Reversibility of the other-race effect in face recognition during childhood

Early experience with faces of a given racial type facilitates visual recognition for this type of face relative to others. To assess whether this so-called other-race effect can be reversed by subsequent experience with new types of faces, we tested adults of Korean origin who were adopted by European Caucasian families when they were between the ages of 3 to 9. The adoptees performed a face recognition task with photographs of Caucasian and Asian faces. They performed exactly like a control group of French participants, identifying the Caucasian faces better than the Asiatic ones. In contrast, a control group of Koreans showed the reverse pattern. This result indicates that the face recognition system remains plastic enough during childhood to reverse the other-race effect.     

Brief report: How many dimensions in the prosocial behavior scale? Psychometric investigation in French-speaking adolescents

The purpose of the study was to evaluate the factor structure and the reliability of the Prosocial Behavior Scale (PBS). To our knowledge, no factorial validity of the multifactorial structure of PBS has been published to date. The psychometric characteristics of the PBS were examined in several samples of French adolescents (aged 11–19, N1 = 1141, N2 = 1071, and N3 = 1640) using Confirmatory factor analyses (CFA). The original four-factor structure was not confirmed due to lack of discriminant validity. CFA led us to retain a two-factor solution with a good fit and a satisfactory reliability. Furthermore, the results support the convergent validity of the PBS: helping and caring dimensions were positively correlated with empathy. In addition, partial measurement invariance across gender and grade was attested. In conclusion, the results indicate that the French version of the PBS is a useful instrument for the assessment of prosocial behaviors in adolescence.     

Emotional prosody: sex differences in sensitivity to speech melody

Emotional prosody is defined as the ability to express emotions through variations of different parameters of the human speech, such as pitch contour, intensity and duration. A recent study has discovered clear differences between men and women in the time course of emotional prosodic processing. There are several interpretations of these intriguing results that hold promise for future studies on language comprehension.     

Perception-action coupling and expertise in interceptive actions

The goal of this experiment was to show that expertise in interceptive actions can be explained by a shorter delay in movement regulation. In this contribution, we tested tennis experts and non-experts using a simulated interceptive task. The experimental device simulated linear motion of an object toward a target on a horizontal runway. Participants had to intercept the simulated moving object with their right hand holding a cart that could slide along a horizontal track perpendicular to the runway. Three different velocity conditions were used: a constant velocity condition that maintained the initial velocity (2m/s) constant until arriving on the target; the decelerated and accelerated velocity conditions, in which the velocity suddenly changed (400 ms before its arrival on the target) from 2 to 1m/s or 3m/s, respectively. Timing accuracy and movement correction after the unexpected velocity change were analysed. The experts were more accurate in the decelerative case (-29 and -124 ms respectively), in the accelerative case (69 and 116 ms respectively), but not in the constant velocity case (2 and 13 ms respectively). Findings can be explained by the shorter visuo-motor delay (VMD: the time required to adapt the movement to the new velocity) for the experts (162 ms) than for the non-experts (221 ms). This shorter VMD offers more time to adapt the interceptive movement to the new velocity. These results can be interpreted as an optimization of the perception-action coupling with expertise.     

Computer simulations as experiments

Whereas computer simulations involve no direct physical interaction between the machine they are run on and the physical systems they are used to investigate, they are often used as experiments and yield data about these systems. It is commonly argued that they do so because they are implemented on physical machines. We claim that physicality is not necessary for their representational and predictive capacities and that the explanation of why computer simulations generate desired information about their target system is only to be found in the detailed analysis of their semantic levels. We provide such an analysis and we determine the actual consequences of physical implementation for simulations. A. Barberousse, S. Franceschelli and C. Imbert have contributed equally to this work.     

Enacted Ebola Stigma and Health-related Quality of Life in Post Ebola Epidemic: A Psychosocial Mediation Framework Through Social Support,Self-Efficacy,and Coping

Applied Research in Quality of Life - On-site experiences and reports have shown that the multiple outbreaks of Ebola virus disease (EVD) in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) resulted in...