White Targets Research Articles

White ≠ Poor: Whites Distance, Derogate, and Deny Low-Status Ingroup Members.

Throughout society, White people of low socioeconomic status (SES) face prejudice, often from racial ingroup members. The present research tested the ingroup distancing effect, which predicts that Whites' negative reactions to low-SES ingroup members are motivated responses to perceived threats to their personal and group-level status. To cope with perceived status threats, White people psychologically and physically distance themselves from low-SES Whites. Four studies provide converging support for this theorizing. Among White participants, low-SES Whites elicited derogation, impaired racial categorization and memory, and inflated perceived personal status. White participants explicitly perceived low-SES Whites as greater status threats than low-SES Blacks, and these perceptions of threat predicted increased discomfort in anticipated social situations with low-SES White targets. Moreover, threatened status led Whites who strongly identified with their racial ingroup to physically distance themselves from a low-SES White partner. This research demonstrates that concerns with status motivate prejudice against ingroup members.

Assumptions about life hardship and pain perception

The present work examines whether people assume that those who have faced hardship feel less pain than those who have not, and whether this belief contributes to the perception that Blacks feel less pain than Whites. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants received information about a Black and/or White target person’s life hardship and then rated the target person’s pain. Participants reported that the target individual would feel less pain if s/he had experienced greater hardship. Importantly, racial bias emerged but only when hardship information was consistent with expectations about race and life hardship; that is, participants reported that the Black (vs. White) target individual would feel less pain only if s/he had experienced greater hardship. In Experiment 3, participants read that hardship either toughens or weakens the body, and then rated a Black or White target person’s pain. Racial bias emerged but only when supported by lay beliefs. Specifically, participants reported that the Black (vs. White) target individual would feel less pain but only if they endorsed the belief that hardship leads to toughness. Taken together, these findings suggest that perceptions of hardship shape perceptions of pain and contribute to racial bias in pain perception. These findings also suggest that eliminating this racial bias will require challenging lay beliefs; it will require the recognition that people who have faced great hardship feel just as much, if not more, pain.

False reaching movements in localization test and effect of auditory feedback in simulated ultra-low vision subjects and patients with retinitis pigmentosa.

To determine the accuracy of reaching movements with localization tests in subjects with simulated ultra-low vision, and to examine the effectiveness of auditory feedback training in improving the accuracy of the reaching movements. Twenty-one subjects with simulated ultra-low vision and three patients with advanced retinitis pigmentosa (RP) were studied with the localization tester. The localization tester had white square targets with a visual angle of 10° that were projected randomly on a computer monitor screen. The subjects or RP patients were instructed to touch the center of the target. Each subject was tested 20 trials. The distance from the center of the target to the point where subjects touched, the deviation, was calculated automatically by the computer. We also examined the effect of auditory feedback on improving the accuracy of reaching movements. The average angle of deviation in the subjects was not significantly correlated with visual acuity. The points touched by subjects with simulated low vision were located downward and horizontally toward the hand they used. They were condensed around the barycenter of the touched points (paired t tests; *p = 0.037). The touched points of the patients also deviated downward and condensed around the barycenter. The deviations decreased significantly with auditory feedback when trained over 100 trials. The subjects with simulated ultra-low vision and the advanced RP patients had false orientations against the position of localized target systematically. An auditory feedback system may help to correct the false orientations for reaching movements in patients with very low vision.

European freight rolling stock fleet size in 2050 in light of the Transport White Paper 2011

The European Transport White Paper 2011 sets high modal shift targets from road freight to rail 50% by 2050. The objective of this paper is to determine the rolling stock fleet size and type up to the year 2050 and associated challenges for stakeholders. Considering the White paper targets, three scenarios are considered; a) Business as usual or Reference Scenario – extrapolation of current trends without major policy change; b) White Paper 2011 Low Scenario (WPL) based on a partial implementation of the modal shift targets and c) White Paper 2011 High Scenario (WPH) based on the full implementation of modal shift targets. To determine the future fleet size, the current paper also conducts a sensitivity analysis assuming 60% productivity level as a base line. The study finds, among others, that significantly more rolling stock (in particular flat wagons, covered wagons and covered hopper wagons) as well as improved asset utilisation will be vital to facilitate the transport of increased freight volume. A unified rail freight system starting with nine Rail Freight Corridors and cooperation among the rail freight operators, wagons manufacturers and companies involved in leasing and hiring wagons will be very important to achieve the modal shift.

