bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
FEEDING TRACES AND PALEOBIOLOGY OF A CRETACEOUS (CENOMANIAN) CROCODYLIFORM: EXAMPLE FROM THE WOODBINE FORMATION OF TEXAS
Authors: Noto Christopher R. , Main Derek J. , Drumheller Stephanie K
Published: July 2018

Direct evidence of behavior in extinct tetrapods is rare. However, these traces can inform a variety of research questions touching on paleoecology, taphonomy, and functional morphology. Here we present fossil specimens from the Upper Cretaceous (Cenomanian) Woodbine Formation that exhibit tooth marks consistent with predation by a new taxon of large crocodyliform currently under study. Collected from the recently discovered Arlington Archosaur Site, the marked bones were largely found in a single peat horizon and in close association with the new crocodyliform. The feeding traces themselves consist of pits, scores, and punctures that occur on multiple turtle shell fragments and two dinosaur limb bones. The pattern of marks and the breakage on turtle carapaces and plastra suggest that they were crushed, whereas the marks on dinosaur bones indicate possible dismemberment. These interpretations and the association with a crocodyliform trace maker are based on observations of feeding behaviors and associated, diagnostic bite mark patterns made by extant crocodylians. The morphology of the new crocodyliform taxon and the distribution of bite marks indicates it was likely a generalist: an opportunistic predator that fed on a variety of prey, including turtles and dinosaurs. Given this evidence and the paleoenvironmental setting, the ecology of the large crocodyliform from the Woodbine Formation was likely most similar to that of fossil and living crocodylians inhabiting delta-plain environments. Not only were these crocodyliforms likely significant predators in the Woodbine paleoecosystem, they also played an important taphonomic role in the assembly of vertebrate remains from the surrounding community.
Revision of the Late Jurassic crocodyliform Alligatorellus, and evidence for allopatric speciation driving high diversity in western European atoposaurids
Authors: Tennant Jonathan , Mannion Philip D.
Published: July 2018

Atoposaurid crocodyliforms represent an important faunal component of Late Jurassic to Early Cretaceous Laurasian semi-aquatic to terrestrial ecosystems, with numerous spatiotemporally contemporaneous atoposaurids known from western Europe. In particular, the Late Jurassic of France and Germany records evidence for high diversity and possible sympatric atoposaurid species belonging to Alligatorellus, Alligatorium and Atoposaurus. However, atoposaurid taxonomy has received little attention, and many species are in need of revision. As such, this potentially high European diversity within a narrow spatiotemporal range might be a taxonomic artefact. Here we provide a taxonomic and anatomical revision of the Late Jurassic atoposaurid Alligatorellus. Initially described as A. beaumonti from the Kimmeridgian of Cerin, eastern France, additional material from the Tithonian of Solnhofen, south-eastern Germany, was subsequently referred to this species, with the two occurrences differentiated as A. beaumonti beaumonti and A. beaumonti bavaricus, respectively. We provide a revised diagnosis for the genus Alligatorellus, and note a number of anatomical differences between the French and German specimens, including osteoderm morphology and the configuration and pattern of sculpting of cranial elements. Consequently, we restrict the name Alligatorellus beaumonti to include only the French remains, and raise the rank of the German material to a distinct species: Alligatorellus bavaricus. A new diagnosis is provided for both species, and we suggest that a recently referred specimen from a coeval German locality cannot be conclusively referred to Alligatorellus. Although it has previously been suggested that Alligatorellus, Alligatorium and Atoposaurus might represent a single growth series of one species, we find no conclusive evidence to support this proposal, and provide a number of morphological differences to distinguish these three taxa that appear to be independent of ontogeny. Consequently, we interpret high atoposaurid diversity in the Late Jurassic island archipelago of western Europe as a genuine biological signal, with closely related species of Alligatorellus, Alligatorium and Atoposaurus in both French and German basins providing evidence for allopatric speciation, potentially driven by fluctuating highstand sea levels.
High-resolution magnetostratigraphy of the upper Nacimiento Formation, San Juan Basin, New Mexico, USA: implications for basin evolution and mammalian turnover
Authors: Leslie Caitlin , Peppe Daniel J. , Williamson Thomas E. , Bilardello Dario , Heizler Matthew , Secord Ross , Leggett Tyler
Published: July 2018

