Cognitive representations of functional interactions with objects

Two studies addressed people’s knowledge about the movements underlying functional interactions with objects, when the interactions were described by simple verbal labels expressing environmental goals. In Experiment 1, subjects rated each action with respect to six dimensions: which portion of the limb moved, distance moved, forcefulness, effectors involved, size of the contact surface, and resemblance to grasp. Ratings were systematic and fell on two distinct underlying factors related to limb movement and effector (usually the hand) configuration. In Experiment 2, subjects sorted a subset of the actions by similarity of movement. Clustering and multidimensional scaling solutions indicated that the six initial dimensions contributed to similarity judgments, along with additional parameters. The results support the existence of cognitively accessible, but still relatively specific, representations of functional actions, with potential implications for motor and memory performance.     

Haptic identification of objects and their depictions

Haptic identification of real objects is superior to that of raised two-dimensional (2-D) depictions. Three explanations of real-object superiority were investigated: contribution of material information, contribution of 3-D shape and size, and greater potential for integration across the fingers. In Experiment 1, subjects, while wearing gloves that gently attenuated material information, haptically identified real objects that provided reduced cues to compliance, mass, and part motion. The gloves permitted exploration with free hand movement, a single outstretched finger, or five outstretched fingers. Performance decreased over these three conditions but was superior to identification of pictures of the same objects in all cases, indicating the contribution of 3-D structure and integration across the fingers. Picture performance was also better with five fingers than with one. In Experiment 2, the subjects wore open-fingered gloves, which provided them with material information. Consequently, the effect of type of exploration was substantially reduced but not eliminated. Material compensates somewhat for limited access to object structure but is not the primary basis for haptic object identification.     

Demographic Variables Associated with Fear of AIDS and Homophobia

During the fall of 1985, over 500 introductory psychology students participated in a survey which employed different questionnaires to measure Fear of AIDS, Knowledge of AIDS, Homophobia, and Behavior Change. Opinions about public policy regarding AIDS and homosexuals, and background information such as sex and religious preference were also obtained. The results indicated that males who knew the most about AIDS were less fearful of the disease than were males who knew the least. No such relationship was found for females. In addition, respondents reported that they have been changing their behavior in light of the AIDS epidemic. This included some behaviors which were related to AIDS and some which were not. Finally, political and religious conservatives were generally more homophobic and fearful of AIDS than were liberals. In addition, conservatives generally preferred protection of the public as an approach to controlling the AIDS epidemic while liberals generally preferred to educate the public.     

Identifying objects by touch: An “expert system”

How good are we at recognizing objects by touch? Intuition may suggest that the haptic system is a poor recognition device, and previous research with nonsense shapes and tangible-graphics displays supports this opinion. We argue that the recognition capabilities of touch are best assessed with three-dimensional, familiar objects. The present study provides a baseline measure of recognition under those circumstances, and it indicates that haptic object recognition can be both rapid and accurate.     

The attribute priming effect in patients with Alzheimer's disease

Experiments with semantic priming (SP) paradigms have documented early hypopriming in patients with AD when concepts are used as primes and attribute concept features as targets, suggesting that concept attributes are vulnerable to damage very early in the disease course. The aims of this study were to confirm early priming reduction in the attribute condition in patients with AD and to determine which of several semantic indexes (such as the level of distinctiveness, correlation or feature dominance of concept features) best predicts the priming effect size in AD. We administered an SP attribute condition paradigm to 20 mildly demented patients with AD and to 10 NCs. We used concept–attribute pairs for which normative data of semantic indexes relative to both concept primes (i.e., number, type, mean level of dominance, distinctiveness and correlation of features constituting the concepts) and target features (i.e., level of feature dominance, correlation and distinctiveness) were available. Results showed that compared to NCs, the AD group obtained very reduced priming facilitation. Furthermore, the item regression analyses showed that the priming decrement in the AD group was predicted by the feature dominance of the target in the related pairs; that is, the lower the target feature dominance, the lower the priming effect elicited. These results confirmed hypopriming in the attribute condition from the very early phase of AD and support the view that attributes which are more salient for the identification of a given concept are also those most resistant to semantic memory degradation in AD pathology.     

Affiliative stimuli as primers to prosocial predispositions

Affiliative stimuli are pleasant and highly biologically relevant. Affiliative cues are thought to elicit a prosocial predisposition. Here affiliative and neutral pictures were exposed prior to a reaction time task which consisted in responding to a visual target. Half the participants responded with finger-flexion, a movement frequently involved in prosocial activities. The other half responded with finger extension, a less prosocially compatible movement. Results showed that under the exposure to affiliative pictures, as compared to neutral ones, participants who used finger flexion were faster, while those using finger extension were slower. Performance benefits to the task, when flexing the finger, together with performance costs, when extending it, indicate the relevance of movement compatibility to the context. These findings put forward a possible link between affiliative primers and motor preparation to facilitate a repertoire of movements related to prosocial predispositions including finger flexion.     

Morally disengaged and unempathic: do cyberbullies fit these definitions? An exploratory study

In recent years, the phenomenon of cyberbullying has been gaining scholars' growing interest under various aspects, including its overlap with face-to-face bullying. Nevertheless, its relationships with cognitive and affective empathy, proactive and reactive aggression, and moral disengagement, constructs that proved to be crucial in distinguishing aggressive subjects from their targets and nonaggressive peers in traditional bullying, still represent, to some extent, an unexplored domain. The main purpose of the present exploratory study was to investigate the associations between cyberbullying and the mentioned constructs among Italian adolescents. 819 high-school students (mean age 16.08) were administered a battery of standardized tools, along with Cyberties, a new instrument created to assess the prevalence of (and the type of involvement in) different forms of electronic assaults. Analyses of variance were conducted to compare four roles ("pure" bullies, "pure" victims, bully victims, and noninvolved subjects). Participants who identified themselves as cyberbullies or cyberbully victims showed significantly higher levels of overall moral disengagement and of both types of aggression. Cyberbullies also displayed a lack of affective empathy. Our findings are in line with the ones in extant literature about correlates of traditional and electronic forms of bullying. Implications for prevention strategies are discussed.     

Enhancing spatial skills of preschoolers from under-resourced backgrounds: A comparison of digital app vs. concrete materials

Spatial skills support STEM learning and achievement. However, children from low-socioeconomic (SES) backgrounds typically lag behind their middle- and high-SES peers. We asked whether a digital educational app—designed to mirror an already successful, spatial assembly training program using concrete materials—would be as effective for facilitating spatial skills in under-resourced preschoolers as the concrete materials. Three-year-olds (N = 61) from under-resourced backgrounds were randomly assigned to a business-as-usual control group or to receive 5 weeks of spatial training using either concrete, tangible materials or a digital app on a tablet. The spatial puzzles used were an extension of items from the Test of Spatial Assembly (TOSA). Preschoolers were pretested and posttested on new two-dimensional (2D) TOSA trials. Results indicate that both concrete and digital spatial training increased performance on the 2D-TOSA compared to the control group. The two trainings did not statistically differ from one another suggesting that educational spatial apps may be one route to providing early foundational skills to children from under-resourced backgrounds.