Exploration and Selection of Intralimb Coordination Patterns in 3-Month-Old Infants

Through the exploration of their own capacities and the selection of adaptive responses, infants learn new motor solutions. Using a conjugate reinforcement mobile procedure, previous researchers have repeatedly shown that infants increase their leg kick frequency to control a mobile that is connected to their ankles. That traditional experimental design allows multiple motor solutions to the task and therefore provides limited information about the infants' capacity to explore and select specific motor solutions. The author designed a new experimental procedure to study infants' capacity to discover and adopt specific motor solutions. The new, constraining mobile reinforcement procedure requires a specific motor response and therefore the development of a more finely tuned perception—action map than has previously been experimentally demonstrated. To gain reinforcement from the mobile, infants had to produce a coordinated hip and knee extension within the same leg. The results from the 13 infant participants showed that they were capable of increasing their frequency of coordinated movements to make the mobile move. Those results suggest that infants at the age of 89–106 days are sensitive to intralimb coordination task requirements and are capable of mapping their own limb dynamics to the environmental information.     

Visual categorization of social interactions

Prominent theories of action recognition suggest that during the recognition of actions the physical patterns of the action is associated with only one action interpretation (e.g., a person waving his arm is recognized as waving). In contrast to this view, studies examining the visual categorization of objects show that objects are recognized in multiple ways (e.g., a VW Beetle can be recognized as a car or a beetle) and that categorization performance is based on the visual and motor movement similarity between objects. Here, we studied whether we find evidence for multiple levels of categorization for social interactions (physical interactions with another person, e.g., handshakes). To do so, we compared visual categorization of objects and social interactions (Experiments 1 and 2) in a grouping task and assessed the usefulness of motor and visual cues (Experiments 3, 4, and 5) for object and social interaction categorization. Additionally, we measured recognition performance associated with recognizing objects and social interactions at different categorization levels (Experiment 6). We found that basic level object categories were associated with a clear recognition advantage compared to subordinate recognition but basic level social interaction categories provided only a little recognition advantage. Moreover, basic level object categories were more strongly associated with similar visual and motor cues than basic level social interaction categories. The results suggest that cognitive categories underlying the recognition of objects and social interactions are associated with different performances. These results are in line with the idea that the same action can be associated with several action interpretations (e.g., a person waving his arm can be recognized as waving or greeting).     

Conditions for positive and negative recencies in running memory-span recognition

A positive recency effect in a running-span recognition procedure was obtained in Experiment 1 for hits and for intratrial false alarms. In running recall procedures, recency does not fit well with an active updating hypothesis. In Experiment 2, in which the beginning of the target set was marked with a cue upon presentation, the recency effects disappeared. In Experiments 3 and 4 participants were forced to maintain 2 items in memory until the last one was presented for recognition. These three items were the target set. When the last item presentation was uncertain—because of the variable length list—an unexpected negative recency effect appeared. An explanation for this change from positive to negative recency is offered based on the sharing of attentional resources put forward by others for similar procedures.     

Transracial adoptees bridging heritage and national cultures: Parental socialisation,ethnic identity and self‐esteem

Transracial adoptees represent a specific group of immigrants who experience unique immigration processes that bring them face‐to‐face with two cultural backgrounds: that of their heritage culture on one hand and that of their national culture on the other hand. However, there is a scarcity of studies focused on the way these processes unfold within adoptive families. This study was aimed at exploring how transracial adoptees cope with the construction of their ethnic identity. Administering a self‐report questionnaire to 127 transracial adoptees and their mothers, for a total of 254 participants, we first investigated the association between mothers' cultural socialisation (enculturation and preparation for bias strategies) and adoptees' ethnic identity (i.e. ethnic identity exploration and ethnic identity affirmation dimensions). We then investigated whether ethnic identity affects self‐esteem by testing the hypothesis that national identity moderates the relationship between ethnic identity and self‐esteem. Results revealed that mothers' enculturation (but not their preparation for bias) supported adoptees' ethnic identity exploration, which in turn was positively associated with ethnic identity affirmation. Moreover, we confirmed the moderation effect: ethnic identity affirmation enhanced the level of self‐esteem, but only for those adoptees who perceived a higher degree of national identity affirmation.     

