Relevance of the listener’s motor system in recalling phrases enacted by the speaker

Memory for series of action phrases improves in listeners when speakers accompany each phrase with congruent gestures compared to when speakers stay still. Studies reveal that the listeners’ motor system, at encoding, plays a crucial role in this enactment effect. We present two experiments on gesture observation, which explored the role of the listeners’ motor system at recall. The participants listened to the phrases uttered by a speaker in two conditions in each experiment. In the gesture condition, the speaker uttered the phrases with accompanying congruent gestures, and in the no-gesture condition, the speaker stayed still while uttering the phrases. The participants were then invited, in both conditions of the experiments, to perform a motor task while recalling the phrases proffered by the speaker. The results revealed that the advantage of observing gestures on memory disappears if the listeners move at recall arms and hands (same motor effectors moved by the speaker, Experiment 1a), but not when the listeners move legs and feet (different motor effectors from those moved by the speaker, Experiment 1b). The results suggest that the listeners’ motor system is involved not only during the encoding of action phrases uttered by a speaker but also when recalling these phrases during retrieval.     

Case–contrast study about parent–infant interaction in a Brazilian sample of siblings of children with autism spectrum disorders

Siblings of children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) present greater susceptibility to developmental problems, in comparison with siblings of typically developing children. The greater prevalence of mental health disorders among parents of children with ASD increases younger siblings’ vulnerability to emotional problems. The aim of this study is to compare the interaction between carers and babies aged 2 to 26 months (M = 11.7, SD = 6.9) who are siblings of children with ASD (ASD dyads) with the interaction of dyads of siblings of typically developing children (TD dyads). The protocol of Clinical Indicators of Risk for Child Development and the Coding Interactive Behaviour measures were used to evaluate interaction. ASD dyads presented higher scores of constriction in their interaction, P = .024, with babies presenting higher scores of withdrawal behavior, P = .003, and carers presenting higher scores of depressive mood, P = .008, when compared to TD dyads. The ASD dyads have interactive impairments more frequently than do the TD dyads.     

Speaker–listener incompatibility: Joint and separate processing in risky choice framing

Framing effects are considered in a conversational framework using the well-known Asian Disease problem [Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1981). The framing of decisions and the psychology of choice. Science, 211, 453–458]. Speakers’ preferred message framing is examined and its corresponding persuasiveness is assessed using listeners’ responses. The results show that speakers exhibit a marked and consistent preference for positive over negative framing (Experiment 1). Judged from listeners’ responses, this preference is effective for promoting riskless, but not risky options. The incompatibility between speakers and listeners may be resolved by noting that speakers can jointly (i.e., comparatively) assess the information and the persuasive qualities of alternative frames. In contrast, listeners are exposed only to one of these frames and, consequently, can only assess the information separately (i.e., non-comparatively). Experiments 2 and 3 demonstrate that no incompatibility exists when both speakers and listeners are either in separate, or in joint evaluation mode. Differences between risky choice and attribute framing [Levin, I.P., Schneider, S.L., & Gaeth, G.J. (1998). All frames are not created equal: a typology and critical analysis of framing effects. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 76, 149–188] are briefly discussed.     

Are families supported to come to terms with an autism diagnosis? A service evaluation of referrals to family therapy for young people with autism in one NHS trust

Young people with autism are increasingly being referred for family therapy (FT) owing to impaired family functioning, but few studies have investigated the support families receive following a diagnosis through specific NHS Trusts. This study examined (1) the proportion of autism cases referred for FT in one Trust and (2) the post-diagnostic support families received. Participants (n = 144; 9.5–19.3 years) were FT referrals between 2019–2020. Autism diagnostic status and the support families received from FT, from the neurodevelopmental (ND) service which specialises in autism, and for co-occurring conditions [e.g., cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT)] was extracted retrospectively from routine data. Forty FT referrals met autism criteria: several families did not receive FT; few were provided with support from the ND service; and if CBT was offered, no adaptations for autism were noted. Families received insufficient support following a diagnosis through this Trust. Implications include improving post-diagnostic support for families in practice.     