Lower Paleocene deposits in the San Juan Basin document one of the best records of mammalian change and turnover following the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinctions and are the type section for the Puercan (Pu) and Torrejonian (To) North America Land Mammal age biozones (NALMA). One of the largest mammalian turnover events in the early Paleocene occurs between the Torrejonian 2 (To2) and Torrejonian 3 (To3) NALMA biozones. The Nacimiento Formation are the only deposits in North America where the To2-To3 mammalian turnover can be constrained, however the precise age and duration of the turnover is poorly understood due to the lack of a precise chronostratigraphic framework. We analyzed paleomagnetic samples, produced a 40Ar/39Ar detrital sanidine age, and developed a detailed lithostratigraphy for four sections of the upper Nacimiento Formation in the San Juan Basin, New Mexico (Kutz Canyon, Escavada Wash, Torreon West and East) to constrain the age and duration of the deposits and the To2-To3 turnover. The polarity stratigraphy for the four sections can be correlated to chrons C27r-C26r of the geomagnetic polarity time scale (GPTS). Using the local polarity stratigraphy for each section, we calculated a mean sediment accumulation rate and developed a precise age model, which allows us to determine the age of important late Torrejonian mammalian localities. Using the assigned ages, we estimate the To2-To3 turnover was relatively rapid and occurred over ~120 kyr (-60/+50 kyr) between 62.59 and 62.47 Ma. This rapid duration of the mammalian turnover suggests that it was driven by external forcing factors, such as environmental change driven by the progradation of the distributive fluvial system across the basin and/or changes in regional or global climate. Additionally, comparisons of the mean sediment accumulation rates between the sections that span from the basin margin to the basin center indicate that sediment accumulation rates equalized across the basin from the end of C27r through the start of C26r, suggesting an accommodation minima in the basin associated with the progradation of a distributive fluvial system into the basin. This accommodation minimum also likely led to the long hiatus of deposition between the Paleocene Nacimiento Formation and the overlying Eocene San Jose Formation.
Patterns of aquatic decay and disarticulation in juvenile Indo-Pacific crocodiles (Crocodylus porosus), and implications for the taphonomic interpretation of fossil crocodyliform material
Authors: Syme Caitlin , Salisbury Steven
Published: July 2018

High levels of skeletal articulation and completeness in fossil crocodyliforms are commonly attributed to rapid burial, with decreasing articulation and completeness thought to result from prolonged decay of soft tissue and the loss of skeletal connectivity during ‘bloat and float’. These interpretations are based largely on patterns of decay in modern mammalian and avian dinosaur carcasses. To address this issue, we assessed the decay of buried and unburied juvenile Crocodylus porosuscarcasses in a controlled freshwater setting. The carcasses progressed through typical vertebrate decay stages (fresh, bloated, active decay, and advanced decay), reaching the final skeletal stage on average 56 days after death. Unburied carcasses commenced floating five days post-mortem during the bloated stage, and one buried carcass only commenced floating 12 days post-mortem. While floating, skeletal elements remained articulated within the still coherent dermis, except for thoracic ribs, ischia and pubic bones. The majority of disarticulation occurred at the sediment-–water interface after the carcasses sank during the advanced decay stage, ~ 36 days post-mortem. Based on these results we conclude that fossil crocodyliform specimens displaying high levels of articulation are not the result of prolonged subaerial and subaqueous decay in a low-energy, aqueous environment. Using extant juvenile C. porosus as a proxy for fossil crocodyliforms, rapid burial in an aquatic setting would have to occur prior to the carcass floating, and would also have to continually negate the positive buoyancy associated with bloating. Rapid burial does not have to be the only avenue to preservation of articulation, as other mechanisms such as physical barriers and internal physiological chemistry could prevent carcasses from floating and subsequently disarticulating upon sinking. The inference that a large proportion of skeletal elements could drift from floating carcasses in a low energy setting with minimal scavenging, thereby causing a loss of completeness, seems unlikely.
Socially Thermoregulated Thinking: How Past Experiences Matter in Thinking about Our Loved Ones
Authors: IJzerman Hans , Neyroud Lison , Courset Rémi , Schrama Michel , Post Jorick , Pronk Tila M.
Published: July 2018

Body temperature regulation is of crucial importance for nonhuman and human animals. Because other animals are crucial in helping to regulate body temperature, temperature differences likely determine how humans think about their social environment. Since 2008, the psychological literature on social thermoregulation has flourished with approximately 80 reports, ranging from economic decision-making to self-regulation. However, questions have arisen to its robustness and about underlying mechanisms, particularly in relation to differences in past relationship experiences. In this report, the authors used an inductive approach, exploring individual differences to identify items that alter the temperature-social thought relationship in a pilot (Study 1), and confirming the effects in Study 2 (total N for 1 and 2 = 366), both of which were not pre-registered. After a first review with the present journal, we preregistered our replication and successfully replicated our effects in a French sample (N = 350). Coldness (vs. warmth) makes people think about closer others when past relationship experiences were positive, while the reverse is true for negative past relationship experiences. These robust results provide future directions for the field of social thermoregulation.
‘They just don’t understand us’: The role of felt understanding in intergroup relations
Authors: Livingstone Andrew G , Fernández Lucía , Rothers Adrian
Published: July 2018

