What are you looking at? Infants’ neural processing of an adult's object‐directed eye gaze

Previous research suggests that by 4 months of age infants use the eye gaze of adults to guide their attention and facilitate processing of environmental information. Here we address the question of how infants process the relation between another person and an external object. We applied an ERP paradigm to investigate the neural processes underlying the perception of the direction of an adult's eye gaze in 4-month-old infants. Infants showed differential processing of an adult's eye gaze, which was directed at a simultaneously presented object compared to non-object-directed eye gaze. This distinction was evident in two ERP components: The Negative component, reflecting attentional processes, and the positive slow wave, which is involved in memory encoding. The implications of these findings for the development of joint attention and related social cognitive functions are discussed.     

What’s in a name? Lexical knowledge drives infants’ visual preferences in the absence of referential input

Seventeen-month-old infants were presented with pairs of images, in silence or with the non-directive auditory stimulus ‘look!’. The images had been chosen so that one image depicted an item whose name was known to the infant, and the other image depicted an image whose name was not known to the infant. Infants looked longer at images for which they had names than at images for which they did not have names, despite the absence of any referential input. The experiment controlled for the familiarity of the objects depicted: in each trial, image pairs presented to infants had previously been judged by caregivers to be of roughly equal familiarity. From a theoretical perspective, the results indicate that objects with names are of intrinsic interest to the infant. The possible causal direction for this linkage is discussed and it is concluded that the results are consistent with Whorfian linguistic determinism, although other construals are possible. From a methodological perspective, the results have implications for the use of preferential looking as an index of early word comprehension.     

Action representations activated by task‐irrelevant information: Is it really irrelevant?

Accessing action knowledge is believed to rely on the activation of action representations through the retrieval of functional, manipulative, and spatial information associated with objects. However, it remains unclear whether action representations can be activated in this way when the object information is irrelevant to the current judgment. The present study investigated this question by independently manipulating the correctness of three types of action‐related information: the functional relation between the two objects, the grip applied to the objects, and the orientation of the objects. In each of three tasks in Experiment 1, participants evaluated the correctness of only one of the three information types (function, grip or orientation). Similar results were achieved with all three tasks: “correct” judgments were facilitated when the other dimensions were correct; however, “incorrect” judgments were facilitated when the other two dimensions were both correct and also when they were both incorrect. In Experiment 2, when participants attended to an action‐irrelevant feature (object color), there was no interaction between function, grip, and orientation. These results clearly indicate that action representations can be activated by retrieval of functional, manipulative, and spatial knowledge about objects, even though this is task‐irrelevant information.     

Volunteering and well‐being: is pleasure‐based rather than pressure‐based prosocial motivation that which is related to positive effects?

This article seeks to establish whether prosocial motivation in a sample of 251 volunteers is based on pleasure and not on pressure, which is related to the states of general well‐being (hedonic and eudaimonic measures) and the various states of well‐being specifically associated with volunteerism (volunteer satisfaction, volunteer engagement, and study enjoyment), all of this irrespective of the age of the volunteers. An analysis of partial correlations and linear regression leads to the conclusion that volunteerism undertaken as a non‐obligatory, planned helping activity, sustained over time and within an organizational context, is not always associated with positive effects in terms of well‐being. It seems that these positive effects are related to pleasure‐based prosocial motivation.     

Why Be an Anti‐Individualist?

Anti-individualists claim that concepts are individuated with an eye to purely external facts about a subject's environment about which she may be ignorant or mistaken. This paper offers a novel reason for thinking that anti-individualistic concepts are an ineliminable part of commonsense psychology. Our commitment to anti-individualism, I argue, is ultimately grounded in a rational epistemic agent's commitment to refining her own representational practices in the light of new and surprising information about her environment. Since anti-individualism is an implicit part of responsible epistemic practices, we cannot abandon it without compromising our own epistemic agency. The story I tell about the regulation of one's own representational practices yields a new account of the identity conditions for anti-individualistic concepts.     

The recognition heuristic in memory‐based inference: is recognition a non‐compensatory cue?

