Reward and number of choices in children's probability learning: An attempt to reconcile conflicting findings

Five event schedules (75:0, 75:25, 75:0:0, 72:25:0, 75:12.5:12.5) were examined in a size discrimination task with penny rewards and plastic token markers. The subjects were 100 fourth graders (mean age = 9.4 years) and 100 undergraduates of both sexes. Whether or not the event probabilities summed to unity proved to be a more important determiner of terminal performance than the number of response alternatives in the task (p < .01). Females maximized more than males (p < .001) and college students more than fourth graders (p < .001). Greater maximization was exhibited by fourth graders in the reward condition (p < .01). These reward effects appeared to be more consistent with a detrimental-effects-of-reward interpretation than either utility or expectancy interpretations.     

Jewish-Arab violence: perspectives of a dominant majority and a subordinate minority

In 2 studies, the authors investigated intergroup violence as perceived by Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs. University and junior high school students judged Jewish-Arab clashes, which ended in shots fired at a crowd of either Jewish or Arab demonstrators. The authors hypothesized that judgments of these shootings would be contingent on 3 variables: the origin of the respondent, the origin of the shooter, and the level of danger to the shooter. The results tended to support those hypotheses: (a) Both Jewish and Arab respondents justified shootings by members of their own group more readily than those by members of the other group. (b) Jewish judgments of violence were associated more closely than Arab judgments with the danger that the demonstrators posed to the shooter. (c) The Jewish respondents referred to self-defense more often than did the Arab respondents to justify their judgments, whereas the Arab respondents referred more often to intergroup considerations. Those differences may reflect the disagreement between the majority and the minority on the issue that each group should take into consideration in cases of international violence.     

On the relation between maternal state of mind and sensitivity in the prediction of infant attachment security

Attachment theorists assume that maternal mental representations influence responsivity, which influences infant attachment security. However, primary studies do not support this mediation model. The authors tested mediation using 2 mother-infant samples and found no evidence of mediation. Therefore, the authors explored sensitivity as a moderator, studying the (a) interaction of mental representation and sensitivity as it predicts infant attachment security and (b) level of sensitivity in mothers whose infants' attachment security is either concordant or discordant with their own. The interactional analyses were not significant. But the match-mismatch data showed that when mother-infant attachment strategies were discordant, maternal sensitivity was more consistent with infant than maternal attachment strategy. These findings are congruent with an interpretation of sensitivity as a moderator that can block transmission of attachment strategy.     

Habermas, Pupil Voice, Rationalism, and Their Meeting with Lacan’s Objet Petit A

‘Pupil voice’ is a movement within state education in England that is associated with democracy, change, participation and the raising of educational standards. While receiving much attention from educators and policy makers, less attention has been paid to the theory behind the concept of pupil voice. An obvious point of theoretical departure is the work of Jürgen Habermas, who over a number of decades has endeavoured to develop a theory of democracy that places strong significance on language, communication and discourse. This paper is an attempt to gauge the usefulness of Habermas’ approach to understanding the theory of pupil voice, in particular how his theory of universal pragmatics lends itself to a ‘philosophy of between’, a philosophy that finds echoes in the conflicted nature of schooling that ‘pupil voice’ is supposed to rectify to some extent. The paper also explores the drawbacks of a Habermasian approach, in particular his overreliance on rationality as a way of understanding communication. Lacan’s concept of the objet petit a is introduced as an alternative way of understanding pupil voice.     

Development of parenting self‐efficacy in mothers of infants with high negative emotionality

Maternal parenting self‐efficacy (PSE) is a potential target for infant mental health interventions because it is associated with a number of positive outcomes for children and mothers. Understanding the development of maternal PSE under conditions of increased parenting stress, such as parenting an infant who is easily distressed and difficult to soothe, will contribute to providing more effective interventions. This study examines the development of maternal PSE in mothers of infants with high negative emotionality (NE). The Neonatal Behavioral Assessment Scale (NBAS; T. Brazelton, 1973 ) was administered twice to 111 infants to select a sample of irritable (n = 24) and nonirritable (n = 29) infants for a prospective study comparing the development of PSE in mothers of infants differing in neonatal NE. Consistent with our hypotheses and previous research, at 8 weeks' postpartum, mothers of irritable infants have significantly lower domain‐specific PSE than do mothers of nonirritable infants. Contrary to our predictions, mothers of irritable infants exhibit a significant increase in domain‐specific and domain‐general PSE from 8 to 16 weeks' postpartum. The implications of these results for infant mental health screening, infant mental health interventions, and research on self‐efficacy theory are discussed.     

The conditional-recency dissociation is confounded with nominal recency: Should unitary models of memory still be devaluated?

The conditional-recency dissociation between immediate and delayed free recall FR; Farrell (Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 36, 324–347, 2010) has critical implications regarding the prolonged debate between unitary and dual-store models of memory. In immediate FR, when the availability of items is controlled for, the recency of the final list item increases across the first few output positions. No such increase is found in delayed FR, with a trend in the opposite direction. This dissociation challenges temporal context TCM; Howard & Kahana (Journal of Mathematical Psychology, 46, 269–299, 2002) and distinctiveness SIMPLE; Brown, Neath, & Chater (Psychological Review, 114, 539–576, 2007) unitary models of memory and suggests the involvement of a short-term buffer in immediate FR. We show that this dissociation is confounded with the different magnitudes of nominal recency (i.e., the prevalence of the final list item) found in immediate as compared to delayed FR. By reshuffling output orders and comparing the empirical results to those of a null hypothesis of no output-order effect, we controlled for the greater prevalence of the final list item that has been observed in immediate FR. Under this control, we found no evidence for a dissociation in the tendency to recall the final list item across output positions. This finding suggests that the conditional-recency dissociation imposes no new constraint on unitary models of memory. More generally, we demonstrate how biases that influence measures of output-order tendencies (e.g., conditional recency) can be controlled for, thus yielding “purer” measures of these variables.