“We believe,we feel,we act”: Testing the BIAS Map predictions during adolescence

The present study examined the relation between adolescents’ beliefs, emotions, and intentional behaviors toward two immigrant groups from the Spanish context: Moroccans and Ecuadorians. For this purpose, we tested the SCM/BIAS Map predictions considering the three-dimensional perspective of stereotype content, which distinguishes between morality, sociability, and competence. Spanish adolescents (N = 231, M_age = 15.39, SD = 1.09) evaluated either Moroccans (n = 114, 55.3% girls) or Ecuadorians (n = 117, 59% girls) on the SCM/BIAS Map variables. Our results confirmed, for both groups, the validity of the three-dimensional model of stereotype content and showed that adolescents differentiate between the two subdimensions of warmth and treat them as independent in intergroup evaluations. Furthermore, the mediating role of emotions in the stereotype content-behavior link was also confirmed but only for the univalent emotions in both groups. Finally, only morality acted as a consistent predictor of adolescents active behavioral intentions. The higher perceived morality of the immigrants increased adolescents’ admiration toward them, which in turn led adolescents to manifest more active facilitation intentions. Likewise, the perceived morality of the immigrants negatively affected adolescents’ contempt toward them, which in turn decreased adolescent's active harm intentions toward Ecuadorians and Moroccans. These findings indicate that the perceived morality of the outgroup is the key aspect in order to simultaneously promote helping behavior and decrease harmful one toward immigrant groups during adolescence.     

Intercessory Prayer on Spiritual Distress,Spiritual Coping,Anxiety, Depression and Salivary Amylase in Breast Cancer Patients During Radiotherapy: Randomized Clinical Trial

The goal of this study was to assess the effect of intercessory prayer in the psychological, spiritual and biological scores of breast cancer patients who are undergoing radiotherapy. Double-blind RCT comprising a sample of 31 participants (15 in the Control Group and 16 in the Intervention Group). Data collection was performed in three time points (T₀, T₁ and T₂). Significant changes have been identified in the intra-group analysis, concerning the decrease in spiritual distress score; negative religious/spiritual coping prevailed, while the total religious/spiritual coping increased between the posttest T₂ to T₀. Intercessory prayer was effective in religious and spiritual scores.

     

Some New Infinity Puzzles

Philosophia - Salmon (1970) was the first to speak explicitly of paradoxes of kinematics. In this short note I introduce a new class of infinity puzzles. Following natural terminology, they should...     

Does Partisan Bias Modulate Neural Processing of Political Information? An Analysis of the Neural Correlates of Corruption and Positive Messages

Daily worldwide newspapers print articles exposing government corruption. Yet these messages do not lead to a loss of votes for the corrupt parties. Sympathizers’ partisan bias, which respectively minimizes and maximizes corruption and positive messages of their own parties respectively, is widely considered the main cause of the loss of effectiveness of political communications. Despite the well-established existence of such bias when processing political information, little is known as to its psychological origin. Through the use of neuroscience (fMRI), this study explores the underlying brain mechanisms of negative (corruption) and positive political messages related to a conservative and a socialist Spanish political party, as well as the differences between their sympathizers. The findings reveal that negative (vs. positive) political messages exert the greatest neuroimaging impact on the electorate, as shown in aversive, risk, and disappointment-related brain regions. Interestingly, we show that there exists a main partisan bias against opposite parties (and not a positive bias toward one’s own party) that stems from a higher risk, ambiguity, and disbelief provoked by both positive and negative information about rival parties. Furthermore, this bias was more pronounced among conservative supporters. The current findings provide valuable insights for political parties to improve their communication campaigns.     

Truth Without Reference: The Use of Fictional Names

Topoi - Singular terms without referents are called empty or vacuous terms. But not all of them are equally empty. In particular, not all proper names that fail to name an existing object fail in...     

EARSHOT: A Minimal Neural Network Model of Incremental Human Speech Recognition

Despite the lack of invariance problem (the many-to-many mapping between acoustics and percepts), human listeners experience phonetic constancy and typically perceive what a speaker intends. Most models of human speech recognition (HSR) have side-stepped this problem, working with abstract, idealized inputs and deferring the challenge of working with real speech. In contrast, carefully engineered deep learning networks allow robust, real-world automatic speech recognition (ASR). However, the complexities of deep learning architectures and training regimens make it difficult to use them to provide direct insights into mechanisms that may support HSR. In this brief article, we report preliminary results from a two-layer network that borrows one element from ASR, long short-term memory nodes, which provide dynamic memory for a range of temporal spans. This allows the model to learn to map real speech from multiple talkers to semantic targets with high accuracy, with human-like timecourse of lexical access and phonological competition. Internal representations emerge that resemble phonetically organized responses in human superior temporal gyrus, suggesting that the model develops a distributed phonological code despite no explicit training on phonetic or phonemic targets. The ability to work with real speech is a major advance for cognitive models of HSR.     

Does cognitive reflection mediate the math gender gap at university admission in Chile?

Social Psychology of Education - In Chile, a vast and persistent gender gap in math performance at university admission has negative consequences for women’s opportunities. International...     

Effect of social organisation on interspecific differences in overmarking behaviour of foals in African equids

Animal Cognition - Overmarking remains an unstudied topic in juvenile mammals. We have previously documented a very high rate of overmarking by foals in four captive African equid species: mountain...     

Self-reported competences and problems in Spanish adolescents: a normative study of the YSR

The aim of the study was to provide a standardization of self-reported competences and emotional/behavioural problems in Spanish adolescents, using the Achenbach's Youth Self-Report (YSR), and to compare our results to those from other countries. The YSR was completed by 2822 adolescents aged 11-18 years, recruited from secondary schools in two regions of Spain. There were significant differences in Total behaviour problems and in most problem scales in boys and girls, scoring boys higher on externalizing syndromes, whereas girls score higher on internalizing syndromes . Males' mean scores were higher than females' scores for social competence. Age effects also showed significant differences with respect to internalizing problems, thought problems, social problems and depression. Cut-off points based on the 90th and 98th percentile developed from this sample are presented for the competences and the problem scales. To test the overall range of variations across cultures, comparisons were made between broad band and narrow band measures of the YSR in Spanish adolescents and those from other countries. Gender differences in the YSR were similar to those found across different cultures; there is a consistent trend to increase behavioural problems with age; and social competence seem to be a relevant protective factor against behavioural problems.