Episodic future thinking in 3- to 5-year-old children: The ability to think of what will be needed from a different point of view

Assessing children’s episodic future thinking by having them select items for future use may be assessing their functional reasoning about the future rather than their future episodic thinking. In an attempt to circumvent this problem, we capitalised on the fact that episodic cognition necessarily has a spatial format (Clayton and Russell, 2009, Hassabis and Maguire, 2007). Accordingly, we asked children of 3, 4, and 5 to chose items they would need to play a game (blow football) from the opposite side of the table on which they had never before played. The crucial item was the box that was needed by children to reach the table from the other side. Over four experiments, we demonstrated that, while children of 3 perform poorly on future questions and children of 5 generally perform quite well, children of 4 years find a question about what they themselves will need to play in the future harder to answer than a similar question posed about another child. We suggest that this result is due to the ‘growth error’ of over-applying newly-developed Level 2 perspective-taking skills (Flavell et al., 1981), which encourages the selection of non-functional items. The data are discussed in terms of perspective-taking abilities in children and of the neural correlates of episodic cognition, navigation, and theory of mind.     

Becoming who you are: An integrative review of self‐determination theory and personality systems interactions theory

One of the enduring missions of personality science is to unravel what it takes to become a fully functioning person. In the present article, the authors address this matter from the perspectives of self‐determination theory (SDT) and personality systems interactions (PSI) theory. SDT (a) is rooted in humanistic psychology; (b) has emphasized a first‐person perspective on motivation and personality; (c) posits that the person, supported by the social environment, naturally moves toward growth through the satisfaction of basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness. PSI theory (a) is rooted in German volition psychology; (b) has emphasized a third‐person perspective on motivation and personality; and (c) posits that a fully functioning person can form and enact difficult intentions and integrate new experiences, and that such competencies are facilitated by affect regulation. The authors review empirical support for SDT and PSI theory, their convergences and divergences, and how the theories bear on recent empirical research on internalization, vitality, and achievement flow. The authors conclude that SDT and PSI theory offer complementary insights into developing a person's full potential.     

When and how social movements mobilize action within and across nations to promote solidarity with refugees

When and how do social movements form to mobilize action across national boundaries? In the context of the 2015 movement to support Syrian refugees, we develop an integrative model of transnational social movement formation shaped by pre-existing world-views (social dominance orientation and right-wing authoritarianism) and social media exposure to iconic events, resulting in an emergent group consciousness (“we are”, “we believe”, “we feel”). Group consciousness is, in turn, the proximal predictor of solidarity with refugees. Participants were from six countries: Hungary (N = 267), Romania (N = 163), Germany (N = 190), the United Kingdom (N = 159), the United States (N = 244) and Australia (N = 344). Multi-group structural equation models confirmed that group consciousness, shaped by individual differences and exposure to events through social media, was the proximal predictor of solidarity. The subjective meaning of group consciousness varied across samples, reflecting national differences. Results support the importance of considering individual and national differences, and group processes in understanding emergent social movements.     

Interactive apps prevent gender discrepancies in early‐grade mathematics in a low‐income country in sub‐Sahara Africa

Globally, gender differences are reported in the early acquisition of reading and mathematics as girls tend to outperform boys in reading, whereas boys tend to outperform girls in mathematics. This can have long‐term impact resulting in an under‐representation of girls in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics subjects. Recent research suggests that sociocultural factors account for differences across genders in the acquisition of these foundational skills. In this study, we investigated whether a new technology‐based intervention, that included activities accessible to both boys and girls, can reduce gender differences from emerging during the early primary school years. The novel instructional method used in this study employed apps developed by onebillion© delivered individually through touch‐screen tablets. Over a series of experiments conducted in Malawi, a low‐income country in sub‐Sahara Africa, we found that when children were exposed to standard pedagogical practice typical gender differences emerged over the first grade (Experiment 1). In contrast, boys and girls learnt equally well with the new interactive apps designed to support the learning of mathematics (Experiment 2) and reading (Experiment 3). When implemented at the start of primary education, before significant gender discrepancies become established, this novel technology‐based intervention can prevent significant gender effects for mathematics. These results demonstrate that different instructional practices influence the emergence of gender disparities in early mathematics. Digital interventions can mitigate gender differences in countries where standard pedagogical instruction typically hinders girls from acquiring early mathematical skills at the same rate as boys. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55x-6hhAY9M&feature=youtu.be     

THE ATTITUDES TOWARD WOMEN SCALE AND ATTITUDE CHANGE IN COLLEGE STUDENTS

To determine cohort changes in gender-role attitudes, responses to the 15-item form of the Attitudes Toward Women Scale (AWS; Spence & Helmreich, 1972a, 1978) were compared for students at the same university tested in 1972, 1976, 1980, and 1992. In both males and females, members of the 1992 cohort were the most egalitarian, and members of the 1972 cohort were the least egalitarian. In all groups, women were significantly less traditional in their attitudes than men. As has been found in previous studies, detailed analyses of the data from the 1992 cohort revealed that the scale was unifactorial, but that the score distributions were skewed. There was also some indication of ceiling effects at the egalitarian end of the scale, particularly in women. The implications of these latter results for the usefulness of the AWS in current research were explored.     

Young children's coordination of motive and outcome in judgements of satisfaction and morality

Three- to seven-year-old children judged a story-character's satisfaction. Their comprehension of the relationship between motives and outcomes of action was tested by presenting them with matching and with mismatching outcomes. For example, one character's motive, depicted in a ‘thinks’ bubble, was to throw a ball to one of two children. In a matching outcome, the intended child caught the ball, whereas in a mismatching outcome, the other child caught it. Even the youngest children judged the character more pleased when the outcome matched his motive than when it did not. This suggests that children from three years old can integrate motive and outcome information. Children under seven years failed to judge satisfaction appropriately when motives and outcomes were bad. Comparisons of children's satisfaction judgements with their moral judgements of the story-characters suggested possible reasons for this failure. The implications of the results for social cognition and information integration are discussed.