The Struggle for the Nature of “Prejudice”: “Prejudice” Expression as Identity Performance

This article develops an identity performance model of prejudice that highlights the creative influence of prejudice expressions on norms and situations. Definitions of prejudice can promote social change or stability when they are used to achieve social identification, explanation, and mobilization. Tacit or explicit agreement about the nature of prejudice is accomplished collaboratively by persuading others to accept (1) an abstract definition of “prejudice,” (2) concrete exemplars of “prejudice,” and (3) associated beliefs about how a target group should be treated. This article reviews three ways in which “prejudice” can be defined in the cut and thrust of social interaction, namely, by mobilizing hatred and violence, by accusation and denial, and by repression. The struggle for the nature of prejudice determines who can be badly treated and by whom. Studying such ordinary struggles to define what counts (and does not count) as “prejudice” will allow us to understand how identities are produced, norms are set into motion, and populations are mobilized as social relations are reformulated.     

The role of procedural memory in grammar and numeracy skills

The objective of this study was to examine the contribution of procedural memory to grammar and numeracy skills, which both involve the manipulation of abstract patterns. Seventy-six typically developing children between 5 and 7 years of age were assessed on grammar with a past tense production task and a sentence comprehension task, on numeracy with a counting task and a calculation task, and on procedural memory with a serial reaction time task. Moderate correlations were found between the measures of grammar and numeracy. Moreover, 4 hierarchical linear regressions indicated that procedural memory was associated with calculation but not with counting or grammar skills when age and working memory were taken into account. These novel findings suggest that procedural memory may have a role to play in the development of some numeracy skills. Several possible explanations for the absence of contribution to grammar are considered.     

Globalization,Spirituality and the Management of Education

This paper provides some brief working positions on spirituality and educational management before moving on to its principal focus on globalization. My objective is to arrive at a sufficiently clear understanding of the meanings and effects of globalization; such an understanding could then be used to facilitate a useful exploration of the implications of globalization for spiritual development, and for the role that educational management currently plays in it. Globalization is described as having a variety of faces, some benign, some malign, with most of these having major effects upon both educational management and spirituality. In particular, I argue that there is increasing evidence that different aspects of globalization are leading to a paradoxical increase in both control and fragmentation effects on schools, and that there must therefore be an increased scrutiny of the effects of globalization on education generally.     

Memory for everyday objects: where are the digits on numerical keypads?

Memory for the layout of the ten digits 0 to 9 on the keypads of push‐button telephones and calculators was investigated in five experiments. Experiments 1 and 2 revealed that, despite frequent usage of these devices, free recall of the numerical layouts is quite poor; and that the layout on calculators is even harder to recall than the telephone layout. Experiment 4 showed that the same is true for recognition of the layouts. Experiment 3 revealed that part of the recall advantage of the telephone layout can be attributed to its being more plausible and more similar to a schematic or prototypical layout of digits. Experiment 5 indicated that a single case of directing attention to the layouts can enhance recall significantly. The results are integrated into earlier research on memory for everyday objects, and concepts used in laboratory memory research such as interference, inference, and attention are used to explain memory for these everyday objects. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The rationality of informal argumentation: a Bayesian approach to reasoning fallacies

Classical informal reasoning "fallacies," for example, begging the question or arguing from ignorance, while ubiquitous in everyday argumentation, have been subject to little systematic investigation in cognitive psychology. In this article it is argued that these "fallacies" provide a rich taxonomy of argument forms that can be differentially strong, dependent on their content. A Bayesian theory of content-dependent argument strength is presented. Possible psychological mechanisms are identified. Experiments are presented investigating whether people's judgments of the strength of 3 fallacies--the argumentum ad ignorantiam, the circular argument or petitio principii, and the slippery slope argument--are affected by the factors a Bayesian account predicts. This research suggests that Bayesian accounts of reasoning can be extended to the more general human activity of argumentation.     

Precision and power grip priming by observed grasping

The coupling of hand grasping stimuli and the subsequent grasp execution was explored in normal participants. Participants were asked to respond with their right- or left-hand to the accuracy of an observed (dynamic) grasp while they were holding precision or power grasp response devices in their hands (e.g., precision device/right-hand; power device/left-hand). The observed hand was making either accurate or inaccurate precision or power grasps and participants signalled the accuracy of the observed grip by making one or other response depending on instructions. Responses were made faster when they matched the observed grip type. The two grasp types differed in their sensitivity to the end-state (i.e., accuracy) of the observed grip. The end-state influenced the power grasp congruency effect more than the precision grasp effect when the observed hand was performing the grasp without any goal object (Experiments 1 and 2). However, the end-state also influenced the precision grip congruency effect (Experiment 3) when the action was object-directed. The data are interpreted as behavioural evidence of the automatic imitation coding of the observed actions. The study suggests that, in goal-oriented imitation coding, the context of an action (e.g., being object-directed) is more important factor in coding precision grips than power grips.