Counter-stereotypic beliefs in math do not protect school girls from stereotype threat

The threat of being negatively stereotyped in math impairs performance of highly qualified females on difficult math tests, a phenomenon known as "stereotype threat"-ST. Perhaps more alarmingly, recent studies based on unselective samples of elementary, middle, and high-school students show that ST also operates in girls from the general population. Here we offer first evidence that ST does operate (with large effect sizes) even in middle school girls who deny the negative gender stereotype. Children's beliefs about the two genders math ability, therefore, do not necessarily moderate their susceptibility to ST, an important issue that remained unclear so far. This new finding is also of great practical significance: School girls’ counter-stereotypic beliefs cannot be taken as sufficient evidence for deciding whether the struggle against ST is or is not needed. Appropriate interventions should be the default option when aiming for true gender equality in math and science achievements

Stereotype Threat Alters the Subjective Experience of Memory

International audienceThere is now evidence that negative age-related stereotypes about memory reduce older adults’ memory performance, and inflate age differences in this domain. Here, we examine whether stereotype threat may also influence the basic feeling that one is more or less able to remember. Using the Remember/Know paradigm, we demonstrated that stereotype threat conducted older adults to a greater feeling of familiarity with events, while failing to retrieve any contextual detail. This finding indicates that stereotype threat alters older adults’ subjective experience of memory, and strengthens our understanding of the mechanisms underlying stereotype threat effects.Effet de menace du stéréotype chez les personnes âgées testées pour la mémoire. Etude impliquant procédure "Remember/Know

Social Context Effects in the Stroop Task: When Knowledge of One’s Relative Standing Makes a Difference

Cet article s’inscrit dans le prolongement d’une série de recherches faisant apparaître la comparaison sociale comme un puissant régulateur de l’effet Stroop. Les résultats de deux études expérimentales montrent que cet effet est réduit dès lors que le sujet est confronté à une comparaison qui lui est défavorable, cela même en l’absence d’instructions compétitives et des personnes impliquées dans cette comparaison au moment de l’activité cible. Ces nouveaux résultats montrent que des informations en rapport à soi issues de l’environnement social peuvent influencer des phénomènes cognitifs encore typiquement étudiés en dehors de la psychologie sociale.This paper expands on prior research demonstrating the power of social comparison in Stroop’s paradigm. In two experiments, it is shown that the Stroop effect is reduced whenever the subject is threatened by social comparison, even in the lack of competitive instructions and comparison others during the Stroop session. These new findings show that self-related information arising from the social world can influence cognitive phenomena which are yet typically examined outside social psychology

The molecular genetic linkage map of the model legume Medicago truncatula: an essential tool for comparative legume genomics and the isolation of agronomically important genes

BACKGROUND: The legume Medicago truncatula has emerged as a model plant for the molecular and genetic dissection of various plant processes involved in rhizobial, mycorrhizal and pathogenic plant-microbe interactions. Aiming to develop essential tools for such genetic approaches, we have established the first genetic map of this species. Two parental homozygous lines were selected from the cultivar Jemalong and from the Algerian natural population (DZA315) on the basis of their molecular and phenotypic polymorphism. RESULTS: An F2 segregating population of 124 individuals between these two lines was obtained using an efficient manual crossing technique established for M. truncatula and was used to construct a genetic map. This map spans 1225 cM (average 470 kb/cM) and comprises 289 markers including RAPD, AFLP, known genes and isoenzymes arranged in 8 linkage groups (2n = 16). Markers are uniformly distributed throughout the map and segregation distortion is limited to only 3 linkage groups. By mapping a number of common markers, the eight linkage groups are shown to be homologous to those of diploid alfalfa (M. sativa), implying a good level of macrosynteny between the two genomes. Using this M. truncatula map and the derived F3 populations, we were able to map the Mtsym6 symbiotic gene on linkage group 8 and the SPC gene, responsible for the direction of pod coiling, on linkage group 7. CONCLUSIONS: These results demonstrate that Medicago truncatula is amenable to diploid genetic analysis and they open the way to map-based cloning of symbiotic or other agronomically-important genes using this model plant

National Stereotypes and Robots' Perception: The “Made in” Effect

In the near future, the human social environment worldwide might be populated by humanoid robots. The way we perceive these new social agents could depend on basic social psychological processes such as social categorization. Recent results indicate that humans can make use of social stereotypes when faced with robots based on their characterization as “male” or “female” and a perception of their group membership. However, the question of the application of nationality-based stereotypes to robots has not yet been studied. Given that humans attribute different levels of warmth and competence (the two universal dimensions of social perception) to individuals based in part on their nationality, we hypothesized that the way robots are perceived differs depending on their country of origin. In this study, participants had to evaluate four robots differing in their anthropomorphic shape. For each participant, these robots were presented as coming from one of four different countries selected for their level of perceived warmth and competence. Each robot was evaluated on their anthropomorphic and human traits. As expected, the country of origin's warmth and competence level biased the perception of robots in terms of the attribution of social and human traits. Our findings also indicated that these effects differed according to the extent to which the robots were anthropomorphically shaped. We discuss these results in relation to the way in which social constructs are applied to robots

Disseminated and circulating tumor cells in gastrointestinal oncology.

International audienceCirculating (CTCs) and disseminated tumor cells (DTCs) are two different steps in the metastatic process. Several recent techniques have allowed detection of these cells in patients, and have generated many results using different isolation techniques in small cohorts. Herein, we review the detection results and their clinical consequence in esophageal, gastric, pancreatic, colorectal, and liver carcinomas, and discuss their possible applications as new biomarkers

Tracking Subtle Stereotypes of Children with Trisomy 21: From Facial-Feature-Based to Implicit Stereotyping

Background: Stigmatization is one of the greatest obstacles to the successful integration of people with Trisomy 21 (T21 or Down syndrome), the most frequent genetic disorder associated with intellectual disability. Research on attitudes and stereotypes toward these people still focuses on explicit measures subjected to social-desirability biases, and neglects how variability in facial stigmata influences attitudes and stereotyping. Methodology/Principal Findings: The participants were 165 adults including 55 young adult students, 55 non-student adults, and 55 professional caregivers working with intellectually disabled persons. They were faced with implicit association tests (IAT), a well-known technique whereby response latency is used to capture the relative strength with which some groups of people—here photographed faces of typically developing children and children with T21—are automatically (without conscious awareness) associated with positive versus negative attributes in memory. Each participant also rated the same photographed faces (consciously accessible evaluations). We provide the first evidence that the positive bias typically found in explicit judgments of children with T21 is smaller for those whose facial features are highly characteristic of this disorder, compared to their counterparts with less distinctive features and to typically developing children. We also show that this bias can coexist with negative evaluations at the implicit level (with large effect sizes), even among professional caregivers

Labraunda 2014

La saison 2014 à Labraunda (Fig. 1) a probablement été la plus intense depuis les grands travaux entrepris par l’équipe suédoise sous la direction d’Alfred Westholm en 1960. Grâce au soutien des très nombreuses institutions, publiques comme privées, et de personnalités physiques, nous avons pu réunir sur le terrain une équipe internationale de 47 chercheurs et étudiants de onze nationalités différentes (d’Ouest en Est : États-Unis, Colombie, Royaume-Uni, France, Suède, Finlande, Slovaquie, Gr..