We report five studies examining the unique role of felt understanding in intergroup relations. In intergroup terms, felt understanding is the belief that members of an outgroup understand and accept the perspectives of ingroup members, including ingroup members’ beliefs, values, experiences, and self-definition/identity. In Studies 1 (Scotland-UK relations; N = 5033) and 2 (UK-EU relations; N = 861) felt understanding consistently and strongly predicted outcomes such as trust, action intentions, and political separatism, including participants’ actual ‘Brexit’ referendum vote in Study 2. These effects were apparent even when controlling for outgroup stereotypes and meta-stereotypes. Felt understanding was a unique predictor of outgroup trust and forgiveness in Study 3 (Catholic-Protestant relations in Northern Ireland; N = 1162), and was a powerful predictor of political separatism even when controlling for specific, relational appraisals including negative interdependence and identity threat in Study 4 (Basque-Spanish relations; N = 205). Study 5 (N = 190) included a direct manipulation of felt understanding, which had predicted effects on evaluation of the outgroup and of ingroup-outgroup relations. Overall, the findings provide converging evidence for the critical role of felt understanding in intergroup relations. We discuss future research possibilities, including the emotional correlates of felt understanding, and its role in intergroup interactions.
Misremembrance of things past: Depression is associated with difficulties in the recollection of both specific and categoric autobiographical memories
Authors: Hitchcock Caitlin , Rees Catrin , Rodrigues Evangeline , Gormley Siobhan , Dritschel Barbara , Dalgleish Tim
Published: July 2018

Impaired retrieval of specific, autobiographical memories of personally experienced events is a key characteristic of major depressive disorder (MDD). However, there are findings in subclinical samples which suggest that the reduced specificity phenomenon may be a reflection of a broader impairment in the deliberate retrieval of all autobiographical memory types. This experiment explored this possibility by requiring individuals with MDD (N=68) to complete a cued-recall task which required retrieval of specific memories to a block of cues, retrieval of categoric, general memories to a block of cues, and to alternate between retrieval of specific and general memories for a block of cues. Results demonstrated that relative to never-depressed controls, individuals with MDD experience reduced recall of both specific, single incident memories (d=0.48) and general memories (d=1.00), along with reduced flexibility in alternating between specific and general memories (d=0.90), a skill vital to restraining negative beliefs. Findings indicate that the flexibility of autobiographical retrieval is important for mental health and support further development of autobiographical memory-based interventions which target a range of retrieval deficits.
Validity and Measurement Invariance of the Unified Multidimensional Calling Scale
Authors: Vianello Michelangelo , Dalla Rosa Anna , Anselmi Pasquale , Galliani Elisa Maria
Published: July 2018

The accumulation of scientific knowledge on calling is limited by the absence of a common theoretical and measurement framework. Many different models of calling have been proposed, and we do not know how much research results that refer to a specific model are generalizable to different theoretical accounts of calling. In this article, we investigate whether two leading models of calling tackle the same construct. The two models were merged into a comprehensive framework that measures calling across seven facets: Passion, Purposefulness, Sacrifice, Pervasiveness, Prosocial Orientation, Transcendent Summons, and Identity. We then developed the Unified Multidimensional Calling Scale (UMCS) drawing from previous published items. Across two surveys involving college students (N = 5886) and adult employees (N = 205) the UMCS was proved to be valid and reliable. We also observed that the UMCS is invariant across time and calling domains. Finally, we found that facets of calling have very different relationships with outcomes and concurrent measures, suggesting that results obtained with a smaller set of facets are not generalizable to the higher-order construct of calling or to a different model that does not share the same facets. Read the post-print version of the article here: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0209348
Electrophysiological correlates of the interplay between low-level visual features and emotional content during word reading
Authors: Schindler Sebastian , Schettino Antonio , Pourtois Gilles
Published: July 2018

Processing affectively charged visual stimuli typically results in increased amplitude of specific event-related potential (ERP) components. Low-level features similarly modulate electrophysiological responses, with amplitude changes proportional to variations in stimulus size and contrast. However, it remains unclear whether emotion-related amplifications during visual word processing are necessarily intertwined with changes in specific low-level features or, instead, may act independently.In this pre-registered electrophysiological study, we varied font size and contrast of neutral and negative words while participants were monitoring their semantic content. We examined ERP responses associated with early sensory and attentional processes as well as later stages of stimulus processing. Results showed amplitude modulations by low-level visual features early on following stimulus onset – i.e., P1 and N1 components –, while the LPP was independently modulated by these visual features. Independent effects of size and emotion were observed only at the level of the EPN. Here, larger EPN amplitudes for negative were observed only for small high contrast and large low contrast words. These results suggest that early increase in sensory processing at the EPN level for negative words is not automatic, but bound to specific combinations of low-level features, occurring presumably via attentional control processes.
Third party preferences for imitators in preverbal infants
Authors: Powell Lindsey J , Spelke Elizabeth
Published: July 2018

