The role of pupil size in communication. Is there room for learning?

The eyes are extremely important for communication. The muscles around the eyes express emotional states and the size of the pupil signals whether a person is aroused and alert or bored and fatigued. Pupil size is an overlooked social signal, yet is readily picked up by observers. Observers mirror their own pupil sizes in response, which can influence social impressions. In a landmark study by Hess [1975. The role of pupil size in communication. Scientific American, 233(5), 110–119] it was shown that individuals with large pupils are perceived more positively than individuals with small pupils. In that behavioral study, participants were asked to draw pupils in line drawings of faces with empty irises and they drew large pupils in the happy face, and small ones in the angry face. The current study tested 579 participants (aged 4–80 years old) and extended this work by showing that this association between large (small) pupils and a positive (negative) impression develops over age and is absent in children. Several explanations for how individuals through interactions with close others learn that large pupils mean care, interest and attention and small pupils the opposite, are discussed. To conclude, this study shows that pupil size and emotion perception are intertwined but that their relationship develops over age.     

Judging a book by its cover: the unconscious influence of pupil size on consumer choice

Past research suggests that men perceive women with large pupils as especially attractive. We employed an innovative methodology to examine whether this effect influences consumer decision-making. A popular psychology book was published with two slightly different front covers. Both covers contained the same photograph of a woman; however, the woman's pupils on one cover were digitally enlarged. Readers indicated whether they were male or female, and whether they possessed the cover with small or large pupils. A significantly greater percentage of men than women had chosen the cover with the large pupils. None of the participants who attempted to guess the nature of the experiment was correct, suggesting that the influence exerted by pupil size was unconscious. These findings provide further support for the notion that people's judgments are unconsciously swayed by pupil size, and demonstrate that this effect operates in a real world setting.     

Academic outcomes in school classes with markedly disruptive pupils

The aim of the present research is to investigate the degree to which average academic outcomes in secondary school classes are associated with the inclusion of markedly disruptive pupils. Findings are based on two separate studies among pupils in Norwegian secondary schools. The first study included a relatively large sample of 2,332 pupils from 105 school classes and used pupil report of disruptive behaviour, perceived peace to learn and grades achieved. A second study, conducted among a smaller sample of 496 pupils from 21 school classes, included teacher reports of pupil behaviour and grades achieved, as well as scores from tests in two school subjects. Results indicate that a relatively large percentage of Norwegian secondary pupils want less classroom disruption. Pupils in classes with markedly disruptive pupils reported significantly less opportunity to learn in peace. However, the percentage of between class variance in perceived peace to learn was relatively low, indicating that lack of peace to learn is a general problem in Norwegian classrooms, irrespective of whether there are markedly disruptive individuals in the class. Finally, academic outcomes were not found to be significantly lower among pupils in classes with markedly disruptive pupils.     

The role of the pupil's size in the perception of other persons

Studies by Hess (1975) show that the pupil serves as a source of information in perception of the emotional state of another person. Large pupils are interpreted in a positive sense. Basing on the results of Hess, the hypothesis that pupil size does not become a relevant variable in person perception until after puberty, was formed. The following result would be interpreted as supporting the hypothesis: since girls reach puberty before boys, more girls should react to pupil size than boys of the same age. 121 students between the ages of 11 and 16 years judged in several statements which of two face photos of a teacher expressed a greater degree of positive attention and esteem towards the students. The two face photos were identical with the exception of pupil size. All age groups rated the photos with larger pupils more positively. Sex differences occurred in the ratings of the 11 to 12-year-olds. Some basic differences between this experiment and that of Hess are discussed.     

Keeping an eye on the truth? Pupil size changes associated with recognition memory

During recognition memory tests participants' pupils dilate more when they view old items compared to novel items. We sought to replicate this “pupil old/new effect” and to determine its relationship to participants' responses. We compared changes in pupil size during recognition when participants were given standard recognition memory instructions, instructions to feign amnesia, and instructions to report all items as new. Participants' pupils dilated more to old items compared to new items under all three instruction conditions. This finding suggests that the increase in pupil size that occurs when participants encounter previously studied items is not under conscious control. Given that pupil size can be reliably and simply measured, the pupil old/new effect may have potential in clinical settings as a means for determining whether patients are feigning memory loss.     

