Embodied perception with others’ bodies in mind: Stereotype priming influence on the perception of spatial environment

It has been shown that spatial perception is not only a function of optical variables but also a function of people’s physiological potential. When this potential is reduced, either due to age or fatigue, individuals have been observed to report hills steeper and distances longer. Two studies have demonstrated that the experience of an actual reduction in capacities is not necessary. After being primed with the elderly category, young participants estimated the gradient of various pathways and that of a hill steeper (Study 1) and distances across a grassy field longer (Study 2) than their non-primed counterparts. The activation of a social category has often been found to result in stereotype-congruent behaviors. The present findings indicate that, in addition to this well-documented behavioral mimetism, this activation also leads to perceptual mimetism. I suggest that it helps facilitate social interactions by investing the partners with a shared vision of their environment.     

Daniel levinson and his theory of adult development: A reminiscence and some clarifications

I offer some reminiscences occasioned by the death of Daniel Levinson, a modern pioneer in the study of the human life cycle. I clarify three controversial aspects of Levinson's theory—its universality, the role of critical life events, and the place of relationships—as well as briefly foreshadow findings from his forthcoming book on women. I show that relationships to people, enterprises, and social institutions are the stuff out of which the individual life structure—Levinson's central concept—is formed. Levinson's dream was of a society in which the developmental needs of adults were better understood and met so that they could more generatively fill their roles in the institutions upon which the young depend. He thought this essential to the evolution of a society that would be both more competent and more humane. In this dream, which was a product of his own difficult mid-life transition and a measure of the success he achieved in integrating its polarities, Levinson united a warm, scientific interest in others with an affectionate curiosity about nature.     

The world in black and white: Ostracism enhances the categorical perception of social information

In two experiments, ostracized individuals showed more pronounced categorical perception of inclusion- and exclusion-related stimuli. Specifically, ostracism enhanced the ability to distinguish between-category differences (e.g., between happy and angry faces) relative to within-category differences (e.g., between two happy expressions). Participants were socially included or excluded via Cyberball (a virtual ball-tossing task). In Experiment 1, ostracized participants showed greater perceptual acuity in distinguishing between subtly happy and angry expressions combined with a reduced ability to discriminate expressions within each expression category. Experiment 2 found analogous categorical perception effects for targets varying on the dimension of race. Importantly, this effect was specific to social information; categorical perception of non-social objects was not qualified by social exclusion. These results suggest that ostracism exacerbates categorical perception, attuning perceivers to the differences between various inclusion- and exclusion-related categories relative to within category acuity, making the world appear more ‘black-and-white’ than it might otherwise.     

Self‐esteem,perception of relationships,and emotional distress: A cross‐cultural study

This study examined the relative importance of self‐esteem, family cohesion, and support from friends in predicting depressed mood and anxiety in Japanese and American college students. Contrary to expectations, self‐esteem was the strongest predictor of emotional distress in both groups of students. Nevertheless, consistent with predictions derived from Markus and Kitayama's theory of self‐construals, family cohesion accounted for a significantly larger percentage of the variance in predicting emotional distress in Japan than in the United States. In both countries, the relations between support from friends and the measures of emotional distress were entirely mediated by self‐esteem. However, among Japanese students, family cohesion accounted for additional significant variance in predicting the measures of emotional distress, even after controlling for self‐esteem.     

Early perception-action coupling: eye movements and the development of object perception

We investigated the scanning strategies used by 2- to 3.5-month-old infants when viewing partly occluded object displays. Eye movements were recorded with a corneal reflection system as the infants observed stimuli depicting two rod parts above and below an occluding box. Stimulus parameters were chosen on the basis of past research demonstrating the importance of motion, occluder width, and edge alignment to perception of object unity. Results indicated that the infants tailored scanning to display characteristics, engaging in more extensive scanning when unity perception was challenged by a wide occluder or misaligned edges. In addition, older infants tended to scan the lower parts of the displays more frequently than did younger infants. Exploration of individual differences, however, revealed marked contrasts in specific scanning styles across infants. The findings are consistent with views of perceptual development stressing the importance of information processing skills and self-directed action to the acquisition of object knowledge.     

Narrative competence and constructive developmental theory: A proposal for rewriting theBildungsroman in the postmodern world

Some of the chief characteristics of the narrative psychology of Bruner, Polkinghorne, Sarbin, Freeman, Howard, and White and Epston are outlined with implications for therapy discussed. Narrative psychology is then related to some current models of adult development, including those of Kegan, Perry, Belenky, Labouvie-Vief, Levinson, Basseches, and Pascual-Leone. Types of narrative competence are discussed and an argument is made that developmental readiness for narrative must be considered if narrative approaches are going to be applied. Different types of narrative approaches are shown to be indicative of particular developmental stages. The social relativism of narrative psychology is addressed and it is argued that developmental models provide a scheme for assessing the maturity of alternative narrative constructions.     

