Implicit Evidence Research Articles

The Unfulfilled Promise of Brown v. Board: white Americans’ Support for Public Education Funding for Black Students in the 21st Century

Abstract Seven decades after Brown v. Board, Black students continue to lag White students. This article analyzes six experiments conducted over three decades to study whether, consistent with social identity theory, White Americans are more supportive of funding increases for nonracially targeted educational programs that benefit their racial ingroup compared to race-targeted programs. We also ask whether racial prejudice is a factor, if implicit or explicit racial priming accounts for any observed differences, and if the effects have changed over time. Our results show that consistent with social identity theory, White Americans are more likely to favor funding increases for public schools or programs for poor children, categories that are majority White, than programs targeted to Black children. Furthermore, we find no evidence of implicit or explicit racial priming. Across all experiments and all years, interactions between racial priors and the treatments are null. We conclude that ingroup favoritism, not prejudice nor racial priming, explains racially discriminatory support for increases in education funding.

Adsorption of nickel (II) from aqueous solutions with clay-supported nano-scale zero-valent iron synthesized from green tea extract

Nano zerovalent iron (nZVI) supported adsorbents have been reported as suitable candidates for adsorption of water contaminants. However, the role of and interplay between surface chemistry, functional group density and textural properties has largely been unexplored. In this work, green tea derived nano zerovalent iron (nZVI) supported clay hybrid material (CnZVI) was used as a novel adsorbent for the removal of Ni2+ ions from water. The unmodified natural clay (Arg) and the CnZVI composite were characterized using FTIR, SEM, TGA and BET techniques. Incorporation of nZVI ameliorated the specific surface area from 16.88 to 30.46 m2/g, translating to ∼80 % increase. This translated to ∼69 % increase in maximum adsorption capacity from 8.47 to 14.38 mg/g, respectively. The addition of nZVI in the clay decreased the affinity (KF) for Ni2+ by ∼48 %. The disparity between the percent increase in surface area (∼80 %) and the adsorption capacity (∼69 %) implies the adsorption of Ni2+ was significantly controlled by textural properties compensating for the antagonistic effects of functional group density. The kinetic rates were best predicted by the pseudo-first-order and Elovich’s models for the Arg and CnZVI, respectively, implicit evidence of the role of surface chemistry. A maximum adsorption capacity of 14 mg/g was achieved for 100 mg Ni2+/L in 120 min for CnZVI.

Assessing the compatibility of EPR rates with one-dimensional numerical modelling in monitoring shoreline kinematics along with supplying near/long-term forecasts

The utilization of remote sensing technologies in conjunction with the Digital Shoreline Analysis System (DSAS) is a commonly employed approach for monitoring shoreline alterations. However, the reliability of DSAS as a predictive tool for assessing short-term and long-term shoreline changes remains questionable. Considering this uncertainty, there arose an urgent need to investigate whether DSAS can be utilized in conjunction with a one-dimensional numerical model, such as LITPACK, to evaluate its credibility over extended periods of 30 and 80 years. For this investigation, a specific area of the shoreline near the Kitchener drain in the Delta region of Northern Egypt was selected. Medium-resolution satellite images, rectified between 1987 and 2022, were employed to undertake various kinematic data processing tasks, including area classification, shoreline digitization, uncertainty estimation, and quantification of temporal changes using the EPR, LRR, and NSM tools. The obtained results were compared between DSAS and LITPACK for the shoreline coordinates of the study area, projecting the analysis until the years 2050 and 2100. The comparison revealed the presence of minor discrepancies in the DSAS outputs for shoreline prediction within the year 2050. However, these discrepancies significantly worsened as the year 2100 approached, casting doubt on the reliability of DSAS as a long-term forecasting tool. Simultaneously, this research provided implicit evidence supporting the use of DSAS in the formulation of a decision matrix for coastal zone planning with a duration of up to 30 years, as it demonstrated a degree of dependability within this timeframe.

