Effects of implementing (APA) ethical principles in collecting classroom data

The study examined the effects of providing six levels of research information to 270 classroom subjects on the data obtained from three different cognitive tasks. The effects of the three tasks on the subjects' academic self-concepts were also investigated. No significant differences were found among the six levels of information for each of the three tasks. On the logical task a significant linear relationship was found supporting previous research which indicates that the more information that is given to research subjects, the more negative the results. There were no significant differences on self-concept scores across the three tasks used. Overall, the implementation of ethical principles had little effect on data collected in classroom settings, indicating support for implementation. This data did indicate, however, that providing more information than required under the ethical principles can result in data bias on a specific task.     

Epistemological beliefs and thinking about everyday controversial issues

The authors investigated the relationship between individuals' beliefs about the nature of knowledge and the nature of learning (epistemological beliefs) and their thinking about everyday controversial issues. Adults (N = 174) ranging in age from 17 to 71 years old with a mean age of 38 completed the Schommer Epistemological Questionnaire (M. Schommer, 1990), which assessed their beliefs in the certainty and organization of knowledge and the speed and control of learning. After they had completed the questionnaire, they responded to a series of questions about two controversial issues that had been discussed in the local newspaper. Regression analyses indicated that the more the participants believed in complex and tentative knowledge, the more likely they were to take on multiple perspectives, be willing to modify their thinking, withhold ultimate decisions until all information was available, and acknowledge the complex, tentative nature of everyday issues. Epistemological beliefs that are heavily influenced by a higher level of education appear to relate to thinking beyond the classroom, and introducing controversial issues into the curriculum may reciprocally foster the development of epistemological beliefs.     

Probabilities on Sentences in an Expressive Logic

Automated reasoning about uncertain knowledge has many applications. One difficulty when developing such systems is the lack of a completely satisfactory integration of logic and probability. We address this problem directly. Expressive languages like higher-order logic are ideally suited for representing and reasoning about structured knowledge. Uncertain knowledge can be modeled by using graded probabilities rather than binary truth values. The main technical problem studied in this paper is the following: Given a set of sentences, each having some probability of being true, what probability should be ascribed to other (query) sentences? A natural wish-list, among others, is that the probability distribution (i) is consistent with the knowledge base, (ii) allows for a consistent inference procedure and in particular (iii) reduces to deductive logic in the limit of probabilities being 0 and 1, (iv) allows (Bayesian) inductive reasoning and (v) learning in the limit and in particular (vi) allows confirmation of universally quantified hypotheses/sentences. We translate this wish-list into technical requirements for a prior probability and show that probabilities satisfying all our criteria exist. We also give explicit constructions and several general characterizations of probabilities that satisfy some or all of the criteria and various (counter)examples. We also derive necessary and sufficient conditions for extending beliefs about finitely many sentences to suitable probabilities over all sentences, and in particular least dogmatic or least biased ones. We conclude with a brief outlook on how the developed theory might be used and approximated in autonomous reasoning agents. Our theory is a step towards a globally consistent and empirically satisfactory unification of probability and logic.     

The composition of category conjunctions

In three experiments, the authors investigated the impression formation process resulting from the perception of familiar or unfamiliar social category combinations. In Experiment 1, participants were asked to generate attributes associated with either a familiar or unfamiliar social category conjunction. Compared to familiar combinations, the authors found that when the conjunction was unfamiliar, participants formed their impression less from the individual constituent categories and relatively more from novel emergent attributes. In Experiment 2, the authors replicated this effect using alternative experimental materials. In Experiment 3, the effect generalized to additional (orthogonally combined) gender and occupation categories. The implications of these findings for understanding the processes involved in the conjunction of social categories, and the formation of new stereotypes, are discussed.     

‘Baby brain’ in pregnancy: A review of social psychological explanations and future research directions

The colloquial concept of ‘baby brain’ suggests that throughout pregnancy and into the immediate postpartum period, women have reduced cognitive abilities and are more distracted, forgetful, and incompetent. To date, a plethora of cognitive and neuropsychological research testing the cognitive functioning of pregnant women relative to other groups has yielded inconsistent and unclear findings. However, there is a notable lack of literature that adopts a social psychological perspective, critically assessing the contribution of social context to the ‘baby brain’ phenomenon. In this paper, we review the current ‘baby brain’ literature and outline two potential social perspectives that provide insights into this research area: stereotype threat theory and objectification theory. We argue that inconsistencies in the ‘baby brain’ cognitive literature may be impacted by under-explored social phenomena, which may result from activation of stereotypes or objectifying cues throughout pregnancy and into early new motherhood. We end with suggestions for future social and personality psychological research directions in the area of ‘baby brain’.