Low‐complexity colour‐shift keying‐based visible light communications system

Colour-shift keying (CSK) has emerged as a new modulation scheme for indoor visible light communication (VLC) systems, standardised in IEEE 802.15.7. This scheme transmits data by modulating the intensity of red-green-blue light-emitting diodes using a colour coding format. To support VLC, CSK requires the application of multiple light sources and detectors without changing the white light target condition. In this study, a low-complexity VLC system is proposed for multiple light sources that offers important reductions to the overall system complexity while maintaining the compatibility with the premises of the IEEE 802.15.7 standard. The contributions of this work are two-fold. First, a new RGB-based modulation scheme is proposed. This modulation scheme suggests to replace the CSK-based colour coding format by a more flexible, versatile and simplified mapping structure without the need of sending target colour information to the receiver. The second contribution is a novel single-photodiode based receiver that reduces the number of inputs to demodulate RGB signals. Closed-form error performance expressions are verified to analyse the proposed VLC system performance which are verified through Monte Carlo simulations. Finally, the performance of the proposed system is also presented and compared in terms of complexity and throughput efficiency.

Categorising intersectional targets: An “either/and” approach to race- and gender-emotion congruity

ABSTRACTResearch on the interaction of emotional expressions with social category cues in face processing has focused on whether specific emotions are associated with single-category identities, thus overlooking the influence of intersectional identities. Instead, we examined how quickly people categorise intersectional targets by their race, gender, or emotional expression. In Experiment 1, participants categorised Black and White faces displaying angry, happy, or neutral expressions by either race or gender. Emotion influenced responses to men versus women only when gender was made salient by the task. Similarly, emotion influenced responses to Black versus White targets only when participants categorised by race. In Experiment 2, participants categorised faces by emotion so that neither category was more salient. As predicted, responses to Black women differed from those to both Black men and White women. Thus, examining race and gender separately is insufficient to understanding how emotion and social category cues are processed.

When bias binds: Effect of implicit outgroup bias on ingroup affiliation.

We tested a novel process we term implicit homophily in which perceivers' implicit outgroup bias shapes their affiliative responses toward ingroup targets with outgroup friends as a function of perceived similarity. Across 4 studies, we tested implicit homophily in the context of racial groups. We found that White participants with higher implicit anti-Black bias reported less affiliative responses toward White targets with Black friends compared with White targets with White friends, and this effect persisted above and beyond the effects of implicit pro-White bias and explicit racial bias (Studies 1-3). We further found evidence that this relationship between implicit anti-Black bias and affiliation exists because participants infer how comfortable targets are around outgroup members (Preliminary Study) and use this information to infer similarity on this dimension (Studies 1-3). Our findings also suggested that stigma transference and expectancy violation were not viable alternative mediators (Preliminary Study and Study 1). Finally, women's implicit anti-Black bias predicted their likelihood of having Facebook friends with Black friends, providing ecological and behavioral evidence of implicit homophily (Study 4). Implications for research on stigma by association, extended contact, affiliation, and network formation are discussed.

Is the evidence from racial bias shooting task studies a smoking gun? Results from a meta-analysis

