Metacognitive monitoring during category learning: how success affects future behaviour

The purpose of this study was to see how people perceive their own learning during a category learning task, and whether their perceptions matched their performance. In two experiments, participants were asked to learn natural categories, of both high and low variability, and make category learning judgements (CLJs). Variability was manipulated by varying the number of exemplars and the number of times each exemplar was presented within each category. Experiment 1 showed that participants were generally overconfident in their knowledge of low variability families, suggesting that they considered repetition to be more useful for learning than it actually was. Also, a correct trial, for a particular category, was more likely to occur if the previous trial was correct. CLJs had the largest increase when a trial was correct following an incorrect trial and the largest decrease when an incorrect trial followed a correct trial. Experiment 2 replicated these results, but also demonstrated that global CLJ ratings showed the same bias towards repetition. These results indicate that we generally identify success as being the biggest determinant of learning, but do not always recognise cues, such as variability, that enhance learning.     

Stereokinetic Anomalous Contours: Demonstrations

Collinearity or correspondence between the contours of the inducing figure to allow `contour continuation' or `figure completion' were, according to G. Kanizsa, the necessary conditions for producing anomalous surfaces or contours. Since Kanizsa's early work various hypotheses have been advanced to explain the phenomenon, but very few examples of anomalous contours that do not satisfy the above conditions have been reported. When two small white discs (1 cm in diameter) are set on a larger black disc in slow rotation, the two discs, after some observation time, will appear as the extremities of a rigid cylinder displaced in depth. The surface of the cylinder, under dim illumination, appears as a whitish transparent surface. However, when the two discs are substituted by a circle and a semicircle of the same size, a clear anomalous contour appears to form the cylinder, even under clear light conditions and when the colours are reversed; i.e., black circles on white disc. The anomalous contours are not apparent when the configuration is stationary. I will demonstrate how the anomalous contours of a stereokinetic cylinder can be obtained even without the “interruption” of the lines in the semicircle. The relationship between the anomalous contours of the stereokinetic cylinder and the vitreous transparency of the surface of the cylinder formed by the two small discs above mentioned, will be discussed as well as their relation to the general theories of anomalous surfaces.     

Evidence of cross‐cultural invariance of the big five personality dimensions in work settings

This article explores the cross‐cultural invariance (construct validity) of two work‐related personality inventories based upon the Five Factor Model (the HPI and the IP/5F). The results show a good convergent and discriminant validity between scales that measure the Big Five personality dimensions. A factor analysis indicates that all personality scales load on the hypothesized Big Five dimensions. Some implications of these findings for the research and practice of personality measurement in personnel selection are discussed. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Issues and Strategies for Studying Latino Student Dropout at the Local Level

Latino student dropout is a national concern that must also be addressed strategically in local communities. Although national studies are important for pointing out areas of concern, local studies can provide more specific information for local policy development and implementation. This paper presents an example of local community-initiated needs assessment that addresses issues of Latino access to education. Focus groups and interviews were held with Latino students, parents, and community leaders as well as teachers and administrators. Issues and strategies of the needs assessment process are presented, which include involving key stakeholders, engaging community members as research partners, and engaging school personnel. General findings are presented and linked to accomplishments of the needs assessment process, such as increasing community awareness of issues and building commitment to implement strategies identified to reduce Latino student dropout.     

Squares in Fork Arrow Logic

In this paper we show that the class of fork squares has a complete orthodox axiomatization in fork arrow logic (FAL). This result may be seen as an orthodox counterpart of Venema's non-orthodox axiomatization for the class of squares in arrow logic. FAL is the modal logic of fork algebras (FAs) just as arrow logic is the modal logic of relation algebras (RAs). FAs extend RAs by a binary fork operator and are axiomatized by adding three equations to RAs equational axiomatization. A proper FA is an algebra of relations where the fork is induced by an injective operation coding pair formation. In contrast to RAs, FAs are representable by proper ones and their equational theory has the expressive power of full first-order logic. A square semantics (the set of arrows is U×U for some set U) for arrow logic was defined by Y. Venema. Due to the negative results about the finite axiomatizability of representable RAs, Venema provided a non-orthodox finite axiomatization for arrow logic by adding a new rule governing the applications of a difference operator. We address here the question of extending the type of relational structures to define orthodox axiomatizations for the class of squares. Given the connections between this problem and the finitization problem addressed by I. Németi, we suspect that this cannot be done by using only logical operations. The modal version of the FA equations provides an orthodox axiomatization for FAL which is complete in view of the representability of FAs. Here we review this result and carry it further to prove that this orthodox axiomatization for FAL also axiomatizes the class of fork squares.     

