Bias and regulation of bias in intergroup interactions: Implicit attitudes toward Muslims and interaction quality

Previous research suggests that automatically activated bias manifests itself in behavior that can jeopardize the quality of intergroup interactions. However, regulation of automatic associations has the potential to attenuate their influence on intergroup interaction. To test this possibility, 46 non-Muslim White participants interacted with a Muslim confederate and completed an implicit measure of attitudes toward Muslims. The Quadruple Process model [Sherman, J. W., Gawronski, B., Gonsalkorale, K., Hugenberg, K., Allen, T. J., & Groom, C. J. (2008). The self-regulation of automatic associations and behavioral impulses. Psychological Review, 115, 314-335] was applied to the implicit measure to estimate participants’ strength of negative associations with Muslims and their ability to overcome those negative associations. The confederate’s ratings of how much he liked the participants were predicted by an interaction between automatic negative associations and the ability to overcome them. Specifically, when the strength of participants’ negative associations with Muslims was low, participants’ level of overcoming bias was unrelated to the confederate’s ratings. In contrast, the ability to regulate automatic negative associations predicted greater liking when those associations were strong.     

Horizontal saccadic eye movements enhance the retrieval of landmark shape and location information

Recent work has demonstrated that horizontal saccadic eye movements enhance verbal episodic memory retrieval, particularly in strongly right-handed individuals. The present experiments test three primary assumptions derived from this research. First, horizontal eye movements should facilitate episodic memory for both verbal and non-verbal information. Second, the benefits of horizontal eye movements should only be seen when they immediately precede tasks that demand right and left-hemisphere processing towards successful performance. Third, the benefits of horizontal eye movements should be most pronounced in the strongly right-handed. Two experiments confirmed these hypotheses: horizontal eye movements increased recognition sensitivity and decreased response times during a spatial memory test relative to both vertical eye movements and fixation. These effects were only seen when horizontal eye movements preceded episodic memory retrieval, and not when they preceded encoding (Experiment 1). Further, when eye movements preceded retrieval, they were only beneficial with recognition tests demanding a high degree of right and left-hemisphere activity (Experiment 2). In both experiments the beneficial effects of horizontal eye movements were greatest for strongly right-handed individuals. These results support recent work suggesting increased interhemispheric brain activity induced by bilateral horizontal eye movements, and extend this literature to the encoding and retrieval of landmark shape and location information.     

Argumentation and Explanation in Conceptual Change: Indications From Protocol Analyses of Peer-to-Peer Dialog

In this paper we attempt to identify which peer collaboration characteristics may be accountable for conceptual change through interaction. We focus on different socio-cognitive aspects of the peer dialog and relate these with learning gains on the dyadic as well as the individual level. The scientific topic that was used for this study concerns natural selection, a topic for which students' intuitive conceptions have been shown to be particularly robust. Learning tasks were designed according to the socio-cognitive conflict instructional paradigm. After receiving a short instructional intervention on natural selection, paired students were asked to collaboratively construct explanations for certain evolutionary phenomena while engaging in dialectical argumentation. Two quantitative coding schemes were developed, each with a different granularity. The first assessed discrete dialog moves that pertained to dialectical argumentation and to consensual explanation development. The second scheme characterized the dialog as a whole on a number of socio-cognitive dimensions. Results from analyses on the dyadic as well as the individual level revealed that the engagement in dialectical argumentation predicted conceptual learning gains, whereas consensual explanation development did not. These findings open up new venues for research on the mechanisms of learning in and from peer collaboration.     