The longstanding issue of extrajudicial police shootings of racial and ethnic minority members has received unprecedented interest from the general public in the past year. To better understand this issue, researchers have examined racial shooter biases in the laboratory for more than a decade; however, shooter biases have been operationalized in multiple ways in previous studies with mixed results within and across measures. We meta-analyzed 42 studies, investigating five operationalizations of shooter biases (reaction time with/without a gun, false alarms, shooting sensitivity, and shooting threshold) and relevant moderators (e.g., racial prejudice, state level gun laws). Our results indicated that relative to White targets, participants were quicker to shoot armed Black targets (dav=−.13, 95% CI [−.19, −.06]), slower to not shoot unarmed Black targets (dav=.11, 95% CI [.05, .18), and more likely to have a liberal shooting threshold for Black targets (dav=−.19, 95% CI [−.37, −.01]). In addition, we found that in states with permissive (vs. restrictive) gun laws, the false alarm rate for shooting Black targets was higher and the shooting threshold for shooting Black targets was lower than for White targets. These results help provide critical insight into the psychology of race-based shooter decisions, which may have practical implications for intervention (e.g., training police officers) and prevention of the loss of life of racial and ethnic minorities.

Commentary: What visual illusions tell us about underlying neural mechanisms and observer strategies for tackling the inverse problem of achromatic perception.

Blakeslee and McCourt state repeatedly that three terms, lightness, brightness, and brightness contrast, are frequently conflated and/or misused. However, they are apparently unable to give a single example. Instead, they refer to their own (Blakeslee et al., 2008) experiment in which they showed that in their replication of Gilchrist et al. (1983), when illumination appeared homogeneous, lightness and brightness judgments were identical. There is nothing new here. It is well known. They assert that our subjects, who were instructed to make lightness matches, were instead making brightness matches. Our subjects were asked to make lightness matches, they were instructed accordingly, and there is no reason to think that they instead made brightness matches. In our replication (Jacobsen and Gilchrist, 1988) of an earlier Jameson and Hurvich (1961) experiment we obtained both lightness and brightness matches. These were qualitatively different (horizontal vs. diagonal lines). The lightness instructions in the 1988 and 1983 papers were essentially equivalent. Blakeslee and McCourt claim that my colleagues and I are not comfortable acknowledging the fact that when illumination is homogeneous, lightness and brightness collapse to the same thing. There is no truth to this claim. On page 205 of my book (Gilchrist, 2006) I have written, “Although brightness models could arguably be ignored in a book on surface lightness, there are several reasons to include them. First, under homogeneous illumination, lightness and brightness can be treated as equivalent.” Blakeslee and McCourt object to my description (2006, p. 6) of brightness as “the perception of a proximal quality—the raw intensity of some part of the image.” They argue that I am confusing brightness with luminance, and they stress that brightness matches deviate substantially from luminance matches. But in a brightness matching task, subjects are instructed to match the luminance of targets, and they try to match luminance, regardless of accuracy. Likewise we say that lightness is perceived reflectance, even though we know that lightness matches deviate from reflectance matches. Brightness is the perception of a proximal quality, even when inaccurate. However, the central argument made by Blakeslee and McCourt is that my colleagues and I are ignoring an important distinction between what they call apparent lightness and inferred lightness. They contend that when illumination is homogeneous, lightness is perceived directly whereas when a visible illumination edge is present, lightness is not seen directly but merely inferred. They claim that both in my experiments on depth and lightness (Gilchrist, 1977, 1980) and in our edge substitution experiments (Gilchrist et al., 1983; Gilchrist, 1988), in those conditions in which the subjects reported black and white targets, those targets did not in fact appear black and white, but instead, the subjects merely inferred that those targets were probably black and white. This claim, which was first made in the 1970's by those defending the simplistic lateral inhibition account of lightness, is nonsense. In all of these experiments, subjects simply reported the lightness values as they appeared. Burkamp (1923) showed that fish correctly respond to the reflectance of a feeding tray, even when an illumination edge is present. Are these fish making an inference? Consider Adelson's well-known checkered shadow illusion. The very different appearance of the two equi-luminant targets lying on opposite sides of the illumination edge cannot be attributed to an inference. It occurs immediately and unavoidably. That is the point of the illusion. It is not hard to see why Blakeslee and McCourt would make such a claim. We have shown that changing the perceived depth of a target or changing whether an edge is perceived as an illumination edge or as a reflectance edge can move the perceived lightness of a target almost from one end of the lightness scale to the other, with merely a trivial change in the retinal image. Unless those data can be discredited, the ODOG model cannot account for lightness perception in most real-world scenes.

