Gesture for generalization: gesture facilitates flexible learning of words for actions on objects

Verb learning is difficult for children (Gentner, 1982 ), partially because children have a bias to associate a novel verb not only with the action it represents, but also with the object on which it is learned (Kersten & Smith, 2002 ). Here we investigate how well 4‐ and 5‐year‐old children (N = 48) generalize novel verbs for actions on objects after doing or seeing the action (e.g., twisting a knob on an object) or after doing or seeing a gesture for the action (e.g., twisting in the air near an object). We find not only that children generalize more effectively through gesture experience, but also that this ability to generalize persists after a 24‐hour delay.     

Virtual Reality and Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy for Driving Anxiety and Aggression in Veterans: A Pilot Study

Within the U.S. military, motor vehicle accidents (MVAs) are the leading cause of preventable morbidity and mortality. Prior combat exposure and anxiety symptoms are associated with risky and aggressive driving, which is responsible for over half of MVA fatalities. Therefore, interventions are needed to reduce driving anxiety and aggression in veterans in order to mitigate the public health impact of MVAs. Virtual reality exposure therapy (VRET) offers safe, controlled exposure to distressing stimuli. The current study piloted a novel virtual reality and cognitive behavioral intervention (VRET + CBT) for veterans that integrated both anxiety and anger management components. Virtual reality driving scenarios were delivered in a driving simulator and tailored for the military population. Six previously deployed veterans completed eight intervention sessions, as well as pre/post, one month follow-up and six to nine month follow-up assessments. Repeated measures ANOVAs demonstrated significant decline and large effect sizes for PTSD symptoms, driving phobia, hyperarousal in driving situations, anxiety/anger-related thoughts and behaviors, and risky driving. Hyperarousal in driving situations declined by 69%, aggressive driving declined by 29%, and risky driving declined by 21%. Treatment gains were maintained at follow-up. Recruitment, retention, immersion, simulator sickness scores, and qualitative feedback demonstrated feasibility of the intervention. Implications for future research and adaptation are discussed.     

Moral (dis)engagement with anthropogenic climate change in online comments on newspaper articles

Anthropogenic climate change (ACC) is widely acknowledged to be morally significant, but little is known about everyday moralising around ACC. We addressed this gap via quantified thematic analysis of 300 online comments to British newspaper articles on ACC, drawing on Bandura's moral disengagement theory. Moral disengagement through denial of ACC was widespread. Other disengagement strategies, such as palliative comparison and diminishing agency, occurred less often. There was also some moral engagement, most often through assertions of the existence of ACC and/or its harmful effects. Moral disengagement was significantly more common in comments on right wing than left wing newspapers, whereas the opposite was true of moral engagement. Although Bandura's framework provided a useful starting point to make sense of ACC moralising, it did not capture moral concerns that extended beyond its “harm/care” remit. In particular, many “denial” comments included a “dishonesty” discourse, whereby ACC proponents were accused of deception for ulterior motives. To classify this discourse as moral disengagement obscures its engagement with a different set of moral issues around trust and honesty. We suggest that Bandura's theory represents one possible “moral landscape” around ACC and could be extended to encompass a broader range of moral concerns.     

Task and distribution sampling affect auditory category learning

There is substantial evidence that two distinct learning systems are engaged in category learning. One is principally engaged when learning requires selective attention to a single dimension (rule-based), and the other is drawn online by categories requiring integration across two or more dimensions (information-integration). This distinction has largely been drawn from studies of visual categories learned via overt category decisions and explicit feedback. Recent research has extended this model to auditory categories, the nature of which introduces new questions for research. With the present experiment, we addressed the influences of incidental versus overt training and category distribution sampling on learning information-integration and rule-based auditory categories. The results demonstrate that the training task influences category learning, with overt feedback generally outperforming incidental feedback. Additionally, distribution sampling (probabilistic or deterministic) and category type (information-integration or rule-based) both affect how well participants are able to learn. Specifically, rule-based categories are learned equivalently, regardless of distribution sampling, whereas information-integration categories are learned better with deterministic than with probabilistic sampling. The interactions of distribution sampling, category type, and kind of feedback impacted category-learning performance, but these interactions have not yet been integrated into existing category-learning models. These results suggest new dimensions for understanding category learning, inspired by the real-world properties of auditory categories.     

Understanding the Association Between Spirituality,Religiosity, and Feelings of Happiness and Sadness Among HIV-Positive Indian Adults: Examining Stress-Related Growth as a Mediator

This study examined the role of stress-related growth as a mediator of the associations between spirituality, religiosity, and feelings of happiness and sadness in a sample of 178 HIV-positive Indian adults. Results indicated that spirituality, but not religiosity, was associated with feelings of happiness and sadness. Subsequent mediation analyses indicated that stress-related growth fully mediated the relationships involving spirituality and feelings of happiness and sadness. Overall, our findings point to the importance of facilitating greater spiritual development among HIV-positive Indians, as well as promoting strategies that help them develop and apply stress-related growth coping methods in their lives.     

