Préservation d’une image positive de soi dans un cadre de vie « à risque »

According to social identity theory (Tajfel, 1972), individual try to maintain a positive self-image. Places at which he/she is attached contribute to identity building (Proshansky et al., 1983; Twigger-Ross & Uzzell, 1996). Therefore, individual will try to maintain a positive a positive and stable image of such places. Our study is interested in what is the representation of their living area for individuals living in coastal area considered as exposed to erosion/flood risk, and attached to it. We are focused on how this representation influences their perception to coastal risk. We assume that individual attached to a place which he/she consider as “at risk” will put in place a strategy to preserve the positive image of this place and of himself/herself. Analyzing answers to a questionnaire, results demonstrate that individuals considering a place which they are attached as “at risk” mitigate the danger impact on that space. Thus, they conciliate probability of such negative event on place which they identifying themselves with positive image of this place and, by extension, of themselves.     

In which direction to move? Facilitative and interference effects of gestures on problem solver's thinking

Recent research shows that co-speech gestures can influence gesturers’ thought. This line of research suggests that the influence of gestures is so strong, that it can wash out and reverse an effect of learning. We argue that these findings need a more robust and ecologically valid test, which we provide in this article. Our results support the claim that gestures not only reflect information in our mental representations, but can also influence gesturer's thought by adding action information to one's mental representation during problem solving (Tower of Hanoi). We show, however, that the effect of gestures on subsequent performance is not as strong as previously suggested. As opposed to what previous research indicates, gestures' facilitative effect through learning was not nullified by the potentially interfering effect on subsequent problem-solving performance of incompatible gestures. To conclude, using gestures during problem solving seems to provide more benefits than costs for task performance.     

Excitatory and inhibitory priming by attended and ignored non-recycled words with monolinguals and bilinguals

Experiments examining identity priming from attended and ignored novel words (words that are used only once except when repetition is required due to experimental manipulation) in a lexical decision task are reported. Experiment 1 tested English monolinguals whereas Experiment 2 tested Twi (a native language of Ghana, Africa)-English bilinguals. Participants were presented with sequential pairs of stimuli composed of a prime followed by a probe, with each containing two items. The participants were required to name the target word in the prime display, and to make a lexical decision to the target item in the probe display. On attended repetition (AR) trials the probe target item was identical to the target word on the preceding attentional display. On ignored repetition (IR) trials the probe target item was the same as the distractor word in the preceding attentional display. The experiments produced facilitated (positive) priming in the AR trials and delayed (negative) priming in the IR trials. Significantly, the positive and negative priming effects also replicated across both monolingual and bilingual groups of participants, despite the fact that the bilinguals were responding to the task in their non-dominant language.     

Real Objects Can Impede Conditional Reasoning but Augmented Objects Do Not

In this study, Knauff and Johnson‐Laird's (2002) visual impedance hypothesis (i.e., mental representations with irrelevant visual detail can impede reasoning) is applied to the domain of external representations and diagrammatic reasoning. We show that the use of real objects and augmented real (AR) objects can control human interpretation and reasoning about conditionals. As participants made inferences (e.g., an invalid one from "if P then Q" to "P"), they also moved objects corresponding to premises. Participants who moved real objects made more invalid inferences than those who moved AR objects and those who did not manipulate objects (there was no significant difference between the last two groups). Our results showed that real objects impeded conditional reasoning, but AR objects did not. These findings are explained by the fact that real objects may over‐specify a single state that exists, while AR objects suggest multiple possibilities.     

Representing ethical reality: a guide for worldly non-naturalists

Abstract

Ethical realists hold (i) that our ethical concepts, thoughts, and claims are in the business of representing ethical reality, by representing evaluative or normative properties and facts as aspects of reality, and (ii) that such representations are at least sometimes accurate. Non-naturalist realists add the further claim that ethical properties and facts are ultimately non-natural, though they are nonetheless worldly. My aim is threefold: to elucidate the sort of representation involved in ethical evaluation on realist views; to clarify what exactly is represented and how non-naturalism comes into the picture for non-naturalists; and to defend worldly non-naturalism against some objections. The first question addressed is how we should model evaluation on any realist view, which should in turn guide the identification of which properties and facts are credibly regarded as ‘evaluative’ ones. Then the question is: what role might non-natural properties and facts play, and how are they related to what is represented in ethical evaluation? Once that is clear, we will be in a position to answer certain objections to non-naturalist realism from Jackson, Gibbard, Bedke, and Dreier. I argue that the objections all mischaracterize the role played by non-natural properties and facts on plausible versions of non-naturalist realism.     

