Quantitative assessment of infant reaching movements

We have identified a fundamental property of human motor behavior as a tight coupling of the curvature-speed relationship in the reaching movements of 5- to 9-month-old infants. This relationship termed a movement unit, occurs regardless of the distance of duration of the reach and in spite of the developmental change that occurs in grasping during this period. Movement unit durations are tightly clustered around 200 ms regardless of overall duration or distance or the position of the unit in the reach. The curvature-speed coupling has been identified by others in adult reaching and handwriting. Models of biological motor control must account for this invariant relationship.     

An inexpensive real-time microcomputer-based cognitive laboratory system

A computer system, based on the Radio Shack Color Computer, for running experiments in cognitive psychology is described. The system was designed according to the following principles: first, all of the equipment should consist of inexpensive, off-the-shelf components; second, the language used to implement experiments should have real-time commands embedded within the character strings to be displayed, and these real-time commands should be interpreted at run time; third, the system should serve multiple subjects, yet one host should be able to run display terminals for several subjects on independent experiments; and fourth, the system should be able to interface to other display devices and other response-recording devices. Two examples of other devices are discussed: an oscilloscope for rapid visual display and an Apple Macintosh for display of pictures.     

Microcomputer-based scalp topography mapping of event-related potentials

A microcomputer-based technique to evaluate the scalp topography of event-related potentials is described. This technique uses only four electrode locations and produces a 24 × 24 element color matrix of the topography of scalp electrical activity across time. The program also displays the coordinates, latency, and value of the maximum point within the matrix. The program is implemented on an Apple II+/IIe computer and is adaptable to other computers with graphic capabilities.     

Examining awareness of privilege among midwestern college students: An analysis of race/ethnicity,gender, and religion

Dominant group members often are not aware of the privileges they benefit from due to their dominant group membership. Yet individuals are members of multiple groups and may simultaneously occupy multiple categories of dominance and marginality, raising the question of how different group memberships work in concert to facilitate or inhibit awareness of multiple forms of privilege. Examining awareness of privilege is important as awareness may be linked to action to dismantle systems of privilege that maintain oppression and inequality. Grounded in intersectional scholarship, in this study we examined how occupying intersecting categories of race/ethnicity, gender, and religion corresponded to an awareness of White, male, and Christian privilege. In a sample of 2321 Midwestern college students, we demonstrated that students from marginalized groups broadly reported greater awareness of all forms of privilege than students from dominant groups, and the difference between marginalized and dominant groups was most pronounced when the specific group category (e.g., gender) aligned with the type of privilege (e.g., male privilege). We also tested interactions among race/ethnicity, gender, and religion, only finding an interaction between race/ethnicity and religion for awareness of White and male privilege. These findings helped to clarify that multiple group memberships tended to contribute to awareness as multiple main effects rather than as multiplicative. Finally, we examined mean differences among the eight intersected groups to explore similarities and differences among groups in awareness of all types of privilege. Taken together, these findings quantitatively demonstrate the ways in which group memberships work together to contribute to awareness of multiple forms of privilege. We discuss study limitations and implications for community psychology research and practice.     

Pandemic precarity: A multi-level study of neoliberal precarity and COVID-Related outcomes in the United States

Neoliberalism is the political-economic system that has characterized the United States for the past half century. Structurally, neoliberalism has involved privatization, deregulation, and government divestment from public health systems. Cultural psychologists have begun to outline the ways that neoliberalism is reflected in attitudes, ways of being, and ideologies, such as in the form of heightened individualism, justification of inequality, depoliticization, and precarity. We argue that neoliberal structures and psychologies may contribute to deleterious outcomes in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. We demonstrate that neoliberalism at the US state level (n = 51) is associated with higher COVID mortality and case fatality rates, as well as lower vaccination rates (Study 1). We also demonstrate that individual-level (n = 8280) neoliberal ideology predicts less adaptive beliefs and attitudes such as the belief that the federal response to the pandemic was too fast and belief in COVID-related misinformation (Study 2). We demonstrate using multilevel modeling that state-level neoliberalism predicts individual-level COVID-related attitudes, which is explained in part by heightened neoliberal ideology in more neoliberal states (Study 2). This study contributes to an understanding of the structural and cultural psychological factors that have contributed to the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic in the US.     

Frequency response characteristics for sinusoidal movement in the fovea and periphery

Threshold sensitivity was measured for sinusoidal movement of bright 1-deg lines against a dark background as a function of oscillation frequency and retinal location. Sensitivity was greatest in the fovea and at a frequency of 1–2 Hz. Peripheral sensitivity was more narrowly tuned than foveal sensitivity. The presence of a stationary reference line affected mainly the foveal sensitivity. The results are interpreted as evidence for both position- and velocity-sensitive mechanisms in the movement detection system.