Social-cognitive development: Domain distinctions and coordinations

Recent research on social-cognitive development has identified three conceptual domains which form the basis of the child's structuring of the social world: the moral, societal, and psychological domains. Research on distinct conceptual domains has thus far focused on events and actions that are clear examples of content for the domains. The issue of domain coordinations has not been addressed. This paper examines coordinations between conceptual domains in children's social judgments through a discussion of the experiential origins of the domains and judgments about mixed, second-order, and ambiguously multifaceted events. The utility of the conceptual domain model for understanding social judgments and social development is discussed.     

Perception of intensity of sperm competition on the part of males

Preferences for certain pornographic themes are hypothesized to have been influenced by our evolutionary history, where sperm competition could play a significant role. The mating system in our australopithecine ancestors, as well as in modern human societies, however, suggests that polygyny (characterized by low risk of sperm competition) has predominated over multi-male multi-female mating systems where high sperm competition is expected. In this study, a sample of men (N = 96) was investigated for their preferences for sexually explicit material showing low (sexual interaction with three women), moderate (one man and one woman) and high intensity of sperm competition (one woman and two men). The participants showed a strong and highly consistent preference for pictures showing moderate and low intensity of sperm competition. These preferences were not influenced by sociosexuality, pornography consumption or attitudes toward pornography. It is suggested that these preferences may mirror psychological adaptations for sperm competition which are activated when the risk of cuckoldry is high. Certain circumstances, where preferences for cues associated with high intensity of sperm competition would be adaptive, are discussed.     

Team performance and collective efficacy in the dynamic psychology of competitive team: A Bayesian network analysis

The purpose of this paper was to discover the relationships among 22 relevant psychological features in semi-professional football players in order to study team’s performance and collective efficacy via a Bayesian network (BN). The paper includes optimization of team’s performance and collective efficacy using intercausal reasoning pattern which constitutes a very common pattern in human reasoning. The BN is used to make inferences regarding our problem, and therefore we obtain some conclusions; among them: maximizing the team’s performance causes a decrease in collective efficacy and when team’s performance achieves the minimum value it causes an increase in moderate/high values of collective efficacy. Similarly, we may reason optimizing team collective efficacy instead. It also allows us to determine the features that have the strongest influence on performance and which on collective efficacy. From the BN two different coaching styles were differentiated taking into account the local Markov property: training leadership and autocratic leadership.     

A geo-literary analysis through human senses. Towards a sensuous Camino geography

The work is framed within the geographical rethinking of spatiality within narrative theories, in relation to geohumanities interest in creative writing. The main aim of the research is to experiment with a new geo-cultural approach to investigate pilgrims' cultural narratives from the book Camino Voices by Iain Dryden (2015), an original collection of pilgrims’ comments which are accompanied by a series of drawings by the author. Through a qualitative methodology based on the human senses as the interpretative criteria, I suggest an approximation to sensuous research in the social sciences in order to reflect upon the multisensory experience of the Camino. As a result, I discuss and propose a set of sensescapes that conduce to the conceptualisation of a sensuous Camino geography, by which I mean a new cultural interpretation of the emotions, feelings and sensations produced throughout the experience of the Camino.     

Pragmatic effects on reference resolution in a collaborative task: evidence from eye movements

In order to investigate whether addressees can make immediate use of speaker-based constraints during reference resolution, participant addressees’ eye movements were monitored as they helped a confederate cook follow a recipe. Objects were located in the helper’s area, which the cook could not reach, and the cook’s area, which both could reach. Critical referring expressions matched one object (helper’s area) or two objects (helper’s and cook’s areas), and were produced when the cook’s hands were empty or full, which defined the cook’s reaching ability constraints. Helper’s first and total fixations showed that they restricted their domain of interpretation to their own objects when the cook’s hands were empty, and widened it to include the cook’s objects only when the cook’s hands were full. These results demonstrate that addressees can quickly take into account task-relevant constraints to restrict their referential domain to referents that are plausible given the speaker’s goals and constraints.     

