The role of motion in children's categorization of objects.

Perceptual cues play a fundamental role in early categorization of objects. What is meant by perceptual cues in the literature, however, is not always clear. It is fair to say that they are typically understood to be static shape cues. A number of recent studies have suggested that dynamic perceptual cues, such as motion, may also be important in early categorization. The study presented here explored the role that motion plays in children's categorization of animal and non-animal kinds, such as geometric figures. Motion was directly pitted against shape as a cue for categorization. Results showed that 4-year-old children, confronted with a choice between shape and motion, significantly used motion cues over shape cues to categorize objects, regardless of whether they were animals or geometric figures. Seven-year-olds also tended to use motion more often to categorize animals but not when dealing with geometric figures. Older children, who have been found to have a clearer natural kind/artifact distinction, seem to appreciate the uniqueness of movement to animals and see motion as more relevant to their categorization but relatively less so to categorize geometric figures. This developmental shift in the categorization of animals and geometric figures based on motion was further confirmed by testing adults on the same tasks. Adults were found to base their judgements significantly more often on motion for animals but not for geometric figures. These findings support the view that children are initially guided by motion in object categorization, suggesting that motion plays an overriding role that is central in the process of concept acquisition and in the mechanisms by which concepts are later structured.     

The ISI Change phenomenon: When contradicting one stereotype changes another

When a population is perceived to consist of two mutually exclusive and exhaustive groups, the stereotypes that people form of these groups are likely to be interdependent. We predicted that stereotype-incongruent information about members of one group (target group) may then evoke change in the stereotype of another group (alternative group) even in the absence of any stereotype-incongruent information about members of the alternative group. We demonstrated this Indirect Stereotype-Incongruence Induced (ISI) Change phenomenon in two studies using novel groups (Study 1 and 2). The effect occurred when the incongruent information was about a competent target group (changing the stereotype about the less competent alternative group) but not when it was about an incompetent target group (Study 2). The ISI Change phenomenon implies that stereotypes may change even in the absence of directly stereotype-incongruent information.     

Gender Differences in Contextual Predictors of Urban,Early Adolescents' Subjective Well‐Being

Gender differences in predicting subjective well‐being (SWB) were examined in 168 urban adolescents. School satisfaction predicted life satisfaction for boys; for girls, family satisfaction predicted life satisfaction and neighborhood satisfaction predicted negative affect. Self‐esteem predicted positive affect for both genders, but friends satisfaction and ethnic identity failed to predict SWB. Se examinaron las diferencias de género al predecir el bienestar subjetivo (SWB, por sus siglas en inglés) de 168 adolescentes urbanos. La satisfacción escolar predijo la satisfacción vital en los chicos; en las chicas, la satisfacción familiar predijo la satisfacción vital, y la satisfacción en el vecindario predijo los sentimientos negativos. La autoestima predijo sentimientos positivos en ambos géneros, pero la satisfacción con los amigos y la identidad étnica no fueron predictores del SWB.     

Attitudes and cognitive distances: On the non-unitary and flexible nature of cognitive maps

Spatial relations of our environment are represented in cognitive maps. These cognitive maps are prone to various distortions (e.g., alignment and hierarchical effects) caused by basic cognitive factors (such as perceptual and conceptual reorganization) but also by affectively loaded and attitudinal influences. Here we show that even differences in attitude towards a single person representing a foreign country (here Barack Obama and the USA) can be related to drastic differences in the cognitive representation of distances concerning that country. Europeans who had a positive attitude towards Obama’s first presidential program estimated distances between US and European cities as being much smaller than did people who were skeptical or negative towards Obama’s ideas. On the basis of this result and existing literature, arguments on the non-unitary and flexible nature of cognitive maps are discussed.     