Participants in social interactions often imitate one another, thereby enhancing their affiliation. We address outstanding questions about the nature and early development of imitation-based affiliation, through studies of infants' responses to participants in imitative interactions that the infants observed as third parties. Four experiments provide evidence that preverbal infants preferentially attend to and approach individuals who imitate others. This preferential engagement is elicited by the elements of mimicry in simple acts of helping. It does not, however, extend to the targets of imitation in these interactions. This set of findings suggests infants’ imitation-based preferences are not well explained by homophily, prestige, or familiarity. We propose instead that infants perceive imitation as an indicator of valuable attributes in a potential social partner, including the capacity and motivation for social attention and coordinated action.
Scaling Beliefs about Learning to Predict Performance and Enjoyment in an Online Course
Authors: Hicks Catherine , Klemmer Scott
Published: July 2018

Previous research suggests that metacognitive learning strategies and beliefs may predict success in online learn-ing, but little research has explored specific belief scales for this context. This paper examines how students’ beliefs about learning predict course performance, satisfaction, and openness to feedback in both a massive open online course and an online experiment. An abbreviated Learning Beliefs scale based on previous scales was developed and tested. Study 1 found that Learning Beliefs significantly predicted 125 participants’ positive attitudes towards an online cognitive task, as well as their perception that feedback on their performance was helpful. Study 2 tested the Learning Beliefs scale in an online course with 171 participants, finding that Learning Beliefs predicted course performance and enjoyment. These studies suggest that even a brief metacognitive scale can provide meaningful information about online learners. These findings highlight the benefits of understanding how online students’ learning beliefs impact their course success.
Reliability from alpha to omega: a tutorial
Authors: Revelle William , Condon David M
Published: July 2018

Reliability is a fundamental problem for measurement in all of science. Al- though defined in multiple ways, and estimated in even more ways, the basic concepts are straight forward and need to be understood by methodologists as well as practioners. Reliability theory is not just for the psychometrician estimating latent variables, it is for everyone who wants to make inferences from measures of individuals or of groups. Easy to use, open source software is applied to examples of real data, and comparisons are made between the many types of reliability
Go/No-go Association Task
Authors: Nosek Brian A. , Banaji Mahzarin R.
Published: July 2018

Overview=======The GNAT (pronounced like the bug) is a flexible technique designed to measure implicit social cognition. Conceptually similar to other implicit measures like the Implicit Association Test (IAT; Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, JPSP, 1998), the GNAT assesses automatic associations between concept (e.g., gender) and attribute (e.g., evaluation) categories. The GNAT has two features that distinguish it from other measures of implicit social cognition. First, the GNAT is designed to be use signal detection statistics in its calculation of automatic associations (d-prime), but can also be adapted to utilize response latency as its operational dependent variable. Second, the GNAT is flexible in the establishing of contextual characteristics for the evaluative situation. For example, the IAT requires an attitude toward one category (insects) be assessed relative to a second category (flowers). With the GNAT, experimenters can vary whether insects are evaluated in the context of a single category (flowers), a superordinate category (animals), a generic category (objects) or with no context at all.
The Role of Musical Attributes in Music-induced Analgesia: A Preliminary Brief Report
Authors: Basiński Krzysztof , Zdun-Ryżewska Agata , Majkowicz Mikołaj
Published: July 2018

Music-induced analgesia (MIA) is the ability of music to influence pain perception. Although this phenomenon has been extensively studied in recent years, only a few studies have addressed what musical characteristics are optimal for MIA. Here, we present a novel approach to this topic, using a recently proposed model of music attribute preferences. The model addresses three musical dimensions: arousal, valence, and depth. Thirty participants (fifteen women and fifteen men, M age = 37.1 years, standard deviation = 15.7) were subjected to experimental pain stimulation (cold-pressor task) while listening to music characteristic of the three attribute dimensions. There was also a control condition, where participants listened to white noise. Results showed that average pain ratings were significantly lower in arousal (p = .002) and depth (p = .01) conditions in comparison to the control condition. Furthermore, participants showed increased pain tolerance in musical conditions in comparison to the control condition (p = .04). The results contribute to better understanding of the mechanisms of pain modulation, and to the development of novel evidence-based therapies of chronic pain. In the advent of on-line music streaming services, this research opens new possibilities for music-based pain interventions.
Computational Theories of Curiosity-Driven Learning
Authors: Oudeyer Pierre-Yves
Published: July 2018

