Getting Even or Getting Equal? Retributive Desires and Transitional Justice

This article examines the effect that different policy interventions of transitional justice have on the desires of the victims of human rights violations for retribution. The retributive desires assessed in this article are conceptualized as individual, collective, and abstract demands for the imposition of a commensurate degree of suffering upon the offender. We suggest a plausible way of reducing victims' retributive desires. Instead of "getting even" in relation to the suffering, victims and perpetrators may "get equal" in relation to their respective statuses, which were affected by political crimes. The article hypothesizes that the three classes of transitional justice: (1) reparation that empowers victims by financial compensation, truth telling, and social acknowledgment; (2) retribution that inflicts punishment upon perpetrators; and (3) reconciliation that renews civic relationship between victims and perpetrators through personal contact, apology, and forgiveness; each contributes to restoring equality between victims and perpetrators, and in so doing decreases the desires that victims have for retribution. In order to test our hypotheses, we conducted a survey of former political prisoners in the Czech Republic. Results from the regression analysis reveal that financial compensation, social acknowledgement, punishment, and forgiveness are likely to reduce victims' retributive desires.     

Differential age effects in load-dependent memory processing

This study examined differential age effects in a young and a middle-aged sample by means of a sequential n-back task with increasing memory load. Participants processed two streams of stimuli either separately as a single task, or simultaneously as a dual task. We investigated age effects as a function of memory load in both the single and the dual-task version. In accuracy, we observed differential age effects as a function of load, which were more prominent in the dual-compared to the single-task versions. That is, middle-aged participants performed poorer than young adults in the dual-task conditions, suggesting that early age-related changes become especially apparent in conditions where task coordination and resource sharing come into play. Regarding latencies, we observed no differential age effect, which we believe is due to characteristics of the sequential n-back task.     

Shia as Internal Others: A Salafi Rejection of the ‘Rejecters’

Conflict and polemic between Sunni Muslims and Shiites have a long history. In the contemporary era, this polemic has been accentuated by the conflictual situation in the Middle East, and it is also colouring the minority Muslim situation. This article is concerned with Islamic interpretations related to ‘othering’, taking as its main focus an analysis of publications on a Swedish Sunni website, ‘Maktabah Dâr-ul-Hadîth’, which has clear Salafi leanings. Reports show that Shiites currently feel threatened by Salafis in minority contexts and the material cited in this article ‘others’ Shiite Islam and Shiites (amongst others), creating a stereotypical image that may have the potential to influence sectarian violence in real life. Several of the texts on the website deal with theological issues concerning the alleged false beliefs of Shiites. However, the article does not focus on theological creed but rather on manhaj, the programme for action, that is, the behaviour towards Shiites that is recommended in various situations, such as at work, in greeting Shiites or being invited to a Shiite wedding, thus affecting everyday situations. The analysis looks into what kind of ‘othering’ is promoted and what effect this othering might have if put into practice.     

Cross-validation of Lewis & Michalson's system for measurement of children's emotional states

Lewis and Michalson's (l983a) theory of emotional development, and their related measurement technique for assessing emotional states of infants and young children, need independent validation, particularly for applied usage. Twenty-eight toddlers (mean age, 31 months) were observed in a seminaturalistic setting. Emotional displays and Lewis and Michalson (LM) scores were coded independently. Some individual cross-contextual stability was found for LM scores, which also varied in mean level across these different contexts. Regarding concurrent validity, microanalytically coded emotional displays were related to LM scores.     