Leaving to Love: Filipina Caregivers and The Queer Kinship of Transnational Childcare

This article considers the affective and psychosocial dimensions of transnational childcare. It offers a transdisciplinary engagement with the subjectivity of Filipina caregivers, suggesting that the ways in which their love and care are split across borders and nations “queers” conceptions of family, childhood, and maternal obligation. Specifically, queer theories of kinship and diaspora are employed to offer an affective reading of Canada’s Caregiver Program. D. W. Winnicott’s theory of the “good enough” mother is also engaged in an effort to complicate narratives of maternal obligation, neglect, and love.     

Hybridized Indigenous Healing in the Kyrgyz Republic: Helping Survivors of Violence

ABSTRACT

Harmful consequences of civil unrest in 2010, in the Southern region of the Kyrgyz Republic in Osh, continue to have an impact on communities to the present day. One of the most significant effects has been numerous undiagnosed cases of rape and other types of gender-based violence (GBV) that occurred during the interethnic conflict. The true prevalence rate of GBV cases is still unknown. For example, according to official data from the Ministry of Internal Affairs (2011), there were only seven cases of rape during the conflict; however, crisis center reports documented 322 rapes (Molchanova, 2016 Molchanova, E. (2016). Okazanie psihologicheskoi pomoshci licam, postradavshim ot genderno-gonasiliya vo vremya krizisov i chrezvichainih situacii. Bishkek, Kyrgyz Republic: AltynPrint Publishing House.  [Google Scholar]). Cultural norms dictate that women who experience GBV hide their “shame,” which is why only a small percentage of victims with PTSD symptoms resulting from GBV seek out services from professionals, such as from crisis centers, psychologists and psychiatrists, and police. Indigenous healers are often the first and only stop for help-seeking. However, the influences of diverse religious beliefs and practices as well as the development of Western-style helping methods in the Kyrgyz Republic have shaped the practice of traditional healing. This hybridization, which is a process of including religious and even medical practices into traditional healing, started in the middle of the 1990s, and now, the extensive networks of traditional healers in the Kyrgyz Republic often combine traditional rituals with Islamic prayer, herbal treatment, massage, and other techniques. This article explores the hybridization of indigenous healing in the Kyrgyz Republic as a consequence of a variety of social transformations, and, as a result of polymorphism, the complexity and clinical variability of posttraumatic symptoms in Kyrgyz cultural settings.     

Fluctuating confidence: the dynamic consequences of true/false affirmatives and denials on how a listener appraises their personal past

The present study examined the mnemonic consequences of true/false denials and affirmatives on how a listener appraises their personal past. To this end, participants (listeners) rated the extent to which they were confident certain events occurred during their childhood. They rated these events both before and after a confederate (speaker) denied or affirmed the occurrence of four different childhood events each, for a total of eight “rehearsed” events. For each set (denials and affirmatives) of events, half were true and half were false. In turn, this created four types of events (two each): true denials, true affirmatives, false denials, and false affirmatives. Additionally, half of the participants were told that the speaker was provided independent information about the veracity of the event’s occurrence (“expert” condition). Overall, listeners were less confident in the occurrence of false denial events, but more so when they believed the speaker to be more knowledgeable of the listeners memories, more confident in false affirmative events and, counter intuitively, more confident in the occurrence of true denial events. These results underscore the importance of a nuanced approach to the mnemonic consequences of true and false denials and affirmations in the course of social interactions.     

Bidirectional Associations between Peer Victimization and Functions of Aggression in Middle Childhood: Further Evaluation across Informants and Academic Years

The current 3-wave study examined bidirectional associations between peer victimization and functions of aggression across informants over a 1-year period in middle childhood, with attention to potential gender differences. Participants included 198 children (51% girls) in the third and fourth grades and their homeroom teachers. Peer victimization was assessed using both child- and teacher-reports, and teachers provided ratings of reactive and proactive aggression. Cross-classified multilevel cross-lagged models indicated that child-reports, but not teacher-reports, of peer victimization predicted higher levels of reactive aggression within and across academic years. Further, reactive aggression predicted subsequent increases in child- and teacher-reports of peer victimization across each wave of data. Several gender differences, particularly in the crossed paths between proactive aggression and peer victimization, also emerged. Whereas peer victimization was found to partially account for the stability of reactive aggression over time, reactive aggression did not account for the stability of peer victimization. Taken together with previous research, the current findings suggest that child-reports of peer victimization may help identify youth who are risk for exhibiting increased reactive aggression over time. Further, they highlight the need to target reactively aggressive behavior for the prevention of peer victimization in middle childhood.     

Mimicry and Investigative Interviewing: Using Deliberate Mimicry to Elicit Information and Cues to Deceit

We examined the effect of deliberate mimicry on eliciting (accurate) information and cues to deceit. Mimicry is considered to facilitate cooperation and compliance in truth tellers, whereas liars are constrained to provide detail. We therefore expected truth tellers to be more detailed than liars, particularly after being mimicked. A total of 165 participants told the truth or lied about a meeting they attended. During the interview, an interviewer mimicked half of the participants. Truth tellers were more detailed than liars, but only in the ‘mimicry present’ condition. Truth tellers also gave more accurate units of information than liars, and the difference was most pronounced in the ‘mimicry present’ condition. Mimicry as a tool for eliciting information and cues to deceit fits well with the emerging ‘interviewing to detect deception’ literature, particularly in the ‘encouraging interviewees to say more’ approach. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.