Scotoma analysis of 10-2 visual field testing with a red target in screening for hydroxychloroquine retinopathy.

ObjectiveTo quantify the variability of scotomas detected by 10–2 visual field (VF) testing with a red target in patients taking hydroxychloroquine without and with retinopathy.DesignRetrospective review of clinical charts and VFs.MethodsTwenty-four patients taking hydroxychloroquine without retinopathy, and eight patients taking hydroxychloroquine with retinopathy were tested in this study. Retinopathy was defined by annular scotomas on 10–2 VF testing with corroborative spectral domain optical coherence tomographic outer retinal changes and multifocal electroretinographic changes leading to cessation of hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine. Location and depth of scotoma points on 10–2 VF testing were recorded and their fates followed in serial, reliable 10–2 VFs performed with a red target over time. The main outcome measures for this study were the number of scotoma points and locations, percentage of persistent scotoma points, size of scotomas, location of scotomas, and percentage of scotomas deepening.ResultsA median of 3, interquartile range (IQR) (2, 5), scotoma points per VF occurred in patients without retinopathy. A median of 86%, IQR (77, 100), of these resolved on the subsequent field. For patients with retinopathy, a median of 50%, IQR (46, 79), resolved, a difference compared to patients without retinopathy that was significant (P=0.0158). The median percentage of scotoma points in the zone from 2° to 8° from fixation in eyes with retinopathy was 72%, IQR (54, 100), compared to 49%, IQR (40, 54), in eyes without retinopathy (P=0.0069). The number of persistent scotoma locations at the last visit was higher in eyes with retinopathy: 3, IQR (1, 3), versus 0, IQR (0, 1), in patients without retinopathy, P=0.0156.ConclusionPoint scotomas are common and variable in 10–2 VF testing with a red target for hydroxychloroquine retinopathy in subjects without retinopathy. Scotoma points in eyes with retinopathy are less variable. The annular zone 2°–8° from fixation was useful for distinguishing the significance of scotoma points. Discriminating eyes with retinopathy from eyes without retinopathy is probably easier using the 10–2 VF with a white target than a red target.

Suspicion of White people's motives relates to relative accuracy in detecting external motivation to respond without prejudice

As a result of prevalent pressure to inhibit prejudice, racial minorities may wonder whether White people's nonprejudiced behavior is primarily motivated by personal commitments to egalitarianism (i.e., internal motivation) or superficial efforts to appear nonprejudiced (i.e., external motivation). The present work investigated whether minority group members chronically suspicious of White people's motives (i.e., those who believe White people are more externally than internally motivated), are more accurate than those who are less suspicious in detecting the motives behind White individuals' pleasant behavior toward minorities. Minority participants viewed four videos of White targets engaging in dyadic interracial interactions with a Black peer and evaluated the White targets' motivations. Compared to those low in suspicion, those high in suspicion were more accurate at assessing White targets' actual levels of external motivation. Hence, suspicion seems to carry some functional benefit as it attunes minority-group members to Whites' externally motivated positivity.

Postmortem diffusion MRI of the human brainstem and thalamus for deep brain stimulator electrode localization.

Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is an established surgical therapy for medically refractory tremor disorders including essential tremor (ET) and is currently under investigation for use in a variety of other neurologic and psychiatric disorders. There is growing evidence that the anti-tremor effects of DBS for ET are directly related to modulation of the dentatorubrothalamic tract (DRT), a white matter pathway that connects the cerebellum, red nucleus, and ventral intermediate nucleus of the thalamus. Emerging white matter targets for DBS, like the DRT, will require improved three-dimensional (3D) reference maps of deep brain anatomy and structural connectivity for accurate electrode targeting. High-resolution diffusion MRI of postmortem brain specimens can provide detailed volumetric images of important deep brain nuclei and 3D reconstructions of white matter pathways with probabilistic tractography techniques. We present a high spatial and angular resolution diffusion MRI template of the postmortem human brainstem and thalamus with 3D reconstructions of the nuclei and white matter tracts involved in ET circuitry. We demonstrate registration of these data to in vivo, clinical images from patients receiving DBS therapy, and correlate electrode proximity to tractography of the DRT with improvement of ET symptoms.

