(Re)presenting: Muslims on North American television

This article describes and analyzes the portrayal of Muslims on several North American television shows. Greatest detail is given to the two seasons of Sleeper Cell, the first show on American television created to deal with Muslim lives post 9/11. I deal briefly with Muslim characters on Oz for a look at portrayals of Muslim life pre 9/11. I also mention Muslim characters in Lost and 24 as well as some films to add further insights to my argument. These television dramas are compared with two comedies, Aliens in America as well as Little Mosque on the Prairie, the first Canadian television show to examine Muslim lives. The conclusion is that in dramas, Muslims are not recognized on American television as citizens of their own country, but instead are portrayed as dangerous immigrants with a religion that is both alien and wicked. Moreover, the religion as it is lived out on the television drama is one of violence—there seems to be no other substantive practice that embodies Islamic faith. The case is very different with regard to the television comedy.     

THE KNOWLEDGE ARGUMENT AND HIGHER-ORDER PROPERTIES

The paper argues that Jackson's knowledge argument fails to undermine physicalist ontology. First, it is argued that, as this argument stands, it begs the question. Second, it is suggested that, by supplementing the argument (and taking one of its premises for granted), this flaw can be remedied insofar as the argument is taken to be an argument against type‐physicalism; however, this flaw cannot be remedied insofar as the argument is taken to be an argument against token‐physicalism. The argument cannot be supplemented so as to show that experiences have properties which are illegitimate from a physicalist perspective.     

Limitations in verbal fluency following heavy burdens of early childhood diarrhea in Brazilian shantytown children.

The effects of heavy burdens of diarrhea in the first 2 years of life on specific executive control function like verbal fluency are not well understood. In previous studies, we have shown associations of early childhood diarrhea (ECD) with nonverbal intelligence and school functioning. Therefore, we postulated that ECD might affect early neuropsychological development leading to long-term deficits in normal cognitive development. Based on our extensive 14-year prospective cohort studies of early childhood diarrheal illnesses in a Brazilian shantytown community, we examined ECD correlations between specific impairments of higher mental function and executive skills in shantytown children 5-10 years later (now at 6-12) years of age. Specifically we examined whether heavy diarrheal illnesses correlate with reduced performance on selected tests of executive function. Our study, for the first time, suggests a disproportional impairment in semantic but not phonetic fluency in a subset of children with heavy burdens of diarrhea in their first 2 years of life even when controlling for maternal education, breastfeeding, and child schooling. Similar semantic decrements have been associated with impaired recovery from brain injury. These exploratory studies suggest the importance of verbal fluency tests to assess executive functioning in children challenged by poor nutrition and diarrhea in early life. In addition, our unique findings show the potential influences of early childhood diarrhea on language development that is so critical to productive adulthood and potentially set a foundation for new neuropsychological approaches, which assess early burdens of enteric illnesses on childhood development.     

Optimal response vigor and choice under non-stationary outcome values

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review - Within a rational framework, a decision-maker selects actions based on the reward-maximization principle, which stipulates that they acquire outcomes with the...     

High involvement HR systems and innovative work behaviour: the mediating role of psychological empowerment,and the moderating roles of manager and co-worker support

Employees’ innovative work behaviour can help firms’ competitiveness. Existing research focuses on several factors, including HR policies, psychological empowerment as well as manager and co-worker support, to explain innovative work behaviour. However, much of this literature analyses just one of these, neglecting how they interact and limiting our understanding of the causes of innovative work behaviour. Synthesizing this work, we develop a novel and holistic framework that examines 1) how high-involvement HR systems are linked via the mediating role of psychological empowerment to innovative work behaviour and 2) how both manager and co-worker support moderate this relationship. Analysing software companies in Pakistan, we use hierarchical linear modelling to assess this framework. We draw on a unique dataset that captures HR policies at the organizational level as well as management and co-worker support, and supervisors’ assessments of individuals’ innovative work behaviour at the individual level. We analyse specific groups of HR practices. Psychological empowerment mediates the relationship between high-involvement HR systems and employees’ innovative work behaviour. Manager and co-worker support moderate the relationship between psychological empowerment and innovative work behaviour. Motivation-enhancing HR practices have a direct effect on innovative work behaviour, whereas ability- and opportunity-enhancing ones are mediated by psychological empowerment.     