Keeping an eye on the truth? Pupil size changes associated with recognition memory

During recognition memory tests participants' pupils dilate more when they view old items compared to novel items. We sought to replicate this "pupil old/new effect" and to determine its relationship to participants' responses. We compared changes in pupil size during recognition when participants were given standard recognition memory instructions, instructions to feign amnesia, and instructions to report all items as new. Participants' pupils dilated more to old items compared to new items under all three instruction conditions. This finding suggests that the increase in pupil size that occurs when participants encounter previously studied items is not under conscious control. Given that pupil size can be reliably and simply measured, the pupil old/new effect may have potential in clinical settings as a means for determining whether patients are feigning memory loss.     

瞳孔变化在记忆加工中的生物标记作用

瞳孔在不同记忆任务的同一加工阶段内具有变化模式的一致性, 瞳孔的缩放变化反映了信息加工过程中神经系统的激活状态。在刺激呈现前的预编码阶段, 瞳孔随个体注意集中水平的提高而收缩。在信息编码阶段, 瞳孔扩张程度作为相继记忆效应的生物标记, 可预测信息未来提取阶段的回忆成绩。在信息提取阶段, 采用自由回忆任务时, 瞳孔随记忆负荷的释放而迅速收缩, 但每个项目的提取均会引发小幅度瞳孔扩张; 而在再认提取任务中, 呈现旧刺激比呈现新刺激时瞳孔扩张更明显, 产生瞳孔新旧效应。瞳孔是记忆加工中敏感而稳定的生物标记, 而瞳孔测量法是探究记忆加工生理机制的有效手段。未来可以从瞳孔追踪术的角度, 采用多种研究手段进一步探究记忆的生理机制。     

Pupillary attributions of college students to happy and angry faces.

As evidence for an hypothesis that pupil size plays an important role in nonverbal communication, Hess (1975) has reported that adults draw in appropriately sized pupils on his happy and angry faces task. However, he did not report a statistical test of his data. In this study, we replicated Hess' research and found congruent with his hypothesis that college students (n = 223) draw in significantly larger pupils on the happy face.     

Multi‐level aspects of social cohesion of secondary schools and pupils' feelings of safety

Background. School safety and corresponding feelings of both pupils and school staff are beginning to receive more and more attention. The social cohesion characteristics of a school may be useful in promoting feelings of safety, particularly in pupils. Aims. To conceptualize theoretically, and check empirically a two‐level model of social cohesion between and within schools, in order to explain a pupil's feelings of safety at school. Samples. Data were collected aided by a national Dutch survey in secondary education carried out via the Internet. In 2008, digital questionnaires were completed by about 78,800 pupils, 6,200 teachers and educational support staff, and 600 school managers. Methods. Data were checked for reliability and representativity. Social cohesion was indicated by self‐reported measures of individual pupils and by aggregating scale and item scores of school managers, teachers, and other support staff within schools. Multi‐level analysis using individual pupil data and school‐level data was performed using MLwiN. Results. A pupil's age, educational attainment level, experience of mild physical violence, prosocial rules of conduct and joint control of these rules, and school measures against playing truant, show positive influences on a pupil's feelings of safety at school. Negative influences are exerted by not feeling most at home in The Netherlands, peers taking drugs and weapons into school, and by experiencing social violence, severe physical violence, and sexual violence. Negative school effects exist simultaneously in severe physical violence experienced by teachers and other staff, and in curriculum differentiation applied by teachers and other staff; a positive school effect is school size. Some interaction effects between pupil and school‐level variables were explored. Conclusions. The variance at school level is relatively low compared with the variance at pupil level. However, a much higher percentage of variance at school level than at pupil level is explained with respect to the pupils' feelings of safety at school. The resulting two‐level model also reflects the streaming of pupils in Dutch secondary schools. To improve school safety, the national results emphasize the need to enhance prosocial behaviour rules and to enhance the shared control of these rules between teachers and pupils. They also emphasize the need for the school to take measures that prevent truancy and redefine curriculum differentiation procedures. National educational policy and research can combine efforts to assist schools in developing reliable and valid procedures to increase effectively safety in and around schools.     

