The effect of witnessing consequences on the behavioral recordings of experimental observers

The cueing effects of interviewer praise contingent on a target behavior and expectation of behavior change were examined with six observers. Experiment I investigated the effect of cues in conjunction with expectation. Experiment II assessed the relative contributions of cues and expectation, and Experiment III examined the effect of cues in the absence of expectation. The frequencies of two behaviors, client eye contact and face touching, were held constant throughout a series of videotaped interviews between an "interviewer" and a "client". A within-subjects design was used in each experiment. During baseline conditions, praise did not follow eye contact by the client on the videotape. In all experimental conditions, praise statements from the interviewer followed each occurrence of eye contact with an equal number of praises delivered at random times when there was no eye contact. Three of the six observers dramatically increased their recordings of eye contact during the first experimental phase, but these increases were not replicated in a second praise condition. There were no systematic changes in recorded face touching. Witnessing the delivery of consequences, rather than expectation seemed to be responsible for the effect. This potential threat to the internal validity of studies using observational data may go undetected by interobserver agreement checks.     

直觉和深思下积极互惠行为的信任水平差异：基于收益框架视角

采用2（加工方式：直觉加工vs.深思加工）×3（信任水平：低vs.中vs.高）被试内设计,探讨双响应范式中直觉加工和深思加工下积极互惠行为存在差异的原因。结果发现,（1）在直觉加工中,处于低、中信任时被试更为利己,高信任时更为利他;深思加工中,信任水平越高利他行为越明显。（2）在低信任时,被试深思后呈现利己行为;中信任、高信任时,深思后呈现利他行为。这表明是信任水平的差异决定了被试在直觉和深思阶段的利己或利他倾向。     

The effect of coaching interviewees on subsequent interview performance in structured experience‐based interviews

This study investigated the effect of coaching interviewees on subsequent interview performance within a structured experience‐based interview format. Using a post‐test only experimental design, participants (N=144) were assigned to one of three coaching conditions of increasing comprehensiveness: low (introduction‐only training), medium (introduction plus awareness training), and high (introduction plus awareness plus skill training). Results indicated that individuals who participated in more comprehensive coaching ultimately received higher interview ratings. Results also identified interviewee knowledge as a partial mediator of the relationship between coaching comprehensiveness and subsequent interview performance.     

寻求者的注视方向对建议者建议提出的影响

基于信号理论, 研究采用3个依次递进的实验, 分别以大学生群体和在职员工为被试, 探讨了建议寻求者的注视方向对建议者建议提出意愿的影响。结果发现：(1)当建议寻求者的注视方向为正视时, 能够促进建议者提出建议的意愿, 建议者感知到的角色期待在其中起到了中介作用。(2)当建议者的拒绝敏感性高时, 寻求者的注视方向对建议提出意愿有显著影响; 当建议者的拒绝敏感性低时, 这种影响减弱或消失; 此外, 拒绝敏感性也调节了角色期待感知的中介效应。     

Attention to eye contact opportunity and facial motion by three-month-old infants

Thirty-two 3-month-old infants participated in two experiments showing color videotapes of facial stimuli in a paired comparison format. In Experiment 1, the experimenter, serving as the stimulus, looked either directly at the infant or averted his gaze to the side; the face was presented either still or in motion. Eye contact opportunity had no effect while motion of the head was an effective attractor of visual fixation. In Experiment 2, the amount of available eye contact opportunity was parametrically varied by occluding the eyes with different patterns of blinking, each at the same rate. The no-motion 100% eye contact available condition received less attention than the three blinking stimuli, which were all equally attended to, though they varied with respect to the amount of eye contact opportunity they afforded. The contrast in effect of eye contact availability and rather subtle stimulus motion would imply that 3-month-old infants are comparatively insensitive to being the object of another's visual regard.     

Interviewer evaluations of interviewee nonverbal behavior

Personnel representatives (N = 52) were shown one of four videotaped job interviews in which the verbal content of the 16-min interview was identical, but the interviewee's nonverbal behavior was manipulated. A “low nonverbal” interviewee was defined by minimal eye contact, low energy level, lack of affect and voice modulation, and a lack of speech fluency. The “high nonverbal” interviewee demonstrated the opposite behavior on each of these components. The subjects were asked to rate the videotaped candidates on dimensions previously identified as critical in influencing a job interviewer's decisions. Nonverbal behavior was found to have a significant effect on almost every rating made by subjects in this study. After reviewing the entire 16-min interview, 23 of the 26 subjects who saw the “high nonverbal” candidate would have invited him/her for a second interview. All 26 of the subjects who saw the “low nonverbal” candidate would not have recommended a second interview.     