经验信息与共变信息对判断两原因共同作用的影响

本研究考察了被试在使用经验信息和共变信息进行两原因共同作用因果判断时所具有的特点。研究结果表明:(1)两原因的性质对于被试的选择有着显著影响。当两原因的可信度相等时,更多被试认为两原因都可以引起结果。(2)两原因都不出现时结果出现的概率P(e/~i~j)对于被试的选择没有显著影响。(3)两原因单独出现时结果出现的概率对于被试的选择有着显著的影响,但是这一变量是与两原因的可信程度共同产生影响的。     

Classroom discourse and the distribution of student engagement

Research in the social psychology of achievement motivation stresses the contribution of the classroom motivational context to problems of student engagement among low achieving students. This analysis contributes to that literature through a focused analysis of English and language arts instruction during the middle school years. Using data from the Partnership for Literacy Study the author investigates the relationship between classroom evaluation during question and answer sessions and two forms of student engagement, participation in classroom discourse, and student effort on classroom and homework assignments. When teachers focus on provoking student thought and analysis, and postpone evaluation during question and answer sessions by engaging in dialogic instruction, levels of student effort are more evenly distributed among students. Moreover, the relationship between levels of initial achievement and student effort is weaker in classrooms where teachers incorporate elements of dialogic instruction into question and answer sessions. However, dialogic instruction had no effect on the distribution of participation in classroom discourse itself.     

混龄编班对四岁儿童心理理论发展的影响

从个体的社会交往经验、同伴关系和社会行为等方面来探讨儿童心理理论发展的个体差异。中国独生子女缺乏西方通常的家庭内兄弟姐妹间的社会交往经验,幼儿园混龄编班为我们提供了一个与西方家庭近似平行的探讨条件。被试为混龄班44名、同龄班30名4岁儿童,男女各半。采用经典错误信念任务测查儿童的心理理论,用情绪知识理解任务测量儿童的情绪理解能力,儿童的社会行为评估问卷和儿童社会技能的教师评价量表对儿童的社会行为和社会技能进行考察。结果表明混龄编班对四岁儿童的错误信念理解和情绪理解有显著的影响,提示了混龄同伴交往经验对独生子女心理理论发展的意义。     

Are You Alive? Sensor Data as a Resource for Social Interaction

This paper presents findings from the field test of a prototype device that collects heart rate sensor data and displays it for users. The prototype was tested on a football team, including teenage players, their parents and coaches. The findings include notes on user expectations related to the technology and detailed analyses of the social interactions that took place during the test. The paper concludes with design implications relating to this application, but also poses challenges for context-aware computing and machine intelligence in general.

失语：医患交往中的沉默现象反思

本文从医生和患者交往的失语现象入手,采取案例分析的方法,分析了沉默的不同类型及特点,指出沉默的原因是对医患沟通的忽视,医生的无暇,受传统父权思想的影响,其根源在于人文精神的失落,并有针对性地提出了沉默的唤醒的途径和治疗失语的方法。     

Similarity in Spatial Origin of Information Facilitates Cue Competition and Interference

Two lick suppression studies were conducted with water-deprived rats to investigate the influence of spatial similarity in cue interaction. Experiment 1 assessed the influence of similarity of the spatial origin of competing cues in a blocking procedure. Greater blocking was observed in the condition in which the auditory blocking cue and the auditory blocked cue originated at the same spatial location. Recent investigations have demonstrated that manipulations that impact competition between cues trained together have similar effects on interference between cues trained apart. Therefore, Experiment 2 investigated the influence of similarity of the spatial origin in proactive interference of Pavlovian conditioning by separately pairing two auditory cues with a common outcome, originating at the same spatial location or different spatial locations. Greater proactive interference was observed in the condition in which the interfering cue and target cue originated at the same spatial location. The results are considered in light of the possibility that a similar mechanism may underlie interference between cues trained apart and cue competition between cues trained together.     

特征归纳中关联强度与关联相似性的交互作用效应

根据特征归纳的关联相似性模型分析和三个因素实验研究发现,在基于关联相似性而进行的特征归纳中,关联强度和关联相似性两因素对归纳强度的影响存在交互作用效应。关联相似性变化对归纳强度的影响依赖于关联强度,随关联强度的增加而增加。关联强度变化对归纳强度的影响依赖于关联相似性水平：在高的关联相似性条件下,归纳强度随关联强度增加而增加;在中等关联相似性条件下,归纳强度不受关联强度变化的影响;而在低的关联相似性条件下,归纳强度随关联强度增加而减小