What are the functions of curiosity? What are the mechanisms of curiosity-driven learning?We approach these questions about the living using concepts and tools from machine learning and developmental robotics. We argue that curiosity-driven learning enables organisms to make discoveries to solve complex problems with rare or deceptive rewards. By fostering exploration and discovery of a diversity of behavioural skills, and ignoring these rewards, curiosity can be efficient to bootstrap learning when there is no information, or deceptive information, about local improvement towards these problems. We also explain the key role of curiosity for efficient learning of world models. We review both normative and heuristic computational frameworks used to understand the mechanisms of curiosity in humans, conceptualizing the child as a sense-making organism. These frameworks enable us to discuss the bi-directional causal links between curiosity and learning, and to provide new hypotheses about the fundamental role of curiosity in self-organizing developmental structures through curriculum learning. We present various developmental robotics experiments that study these mechanisms in action, both supporting these hypotheses to understand better curiosity in humans and opening new research avenues in machine learning and artificial intelligence. Finally, we discuss challenges for the design of experimental paradigms for studying curiosity in psychology and cognitive neuroscience.
A growing sense of well-being: a literature review on the complex framework well-being.
Authors: Van de Weijer Margot , Baselmans Bart , van der Deijl Willem , Bartels Meike
Published: July 2018

This review examines the origin and structure of the complex well-being (WB) concept as it is currently applied in behavioral and social sciences. Current research on WB is often divided into two perspectives: subjective well-being (SWB) and psychological well-being (PWB), shaped by the philosophical concepts of hedonism and eudaimonism, respectively. How these different views relate to each other and to WB as a whole has not yet been clearly defined, leading to difficulties in interpretation. In this review, we aim to get more insight into the relation between SWB and PWB. We first present an overview of the philosophical history of SWB and PWB, followed by a systematic literature review. The goal of this review, based on 29 studies, was to investigate how much evidence there is for a conceptual overlap between SWB and PWB. A majority of the studies found appreciable shared variance between the constructs, suggesting that they might be more closely related than previously assumed. On the other hand, evidence from biological studies provides mixed results: a distinction between SWB and PWB based on unique biomarkers is reported, while recent molecular genetic studies show strong genomic overlap between SWB and PWB, but different gene-expression regulation. We end with a discussion on how these findings fit into a well-being framework, and describe some of the issues in the well-being field as we encountered them in our review followed by potential solutions to these problems.
Implicit mind perception alters vigilance performance due to cognitive conflict processing
Authors: Wiese Eva , Mandell Arielle , Shaw Tyler , Smith Melissa
Published: July 2018

Knowing the internal states of others is essential to predicting behavior in social interactions and requires that the general characteristic of ‘having a mind’ is granted to our interaction partners. Mind perception is a highly automatic process and can potentially cause a cognitive conflict when interacting with agents whose mind status is ambiguous, such as artificial agents. We investigate whether mind perception negatively impacts performance on tasks involving artificial agents due to cognitive conflict processing caused by a potentially increased difficulty to categorize them as human versus non-human. Experiment 1 shows that an ambiguous humanoid stimulus negatively impacts performance on a vigilance task that is known to be sensitive to the drainage of cognitive resources. This negative effect on performance vanishes when participants are pre-exposed to the stimulus be-fore the vigilance task (Experiment 2 and 3). The effect of pre-exposure on performance recovery is independent of whether participants explicitly resolve the cognitive conflict by answering mind-related questions (Experiment 2) or implicitly by judging the stimuli on a set of physical features (Experiment 3). Together, the findings suggest that mind perception is so automatic that it cannot be suppressed even if it has negative effects on cognitive performance.
Commentary on Branigan and Pickering: Don’t shoot the giant whose shoulders we are standing on.
Authors: De Ruiter Jan Peter , De Ruiter Laura Edwina
Published: July 2018

Structural priming is a sufficient, but not a necessary condition for proving the existence of representations. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Cognitive science relies on the legitimacy of positing representations and processes without “proving” every component. Also, psycholinguistics relies on other methods, including acceptability judgments, to find the materials for priming experiments in the first place.
Efficacy of an SMS-based Smoking Intervention Using Message Self-authorship: A Pilot Study
Authors: DeStasio Krista Leigh , Hill Anne , Berkman Elliot
Published: July 2018

Introduction: Text-message based interventions hold great potential for intervention and areincreasingly feasible given advances in information technology.Aims: This pilot RCT aims to compare the efficacy of self- versus expert-authored contentdelivered via text-messaging for smoking cessation.Methods: Sixty-two participants aged 25-66 attended laboratory sessions pre and post 30-days of text-messaging intervention. Participants were randomized to one of two experimentalconditions—self-authorship only (SA) and self-authorship with implementation intentions(SA+ii)—or active control. Participants composed 30-60 brief motivational cessation messagesfor use during their cessation attempt. SA+ii participants were further instructed to anticipateobstacles and form simple if-then plans to overcome them. Experimental groups received their self-authored texts during the intervention phase while control participants received expert-authored messages.Results: Overall, smoking decreased as measured by change in exhaled carbon monoxide (CO),F(1,59)=4.43, p=0.04. The SA+ii group showed slightly greater CO reduction (M=3.63,SD=5.39) than control (M=0.03, SD=5.80; t(40)=2.08, p=0.04). Self-authorship alone (M=1.97,SD=9.30) was not more effective than control.Conclusions: Self-authorship does not appear to increase efficacy. However, this pilot supportsprior research indicating text-based interventions can increase smoking cessation success andmay decrease psychological symptoms of withdrawal. More research is needed to identify ways to bolster intervention efficacy.
Sex differences in distress from infidelity in early adulthood and in later life: A replication and meta-analysis of Shackelford et al. (2004)
Authors: IJzerman Hans , Blanken Irene , Brandt Mark , Oerlemans Hanneke , Hoogenhof Marloes van den , Oerlemans Mathé
Published: July 2018