ATTENTION TRAINING: THE USE OF OVERCORRECTION AVOIDANCE TO INCREASE THE EYE CONTACT OF AUTISTIC AND RETARDED CHILDREN

A crucial first step in teaching and training the retarded and autistic is to develop and maintain eye contact with the therapist. Functional movement training (an overcorrection procedure) plus edibles and praise were compared with edibles and praise alone as a method of developing eye contact in three such children. In both conditions, the child was given food and praise when eye contact occurred within 5 sec of the therapist's verbal prompt: “Look at me.” Functional movement training avoidance plus edibles and praise produced about 90% attention for the three children, while edibles and praise alone were less effective (eye contact never exceeded 55%). Functional movement training avoidance combined with edibles and praise appears to be an effective method of teaching eye contact and possibly other forms of instruction-following to behaviorally disordered children who are not always responsive to positive consequences.     

The effect of drivers’ eye contact on pedestrians’ perceived safety

Many fatal accidents that involve pedestrians occur at road crossings, and are attributed to a breakdown of communication between pedestrians and drivers. Thus, it is important to investigate how forms of communication in traffic, such as eye contact, influence crossing decisions. Thus far, there is little information about the effect of drivers’ eye contact on pedestrians’ perceived safety to cross the road. Existing studies treat eye contact as immutable, i.e., it is either present or absent in the whole interaction, an approach that overlooks the effect of the timing of eye contact. We present an online crowdsourced study that addresses this research gap. 1835 participants viewed 13 videos of an approaching car twice, in random order, and held a key whenever they felt safe to cross. The videos differed in terms of whether the car yielded or not, whether the car driver made eye contact or not, and the times when the driver made eye contact. Participants also answered questions about their perceived intuitiveness of the driver’s eye contact behavior. The results showed that eye contact made people feel considerably safer to cross compared to no eye contact (an increase in keypress percentage from 31% to 50% was observed). In addition, the initiation and termination of eye contact affected perceived safety to cross more strongly than continuous eye contact and a lack of it, respectively. The car’s motion, however, was a more dominant factor. Additionally, the driver’s eye contact when the car braked was considered intuitive, and when it drove off, counterintuitive. In summary, this study demonstrates for the first time how drivers’ eye contact affects pedestrians’ perceived safety as a function of time in a dynamic scenario and questions the notion in recent literature that eye contact in road interactions is dispensable. These findings may be of interest in the development of automated vehicles (AVs), where the driver of the AV might not always be paying attention to the environment.     

Perceived Physical Attractiveness, Sexual History, and Sexual Intentions: An Internet Study

This study was designed to examine the influence a potential date’s physical attractiveness and sexual history has on an individual’s intentions to engage in safer sex. Over 1,200 participants completed an Internet survey. The questionnaire presented a randomized biography and photograph and asked participants to rate their interest in dating and having a sexual relationship with the target. Participants were randomly assigned to one of six conditions based on the target’s physical attractiveness (low vs. high) and sexual experience (low, medium, or high). Results indicated that men reported greater intentions to have sex than women did, and all participants reported greater likelihood of having sex when the potential partner was highly attractive. Participants rated men and more experienced targets as more risky sexual partners, and the level of a target’s sexual experience was directly related to participants’ willingness to discuss sexual risks. Results indicate a continuing need to include discussion of cognitive factors in all HIV prevention efforts.     

Behavioral treatment of adult obesity: Attentional controls and a 2-year follow-up

This research included controls for both amount of extra-therapy attention focused on target behaviors and for quality and duration of attention provided during therapy. Two pairs of therapists each conducted one group for each of four experimental conditions: nonspecific therapy, nonspecific therapy + attention prompting, behavior therapy, behavior therapy + positive induction (procedures designed to maximize favorableness of expectancies). Sixty-five obese adults ( OVERWEIGHT = 52%) attended 12 weekly group sessions and 3-month and 2-yr follow-ups. Ratings of expectancies, credibility and therapist characteristics were equivalent in all experimental conditions. Attrition was low (9.7%) and Ss averaged 1–2 lb weight losses per week during treatment, while improving concurrently in eating habits, cardiovascular fitness and adjustment. However, only participants who were in groups conducted by the therapist pair which was rated especially ‘democratic’ maintained average weight losses at the 2-yr follow-up. These results demonstrate the potentially vital role of several ‘nonspecific’ factors in long-term outcomes associated with behavioral treatments for adult obesity.     

