Behavioural responses to facial and postural expressions of emotion: An interpersonal circumplex approach

While the recognition of emotional expressions has been extensively studied, the behavioural response to these expressions has not. In the interpersonal circumplex, behaviour is defined in terms of communion and agency. In this study, we examined behavioural responses to both facial and postural expressions of emotion. We presented 101 Romanian students with facial and postural stimuli involving individuals (‘targets’) expressing happiness, sadness, anger, or fear. Using an interpersonal grid, participants simultaneously indicated how communal (i.e., quarrelsome or agreeable) and agentic (i.e., dominant or submissive) they would be towards people displaying these expressions. Participants were agreeable‐dominant towards targets showing happy facial expressions and primarily quarrelsome towards targets with angry or fearful facial expressions. Responses to targets showing sad facial expressions were neutral on both dimensions of interpersonal behaviour. Postural versus facial expressions of happiness and anger elicited similar behavioural responses. Participants responded in a quarrelsome‐submissive way to fearful postural expressions and in an agreeable way to sad postural expressions. Behavioural responses to the various facial expressions were largely comparable to those previously observed in Dutch students. Observed differences may be explained from participants’ cultural background. Responses to the postural expressions largely matched responses to the facial expressions.     

Body posture and interpersonal perception in a dyadic interaction: A Big Two analysis

Body posture influences feelings about the self, but little is known about its impact on social cognition more generally. We apply the Big Two framework (Agency/Competence, Communion/Warmth) and study how body posture influences interpersonal perception in a dyadic interaction. In three experiments, we studied dyads with different body postures (Exps. 1 and 2: expanded/restricted; Exp. 3: expanded/neutral). Dyad members worked on a joint task, and rated self and other. Findings showed that participants in an expanded posture rated the self higher and the other lower on agency, whereas those in a submissive (or neutral) posture rated the self lower and the other higher on agency. In Experiment 2, participants in a submissive posture also rated their communion lower. Results are important both for the impact of body posture on interpersonal perception and for context effects in the relationship of Agency versus Communion ratings of self and others.     

The spatial representation of power in children

Previous evidence demonstrates that power is mentally represented as vertical space by adults. However, little is known about how power is mentally represented in children. The current research examines such representations. The influence of vertical information (motor cues) was tested in both an explicit power evaluation task (judge whether labels refer to powerless or powerful groups) and an incidental task (judge whether labels refer to people or animals). The results showed that when power was explicitly evaluated, vertical motor responses interfered with responding in children and adults, i.e., they responded to words representing powerful groups faster with the up than the down cursor key (and vice versa for powerless groups). However, this interference effect disappeared in the incidental task in children. The findings suggest that children have developed a spatial representation of power before they have been taught power–space associations formally, but that they do not judge power spontaneously.     

Upright and left out: Posture moderates the effects of social exclusion on mood and threats to basic needs

Adopting a powerful posture leads individuals to feel more confident and dominant. Social exclusion can strongly impact individuals' mood and basic social needs. The current research combines these bodies of research, investigating the effects of dominant and submissive poses on responses to social exclusion and inclusion. In two experiments, participants held a slouching or upright pose and were either socially included or excluded using the Cyberball social exclusion manipulation. Social exclusion only affected participants' mood when individuals took a powerful posture: Excluded participants in powerful postures had more negative mood after exclusion than included power‐posing participants, but effects of exclusion and inclusion did not differ among submissive‐posing participants (Experiments 1 and 2). Similarly, it was also found that social exclusion affected basic needs only when participants' adopted powerful poses (Experiment 2). Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