Shackelford and colleagues (2004) found that men, compared to women, are more distressed by sexual than emotional infidelity, and this sex difference continued into older age. We conducted four high-powered replications (total N = 1,952) of this effect and found different results. A meta-analysis of original and replication studies finds the sex difference in younger samples (though with a smaller effect size), and no effect among older samples. Furthermore, we found attitude toward uncommitted sex to be a mediator (although not consistently in the same direction) between participant sex and relative distress between sexual and emotional infidelity. We hypothesize that the discrepancies between the original and replication studies may be due to changing cultural attitudes about sex across time. Confirming this speculative interpretation requires further investigation.This paper was published in Social Psychology:Ijzerman, H., Blanken, I., Brandt, M. J., Oerlemans, H., van den Hoogenhof, M., Franken, S., & Oerlemans, M. (2014). Sex differences in distress from infidelity in early adulthood and in later life: A replication and meta-analysis of Shackelford et al.(2004). Social Psychology, 45(3), 202-208.
Young children pause on phrase boundaries in self-paced music listening: The role of harmonic cues
Authors: Kragness Haley Elisabeth , Trainor Laurel
Published: July 2018

Proper segmentation of auditory streams is essential for understanding music. Many cues, including meter, melodic contour, and harmony, influence adults’ perception of musical phrase boundaries. To date, no studies have examined young children’s musical grouping in a production task. We used a musical self-pacing method to investigate (1) whether dwell times index young children’s musical phrase grouping and, if so, (2) whether children dwell longer on phrase boundaries defined by harmonic cues specifically. In Experiment 1, we asked 3-year-old children to self-pace through chord progressions from Bach chorales (sequences in which metrical, harmonic, and melodic contour grouping cues aligned) by pressing a computer key to present each chord in the sequence. Participants dwelled longer on chords in the eighth position, which corresponded to phrase endings. In Experiment 2, we tested 3-, 4-, and 7-year-old children’s sensitivity to harmonic cues to phrase grouping when metrical regularity cues and melodic contour cues were misaligned with the harmonic phrase boundaries. In this case, 7- and 4-year-olds but not 3-year-olds dwelled longer on harmonic phrase boundaries, suggesting that the influence of harmonic cues on phrase boundary perception develops substantially between 3 and 4 years of age in Western children. Overall, we show that the musical dwell time method is child-friendly and can be used to investigate various aspects of young children’s musical understanding, including phrase grouping and harmonic knowledge.
Modeling the Spearman's Hypothesis using MGCFA - The Woodcock-Johnson data
Authors: Hu Meng
Published: July 2018

There has been a good deal of research on Spearman’s hypothesis with regard to Black-White differences in tests of cognitive ability. Most of the research has relied on Jensen’s Method of Correlated Vectors (Jensen, 1998). This method, however, is incapable of rigorously testing competing models that do not involve group differences in g (Dolan, 2000, Dolan & Hamaker, 2001). The purpose of the present paper is to test Spearman’s hypothesis using Multi-Group Confirmatory Factor Analysis applied to three waves of Woodcock-Johnson standardization data. First, using Jensen’s MCV, it is found, for all three standardization waves, that there is a Jensen effect, i.e., positive correlation between the subtests’ g-loadings and the Black-White differences. Secondly, while measurement invariance (MI) was generally found to hold, results from MGCFA using either the high-order-factor or the bi-factor model approach could not reliably confirm that the Spearman’s model fits better than the contra-Spearman’s model. Tentative explanations are provided.
Do attitudes toward societal structure predict beliefs about free will and achievement? Evidence from the Indian caste system
Authors: Srinivasan Mahesh , Dunham Yarrow , Hicks Catherine , Barner David
Published: July 2018