Does Cognitive Depletion Shape Bias Detection for Minority Group Members?

Previous research has explored how context, characteristics of the target, or a perceiver's cognitive state may affect person perception and impression formation. The present work extends theory on person perception and illuminates factors that determine when Blacks perceive a White target as prejudiced. Building from research suggesting that modern racism may require more cognitive resources to discern than old-fashioned racism, participants were first cognitively depleted (or not). Next, they were asked to watch a video in which a White target displayed cues consistent with modern or old-fashioned racism toward a Black partner during an interracial interaction. Consistent with hypotheses, non-depleted Black participants perceived both the modern and old-fashioned racist as equally prejudiced. However, depletion moderated Black participants' bias detection such that they perceived the modern racist as less prejudiced than did the non-depleted Black participants. Depleted and non-depleted Black participan...

Scotoma analysis of 10-2 visual field testing with a white target in screening for hydroxychloroquine retinopathy.

ObjectiveTo quantify the variability of scotomas detected by 10-2 visual field (VF) testing in patients taking hydroxychloroquine without and with retinopathy.DesignRetrospective review of clinical charts and visual fields.SubjectsTwenty-one patients taking hydroxychloroquine without retinopathy, and nine patients taking hydroxychloroquine and one patient taking chloroquine with retinopathy.MethodsRetinopathy was defined by annular scotomas on 10-2 VF testing with corroborative spectral domain optical coherence tomographic outer retinal changes and multifocal electroretinographic changes leading to cessation of hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine. Location and depth of scotoma points on 10-2 VF testing were recorded and their fates followed in serial, reliable 10-2 VFs performed with a white target over time.Main outcome measuresNumber of scotoma points and locations, percentage of persistent scotoma points, size of scotomas, location of scotomas, and percentage of scotomas deepening.ResultsA median of five, interquartile range (IQR) 3–8 scotoma points per VF occurred in patients without retinopathy. A median of 86%, IQR 63%–100% of these points resolve on the subsequent field. For patients with retinopathy, a median of 22%, IQR 10%–59% resolve. The median percentage of scotoma points in the zone 2–8 degrees from fixation in eyes with retinopathy was 79%, IQR 68%–85% compared to 60%, IQR 54%–75% in eyes without retinopathy (P=0.0094). Single-point scotomas were more common in eyes without than with retinopathy. Scotomas consisting of more than four contiguous scotoma points were generally indicative of retinopathy.ConclusionPoint scotomas are common and variable in 10-2 VF testing with a white target for hydroxychloroquine retinopathy in subjects without retinopathy. The annular zone 2 to 8 degrees from fixation was useful for distinguishing the significance of scotoma points. Scotomas with more contiguous scotoma points were more often associated with retinopathy.

White House Targets Superbugs

The White House is ramping up its fight against drug-resistant bacteria with an aggressive new plan aimed at cutting in half the rate of the deadliest infections in the U.S. within five years. The plan, released on March 27, seeks to stop the unnecessary use of antibiotics on farms and in hospitals. It focuses on eliminating the use of antibiotics fed to farm animals to promote their growth. It condones, however, the routine use of antibiotics “to help animals survive crowded, stressful, and unsanitary confinement conditions,” says Mae Wu, program attorney at the environmental group Natural Resources Defense Council. The White House also seeks to fund the discovery of new antibiotics to kill drug-resistant bacteria as well as the development of new diagnostics to quickly detect the deadly germs. These so-called superbugs are linked to an estimated 23,000 deaths and 2 million infections in the U.S. each year. Called the ...

Climate Policy White House sets national emissions reduction targets in advance of global talks

The Obama Administration last week committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 26 to 28% below 2005 levels by 2025 in preparation for upcoming international climate talks in Paris. The announ...

There is more to trial history than priming in attentional capture experiments.

