The costs of racism for marriage: how racial discrimination hurts, and ethnic identity protects, newlywed marriages among Latinos

The experience of racial or ethnic discrimination is a salient and severe stressor that has been linked to numerous disparities in important outcomes. Yet, the link between perceived discrimination and marital outcomes has been overlooked by research on relationship stressors. The current study examined this link and tested whether ethnic identity buffered the relation between discrimination and ratings of marital quality and verbal aggression. A sample of 330 Latino newlyweds completed measures of perceived discrimination, ethnic identity, spouse's verbal aggression, and marital quality. Each spouse's interviewer also independently rated marital quality. Dyadic analyses revealed that husbands' experience of discrimination negatively predicted wives' marital quality, but only for husbands with weak ethnic identity. Wives whose husbands had strong ethnic identity were buffered from this effect. Identity also buffered the relation between husbands' discrimination and verbal aggression toward their wives, and this effect mediated the association between discrimination, identity, and marital quality.     

Improving Migrant Students' Spelling of English and Spanish Words with Error Correction

We examined the effects of error correction on spelling accuracy of culturally and linguistically diverse students enrolled in summer Migrant Education. In an error correction strategy, students spelled a word, viewed a correct model, and corrected specific errors. In a traditional strategy, students wrote words three times each while viewing a correct model. Words were presented in Spanish or English. Results showed that students with and without learning disabilities, whose primary language was English, correctly spelled more English words in the error correction condition than the traditional. Students whose primary language was Spanish correctly spelled Spanish words equally well in both conditions, possibly because of the phonetic nature of the Spanish language.     

On A. D. Smith’s constancy based defence of direct realism

This paper presents an argument against A D Smith’s Direct Realist theory of perception, which attempts to defend Direct Realism against the argument from illusion by appealing to conscious perceptual states that are structured by the perceptual constancies. Smith’s contention is that the immediate objects of perceptual awareness are characterised by these constancies, which removes any difficulty there may be in identifying them with the external, or normal, objects of awareness. It is here argued that Smith’s theory does not provide an adequate defence of Direct Realism because it does not adequately deal with the difficulties posed by the possibility of perceptual illusion. It is argued that there remain possible illusory experiences where the immediate objects of awareness, which in Smith’s account are those characterised by perceptual constancies, cannot be identified with the external objects of awareness, contrary to Direct Realism. A further argument is offered to extend this conclusion to all non-illusory cases, by adapting an argument of Smith’s own for the generalising step of the Argument from Illusion. The result is that Smith’s theory does not provide an adequate Direct Realist account of the possibility of perceptual illusion.     

(Pea)nuts and bolts of visual narrative: structure and meaning in sequential image comprehension

Just as syntax differentiates coherent sentences from scrambled word strings, the comprehension of sequential images must also use a cognitive system to distinguish coherent narrative sequences from random strings of images. We conducted experiments analogous to two classic studies of language processing to examine the contributions of narrative structure and semantic relatedness to processing sequential images. We compared four types of comic strips: (1) Normal sequences with both structure and meaning, (2) Semantic Only sequences (in which the panels were related to a common semantic theme, but had no narrative structure), (3) Structural Only sequences (narrative structure but no semantic relatedness), and (4) Scrambled sequences of randomly-ordered panels. In Experiment 1, participants monitored for target panels in sequences presented panel-by-panel. Reaction times were slowest to panels in Scrambled sequences, intermediate in both Structural Only and Semantic Only sequences, and fastest in Normal sequences. This suggests that both semantic relatedness and narrative structure offer advantages to processing. Experiment 2 measured ERPs to all panels across the whole sequence. The N300/N400 was largest to panels in both the Scrambled and Structural Only sequences, intermediate in Semantic Only sequences and smallest in the Normal sequences. This implies that a combination of narrative structure and semantic relatedness can facilitate semantic processing of upcoming panels (as reflected by the N300/N400). Also, panels in the Scrambled sequences evoked a larger left-lateralized anterior negativity than panels in the Structural Only sequences. This localized effect was distinct from the N300/N400, and appeared despite the fact that these two sequence types were matched on local semantic relatedness between individual panels. These findings suggest that sequential image comprehension uses a narrative structure that may be independent of semantic relatedness. Altogether, we argue that the comprehension of visual narrative is guided by an interaction between structure and meaning.     