Intuitive theories about the malleability of intellectual ability affect our motivation and achievement in life. But how are such theories shaped by the culture in which an individual is raised? We addressed this question by exploring how Indian children’s and adults’ attitudes toward the Hindu caste system – and its deterministic worldview – are related to differences in their intuitive theories. Strikingly, we found that, beginning at least in middle school and continuing into adulthood, individuals who placed more importance on caste were more likely to adopt deterministic intuitive theories. We also found a developmental change in the scope of this relationship, such that in children, caste attitudes were linked only to abstract beliefs about personal freedom, but that by adulthood, caste attitudes were also linked to beliefs about the potential achievement of members of different castes, personal intellectual ability, and personality attributes. These results are the first to directly relate the societal structure in which a person is raised to the specific intuitive theories they adopt.
'Terrorist' or 'Mentally Ill': Motivated Biases Rooted in Partisanship Shape Attributions about Violent Actors
Authors: Noor Masi , Kteily Nour , Siem Birte , Mazziotta Agostino
Published: July 2018

We investigated whether motivated reasoning rooted in partisanship affects the attributions individuals make about violent attackers’ underlying motives and group memberships. Study 1 demonstrated that on the day of the Brexit referendum pro–leavers (vs. pro–remainers) attributed an exculpatory (i.e., mental health) versus condemnatory (i.e., terrorism) motive to the killing of a pro-remain politician. Study 2 demonstrated that pro– (vs. anti–) immigration perceivers in Germany ascribed a mental health (vs. terrorism) motive to a suicide attack by a Syrian refugee, predicting lower endorsement of punitiveness against his group (i.e., refugees) as a whole. Study 3 experimentally manipulated target motives, showing that Americans distanced a politically-motivated (vs. mentally ill) violent individual from their ingroup and assigned him harsher punishment— patterns most pronounced amongst high group identifiers.
Communicative Efficiency, Uniform Information Density, and the Rational Speech Act theory
Authors: Levy Roger Philip
Published: July 2018

One major class of approaches to explaining the distribution of linguistic forms is rooted in communicative efficiency. For theories in which the communicative efficiency of an utterance is itself dependent on the distribution of linguistic forms in the language, however, it is less clear how to make distributional predictions that escape circularity. We propose an approach to making distributional predictions for these cases by iterating between speaker and listener in the Rational Speech Act theory. Characteristics of the fixed points of this iterative process constitute the distributional predictions of the theory. Through computer simulation we apply this approach to the well-studied case of predictability-sensitive optional function word omission for the theory of Uniform Information Density, and show that the approach strongly predicts the negative correlation between phrase onset probability and rate of function word use that has previously been argued for and that has been empirically observed in previous studies.
Empowered and disempowered voices of low-income people with disabilities on the initiation of government-funded, managed health care
Authors: McAuliff Kathleen , Viola Judah , Keys Christopher , Back Lindsey T. , Williams Amber E. , Steltenpohl Crystal Nicole
Published: July 2018

The health and healthcare of vulnerable populations is an international concern. In 2011, a Midwestern state within the U.S. mandatorily transitioned 38,000 Medicaid recipients from a fee-for-service system into a managed care program in which managed care companies were contracted to provide recipients’ healthcare for a capitated rate. In addition to cost savings through reductions in preventable and unnecessary hospital admissions, the goals of the managed care program (MCP) included: (1) access to a more functional support system, which can support high and medium risk users in the development of care plans and coordination of care, and (2) choice among competent providers. The population transitioned was a high-need, high-cost, low-income, and low-power group of individuals. The evaluation research team used focus groups as one of many strategies to understand the experience of users during the first two years of this complex change effort. The article explores empowerment in terms of users and their family caregivers’ ability to make meaningful choices and access resources with regard to their healthcare. Specifically, factors empowering and disempowering users were identified within three thematic areas: (1) enrollment experiences, (2) access to care and (3) communication with managed care organizations and providers. While the change was not optional for users, a disempowering feature, there remained opportunities for other empowering and disempowering processes and outcomes through the transition and new managed care program. The results are from 74 participants: 65 users and 9 family caregivers in 11 focus groups and six interviews across two waves of data collection. MCP users felt disempowered by an initial lack of providers, difficulty with transportation to appointments, and challenges obtaining adequate medication. They felt empowered by having a choice of providers, good quality of transportation services and clear communication from providers and managed care organizations. Recommendations for increasing prospects for the empowerment of healthcare users with disabilities within a managed care environment are presented.
Pre-Registration in Social Psychology—a Discussion and Suggested Template
Authors: van 't Veer Anna Elisabeth , Giner-Sorolla Roger
Published: July 2018

see https://osf.io/56g8e/ for more files related to this preprint
Longitudinal Evidence that Experience with Anonymous Interactions Reduces Intuitive Cooperation
Authors: McAuliffe William H.B. , Forster Daniel Eric , Pedersen Eric J. , McCullough Michael E.
Published: July 2018