Work–family conflict influences on preschool teachers’ work engagement through psychological detachment: explicit and implicit evidence

Work–family conflict influences on preschool teachers’ work engagement through psychological detachment: explicit and implicit evidence

Evidence of Implicit and Explicit Motor Learning during Gait Training with Distorted Rhythmic Auditory Cues

Gait training with rhythmic auditory cues contains motor learning mechanisms that are weighted more explicitly than implicitly. However, various clinical populations may benefit from a shift to gait training with greater implicit motor learning mechanisms. To investigate the ability to incorporate more implicit-weighted motor learning processes during rhythmic auditory cueing, we attempted to induce error-based recalibration using a subtly varying metronome cue for naïve unimpaired young adults. We assessed the extent of implicit and explicit retention after both an isochronous metronome and subtly varying metronome frequency during treadmill and overground walking. Despite 90% of participants remaining unaware of the changing metronome frequency, participants adjusted their cadence and step length to the subtly changing metronome, both on a treadmill and overground (p < 0.05). However, despite evidence of both implicit and explicit processes involved with each metronome (i.e., isochronous and varying), there were no between-condition differences in implicit or explicit retention for cadence, step length, or gait speed, and thus no increased implicit learning advantage with the addition of error-based recalibration for young, unimpaired adults.

Implicit and explicit racial prejudice among medical professionals: updated estimates from a population-based study

Prior research provides evidence of implicit and explicit anti-Black prejudice among US physicians. However, we know little about whether racialized prejudice varies among physicians and non-physician healthcare workers relative to the general population. Using ordinary least squares models and data from Harvard's Project Implicit (2007-2019), we assessed the associations between self-reported occupational status (physician, non-physician healthcare worker) and implicit (N=1,500,268) and explicit prejudice (N=1,429,677) toward Black, Arab-Muslim, Asian, and Native American populations, net of demographic characteristics. We used STATA 17 for all statistical analyses. Physicians and non-physician healthcare workers exhibited more implicit and explicit anti-Black and anti-Arab-Muslim prejudice than the general population. After controlling for demographics, these differences became non-significant for physicians but remained for non-physician healthcare workers (β=0.027 and 0.030, p<0.01). Demographic controls largely explained anti-Asian prejudice among both groups, and physicians and non-physician healthcare workers exhibited comparatively lower (β=-0.124, p<0.01) and similar levels of anti-Native implicit prejudice, respectively. Finally, white non-physician healthcare workers exhibited the highest levels of anti-Black prejudice. Demographic characteristics explained racialized prejudice among physicians, but not fully among non-physician healthcare workers. More research is needed to understand the causes and consequences of elevated levels of prejudice among non-physician healthcare workers. By acknowledging implicit and explicit prejudice as important reflections of systemic racism, this study highlights the need to understand the role of healthcare providers and systems in generating health disparities. UW-Madison Centennial Scholars Program, Society of Family Planning Research Fund, UW Center for Demography and Ecology, the County Health Rankings and Roadmaps Program and the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Provider implicit and explicit bias in person-centered maternity care: a cross-sectional study with maternity providers in Northern Ghana

BackgroundPerson-centered maternity care (PCMC) has become a priority in the global health discourse on quality of care due to the high prevalence of disrespectful and lack of responsive care during facility-based childbirth. Although PCMC is generally sub-optimal, there are significant disparities. On average, women of low socioeconomic status (SES) tend to receive poorer PCMC than women of higher SES. Yet few studies have explored factors underlying these inequities. In this study, we examined provider implicit and explicit biases that could lead to inequitable PCMC based on SES.MethodsData are from a cross-sectional survey with 150 providers recruited from 19 health facilities in the Upper East region of Ghana from October 2020 to January 2021. Explicit SES bias was assessed using situationally-specific vignettes (low SES and high SES characteristics) on providers’ perceptions of women’s expectations, attitudes, and behaviors. Implicit SES bias was assessed using an Implicit Association Test (IAT) that measures associations between women’s SES characteristics and providers’ perceptions of women as ‘difficult’ or ‘good’. Analysis included descriptive statistics, mixed-model ANOVA, and bivariate and multivariate linear regression.ResultsThe average explicit bias score was 18.1 out of 28 (SD = 3.60) for the low SES woman vignette and 16.9 out of 28 (SD = 3.15) for the high SES woman vignette (p < 0.001), suggesting stronger negative explicit bias towards the lower SES woman. These biases manifested in higher agreement to statements such as the low SES woman in the vignette is not likely to expect providers to introduce themselves and is not likely to understand explanations. The average IAT score was 0.71 (SD = 0.43), indicating a significant bias in associating positive characteristics with high SES women and negative characteristics with low SES women. Providers with higher education had significantly lower explicit bias scores on the low SES vignette than those with less education. Providers in private facilities had higher IAT scores than those in government hospitals.ConclusionsThe findings provide evidence of both implicit and explicit SES bias among maternity providers. These biases need to be addressed in interventions to achieve equity in PCMC and to improve PCMC for all women.