Daydreams and trait affect: The role of the listener’s state of mind in the emotional response to music

Music creates room for the mind to wander, mental time travel, and departures into more fantastical worlds. We examined the mediating role of daydreams and the moderating function of personality differences for the emotional response to music by using a moderated mediation approach. The results showed that the valence of daydreams played a mediating role in the reaction to the musical experience: happy music was related to more positive daydreams, which were associated with greater relaxation with the happy music and to greater liking of the happy music. Furthermore, negative affect (trait) moderated the direct effect of sad vs. happy music on the liking of the music: individuals with high scores on negative affect preferred sad music. The results are discussed with regard to the interplay of general and personality-specific processes as it is relevant to better understand the effects music can have on the listeners.     

From multimodal programs to a new cognitive–interpersonal approach in the rehabilitation of offenders

A considerable amount of meta-analytic research supports the effectiveness of cognitive–behavioral psychoeducational programs in reducing recidivism rates, in youths and adults with antisocial behavior. These same studies suggest that programs including a cognitive component are as twice as more effective in reducing recidivism rates. This paper reviews outcome studies sustaining the use of structured interventions in forensic settings. It introduces a new program, Growing Pro-Social (GPS), currently in use in several Portuguese youth rehabilitation centers and prisons. GPS is a multimodal structured group program designed for the rehabilitation of individuals with antisocial behavior. It includes 40 weekly sessions, organized into 5 sequential modules. Based on a cognitive–interpersonal theoretical framework, GPS focuses on cognitive, emotional, and behavioral change, assuming as an ultimate goal the modification of dysfunctional core beliefs underlying antisocial behavior.     

Epistemic justice as a condition of political freedom?

I shall first briefly revisit the broad idea of ‘epistemic injustice’, explaining how it can take either distributive or discriminatory form, in order to put the concepts of ‘testimonial injustice’ and ‘hermeneutical injustice’ in place. In previous work I have explored how the wrong of both kinds of epistemic injustice has both an ethical and an epistemic significance—someone is wronged in their capacity as a knower. But my present aim is to show that this wrong can also have a political significance in relation to non-domination, and so to freedom. While it is only the republican conception of political freedom that presents nondomination as constitutive of freedom, I shall argue that non-domination is best understood as a thoroughly generic liberal ideal of freedom to which even negative libertarians are implicitly committed, for non-domination is negative liberty as of right—secured non-interference. Crucially on this conception, non-domination requires that the citizen can contest interferences. Pettit specifies three conditions of contestation, each of which protects against a salient risk of the would-be contester not getting a ‘proper hearing’. But I shall argue that missing from this list is anything to protect against a fourth salient threat: the threat that either kind of epistemic injustice might disable contestation by way of an unjust deflation of either credibility or intelligibility. Thus we see that both testimonial and hermeneutical injustice can render a would-be contester dominated. Epistemic justice is thereby revealed as a constitutive condition of non-domination, and thus of a central liberal political ideal of freedom.     

Human–dog relationships as a working framework for exploring human–robot attachment: a multidisciplinary review

Animal Cognition - Robotic agents will be life-long companions of humans in the foreseeable future. To achieve such successful relationships, people will likely attribute emotions and personality,...     

Feelings of belonging in a congregation: a social–psychological assessment

The purpose of this study is to empirically evaluate a conceptual model that explores the social aspects of congregational life that promote feelings of belonging in a congregation. The following core hypotheses are embedded in this model: (1) individuals who go to church more often will receive more spiritual support from fellow church members; (2) people who get more spiritual support from coreligionists will have more practical wisdom; (3) those with more practical wisdom will be more likely to provide emotional support to the individuals in their congregation; (4) people who provide emotional support to fellow church members will be more highly valued by their coreligionists; and (5) individuals who feel they are valued by their fellow congregants will be more likely to believe that they belong in the place where they worship. Data from a recent nationwide survey (N?=?1154) of Christians provide support for each of these relationships.     