Autopoietic theory,enactivism, and their incommensurable marks of the cognitive

This paper examines a fundamental philosophical difference between two radical postcognitivist theories that are usually assumed to offer (more or less) the same view of cognition; namely the autopoietic theory (AT) and the enactive approach. The ways these two theories understand cognition, it is argued, are not compatible nor incompatible but rather incommensurable. The reason, so it is argued, is that while enactivism, following the traditional stance held by most of the cognitive theories, understands cognitive systems as constituting a (sort of) natural kind, the autopoietic theory understands them as constituting only a conventional kind. Additionally, the paper shows that AT’s conventionalist stance about cognition, far from being an undesirable or useless position, offers some methodological virtues that might be timely and welcome in the agitated and revolutionary climate of current cognitive science.

     

The Best Is Yet to Come? Attitudes Toward Gender Roles Among Adolescents in 36 Countries

In the present article, we look at attitudes toward gender roles among young women and men in 36 countries with different levels of societal gender inequality. By applying multilevel models to data from the International Civic and Citizenship Education Study 2009, the study contributes to our understanding of gender inequality by showing that (a) both young women and young men (in 8th grade; M_age = 14.39 years) display more gender-egalitarian attitudes in countries with higher levels of societal gender equality; (b) young women in all countries have more egalitarian attitudes toward gender roles than young men do, but (c) the gender gap in attitudes is more evident in more egalitarian contexts; and (d) a higher level of maternal education is associated with more gender-egalitarian attitudes among young women. In contrast, no statistically significant association emerges between maternal employment and young men’s attitudes. Overall, the findings suggest that adolescents in different contexts are influenced by the dominant societal discourse on gender inequality, which they interiorize and display through their own attitudes toward gender roles. However, the findings also indicate that young women are more responsive to external cues than young men are. This result, coupled with the fact that young men in egalitarian contexts have not adopted gender-egalitarian attitudes to the same extent as young women, is concerning because it suggests a slowdown in the achievement of societal gender equality that is still far from being reached.     

Eudaimonic Well-Being in Transsexual People,Before and After Gender Confirming Surgery

Gender confirming surgery (GCS) and cross-sex hormones (CSH) are crucial steps in the self-realization of a transsexual individual. However, no study has analyzed the outcome of GCS in a eudaimonic perspective, nor explored eudaimonic well-being before GCS. The study compares the eudaimonic well-being of trans men (N = 56) and women (N = 89) before and after GCS; in the MtF sample, a further comparison was carried out between those who never started any medical intervention and those who were already taking CSH. Finally, the impact of experiences of harassment, discrimination and violence on eudaimonic well-being in the post-surgery sample was explored. All participants completed the Psychological Well-being Scales (Ryff in J Pers Soc Psychol 57:1069–1081, 1989) and, only the post-surgery sample, a questionnaire to assess previous experiences of harassment, discrimination and violence. Both in MtF and FtM participants, those who already received GCS showed higher scores on self-acceptance; in the MtF sample, higher scores were also found on environmental mastery and lower scores on personal growth. The association between experiences of discrimination on well-being was limited and positive, with higher scores in personal growth only in FtM participants who reported being victims of such experiences. Our results suggest that both MtF and FtM transsexuals show higher levels of eudaimonic well-being after GCS.     

The appeal of the devil’s eye: social evaluation affects social attention

Humans typically exhibit a tendency to follow the gaze of conspecifics, a social attention behaviour known as gaze cueing. Here, we addressed whether episodically learned social knowledge about the behaviours performed by the individual bearing the gaze can influence this phenomenon. In a learning phase, different faces were systematically associated with either positive or negative behaviours. The same faces were then used as stimuli in a gaze-cueing task. The results showed that faces associated with antisocial norm-violating behaviours triggered stronger gaze-cueing effects as compared to faces associated with sociable behaviours. Importantly, this was especially evident for participants who perceived the presented norm-violating behaviours as far more negative as compared to positive behaviours. These findings suggest that reflexive attentional responses can be affected by our appraisal of the valence of the behaviours of individuals around us.     

When subjective experiences matter: power increases reliance on the ease of retrieval

Past research on power focused exclusively on declarative knowledge and neglected the role of subjective experiences. Five studies tested the hypothesis that power increases reliance on the experienced ease or difficulty that accompanies thought generation. Across a variety of targets, such as attitudes, leisure-time satisfaction, and stereotyping, and with different operationalizations of power, including priming, trait dominance, and actual power in managerial contexts, power consistently increased reliance on the ease of retrieval. These effects remained 1 week later and were not mediated by mood, quality of the retrieved information, or number of counterarguments. These findings indicate that powerful individuals construe their judgments on the basis of momentary subjective experiences and do not necessarily rely on core attitudes or prior knowledge, such as stereotypes.