Learning strategy differentially impacts memory connections in children and adults.

Even once children can accurately remember their experiences, they nevertheless struggle to use those memories in flexible new ways-as in when drawing inferences. However, it remains an open question as to whether the developmental differences observed during both memory formation and inference itself represent a fundamental limitation on children's learning mechanisms, or rather their deployment of suboptimal strategy. Here, 7-9-year-old children (N=154) and young adults (N=130) first formed strong memories for initial (AB) associations and then engaged in one of three learning strategies as they viewed overlapping (BC) pairs. We found that being told to integrate-combine ABC during learning-both significantly improved children's ability to explicitly relate the indirectly associated A and C items during inference and protected the underlying pair memories from forgetting. However, this finding contrasted with implicit evidence for memory-to-memory connections: Adults and children both formed A-C links prior to any knowledge of an inference test-yet for children, such links were most apparent when they were told to simply encode BC, not integrate. Moreover, the accessibility of such implicit links differed between children and adults, with adults using them to make explicit inferences but children only doing so for well-established direct AB pairs. These results suggest that while a lack of integration strategy may explain a large share of the developmental differences in explicit inference, children and adults nevertheless differ in both the circumstances under which they connect interrelated memories and their ability to later leverage those links to inform flexible behaviours. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS: Children and adults view AB and BC pairs related through a shared item, B. This provides an opportunity for learners to connect A-C in memory. Being encouraged to integrate ABC during learning boosted performance on an explicit test of A-C connections (children and adults) and protected from forgetting (children). Children and adults differed in when implicit A-C connections were formed-occurring primarily when told to separately encode BC (children) versus integrate (adults), respectively. Adults used implicit A-C connections to facilitate explicit judgments, while children did not. Our results suggest developmental differences in the learning conditions promoting memory-to-memory connections.

Implicit learning of regularities followed by realistic body movements in virtual reality.

The existence of implicit (unconscious) learning has been demonstrated in several laboratory paradigms. Researchers have also suggested that it plays a role in complex real-life human activities. For instance, in social situations, we may follow unconscious behaviour scripts or intuitively anticipate the reaction of familiar persons based on nonconscious cues. Still, it is difficult to make inferences about the involvement of implicit learning in realistic contexts, given that this phenomenon has been demonstrated, almost exclusively, using simple artificial stimuli (e.g., learning structured patterns of letters). In addition, recent analyses show that the amount of unconscious knowledge learned in these tasks has been overestimated by random measurement error. To overcome these limitations, we adapted the artificial grammar learning (AGL) task, and exposed participants (N = 93), in virtual reality, to a realistic agent that executed combinations of boxing punches. Unknown to participants, the combinations were structured by a complex artificial grammar. In a subsequent test phase, participants accurately discriminated novel grammatical from nongrammatical combinations, showing they had acquired the grammar. For measuring awareness, we used trial-by-trial subjective scales, and an analytical method that accounts for the possible overestimation of unconscious knowledge due to regression to the mean. These methods conjointly showed strong evidence for implicit and for explicit learning. The present study is the first to show that humans can implicitly learn, in VR, knowledge regarding realistic body movements, and, further, that implicit knowledge extracted in AGL is robust when accounting for its possible inflation by random measurement error.