Eucharistic priority in Hilary of Poitiers' trinitarian theology: a critique of contemporary approaches to divine–human communio

The notion of koinonia or communio is at the heart of contemporary ecclesiology, and trinitarian theology has become its necessary presupposition. This article argues that the way many contemporary theologians have envisaged this link between divine and human communion is deeply problematic. Hilary of Poitiers was the first theologian of communio, and he offers a bold critique of contemporary discussions. Hilary gives eucharistic priority to trinitarian theology, that is, there is a movement from Eucharist to Trinity in his thinking on the relation between divine and human communion. A retrieval of Hilary's eucharistic priority in trinitarian discourse can provide constructive avenues in trinitarian theology which avoid the anthropocentric tendencies of contemporary social doctrines of the Trinity and reject the misdiagnosed problem of trinitarian ‘relevance’ in current discussions. Such a retrieval recovers trinitarian doctrine as a practised, performed reality, lived out in human communio itself through the eucharistic life of the Church.     

Utilizing Benchmarking to Study the Effectiveness of Parent–Child Interaction Therapy Implemented in a Community Setting

Benchmarking is a program evaluation approach that can be used to study whether the outcomes of parents/children who participate in an evidence-based program in the community approximate the outcomes found in randomized trials. This paper presents a case illustration using benchmarking methodology to examine a community implementation of Parent–Child Interaction Therapy (CI-PCIT) utilized as a child maltreatment prevention effort. Data were collected from 83 parent–child dyads. Change scores were compared to treatment and control effect sizes aggregated from the PCIT literature. Pre-post results indicated significant positive changes in child behavior for CI-PCIT completers. Benchmarking analyses revealed that parents who completed CI-PCIT reported significantly greater positive child outcomes than the aggregate control group benchmark, and significantly less than observed in the treatment benchmark. A summary of decision points and implications for utilizing this methodology in the child maltreatment field are postulated.     

Is autism really a coherent syndrome in boys,or girls?

This article is a commentary on ‘Fetal testosterone and autistic traits’ (Auyeung et al., 2009).     

Newborns learn to identify a face in eight/tenths of a second?

A number of recent studies have shown that newborns prefer to look at mother's face rather than at the face of a stranger. This preference can be seen as the result of familiarity with the mother's face, stemming from a greater number of encounters with mother's face. A schema theory can deal with this kind of recognition. Recent work with verbal stimuli has shown that newborns are sensitive to primacy and recency as well as simple familiarity. A pilot and one complete experiment were carried out to examine whether primacy and recency operated with faces as well. Results indicated that primacy, but not recency, was effective. The results show very rapid learning, learning that may outpace the capacity of any extant model of perceptual learning.     

Exposure to Violence as a Mediator of the CU–Aggression Relationship: on the Importance of Establishing the Causal Direction of Variables in a Path Analysis

The current study sought to determine which of three variables—callous-unemotional (CU) traits, exposure to violence (ETV), and aggressive offending—did the best job of mediating the other two variables. This question was addressed in a sample of 1170 male delinquents from the Pathways to Desistance study using three waves of data and the comparison pathways approach to mediation. Consistent with predictions, ETV successfully mediated the CU–aggression relationship, whereas the two control pathways (ETV?→?CU?→?aggression and CU?→?aggression → ETV) were non-significant. These results suggest that certain variables are better suited to serving as mediators than other variables. Hence, while personality-based constructs like CU traits perform well as independent variables and behavioral measures like aggressive offending make for effective dependent variables, mediation is perhaps best served by social cognitive, affective-motivational, perceptual, and experiential variables, the latter of which is the category into which exposure to violence falls. From a theoretical standpoint, these findings suggest that exposure to violence may trigger or prime aggressive offending in individuals possessing strong CU traits. Exposure to violence may therefore serve as one mechanism with the capacity to link CU traits to later aggressive offending, with implications for both prevention and intervention.     