Psychosomatic complaints in adolescence: Untangling the relationship between offline and online peer victimization,psychosomatic complaints and social support

Offline peer victimization has been linked to psychosomatic complaints. As peer victimization is no longer limited to adolescents’ offline relationships, it is crucial that we investigate whether online peer victimization has similar negative consequences. To date, no study systematically investigated the unique contribution of online vs. offline peer victimization on psychosomatic complaints, and the possible protective effect of social support. The current study disentangled offline and online peer victimization by distinguishing four victim types: non-victims, offline, online, and dual victims (N = 897, 9-to-18-year-olds). In addition, we assessed perceived social support from teachers, parents, friends and classmates. A main effect was found for victim type on psychosomatic complaints. Victims (offline or dual) reported more psychosomatic complaints than non-victims. Notably, online victims reported similar levels of psychosomatic complaints compared to non-victims. Furthermore, although social support from parents and classmates was related to fewer psychosomatic complaints, only limited support was found for a buffering effect of social support.     

Racing dragons and remembering aliens: Benefits of playing number and working memory games on kindergartners' numerical knowledge

Sources that contribute to variation in mathematical achievement include both numerical knowledge and general underlying cognitive processing abilities. The current study tested the benefits of tablet‐based training games that targeted each of these areas for improving the mathematical knowledge of kindergarten‐age children. We hypothesized that playing a number‐based game targeting numerical magnitude knowledge would improve children's broader numerical skills. We also hypothesized that the benefits of playing a working memory (WM) game would transfer to children's numerical knowledge given its important underlying role in mathematics achievement. Kindergarteners from diverse backgrounds (n = 148; 52% girls; M_age = 71.87 months) were randomly assigned to either play a number‐based game, a WM game, or a control game on a tablet for 10 sessions. Structural equation modeling was used to model children's learning gains in mathematics and WM across time. Overall, our results suggest that playing the number game improved kindergarten children's numerical knowledge at the latent level, and these improvements remained stable as assessed 1 month later. However, children in the WM group did not improve their numerical knowledge compared to children in the control condition. Playing both the number game and WM game improved children's WM at the latent level. Importantly, the WM group continued to improve their WM for at least a month after playing the games. The results demonstrate that computerized games that target both domain‐specific and domain‐general skills can benefit a broad range of kindergarten‐aged children.     

Better late than never: how onsets and offsets influence prior entry and exit

The three experiments presented in the paper examine visual prior entry (determining which of two stimuli appeared first) and prior exit (determining which of two stimuli disappeared first) effects with a temporal order judgment (TOJ) task. In addition to using onset and offset targets, the preceding cues also consisted of either onset or offset stimuli. Typical, and equivalent, prior entry effects were found when either onset or offset cues preceded the onset targets. Unexpectedly large prior exit effects where found with the offset targets, with offset cues producing greater capture effects than onset cues. These findings are consistent with the notion that more attention is allocated to searching the visual field when targets are more difficult to find. In addition, the results indicate that attentional control settings may be more likely to occur with more difficult searches. In addition, these findings demonstrate that TOJ tasks provide extremely precise measures of the allocation of attention and are very sensitive to a range of task manipulations.     

Contributions of the medial temporal lobe to declarative memory retrieval: manipulating the amount of contextual retrieval

We investigated how the hippocampus and its adjacent mediotemporal structures contribute to contextual and noncontextual declarative memory retrieval by manipulating the amount of contextual information across two levels of the same contextual dimension in a source memory task. A first analysis identified medial temporal lobe (MTL) substructures mediating either contextual or noncontextual retrieval. A linearly weighted analysis elucidated which MTL substructures show a gradually increasing neural activity, depending on the amount of contextual information retrieved. A hippocampal engagement was found during both levels of source memory but not during item memory retrieval. The anterior MTL including the perirhinal cortex was only engaged during item memory retrieval by an activity decrease. Only the posterior parahippocampal cortex showed an activation increasing with the amount of contextual information retrieved. If one assumes a roughly linear relationship between the blood-oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) signal and the associated cognitive process, our results suggest that the posterior parahippocampal cortex is involved in contextual retrieval on the basis of memory strength while the hippocampus processes representations of item-context binding. The anterior MTL including perirhinal cortex seems to be particularly engaged in familiarity-based item recognition. If one assumes departure from linearity, however, our results can also be explained by one-dimensional modulation of memory strength.