Emotional face recognition in autism and in cerebral visual impairments: In search for specificity

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is characterized by difficulties in the social domain, but also by hyper- and hypo-reactivity. Atypical visual behaviours and processing have often been observed. Nevertheless, several similar signs are also identified in other clinical conditions including cerebral visual impairments (CVI). In the present study, we investigated emotional face categorization in groups of children with ASD and CVI by comparing each group to typically developing individuals (TD) in two tasks. Stimuli were either non-filtered or filtered by low- and high-spatial frequencies (LSF and HSF). All participants completed the autism spectrum quotient score (AQ) and a complete neurovisual evaluation. The results show that while both clinical groups presented difficulties in the emotional face recognition tasks and atypical processing of filtered stimuli, they did not differ from one another. Additionally, autistic traits were observed in the CVI group and symmetrically, some visual disturbances were present in the ASD group as measured via the AQ score and a neurovisual evaluation, respectively. The present study suggests the relevance of comparing ASD to CVI by showing that emotional face categorization difficulties should not be solely considered as autism-specific but merit investigation for potential dysfunction of the visual processing neural network. These results are of interest in both clinical and research perspectives, indicating that systematic visual examination is warranted for individuals with ASD.     

A Conceptual Structure of Justice - Providing a Tool to Analyse Conceptions of Justice

Justice is a contested concept. There are many different and competing conceptions, i.e. interpretations of the concept. Different domains of justice deal with different fields of application of justice claims, such as structural justice, distributive justice, participatory justice or recognition. We present a formal conceptual structure of justice applicable to all these domains. We show that conceptions of justice can be described by specifying the following conceptual elements: the judicandum (that which is to be judged as just or unjust), the community of justice including claim holders and claim addressees, their claims (and obligations), the informational base for the assessment, the principles of justice, and on a more practical level, the instruments of justice. By specifying these conceptual elements of justice, it is possible to analyse and compare different conceptions of justice, to assess their internal consistency, to explore new definitions of justice in an analytical way, and to explicate an idea of justice in a manner that provides concrete links to the relevant context.     

Brain mechanisms involved in angry prosody change detection in school-age children and adults,revealed by electrophysiology

Voices transmit social signals through speech and/or prosody. Emotional prosody conveys key information about the emotional state of a speaker and is thus a crucial cue that one has to detect in order to develop efficient social communication. Previous studies in adults reported different brain responses to emotional than to neutral prosodic deviancy. The aim of this study was to characterize such specific emotional deviancy effects in school-age children. The mismatch negativity (MMN) and P3a evoked potentials, reflecting automatic change detection and automatic attention orienting, respectively, were obtained for neutral and emotional angry deviants in both school-age children (n = 26) and adults (n = 14). Shorter latencies were found for emotional than for neutral preattentional responses in both groups. However, whereas this effect was observed on the MMN in adults, it appeared in an early discriminative negativity preceding the MMN in children. A smaller P3a amplitude was observed for the emotional than for the neutral deviants at all ages. Overall, the brain responses involved in specific emotional change processing are already present during childhood, but responses have not yet reached an adult pattern. We suggest that these processing differences might contribute to the known improvement of emotional prosody perception between childhood and adulthood.     

Reality monitoring and metacognitive beliefs related to cognitive confidence in obsessive-compulsive disorder

The present study investigated general reality monitoring ability, and selective reality monitoring ability for anxiety relevant actions in a group of individuals with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and a group of non-anxious controls. In addition, reality monitoring confidence was assessed, as well as specific meta-cognitive beliefs related to cognitive confidence (by means of the Meta-Cognitions Questionnaire (MCQ)). No differences were found between both groups in actual reality monitoring ability. Unlike previous studies, the reality monitoring task included actions that were related to the individual concerns of the OCD patients and were ideographically selected. Nevertheless, no differential reality monitoring effect was observed for the anxiety relevant stimuli. Data from the MCQ, however, revealed that OCD patients had less overall confidence in their memory for actions and their reality monitoring ability. Analysis of the confidence ratings of the reality monitoring task showed that this reduced confidence was restricted to the neutral actions. No differences were observed for patients that reported low or high frequencies of checking behaviour. The whole of these data do not support memory deficit models of OCD, but are in line with recent emphasis on the importance of memory confidence and other meta-cognitive beliefs in OCD.     