Flexibility of working memory encoding in a sentence–picture–sound verification task

Dual-process accounts of working memory have suggested distinct encoding processes for verbal and visual information in working memory, but encoding for nonspeech sounds (e.g., tones) is not well understood. This experiment modified the sentence–picture verification task to include nonspeech sounds with a complete factorial examination of all possible stimulus pairings. Participants studied simple stimuli–pictures, sentences, or sounds–and encoded the stimuli verbally, as visual images, or as auditory images. Participants then compared their encoded representations to verification stimuli–again pictures, sentences, or sounds–in a two-choice reaction time task. With some caveats, the encoding strategy appeared to be as important or more important than the external format of the initial stimulus in determining the speed of verification decisions. Findings suggested that: (1) auditory imagery may be distinct from verbal and visuospatial processing in working memory; (2) visual perception but not visual imagery may automatically activate concurrent verbal codes; and (3) the effects of hearing a sound may linger for some time despite recoding in working memory. We discuss the role of auditory imagery in dual-process theories of working memory.     

Production of recrystallized nano-grains in a fine-grained Cu–Zn alloy

A fine-grained Cu–30%Zn alloy sheet was rolled at 77 K to induce ultrafine mechanical twins. Subsequent annealing of the rolled alloy at temperatures up to 543 K led to the uniform appearance of recrystallized ultrafine grains (UFGs), which contained numerous annealing twins. Average grain sizes of 150 ～ 300 nm were produced in this way. The formation of such UFGs during annealing is attributed to the high nucleus density associated with the fine initial grain size as well as to the high densities of mechanical twins and dislocations produced by cryorolling. The high driving force for recrystallization enabled the use of relatively low annealing temperatures, which limited the subsequent grain growth.     

Prediction of termination migration of a rod-type particle in Ti–6Al–4Fe alloy

The kinetics for the termination migration of a rod-type alpha particle in a two-phase Ti alloy was predicted on the basis of the edge recession theory. The developed model quantified the effect of geometrical dimensions and diffusional factors on the spheroidization rate. Comparison with the experimental results of Ti–6Al–4Fe showed that the model can provide a reasonable prediction of the time to complete the static spheroidization of rod-type particles.     

Can a shuttlebox computer analog be used to condition human avoidance behavior?

Freedman (1990) introduced a computer analog of the shuttlebox paradigm and presented results to show that this analog could be used for studying human avoidance conditioning. In the present study, a first experimental phase was conducted to test how the fact that the tone was considered aversive in the instructions and the intensity of this tone affect avoidance behavior. In a transfer-of-control test phase, it was tested as to whether the warning stimulus presented as a cue to the aversive stimulus had acquired either aversive or informative quality. An effect of instructions was observed for both levels of the auditive stimulus, and a stimulus effect was found for those groups that were given the instructions that described the tone as aversive. In the case of subjects who in the first phase achieved a certain learning criterion, it was recorded how often they in the second phase selected a condition in which the warning signal of the first phase was not presented. No transfer of control was observed. Thus, no positive evidence was found indicating that Freedman’s computer analog could be used for studying human avoidance conditioning.     

Synthesis of a single phase of high-entropy Laves intermetallics in the Ti–Zr–V–Cr–Ni equiatomic alloy

The high-entropy Ti–Zr–V–Cr–Ni (20 at% each) alloy consisting of all five hydride-forming elements was successfully synthesised by the conventional melting and casting as well as by the melt-spinning technique. The as-cast alloy consists entirely of the micron size hexagonal Laves Phase of C14 type; whereas, the melt-spun ribbon exhibits the evolution of nanocrystalline Laves phase. There was no evidence of any amorphous or any other metastable phases in the present processing condition. This is the first report of synthesising a single phase of high-entropy complex intermetallic compound in the equiatomic quinary alloy system. The detailed characterisation by X-ray diffraction, scanning and transmission electron microscopy and energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy confirmed the existence of a single-phase multi-component hexagonal C14-type Laves phase in all the as-cast, melt-spun and annealed alloys. The lattice parameter a = 5.08 Å and c = 8.41 Å was determined from the annealed material (annealing at 1173 K). The thermodynamic calculations following the Miedema’s approach support the stability of the high-entropy multi-component Laves phase compared to that of the solid solution or glassy phases. The high hardness value (8.92 GPa at 25 g load) has been observed in nanocrystalline high-entropy alloy ribbon without any cracking. It implies that high-yield strength (~3.00 GPa) and the reasonable fracture toughness can be achieved in this high-entropy material.