Masturbation in high field secondary schools of Harare, Zimbabwe: A youth challenge, reflection and suggested biblical responses

Masturbation appears to be a growing challenge among today's youths with many seeking professional counselling in a bid to find solutions to curb the vice. Despite the fact that many are battling masturbation addiction, questions have been raised regarding the biblical premise upon which masturbation is considered a sin. However, these questions have been met with an apparent dearth in literature. It is in this light that this study analyses the scriptural basis for discouraging masturbation. The study argues that while there seems to be no explicit reference to masturbation in the Scriptures, there is implicit evidence that discourages the act. To validate this assertion, the study characterizes masturbation and its effects before providing biblical texts that circumstantially discuss masturbation. Different ways through which one can overcome masturbation are provided.

At the Buzzer: Parting Shots on Communication and Sport

In his final editorial essay, founding Editor-in-Chief Lawrence Wenner speaks to the successes of the Communication &amp; Sport project as a disciplinary endeavor over its first 10 years. In handing over the editor’s baton to Andrew Billings and Marie Hardin, Communication &amp; Sport is in good hands with the continued support of SAGE Publishing, the sponsorship of a set of scholarly societies, and a growing global scholarly community. Still, communication and sport, as an interdisciplinary scholarly endeavor, has been challenged by competing epistemological perspectives from pragmatic to critical. There is much evidence of implicit and explicit endorsement of a “received” view of sport in line with Coakley’s notion of the “Great Sports Myth.” Caution is advised as research from this vantage point often too eagerly receives sport as a naturalized state-of-affairs worthy of supporting and growing in an agenda focused on advancing the effectiveness and reception of sport communication in the marketplace. The essay closes with the need for a reckoning about the objectives of communication and sport as a scholarly space by reiterating reminder that today’s mediated world is ultimately “all about power.”

Implicit evidence on the dissociation of identity and emotion recognition.

Recognition of identity and of emotional facial expressions of individuals are both based on processing of the human face. While most studies show these abilities to be dissociated, some others find evidence of a connection. One possible explanation for these contradictory results comes from neurological evidence, which points to identity recognition being mostly based on holistic processing, while emotion recognition seems to be based on both an explicit, fine-grained process, and an implicit, mostly-holistic one. Our main hypothesis, that would explain the contradictory findings, is that holistic implicit emotion recognition, specifically, would be related to identity recognition, while explicit emotion recognition would be a process separate to identity recognition. To test this hypothesis, we employed an experimental paradigm in which spatial frequencies of visual stimuli are manipulated so that automatic, holistic-based, implicit emotion recognition influences perceived friendliness of unfamiliar faces. We predicted the effect to be related to identity recognition ability, since they both require holistic face processing. After a successful replication study, we employed the paradigm with 140 participants, measuring also identity recognition ability and explicit emotion recognition ability. Results showed that the effect is not moderated by these two variables (p = .807 and .373, respectively), suggesting that the independence of identity and emotion recognition holds even when considering, specifically, implicit emotion recognition.

The Actualization of the Transplantation Complex on the Axis of Psychosomatic Totality-Results of a Qualitative Study.

Although transplantation medicine is not new, there is a clinically justified gap in the existing literature with respect to the psychological processing of lung transplants. The present study aims to examine whether lung transplantation leads to an actualization of psychological, e.g., oral-sadistic fantasies. Following a qualitative approach, 38 lung transplant patients were interviewed three times within the first six months after transplantation. Data analysis focused on identifying unconscious and conscious material. The inter-rater reliability for all codes was calculated using Krippendorff’s Alpha (c-α-binary = 0.94). Direct and implicit evidence of a so-called transplantation complex was detected e.g., regarding the “incorporation” of the dead donor and his lungs. These processes occur predominantly at an imaginary level and are related to the body. Our findings emphasize that such psychological aspects should be borne in mind in the psychological treatment of lung-transplant patients in order to improve the processing of lung transplants, and that this might have a positive effect on patient adherence.

Reliability analysis of a complex system with hybrid structures and multi-level dependent life metrics

In practical engineering, the presence of dependent evidence is not rare due to various imperfections. Misuse of such information in reliability analysis will lead to conflicting or even erroneous results. In this paper, we propose a Bayesian reliability approach for complex systems with dependent life metrics. Notions such as explicit evidence and implicit evidence are established based on an identification of different roles of multiple dependent evidence in the likelihood construction. A likelihood decomposition method is developed to convert the overall likelihood into a product of Explicit Evidence-based Likelihood (EEL) function and Implicit Evidence-based Likelihood (IEL) function. An inferential diagram is developed to intuitively generate the required implicit evidence taking both outer-source information and the system configuration into consideration. An algorithm is then presented for implementation. The contribution of our work is a systematic investigation of the role of dependent evidence in system reliability evaluation and a full Bayesian approach that is applied to various system reliability models. Extensive numerical cases and a practical engineering case are demonstrated for validation and to illustrate the benefits of our approach.