Infants perceiving and acting on the eyes: tests of an evolutionary hypothesis

It has been hypothesized that an evolutionarily ancient mechanism underlies the ability of human infants to detect and act upon the direction of eye gaze of another human face. However, the evidence from behavioral studies with infants is also consistent with a more domain-general system responsive to the lateral motion of stimuli regardless of whether or not eyes are involved. To address this issue three experiments with 4-month-old infants are reported that utilize a standard face-cueing paradigm. In the first experiment an inverted face was used to investigate whether the motion of the pupils elicits the cueing effect regardless of the surrounding face context. In the second experiment pupil motion and eye gaze direction were opposed, allowing us to assess their relative importance. In a third experiment, a more complex gaze shift sequence allowed us to analyse the importance of beginning with a period of mutual gaze. Overall, the results were consistent with the importance of the perceived direction of motion of pupils. However, to be effective in cueing spatial locations this motion needs to be preceded by a period of direct mutual gaze (eye contact). We suggest that evolution results in information-processing biases that shape and constrain the outcome of individual development to eventually result in adult adaptive specializations.     

Processing of observed pupil size modulates perception of sadness and predicts empathy

Facial autonomic responses may contribute to emotional communication and reveal individual affective style. In this study, the authors examined how observed pupillary size modulates processing of facial expression, extending the finding that incidentally perceived pupils influence ratings of sadness but not those of happy, angry, or neutral facial expressions. Healthy subjects rated the valence and arousal of photographs depicting facial muscular expressions of sadness, surprise, fear, and disgust. Pupil sizes within the stimuli were experimentally manipulated. Subjects themselves were scored with an empathy questionnaire. Diminishing pupil size linearly enhanced intensity and valence judgments of sad expressions (but not fear, surprise, or disgust). At debriefing, subjects were unaware of differences in pupil size across stimuli. These observations complement an earlier study showing that pupil size directly influences processing of sadness but not other basic emotional facial expressions. Furthermore, across subjects, the degree to which pupil size influenced sadness processing correlated with individual differences in empathy score. Together, these data demonstrate a central role of sadness processing in empathetic emotion and highlight the salience of implicit autonomic signals in affective communication.     

Collaboration to improve cross-race face identification: Wisdom of the multi-racial crowd?

Face identification is particularly prone to error when individuals identify people of a race other than their own – a phenomenon known as the other-race effect (ORE). Here, we show that collaborative “wisdom-of-crowds” decision-making substantially improves face identification accuracy for own- and other-race faces over individuals working alone. In two online experiments, East Asian and White individuals recognized own- and other-race faces as individuals and as part of a collaborative dyad. Collaboration never proved more beneficial in a social setting than when individual identification decisions were combined computationally. The reliable benefit of non-social collaboration may stem from its ability to avoid the potential negative outcomes of group diversity such as conflict. Consistent with this benefit, the racial diversity of collaborators did not influence either general or race-specific face identification accuracy. Our findings suggest that collaboration between two individuals is a promising strategy for improving cross-race face identification that may translate effectively into forensic and eyewitness settings.     