语境预测性对阅读中字词加工过程的影响：眼动证据

研究包含3项实验, 通过观察语境预测性与目标词汇的整词词频、词内汉字字频间交互作用, 以探讨阅读中语境预测性如何影响中文词汇加工问题。研究以双字词为例, 实验1操控目标词汇的语境预测性与整词词频, 结果发现, 语境预测性与整词词频交互作用不显著。实验2操控目标词汇的语境预测性与首字字频, 结果发现, 语境预测性与首字字频交互作用不显著。实验1和实验2的贝叶斯分析都倾向于支持交互作用不存在假设。实验3操控目标词汇的语境预测性与尾字字频, 结果发现, 语境预测性与尾字字频交互影响首次注视时间、凝视时间、总注视时间和再注视概率。由此可知, 语境预测性与整词词频、首字字频变量相对独立地影响词汇加工; 语境预测性直接影响词内汉字(尾字)的加工过程。     

Participant and Word Gender in Age of Acquisition Effects: The Role of Gender Socialization

The age of acquisition (AoA) effect represents the processing advantage for developmentally earlier-acquired words. An initial norming study identified early and late AoA words having either a strong female-oriented (e.g., flute) or male-oriented (e.g., cigar) semantic bias. Forty-seven female and 45 male Scottish university students participated in a lexical decision task using 100 early and late AoA female- and male-oriented words. Reaction time data showed significant AoA effects for both females and males across both female- and male-oriented words, with faster responses to earlier than later acquired words. Females, however, took longer to respond to male-oriented words, particularly late AoA ones. Males demonstrated no effect of semantic gender. The pattern of effects is consistent with differential gender role socialization.     

个体关于加工流畅性的信念对字体大小效应的影响

本研究考察个体关于加工流畅性的信念对学习判断(Judgment of learning, 简称JOL)的影响, 探讨字体大小效应的产生机制。研究通过两个实验分别考察个体关于“字体大小影响加工流畅性” (实验1)以及“加工流畅性影响记忆效果” (实验2)等信念对字体大小效应的影响。结果发现: 1)当人们相信大字体更流畅(实验1)或者越流畅越好记(实验2)时, 他们在大字体项目上的JOL值显著高于小字体项目上的JOL值; 2)当人们相信小字体更流畅(实验1)或者流畅性与记忆无关(实验2)时, 他们在大字体和小字体项目上的JOL值无显著差异, 字体大小效应消失。上述结果表明, 个体关于加工流畅性的信念是字体大小效应产生的重要原因, 是人们进行学习判断的重要线索。     

The organization of words and environmental sounds in the second year: Behavioral and electrophysiological evidence

The majority of research examining early auditory‐semantic processing and organization is based on studies of meaningful relations between words and referents. However, a thorough investigation into the fundamental relation between acoustic signals and meaning requires an understanding of how meaning is associated with both lexical and non‐lexical sounds. Indeed, it is unknown how meaningful auditory information that is not lexical (e.g., environmental sounds) is processed and organized in the young brain. To capture the structure of semantic organization for words and environmental sounds, we record event‐related potentials as 20‐month‐olds view images of common nouns (e.g., dog) while hearing words or environmental sounds that match the picture (e.g., “dog” or barking), that are within‐category violations (e.g., “cat” or meowing), or that are between‐category violations (e.g., “pen” or scribbling). Results show both words and environmental sounds exhibit larger negative amplitudes to between‐category violations relative to matches. Unlike words, which show a greater negative response early and consistently to within‐category violations, such an effect for environmental sounds occurs late in semantic processing. Thus, as in adults, the young brain represents semantic relations between words and between environmental sounds, though it more readily differentiates semantically similar words compared to environmental sounds.     

How sex puts you in gendered shoes: sexuality-priming leads to gender-based self-perception and behavior

Scripts for sexual behavior dictate that women be submissive and tender and that men be assertive and dominant, reflecting the stereotypical view of women as communal and of men as agentic. Six experiments tested the hypothesis that exposure to sexuality cues causes men's and women's momentary self-perceptions and concomitant behavior to become more gender-typical. Using both pictorial and verbal prime materials that were presented both supraliminally and subliminally, we found that sex-priming strengthened gender-based self-perceptions (i.e., faster self-categorization as a woman or man; Study 1), heightened identification with one's own gender (Study 2), increased gender self-stereotyping (Study 3), and elicited greater submissiveness in women's behavior and greater assertiveness in men's behavior (Studies 4 and 5). These findings indicate that sex-priming causes self-perception and social behavior to become "attuned" to gender stereotypes. Study 6 demonstrated that these sex-priming effects can be eliminated by modern gender role primes. The potentially detrimental effects of sex-priming and possible countermeasures are discussed.     