Individual,organizational, and societal empowerment: A study of the processes in a Nicaraguan agricultural cooperative

Defined and examined the personal (material and psychological), organizational, and societal goals of empowerment. This exploration of empowerment was primarily based on 7 months of participant observation in an agricultural cooperative in Nicaragua in 1989. The research focused on the perspectives of the participants, internal program functioning, and relations to local organizations and the national context. This study shows that some factors in the cooperative setting enhanced empowerment at each level, while others impeded its development. The cooperative met immediate needs, and provided social status and a degree of autonomy in society. Its structure allowed for broad participating in decision making and control. “Sense-making” and informal consciousness-raising processes facilitated psychological empowerment. These processes were hidden in apparent disorganization and thus not recognized by local service providers. Fears of speaking in meetings and the reluctance to face crises were intense and influential. Opinions and behavior of outsiders and the environmental context, although seemingly helpful, also had detrimental effects. Parallels are drawn to empowerment theory and findings from other populations. This article is based on the author's unpublished dissertation in Social Psychology at the Claremont Graduate School. The name of the cooperative was not disclosed to protect the members. The author thanks Douglas Perkins for his helpful support and valuable comments on earlier drafts.     

The psychophysics of chasing: A case study in the perception of animacy

Psychologists have long been captivated by the perception of animacy – the fact that even simple moving shapes may appear to engage in animate, intentional, and goal-directed movements. Here we report several new types of studies of a particularly salient form of perceived animacy: chasing, in which one shape (the ‘wolf’) pursues another shape (‘the sheep’). We first demonstrate two new cues to perceived chasing – chasing subtlety (the degree to which the wolf deviates from perfectly ‘heat-seeking’ pursuit) and directionality (whether and how the shapes ‘face’ each other). We then use these cues to show how it is possible to assess the objective accuracy of such percepts, and to distinguish the immediate perception of chasing from those more subtle (but nevertheless real) types of ‘stalking’ that cannot be readily perceived. We also report several methodological advances. Previous studies of the perception of animacy have faced two major challenges: (a) it is difficult to measure perceived animacy with quantitative precision; and (b) task demands make it difficult to distinguish perception from higher-level inferences about animacy. We show how these challenges can be met, at least in our case study of perceived chasing, via tasks based on dynamic visual search (the Find-the-Chase task) and a new type of interactive display (the Don’t-Get-Caught! task).     

A systematic, large-scale study of synaesthesia: implications for the role of early experience in lexical-colour associations

For individuals with synaesthesia, stimuli in one sensory modality elicit anomalous experiences in another modality. For example, the sound of a particular piano note may be 'seen' as a unique colour, or the taste of a familiar food may be 'felt' as a distinct bodily sensation. We report a study of 192 adult synaesthetes, in which we administered a structured questionnaire to determine the relative frequency and characteristics of different types of synaesthetic experience. Our data suggest the prevalence of synaesthesia in the adult population is approximately 1 in 1150 females and 1 in 7150 males. The incidence of left-handedness in our sample was within the normal range, contrary to previous claims. We did, however, find that synaesthetes are more likely to be involved in artistic pursuits, consistent with anecdotal reports. We also examined responses from a subset of 150 synaesthetes for whom letters, digits and words induce colour experiences ('lexical-colour' synaesthesia). There was a striking consistency in the colours induced by certain letters and digits in these individuals. For example, 'R' elicited red for 36% of the sample, 'Y' elicited yellow for 45%, and 'D' elicited brown for 47%. Similar trends were apparent for a group of non-synaesthetic controls who were asked to associate colours with letters and digits. Based on these findings, we suggest that the development of lexical-colour synaesthesia in many cases incorporates early learning experiences common to all individuals. Moreover, many of our synaesthetes experienced colours only for days of the week, letters or digits, suggesting that inducers that are part of a conventional sequence (e.g. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday...; A, B, C...; 1, 2, 3...) may be particularly important in the development of synaesthetic inducer-colour pairs. We speculate that the learning of such sequences during an early critical period determines the particular pattern of lexical-colour links, and that this pattern then generalises to other words.     

Morphological constraints in children’s spoken language comprehension: A visual world study of plurals inside compounds in English

Many previous studies have shown that the human language processor is capable of rapidly integrating information from different sources during reading or listening. Yet, little is known about how this ability develops from child to adulthood. To gain insight into how children (in comparison to adults) handle different kinds of linguistic information during on-line language comprehension, the current study investigates a well-known morphological phenomenon that is subject to both structural and semantic constraints, the plurals-in-compounds effect, i.e. the dislike of plural (specifically regular plural) modifiers inside compounds (e.g. rats eater). We examined 96 seven-to-twelve-year-old children and a control group of 32 adults measuring their eye-gaze changes in response to compound-internal plural and singular forms. Our results indicate that children rely more upon structural properties of language (in the present case, morphological cues) early in development and that the ability to efficiently integrate information from multiple sources takes time for children to reach adult-like levels.     

