Sexual Assault Training in the Military: Evaluating Efforts to End the “Invisible War”

Sexual assault is an insidious problem in the United States military. In 2005 the Department of Defense (DoD) created the Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office, which centralizes responsibility for sexual assault training. However, this training initiative has undergone little evaluation by outside researchers. Addressing this need, we analyzed responses from over 24,000 active duty personnel who completed the 2010 DoD Workplace and Gender Relations Survey. We assessed whether sexual assault training exposure (None, Minimal, Partial, or Comprehensive) predicted accurate knowledge of sexual assault resources and protocols. Using a social-ecological framework, we investigated whether institutional and individual factors influenced Service members’ training exposure and judgment of training effectiveness. According to our results, exposure to comprehensive training predicted lower sexual assault incidence and superior knowledge. However, comprehensive training differed as a function of military branch, rank, gender, and sexual assault history. Judgments of training effectiveness also varied across these dimensions. Our results highlight the importance of considering context, gender, and victimization history when evaluating institutional efforts to end sexual violence. The DoD’s 2010 annual report on military sexual assault concluded that “most Active Duty members receive effective training on sexual assault” (p. 104). Our results cast doubt on that assertion.     

Ocular signatures of proactive versus reactive cognitive control in young adults

During the execution of a cognitive task, the brain maintains contextual information to guide behavior and achieve desired goals. The AX-Continuous Performance Task is used to study proactive versus reactive cognitive control. Young adults tend to behave proactively in standard testing conditions. However, it remains unclear how interindividual variability (e.g., in cognitive and motivational factors) may drive people into more reactive or proactive control under the same task demands. We investigated the use of control strategies in a large population of healthy young adults. We computed the proactive behavioral index and consequently divided participants into proactive, reactive, and intermediate groups. We found that reactive participants were generally slower, presented lower context sensitivity, and larger response variability. Pupillary changes and blink rate index cognitive effort allocation. We measured, concomitantly to the task, the pupil size and frequency of blinks associated with the cue maintenance and response intervals. During the cue period, nonfrequent, nontarget cues led to increased pupil dilation and number of blinks in all participants. During the response interval, we found more errors and increased pupil dilation to the probe when all participants had to overcome a response bias generated by the frequent cue. Only reactive participants showed larger response-related pupil when they had to overcome a response bias related to the frequent probe. Contrary to expectations, groups did not differ in ocular measures in the cue period. In conclusion, interindividual differences in cognitive control between healthy adults can be mapped onto different patterns of effort allocation indexed by the pupil.     

Reading the Lives of Others: Biography as Political Thought in Hannah Arendt and Simone de Beauvoir

In this essay, I focus on two biographical works by Hannah Arendt and Simone de Beauvoir that I read as political texts: Rahel Varnhagen: The Life of a Jewess (Arendt 1957 ) and “Must We Burn Sade?” (Beauvoir 2012 ). Reading Arendt's Varnhagen and Beauvoir's “Sade” side by side illuminates their shared preoccupation with lived experience and their common political premises: the antagonism between freedom and sovereignty, and the centrality of action and constructive relations with others. My argument is that these texts constitute an original style of political thinking, which I call politico‐biographical hermeneutics, or reading the life of others as exercises in political theory. Politico‐biographical hermeneutics, as I take it, is not a systematic methodology, but an approach to interpreting sociopolitical forces as they come to bear and are embodied and inscribed in the lived experiences, struggles, and works of representative or exemplary individuals. This approach identifies the political lessons of lived experience and supports one of the central claims of feminist philosophy, namely, that the personal and the political are not antithetical, but relational.     

Longitudinal trajectories of bicultural identity integration in recently immigrated Hispanic adolescents: Links with mental health and family functioning

This study examined, in a sample of recently immigrated Hispanic adolescents in Miami and Los Angeles, the extent to which bicultural identity integration (BII; involving the ability to synthesise one's heritage and receiving cultural streams and to identify as a member of both cultures) is best understood as a developmental construct that changes over time or as an individual‐difference construct that is largely stable over time. We were also interested in the extent to which these trajectories predicted mental health and family functioning. Recent‐immigrant 9th graders (N = 302) were assessed 6 times from 9th to 12th grade. Latent class growth analyses using the first 5 timepoints identified 2 trajectory classes—one with lower BII scores over time and another with higher BII scores over time. Higher heritage and US identity at baseline predicted membership in the higher BII class. At the 6th study timepoint, lower BII adolescents reported significantly poorer self‐esteem, optimism, prosocial behaviour and family relationships compared with their higher BII counterparts. These findings are discussed in terms of further research on the over‐time trajectory of biculturalism, and on the need to develop interventions to promote BII as a way of facilitating well‐being and positive family functioning.     

Contextual Variations of Infrahumanization: The Role of Physical Context and Territoriality

The malleability of the infrahumanization bias was tested varying the physical context in which the ingroup and the outgroup target were assessed. Using a sequential priming paradigm, Study 1 replicated the infrahumanization bias in a neutral context. Study 2 tested the hypothesis that there are contextual variations in infrahumanization. Specifically, Black targets were infrahumanized in a context familiar to White participants, and not in an unfamiliar context. Study 3 revealed that participants’ threat perceptions were reduced when ingroup targets appeared in familiar context, compared to Black targets. Theoretical implications for the infrahumanization bias are discussed.     

An information-based approach to action understanding

It has been proposed that the ability to make sense of other agents' behavior relies on the activation of internal mechanisms that map action perception onto action execution. In this study we explored the constraints on this ability introduced by eyeheight-scaled information in the optic array. Short and tall participants provided maximum overhead reaching judgments for themselves and another participant. Perceptual information was manipulated by changing the participants' optically specified eyeheight. Observers were modestly accurate in perceiving maximum overhead reach for themselves and for another actor whose action capabilities differed. Perceived maximum overhead reach increased for both self- and other-judgments when the perceiver's eyeheight was increased. The results suggest an important role of perceptual information that has gone unrecognized in existing accounts of action understanding and prediction.     

Female degus (Octodon degus) monitor their environment while foraging socially

Vigilance or scanning involves interruptions in foraging behavior when individuals lift their heads and conduct visual monitoring of the environment. Theoretical considerations assume that foraging with the "head down", and scanning ("head up") are mutually exclusive activities, such that foraging precludes vigilance. We tested this generalization in a socially foraging, small mammal model, the diurnal Chilean degu (Octodon degus). We studied spontaneous bouts of scanning of captive degus when foraging in pairs of female sibs and non-sibs. We examined the extent to which foraging (head down postures) and scanning (head up postures) were mutually exclusive in subjects exposed to none, partial, and complete lateral visual obstruction of their partners. In addition, we monitored the orientation of their bodies to examine the target of attention while foraging and scanning. Lastly, we examined the temporal occurrence of scanning events to assess the extent of scanning coordination, and whether this coordination is kin-biased. Visual obstruction had a significant influence on degu vigilance. Focal degus increased their quadrupedal and semi-erect scanning when foraging under a partially obstructed view of their partners. Degus oriented their bodies toward partners when foraging and scanning. Despite this, degus did not coordinate scanning bouts; instead, they scanned independently from one another. Relatedness among cage mates did not influence any aspect of degu behavior. Contrary to theoretical expectations, these results indicate that foraging and vigilance are not mutually exclusive, and that kinship per se does not influence scanning behavior and coordination.