Mapping Among Number Words,Numerals, and Nonsymbolic Quantities in Preschoolers

In mathematically literate societies, numerical information is represented in 3 distinct codes: a verbal code (i.e., number words); a digital, symbolic code (e.g., Arabic numerals); and an analogical code (i.e., quantities; Dehaene, 1992). To communicate effectively using these numerical codes, our understanding of number must involve an understanding of each representation as well as how they map to other representations. In the current study, we looked at 3- and 4-year-old children’s understanding of Arabic numerals in relation to both quantities and number words. The results suggest that the mapping between quantities and numerals is more difficult than the mapping between numerals and number words and between number words and quantities. Thus, we compared 2 competing models designed to investigate how children represent the meanings of Arabic numbers—whether numerals are mapped directly to the quantities they represent or instead if numerals are mapped to quantities indirectly via a direct mapping to number words. We found support for the latter suggesting that children may first map numerals to number words (another symbolic representation) and only through this mapping are numerals subsequently tied to the quantities they represent. In addition, unlike both mappings involving quantity, the mapping between the 2 symbolic representations of number (numerals and number words) was not set-size-dependent, therefore providing further evidence that children may map symbols to other symbols in the absence of a quantity referent. Together, the results provide new insight into the important processes involved in how children acquire an understanding of symbolic representations of number.     

A further examination of the lexical-processing stages hypothesized by the E-Z Reader model

Participants’ eye movements were monitored while they read sentences in which high- and low-frequency target words were presented normally (i.e., the normal condition) or with either reduced stimulus quality (i.e., the faint condition) or alternating lower- and uppercase letters (i.e., the case-alternated condition). Both the stimulus quality and case alternation manipulations interacted with word frequency for the gaze duration measure, such that the magnitude of word frequency effects was increased relative to the normal condition. However, stimulus quality (but not case alternation) interacted with word frequency for the early fixation time measures (i.e., first fixation, single fixation), whereas case alternation (but not stimulus quality) interacted with word frequency for the later fixation time measures (i.e., total time, go-past time). We interpret this pattern of results as evidence that stimulus quality influences an earlier stage of lexical processing than does case alternation, and we discuss the implications of our results for models of eye movement control during reading.     

What's up? Emotion-specific activation of vertical space during language processing

The relationship between language processing and vertical space has been shown for various groups of words including valence words, implicit location words, and words referring to religious concepts. However, it remains unclear whether these are single phenomena or whether there is an underlying common mechanism. Here, we show that the evaluation of word valence interacts with motor responses in the vertical dimension, with positive (negative) evaluations facilitating upward (downward) responses. When valence evaluation was not required, implicit location words (e.g., bird, shoe) influenced motor responses whereas valence words (e.g., kiss, hate) did not. Importantly, a subset of specific emotional valence words that are commonly associated with particular bodily postures (e.g., proud → upright; sad → slouched) did automatically influence motor responses. Together, this suggests that while the vertical spatial dimension is not directly activated by word valence, it is activated when processing words referring to emotional states with stereotypical bodily-postures. These results provide strong evidence that the activation of spatial associations during language processing is experience-specific in nature and cannot be explained with reference to a general mapping between all valence words and space (i.e., all positive and negative words generally relate to spatial processing). These findings support the experiential view of language comprehension, suggesting that the automatic reactivation of bodily experiences is limited to word groups referring to emotions or entities directly associated with spatial experiences (e.g., posture or location in the world).     

