Examining civic engagement in ethnic minority youth populations: A literature review and concept analysis

Racial reckoning is defined as the subjugation of Black, Indigenous, and people of Color (BIPOC) to racial hierarchies and subordinate groups that influence multiple well-being outcomes throughout the developmental lifespan and across generations. With the two pandemics of racial reckoning and COVID-19 amidst a growing controversial political landscape, topics around civic engagement have been brought to the forefront of community conversation. Discussions surrounding civic engagement must go beyond addressing issues of public concern and examine the vehicle in which civic engagement may be delivered. This is becoming increasingly important as civic engagement is one of the main avenues of social change through individual and collective action, particularly regarding racial reckoning and healthcare disparities highlighted by COVID-19. The paper focuses on civic engagement among ethnic minority youth and young adults. An integrated model of civic engagement was created based off what was learned through this review. This proposed model of civic engagement is meant to be the first step to addressing the gap in civic engagement literature for ethnic minority youth. Weaknesses and future considerations regarding the model will also be discussed, as well as any implications for ethnic minority youth and young adults.     

“Put a Little Love in Your Heart”: Acceptance of Paternalistic and Ally Political Discourses Both Predict Pro-Roma Solidarity Intentions Through Moral Inclusion

The way politicians talk about minorities institutes the normative context of intergroup relations. We investigated how endorsement of different political discourses predicts donation and collective action intentions by majority members toward the Roma in five European countries. The survey was conducted online using samples demographically similar to the populations of Hungary, Slovakia, Romania, France, and Ireland (N = 5,054). First, results showed that accepting paternalistic discourse versus discourse promoting allyship were not distinguishable; both promoted higher moral inclusion which in turn predicted higher prosocial intentions. Second, donations (i.e., immediate relief) and collective action (i.e., social change action) were driven by identical factors. Third, acceptance of openly hostile political discourse neither predicted moral exclusion, nor lower prosocial intentions. In summary, our research provides important evidence that when it comes to Roma—non-Roma relations, the previously established distinction between solidarity intentions that aim to solidify status relations versus bring about social change is completely blurred, presumably because of the social context in which any positive message communicates moral inclusion challenging the hostile status quo.     

A review on equivalence-based procedures to teach food-portion estimation skills

This review involved a systematic analysis of equivalence-based instruction (EBI) that aimed to improve food-size interventions in diverse populations. Systematic searches identified seven studies published since 2010 that met inclusion criteria. These studies were analyzed according to their participants, design, setting, content taught, training structures, training protocol, testing format, treatment integrity, and outcomes. Results showed EBI procedures for teaching food estimation skills have been mostly implemented with adults. The type of content taught in the identified studies included carbohydrate ranges, portion size with food and non-food items, measuring cups and nutritional content of calories. Majority of included studies used one-to-many training structure and simultaneous protocols for teaching stimulus relations. Five studies completed a generalization probe and three studies reported treatment integrity data. Overall, all participants demonstrated skill acquisition of novel relations between food and portion measurement aides. Recommendations for future research and clinical applications of EBI in teaching food portion estimation are presented.     

Worldviews about change: Their structure and their implications for understanding responses to sustainability,technology, and political change

People hold different perspectives about how they think the world is changing or should change. We examined five of these “worldviews” about change: Progress, Golden Age, Endless Cycle, Maintenance, and Balance. In Studies 1–4 (total N = 2733) we established reliable measures of each change worldview, and showed how these help explain when people will support or oppose social change in contexts spanning sustainability, technological innovations, and political elections. In mapping out these relationships we identify how the importance of different change worldviews varies across contexts, with Balance most critical for understanding support for sustainability, Progress/Golden Age important for understanding responses to innovations, and Golden Age uniquely important for preferring Trump/Republicans in the 2016 US election. These relationships were independent of prominent individual differences (e.g., values, political orientation for elections) or context-specific factors (e.g., self-reported innovativeness for responses to innovations). Study 5 (N = 2140) examined generalizability in 10 countries/regions spanning five continents, establishing that these worldviews exhibited metric invariance, but with country/region differences in how change worldviews were related to support for sustainability. These findings show that change worldviews can act as a general “lens” people use to help determine whether to support or oppose social change.     