Further evidence of the heterogeneous nature of impulsivity

‘Impulsivity’ refers to a range of behaviours including preference for immediate reward (temporal-impulsivity) and the tendency to make premature decisions (reflection-impulsivity) and responses (motor-impulsivity). The current study aimed to examine how different behavioural and self-report measurements of impulsivity can be categorised into distinct subtypes.Exploratory factor analysis using full information maximum likelihood was conducted on 10 behavioural and 1 self-report measure of impulsivity.Four factors of impulsivity were indicated, with Factor 1 having a high loading of the Stop Signal Task, which measures motor-impulsivity, factor 2 representing reflection-impulsivity with loadings of the Information Sampling Task and Matching Familiar Figures Task, factor 3 representing the Immediate Memory Task, and finally factor 4 which represents the Delay Discounting Questionnaire and The Monetary Choice Questionnaire, measurements of temporal-impulsivity.These findings indicated that impulsivity is not a unitary construct, and instead represents a series of independent subtypes. There was evidence of a distinct reflection-impulsivity factor, providing the first factor analysis support for this subtype. There was also support for additional factors of motor- and temporal-impulsivity. The present findings indicated that a number of currently accepted tasks cannot be considered as indexing motor- and temporal-impulsivity suggesting that additional characterisations of impulsivity may be required.     

Thomas Willis: The faculties and his two cognitive frameworks

Thomas Willis’ 1664 study The anatomy of the brain is widely regarded as one of the first clinical studies of the brain. In The anatomy, Thomas Willis explicitly connected the cognitive faculties and the nerves. Willis’ later, 1672 work, The two discourses concerning the soul of brutes, severely undermined the materialism of Willis’ first study: he affirmed dualism and cognitive immateriality; changed the anatomical locations of cognition; and reasserted a division between the rational and sensitive souls. His exact motive to return to orthodoxy is unclear, but contemporary scholarship of Willis has compounded the confusion with by relying predominantly on The soul of brutes instead of The anatomy. We trace Willis’ career and examine his methodological practices, which help explain the historical practices and pressures. A closer examination of Willis’ Anatomy of the brain reveals a much more materialistic account of the brain, the faculties, and nervous system. In this article, we present our own analysis of Willis’ concept of rationality in the Anatomy and explain its importance for nervous physiology and understanding the analytic techniques for first defining faculty localizations. We then explain the role of the imagination and the immortal soul in the rearticulated anatomical concepts from The soul of brutes.     

Mapping Word to World in ASL: Evidence from a Human Simulation Paradigm

Across languages, children map words to meaning with great efficiency, despite a seemingly unconstrained space of potential mappings. The literature on how children do this is primarily limited to spoken language. This leaves a gap in our understanding of sign language acquisition, because several of the hypothesized mechanisms that children use are visual (e.g., visual attention to the referent), and sign languages are perceived in the visual modality. Here, we used the Human Simulation Paradigm in American Sign Language (ASL) to determine potential cues to word learning. Sign-naïve adult participants viewed video clips of parent–child interactions in ASL, and at a designated point, had to guess what ASL sign the parent produced. Across two studies, we demonstrate that referential clarity in ASL interactions is characterized by access to information about word class and referent presence (for verbs), similarly to spoken language. Unlike spoken language, iconicity is a cue to word meaning in ASL, although this is not always a fruitful cue. We also present evidence that verbs are highlighted well in the input, relative to spoken English. The results shed light on both similarities and differences in the information that learners may have access to in acquiring signed versus spoken languages.     

Evidential diversity and premise probability in young children's inductive judgment

A familiar adage in the philosophy of science is that general hypotheses are better supported by varied evidence than by uniform evidence. Several studies suggest that young children do not respect this principle, and thus suffer from a defect in their inductive methodology. We argue that the diversity principle does not have the normative status that psychologists attribute to it, and should be replaced by a simple rule of probability. We then report experiments designed to detect conformity to the latter rule in children's inductive judgment. The results suggest that young children in both the United States and Taiwan are sensitive to the constraints imposed by the rule on judgments of probability and evidential strength. We conclude with a suggested reinterpretation of the thesis that children's inductive methodology qualifies them as “little scientists.”     

Occupational Identity,Competence, and Environments Among Adults With and Without Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

Exploring occupational adaptation among adults with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is essential due to associated occupational difficulties. Occupational Performance History Interview scales—identity, competence, and environments—were compared between 51 adults with and 50 without ADHD who participated in occupations. Internal and external resources supporting occupational participations were represented by the competence and environment scales, respectively. The group with ADHD reported fewer internal and external occupational resources compared to the group without ADHD, despite occupational identity similarities. Study findings suggest that occupational interventions aimed at increasing internal and external occupational resources may support occupational adaptation among adults with ADHD.