No abstract

In line with the psychological essentialism perspective, Leyens et al. (2000) have hypothesized that people attribute different essences to groups and that they attribute more uniquely human characteristics to their own group than to out‐groups. Leyens et al. have focused on two types of emotions, which in Roman languages have specific labels, such as sentimientos and emociones in Spanish. A cross‐cultural study showed that sentimientos (or secondary emotions) are considered uniquely human emotions whereas emociones (or primary emotions) are perceived as nonuniquely human emotions. The present study focuses on whether this categorization into primary and secondary emotions is a spontaneous distinction that people use in their everyday lives, or whether, on the contrary, it is the result of experimental demands. The paradigm “Who says what to whom” was used to test this question. Geometrical shapes of different colours were systematically associated with different stimuli that varied in meaningfulness. In a first condition, shapes were associated with small or large items of furniture (meaningful categories) and with primary and secondary emotions. In a second condition, the items of furniture were replaced by words ending with a vowel or a consonant (meaningless categories). Subsequently, participants had to recognize which shape was associated with each stimulus. Intra‐category errors were significantly more numerous than inter‐category errors, except for the words ending with a vowel or a consonant. Stated otherwise, types of emotions were recognized like the meaningful difference between items of furniture. These results show that the distinction between primary and secondary emotions is an implicit one that people use spontaneously, and not as a result of task demands. The findings are discussed from the perspective of psychological essentialism and inter‐group relations.

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

The interface design is one of the essential elements for building a coherent and consistent learning object. However, it is still believed that interface design relates only to providing an aesthetic appearance to the learning object. The interface should be seen as the action space where mediatic objects are presented for user interaction. In this paper we introduce a architecture for adaptability and adaptivity of learning object"s interface. A learning object adapts itself to the user; it is not the user who must adapt her/himself to the learning object. This adaptation implies the design of the learning object interface, which includes the processes and structures for adaptivity and adaptability. The paper includes a discussion of the architecture, its components, and a detailed description of the sequence of actions for adaptive interaction.

In this paper the authors introduce a Design Methodology for Adaptivity and Adaptability of Learning Object’s Interface. The interface should be seen as the action space where mediatic objects are presented for user interaction. A learning object developed based on this methodology adapts itself to the user; it is not the user who must adapt her/himself to the learning object. This adaptation implies the design of the learning object interface, which includes the processes and structures for adaptivity and adaptability. The paper includes a discussion of methodology, the architecture and its components.