Eco-restrictive experiences forming extraordinary consumer experiences

This article contributes to different research traditions when proposes to reflect on theoretical fields, such as consumer culture and contemporary marketing. The study in a tourist and ecological conservation project revealed eco-restricted extraordinary experiences. We found a group of volunteers that build meanings and practices connected with new actions and habits that offer, not only ecological and sustainable benefits, but new value consumption relations. In contextualizing our findings, we highlight experiences and curiosities that are glossed over in academic and practical accounts that celebrate the extraordinary experience. It was observed, by analyzing data from various qualitative techniques, that the findings cross borders of mundane ingrained practices and bring an emerging domain, where both, consumption and anti-consumption experiences, offer insights into to a diversity of areas of knowledge.     

Transfer effects from language processing to visual attention dynamics: The impact of orthographic transparency

The consistency between letters and sounds varies across languages. These differences have been proposed to be associated with different reading mechanisms (lexical vs. phonological), processing grain sizes (coarse vs. fine) and attentional windows (whole words vs. individual letters). This study aimed to extend this idea to writing to dictation. For that purpose, we evaluated whether the use of different types of processing has a differential impact on local windowing attention: phonological (local) processing in a transparent language (Spanish) and lexical (global) processing of an opaque language (English). Spanish and English monolinguals (Experiment 1) and Spanish–English bilinguals (Experiment 2) performed a writing to dictation task followed by a global–local task. The first key performance showed a critical dissociation between languages: the response times (RTs) from the Spanish writing to dictation task was modulated by word length, whereas the RTs from the English writing to dictation task was modulated by word frequency and age of acquisition, as evidence that language transparency biases processing towards phonological or lexical strategies. In addition, after a Spanish task, participants more efficiently processed local information, which resulted in both the benefit of global congruent information and the reduced cost of incongruent global information. Additionally, the results showed that bilinguals adapt their attentional processing depending on the orthographic transparency.     

Thinking disposition,thinking style,and susceptibility to causal illusion predict fake news discriminability

Acceptance of fake news is probably modulated by an intricate interplay of social, cultural, and political factors. In this study, we investigated whether individual-level cognitive factors related to thinking and decision making could influence the tendency to accept fake news. A group of volunteers responded to a COVID19-related fake news discrimination scale as well as to questionnaires assessing their thinking style (reflective vs. intuitive) and thinking disposition (actively open-mindedness). Furthermore, they completed a computerized contingency learning task aimed at measuring their tendency to develop a causal illusion, a cognitive bias leading to perceive causal connections between non-contingent events. More actively open-minded and more reflective individuals presented higher fake news discrimination scores. In addition, those who developed weaker causal illusions in the contingency learning task were also more accurate at differentiating between fake and legitimate news. Actively open-minded thinking was the main contributor in a regression model predicting fake news discrimination.     

Lifespan normative data (18–89 years) for Raven's Advanced Progressive Matrices Set I

Raven's Advanced Progressive Matrices (APM) Set I is a validated and brief test of fluid intelligence, ideal for use in busy clinical settings. However, there is a dearth of normative data allowing an accurate interpretation of APM scores. To address this, we present normative data from across the adult lifespan (18–89 years) for the APM Set I. Data are presented in five age cohorts (total N = 352), including two older adult cohorts (65–79 years and 80–89 years), which allows age-standardized assessment. We also present data from a validated measure of premorbid intellectual ability, which was absent from previous standardizations of longer forms of the APM. In line with previous findings, a striking age-related decline was noted, beginning relatively early in adulthood and most marked amongst lower-scoring individuals. Older adults did not demonstrate difficulty with specific test items or make an increased proportion of specific errors. Sex was not a significant predictor of performance. The data set is of particular use in the neuropsychological assessment of older adults, given the known susceptibility of fluid intelligence to both the effects of normal ageing and acquired brain injury in older age. The results are discussed in light of theories of neurological ageing.     

Aggression as a reinforcer: operant behavior in the mouse-killing rat

Two experiments examined mouse killing as a reinforcer of key pressing by rats that killed mice. In Experiment I, mouse-killing rats performed the key-pressing response when each press was reinforced with presentation of a mouse. Offered a choice between a key that yielded presentation of mice and one that did not, the rats preferred the key that yielded mice. When the contingency was reversed, the rats preferred the other key and continued to kill mice. In Experiment II, mouse-killing rats that did not kill rat pups performed a key-pressing response reinforced with presentation of mice on a variable-interval schedule. In tests for responding reinforced on that schedule with presentation of normal mice, anesthetized mice, dead mice, or rat pups, these rats that killed mice but not rat pups exhibited a decline in response rate when rat pups were the reinforcer. Altering the condition of the mice did not significantly affect performance.