Object individuation using property/kind information in rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta)

Around 1 year of age, infants develop the ability to individuate objects in the absence of spatiotemporal information. Some have proposed that this capacity relies on the emergence of language and, in particular, that comprehending an object's label is required to individuate it as a particular kind. One approach to testing this hypothesis is to conduct experiments on pre-linguistic human infants. A second is to test non-linguistic animals. We followed the second approach, exploring whether semi-free-ranging rhesus macaques can individuate objects using property/kind information. To make the results most directly comparable, we adapted a reaching paradigm used to examine property/kind individuation in infants. Results from three experiments demonstrate that, like 12-month-old infants, adult rhesus macaques can use both spatiotemporal and property/kind information to individuate food objects. In a fourth experiment designed to examine which properties are used to individuate food objects, results revealed that rhesus use color, but not shape. These results, together with experiments involving different procedures, provide support for the conclusion that in the absence of linguistic abilities, some non-human primates spontaneously use property/kind information to individuate objects.     

Names,concepts, features and the living/nonliving things dissociation

The present paper evaluates different hypotheses for explaining the living/nonliving things dissociation phenomenon in terms of feature type, considering the role of this dimension in the organization of conceptual semantic representations and in the activation of name representations. For this purpose we used Sloman and associates' (Memory and Cognition 27(3) (1999) 526; Cognitive Science 22(2) (1998) 189) name centrality and conceptual centrality tasks and asked subjects to judge functional and perceptual/visual features of living and nonliving items. Conceptual centrality results are more in accordance with a "single feature-domain connection hypothesis" where visual features are more important than functional features for the representation of living things and no feature type advantage is found for nonliving things. Name centrality results show that functional features are more important than sensory/visual features overall, a result that is not predicted by any of the hypotheses considered. The fact that the two judgments diverge emphasizes their importance for evaluating the role of feature type in the living/nonliving dissociation. Implications for explaining this phenomenon are also discussed.     

The Violation of Inner and Outer Boundaries in Political Persecution

One of the consequences of persecution for the individual is the experienced confusion of inner and outer worlds. With the help of a broadened concept of the transitional space, derived from Winnicott, we could understand the various psychological consequences of structural physical violence. The violation of the transitional space during physical violence can result in a transformation to an inorganic state, an introjection or incorporation of the bad object into the self, intrusive re-experiencing and shattered assumptions often seen long after psychotrauma. In this article a broadened and elaborated concept of transitional space is described. Therefore, several theoretical concepts, such as inner and outer world are discussed and defined which makes it possible to put them into practice of psychotherapy and research. An example is given of a documented case of imprisonment under extreme conditions in which the prisoners were able to build up a common transitional space in order to survive. In this case, the transitional space is not an aid for the passage from one developmental phase to another, but instead a way of keeping open the connection between the psychic inner world, the world of the prison and the free world outside the prison walls. It is suggested to extend the concept of the transitional space to this meaning.     

History Matters: Effects of Culture‐specific Symbols on Political Attitudes and Intergroup Relations

A theory of the historical anchoring and mobilization of political attitudes is proposed, arguing that culture‐specific symbols, configured by historical charters, are an important resource in defining nationhood and legitimizing public opinion in a way that makes some political attitudes difficult to change. Five studies in New Zealand and Taiwan using diverse methods converged to show that historical events with “charter status” have an additive effect in explaining variance in political attitudes regarding biculturalism in New Zealand and independence in Taiwan even after controlling for the effects of Social Dominance Orientation, Right‐Wing Authoritarianism, relevant social identities, and collective guilt. Field and lab experiments showed that the impact of historical symbols did not depend on the mobilization of social identity (e.g., increasing mean scores and indirect effects), but the historical anchoring of political attitudes in representations was resistant to change. Manipulations of the salience of historical events changed levels of social identification, but did not change mean levels of support for New Zealand biculturalism or Taiwanese independence. Even an intense and immersive pretest/posttest design taking high school students on a national museum tour failed to change attitudes towards biculturalism in New Zealand.     