A Psychoanalyst’s Contexts

You only remember what you feel.¹

This is an experiential journey through some of the significant experiences that have played a part in shaping my professional identity. An analyst’s work consists of accompanying the patient in a double function of observer and participant with the aim of easing mental pain and facilitating emotional growth that has been partially blocked by past traumatic experiences. Shame is considered to be a central affect appearing in the intimate space of analysis. The subjectivity emerging in the analytic dyad is the principal focus of study for contemporary psychoanalysis. Validation and recognition of the development of subjectivity in the analytic process is the base of psychic change. The psychoanalytic experience transforms the patient’s self-experience at the same time as enhancing those mental functions deriving from good personal development, such as tolerance, mental flexibility, and the capacity of considering others.     

The Religion–Health Connection Among African Americans: What Is the Role of Social Capital?

Researchers have expressed growing interest in factors that may explain the relationship between religious involvement and health‐related outcomes. Faith‐based organizations are a significant institution in African American communities, both serving religious/spiritual needs and providing an important source of social capital. These communities often suffer a disproportionate burden of health conditions as well. The present study examined the role of social capital (social support, interconnectedness, and community participation) in the relationship between religious involvement (beliefs and behaviours) and physical and emotional functioning and depressive symptoms, among a national probability sample of African Americans (N = 803). Participants completed telephone interviews. We used structural equation modelling to test hypotheses based on the theoretical model. Results indicate that interconnectedness played a modest mediational role in the relationship between religious behaviours/participation and depressive symptoms. Interconnectedness was predictive of fewer depressive symptoms and marginally with better emotional functioning. Findings highlight the importance of trust in and commitment to one's community for health and have implications for community‐based health promotion initiatives. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

At the root of the left–right asymmetries in spatial–numerical processing: From domestic chicks to human subjects

In this review, we discuss evidence showing that birds (Gallus gallus and Nucifraga columbiana) represent numerical magnitudes as being oriented from left to right. Subjects, trained to identify a target element (i.e. the 4th) in a series of sagittally oriented identical elements, when required to generalise on an identical series oriented spatially from left to right, correctly identified the target element “counting” from the left of the array. Moreover, chicks, when presented with sets of 5 vs. 10 or 6 vs. 9 imprinting objects, which were made to disappear one at a time behind one of two identical screens, spontaneously inspected the screen which occluded the larger set. Interestingly, chicks scored a higher percentage of correct choices when the larger of the two sets was on their right side. Similarities with the phenomenon of the spatially oriented (left to right) number line in humans are discussed. Animal models promise a fresh approach to the understanding of developmental mechanisms underlying the expression of knowledge, offering attractive arguments for doubting the uniqueness of human numerical cognition.     

‘Who Were the Experts?’ The Science of Love vs. Women's Knowledge of Love During the Spanish Dictatorship

During the most oppressive decades of National-Catholicism imposed by the Franco regime, scientific and medical expertise and knowledge were used to promote a particular form of heterosexual love that supported patriarchal normativity and notions of femininity. This ‘science of love’ represents two dispositifs of feminization that circulated through a range of scientific and medical knowledges (e.g. eugenics, ethology, physiology, neurosciences and psychiatry). It not only supported the internal coherence of science and medicine, but also supported particular forms of knowledge within the cultural context of National-Catholicism. Although the science of love was inspired by particular notions of romantic love, it was also contested by the daily and practical experiences of women. Different women in Franco's Spain deployed marginalized and subaltern knowledges as they orchestrated an emotional knowledge that was more emancipatory and useful for everyday amorous preoccupations and well-being than the one in medical and psychiatric texts. Women's discussions of love represented a key site and source of knowledge, an authentic repository of imaginative ideas that are also useful for the present to challenge patriarchal norms.     

Effects of university affiliation and “school spirit” on color preferences: Berkeley versus Stanford

The ecological valence theory (EVT) posits that preference for a color is determined by people’s average affective response to everything associated with it (Palmer & Schloss, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107, 8877–8882, 2010). The EVT thus implies the existence of sociocultural effects: Color preference should increase with positive feelings (or decrease with negative feelings) toward an institution strongly associated with a color. We tested this prediction by measuring undergraduates’ color preferences at two rival universities, Berkeley and Stanford, to determine whether students liked their university’s colors better than their rivals did. Students not only preferred their own colors more than their rivals did, but the degree of their preference increased with self-rated positive affect (“school spirit”) for their university. These results support the EVT’s claim that color preference is caused by learned affective responses to associated objects and institutions, because it is unlikely that students choose their university or develop their degree of school spirit on the basis of preexisting color preferences.