Selves in contact: how integrating perspectives on sociocultural selves and intergroup contact can inform theory and application on reducing inequality

Research within cultural psychology and intergroup relations represent two, often separate and distinct, approaches to examining social groups—including outcomes and experiences that define and distinguish group membership and its consequences. Often, social group membership (e.g., race/ethnicity, gender, and social class) is tied to persistent and pervasive divides—separations that mark the difference in who attends college, stays in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields, and even views personal and societal events (e.g., microaggressions, police‐involved shootings) as involving bias. Addressing such complex and often divisive issues, psychological science has contributed theoretical and applied insights to mitigate social differences and inequalities experienced by historically disadvantaged social groups. The present paper integrates research on cultural psychology and intergroup relations by (a) reviewing empirical findings on sociocultural selves and intergroup contact and (b) considering how merging approaches from these literatures, using a selves in contact framework, can inform and elaborate theoretical perspectives and applications aimed at reducing inequality.     

Protecting Our Daughters: Intersection of Race, Class and Gender in African American Mothers’ Socialization of Their Daughters’ Heterosexuality

Using a framework of intersectionality and Black feminist thought, this paper provides a conceptual exploration of the socialization process among African American mothers and daughters, with special attention given to the ways in which African American girls become aware of their mother’s attitudes and beliefs concerning romantic relationships. Edmondson Bell, E. L., Nkomo, S. M. (1998). Journal of Comparative Family Studies, 29, 285–295 labeled this process armoring. I propose a model of sexual risk for low income African American girls in which the armoring process serves as the focal point. I then provide a conceptual discussion, comparing my proposed model to current social cognitive models in its ability to comprehensively explain the correlates and predictors of sexual behavior among this population. Implications concerning sexual risk prevention efforts are also discussed.     

Gender matters, too: the influences of school racial discrimination and racial identity on academic engagement outcomes among African American adolescents

The authors examined relationships among racial identity, school-based racial discrimination experiences, and academic engagement outcomes for adolescent boys and girls in Grades 8 and 11 (n = 204 boys and n = 206 girls). The authors found gender differences in peer and classroom discrimination and in the impact of earlier and later discrimination experiences on academic outcomes. Racial centrality related positively to school performance and school importance attitudes for boys. Also, centrality moderated the relationship between discrimination and academic outcomes in ways that differed across gender. For boys, higher racial centrality related to diminished risk for lower school importance attitudes and grades from experiencing classroom discrimination relative to boys lower in centrality, and girls with higher centrality were protected against the negative impact of peer discrimination on school importance and academic self-concept. However, among lower race-central girls, peer discrimination related positively to academic self-concept. Finally, socioeconomic background moderated the relationship of discrimination with academic outcomes differently for girls and boys. The authors discuss the need to consider interactions of individual- and contextual-level factors in better understanding African American youths' academic and social development.     

Autobiographical narratives of deaf and hearing adults: an examination of narrative coherence and the use of internal states

To examine the impact of early linguistic experiences on later verbal report of autobiographical memory, 13 hearing adults and 13 deaf adults born to hearing parents described events that occurred before and after the age of 10 years. The contextual, temporal, and thematic coherence of the narratives was rated. The use of emotional, perceptual, mental, and physiological states was also recorded. There were differences in the coherence of the narratives and use of internal states according to the age at which the events occurred. There were no group differences in coherence, but hearing adults provided longer narratives than deaf adults. When narrative length was controlled, deaf adults included more emotional states than hearing adults. Results suggest that early unavailability of language does not impact the coherence of adults' narratives, although certain features of linguistic expression specific to ASL may result in greater saturation of emotional states references in autobiographical narratives of deaf adults.     

Neuropsychological,Cognitive, and Theoretical Considerations for Evaluation of Bilingual Individuals

As the number of bilinguals in the USA grows rapidly, it is increasingly important for neuropsychologists to be equipped and trained to address the unique challenges inherent in conducting ethical and competent neuropsychological evaluations with this population. Research on bilingualism has focused on two key cognitive mechanisms that introduce differences between bilinguals and monolinguals: (a) reduced frequency of language-specific use (weaker links), and (b) competition for selection within the language system in bilinguals (interference). Both mechanisms are needed to explain how bilingualism affects neuropsychological test performance, including the robust bilingual disadvantages found on verbal tasks, and more subtle bilingual advantages on some measures of cognitive control. These empirical results and theoretical claims can be used to derive a theoretically informed method for assessing cognitive status in bilinguals. We present specific considerations for measuring degree of bilingualism for both clients and examiners to aid in determinations of approaches to testing bilinguals, with practical guidelines for incorporating models of bilingualism and recent experimental data into neuropsychological evaluations. This integrated approach promises to provide improved clinical services for bilingual clients, and will also contribute to a program of research that will ultimately reveal the mechanisms underlying language processing and executive functioning in bilinguals and monolinguals alike.     