Why would people pay costs to deliver benefits to anonymous strangers in one-shot interactions? The Social Heuristics Hypothesis (SHH) claims that cooperation is intuitive because it is positively reinforced in everyday life, where behavior typically has reputational consequences. Consequently, participants will cooperate in anonymous laboratory settings unless they either reflect on the one-shot nature of the interaction or learn through experience with such settings that cooperation does not promote self-interest. Experiments reveal that cognitive-processing manipulations (which increase reliance on either intuition or deliberation) indeed affect cooperation, but may also introduce confounds. Here, we elide the interpretation issues created by between-subjects designs in showing that people are less cooperative over time in laboratory paradigms in which cooperation cannot promote self-interest, but are just as cooperative over time in paradigms that have the potential to promote self-interest. Contrary to previous findings, we find that cooperation is equally intuitive for men and women: Unilateral giving did not differ across gender at the first study session, and decreased equally for both genders across sessions.
Changes in fronto-parieto-temporal connectivity following Do-As-I-Do imitation training in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes)
Authors: Pope Sarah , Taglialatela Jared , Skiba Sara , Hopkins William D.
Published: July 2018

Human imitation is supported by an underlying ‘mirror system’ principally composed of inferior frontal (IF), inferior parietal (IP), and superior temporal (ST) cortical regions. Across primate species, differences in fronto-parieto-temporal connectivity have been hypothesized to explain phylogenetic variation in imitative abilities. However, if and to what extent these regions are involved in imitation in non-human primates is unknown. We hypothesized that ‘Do As I Do’ (DAID) imitation training would enhance white matter integrity within and between fronto-parieto-temporal regions. To this end, four captive chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) were trained to reproduce 23 demonstrated actions, while four age/sex-matched controls were trained to produce basic husbandry behaviors in response to manual cues. Diffusion tensor images were acquired before and after 600 minutes of training over an average of 112 days. Bilateral and asymmetrical changes in fronto-parieto-temporal white matter integrity were compared between DAID trained subjects and controls. We found that imitation trained subjects exhibited leftward shifts in both mean fractional anisotropy and tract strength asymmetry measures in brain regions within the mirror system. This is the first report of training-induced changes in white matter integrity in chimpanzees and suggests that fronto-parieto-temporal connectivity, particularly in the left hemisphere, may have facilitated the emergence of increasingly complex imitation learning abilities.
A Simple and Flexible Bayesian Method for Inferring Step Changes in Cognition
Authors: Lee Michael David
Published: July 2018

Human behavioral data often shows patterns of sudden change overtime. Sometimes the causes of these step changes are internal, such as learning curves that change abruptly when a learner implements a new rule. Sometimes the cause is external, such as when people's opinions about a topic change in response to a new relevant event. Detecting change points in sequences of binary data is basic statistical problem, with many existing solutions, but they seem rarely to be used in psychological modeling. We develop a simple and flexible Bayesian approach to modeling step changes in cognition, implemented as a graphical model in JAGS. The model is able to infer how many change points are justified by the data, as well as the location of the change points. The basic model is also easily extended to include latent-mixture and hierarchical structures, allowing it to be tailored to specific cognitive modeling problems. We demonstrate the adequacy of the basic model by applying it to the classic Lindisfarne Scribes problem, and the flexibility of the modeling approach through two new applications. The first involves a latent-mixture model to determine if individuals learn categories incrementally or in discrete stages.The second involves a hierarchical model of crowd-sourced predictions about the winner of the U.S. National Football League's Most Valuable Player for the 2016{2017 season.
Personally salient, emotionally negative task contexts provoke goal neglect in depression
Authors: Werner-Seidler Aliza , Dahm Theresa , Golden Ann-Marie , Manly Tom , Dalgleish Tim
Published: July 2018

Goal neglect refers to a dissociation between intended and actual action. Although commonly associated with frontal brain damage, this phenomenon is also characteristic of clinical depression. To date, tests of goal neglect typically require individuals to switch between subtasks populated with neutral stimuli. This study examined the impact of affective and personally salient stimulus contexts on goal neglect in clinical depression. Participants were randomly allocated to either positively or negatively-valenced versions of the Affective Six Elements Test (A-SET). We hypothesized that depressed individuals (n=30) would exhibit an overall impairment in A-SET performance by neglecting entire subtasks and allocating suboptimal time to each task, relative to never-depressed peers (n=30), with effects being strongest for the negatively-valenced version. Results showed that depressed individuals exhibited specific deficits, relative to controls on these measures in the negative A-SET only, with a magnitude comparable to that found in brain injured patients. Potential mechanisms are discussed.
Prose Comprehension Beyond the Word Revisited
Authors: Zwaan Rolf Antonius
Published: July 2018

What constitutes "deep" prose comprehension. Citation: Zwaan, R.A., (2018). Comprehension beyond the word revisited. In: K. Millis, D.L. Long, J.P. Magliano,& K. Wiemer, (Eds.). Deep Comprehension (pp. 16-26). New York: Routledge, https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315109503