The Sources and Resources of Our Indigenous Theology

In this article I describe the sources of my indigenous theology out of my own experiences, my worldview, and as a woman. In the first part, I mention our struggles of resistance as the source from which we draw our strength and hopes to resist oppression and dream of a different society, as our ancestors dreamed and acted. I then speak of our living for the day as an act of ideological resistance. It is possible that many readers do not yet understand it, but this involves a worldview different from that of Western capitalism. Some communities in the Amazon still practise this other worldview and take it as their guide. They live day by day, concerned not for the morrow but for the present day; they attempt to live a life of quality, justice and honesty, as if it were the last day of their lives. The source from which our theological enterprise springs is also our wise men and women, who still survive in our communities. They are the guardians of our ancestral wisdom on life, the cosmos and our relations with the created world and its creatures. Moreover, our lifestyle is based on caring for and protecting Pachamama as one of the joint creators with God, who offers us life and enables us to live in the world as brothers and sisters, because we come into being in Pachamama and return to her.     

Sustained vs. transient cognitive control: Evidence of a behavioral dissociation

This study assessed whether two well known effects associated with cognitive control, conflict adaptation (the Gratton effect) and conflict context (proportion congruent effects), reflect a single common or separate control systems. To test this we examined if these two effects generalized from one kind of conflict to another by using a combined-conflict paradigm (involving the Simon and Spatial Stroop tasks) and manipulating the proportion of congruent to incongruent trials for one conflict (Simon) but not the other (Spatial Stroop). We found that conflict adaptation effects did not generalize, but the effect of conflict context did. This contrasting pattern of results strongly suggests the existence of two separate attentional control systems, one transient and responsible of online regulation of performance (conflict adaptation), the other sustained and responsible for conflict context effects.     

Sources of variability in children’s language growth

The present longitudinal study examines the role of caregiver speech in language development, especially syntactic development, using 47 parent–child pairs of diverse SES background from 14 to 46 months. We assess the diversity (variety) of words and syntactic structures produced by caregivers and children. We use lagged correlations to examine language growth and its relation to caregiver speech. Results show substantial individual differences among children, and indicate that diversity of earlier caregiver speech significantly predicts corresponding diversity in later child speech. For vocabulary, earlier child speech also predicts later caregiver speech, suggesting mutual influence. However, for syntax, earlier child speech does not significantly predict later caregiver speech, suggesting a causal flow from caregiver to child. Finally, demographic factors, notably SES, are related to language growth, and are, at least partially, mediated by differences in caregiver speech, showing the pervasive influence of caregiver speech on language growth.     

True or false: do 5-year-olds understand belief?

In 3 studies (N = 188) we tested the hypothesis that children use a perceptual access approach to reason about mental states before they understand beliefs. The perceptual access hypothesis predicts a U-shaped developmental pattern of performance in true belief tasks, in which 3-year-olds who reason about reality should succeed, 4- to 5-year-olds who use perceptual access reasoning should fail, and older children who use belief reasoning should succeed. The results of Study 1 revealed the predicted pattern in 2 different true belief tasks. The results of Study 2 disconfirmed several alternate explanations based on possible pragmatic and inhibitory demands of the true belief tasks. In Study 3, we compared 2 methods of classifying individuals according to which 1 of the 3 reasoning strategies (reality reasoning, perceptual access reasoning, belief reasoning) they used. The 2 methods gave converging results. Both methods indicated that the majority of children used the same approach across tasks and that it was not until after 6 years of age that most children reasoned about beliefs. We conclude that because most prior studies have failed to detect young children's use of perceptual access reasoning, they have overestimated their understanding of false beliefs. We outline several theoretical implications that follow from the perceptual access hypothesis.     