Interethnic Factors as Predictors of the Subjective Well‐Being of Minority Individuals in a Context of Recent Societal Changes

Our research examined the impact of contextual intergroup variables on the subjective well‐being of ethnic Russians in Estonia (N = 190) who have experienced major social changes with the demise of the Soviet Union. A mediational model was tested where aspects of intergroup relations (i.e., relative deprivation, status legitimization, and temporal comparisons) acted as mediators of the influence of cultural identity and representations of history on subjective well‐being. Preliminary analyses indicated polemical representations of history in which Estonian historical narratives are established around the struggle for independence, and Russian representations of history are consolidated around victory in World War II. Mediation analyses demonstrated that the importance of Russian history increased the perceptions of relative deprivation, status delegitimization, and the frequency of temporal comparisons, which negatively affected life satisfaction. At the same time, the importance of Estonian history led to positive perceptions of the intergroup situation and, in turn, to greater subjective well‐being. The effect of Russian identity on well‐being was mediated by delegitimizing beliefs, but not by relative deprivation and temporal comparisons. Estonian identity did not exert a significant effect on the proposed mediators. The research demonstrates the salience of the effects of contextual intergroup factors on subjective well‐being, and the article discusses implications for the study of intergroup relations and subjective well‐being.     

Analogue Mental Transformations in 3‐Year‐Olds: Introducing a New Mental Rotation Paradigm Suitable for Young Children

Until now, a successful application of the mental rotation paradigm was restricted to children 5 years or older. By contrast, recent findings suggest that even infants can perform mental rotation. Unlike the methods used in infant studies (looking time), our new research paradigm allows for the measurement and interpretation of reaction times. Kindergartners (aged 3–6 years) were presented with a stimulus configuration on a touchscreen and asked to bring a rotated stimulus into an upright position using the shortest path. Mean reaction time (RT) increased linearly with angular disparity. The ensuing linear trend was significant not only for the entire sample but also for the youngest age group analysed separately. To exclude the possibility that linearity was due to movement planning, 3‐year‐olds had to manually rotate a stimulus about the same trajectory without the need for a corresponding mental transformation in a second experiment. Here, no linear trend was observed. These results are interpreted as evidence for an analogue mental transformation in 3‐year‐olds, equal to the transformation processes in older children's and adults' mental rotation. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

‘The Good Mother and Her Clinging Child’: Patterns of Anchoring in Social Representations of Dementia Caregiving

This paper discusses the findings of a study that examined the processes of anchoring in the understanding of dementia caregiving using 29 interviews conducted in Germany with wives and daughters caring for a relative with dementia and 43 newspaper articles pertinent to the research objective. The concept of anchoring from Social Representations Theory was complemented by elements from cognitive linguistics to analyse the social representations (SRs) that served as source domains to determine what the target domain of dementia caregiving means, entails and requires. The analysis revealed three prevalent patterns of anchoring dementia care in SRs of child care and the good mother. The first pattern ascribed the role of the helpless clinging child needing his mother to the dementia patient, the second emphasised that the dementia caregivers' responsibility for caring, just like motherhood, should take precedence over all other interests and the third consisted of dementia caregivers deriving the perception of being the most suitable caregiver from the mother's natural aptitude for caring. The conclusions reached by the different patterns are argued to contribute to dementia caregivers overexerting themselves and not using support services. The clinical implications for targeting such adverse effects of the anchoring will be discussed. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Motion and edge sensitivity in perception of object unity

Although much evidence indicates that young infants perceive unitary objects by analyzing patterns of motion, infants' abilities to perceive object unity by analyzing Gestalt properties and by integrating distinct views of an object over time are in dispute. To address these controversies, four experiments investigated adults' and infants' perception of the unity of a center-occluded, moving rod with misaligned visible edges. Both alignment information and depth information affected adults' and infants' perception of object unity in similar ways, and infants perceived object unity by integrating information about object features over time. However, infants perceived a moving, misaligned, three-dimensional object as indeterminate in its connectedness, whereas adults perceived it as connected behind the occluder. These findings indicate that the effectiveness of common motion in specifying unified surfaces across an occluder is reduced by misalignment of edges. Alignment information enhances perception of object unity either by serving directly as information for unity or by optimizing the detectability of motion-carried information for unity. In addition, young infants are able to retain information about edge orientation over short intervals in determining connectedness via a process of spatiotemporal integration.