Victim Blaming in Young, Middle-Aged, and Older Adults: Variations on the Severity Effect

It has been long known that people blame victims for the bad things that happen to them, and that people blame victims more when the victims experience severe difficulties than when they experience minor difficulties, even if the victims were not particularly irresponsible. Little previous research has examined victim blaming in middle-age and older adults. One hundred and forty-five adults in 3 age groups (18–34, 35–59, and 60–84) read 4 scenarios (2 accidents, 1 crime, and 1 fire) imbedded in other scenarios. The scenarios were varied so that the victim is either very irresponsible or not very irresponsible, and the outcome is mild or severe. The oldest group of participants blamed the victims more than the other groups. However, in contrast to the typical severity effect, the oldest group blamed the very irresponsible victim more when the outcome was mild than they did when the outcome was severe.     

Sing that tune: Infants’ perception of melody and lyrics and the facilitation of phonetic recognition in songs

To better understand how infants process complex auditory input, this study investigated whether 11-month-old infants perceive the pitch (melodic) or the phonetic (lyric) components within songs as more salient, and whether melody facilitates phonetic recognition. Using a preferential looking paradigm, uni-dimensional and multi-dimensional songs were tested; either the pitch or syllable order of the stimuli varied. As a group, infants detected a change in pitch order in a 4-note sequence when the syllables were redundant (experiment 1), but did not detect the identical pitch change with variegated syllables (experiment 2). Infants were better able to detect a change in syllable order in a sung sequence (experiment 2) than the identical syllable change in a spoken sequence (experiment 1). These results suggest that by 11 months, infants cannot “ignore” phonetic information in the context of perceptually salient pitch variation. Moreover, the increased phonetic recognition in song contexts mirrors findings that demonstrate advantages of infant-directed speech. Findings are discussed in terms of how stimulus complexity interacts with the perception of sung speech in infancy.     

Influence of memory strategies on memory test performance: A study in healthy and pathological aging

ABSTRACT

The ability to generate memory strategies is a key factor in the performance of episodic memory tasks. Whether the ability to generate memory strategies exerts an influence in the performance of memory tests in the elderly population is still a matter of debate. Here we present results from an experimental memory task (Test of Memory Strategies, TMS), comprised of five lists of words starting from an incidental learning task, and four more lists which progressively gain in their external organization of the material, reducing the necessity of mobilizing complex memory strategies. TMS has been applied to four groups of elderly patients (amnestic Mild Cognitive Impairment – aMCI, multidomain (mMCI), and Vascular Cognitive Impairment – VCI and Depression) and a healthy aging group. In conditions with low organization of the material, the mMCI and VCI groups (both showing a greater executive function impairment) have shown lower performance. However, as the material was progressively organized, they improved their performance. The aMCI group showed similar performance to the control group at the lower level of external organization but did not improve performance in conditions with a high level of external organization. The mMCI and VCI groups showed lower performance on all TMS conditions compared with controls. Discriminant analysis revealed 90% sensitivity and specificity to differentiate between groups based on TMS conditions. These results indicate how executive functions influence performance on memory tasks in elderly subjects with different neuropsychological profiles.     

Emotions as strategic information: Effects of other’s emotional expressions on fixed-pie perception, demands, and integrative behavior in negotiation

Negotiators often fail to reach integrative (”win-win”) agreements because they think that their own and other’s preferences are diametrically opposed—the so-called fixed-pie perception. We examined how verbal (Experiment 1) and nonverbal (Experiment 2) emotional expressions may reduce fixed-pie perception and promote integrative behavior. In a two-issue computer-simulated negotiation, participants negotiated with a counterpart emitting one of the following emotional response patterns: (1) anger on both issues, (2) anger on participant’s high priority issue and happiness on participant’s low-priority issue, (3) happiness on high priority issue and anger on low-priority issue, or (4) happiness on both issues. In both studies, the third pattern reduced fixed-pie perception and increased integrative behavior, whereas the second pattern amplified bias and reduced integrative behavior. Implications for how emotions shape social exchange are discussed.     

Reorientation in the real world: the development of landmark use and integration in a natural environment

An influential series of studies have argued that young children are unable to use landmark information to reorient. However, these studies have used artificial experimental environments that may lead to an underestimation of the children’s ability. We tested whether young children could reorient using landmarks in an ecologically valid setting. Children aged between 3 and 7 years completed a reorientation task in open parkland, and the properties of the search array (size and distinctiveness) were manipulated in a within-subjects design. Responses were recorded using Global Positioning Systems technology. All age groups performed above chance level, demonstrating that young children can reorient using natural landmarks. This behaviour was modulated by the nature of the search array: children were more accurate when the locations were spaced in a large array, and when the search locations were distinctively coloured. This suggests that the integration between landmarks and search locations, at different spatial scales, is a key factor in characterising human reorientation in the real world.     

