Identity Processes in Collective Action Participation: Farmers' Identity and Farmers' Protest in the Netherlands and Spain

This study tested the assumption that a sense of collective identity stimulates participation in collective action. Contextual circumstances supposedly make a collective identity more salient and compel people to act as members of the group; protest participation is more likely among people with a strong collective identity. Group identification and participation in identity organizations were used as indicators of collective identity in a study of 248 farmers from Galicia (Spain) and 167 farmers from the Netherlands. The farmers were interviewed three times at intervals of 1 year. The longitudinal design also allowed a test of causality. A sense of collective identity appeared to stimulate preparedness to take part in farmers' protest. Action preparedness leads to action participation, which in turn appears to foster collective identity.     

Facilitating the emergence of convergent intraverbals in children with autism

Convergent intraverbals represent a specific type of intraverbal in which multiple components of one speaker's verbal behavior control a specific verbal response from another speaker (e.g., Speaker 1: What wooly, horned animal lives in the high country? Speaker 2: Bighorn sheep). To foster the development of advanced language, Sundberg and Sundberg (2011) proposed prerequisite skills that may engender the emergence of novel, convergent intraverbals. We used a multiple‐probe design with both nonconcurrent (across participants) and concurrent (across stimulus sets) components to evaluate the effects of training these prerequisite skills on the emergence of convergent intraverbals with four children with autism. Participants showed the emergence of convergent intraverbals at mastery levels after they displayed mastery performance on all of the prerequisite skills identified by Sundberg and Sundberg, lending support to their characterization as prerequisites. We discuss these findings in terms of operant mechanisms that may facilitate the development of generative language.     

Effects of modeling rote versus varied responses on response variability and skill acquisition during discrete‐trial instruction

Despite its advantages, discrete‐trial instruction (DTI) has been criticized for producing rote responding. Although there is little research supporting this claim, if true, this may be problematic given the propensity of children with autism to engage in restricted and repetitive behavior. One feature that is common in DTI that may contribute to rote responding is the prompting and reinforcement of one correct response per discriminative stimulus. To evaluate the potential negative effects of rote prompts on varied responding, we compared the effects of modeling rote versus varied target responses during the teaching of intraverbal categorization. We also evaluated the effects of these procedures on the efficiency of acquisition of any one correct response. For all four children, any increase in varied responding was fleeting, and for two participants, acquisition was slower in the variable‐modeling condition.     

Will They Listen to Me? An Examination of In-Group Gender Bias in Children’s Communication Beliefs

Sex Roles - We assessed developmental and gender differences in children’s beliefs about their peers’ communication styles. We hypothesized that children hold more favorable beliefs...     

Examining the relation between PTSD and insomnia on aggression

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms and poor sleep have been identified as potential causals factor in aggression, violence, and impulsive behavior. Given the high cost of aggression to society and public health, identifying modifiable factors related to aggression, such as insomnia, may guide treatment strategies to help decrease aggression. Participants were 143 Veterans seeking treatment for PTSD at a VA outpatient PTSD clinic. Linear and logistic regression analyses were used to examine the relation between PTSD and insomnia on aggression. Results from bivariate analyses indicated that while both PTSD and insomnia severity were associated with higher aggression scores independently, when PTSD and insomnia were examined together, PTSD severity was the only significant predictor of aggression. Interaction effects yielded nonsignificant results suggesting that poor sleep did not moderate the PTSD and aggression relation. Results suggest that addressing PTSD symptoms as a first treatment target may be more important for decreasing risk for aggression than targeting insomnia. More research is needed to understand whether treating PTSD and insomnia reduces aggression in Veterans.     

Innovativeness and the effects of urbanization on risk-taking behaviors in wild Barbados birds

The effects of urbanization on avian cognition remain poorly understood. Risk-taking behaviors like boldness, neophobia and flight distance are thought to affect opportunism and innovativeness, and should also vary with urbanization. Here, we investigate variation in risk-taking behaviors in the field in an avian assemblage of nine species that forage together in Barbados and for which innovation rate is known from previous work. We predicted that birds from highly urbanized areas would show more risk-taking behavior than conspecifics from less urbanized parts of the island and that the differences would be strongest in the most innovative of the species. Overall, we found that urban birds are bolder, less neophobic and have shorter flight distances than their less urbanized conspecifics. Additionally, we detected between-species differences in the effect of urbanization on flight distance, more innovative species showing smaller differences in flight distance between areas. Our results suggest that, within successful urban colonizers, species differences in innovativeness may affect the way species change their risk-taking behaviors in response to the urban environment.     

Potentiation of latent inhibition

Rats were given exposure either to an odor (almond) or a compound of odor plus taste (almond plus saline), prior to training in which the odor served as the conditioned stimulus. It was found, for both appetitive and aversive procedures, that conditioning was retarded by preexposure (a latent inhibition effect), and the extent of the retardation was greater in rats preexposed to the compound (i.e., latent inhibition to the odor was potentiated by the presence of the taste). In contrast, the presence of the taste during conditioning itself overshadowed learning about the odor. We argue that the presence of the salient taste in compound with the odor enhances the rate of associative learning, producing a rapid loss in the associability of the odor. This loss of associability will generate both overshadowing and the potentiation of latent inhibition that is observed after preexposure to the compound.     

Mental exercising through simple socializing: social interaction promotes general cognitive functioning

Social interaction is a central feature of people's life and engages a variety of cognitive resources. Thus, social interaction should facilitate general cognitive functioning. Previous studies suggest such a link, but they used special populations (e.g., elderly with cognitive impairment), measured social interaction indirectly (e.g., via marital status), and only assessed effects of extended interaction in correlational designs. Here the relation between mental functioning and direct indicators of social interaction was examined in a younger and healthier population. Study 1 using survey methodology found a positive relationship between social interaction, assessed via amount of actual social contact, and cognitive functioning in people from three age groups including younger adults. Study 2 using an experimental design found that a small amount of social interaction (10 min) can facilitate cognitive performance. The findings are discussed in the context of the benefits social relationships have for so many aspects of people's lives.     

Do Cross‐Cultural Values Affect Multisource Feedback Dynamics? The Case of High Power Distance and Collectivism in Two Latin American Countries

In this investigation we report results of a study designed to test the effect of cross‐cultural values on multisource feedback (MSF). With the participation of a sample of 501 managers from Venezuela and Colombia, two collectivistic and high power distance countries, results of the study indicate that cultural values distort the evaluations involved in MSF systems. Specifically, unlike reports of studies conducted in individualistic and low power distance environments, we found that (a) peers are the least discrepant source of information, (b) subordinates tend to provide the highest evaluations across feedback sources, and (c) there is an excessive emphasis on people‐oriented behaviors. Results are discussed in light of the conflict between our findings and those in existing literature. The practical implications of MSF in multi‐cultural workplaces are addressed.