We used contingent attentional capture to investigate whether capture in a given trial n was affected by the cue-target position relations in a preceding trial n-1. Typically, attentional capture by a cue facilitates reaction times for targets in valid conditions (with the cue and target at the same position) relative to invalid conditions (with the cue and target at different positions). Also, this validity effect holds for cues with a feature similar to the searched-for target features (i.e., matching cues), but not for cues dissimilar to the searched-for target features (i.e., nonmatching cues), a pattern termed contingent capture because capture is assumed to be contingent on the match between the cue and top-down control settings. Here, we replicated this contingent-capture pattern with cues that were nonpredictive of the target position. In addition, we showed that during search for white onset targets, red nonmatching color cues also created a validity effect if the same nonmatching cue had been used as a valid cue in trial n-1 (Exps. 1 and 2). This intertrial contingency of the nonmatching cue's validity effect was also found if the cues and targets both changed their positions from trial to trial, rendering position priming unlikely (Exp. 2). A similar intertrial contingency was found for nonmatching white onset cues, but not for matching red color cues during search for red color targets (Exp. 3). These results are discussed in light of explanations of the contingent-capture effect and of intertrial contingencies.

Attraction of Spathius Agrili Yang (Hymenoptera: Eulophidae) to Male-Produced “Aggregation-sex Pheromone”: Differences Between the Sexes and Mating Status

Male and female Spathius agrili Yang were tested for attraction to the synthetic male pheromone. Lures consisting of a 3-component pheromone blend were placed in the center of a white filter paper target used to activate upwind flight in the wind tunnel. When virgin males and females were tested for attraction, both sexes were attracted to the lure prior to mating. However, only males were attracted to the pheromone lures after mating. In another experiment, of females that flew to the lure as virgins, half were subsequently mated and the other half were not, and mated females were no longer attracted. Then both mated and virgin females were provided with host material (emerald ash borer larvae in sticks of ash) to determine if oviposition affected attraction. They were supplied with fresh hosts ad libidum and subsequently tested for attraction for 55 days, and results showed that oviposition did not affect attraction to the pheromone. The key factor in attraction to the pheromone was mating. Because this pheromone is released by one sex and is attractive to both sexes for the purpose of mating, it qualifies as an “aggregation-sex pheromone”.

Latino Audiences, Racial/Ethnic Identification, and Responses to Stereotypical Comedy

Given the popularity of comedy, humor is an important avenue for examining the racial/ethnic stereotyping effects. Grounded in social identity theory, this study explores the effects of stereotypical comedy on Latino audiences. A 2 × 2 × 2 factorial experiment was conducted to explore how Latino participants’ (N = 150) racial/ethnic identification level (high/low) and comedians’ race/ethnicity (Latino/White) influence evaluations of a target alleged offender (Latino/White) in subsequent scenarios. Findings revealed that participants rated the comedy more favorably when the comedian was Latino compared to when the comedian was White. Moreover, participants with high levels of racial/ethnic identification rated the comedy script as significantly more stereotypical and the White target alleged offender as significantly more culpable than the Latino alleged offender.

Stereotypic vision: how stereotypes disambiguate visual stimuli.

Three studies examined how participants use race to disambiguate visual stimuli. Participants performed a first-person-shooter task in which Black and White targets appeared holding either a gun or an innocuous object (e.g., a wallet). In Study 1, diffusion analysis (Ratcliff, 1978) showed that participants rapidly acquired information about a gun when it appeared in the hands of a Black target, and about an innocuous object in the hands of a White target. For counterstereotypic pairings (armed Whites, unarmed Blacks), participants acquired information more slowly. In Study 2, eye tracking showed that participants relied on more ambiguous information (measured by visual angle from fovea) when responding to stereotypic targets; for counterstereotypic targets, they achieved greater clarity before responding. In Study 3, participants were briefly exposed to targets (limiting access to visual information) but had unlimited time to respond. In spite of their slow, deliberative responses, they showed racial bias. This pattern is inconsistent with control failure and suggests that stereotypes influenced identification of the object. All 3 studies show that race affects visual processing by supplementing objective information.