Grasping the diagonal: controlling attention to illusory stimuli for action and perception

Since the pioneering work of [Aglioti, S., DeSouza, J. F., & Goodale, M. A. (1995). Size-contrast illusions deceive the eye but not the hand. Current Biology, 5(6), 679-685] visual illusions have been used to provide evidence for the functional division of labour within the visual system-one system for conscious perception and the other system for unconscious guidance of action. However, these studies were criticised for attentional mismatch between action and perception conditions and for the fact that grip size is not determined by the size of an object but also by surrounding obstacles. Stoettinger and Perner [Stoettinger, E., & Perner, J., (2006). Dissociating size representations for action and for conscious judgment: Grasping visual illusions without apparent obstacles. Consciousness and Cognition, 15, 269-284] used the diagonal illusion controlling for the influence of surrounding features on grip size and bimanual grasping to rule out attentional mismatch. Unfortunately, the latter objective was not fully achieved. In the present study, attentional mismatch was avoided by using only the dominant hand for action and for indicating perceived size. Results support the division of labour: Grip aperture follows actual size independent of illusory effects, while finger-thumb span indications of perceived length are clearly influenced by the illusion.     

Priming associations between bodily sensations and catastrophic misinterpretations: Specific for panic disorder?

Cognitive models assume that panic disorder is characterised by a tendency to misinterpret benign bodily symptoms (e.g. breathlessness) in a catastrophic fashion (e.g. suffocation). This is a central part of the cognitive model which presents a core focus for treatment. Several studies have supported this hypothesis. These studies have, however, almost always relied on self-report. In addition to susceptibility to biases (e.g. distortions of memory), a limitation of research based on verbal report is its inability to capture the spontaneous/automatic nature that is attributed to these catastrophic interpretations. The present paper reports on two experiments in which a priming procedure was used to test the hypothesis that panic disorder is characterised by spontaneous catastrophic interpretations and whether this effect is ‘specific’ to panic disorder. In line with predictions from the cognitive model, it was observed in the first experiment that the panic group demonstrated facilitated responses to trials consisting of a ‘symptom’ prime and a ‘catastrophic outcome’ target (e.g. breathlessness - suffocate). Similar effects were not observed for an anxious control group and a nonclinical control group, supporting the specificity of this effect. Interestingly, however, significant priming effects were observed for a group of mental health professionals (part of the healthy control group) who had no history of panic disorder. Subsequently, this unexpected observation was explicitly addressed in a second experiment, which confirmed the findings of Experiment 1. Together, these results suggest that associations between mental representations of benign bodily symptoms and catastrophic outcomes might develop as part of professional knowledge and experience, and should not necessarily be viewed as pathogenic. Theoretical and clinical implications are discussed.     

Do We Feel the Same Way If We Think the Same Way? Shared Attitudes and the Social Induction of Affect

Drawing on the literature on emotional mimicry, we argue that attitude similarity between a sender and a receiver influences the social induction of affect. Studies 1, 2, and 3 supported this reasoning by showing that similarity fostered, whereas dissimilarity blocked concordant reactions to a happy sender (but not to a sad sender). We also examined the mechanism behind these effects and found that similarity influenced liking of the happy sender but did not affect liking of the sad sender. Study 4 provided causal evidence for this idea by showing that similarity influenced the induction of positive affect through liking.     

Validation of the German Version of the Sexual Self-Esteem Inventory for Women and its Application in a Sample of Sexually and Physically Abused Women

Results regarding the association between global self-esteem and sexual behavior suggest the importance of a domain-specific construct—so-called sexual self-esteem (SSE). Prior studies suggested that SSE is malleable and found a negative impact of sexual abuse on SSE. In the present study, the German translation of the Sexual Self-Esteem Inventory-Short Form (SSEI-SF) by Zeanah and Schwarz (1996) was validated via an online survey with 557 women and then investigated in a clinical sample of women suffering from PTSD following sexual and physical abuse compared with healthy controls (n = 130). We examined differences in SSE depending on the type of abuse. Confirmatory factor analysis revealed adequate model fit, with acceptable-to-excellent reliability (α = .78–.94) and sound convergent and discriminant validity. As expected, SSEI-SF scores were significantly lower in the clinical sample than those in the healthy control group. Within the clinical sample, there were no significant differences in SSE between clients who had experienced sexual abuse and those who had experienced physical abuse, but a history of sexual abuse was significantly linked to lower SSE and SSE was related to both sexual behavior and sexual satisfaction. In conclusion, our study supports the validity and applicability of the German version of the SSEI-SF. Results regarding the differences in SSE between survivors of abuse and healthy controls contribute to the further understanding of female sexuality and have implications for treatment.     

Reading words with irregular decoding rules: A test of premorbid cognitive function?

The present study investigated the relation between level of general cognitive function and the oral reading of irregular words in Swedish. Swedish is an orthographically regular language, so many irregular words are loan words from other languages. A test comprising such words (irregularly spelled words (ISW)) was designed, and tested on a sample of 48 healthy Swedish adults, stratified according to age, gender, and level of education. The results confirmed that the ability to read words that do not follow the regular rules for decoding in Swedish was positively related to general cognitive level. ISW in combination with demographic variables gave a good estimate of general cognitive function and a better estimate than demographic variables alone. Exposure to written and spoken vocabulary during the lifespan may be indexed by ISW performance, for factor analysis suggested that this may constitute a discrete factor contributing to cognitive function.