Stoicism and Sensation Seeking: Male Vulnerabilities for the Acquired Capability for Suicide

Our aim was to investigate two personality traits (i.e., stoicism and sensation seeking) that may account for well-established gender differences in suicide, within the framework of the interpersonal theory of suicide. This theory proposes that acquired capability for suicide, a construct comprised of pain insensitivity and fearlessness about death, explains gender differences in suicide. Across two samples of undergraduates (N = 185 and N = 363), men demonstrated significantly greater levels of both facets of acquired capability than women. Further, we found that stoicism accounted for the relationship between gender and pain insensitivity, and sensation seeking accounted for the relationship between gender and fearlessness about death. Thus, personality may be one psychological mechanism accounting for gender differences in suicidal behavior.     

A generalized visual latency explanation of the Pulfrich phenomenon

The classical visual latency explanation of the Pulfrich phenomenon is generalized to allow for the possibility that the visual system uses velocity information from motion detectors to compensate for spatial lag due to time lag, in identifying the instantaneous position of a moving object. The results of the reported experiment verify one consequence of the generalized version: the elliptical apparent path is skewed away from the filtered eye. The results suggest also that the extrapolation factor increases with visual latency and that there is a different extrapolation factor for each eye when the eyes are illuminated unequally.     

Affect and alcohol use: an ecological momentary assessment study of outpatients with borderline personality disorder

Alcohol use may be viewed as an attempt (albeit maladaptive) to regulate negative emotional states. We examined associations between both negative and positive affects and alcohol use in outpatient women diagnosed with borderline personality disorder (BPD; n=74), a prototype of emotional dysregulation, as well as a psychiatric control group of women with current depressive disorder (major depressive disorder/dysthymic disorder [MDD\DYS]; n=50). Participants completed randomly prompted reports of mood and alcohol use up to six times a day over a 28-day period using electronic diaries. Mean levels of either positive or negative affects did not distinguish between drinkers and nondrinkers in either diagnostic group. However, levels of both negative and positive affects were positively associated with alcohol use at the momentary level in BPD drinkers. More robust findings were obtained with respect to within-person affective variability, which was related to alcohol use in multiple ways. BPD drinkers showed higher within-person variability for most negative affects than BPD nondrinkers; MDD\DYS drinkers in general showed less within-person variability than MDD\DYS nondrinkers for negative affects. Multilevel lagged analyses for BPD drinkers indicated that alcohol use was positively related to variability in all affects, concurrently, but fewer significant effects of affect variability on the next day's drinking or significant effects of alcohol use on the next day's affect variability were observed. Among MDD\DYS drinkers, we observed more significant associations between affect variability on next day's alcohol use and of alcohol use on next day's affect variability. We discuss theoretical and methodological issues relevant to these findings as well as implications for future research.     

Improving the effectiveness of an interruption lag by inducing a memory-based strategy

The memory for goals model (Altmann & Trafton, 2002) posits the importance of a short delay (the ‘interruption lag’) before an interrupting task to encode suspended goals for retrieval post-interruption. Two experiments used the theory of soft constraints (Gray, Simms, Fu & Schoelles, 2006) to investigate whether the efficacy of an interruption lag could be improved by increasing goal-state access cost to induce a more memory-based encoding strategy. Both experiments used a copying task with three access cost conditions (Low, Medium, and High) and a 5-s interruption lag with a no lag control condition. Experiment 1 found that the participants in the High access cost condition resumed more interrupted trials and executed more actions correctly from memory when coupled with an interruption lag. Experiment 2 used a prospective memory test post-interruption and an eyetracker recorded gaze activity during the interruption lag. The participants in the High access cost condition with an interruption lag were best at encoding target information during the interruption lag, evidenced by higher scores on the prospective memory measure and more gaze activity on the goal-state during the interruption lag. Theoretical and practical issues regarding the use of goal-state access cost and an interruption lag are discussed.     

Blameworthiness, Vice, and The Objectivity of Morals

Abstract: The following thesis is defended: whether actions are morally required is an objective matter – that is, independent of the beliefs, intentions, etc. with which the actions are preformed. This thesis needs defending because it seems vulnerable to certain counterexamples. One approach to dealing with these counterexamples centers on the concept of blameworthiness, but this approach is flawed. An alternative approach is developed that relies on the concept of a vicious action. And although it too centers on the concept of blameworthiness, it lacks the flaws that are present in the original approach.