Automatic activation of attribute knowledge in heuristic inference from memory

In memory-based decision making, people often rely on simple heuristics such as take-the-best (TTB; Gigerenzer & Goldstein, Psychological Review, 103, 650–669, 1996), which processes information about the alternatives sequentially and stops processing as soon as a decision can be made. In this article, we examine the memory processes associated with TTB—in particular, to what degree the selective memory retrieval of relevant information required by TTB is accompanied by automatic activation of associated but irrelevant information. To address this question, we studied the fan effect (Anderson, Cognitive Psychology, 6, 451–474, 1974), which is assumed to arise from automatic spread of activation, in inferences from memory. Participants were instructed to use TTB when making decisions about objects on the basis of previously memorized attribute information. Both the number of attributes required by TTB and the number of attributes associated with an object (i.e., fan level) were manipulated. As it turned out, response times and the correct execution of TTB were a function not only of the number of required attributes, but also of the number of associated attributes. This suggests that information that TTB “ignores” is nevertheless activated in memory.     

Coping with Disasters While Living in Poverty: A Systematic Review

ABSTRACT

This review synthesizes the literature on how Asia-Pacific children and families living in poverty cope with disasters. A systematic search yielded 26 studies from six low- and middle-income countries (LMIC) in the region. Findings emphasized the role of socioeconomic factors, sociocultural factors, and indigenous knowledge. Coping strategies related to finances were most prominently described in the studies, in contrast to health and psychosocial strategies. Substantial gender issues were identified. The review highlights gaps regarding child involvement in research and coping strategies used by children living in poverty.     

Relations among religiosity, health, happiness, and anxiety for Kuwaiti adolescents

The present study investigated correlations among religiosity, health, happiness, and anxiety for 941 Kuwaiti adolescents. A convenience sample of male (n=408) and female (n=533) students (M age = 16.5, SD = 1.2 yr.) was randomly selected from secondary school students of different districts of the State of Kuwait. The Intrinsic Religious Motivation scale, the Kuwait University Anxiety Scale, and six self-rating scales assessing religiosity, strength of religious belief, physical health, mental health, happiness, and life satisfaction were applied to assess correlations among Kuwaiti adolescents. Analysis showed boys had significantly higher mean scores than girls on all measures except anxiety, on which girls scored significantly higher than boys. There also were significant and positive correlations among the variables, except for anxiety, which was significant and negative.     

The Hard Problem & Its Explanatory Targets

Two decades in, whether we are making any progress towards solving, or even explaining away, what David Chalmers calls (1995) the ‘hard’ problem of consciousness is as controversial as ever. This paper aims to argue that there are, in actual fact, two explanatory targets associated with the hard problem. Moreover, this in turn has repercussions for how we assess the explanatory merits of any proposed solution to the problem. The paper ends with a brief exposition of how the present distinction goes beyond similar ones already made by respondents to Joseph Levine's (1983) explanatory gap.     

Cross‐national comparisons of attitudes towards suicide and suicidal persons in university students from 12 countries

This paper reports the results of a comparative investigation of attitudes to suicide and suicidal persons in 5,572 university students from 12 countries. Participants filled out two scales measuring attitudes towards suicide and suicidal persons, a measure of psychological distress together with the questions about suicidal behavior. Results showed that the highest suicide acceptance scores were observed in Austrian, UK, Japanese and Saudi Arabian samples and the lowest scores were noted in Tunisian, Turkish, Iranian and Palestinian samples. While the highest social acceptance scores for a suicidal friend were noted in Turkish, US, Italian and Tunisian samples, the lowest scores were seen in Japanese, Saudi Arabian, Palestinian and Jordanian samples. Compared to participants with a suicidal past, those who were never suicidal displayed more internal barriers against suicidal behavior. Men were more accepting of suicide than women but women were more willing to help an imagined suicidal peer. Participants with accepting attitudes towards suicide but rejecting attitudes towards suicidal persons reported more suicidal behavior and psychological distress, and were more often from high suicide rate countries and samples than their counterparts. They are considered to be caught in a fatal trap in which most predominant feelings of suicidality such as hopelessness or helplessness are likely to occur. We conclude that in some societies such as Japan and Saudi Arabia it might be difficult for suicidal individuals to activate and make use of social support systems.     