Delay-dependent involvement of the rat entorhinal cortex in habituation to a novel environment

Evidence has accumulated that the entorhinal cortex (EC) is involved in memory operations underlying formation of a long-term memory. Because entorhinal-lesioned rats are impaired for long delays in delayed matching and non-matching to sample tasks, it has been proposed that EC contributes to the maintenance of information in short-term memory. In the present study, we asked whether such a time-limited role applies also when learning complex spatial information in a novel environment. We therefore examined the effects of EC lesions on habituation in an object exploration task in which a delay of either 4 min or 10 min is imposed between successive sessions. EC-lesioned rats exhibited a deficit in habituation at 10 min but not 4 min delays. Following habituation, reactions to spatial change (object configuration) and non-spatial change (novel object) were also examined. EC-lesioned rats were impaired in detecting the spatial change but were able to detect a non-spatial change, irrespective of the delay. Overall, the results suggest that EC is involved in maintaining a large amount of novel, multidimensional information in short-term memory therefore enabling formation of long-term memory. Switching to a novelty detection mode would then allow the animal to rapidly adapt to environmental changes. In this mode, EC would preferentially process spatial information rather than non-spatial information.     

Using outgroup comfort to predict Black students' college experiences

This study investigated whether Black students' social comfort with Whites, termed outgroup comfort (OC), predicted outcomes related to academics and mental health. Surveys administered to Black college students near the beginning and end of their first year showed OC measured in the fall predicted outcomes assessed in the spring, including contact with other races, academic concerns among men, and psychological well-being among women. A subsample selected on the basis of high or low OC scores participated in two weeks of experience sampling, revealing students high in OC reported less state anxiety than those low in OC when in academic settings; in nonacademic settings, anxiety did not differ by OC. System-justifying ideology favoring the outgroup was controlled, thus OC is distinct from internalized oppression. Results are discussed in relation to gender differences in racial identity and college student development.     

Overshadowing and stimulus duration

In 3 experiments, the authors investigated the effect of stimulus duration on overshadowing. Experiments 1 and 2 examined responding to a target conditioned stimulus (CS1) when it was conditioned in compound with a coterminating overshadowing stimulus (CS2) that was longer, shorter, or of the same duration (the long, short, and matched groups, respectively). Equal overshadowing of conditioning to CS1 was obtained in all 3 conditions relative to a control group conditioned to the light alone. There were, however, differences in responding to CS2 as a function of its absolute duration. Experiment 3 examined the contribution of the food-food interval/CS onset-food interval ratio to these findings. In Experiments 1 and 2, the ratio differed for the overshadowing CS but not for the target CS. In Experiment 3, this arrangement was reversed, but the pattern of results remained the same. The implications of these findings for trial-based and real-time models of conditioning are discussed.     

Occasion setting of timing behavior

Rats were trained on a temporal switching discrimination, with 2 features, A and B, signaling 2 target conditioned stimuli, x and y; feature offset and target onset were separated by a 5-s feature-target interval, and all target stimulus presentations terminated in a food pellet. The target conditioned stimuli were either short or long (6 or 30 s): Specifically, when signaled by A, x was 6 s and y 30 s, but when x and y were signaled by B, x was 30 s and y 6 s. Trials with 6-s and 30-s targets were termed short and long trials, respectively. Probe tests indicated that the animals correctly anticipated when food was to be delivered on these 2 types of trials. In further testing, the interval between feature offset and target onset was lengthened, to investigate the precise mechanism underlying this behavior. This manipulation did not have a substantial effect on discrimination performance. These results are discussed with reference to theories of occasion setting, timing, and configural learning.     

Embedding an identity-matching task within a prompting hierarchy to facilitate acquisition of conditional discriminations in children with autism

Least-to-most prompting hierarchies (e.g., progressing from verbal to modeled to physical prompts until the target response occurs) may be ineffective when the prompts do not cue the individual to attend to the relevant stimulus dimensions. In such cases, emission of the target response persistently requires one or more of the higher level prompts, a condition called prompt dependence (Clark & Green, 2004). Reinforcement of differential observing responses (DORs) has sometimes been used to ensure that participants attend to the relevant stimulus dimensions in matching-to-sample (MTS) tasks (e.g., Dube & McIlvane, 1999). For 2 participants with autism, we embedded an identity-matching task within a prompting hierarchy as a DOR to increase the likelihood that the participants attended to and discriminated the relevant features of the comparison stimuli in an MTS task. This procedure was compared with a traditional least-to-most prompting hierarchy and a no-reinforcement control condition in a multielement design. Results for both participants indicated that mastery-level acquisition of spoken-word-to-picture relations occurred only under the identity-matching condition. Findings are discussed relative to the use of DORs to facilitate acquisition of conditional discriminations in persons with autism or other conditions who do not attend to the comparison stimuli.