevance of social factors to theory of mind development

Many accounts of children's Theory of Mind (ToM) development favor a cognitive explanation, for example, in terms of mental representational improvements at or before 4 years. Here, we investigated whether social factors as rated by a child's teacher, are related to ToM development. We tested 82 children of 3–6 years on each of four ToM tasks, and their class teacher completed a social questionnaire about each child's playing behavior, sharing, talkativeness, confidence, aggressiveness and outgoingness. A measure of task memory and the child's gender were also recorded. Here, children generally passed ToM tasks after 5 years‐old, but no one gender performed reliably better than the other. Teacher‐rated confidence and playing behavior were correlated to ToM. But in a regression analysis, these were replaced by teacher‐rated talkativeness; with age and memory given primacy in both sets of analyses. It is concluded that maturation and cognitive factors may well have primacy but social factors, facilitated during early primary education, must also be given a role in ToM development.     

Reward history but not search history explains value-driven attentional capture

In past years, an extensive amount of research has focused on how past experiences guide future attention. Humans automatically attend to stimuli previously associated with reward and stimuli that have been experienced during visual search, even when it is disadvantageous in present situations. Recently, the relationship between “reward history” and “search history” has been discussed critically. We review results from research on value-driven attentional capture (VDAC) with a focus on these two experience-based attentional selection processes and their distinction. To clarify inconsistencies, we examined VDAC within a design that allows a direct comparison with other mechanisms of attentional selection. Eighty-four healthy adults were trained to incidentally associate colors with reward (10 cents, 2 cents) or with no reward. In a subsequent visual search task, distraction by reward-associated and unrewarded stimuli was contrasted. In the training phase, reward signals facilitated performance. When these value-signaling stimuli appeared as distractors in the test phase, they continuously shaped attentional selection, despite their task irrelevance. Our findings clearly cannot be attributed to a history of target search. We conclude that once an association is established, value signals guide attention automatically in new situations, which can be beneficial or not, depending on the congruency with current goals.     

Auditory attention switching and judgment switching: Exploring multicomponent task representations

An auditory attention-switching paradigm was combined with a judgment-switching paradigm to examine the interaction of a varying auditory attention component and a varying judgment component. Participants heard two dichotically presented stimuli—one spoken by a female speaker and one spoken by a male speaker. In each trial, the stimuli were a spoken letter and a spoken number. A visual explicit cue at the beginning of each trial indicated the auditory attention criterion (speaker sex/ear) to identify the target stimulus (Experiment 1) or the judgment that had to be executed (Experiment 2). Hence, the attentional selection criterion switched independently between speaker sexes (or between ears), while the judgment alternated between letter categorization and number categorization. The data indicate that auditory attention criterion and judgment were not processed independently, regardless of whether the attention criterion or the judgment was cued. The partial repetition benefits of the explicitly cued component suggested a hierarchical organization of the auditory attention component and the judgment component within the task set. We suggest that the hierarchy arises due to the explicit cuing of one component rather than due to a “natural” hierarchy of auditory attention component and judgment component.     

Exploring the cognitive development of children born to adolescent mothers in South Africa

This study explores the cognitive development of children born to adolescent mothers within South Africa compared to existing reference data, and explores development by child age bands to examine relative levels of development. Cross-sectional analyses present data from 954 adolescents (10–19 years) and their first-born children (0–68 months). All adolescents completed questionnaires relating to themselves and their children, and standardized child cognitive assessments (Mullen Scales of Early Learning) were undertaken. Cognitive development scores of the sample were lower than USA reference population scores and relative performance compared to the reference population was found to decline with increasing child age. When compared to children born to adult mothers in the sub-Saharan African region, children born to adolescent mothers (human immunodeficiency virus [HIV] unexposed; n = 724) were found to have lower cognitive development scores. Findings identify critical periods of development where intervention may be required to bolster outcomes for children born to adolescent mothers.

Highlights

• An exploration of the cognitive development of children born to adolescent mothers within South Africa utilizing the Mullen Scales of Early Learning.
• Cognitive development scores of children born to adolescent mothers within South Africa were lower compared to USA norm reference data and declined with child age.
• Previous studies utilizing the Mullen Scales of Early Learning within sub-Saharan Africa were summarized, and comparisons were made with the current sample.
• Findings highlight a potential risk of developmental delay among children born to adolescent mothers compared to children of adult mothers in the sub-Saharan African region.

     

A Closer Look at Life Goals Across Adulthood: Applying a Developmental Perspective to Content,Dynamics, and Outcomes of Goal Importance and Goal Attainability

It is well established that goals energize and direct behaviour across the lifespan. To better understand how goals are embedded in people's lives across adulthood, the present research examined life goals' content (health, personal growth, prosocial engagement, social relations, status, work), dynamics (interplay between goal importance and goal attainability), and outcomes (subjective well‐being) from a developmental perspective. We argue that people rate those goals as important and attainable that enable them to master developmental tasks, that they adapt their goals to personal capacities, and that goals predict subjective well‐being after 2 and 4 years. The sample included 973 individuals (18–92 years old, M = 43.00 years) of whom 637 participated 2 years later and 573 participated 4 years later. Goal importance and well‐being were assessed at all occasions and goal attainability at the first two occasions. Results indicated that age was negatively associated with importance and attainability of personal‐growth, status, and work goals but positively associated with importance and attainability of prosocial‐engagement goals. The association between goal importance and attainability was largely bidirectional over time; and goal attainability, rather than goal importance, was positively linked to later well‐being. Implications of these findings are discussed in light of adult lifespan development. © 2019 European Association of Personality Psychology