Victims' Stories and the Postcolonial Politics of Empathy

This paper discusses Diana Meyers's book in light of postcolonial feminist insights. It argues that though Meyers's defense of empathy is admirably sensitive to the ways philosophical concepts and popular discourses can undermine our empathetic capacities, building a human rights culture requires attention to the relational and distributional dimensions of empathy. Meyers's criticism of the expectation of moral purity from victims attests to the richness of her work on agency and helps dismantle unduly narrow conceptions of who counts as a victim of a human rights violation. Meyers's argument for empathy over sympathy is especially useful for understanding culturally encoded forms of degradation. However, human rights violations are caused not only by empathy deficits; they are caused also by empathy excesses toward some people and savior mentalities that can coexist with empathy. Empathy should be supplemented by a political analysis that helps us identify the causes of global injustice.     

Working memory maintenance contributes to long-term memory formation: Evidence from slow event-related brain potentials

Behavioral research has led to conflicting views regarding the relationship between working memory (WM) maintenance and long-term memory (LTM) formation. We used slow event-related brain potentials to investigate the degree to which neural activity during WM maintenance is associated with successful LTM formation. Participants performed a WM task with objects and letter strings, followed by a surprise LTM test. Slow potentials were found to be more negative over the parietal and occipital cortex for objects and over the left frontal cortex for letter strings during WM maintenance. Within each category, they were enhanced for items that were subsequently successfully remembered. These effects were topographically distinct, with maximum effects at those electrodes that showed the maximum negativity during WM maintenance in general. Together, these results are strongly consistent with the ideas that WM maintenance contributes to LTM formation and that this may occur through strengthening of stimulus-specific cortical memory traces.     

Pleading ignorance in response to experiential primitivism

Modal arguments like the Knowledge Argument, the Conceivability Argument and the Inverted Spectrum Argument could be used to argue for experiential primitivism; the view that experiential truths aren’t entailed from nonexperiential truths. A way to resist these arguments is to follow Stoljar (Ignorance and imagination. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2006) and plead ignorance of a type of experience-relevant nonexperiential truth. If we are ignorant of such a truth, we can’t imagine or conceive of the various sorts of scenarios that are required to make these arguments sound. While I am sympathetic to this response, in this article I will argue that we have good reason to believe that this particular ignorance hypothesis is false.     

A gendered approach to workforce participation patterns over the life course for an Australian baby boom cohort

Population ageing and its future implications for governments and individuals have been central to much policy debate and research targeted to retain older people in the workforce. This study identified workforce participation patterns across the adult life course for women and men entering later life, and explored the influences of various early and adult life socio-demographic circumstances. Data were collected from 1261 men and women aged 60 to 64 years in the Life History and Health (LHH) Survey (a sub-study of the Sax Institute's 45 and Up Study, Australia) in 2010–11. LHH provides detailed information on personal histories of paid work, socio-economic resources from childhood (number of books and father's occupation) and adult life factors such as educational attainment, marital histories, childcare and informal caring. Latent class analysis (LCA) was undertaken to identify patterns of workforce participation for participants across their adult life. Significant gender differences were confirmed. Further analysis (LCA with covariates) showed that women who reported having books during childhood, and those who had post-school qualification, were more likely to have mostly been in paid work and less likely to have not been in paid work; while ever partnered women had significantly higher odds of increasing part time work over time. Men who had reported ever having had informal caring activities were likely to have had decreasing participation in paid work over time, and were highly likely to be not in paid work after 55 years. Ever partnered status was protective for being in paid work for men. These findings indicate the need for gender-specific policies and strategies to enable continued workforce participation throughout adult life and into later working years, particularly for people who had fewer social or economic opportunities earlier in life.