Asymmetry of perception of size between the right and left hands in normal subjects

A method of measuring the perception of size in the hands was applied to 4 0 righthanded and 40 left-handed normal subjects.

It was found that objects of equal size held simultaneously in each hand tend t o be judged to be unequal, and that, in the majority of subjects, the object held in the doniinant hand is perceived to be the smaller.

These results are discussed in the light of previous work, and some reference is made to the examination of pathological cases.     

The excess choice effect: The role of outcome valence and counterfactual thinking

Contrary to economic theory, psychological research has demonstrated increased choice can undermine satisfaction. When and why this ‘excess choice effect’ (ECE) occurs remains unclear. Building on theories of counterfactual thinking we argue the ECE is more likely to occur when people experience counterfactual thought or emotion and that a key trigger is a negative versus positive task outcome. Participants either selected a drink (Experiment 1) or chocolate (Experiment 2) from a limited (6) versus extensive (24) selection (Experiment 1) or were given no choice versus extensive (24) choice (Experiment 2). In both experiments, however, the choice was illusory: Half the participants tasted a ‘good’ flavour, half a ‘bad’ flavour. As predicted, extensive choice was only detrimental to satisfaction when participants tasted the ‘bad’ drink or chocolate, and this was mediated by the experience of counterfactual thought (Experiment 1) or emotion (Experiment 2). When outcomes were positive, participants were similarly satisfied with limited versus extensive and no choice versus extensive choice. Implications for our theoretical understanding of the ECE and for the construction of choice architectures aimed at promoting individual satisfaction and well‐being are discussed.     

Links Among Cognitive Empathy,Theory of Mind,and Affective Perspective Taking by Young Children

The authors investigated the development of the affective, cognitive, and behavioral components of empathy in preschoolers, specifically examining how cognitive empathy is linked to theory of mind and affective perspective taking. Participants were 158 children aged 4–6 years. They listened to narratives and then answered questions about the protagonists' emotions. The affective component was probed with the question, “How do you feel seeing the little girl/boy?”; the cognitive component with the question, “Why do you feel [emotion shared with the character]?”; and the behavioral one with the question, “What would you do if you were next to the little boy/girl [experiencing an emotional scenario]?” Results revealed a developmental sequence in the self-focused attribution of cognitive empathy, and a trend toward a developmental sequence for behavioral empathy, which underwent a slight linear increase between 4 and 6 years old. Affective empathy remained stable. More interestingly, they showed that cognitive empathy is linked to both theory of mind and affective perspective taking.     

Ecological and Dynamical Study of the Creative Process and Affects of Scientific Students Working in Groups

Although creativity has drawn the attention of researchers during the past century, collaborative processes have barely been investigated. In this article, the collective dimension of a creative process is investigated, based on a dynamic and ecological approach that includes an affective component. Dynamic means that the creative process is no longer considered as sequential, and ecological, that the individuals were observed in their normal place of creation. This study was conducted with science students that were required to carry on a research project during 15 weeks in small groups. The results tend to confirm the hypothesis of a nonlinear process, with important variations of the affects depending on the stage. Moreover, each group creative process seems to be specific. The relation between the social functioning of the group and the process is also discussed. Finally, because it is a part of any teamwork, verbalization is proposed as a new powerful tool to investigate creative process.     

Attentional control mediates fearful responding to an ecologically valid stressor

Background and Objectives: Attentional control (AC) is defined as the ability to voluntarily shift and disengage attention and is thought to moderate the relationship between preexisting risk factors for fear and the actual experience of fear. Design: This longitudinal study elaborates on current models of AC by examining whether AC moderates or mediates effects of an ecologically valid stressor (a college examination) and also whether AC is predictive of state-like fear over longer timescales than previously reported. Methods: Based on previous findings, we hypothesized that AC would moderate the relationship between trait anxiety and affective distress in response to the examination stressor. We also tested a competing mediational model based on AC theory. These models were tested in two separate samples (sample 1, N = 219; sample 2, N = 129; Total N = 348) at two time points, at the beginning of a college semester in a large undergraduate class and 5 minutes prior to a college examination. Results: Mediation but not moderation of anxiety by AC was supported in both samples using multiple dependent measures. Conclusions: We conclude that AC may be useful in predicting affective distress in naturalistic settings, particularly in cases where anxiety is anticipatory.     

A Place for Every Event and Every Event in Its Place: Memory for Locations and Activities by 4-Year-Old Children

Episodic memories are of specific events and experiences associated with particular times and places. Whereas memory for the temporal aspects of past events has been a focus of research attention, memory for the location in which events were experienced has been less fully investigated. The limited developmental research suggests that preschool-age children, in particular, may have difficulty remembering the location in which they experienced specific events. In 2 experiments, 4-year-old children engaged in 4 unique activities in 4 unique locations in and around a laboratory suite. In Experiment 1, the children had high levels of recall of the activities, the locations, and the conjunctions of activities and locations, implying that they had formed memory representations that featured activities bound in locations. In Experiment 2, we tested whether 1 element of the bound representation—the location of an activity—served as a reliable cue to recall of the other element—the activity itself. The test was positive, providing further evidence that 4-year-old children form mnemonic conjunctions of activities and locations. The results imply that important elements of episodic memory are available to young children.     

Constructing Gender Incommensurability in Competitive Sport: Sex/Gender Testing and the New Regulations on Female Hyperandrogenism

The segregation of the sexes in sport still seems to be regarded as a matter of course. In contrast to other performance classes, e.g., age and weight, which are constructed on the grounds of directly relevant performance features, in the case of gender it is dealt with the merely statistical factor that women on average perform less well than men. And yet unlike weight or age classes, which can be interchanged if the required performances are provided, the segregation between the sexes in many types of sport seems to be quite impermeable. Contrary to popular beliefs women were not excluded from the beginning of modern sport. Hence, the meaning of gender differences varies in the course of time and in types of sport. Thus, this paper firstly gives a short summary of the different relevance of gender differences in high performance competitions of various types of sport. Then the historical construction of gender as central dimension in modern sport will be illustrated by using the example of soccer. Here in this paper, the elaborate processes of reproducing this incommensurability between women and men in sport is the main focus: At first big sport organisations tried to exclude women whose performances were well above the expectations by establishing so called “Gender verifications” which suspected them of fraud. Although it became certain that there is no clear differentiation between the sexes, gender segregation was not abolished. Instead new regulations have been invented to treat and “normalise” people who are difficult to categorise, e.g., transsexuals and women with Hyperandrogenism, in order to subsume them into the existent gender categories. So finally, gender segregation in sport seems to be just another example for Goffman’s institutional reflexivity: While the separation of the competitions are said to be a natural consequence of the differences between men and women, it actually is just a tool to create those differences.     

Toward the Development of Socio-Metacognitive Expertise: An Approach to Developing Collaborative Competence

We proposed and evaluated an instructional framework for increasing students' ability to understand and regulate collaborative interactions called Co-Regulated Collaborative Learning (CRCL). In this instantiation of CRCL, models of collaborative competence were articulated through a set of socio-metacognitive roles. Our population consisted of 28 students from one urban classroom taking part in an 11-week science unit. Our research questions focused on examining the extent to which students understood and used the roles as intended to regulate collaborative interactions to address group process problems. Mixed-methods analysis of collaborative work sessions determined that (a) students generally understood the language and purpose of the roles, (b) students frequently used and accepted the roles to monitor and regulate activity, and (c) students' ability to use the roles to monitor and regulate activity improved over time. This paper contributes to our understanding of socio-metacognition and trade-offs associated to its development in classroom settings.