The perception of changing emotion expressions

The utility of recognising emotion expressions for coordinating social interactions is well documented, but less is known about how continuously changing emotion displays are perceived. The nonlinear dynamic systems view of emotions suggests that mixed emotion expressions in the middle of displays of changing expressions may be decoded differently depending on the expression origin. Hysteresis is when an impression (e.g., disgust) persists well after changes in facial expressions that favour an alternative impression (e.g., anger). In expression changes based on photographs (Study 1) and avatar images (Studies 2a-c, 3), we found hystereses particularly in changes between emotions that are perceptually similar (e.g., anger-disgust). We also consistently found uncertainty (neither emotion contributing to the mixed expression was perceived), which was more prevalent in expression sequences than in static images. Uncertainty occurred particularly in changes between emotions that are perceptually dissimilar, such as changes between happiness and negative emotions. This suggests that the perceptual similarity of emotion expressions may determine the extent to which hysteresis and uncertainty occur. Both hysteresis and uncertainty effects support our premise that emotion decoding is state dependent, a characteristic of dynamic systems. We propose avenues to test possible underlying mechanisms.     

Wenn ja,wie lange? – Dauer antiandrogener Behandlung von Sexualstraftätern mit paraphilen Störungen

Background

Since 2010 a total of 15 individually justified, therapeutically accompanied treatment-free intervals from antiandrogenic treatment (ADT) have been carried out in the Forensic Therapeutic Outpatient (FTA) department in Berlin.

Material and methods

This article describes the conditions under which a responsible and legally justifiable cessation of ADT can be carried out.

Results

In all 15 of the investigated stable, forensically rehabilitated patients who had been on long-term psychotherapeutic treatment, no criminally prognostic or clinically relevant destabilization has so far occurred, which would have necessitated cessation of the treatment-free interval with resumption of the antiandrogenic depot medication.

Conclusion

The short-term experiences from the clinical aftercare practice have so far shown that in a strictly structered aftercare setting with continuous clinical monitoring, it is possible to withdraw even long-standing antiandrogenic medication. This is important not least to attest the argumentation for a removal of supervision of conduct in case destabilization does occur. Further long-term longitudinal investigations will be the subject of later publications.

     

Diminutives in child-directed speech supplement metric with distributional word segmentation cues

In two experiments, we explored whether diminutives (e.g.,birdie, Patty, bootie), which are characteristic of child-directed speech in many languages, aid word segmentation by regularizing stress patterns and word endings. In an implicit learning task, adult native speakers of English were exposed to a continuous stream of synthesized Dutch nonsense input comprising 300 randomized repetitions of six bisyllabic target nonwords. After exposure, the participants were given a forced choice recognition test to judge which strings had been present in the input. Experiment 1 demonstrated that English speakers used trochaic stress to isolate strings, despite being unfamiliar with Dutch phonotactics. Experiment 2 showed benefits from invariance introduced by affricates, which are typically found at onsets of final syllables in Dutch diminutives. Together, the results demonstrate that diminutives contain prosodic and distributional features that are beneficial for word segmentation.     

Self-Favoring Biases, Self-Presentation, and the Self-Other Asymmetry in Social Comparison

ABSTRACT The relationship between self-favoring biases in social comparison, favorable self-presentation, and well-being and the self-other asymmetry effect was examined. Participants gave comparative chance estimations and trait ratings for positive and negative future events and traits. One-half of the participants compared themselves to the average other, while the remainder compared the average other to themselves. All participants completed measurements of two types of desirable responding (self-deception and impression management) and of subjective well-being. Participants who compared themselves to another showed stronger unrealistic optimism and illusory superiority effects for positive (but not for negative) future events und traits than participants comparing another to themselves, demonstrating a self-other asymmetry effect. Unrealistic optimism and illusory superiority concerning positive attributes were related to self-deception, while unrealistic optimism and illusory superiority concerning negative attributes were related to impression management. The relative independence of “positive” and “negative” self-favoring biases was further demonstrated by their differential relationship with self-esteem and subjective well-being.