Contribution of the visual perception and graphic production systems to the copying of complex geometrical drawings: A developmental study

The aim of this study was to determine the contribution of the visual perception and graphic production systems [Van Sommers, P. (1989). A system for drawing and drawing-related neuropsychology. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 6, 117–164] to the manifestation of the “Centripetal Execution Principle” (CEP), a graphic rule for the copying of drawings consisting of embedded simple geometric shapes from the outside shape to the inside shape. Children aged 4–8 years copied two types of model that differed in the visual salience of one of the simple geometric shapes (drawn in bold or normal weight lines), producing the drawings either by graphic execution (freehand) or by superimposing the simple geometric shapes. The results indicated that the frequency of CEP depended both on the type of model and on the drawing context in the youngest children. They suggest that the CEP is determined by the structure of the representation of the models and the planning of the execution of the drawings. The developmental differences in the effects of visual salience and execution context are discussed in the light of the development of representational flexibility and planning abilities. These data are consistent with a dissociation between the visual perception and graphic production systems and account for their interaction.     

Perceptual and decisional contributions to audiovisual interactions in the perception of apparent motion: a signal detection study

Motion information available to different sensory modalities can interact at both perceptual and post-perceptual (i.e., decisional) stages of processing. However, to date, researchers have only been able to demonstrate the influence of one of these components at any given time, hence the relationship between them remains uncertain. We addressed the interplay between the perceptual and post-perceptual components of information processing by assessing their influence on performance within the same experimental paradigm. We used signal detection theory to discriminate changes in perceptual sensitivity (d') from shifts in response criterion (c) in performance on a detection (Experiment 1) and a classification (Experiment 2) task regarding the direction of auditory apparent motion streams presented in noise. In the critical conditions, a visual motion distractor moving either leftward or rightward was presented together with the auditory motion. The results demonstrated a significant decrease in sensitivity to the direction of the auditory targets in the crossmodal conditions as compared to the unimodal baseline conditions that was independent of the relative direction of the visual distractor. In addition, we also observed significant shifts in response criterion, which were dependent on the relative direction of the distractor apparent motion. These results support the view that the perceptual and decisional components involved in audiovisual interactions in motion processing can coexist but are largely independent of one another.     

Assessing mobility in an aging society: Personal and built environment factors associated with older people’s subjective transportation deficiency in the US

This study analyzed subjective transportation deficiency, in terms of missing activities due to lack of transportation, of the older population aged 65 and over in the United States. This study found that those who have lower personal automobile accessibility and minority females are more likely to experience transportation deficiency. Older people who have lower income, have lived for a relatively short period (3–10 years) in their communities, and live with minors are also more likely to experience lack of transportation. Older people who live in suburban communities have greater transportation deficiency, but the placement of activity locations within walking distance can improve transportation deficiency among older people who do not drive. The availability of public transit services within walking distance and knowledge about transportation alternatives do not significantly affect the transportation deficiency of the older population. The results indicate that a substantive focus should be given to how to help the older population keep driving as long as they can, and aid communities with high concentrations of older minority females. Also, developing activity clusters containing commercial and social service facilities in suburban areas with high concentrations of older populations, has the potential to alleviate transportation deficiency among this widely observed group of people who age in place.     

Cross‐cultural study on adult age‐group differences in the recall of the literal and interpretive meanings of narrative text1

Abstract: This study examined cultural and age differences in the recall of the literal and interpretive meanings of narrative text. Twenty Japanese younger adults (age: M = 21.05, SD = 1.02), 20 Japanese older adults (age: M = 66.95, SD = 1.71), 20 American younger adults (age M = 21.7, SD = 1.76), and 16 American older adults (age M = 69.56, SD = 3.43) participated in this study. One story rich in both literal and interpretive content was used as a stimulus text for two recall tasks, to retell and interpret the story. The response task order was counterbalanced across the participants for each group. When asked to retell a story as close to the original as possible, the younger adults in both of the two cultural groups recalled more of the literal propositions than did the older adults. Both older and younger adults in the two cultural groups recalled more of the main ideas relative to the details; however, when asked to interpret the same story, more older than younger adults represented deep and synthetic representations of the story's interpretive meanings in the Japanese group. The interpretive responses by both the older and younger adults were almost to the same extent on depth; however, the younger adults’ responses were slightly higher on synthesis in the American group. These interpretive patterns stem from cultural background.