The functions of nonsuicidal self-injury: support for cognitive-affective regulation and opponent processes from a novel psychophysiological paradigm

Although research on the reasons for engaging in nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI) has increased dramatically in the last few years, there are still many aspects of this pernicious behavior that are not well understood. The purpose of this study was to address these gaps in the literature, with a particular focus on investigating whether NSSI (a) regulates affective valence in addition to affective arousal and (b) serves a cognitive regulation function in addition to an affect regulation function. To elucidate these issues, the present study utilized a sample of 112 participants (33 controls, 39 no pain controls, 16 NSSI individuals, and 24 controls matching the affect dysregulation levels of the NSSI group), employed psychophysiological measures of affective valence (startle-alone reactivity) and quality of information processing (prepulse inhibition), and used experimental methods involving an NSSI-proxy to model the NSSI process. Results largely were consistent with predictions, supporting the hypotheses that NSSI serves to regulate cognitive processing and affective valence. On this latter point, however, the control groups also showed a decrease in negative affective valence after the NSSI-proxy. This unexpected finding is consistent with the hypothesis that opponent processes may contribute to the development of self-injurious behaviors (Joiner, 2005). Overall, the present study represents an important extension of previous laboratory NSSI studies and provides a fertile foundation for future studies aimed at understanding why people engage in NSSI.     

A behavioral intervention for teaching tackling skills to high school football athletes

We evaluated an intervention that combined task analysis and differential reinforcement for teaching tackling skills to 2 high school football athletes. As a result of intervention, both players tackled more proficiently in practice drills and maintained proficient tackling during games.     

Event detail and confidence in gambling: The role of counterfactual thought reactions

Differences in people’s reactions to the same events described with full vs. sketchy information are examined. It is hypothesized that differences in counterfactual thought reactions to varying levels of event detail shape confidence in, and willingness to gamble on similar, future events. In three experiments, participants were presented with different types and levels of event detail about their performances on a trivia test, on several games of blackjack, or on gambling on a professional horse race. Upward counterfactual thoughts were observed more frequently in response to losing events containing high levels of detail and specificity. Importantly, counterfactual thought frequency also mediated the relationships between event detail and the level of confidence in and willingness to gamble on similar, future events. Evidence also indicates that this relationship is based on the hindsight bias that results from counterfactual thinking. Results are discussed in terms of cognitive processes and decision making research.     

Estimation and visualization of confusability matrices from adaptive measurement data

We present a simple but effective method based on Luce’s choice axiom [Luce, R.D. (1959). Individual choice behavior: A theoretical analysis. New York: John Wiley & Sons] for consistent estimation of the pairwise confusabilities of items in a multiple-choice recognition task with arbitrarily chosen choice-sets. The method combines the exact (non-asymptotic) Bayesian way of assessing uncertainty with the unbiasedness emphasized in the classical frequentist approach.We apply the method to data collected using an adaptive computer game designed for prevention of reading disability. A player’s estimated confusability of phonemes (or more accurately, phoneme-grapheme connections) and larger units of language is visualized in an easily understood way with color cues and explicit indication of the accuracy of the estimates. Visualization of learning-related changes in the player’s performance is considered.The empirical validity of the choice axiom is evaluated using the game data itself. The axiom appears to hold reasonably well although a small systematic violation is observable for the smallest choice-set sizes.     

Self-Efficacy and the Prediction of Domain-Specific Cognitive Abilities

ABSTRACT We evaluated predictors of performance in 4 specific cognitive ability domains: verbal, numerical, spatial, and mechanical. The predictors were individual differences in self-efficacy beliefs, self-enhancement tendencies, and cross-domain abilities. Our university students' beliefs about their verbal, numerical, and spatial capabilities correlated well with their actual performance on standardized tests (verbal r =.33, numerical r =.27, spatial r =.36). In contrast, the students' self-efficacy for mechanical tasks did relatively poorly in predicting mechanical test performance ( r =.10). Most interesting were two other findings: (a) The best predictor of domain performance was level of cross-domain performance by far, even for mechanical tasks, and (b) self-enhancement tendencies added to cross-domain abilities and self-efficacy beliefs in the prediction of performance. The results are discussed in terms of possible mechanisms explaining how one's score on a maximal performance task can be affected by self-efficacy beliefs and self-enhancement tendencies.