The recognition heuristic makes the strong claim that probabilistic inferences in which a recognized object is compared to an unrecognized one are made solely on the basis of whether the objects are recognized or not, ignoring all other available cues. This claim has been seriously challenged by a number of studies that have shown a clear effect of additional cue knowledge. In most of these studies, either recognition knowledge was acquired during the experiment, and/or additional cues were provided to participants. However, the recognition heuristic is more likely to be a tool for exploiting natural (rather than induced) recognition when inferences have to be made from memory. In our study on natural recognition and inferences from memory, around 85% of the inferences followed recognition information even when participants had learned three cues that contradicted recognition and when some of the contradictory cues were deemed more valid than recognition. Nevertheless, there were strong individual differences in the use of recognition. Whereas about half of the participants chose the recognized object regardless of the number of conflicting cues—suggestive of the hypothesized noncompensatory processing of recognition—the remaining participants were influenced by the additional knowledge. The former group of participants also tended to give higher estimates of recognition's validity. In addition, we found that the use of recognition for an inference may be affected by whether additional cue knowledge has been learned outside or within the experimental setting. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Partner‐AMP and well‐being: Evidence for an implicit secure base script?

The current research presents an adapted Affect Misattribution Procedure (AMP) to assess the aspects of the relational schema of romantic partners that are difficult to verbalize and tests the prediction that a positive implicit image of the partner constitutes a psychological resource that increases well‐being. In Study 1, the partner‐AMP predicted well‐being in student participants even after controlling for explicit partner attitudes and socially desirable responding. In Study 2, the partner‐AMP was assessed in women with a recent history of physical abuse and a control group. As expected, the partner‐AMP was related to group membership and predicted well‐being over and above explicit partner attitudes and battering experience. The results are compatible with the notion of an implicit secure base schema.     

Justifying Counterproductive Work Behaviors and an Integrity‐based Conditional Reasoning Test: Back to the drawing board?

Conditional reasoning tests (CRT) were proposed as an innovative approach to implicitly measure the rationalizations toward counterproductive work behaviors (CWB) often associated with overt integrity tests. The authors first set out to map a typology of justification mechanisms for general CWB, and to then validate a new integrity‐based CRT in both honest and faking testing conditions. Unfortunately, while demonstrating encouraging construct and criterion validity in the honest testing condition, the test was less resistant to faking than originally anticipated, and ceased to be valid in the faking condition. Overall, the results provide theoretical insight toward understanding how employees justify CWB, but raise concerns regarding the potential operational limitations of at least some CRTs.     

Report from borderland: an addendum to ‘What works?’

Abstract :  Based on personal experience the following paper briefly argues that forming a supportive relationship prior to analysis is important for certain 'borderline' patients. Should such a relationship not be established analysis may prove destructive, despite the best of intentions. Direct expression of feeling is important here but, it is suggested, has been undervalued in the history of analysis because of fear of spontaneity. This also affects current day writing about analysis.     

White‐Collar Criminals: The ‘Kinder,Gentler’ Offender?

Even though white‐collar criminals (WCCs) cause financial damage and, at times, emotional and physical harm to individuals, organisations, and consumers, their crimes are viewed as being less harmful than street‐level crimes. Misperceptions that WCCs commit financial crimes because of a temporary moral lapse that represents an ‘out of character’ act for the offender still permeate the criminal justice system and academic venues. Yet, research shows that WCCs may display a pattern of criminal thinking that parallels street‐level offenders coupled with the same behavioural traits that serve as risk factors for offences to occur. Furthermore, the belief that WCCs are non‐violent is misguided, as there is a subgroup of WCCs who are willing to resort to violence, namely homicide, to prevent their fraud schemes from being discovered and revealed. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Are stepfathers’ education levels associated with the intelligence of their stepsons? A register‐based study of Norwegian half‐brothers

