Changing American Congregations: Findings from the Third Wave of the National Congregations Study

The third wave of the National Congregations Study (NCS‐III) was conducted in 2012. The 2012 General Social Survey asked respondents who attend religious services to name their religious congregation, producing a nationally representative cross‐section of congregations from across the religious spectrum. Data about these congregations were collected via a 50‐minute interview with one key informant from 1,331 congregations. Information was gathered about multiple aspects of congregations’ social composition, structure, activities, and programming. Approximately two‐thirds of the NCS‐III questionnaire replicates items from 1998 or 2006–2007 NCS waves. Each congregation was geocoded, and selected data from the 2010 U.S. Census or American Community Survey have been appended. We describe NCS‐III methodology and use the cumulative NCS dataset (containing 4,071 cases) to describe five trends: more ethnic diversity, greater acceptance of gays and lesbians, increasingly informal worship styles, declining size (but not from the perspective of the average attendee), and declining denominational affiliation.     

Exploring the Hierarchical Structure of the MMPI–2–RF Personality Psychopathology Five in Psychiatric Patient and University Student Samples

In this study our goal was to examine the hierarchical structure of personality pathology as conceptualized by Harkness and McNulty's (1994) Personality Psychopathology Five (PSY–5) model, as recently operationalized by the MMPI–2–RF (Ben-Porath & Tellegen, 2011) PSY–5r scales. We used Goldberg's (2006) “bass-ackwards” method to obtain factor structure using PSY–5r item data, successively extracting from 1 to 5 factors in a sample of psychiatric patients (n = 1,000) and a sample of university undergraduate students (n = 1,331). Participants from these samples had completed either the MMPI–2 or the MMPI–2–RF. The results were mostly consistent across the 2 samples, with some differences at the 3-factor level. In the patient sample a factor structure representing 3 broad psychopathology domains (internalizing, externalizing, and psychoticism) emerged; in the student sample the 3-factor level represented what is more commonly observed in “normal-range” personality models (negative emotionality, introversion, and disconstraint). At the 5-factor level the basic structure was similar across the 2 samples and represented well the PSY–5r domains.     

Fallibilism and the flexibility of epistemic modals

It is widely acknowledged that epistemic modals admit of inter-subjective flexibility. This paper introduces intra-subjective flexibility for epistemic modals and draws on this flexibility to argue that fallibilism is consistent with the standard account of epistemic modals.     

The Effects of Prior Learned Strategies on Updating an Opponent's Strategy in the Rock,Paper, Scissors Game

To explore how model building adapts to changing environments, we had participants play “rock‐paper‐scissors” against a computer that played a frequency bias or a player‐dependent bias and then switched. Participants demonstrated their use of prior experience in how quickly they recognized and exploited changes in the computer's play strategy; in general, the more similar the strategies, the more efficient the updating. These findings inform our understanding of previously reported updating impairments in right‐brain damaged patients.     

The Development of Global and Local Processing: A Comparison of Children to Adults

In light of the adult model of a hemispheric asymmetry of global and local processing, we compared children (M _age = 8.4 years) to adults in a global-local reaction time (RT) paradigm. Hierarchical designs (large shapes made of small shapes) were presented randomly to each visual field, and participants were instructed to identify either the global or the local level in each of two blocks. We obtained evidence of a global-local processing asymmetry, with stronger effects for children than for adults. In both children and adults, responses were faster and more accurate for global identification in the right hemisphere and for local identification in the left hemisphere. Similarly, a significant asymmetry of global and local interference was obtained in children but not in adults. Interference reflects the RT cost of conflicting information at the nonattended level. For example, local interference indicates the degree to which inconsistency at the local level slows global identification. Stronger evidence for lateralized processing in children is discussed within the framework of increasing interhemispheric transfer. That is, as interhemispheric transfer increases, cost of presentation to the nonpreferred hemisphere (e.g., local identification in the right hemisphere) is reduced.     

Hide and seek: The theory of mind of visual concealment and search

Researchers have investigated visual search behavior for almost a century. During that time, few studies have examined the cognitive processes involved in hiding items rather than finding them. To investigate this, we developed a paradigm that allowed participants to indicate where they would hide (or find) an item that was to be found (or hidden) by a friend or a foe. We found that (i) for friends more than foes, participants selected the pop-out item in the display, and (ii) when the display was homogeneous, they selected nearby and corner items. These behaviors held for both hiding and finding, although hide and find behaviors were not identical. For pop-out displays, decision times were unusually long when hiding an item from a foe. These data converge on the conclusion that the principles of search and concealment are similar, but not the same. They also suggest that this paradigm will provide researchers a powerful method for investigating theory of mind in adults.     

Amodal completion is modulated by lightness similarity

The strength of amodal completion is known to be modulated by contour relationships and global shape. Some researchers have shown that amodal completion also depends on surface similarity, but they have not distinguished the relative importance of similarity in surface representations either pre or post lightness constancy. In the experiments reported here, we aimed to determine whether amodal completion depends on processes that occur either before or after the establishment of lightness constancy. We used computer rendering techniques to vary the consistency of a cast shadow with a decrement in luminance on one side of a partially occluded surface. We found that perceived completion depended on the consistency of the decrement in surface luminance with the orientation of a cast shadow (Exp.?1). In Experiment ?2, we generated occluded surface fragments that could be either luminance-matched or lightness-matched to surface fragments on the opposite side of the occluder, and we found that the strength of amodal completion depended primarily on similarity in the perceived surface reflectance. In Experiments 3 and 4, we performed apparent-motion tasks to obtain converging evidence for grouping on the basis of perceived similarity in lightness. We found that matching surfaces in lightness significantly improved the apparent motion of surfaces behind an occluder, as compared with surfaces that were matched in contrast alone. These results suggest that amodal completion depends on the perceived similarity in lightness of partially occluded surface fragments.