Measuring attention in the hemispheres: the lateralized attention network test (LANT)

The attention network test (ANT) is a brief computerized battery measuring three independent behavioral components of attention: Conflict resolution (ability to overcome distracting stimuli), spatial Orienting (the benefit of valid spatial pre-cues), and Alerting (the benefit of temporal pre-cues). Imaging, clinical, and behavioral evidence demonstrate hemispheric asymmetries in these attentional networks. We constructed a lateralized version of the ANT (LANT), with brief targets flashed in one or the other visual hemifield. We also modified the tests by including invalid spatial cues in order to measure the cost component of Orienting. In a series of experiments, we investigated the efficiency of the attention networks separately in each hemisphere. Participants exhibited significant estimates of all networks measured by the LANT, comparable to the ANT. The three networks were represented in each hemisphere separately and were largely comparable across the two hemispheres. We suggest that the LANT is an informative extension of the original ANT, allowing for measurement of the three attention networks in each hemisphere separately.     

Determining who owns what: do children infer ownership from first possession?

A basic problem of daily life is determining who owns what. One way that people may solve this problem is by relying on a ‘first possession’ heuristic, according to which the first person who possesses an object is its owner, even if others subsequently possess the object. We investigated preschoolers’ use of this heuristic in five experiments. In Experiments 1 and 2, 3- and 4-year-olds inferred that an object was owned by the character who possessed it first, even though another character subsequently possessed it. Two-year-olds also showed this bias, but only when the object was placed between the characters when children were asked about ownership. Experiment 3 ruled out the possibility that children’s bias to select the first possessor results from a tendency to select the character first associated with the object. Experiment 4 showed that 3- and 4-year-olds have difficulty disregarding the first possession heuristic, even when provided with evidence that the character who first possessed an object is not its owner. But Experiment 5 found that children can disregard the heuristic in at least some situations. These five experiments suggest that the first possession heuristic guides children’s ownership inferences. The findings provide the first evidence that preschoolers can infer who owns what, when not explicitly told, and when not reasoning about objects with which they are personally acquainted.     

Unresolved anger and sadness: Identifying vocal acoustical correlates

The authors conducted 2 studies to identify the vocal acoustical correlates of unresolved anger and sadness among women reporting unresolved anger toward an attachment figure. In Study 1, participants (N = 17) were induced to experience and express anger then sadness or sadness then anger. In Study 2, a 2nd group of participants (N = 22) underwent a relationship-oriented, emotion-focused analogue therapy session. Results from both studies showed that, relative to emotionally neutral speech, anger evoked an increase in articulation rate and in mean fundamental frequency (F0) and F0-range, whereas sadness evoked an increase in F0-perturbation. Both F0 and F0-range were larger for anger than for sadness. In addition, results from the mood-induction-procedure study revealed 2 Emotion×Order interactions. Whereas variations in amplitude range suggested that anger evoked less physiological activation when induced after sadness, variations in F0-perturbation suggested that sadness evoked more physiological activation when induced after anger. These findings illustrate the feasibility of using acoustical measures to identify clients' personally and clinically meaningful emotional experiences, and shifts between such emotional experiences, in the context of psychotherapy. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved).     

Human–Android Interaction in the Near and Distant Future

ABSTRACT— In this article, a psychologist and an artificial-intelligence (AI) researcher speculate on the future of social interaction between humans and androids (robots designed to look and act exactly like people). We review the trajectory of currently developing robotics technologies and assess the level of android sophistication likely to be achieved in 50 years time. On the basis of psychological research, we consider obstacles to creating an android indistinguishable from humans. Finally, we discuss the implications of human–android social interaction from the standpoint of current psychological and AI research and speculate on the novel psychological issues likely to arise from such interaction. The science of psychology will face a remarkable new set of challenges in grappling with human–android interaction.