Influence of dominance on the development of play fighting in pairs of male Syrian golden hamsters (Mesocricetus auratus)

In the highly social rat, male juvenile and adult subordinates initiate more playful contacts with dominant pairmates than vice versa. This study examined the effect of dominance on playful contacts in the relatively asocial golden hamster. Pairs of male hamsters were reared together from weaning, and their play was filmed in the juvenile (28-36 days) and the young adult (60-70 days) stages of development. By the adult stage, it became clear that one pairmate was dominant over the other. The dominant pairmate launched all aggressive attacks (i. e., bites to the lower flanks and rump), and the subordinate pairmate performed all the submissive gesturing (e. g., tail up submissive posture). Playful contact, which in this species involves gentle nibbling of the posterior cheeks, was more frequently launched by the dominant than by the subordinate. This was not only true at the adult stage, but also at the juvenile stage, before dominance-subordination relationships were sharply polarized. Therefore, it would appear that in the relatively asocial hamster, the subordinates tend to avoid playful contact with dominants. This is markedly different to rats, where the subordinates actively seek out and engage dominants in play. This contrast further supports our hypothesis that subordinate male rats use play as a means of maintaining familiarity with dominants. © 1993 Wiley-Liss, Inc.     

Flexible parafoveal encoding of character order supports word predictability effects in Chinese reading: Evidence from eye movements

Several eye-movement studies have revealed flexibility in the parafoveal processing of character-order information in Chinese reading. In particular, studies show that processing a two-character word in a sentence benefits more from parafoveal preview of a nonword created by transposing rather than replacing its two characters. One issue that has not been investigated is whether the contextual predictability of the target word influences this processing of character order information. However, such a finding would provide novel evidence for an early influence of context on lexical processing in Chinese reading. Accordingly, we investigated this issue in an eye-movement experiment using the boundary paradigm and sentences containing two-character target words with high or low contextual predictability. Prior to the reader’s gaze crossing an invisible boundary, each target word was shown normally (i.e. a valid preview) or with its two characters either transposed or replaced by unrelated characters to create invalid nonword previews. These invalid previews reverted to the target word once the reader’s gaze crossed the invisible boundary. The results showed larger preview benefits (i.e. a decrease in fixation times) for target words following transposed-character than substituted-character previews, revealing a transposed-character effect similar to that in previous research. In addition, a word predictability effect (shorter fixation times for words with high than low predictability) was observed following both valid and transposed-character previews, but not substituted-character previews. The findings therefore reveal that context can influence an early stage of lexical processing in Chinese reading during which character order is processed flexibly.

     

Recalling taboo and nontaboo words

People remember emotional and taboo words better than neutral words. It is well known that words that are processed at a deep (i.e., semantic) level are recalled better than words processed at a shallow (i.e., purely visual) level. To determine how depth of processing influences recall of emotional and taboo words, a levels of processing paradigm was used. Whether this effect holds for emotional and taboo words has not been previously investigated. Two experiments demonstrated that taboo and emotional words benefit less from deep processing than do neutral words. This is consistent with the proposal that memories for taboo and emotional words are a function of the arousal level they evoke, even under shallow encoding conditions. Recall was higher for taboo words, even when taboo words were cued to be recalled after neutral and emotional words. The superiority of taboo word recall is consistent with cognitive neuroscience and brain imaging research.     

Network structure influences speech production

Network science provides a new way to look at old questions in cognitive science by examining the structure of a complex system, and how that structure might influence processing. In the context of psycholinguistics, clustering coefficient-a common measure in network science-refers to the extent to which phonological neighbors of a target word are also neighbors of each other. The influence of the clustering coefficient on spoken word production was examined in a corpus of speech errors and a picture-naming task. Speech errors tended to occur in words with many interconnected neighbors (i.e., higher clustering coefficient). Also, pictures representing words with many interconnected neighbors (i.e., high clustering coefficient) were named more slowly than pictures representing words with few interconnected neighbors (i.e., low clustering coefficient). These findings suggest that the structure of the lexicon influences the process of lexical access during spoken word production.     