Teachers' and pupils' definitions of bullying

Background. Comparison of teachers' and pupils' definitions of bullying is important for considering the implications for reports of its incidence in schools, for the study of developmental trends in children's and adolescents' perceptions of the phenomenon and for evaluating the effectiveness of interventions designed to combat bullying. Aims. To investigate the effects of gender, teacher/pupil status and, for pupils, bullied/non‐bullied (target/non‐target) status and age on the definition of bullying. Samples. Teachers (N = 225: 158 women, 67 men) and pupils (N = 1,820: 466 boys, 460 girls were 11–12 years old, year 7, and 415 boys, 479 girls were 13–14 years, year 9) in 51 UK secondary schools participated in a questionnaire survey. A total of 557 of the pupils (117 girls and 117 boys aged 11–12 years, and 197 girls and 126 boys aged 13–14 years) reported that they had been bullied at some time in their present school. Methods. Written questionnaire responses to the question, ‘Say what you think bullying is’ have been content analysed to derive two sets of categories, one of bullying behaviour and the other of effects of bullying on the target. Results. Regarding both bullying behaviour and the effects of bullying on the target, teachers – by comparison with pupils – have been found to express more comprehensive ideas in their definitions. Specifically, pupils compared with teachers are more likely to restrict their definitions to direct bullying (verbal and/or physical abuse) and are less likely to refer to social exclusion, a power imbalance in the bully's favour and the bully's intention to cause the target hurt or harm and to feel threatened. Analysis of definitions on the bases of sex, pupil age and target/non‐target status show that: targets are more likely than non‐targets are to refer to the bully's physically and verbally abusive behaviour, and for Year 7 compared with Year 9 pupils, to suggest that bullies socially exclude targets; girls are more likely than boys are to mention verbal abuse and the effects on the target of ‘Feels hurt/harm’, but boys are more likely than girls are to construe bullying as involving repetition; older pupils are more likely than younger ones are to refer to a power imbalance in the bully's favour but, for bully targets, younger ones compared with older ones are more likely to invoke the idea of social exclusion in their definitions. Conclusions. The most important implication of the findings of this study that there are important differences between teachers' and pupils' definitions of bullying is that teachers need to listen carefully to what pupils have to say about bullying and work with and help them to develop their conceptions of the phenomenon. Some teachers, too, need to develop their conceptions of bullying.     

瞳孔是心灵的窗口吗?——瞳孔在心理学研究中的应用及测量

瞳孔大小是眼动研究中一个重要的参数指标, 在一定程度上能够反映人的心理活动并影响他人的心理与行为。一方面, 瞳孔变化受到自上而下的知觉与注意、情绪与动机、心理努力、社会认知与发展等因素的影响, 另一方面, 大瞳孔能引起他人更多的积极评价和积极行为。瞳孔的神经机制(蓝斑-去甲肾上腺素系统)和自适应增益理论解释了瞳孔与心理之间存在紧密联系的原因。瞳孔测量(pupillometry)作为一种有效的眼动追踪方法有助于理解瞳孔与心理的关系, 研究者在测量瞳孔时需要关注无关变量(如亮度、注视位置), 原始数据处理(如基线校正、眨眼处理)及瞳孔指标选取(如瞳孔直径、震颤频率)等问题, 未来研究应继续探讨瞳孔与其他心理之间的关系, 并探索更有效地处理和使用瞳孔指标的方法。     

The feature-positive effect in allocations of responsibility for collaborative tasks

People commonly believe they have contributed more to collaborative tasks than others give them credit for. We distinguish between two types of contributions – additions (such as adding words to a co-authored paper) and deletions (such as removing extraneous words) – and show that individuals are especially prone to receive less credit from others than they believe they deserve when their contributions consist of taking something away rather than adding something. Participants who shortened some writing believed they improved it just as much as did participants who lengthened some, but were seen by others as having contributed less. Although one can hardly fail to notice one's own deletions, these contributions – like any contributions that, by their very nature, leave little trace of themselves – are easy for others to overlook.     