ISO Standards: A Platform for Achieving Sustainable Development Goal 2

The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has recently begun promoting the linkages between its standards and the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). However, further research is needed to explore how ISO standards can serve as a platform for achieving the SDGs. In this paper, we discuss the interlinkage between ISO standards and SDG 2 (i.e., Zero hunger—End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture). We review the literature on a set of 77 ISO standards related to SDG 2 and study existing evidence pertinent to SDG 2 and its targets. Specifically, we review research in four key areas of interest: agricultural productivity of ISO certified firms, adoption of ISO standards amongst small scale producers, ISO standards development, and governance of standards. We found implicit evidence in the literature that ISO standards have the potential to contribute to two SDG 2 targets, namely targets 2.3 and 2.4. Some aspects of ISO standards, however, such as low levels of adoption amongst small scale farmers or a lack of multi-stakeholder standard development, contradict key aspects of the SDG agenda. We outline key areas for future research in the four areas of interest noted above.

The perceived impact of fluency on personalities of adults who stutter: implicit evidence of self-stigma

Purpose The NEO-FFI is an extensively used instrument that has been used to identify personality differences between those who stutter and matched controls or group norms. The goal of this study was to use the NEO-FFI to implicitly capture and quantify self-stigma related to personality in persons who stutter (PWS). Methods Thirty PWS completed the NEO-FFI twice; once as themselves and once while mentalizing (using theory of mind) to respond as though they did not stutter and had never stuttered, thus comparing their true personality to their perceived personality if they were fluent speakers. Compared to their true personalities, PWS perceived their fluent counterparts to be significantly less neurotic and more extroverted. Results The differences observed are somewhat analogous, though considerably larger in magnitude than personality differences that have previously been reported when comparing PWS to fluent controls or norms. Differences were interpreted to be due to “contrast effects” influencing the comparison. That is, PWS cognitively separated themselves from their fluent counterparts, seeing their true selves in a negative light compared to their fluent counterparts. This “us” vs. “them” separation is considered evidence of self-stigma related to personality in PWS. Conclusions The finding that the perceived differences were in the domains of Neuroticism and Extraversion is consistent with prevailing stereotypes about PWS and exemplifies how public stigma can become internalized. Clinical implications are discussed with respect to how similar theory of mind/social comparison exercises can be used in cognitive behavioral therapy to help identify and restructure negative thoughts and beliefs about stuttering.

Implicit and Explicit Problem-Solving Process during Chinese Radical Assembly Game

ABSTRACT The Chinese Radical Assembly Game (CRAG) is an online platform that assesses the lexical competence. In which, individuals select different Chinese radicals to combine them and form a legitimate character. This concept is similar to that of creative synthesis. Therefore, this study aimed to examine whether the CRAG response process involves creativity through eye-tracking technologies and behavior scales. In Experiment 1, the eye movements of 40 participants in the CRAG process were tracked with an eye tracker, after which the average fixation duration (AFD) and average fixation count (AFC) were calculated. Additionally, we analyzed the correlation among AFD, AFC and participants’ radical assembly performance. In Experiment 2, 75 participants of CRAG and the Chinese Remote Associates Test (CRAT) were collected to analyze the correlation between their CRAG and CRAT performance. The results indicate that individuals’ saccades of different Chinese radicals per unit of time contributed to the accuracy of radical combination. Long fixation durations on certain Chinese radicals reduced the accuracy of radical combinations. The accuracy rates of the CRAG and CRAT correlated positively. This study presents the cognitive process in the CRAG based on implicit and explicit evidence.