The Impact of Cumulative Minority Stress on Cognitive Behavioral Treatment With Gender Minority Individuals: Case Study and Clinical Recommendations

For sexual minority individuals (i.e., lesbian, gay, and bisexual [LGB] persons), minority stress includes experiences of discrimination, expectations of rejection, internalized negativity, and concealment of identity. Sexual minority stress has been linked to various negative mental health outcomes (e.g., depression, anxiety), and levels of psychiatric comorbidity are high among LGB people. However, little is known about the extension of minority stress models to gender minority individuals (i.e., transgender and gender nonconforming persons) and its impact on mental health in this particular group. Further, the influence of gender minority stress on the delivery and outcome of traditional cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) approaches is unclear. A case study of CBT for chronic depression with a young, transgender individual is presented. This case study highlights potential barriers that may arise with gender minority clients when implementing evidence-based clinical interventions in the context of an individual’s minority stress history. Implications for cognitive-behavioral treatments with gender minority individuals and recommendations for clinicians and researchers are discussed.     

Encoding the world around us: Motor-related processing influences verbal memory

It is known that properties of words such as their imageability can influence our ability to remember those words. However, it is not known if other object-related properties can also influence our memory. In this study we asked whether a word representing a concrete object that can be functionally interacted with (i.e., high-manipulability word) would enhance the memory representations for that item compared to a word representing a less manipulable object (i.e., low-manipulability word). Here participants incidentally encoded high-manipulability (e.g., CAMERA) and low-manipulability words (e.g., TABLE) while making word judgments. Using a between-subjects design, we varied the depth-of-processing involved in the word judgment task: participants judged the words based on personal experience (deep/elaborative processing), word length (shallow), or functionality (intermediate). Participants were able to remember high-manipulability words better than low-manipulability words in both the personal experience and word length groups; thus presenting the first evidence that manipulability can influence memory. However, we observed better memory for low- than high-manipulability words in the functionality group. We explain this surprising interaction between manipulability and memory as being mediated by automatic vs. controlled motor-related cognition.     

Early Adolescents’ Responses to Witnessing Gender-Based Harassment Differ by their Perceived School Belonging and Gender Typicality

The current study examined bystanders of gender-based harassment (GBH) in early adolescence. Specifically, it examined whether early adolescents’ sense of school belonging, perceived peer support, and self-perceived gender typicality predicted how they respond to witnessing GBH (e.g., whether they confront the perpetrator, seek social support, or ignore it), and whether they feel good or worried about confronting perpetrators of GBH. U.S. 7th and 8th graders (n?=?594; 300 male early adolescents and 294 female early adolescents; M_age?=?12.74, SD?=?.70) completed measures of same- and other-gender typicality, school belonging, peer support, and experiences witnessing GBH. Students reported how often they had witnessed GBH, how they thought they would feel about confronting the perpetrator of GBH, and how they responded (or thought they would respond) to witnessing GBH. The more strongly early adolescents felt a sense of belonging to their school, (a) the more worried and good they felt about confronting GBH and (b) the more likely they were to both confront perpetrators of GBH and to seek social support after witnessing GBH. Early adolescents who were lower in gender typicality felt less positively about confronting GBH, but they were more likely to report confronting perpetrators of GBH. These results indicate that bystander interventions targeting GBH should focus on increasing students’ sense of school belonging and considering individuals simultaneously as both targets and bystanders.

     

Cardiovascular and testosterone responses to contested dominance in women

Examined cardiovascular and testosterone responses of dominant and submissive women to an acute stressor involving contested dominance. Twenty (10 dominant, 10 submissive) university students rated their dominance to a predefined reference group, participated in a task that involved debating with a trained technician, and were continuously provided with bogus feedback throughout the task concerning biochemical substances in their blood that purportedly covaried with dominance. Covariance analyses revealed that dominant women were much more reactive to the stressor in several cardiovascular parameters than those classified as submissive. Serum testosterone did not vary as a function of the experimental manipulation, and at each measurement point, dominant and submissive subjects had essentially identical serum levels of this hormone. Interestingly, however, baseline testosterone for the dominant group was related to changes in systolic blood pressure (i.e., gain scores computed as task response minus baseline values).