Rudd's Apology to the Stolen Generations: Challenging Self‐Sufficient Arguments in “Race” Discourse

While the public debate on whether to apologise to the Stolen Generations ended on 13 February, 2008, public opinion was still divided, reflected particularly in the arguments against apologising that were common in political and public discourse. We examine the ways in which differing arguments can be flexibly deployed and combined within a political context to not just resist, but also to support, an act of reparation for historical injustice. In particular, we consider how Rudd makes use of specific rhetorically self‐sufficient arguments to justify offering the apology; precisely the same arguments that had previously been used by political leaders and members of the public to oppose the apology. It is the use of such arguments in combination with each other and additional common tropes drawn from egalitarian and liberal discourse that allow for the building of a rhetorically powerful case for offering the apology. Rather than the traditional focus of such research on the ways in which racism is accomplished in talk, we suggest that Rudd's apology to the Stolen Generations can be seen as a practical tool‐kit for building an “anti‐racist” rhetoric in the context of Indigenous and non‐Indigenous relations in Australia.     

Cold hearts and bleeding hearts: disciplinary differences in university students' sociopolitical orientations

Many people believe that a university education leads to the liberalization of students' worldviews. The author aimed to investigate whether such differences occur across disciplines and whether they are due to self-selection or socialization within disciplines. The author conducted 3 correlational studies of university students (N = 223, N = 531) and alumni (N = 143). The results clearly supported the self-selection hypothesis and suggested that students from all disciplines generally endorse liberal or left-wing attitudes. These findings have theoretical implications for the study of belief system development (primarily the impressionable years hypothesis), and they contribute to a greater understanding of how a university education affects the sociopolitical orientations of students.     

Development of an eight-subtest short form of the WISC-IV and evaluation of its clinical utility in children with traumatic brain injury

This study evaluated the degree to which an 8-subtest short form of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children—Fourth Edition would yield acceptable estimates of the long-form Full-Scale IQ index while clarifying the underlying factor structure in a sample of 100 children and adolescents with traumatic brain injury. The short-form Full-Scale IQ had sufficient (i.e., at least two thirds) nonerror covariance with its full-length counterpart. In addition, a sufficient proportion (i.e., > 80%) of these short-form estimates fell within the 90% confidence interval of the respective full-length scores. Importantly, the elimination of 2 subtests, and in particular the Picture Concepts subtest, resulted in a factor structure where each remaining subtest was fairly specifically associated with its intended scale. It is concluded that this short form can be used clinically in children with traumatic brain injury without sacrificing reliability and with more straightforward interpretability at the level of the factor index scores.     

Linking cause and solution: Predicting support for poverty alleviation proposals

There are multiple alternative proposals for alleviating poverty, but unless these receive public support they are unlikely to be implemented. Drawing on Feagin's work, this research predicted support for different poverty alleviation proposals among Australians based on individual characteristics and attitudes, including explanations for poverty. Overall, participants (N = 526) favoured the minimum income proposal (traditional welfare) significantly more than the guaranteed jobs or equal income proposals. The results indicated differences in predictors of support for each proposal, but structural causes of poverty had the most consistent effect across all three. Other variables included gender, age, having received welfare, self‐reported social class, self‐reported financial situation, egalitarianism, conservatism, and support for individualistic explanations for poverty. The results suggested that Australians prefer traditional welfare‐style measures to alleviate poverty, compared to the other proposals examined here. Support for all proposals, however, was predicated on people's beliefs being consistent with those underlying the proposal. Those interested in implementing more radical solutions to address poverty need to emphasise the relations between the causes of poverty and the solutions to it in order to increase public support.     

Paternity Leave-Taking and Father Involvement among Socioeconomically Disadvantaged U.S. Fathers

Sex Roles - In the present study, we examine the associations between the amount of time that U.S. employed fathers took off from work after the birth of a child (i.e., paternity leave-taking) and...     

From Cognitive Neuroscience to Geriatric Neuropsychology: What Do Current Conceptualizations of the Action Error Handling Process Mean for Older Adults?

The fields of cognitive neuroscience and neuropsychology have contributed an extensive corpus of research to the study of error monitoring processes in younger adults; however, less is known about error handling in older adults. This paper highlights current conceptualizations of error detection and correction in healthy and impaired older adult populations. The literature suggests that some error handling processes require fewer processing resources than others and may be performed relatively automatically. Compared with young adults, older adults demonstrate a reduced ability to recognize errors, but exhibit similar rates of correction. Older adults diagnosed with a neurodegenerative disease (e.g. Alzheimer’s disease) show a reduced ability to detect and correct their action errors. Thus, neurodegenerative disease processes amplify the impairments in error identification associated with normal aging by disrupting both automatic and controlled error corrections. The clinical implications of our current knowledge are discussed, and directions for future neuropsychological research are offered.

Perpetrators’ reactions to perceived interpersonal wrongdoing: The associations of guilt and shame with forgiving,punishing, and excusing oneself

We describe a model in which guilt and shame associate with reactions to wrongdoing among perpetrators of interpersonal harm. Individuals who reported wronging another person (N = 410) completed measures of perceived transgression severity, guilt and shame, and possible reactions to perpetration of wrongdoing (i.e., forgiving, punishing, and excusing oneself). Guilt positively predicted forgiving and punishing oneself, and negatively predicted excusing oneself of blame. Shame, in contrast, negatively predicted forgiving oneself and positively predicted punishing and excusing oneself. The observed patterns of associations between guilt and shame with perpetrators’ reactions to wrongdoing provide further support for the dual-process model of self-forgiveness. Implications for future basic and applied investigations are discussed.     

Intrapersonal and interpersonal functions of non suicidal self-injury: associations with emotional and social functioning

Understanding the functions of nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI) has important implications for the development and refinement of theoretical models and treatments of NSSI. Emotional and social vulnerabilities associated with five common functions of NSSI-emotion relief (ER), feeling generation (FG), self-punishment (SP), interpersonal influence (II), and interpersonal communication (IC)-were investigated to clarify why individuals use this behavior in the service of different purposes. Female participants (n = 162) with a history of NSSI completed online measures of self-injury, emotion regulation strategies and abilities, trait affectivity, social problem-solving styles, and interpersonal problems. ER functions were associated with more intense affectivity, expressive suppression, and limited access to emotion regulation strategies. FG functions were associated with a lack of emotional clarity. Similar to ER functions, SP functions were associated with greater affective intensity and expressive suppression. II functions were negatively associated with expressive suppression and positively associated with domineering/controlling and intrusive/needy interpersonal styles. IC functions were negatively associated with expressive suppression and positively associated with a vindictive or self-centered interpersonal style. These findings highlight the specific affective traits, emotional and social skill deficits, and interpersonal styles that may render a person more likely to engage in NSSI to achieve specific goals.     

Misremembering pictured objects: people of all ages demonstrate the boundary extension illusion

In the boundary extension illusion, subjects recollect more of a photographed scene than was originally shown. In this study, first- and fifth-grade children, young adult college students, and older adults studied 4 one-object or 4 two-object picture stimuli for 15 s each. Immediately after each visual scene was shown, the subjects drew it from memory inside a rectangle that was the same size as the previous picture. This study demonstrated that all age groups, from young children to older adults, were susceptible to the boundary extension illusion. This finding is discussed in terms of Intraub's perceptual schema hypothesis and Johnson's source-monitoring hypothesis.