Discrepancies between explicit and implicit evaluation of aesthetic perception ability in individuals with autism: a potential way to improve social functioning

BackgroundThe capacity to evaluate beauty plays a crucial role in social behaviour and social relationships. It is known that some characteristics of beauty are important social cues that can induce stereotypes or promote different behavioural expectations. Another crucial capacity for success in social interactions is empathy, i.e. the ability to understand and share others’ mental and emotional states. Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) have an impairment of empathic ability. We showed in a previous study that empathy and aesthetic perception abilities closely related. Indeed, beauty can affect different aspects of empathic behaviour, and empathy can mediate the aesthetic perception in typically developing (TD) individuals. Thus, this study evaluates the ability of aesthetic perception in ASD individuals compared to TD individuals, using the Golden Beauty behavioural task adapted for eye-tracking in order to acquire both explicit and implicit evidences. In both groups, the relationship between empathic and aesthetic perception abilities was also evaluated.MethodsTen ASD individuals (age ± SD:20.7 ± 4.64) and ten TD individuals (age ± SD:20.17 ± 0.98) participated in the study. Participants underwent empathy tasks and then the Golden Beauty task. To assess differences in the participants’ performance, we carried out a repeated measures general linear model.ResultsAt the explicit level, our behavioural results show an impairment in aesthetic perception ability in ASD individuals. This inability could have relevance for their ability to experience pleasure during social interactions. However, at the implicit level (eye-tracking results), ASD individuals conserved a good ability to feel aesthetic pleasure during the Golden Beauty task, thus indicating a discrepancy between the explicit and implicit evaluation of the beauty task. Finally, beauty perception appears to be linked to empathy when neither of these capacities is compromised, as demonstrated in the TD group. In contrast, this link is missed in ASD individuals.ConclusionOverall, our results clearly show that individuals with autism are not completely blind to aesthetic pleasure: in fact, they retain an implicit ability to experience beauty. These findings could pave the way for the development of new protocols to rehabilitate ASD social functioning, exploiting their conserved implicit aesthetic perception.

Imitation recognition and its prosocial effects in 6-month old infants.

The experience of being imitated is theorised to be a driving force of infant social cognition, yet evidence on the emergence of imitation recognition and the effects of imitation in early infancy is disproportionately scarce. To address this lack of empirical evidence, in a within-subjects study we compared the responses of 6-month old infants when exposed to ipsilateral imitation as opposed to non-imitative contingent responding. To examine mediating mechanisms of imitation recognition, infants were also exposed to contralateral imitation and bodily imitation with suppressed emotional mimicry. We found that testing behaviours-the hallmark of high-level imitation recognition-occurred at significantly higher rates in each of the imitation conditions compared to the contingent responding condition. Moreover, when being imitated, infants showed higher levels of attention, smiling and approach behaviours compared to the contingent responding condition. The suppression of emotional mimicry moderated these results, leading to a decrease in all social responsiveness measures. The results show that imitation engenders prosocial effects in 6-month old infants and that infants at this age reliably show evidence of implicit and high-level imitation recognition. In turn, the latter can be indicative of infants' sensitivity to others' intentions directed toward them.

Beyond wages: Why dual practice physicians discriminate care quality towards private patients in Ghana

ABSTRACT There is sparse implicit evidence that Dual Practitioners (DPs), physicians holding public and private jobs concurrently discriminate care quality toward private patients to attract better wages. We examined this phenomenon drawing on literature to construct and test the hypotheses that beyond wages, differences in leadership and management, working conditions and psychological ownership between the private and public healthcare sectors influence DPs discriminatory care quality efforts. The study surveyed 121 DPs in four cities across Ghana. Data were collected using a structured questionnaire modelled on the three constructs and two outcome measures of care quality: patient-centeredness and patient satisfaction. Repeated t-measures and logistic regression models were used to analyse data. DPs rated private facilities higher than public facilities in all the domains of the three constructs. DPs patient-centeredness and commitment to patient satisfaction was highly influenced by effective leadership and management and good working conditions in the private than public facilities. Psychological ownership had statistically significant influence on DPs patient-centeredness in the private facilities but not the public. These findings provide explicit evidence toward understanding the causalities of DPs service quality fragmentation across practice settings and contribute to policy regulation of the medical labor market in Ghana and other countries.