Investigating Individual Differences in Toddler Search with Mixture Models

Children's performance on cognitive tasks is often described in categorical terms in that a child is described as either passing or failing a test, or knowing or not knowing some concept. We used binomial mixture models to determine whether individual children could be classified as passing or failing two search tasks, the DeLoache model room task and the Berthier et al. door task. The data support categorical classification of the children and suggest that the increase in average proportion correct with age is the result of an increasing proportion of children who can solve the tasks. Performance on the two tasks was concordant, and improving performance could be due to advances in a single psychological ability, such as cognitive control. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Emotional,Sensitive, and Unfit for Office? Gender Stereotype Activation and Support Female Candidates

Women are underrepresented at all levels of elected office. It is suspected that gender stereotypes hinder the electoral success of female candidates, but empirical evidence is inconclusive on whether stereotypes have a direct effect on voting decisions. This empirical conflict stems, in part, from the assumption that voters automatically rely on gender stereotypes when evaluating female candidates. This study explicitly tests the assumption of automatic stereotype activation. I suggest that stereotype reliance depends on whether stereotypes have been activated during a campaign, and it is only when stereotypes are activated that they influence evaluations of female candidates. These hypotheses are tested with a survey experiment and observational analysis. The results show that campaign communication activates stereotypes when they otherwise might not be activated, thereby diminishing support for female candidates.     

Causal Networks or Causal Islands? The Representation of Mechanisms and the Transitivity of Causal Judgment

Knowledge of mechanisms is critical for causal reasoning. We contrasted two possible organizations of causal knowledge—an interconnected causal network, where events are causally connected without any boundaries delineating discrete mechanisms; or a set of disparate mechanisms—causal islands—such that events in different mechanisms are not thought to be related even when they belong to the same causal chain. To distinguish these possibilities, we tested whether people make transitive judgments about causal chains by inferring, given A causes B and B causes C, that A causes C. Specifically, causal chains schematized as one chunk or mechanism in semantic memory (e.g., exercising, becoming thirsty, drinking water) led to transitive causal judgments. On the other hand, chains schematized as multiple chunks (e.g., having sex, becoming pregnant, becoming nauseous) led to intransitive judgments despite strong intermediate links ((Experiments 1–3). Normative accounts of causal intransitivity could not explain these intransitive judgments (Experiments 4 and 5).     

熟悉性和兼容性对复合社会范畴刻板印象表征的影响

通过对启动任务范式的改进,运用3个实验全面考察了复合社会范畴本身的熟悉性和兼容性对复合社会范畴刻板印象中抽象表征和样例表征策略运用的影响。实验1分别以熟悉的、不熟悉且在刻板印象上不兼容的复合范畴为研究对象,研究发现对熟悉的复合范畴采用抽象表征,而对不熟悉且在刻板印象上不兼容的复合范畴的表征采用样例表征;实验2以熟悉且在刻板印象上不兼容的复合范畴为研究对象,研究发现对于熟悉但构成范畴不兼容的复合范畴的表征也采用样例表征;实验3采用相同的实验范式,在描述和定义两种启动任务中设置子范畴间兼容的刻板特质词和不兼容的刻板特质词,选择与实验2相同的复合范畴"男中学教师"为目标群体,更加严密地证实和整合了实验1与实验2的研究结论。3个实验的结果说明复合范畴刻板印象的表征关键取决于兼容性,一旦复合社会范畴的构成范畴在刻板印象上不兼容,那么对于这一复合社会范畴刻板印象的表征采用样例表征。当构成复合范畴的两个子范畴之间兼容时,熟悉性成为刻板印象运用抽象表征还是样例表征的影响因素,无论是对内群体的刻板印象还是外群体的刻板印象,对熟悉的刻板特质词的表征运用抽象表征。     

Mental representations of magnitude and order: A dissociation by sensorimotor learning

Numbers and spatially directed actions share cognitive representations. This assertion is derived from studies that have demonstrated that the processing of small- and large-magnitude numbers facilitates motor behaviors that are directed to the left and right, respectively. However, little is known about the role of sensorimotor learning for such number–action associations. In this study, we show that sensorimotor learning in a serial reaction-time task can modify the associations between number magnitudes and spatially directed movements. Experiments 1 and 3 revealed that this effect is present only for the learned sequence and does not transfer to a novel unpracticed sequence. Experiments 2 and 4 showed that the modification of stimulus–action associations by sensorimotor learning does not occur for other sets of ordered stimuli such as letters of the alphabet. These results strongly suggest that numbers and actions share a common magnitude representation that differs from the common order representation shared by letters and spatially directed actions. Only the magnitude representation, but not the order representation, can be modified episodically by sensorimotor learning.