Australia Day or Invasion Day? Perspectives on the Continuing Impact of Colonialism Underlies Public Contestations Around Australia's National Day

The ways in which collective memories are constructed in the present is important in explaining how people choose to commemorate their nation's history. The present research focused on the context of Australia Day, a controversial national holiday that falls on January 26, which is a date that marks the beginning of colonization. We conducted field surveys of community members participating in an Invasion Day protest pushing for Indigenous rights (n = 219) and community members enjoying the public holiday in a public park (n = 174). We found that greater recognition of colonial history explained protesters' (vs. nonprotesters') greater support for changing the date of Australia Day. Further, protesters' lower levels of perceived continuity and higher levels of desired continuity of First Australian culture was linked to greater support for changing the date of Australia Day compared to the nonprotesters. These findings suggest that creating consensus over contested collective memories of a nation's history requires greater recognition of the ongoing impact of past atrocities.     

Political Extremism and a Generalized Propensity to Discriminate Among Values

Research exploring the psychological differences between people supporting extreme versus moderate ideologies is growing. However, this research has rarely examined the domain of values. Here, we explore this domain by assessing the possibility that political extremists discriminate more among values compared to moderates, namely, that extremists exhibit strong commitment toward some values at the expense of other values, whereas moderates would acknowledge a multiplicity of values as equally important. First, we propose a model positing that a value discriminability parameter captures a general tendency to discriminate among values. Second, we test empirically the prediction that, compared to moderates, political extremists exhibit a higher discriminability parameter. This prediction is supported by four studies (including one based on the European Social Survey where representative samples from 29 European countries are examined) where participants reported their ideological orientation and rated the importance of basic human values (we focused on basic values because these transcend the political domain, thus highlighting general effects). Specifically, in all studies we observed a positive correlation between political extremism and residual variability in ratings, a hallmark of a higher discriminability parameter. These findings highlight the value domain as critical to understanding differences between political extremists and moderates.     

Ideological Contestation on Twitter Over Diversity: Constructions of Diversity as Clashing Projects

The problematic of diversity today circulates a discourse on human differences and similarities which is also taken up by actors with controversial political agendas, notably right-wing populist and neoconservative movements. Focusing on contestation over the meaning of “diversity” by lay actors in social media, we suggest here that different constructions of diversity may be seen as clashing projects largely shaping each other through their emphasis on differences or similarities among people. In a qualitative analysis on the tweets mentioning diversity in Greek over a year, constructions of diversity were mirror images of each other across two independent ideological tensions, with distinct social stakes. Individualist constructions of diversity praising individuals' differences clashed over the legitimation of power with majoritarianist constructions emphasizing social homogeneity, and universalist constructions of diversity advocating the fundamental similarities of individuals clashed over the legitimation of social identities with particularist constructions praising cultural differences. Those constructions converse with basic social psychological models of diversity, suggesting that the emphasis on difference or similarity across people may stem from a dynamic context of political confrontation. The findings also suggest that right-wing populist representations may be channeled by the content of contestation and the positions held by the other side.     

RESPONSIBLE AGENCY: A HUMAN DISTINCTIVE?

While agent responsibility appears to be one of the clearest examples of a human distinctive, practices of holding responsible are bound up with social expectations and emotional reactions, many of which are shared with other social animals. This essay attends to the ways in which what Peter Strawson first identified as the reactive emotions, including notably anger, resentment, and indignation, are key to making sense of both the shared and distinctive features of responsible human agency. Like human beings, other social animals express a range of reactive emotions in response to others’ conformity with or violation of implicit social expectations and norms; human beings sometimes reflect on these reactive attitudes and their justifiability, asking whether and when it is appropriate to hold others accountable, blame, and/or punish them. We should recognize that we often praise and blame others for attitudes and desires which they have not chosen and over which they have no direct control, and that this is appropriate.     

