Knowing what to look for: Voice affects face race judgements

The study examined the effect that auditory information (speaker language/accent: Japanese or French) had on the processing of visual information (the speaker's race: Asian or Caucasian) in two forced-choice tasks: Classification and perceptual judgement on animated talking characters. Two (male and female) sets of facial morphs were constructed such that a 3-D head of Caucasian appearance was gradually morphed (in 11 steps) into one of Asian appearance. Each facial morph was animated in association with spoken French/Japanese or English with a French/Japanese accent. To examine the auditory effect, each animation was played with or without sound. Experiment 1 used an Asian or Caucasian classification task. Results showed that faces heard in conjunction with Japanese or a Japanese accent were more likely to be classified as Asian compared to those presented without sound. Experiment 2 used a same or different judgement task. Results showed that accuracy was improved by hearing a Japanese accent compared to without sound. These results were discussed in terms of the voice information acting as a cue to assist in organizing and attending to face features.     

Teaching with Complicating Views: Beyond the Survey,Behind the Pro and Con

In this article I propose a method of selecting and assigning readings in the religious studies or theology classroom, such that these readings complicate one another, rather than standing in opposition or as simple alternatives. Such a strategy emulates key pedagogical insights of twelfth‐century sentence collection, an activity at the very heart of the earliest universities in Europe. It also draws support from the theories of intellectual development advanced by William G. Perry, Jr. and the Women's Ways of Knowing Collaborative. Both precedents suggest a principle of “complicating views” that can be flexibly employed in a variety of ways and diverse pedagogical contexts, as illustrated by examples from several classes. Such strategies aim to avoid reinforcing intellectual patterns of dualism or undifferentiated relativism; instead, they attempt to promote students' ability to integrate discordant voices and to appreciate diverse points of view, while also staking their own claims relative to them.     

Crying games in the theory of child development

Mathematical tools, such as static and dynamic optimization theory and game theory, are used to axiomatize developmental theory and to model the interaction between parents, their infant children and siblings. Parents allocate their time between parenting and other activities. They respond to their children's demand for attention. Children signal attention seeking by “crying”. Jealous siblings vie for their parents' attention. Parents, children and siblings are assumed to pursue their goals efficiently. The model solves for the equilibrium amount of crying by siblings, the allocation of parents' time between themselves and their children, and the sub-allocation of attention between rival siblings. Parents have an enlightened self-interest in promoting their children's independence, which they do by setting limits. In this they tread a fine line between spoiling and depriving their child. The model is dynamized to solve the optimal development policy of parents and to formalize the separation process of children from parents.     

The association between maternal strategies and preschoolers' memory for location of objects

Using a Vygotskian theoretical framework and a social interaction design, we observed 30 middle-class North American mother–child dyads engaged in a location memory activity. The central aim of this investigation was to assess maternal and preschool strategy use employed during a memory for location task, and to determine which strategies are associated with preschooler accuracy of memory for location of objects. Results suggest that mothers are more apt to utilize labelling, encouragement, and guidance as opposed to location-specific assistance to their child during the task, and children are more apt to link the memory information to their real-life experiences, request help for assistance, and utilize self-regulatory speech. Implications of the research, suggestions for future research, and expansions of theoretical perspectives on the role of social interaction on preschool location memory performance, and educational implications are discussed.     

Age differences in contingency judgement linked to perceptual segregation

We demonstrate large differences in judging positive and null contingencies between younger and older adults with a task commonly used to explore cue competition in both contingency and causality judgements. The one-phase blocking task uses two cues, with separate contingencies with the same outcome. The age differences persisted even when participants knew in advance which of the two contingencies to judge. The age differences disappeared, however, when the stimulus display contained markers aiding perceptual segregation. We suggest that the age differences elicited in the one-phase blocking task are linked to decrements in perceptual segregation.     