Unwilling,but not unaffected—Imagined contact effects for authoritarians and social dominators

According to a dual process model perspective, intergroup contact should be particularly effective for people high in right‐wing authoritarianism (RWA), but not for those high in social dominance orientation (SDO), because of different underlying motivational goals. In the present studies, we tested the hypothesis that imagined contact, that is, the mental representation of a positive intergroup encounter, improves intergroup relations for high RWAs. In two experimental studies, we showed that high RWAs, compared with low RWAs, show less negative emotions toward Turks (Study 1; N = 120) and more willingness to engage in future contact with Romani people (Study 2; N = 85) after imagined contact. As expected, people high in SDO did not benefit from imagined contact. Instead, people low in SDO showed less negative emotions after imagined contact in Study 1, but this effect was not replicated in the second study. Theoretical implications and the role of imagined contact as a possible intervention for highly biased individuals will be discussed. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

FUNCTIONAL ANALYSIS AND TREATMENT OF EYE POKING

In four studies we analyzed the eye poking of a youth with profound disabilities. In Study 1, a functional analysis showed that eye poking occurred during the no-attention condition, but not during demand, attention, or recreation conditions. The analysis did not identify socially mediated variables involved in the maintenance of eye poking; rather, eye poking may have been maintained by consequences produced directly by the response. In Study 2 we had the student wear goggles to prevent potential reinforcement from finger—eye contact. The results of Study 2 indicated that eye-poking attempts were reduced when the student wore goggles. We then tested in Study 3 the effects of two alternative topographies of stimulation. Study 3 demonstrated that eye poking was reduced when a video game was provided as a competing source of visual stimulation, and that music was less effective in reducing eye poking. In Study 4, a contingency analysis using the video game was conducted in an attempt to (a) reduce the frequency of eye poking and (b) study whether the video game functioned as a reinforcer. The results of Study 4 demonstrated substantive reductions in the frequency of eye poking, and suggested that the video game served as a reinforcer.     

头部朝向在社会性注意转移中的作用

注视指向是非常重要的社会性注意线索,但是在日常情境中,注视指向往往伴随着头部朝向信息,而且两者都包含空间指向信息.已有研究发现头部朝向会影响注视指向知觉的速度和准确性,为注视指向提供参照系,进而会影响注视指向诱发的社会性注意.头部朝向和注视指向加工的神经机制也存在着广泛的重合.因此,除眼睛注视以外,头部朝向也是建构和完善基于心理模型的社会性注意机制的一个关键因素.未来的研究应关注头部朝向与眼睛注视指向共同影响注意转移的作用机制,并且从功能整合的角度开展神经机制研究.     

AN EXPERIMENTAL ANALYSIS OF SOCIAL INTERACTION BETWEEN A BEHAVIORALLY DISORDERED PRESCHOOL CHILD AND HER CLASSROOM PEERS1

The social interaction between a behaviorally disordered preschool child and her classroom peers was measured under two conditions of contingent adult attention: (1) verbal praise and physical contact directed to the target subject's peers for appropriate interaction with the target subject, and (2) verbal praise and physical contact directed specifically to the target subject for engaging in appropriate interaction with peers. Continuous measures of interactive behavior were made during baseline, intervention, and return to baseline conditions. Results indicated that application of experimental contingencies to peers (Condition 1) rapidly increased appropriate social behaviors by the peers and also by the target subject. When experimental contingencies were applied to the target subject (Condition 2), a similar increase in appropriate social behaviors was noted for both the target subject and the peers. Additionally, during Conditions 1 and 2 the recipient(s) of contingent adult attention initiated more appropriate social contacts than did the interacting partner(s).     

A meta-analysis of the effect of cognitive bias modification on anxiety and depression

Cognitive biases have been theorized to play a critical role in the onset and maintenance of anxiety and depression. Cognitive bias modification (CBM), an experimental paradigm that uses training to induce maladaptive or adaptive cognitive biases, was developed to test these causal models. Although CBM has generated considerable interest in the past decade, both as an experimental paradigm and as a form of treatment, there have been no quantitative reviews of the effect of CBM on anxiety and depression. This meta-analysis of 45 studies (2,591 participants) assessed the effect of CBM on cognitive biases and on anxiety and depression. CBM had a medium effect on biases (g = 0.49) that was stronger for interpretation (g = 0.81) than for attention (g = 0.29) biases. CBM further had a small effect on anxiety and depression (g = 0.13), although this effect was reliable only when symptoms were assessed after participants experienced a stressor (g = 0.23). When anxiety and depression were examined separately, CBM significantly modified anxiety but not depression. There was a nonsignificant trend toward a larger effect for studies including multiple training sessions. These findings are broadly consistent with cognitive theories of anxiety and depression that propose an interactive effect of cognitive biases and stressors on these symptoms. However, the small effect sizes observed here suggest that this effect may be more modest than previously believed.     