HOW CULTURE MADE US UNIQUELY HUMAN

This article argues that understanding human uniqueness requires recognizing that we are a cultural species whose evolution has been driven by the interaction among genes and culture for over a million years. Here, I review the basic argument, incorporate recent findings, and highlight ongoing efforts to apply this approach to more deeply understand both the universal aspects of our cognition as well as the variation across societies. This article will cover (1) the origins and evolution of our capacities for culture, (2) examples of specialized mental abilities such as those related to mechanical causality, prestige, and cooperation, and (3) recent efforts to apprehend our capacities for abstraction. I close by discussing common canards that generate confusion in mapping what makes us human.     

Further evaluation of prompt density,rate of reinforcement,and the persistence of manding

Previous research has evaluated the effects of prompt rates on the rate of communicative behavior. More recent research has suggested that dense prompting can result in communicative behavior that is more resistant to change. However, existing research has not considered the impact that higher response rates had on reinforcement rate, a variable known to impact response persistence. The current study systematically replicated previous research by evaluating communicative responding in contexts associated with dense- and lean-prompt schedules and extended existing research by (a) holding reinforcement rates similar across the two prompting schedules (lean and dense), and (b) evaluating the persistence of communicative responding in the contexts associated with each prompting schedule. The results for Experiment 1 clearly replicated and extended previous research. The results for Experiment 2 were equivocal and suggested that previous reinforcement history and response class size impacted outcomes.     

Teaching self-control to reduce overt food stealing by children with autism and developmental disorders

Food stealing is often a serious behavioral problem among children with diagnoses of autism and other developmental disorders. Very few empirical studies concerning this behavioral challenge have been reported. We applied a correspondence training procedure to teach self-control as replacement behavior to four children with autism and developmental disorders who displayed food stealing in the community. A changing criterion design embedded within a nonconcurrent multiple-probe across participants design was used. The treatment succeeded for all four participants by increasing latency to eating highly preferred food to a predetermined criterion and reducing occurrences of food stealing to zero. Three participants generalized the replacement behavior to natural settings and maintained the behavior for 2 weeks, 1 month, 2 months, 3 months, and 4 months. One participant without expressive language was taught successfully during treatment trials but failed to maintain and generalize the behavior. A functional relation between delaying food eating and Say-Do correspondence training was demonstrated.     

Communities as conduits of harm: A social identity analysis of appraisal,coping and justice-seeking in response to historic collective victimization

Social identity approach (SIA) research shows that community members often work together to support survivors of collective victimization and rectify social injustices. However, complexities arise when community members have been involved in perpetrating these injustices. While many communities are unaware of their role in fostering victimization, others actively deny their role and responsibility to restore justice. We explore these processes by investigating experiences of community violence and collective justice-seeking among Albanian survivors of dictatorial crimes. Survivors (N = 27) were interviewed, and data were analysed using theoretical thematic analysis guided by the SIA. The analysis reveals the diverse ways communities can become harmful ‘Social Curses’. First, communities in their various forms became effective perpetrators of fear and control (e.g., exclusion and/or withholding ingroup privileges) during the dictatorship because of the close relationship between communities and their members. Second, communities caused harm by refusing to accept responsibility for the crimes, and by undermining attempts at collective action to address injustices. This lack of collective accountability also fosters survivors' feelings of exclusion and undermines their hope for systematic change. Implications for SIA processes relating to health/wellbeing (both Social Cure and Curse) are discussed. We also discuss implications for understanding collective action and victimhood.     

Telehealth parent training for a young child at risk for autism spectrum disorder

The global pandemic has highlighted the importance of telehealth to access behavioral interventions. Face-to-face parent training improves the development and behaviors of young children at risk for autism spectrum disorder (ASD). We evaluated a telehealth parent training intervention for a child at risk for ASD. Two parents identified possible early ASD symptoms in their 30-month-old son (lack of imitation, pointing, and vocal manding). Both parents simultaneously received telehealth behavioral skills training on the Parent Intervention for Children at Risk for Autism program for 1 hour per week over 29 weeks. Multiple baseline designs across parent and child behaviors showed that both parents improved their parent teaching fidelity above 80% and the child improved on all trained behaviors. This study expands the utility of telehealth behavioral parent training to young children at risk for ASD to mitigate early symptoms of ASD.