Integration of motion parallax with binocular disparity specifying different surface shapes

We investigated the interaction between motion parallax and binocular disparity cues in the perception of surface shape and depth magnitude by the use of the random dot stimuli in which these cues specified sinusoidal depth surfaces undulating with different spatial frequencies. When ambiguous motion parallax is inconsistent with unambiguous disparity cue, the reasonable solution for the visual system is to convert the motion signal to the flow on the surface specified by disparity. Two experiments, however, found that the visual system did not always use this reasonable solution; observers often perceived the surface specified by a composite of the two cues, or the surface specified by parallax alone. In the perception of this composite of the two cues, the apparent depth magnitude increased with the increase of the depth magnitude specified by both cues. This indicates that the visual system can combine the depth magnitude information from parallax and disparity in an additive fashion. The interference with parallax by disparity implies that the parallax processing is not independent of the disparity processing.     

Measurement variability in infant and maternal behavioral assessment

Evaluations of methodological assessments sometimes show similar, sometimes different patterns of findings reflective of different approaches to the same problem. In this study, frequencies of behaviors of infants and mothers in two cultures based on continuous coding were compared with frequencies based on time-sampling, and resulting patterns of findings were evaluated. Time-sampling and continuous coding give different estimates of absolute frequency of typical infant and maternal behaviors between individuals and between cultural groups. However, time-sampling adequately preserves the relative ranking of infant and mother behaviors among individuals and between cultural groups. If research is concerned with the relative standing of individuals and/or groups on frequency of infant or maternal behavior, then (under specified circumstances) time-sampling and continuous coding yield comparable results.     

Hertz and Wittgenstein's Philosophy of Science

The German physicist Heinrich Hertz played a decisive role for Wittgenstein's use of a unique philosophical method. Wittgenstein applied this method successfully to critical problems in logic and mathematics throughout his life. Logical paradoxes and foundational problems including those of mathematics were seen as pseudo-problems requiring clarity instead of solution. In effect, Wittgenstein's controversial response to David Hilbert and Kurt Gödel was deeply influenced by Hertz and can only be fully understood when seen in this context. To comprehend the arguments against the metamathematical programme, and to appreciate how profoundly the philosophical method employed actually shaped the content of Wittgenstein's philosophy, it is necessary to make an intellectual biographical reconstruction of their philosophical framework, tracing the Hertzian elements in the early as well as in the later writings. In order to write Wittgenstein's biography, we have to take seriously the coherence of his thought throughout his life, and not let convenient philosophical ideologies be our guidance in drawing up a “Wittgensteinian philosophy”. To do so, we have to take a second look upon what he actually wrote, not only in the already published material, but in the entire Nachlass. Clearly, this is not easily done, but it is a necessary task in the historical reconstruction of Wittgenstein's life and work.     

Patient Adherence With Medical Treatment Regimens: An Interactive Approach

Inadequate patient adherence to treatment regimens is a ubiquitous problem in health care and carries a profound personal, societal, and economic cost. This article illustrates a general theoretical framework we believe to be useful for the interpretation, conception, and design of adherence research. The core tenet of this framework is that factors that influence adherence can be better understood by considering the interactive effects of patients' characteristics, type of adherence intervention, and characteristics of the illness and medical treatment context. This framework represents an extension and application of previous theory and research from personality, social, and clinical psychology concerning the value of an interactionalist perspective. We illustrate the framework using some of our past work involving treatment adherence among patients with chronic renal failure.     

Who's controlling whom? Infant contributions to maternal play behavior

Because the way mothers play with their children may have significant impacts on children's social, cognitive, and linguistic development, researchers have become interested in potential predictors of maternal play. In the present study, 40 mother–infant dyads were followed from child age 5–20 months. Five‐month habituation rate and 13 and 20 month temperamental difficulty were found to be predictive of maternal play quality at 20 months. The most parsimonious theoretical model was one in which habituation was mediated by temperamental difficulty in predicting mother play. Consistent with prior speculation in the literature, these data support the possibility that mothers adjust some aspects of their play behaviors to fit their children's cognitive and temperamental capabilities. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.