We examined the relationship between the parents’ education levels and the adult intelligence of their children in a population‐based, nationwide sample of Norwegian half‐brothers with different fathers (2,016 pairs of half‐brothers). In a family where the mother has two children with different men, the firstborn child usually lives with the younger child's father during a period of their childhood. This makes it possible to study the non‐genetic effects of paternal education on children's development. Results showed that the education level of the younger half‐brother's father was positively associated with the intelligence score of the older half‐brother. The education level of the older half‐brother's father was not associated with the intelligence score of the younger half‐brother. Firstborn men whose half‐brothers’ fathers had high levels of education had intelligence scores that were 33% (95% confidence interval: 18–47%) of a standard deviation higher than those of firstborn men whose half‐brothers’ fathers had low levels of education, after adjustment for the biological fathers’ education levels, mothers’ education levels, and other background factors. These findings are compatible with the hypothesis that a child's family environment exerts an effect on the cognitive abilities of the child that lasts into adulthood.     

Is color an intrinsic property of object representation?

The role of color in object representation was examined by using a variation of the Stroop paradigm in which observers named the displayed colors of objects or words. In experiment 1, colors of color-diagnostic objects were manipulated to be either typical or atypical of the object (eg a yellow banana versus a purple banana). A Stroop-like effect was obtained, with faster color-naming times for the typical as compared to the atypical condition. In experiment 2, naming colors on words specifying these same color-diagnostic objects reversed this pattern, with the typical condition producing longer response times than the atypical condition. In experiment 3, a blocked condition design that used the same words and colors as experiment 2 produced the standard Stroop-like facilitation for the typical condition. These results indicate that color is an intrinsic property of an object's representation at multiple levels. In experiment 4, we examined the specific level(s) at which color-shape associations arise by following the tasks used in experiments 1 and 2 with a lexical-decision task in which some items were conceptually related to items shown during color naming (eg banana/monkey). Priming for these associates was observed following color naming of words, but not pictures, providing further evidence that the color-shape associations responsible for the differing effects obtained in experiments 1 and 2 are due to the automatic activation of color-shape associations at different levels of representation.     

Acute Alcohol Co‐Ingestion and Hospital‐Treated Deliberate Self‐Poisoning: Is There an Effect on Subsequent Self‐Harm?

The aim of this study was to determine the relationship between alcohol co‐ingestion in an index deliberate self‐poisoning (DSP) episode with repeated DSP and subsequent suicide. A retrospective cohort study was conducted involving 5,669 consecutive index presentations to a toxicology service following DSP between January 1, 1996, and October 31, 2010. Records were probabilistically matched to National Coronial Information System data to identify subsequent suicide. Index DSPs were categorized on co‐ingestion of alcohol, and primary outcomes analyzed were repetition of any DSP, rates of repeated DSP, time to first repeat DSP, and subsequent suicide. Co‐ingestion of alcohol occurred in 35.9% of index admissions. There was no difference between those who co‐ingested alcohol (ALC+) and those who did not co‐ingest alcohol (ALC?) in terms of proportion of repeat DSP, number of DSP events, or time to first repeat DSP event. Forty‐one (1.0%) cases were probabilistically matched to a suicide death; there was no difference in the proportion of suicide between ALC+ and ALC? at 1 or 3 years. There was no significant relationship between the co‐ingestion of alcohol in an index DSP and subsequent repeated DSP or suicide. Clinically, this highlights the importance of mental health assessment of patients that present after DSP, irrespective of alcohol co‐ingestion at the time of event.     

Beyond the distributional input? A developmental investigation of asymmetry in infants’ categorization of cats and dogs

Two experiments are reported using a visual familiarization categorization procedure. In both experiments, infants were familiarized with sets of stimuli previously shown to contain asymmetric feature distributions that support an asymmetry in young infants' categorization of cats and dogs (i.e. infants' cat category excludes dogs but their dog category includes cats). In Experiment 1, the asymmetry was replicated in 4-month-old infants. In contrast, 10-month-old infants demonstrated exclusive category representations for both cats and dogs. In Experiment 2, an additional group of 10-month-olds demonstrated exclusive representations for both cats and dogs under conditions of very limited within-task category familiarization. Potential mechanisms underlying the shift from an asymmetric to a symmetric pattern of categorization in the first year are discussed.