Peers, Parents and Pornography: Exploring Adolescents’ Exposure to Sexually Explicit Material and Its Developmental Correlates

On the basis of an online survey of 352 teenagers aged between 16 and 19, the use of pornographic video clips and films was investigated along with the connection between this use and indicators of adolescents?? perceived autonomy, peer group influences, and notions of sexuality. We found that many adolescents regularly use pornographic video clips or films. Respondents who regard themselves as less independent of their environment, especially their parents, use pornography more frequently themselves. For girls, this also applies if they assess the use within their peer group as particularly extensive, and for boys, if they frequently discuss pornography within their peer group. A high level of consumption of sexually explicit media also goes hand in hand with the assumption that people generally have sexual intercourse earlier in life and that people generally favor more varied sexual techniques.     

A comparison of adults’ and children's metacognition for yes/no recognition decisions

Basic metacognitive development research suggests that metacognitive abilities develop before adolescence. However, this research has not used tasks that require the discrimination of seen from unseen stimuli, an important element of real-world recognition tasks such as eyewitness identification. We tested the idea that children would be less able to monitor and control the accuracy of their memories in such a task. We used a word-pair recognition task to compare children's (109 8–12 year olds) and adult's (102 first-year psychology students) ability to adaptively make, monitor, and control the reporting of yes/no recognition decisions about familiar stimuli in a task with no demand effects. We found that adults were substantially better at discriminating old from new stimuli, but no evidence of an age difference in metacognitive ability. Although these results do not explain children's poor metacognition in eyewitness identification, they suggest potential steps to improve children's identification performance.     

Explanation And Solution In The Inclosure Argument

In a recent article, Emil Badici contends that the inclosure schema substantially fails as an analysis of the paradoxes of self-reference because it is question-begging. The main purpose of this note is to show that Badici's critique highlights a necessity condition for the success of dialectic about paradoxes. The inclosure argument respects this condition and remains solvent.     

Symmetry perception in bamboo sharks (Chiloscyllium griseum) and Malawi cichlids (Pseudotropheus sp.)

Several species have been shown to perceive symmetry as a measure of superior genetic quality, useful for assessing potential mates or mediating other visual activities such as the selection of food sources. The current study assessed whether Pseudotropheus sp. and Chiloscyllium griseum, two fish species from distantly related groups, possess symmetry perception. In alternative two choice experiments, individuals were tested for spontaneous preferences and trained to discriminate between abstract symmetrical and asymmetrical stimulus pairs. Pair discriminations were followed by extensive categorization experiments. Transfer tests elucidated whether bilaterally symmetrical and rotationally symmetrical stimuli could be distinguished. Sharks were also tested for the degree of dissimilarity between two symbols that could still be detected. While sharks showed both a spontaneous preference for symmetry as well as remarkable discrimination abilities by succeeding in all of the presented tasks, cichlids showed no spontaneous preference, had difficulties in discriminating between symbols and performed poorly in the categorization experiments. Sharks distinguished between bilaterally and rotationally symmetrical stimuli and easily differentiated between a four-armed cross (all arms 90° apart) and a cross where one of the arms was only 45° spaced from the one next to it. Performance did not decline when the separation was extended to 70°, but was significantly reduced at an 80° separation. Results indicate that the ability for symmetry perception varies across fish species and individuals, whereby some can detect even subtle differences in this respect.     

Career Adaptation Wheel to Address Issues Faced by Older Workers

Older workers face increasing challenges in the workplace. Many find that they work more years than anticipated because of changes in social security and uncertain retirement accounts, along with the need for adequate healthcare. Counselors face unique opportunities to assist older workers. This article presents a Career Adaptation Wheel for Older Workers. The model can be used to help identify areas in which older adults are having challenges with job selection, colleagues at work, changes in the workplace, and learning new tasks. Counselors can then begin to consider appropriate interventions to help older workers adapt to changes in the work environment. This model offers a conceptual framework within which one's career can be viewed.     

Creativity and schizotypy from the neuroscience perspective

Behavioral research has revealed that some cognitive features may be similar between creative and psychotic/schizophrenic-like thoughts. In this study, we addressed the potential link between creativity and schizotypy at the level of the brain by investigating functional patterns of brain activity (using functional magnetic resonance imaging) during creative cognition in preselected groups with low versus high psychometrically determined schizotypy. Our findings revealed an association between the originality component of creativity and reduced deactivation of right parietal brain regions and the precuneus during creative cognition, congruent with the idea that more-creative people may include many more events/stimuli in their mental processes than do less-creative people. Similarly, the high-schizotypy group showed weaker deactivation of the right precuneus during creative cognition. The fact that originality and schizotypy show similar functional brain activity patterns during creative ideation (i.e., reduced deactivation of the right precuneus) strongly supports the contention that similar mental processes may be implicated in creativity and in psychosis proneness.