Familiarity increases subjective positive affect even in non-affective and non-evaluative contexts

Previous research shows that the experience of familiarity involves the experience of positive affect. In two experiments we clarify and extend this research by showing that the experience of familiarity involves the experience of positive affect even when the nature of the experimental task is non-affective and non-evaluative and even when participants are actively performing other cognitive operations—that the association of familiarity and positive affect is not disrupted by (non-affective and non-evaluative) judgments regardless of whether familiarity does or does not play a role in those judgments. Experiment 1 used a non-affective but evaluative task and Experiment 2 a completely non-evaluative task. Both studies manipulated familiarity through re-exposure and showed that processing familiar stimuli induced a pleasurable subjective experience.     

Mistakes pertaining to undesired (relative to desired) self-standards elicit immediate enhanced electrocortical signals of error processing

Past research provides initial evidence that errors pertaining to undesired (vs. desired) self-standards are of greater motivational significance, but little is known about how quickly people recognize and respond to such errors. To examine immediate responses to errors pertaining to desired and undesired self-standards, we assessed event-related potentials (ERPs) while participants judged self-attributes as personally desirable or undesirable. No discernible differences emerged in ERPs associated with correct responses to undesired compared to desired self-standards. Error-related negativities, shown in past work to index motivational significance, and error positivities, shown in past work to index post-error adjustment, were more pronounced when participants erroneously endorsed undesirable self-standards than when they erroneously failed to endorse desirable self-standards. These electrophysiological correlates of differences in the motivational significance of undesired versus desired self-standards emerged within 400 ms of making an error, suggesting that the impact of these errors does not require extensive deliberation.     

D. C. S. Oosthuizen on Husserl’s Doctrine of Constitution

The following is an English translation of the 1960 paper by the South African philosopher D. C. S. Oosthuizen entitled “Die Transendentaal-Frenomenologiese Idealisme: ‘n Aspek van die konstitusie-probleem in die filosofie van Edmund Husserl,” preceded by a few contextualizing remarks by the translator. The paper attempts to show that the phenomenological, eidetic and transcendental reductions, the problem of constitution and transcendental genesis are indispensable parts of the transcendental phenomenological method. It then demonstrates that this method and the results that are obtained by means of it cannot, strictly speaking, be said to decisively favour a metaphysical or epistemological idealism, specifically because the transcendental reductions cannot be undone.     

Differentiation of Self,Mate Selection,and Marital Adjustment: Validity of Postulates of Bowen Theory in a Spanish Sample

This research investigates relationships between differentiation of self, mate selection, and marital adjustment in a Spanish sample of 118 heterosexual couples (N = 236). In line with Bowen theory, greater differentiation of self and greater similarity in partners' differentiation of self levels each predicted greater marital adjustment. Contrary to theory, gender differences were observed on the S-DSI, with males showing higher total differentiation scores than females, and hypothesized links between differentiation of self and mate selection were not observed. Implications for therapy and suggestions for future research with the S-DSI are discussed.     

How do trainees choose their first psychotherapy training? The case of training in psychotherapy integration

Future trainees go through difficult decision-making processes when starting their first psychotherapy training. The choice of training in psychotherapy integration is a specific type of this process. In this study, qualitative data were obtained from the motivational letters, in-depth semi-structured interviews and e-mail questionnaires of 26 future trainees to answer the research question, ‘How do trainees choose their first psychotherapy training?’ We primarily employed the grounded theory approach as well as consensual qualitative research to shed light on the central category of Gaining Certainty to enter the training. This category was elaborated into a four-phase model, specifically comprised of the: (1) Critical Comparison, (2) Identification, (3) Self-Confirmation and (4) Waiting phases. The model was then discussed in connection with relevant concepts, such as the degree of complexity and flexibility within the epistemological development of trainees [Vasco, A. B., &; Dryden, W. (1994). The development of psychotherapists’ theoretical orientation and clinical practice. British Journal of Guidance &; Counselling, 22(3), 327–341].     

Perceiving emotions: Cueing social categorization processes and attentional control through facial expressions

Individuals spontaneously categorise other people on the basis of their gender, ethnicity and age. But what about the emotions they express? In two studies we tested the hypothesis that facial expressions are similar to other social categories in that they can function as contextual cues to control attention. In Experiment 1 we associated expressions of anger and happiness with specific proportions of congruent/incongruent flanker trials. We also created consistent and inconsistent category members within each of these two general contexts. The results demonstrated that participants exhibited a larger congruency effect when presented with faces in the emotional group associated with a high proportion of congruent trials. Notably, this effect transferred to inconsistent members of the group. In Experiment 2 we replicated the effects with faces depicting true and false smiles. Together these findings provide consistent evidence that individuals spontaneously utilise emotions to categorise others and that such categories determine the allocation of attentional control.     

Are future generations that belong to language minorities entitled to group rights?

In this article, I investigate to what extent future generations that belong to language minorities are entitled to group rights that protect their linguistic identity. In particular, I assess whether these future generations are entitled to assistance rights, symbolic claims, self-government rights and exemptions from the law. To address this I outline three arguments supporting group rights for current generations and raise the question of whether these arguments, which are true for current generations, will also be true for future generations. The answer defends the entitlement of future generations to group rights against two counterarguments. The first is that future generations have no interest in preserving their language and therefore there is no normative justification for group rights. The second is that there is a duty to eliminate group rights in order to avoid malign consequences of these rights for future generations.     

Three Decades of State Feminism and Gender Equality Policies in Multi-governed Spain

Spain’s evolution from an authoritarian regime to a well-established multi-governed democracy in a short period of time, has been accompanied by incredibly rapid social change and a varied (depending on the governmental period), but overall steady, consideration of gender equality as a political priority. This has also led to the rapid development and consolidation of women’s and equality machineries–state feminism–and well-established policies devoted to promoting gender equality over the last three decades, both at national and regional governmental levels. This article aims to present a consolidated policy area which has enough elements to survive and to keep on developing, although in an increasingly fragmented manner, among regions, despite the ongoing economic crisis and the conservative political turn. Based on theories of state feminism and discursive politics, this article analyzes four important elements for understanding this claim and the evolution of national and regional Spanish gender policies and institutions during the last three decades: women’s machinery, the relations between that machinery and women’s and feminist movements, the policy discourses present in gender equality policies, and the policy instruments used by those machineries and policies.     

An Elicited‐Production Study of Inflectional Verb Morphology in Child Finnish

Many generativist accounts (e.g., Wexler, 1998) argue for very early knowledge of inflection on the basis of very low rates of person/number marking errors in young children's speech. However, studies of Spanish (Aguado‐Orea & Pine, 2015) and Brazilian Portuguese (Rubino & Pine, 1998) have revealed that these low overall error rates actually hide important differences across the verb paradigm. The present study investigated children's production of person/number marked verbs by eliciting present tense verb forms from 82 native Finnish‐speaking children aged 2;2–4;8 years. Four main findings were observed: (a) Rates of person/number marking errors were higher in low‐frequency person/number contexts, even excluding children who showed no evidence of having learned the relevant morpheme, (b) most errors involved the use of higher frequency forms in lower frequency person/number contexts, (c) error rates were predicted not only by the frequency of person/number contexts (e.g., 3sg > 2pl) but also by the frequency of individual “ready‐inflected” lexical target forms, and (d) for low‐frequency verbs, lower error rates were observed for verbs with high phonological neighborhood density. It is concluded that any successful account of the development of verb inflection will need to incorporate both (a) rote‐storage and retrieval of individual inflected forms and (b) phonological analogy across them.