Effects of Involving Conduct Problem Adolescents in the Setting of Counseling Goals

Effects of involving conduct problem adolescents in the setting of individual counseling goals were examined. Four levels of goal setting involvement were copmared with high school pupils referred for behavioral counseling in an urban public high school. The four levels were: Level 1-a pupil was directly invovled with a counselor in the goal setting process. Level 2-a pupil was informed that goals were being set by a counselor but pupil did not participate in the process. Level 3-goals were set by a counselor and pupil was neither informed nor involved. Level 4-no explicit counseling goal was set. Three school counselors employed a different level of goal setting for individual behavioral counseling with a different set of pupils during each quarter of the school year. Direct involvement of pupils in goal setting (Level 1) and knowledge that goals were being set for them (Level 2) led to greater amounts of goal attainment than was the case when pupils were not informed of goals (level 3) or when no explicit goal was set (Level 4). Direct involvement in goal setting was associated with highest degrees of pupil satisfaction with counseling. Results are discussed within the context of an increased concern among public school educators for development of effective means to assist the high school pupil with conduct problems. Directions for additional investigations are briefly noted.     

Face processing in adolescents with autistic disorder: the inversion and composite effects

Two experiments with upright and inverted face and object images were carried out to investigate whether face processing in autism is more feature-based than in individuals with typical development. Participants were 17 high-ability adolescents with autistic disorder (16-24 years), 24 typically developing children (9-10 years) and 16 adults (18-33 years). In Experiment 1, a normal inversion effect was found for the adolescents with autism in a standard face recognition paradigm with reduced memory demands, except for a subgroup with low social intelligence who were not better in recognizing upright relative to inverted photographs of faces. In Experiment 2, the group with autism did not show the composite effect like the adult group did: they recognized face halves as well in aligned composite faces as in non-aligned composite faces. The results on the inversion task suggest that most adolescents with autism form a normal configuration-based face representation, but the absence of the composite effect indicates that they are less prone to use the contextual information of the face in a visual-search task.     

Looking at remembering: Eye movements,pupil size,and autobiographical memory

To examine the relationship between visual imagery and autobiographical memory, eye position and pupil size were recorded while participants first searched for memories and then reconstructed the retrieved memories (Experiment 1), or only searched for memories (Experiment 2). In Experiment 1, we observed that, although recollective experience was not associated with the number of fixations per minute, memories that took longer to retrieve were linked to increased pupil size. In Experiment 2, we observed that directly retrieved memories were recalled more quickly and were accompanied by smaller pupils than generatively retrieved memories. After correcting for response time, retrieval mode also produced an effect, showing that decreased pupil size is not simply due to directly retrieved memories being recalled more quickly. These findings provide compelling evidence that objective measures, such as pupil size, can be used alongside subjective measures, such as self-reports, to distinguish between directly retrieved and generatively retrieved memories.     

Carry-over effects in face recognition: Processing mode or attentional window?

This study investigates whether or not the dominant processing mode (global or local) in a Navon task is carried over to a face recognition task when the dominant processing mode (configural or featural) in an encoding phase is manipulated. In Experiment 1, Navon figures that were equal in size to a facial photograph were prepared. Participants performed better on the face recognition task after reading large letters in the Navon figures than after reading small letters when configural processing was required in the encoding phase. In Experiment 2, Navon figures that were equal in size to the parts of a face were prepared. The performance after reading large letters did not differ from that after reading small letters. This suggests that both the dominant processing mode in Navon tasks and the size of Navon figures should be considered when discussing the effects of Navon tasks in face recognition.     

Interpretation of ambiguous information in clinical depression

The present study used two cognitive tasks--a text comprehension task and a homophone task--to investigate whether clinically depressed individuals have a negative bias when interpreting ambiguous information. Previous research indicates that both tasks are sensitive to anxiety-related interpretive biases, and that the former is less prone to response bias effects. Negative memory biases were also assessed. Results showed that, compared with normal controls, depressed individuals made more negative interpretations on the homophone task, and they also showed an enhanced negative recall bias. However, the groups did not differ in interpretative bias on the text comprehension task. Possible explanations of the results are discussed, including the potential influences of self-referent processing and response bias.