UNIVERSALISM IN LAY CONCEPTIONS OF DISTRIBUTIVE JUSTICE: A CROSS-CULTURAL EXAMINATION

In two studies of Japanese and Australian university students, we examined the resource allocation rules of equity and equality. In both cultures, subjects were universalistic rather than relativistic in their judgments of fairness and alterability of these rules in the work place. They judged the equity rule to be unalterable by legislation or consensus. However, in both studies, the Japanese perceived equity to be less fair and equality to be less unfair than their Australian counterparts. In addition, study 2 indicated that cross-cultural differences in judgments of fairness were influenced by consideration of need. The age of the worker was a more important determinant of fairness judgments for Japanese than for Australians; the debt of a worker was a more important déterminant for Australians than for Japanese. The results are discussed with regard to the role of culture in conceptions of distributive justice.     

Influential observations in principal factor analysis

We propose a method for detecting influential observations in iterative principal factor analysis. For this purpose we derive the influence functionsI(x; LL ^T ) andI(x; ) for the common variance matrixT =LL ^T and the unique variance matrix , respectively, in the common factor decomposition =LL ^T + . A numerical example is given for illustration.The authors are grateful to Tomoyuki Tarumi and Atsuhiro Hayashi for their kind permission to use their software Seto/B for drawing Figures 1 and 2 and to anonymous reviewers for comments on the paper.     

The culture of perceptual expertise and the other-race effect

In our commentary, we propose that the ORE can be viewed as a form of perceptual expertise. Like experts, we recognize own-race faces at the subordinate level as individuals and novices when recognize other-race faces at the basic level of race. Applying a perceptual expertise account, we explain the ORE in terms of its cognitive, neural, and motivational factors. We suggest that by creating a culture of “other-race” expertise, improvements in other-race face recognition can be achieved.     

Parts and wholes in face recognition

Are faces recognized using more holistic representations than other types of stimuli? Taking holistic representation to mean representation without an internal part structure, we interpret the available evidence on this issue and then design new empirical tests. Based on previous research, we reasoned that if a portion of an object corresponds to an explicitly represented part in a hierarchical visual representation, then when that portion is presented in isolation it will be identified relatively more easily than if it did not have the status of an explicitly represented part. The hypothesis that face recognition is holistic therefore predicts that a part of a face will be disproportionately more easily recognized in the whole face than as an isolated part, relative to recognition of the parts and wholes of other kinds of stimuli. This prediction was borne out in three experiments: subjects were more accurate at identifying the parts of faces, presented in the whole object, than they were at identifying the same part presented in isolation, even though both parts and wholes were tested in a forced-choice format and the whole faces differed only by one part. In contrast, three other types of stimuli--scrambled faces, inverted faces, and houses--did not show this advantage for part identification in whole object recognition.     

Composites, compromises, and CHARM: what is the evidence for blend memory representations?

Metcalfe's (1990) distributed memory model simulates many misinformation effects by assuming representations that superimpose information from multiple sources. In the present article, two types of evidence are reviewed for such "blend" representations: composite recollections, including items from both the original and postevent sources (e.g., a previously seen intersection is remembered with a subsequently suggested stop sign), and compromise recollections, including features that cannot be exclusively associated with either source (e.g., a green car that was later suggested to be blue is remembered as bluish green). The considerable evidence for composite recollections provides little support for blend representations. Compromise recollections, though seemingly more persuasive, are both rare and interpretable without postulating blend representations. Speculation is made about potential findings that would support blend representations.     

A psychotherapeutic technique for mother-child intervention: A case study of a japanese down syndrome child

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate our approach to the activation of mother-child interaction, by presenting a case study. We describe a Japanese mother's adaptation process (consisting of five stages) to her child's handicap through 6 years of continuous therapeutic support for both the mother and her child. In this particular case, the mother suffers from a mild form of cerebral palsy; therefore, the problem involves two generations, because both the mother and her child are handicapped. By analyzing the processes of this case, we also describe our method of intervention for problems in the development of multidimensional relationships. We discuss the mother's psychological maturation and the role of the therapist within the Japanese social and cultural context, under the following headings: (1) Sharing in the Mother's Ambivalence; (2) Natural Melting of the Mother's Frozen Emotional Availability; (3) Sharing in the Mother's Illusion and Disillusion; (4) Transformation of Relationships Between Family Members and Their Relationship to Society.     

Understanding bias in proportion production

The Stevens exponent (beta) can be obtained from proportion estimation judgments using the power model. In this article, the authors extend that model to proportion production, in which the relative magnitudes of 2 stimuli are adjusted to correspond to a numeric proportion (e.g., 1/4 or .25). The model predicts that when beta < 1, small proportions are underproduced, and large proportions are overproduced, but it predicts the reverse when beta > 1, which is the opposite of the predicted patterns for estimation. Eight participants estimated and produced magnitudes and proportions with spatial volume (beta < 1; Experiment 1) and color saturation (beta > 1; Experiment 2). The model's predictions were generally supported. An extension of the model using reference points can account for multicycle patterns shown by some participants.     

A new approach to the formation of equivalence classes in pigeons

Four pigeons were given simultaneous discrimination training with visual patterns arbitrarily divided into two sets, with the stimuli in one set designated A1, B1, C1, and D1 and those in the other set designated A2, B2, C2, and D2. In sequentially introduced training phases, the pigeons were exposed to a series of reversals to establish AB and then CD equivalences. In subsequent testing sessions, a subset of stimuli from one set served as positive stimuli and those from the other set as negative stimuli on training trials, and transfer of the reinforced relation to other members of the sets was tested with nonreinforced probe trials. The pigeons were trained further on AC and BD equivalences and then were tested for the emergence of untrained AD and BC equivalences. Two of the 4 pigeons exhibited the emergence of one of these untrained equivalences, evidence for the emergence of transitive relations. This finding suggests that the pigeons established three-member functional equivalence classes by incorporating separately trained multiple equivalence relations. Repeated reversal training and probe testing enabled us to explore the formation and expansion of functional equivalence classes in pigeons.