A Study of Stereotyped Thinking: Affective Reactions to Persons as the Basis for Judging their Nationality

Summary

Thirty female Ss and one female confederate enrolled in introductory psychology courses participated in the experiment. Each discussion group consisted of two naive Ss and the confederate. The effect of quality of argument on eye contact and the relationship between leadership votes and eye contact were studied. It was found that (a) when the confederate gave high quality arguments she received more eye contact and more leadership votes from naive group members (t = 3.69, p < .01, t = 5.36, p < .01, respectively); (b) when ranked on a leadership questionnaire, the confederate was ranked significantly higher in the high quality condition than in the low quality condition (X ² = 41.00, p < .001); (c) the correlation between eye contact and leadership votes across quality conditions was r = .69, p < .01.     

Inhibition of saccadic eye movements to locations in spatial working memory

Inhibition of return (IOR) refers to a bias against overt and covert attentional orienting toward previously attended locations. According to the reorienting hypothesis, IOR is generated when attention is withdrawn from the attended location and is prevented from “returning” to it. The present study investigated whether maintenance of attention at the cued location could affect the inhibition of oculomotor orienting to it. To preclude disengagement of attention, we asked participants to maintain the cued location in working memory. Maintenance of visuospatial information in memory has been shown to be accomplished through a sustained shift of spatial attention to a memorized location. Our results show that oculomotor IOR occurs at a particular location even when that location is kept in working memory (Experiment 1). Furthermore, we demonstrate that the mere act of maintenance of a location in working memory produces oculomotor inhibition similar to IOR (Experiments 2 and 3). We conclude that the oculomotor system is used for coding and maintaining locations in spatial working memory. In addition, we demonstrate that endogenous attention associated with maintenance of a location in working memory can be dissociated from the attention needed for execution of a saccadic eye movement.     

The role of TPH2 variant rs4570625 in shaping infant attention to social signals

TPH2, the rate-limiting enzyme in the synthesis of serotonin, has been connected to several psychiatric outcomes. Its allelic variant, rs4570625, has been found to relate to individual differences in cognitive and emotion regulation during infancy with T-carriers of rs4570625 showing a relatively heightened attention bias for fearful faces. A significant gene-environment interaction was also reported with the T-carriers of mothers with depressive symptoms showing the highest fear bias.We investigated these associations in a sample of 8-month old infants (N = 330), whose mothers were prescreened for low/high levels of prenatal depressive and/or anxiety symptoms. Attention disengagement from emotional faces (neutral, happy, fearful, and phase-scrambled control faces) to distractors was assessed with eye tracking and an overlap paradigm. Maternal depressive symptoms were assessed at several time points during pregnancy and postpartum. The mean levels of symptoms at six months postpartum and the trajectories of symptoms from early pregnancy until six months postpartum were used in the analyses (N = 274).No main effect of the rs4570625 genotype on attention disengagement was found. The difference in fear bias between the genotypes was significant but in an opposite direction compared to a previous study. The results regarding the interaction of the genotype and maternal depression were not in accordance with the previous studies.These results show inconsistencies in the effects of the rs4570625 genotype on attention biases in separate samples of infants from the same population with only slight differences in age.     

Fluency and eye contact as factors influencing observers' perceptions of stutterers

The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of different levels of eye contact and fluency on observers' perceptions of a speaker. One of four videotapes depicting an actor (playing the part of a supervisor) interviewing another actor (who played a subordinate) were shown to 127 college students. The four videotapes represented four different conditions comprising combinations of fluent vs nonfluent speech and normal vs low eye contact. Results indicated that these combinations of fluency and eye contact differentially influence listeners' perceptions of a speaker. Highest ratings were obtained for the fluent-normal eye-contact speaker, with lower ratings for all other conditions. In addition, it was determined that the frequency of eye contact rather than fluency was more strongly related to listeners' perceptions. The clinical implications of these findings are discussed.