Beyond Personality Impressions: Effects of Physical and Vocal Attractiveness on False Consensus, Social Comparison, Affiliation, and Assumed and Perceived Similarity

ABSTRACT We examined the effects of target persons' physical and vocal attractiveness on judges' responses to five measures: false consensus (the belief that the target shares one's behavior), choice of targets as comparison others, affiliation with targets, assumed similarity (similarity between self-ratings and ratings assigned to targets), and perceived similarity (direct questions about similarity). Higher physical attractiveness and higher vocal attractiveness were both related to higher scores on all variables. The effect of one type of attractiveness was more pronounced for higher levels of the other type of attractiveness. The joint effect of the two types of attractiveness was best described as synergistic, i.e., only targets high on both types of attractiveness elicited higher scores on the dependent variables. The effect of physical attractiveness on most dependent variables was more pronounced for subjects who were themselves physically attractive. The synergistic effect (the advantage of targets high on both types of attractiveness) was more pronounced for judges high in self-monitoring. The contribution of the study to the literature on attractiveness stereotypes is discussed.     

Individual differences in second-language proficiency: does musical ability matter?

This study examined the relation between musical ability and second-language (L2) proficiency in adult learners. L2 ability was assessed in four domains: receptive phonology, productive phonology, syntax, and lexical knowledge. Also assessed were various other factors that might explain individual differences in L2 ability, including age of L2 immersion, patterns of language use and exposure, and phonological short-term memory. Hierarchical regression analyses were conducted to determine if musical ability explained any unique variance in each domain of L2 ability after controlling for other relevant factors. Musical ability predicted L2 phonological ability (both receptive and productive) even when controlling for other factors, but did not explain unique variance in L2 syntax or lexical knowledge. These results suggest that musical skills may facilitate the acquisition of L2 sound structure and add to a growing body of evidence linking language and music.     

The Nature and Organization of Individual Differences in Executive Functions: Four General Conclusions

Executive functions (EFs)-a set of general-purpose control processes that regulate one's thoughts and behaviors-have become a popular research topic lately and have been studied in many subdisciplines of psychological science. This article summarizes the EF research that our group has conducted to understand the nature of individual differences in EFs and their cognitive and biological underpinnings. In the context of a new theoretical framework that we have been developing (the unity/diversity framework), we describe four general conclusions that have emerged from our research. Specifically, we argue that individual differences in EFs, as measured with simple laboratory tasks, (1) show both unity and diversity (different EFs are correlated yet separable); (2) reflect substantial genetic contributions; (3) are related to various clinically and societally important phenomena; and (4) show some developmental stability.     

Cross-channel effects of vocal and physical attractiveness and their implications for interpersonal perception

Judges' ratings of senders' vocal attractiveness from face-plus-voice (F+V) cues were influenced by senders' physical attractiveness, and ratings of senders' physical attractiveness from F+V cues were influenced by senders' vocal attractiveness. This occurred even when judges were warned not to pay attention to face when rating vocal attractiveness and not to pay attention to voice when rating physical attractiveness. Instructions to judge attractiveness without being told which channel to attend to resulted in ratings influenced by both vocal and physical attractiveness of senders. Because of cross-channel effects, F+V attractiveness ratings should be more highly related to F+V personality impressions than attractiveness ratings based on only face or only voice. The results supported this hypothesis. Implications of cross-channel effects for research on the attractiveness stereotype were discussed.     

ACQUISITION AND FUNCTIONAL ANALYSIS OF MANDING WITH AUTISTIC STUDENTS

Three autistic students were trained to request a specific object from an adult “supplier” with the sentence, “Give me —” and to deliver that object to another adult, the “director.” Subsequently, the degree to which the object offered by the supplier controlled the “Give me —” verbal response was assessed by delivering to the student an object other than the one requested. Despite knowing the names of all objects used in the experiment, students accepted and delivered to the director any object offered by the supplier regardless of its match with the requested object. After training to say “That's not it. Give me —” when nonrequested objects were offered, students responded differentially to requested and nonrequested objects, suggesting control of the “Give me —” response by the requested object, a characteristic of a mand. These results generalized across settings and objects. Results are discussed in terms of the training technique to establish manding and the functional analysis of the resulting verbal behavior.     

Computational exploration of metaphor comprehension processes using a semantic space model

Recent metaphor research has revealed that metaphor comprehension involves both categorization and comparison processes. This finding has triggered the following central question: Which property determines the choice between these two processes for metaphor comprehension? Three competing views have been proposed to answer this question: the conventionality view ( Bowdle & Gentner, 2005 ), aptness view ( Glucksberg & Haught, 2006b ), and interpretive diversity view ( Utsumi, 2007 ); these views, respectively, argue that vehicle conventionality, metaphor aptness, and interpretive diversity determine the choice between the categorization and comparison processes. This article attempts to answer the question regarding which views are plausible by using cognitive modeling and computer simulation based on a semantic space model. In the simulation experiment, categorization and comparison processes are modeled in a semantic space constructed by latent semantic analysis. These two models receive word vectors for the constituent words of a metaphor and compute a vector for the metaphorical meaning. The resulting vectors can be evaluated according to the degree to which they mimic the human interpretation of the same metaphor; the maximum likelihood estimation determines which of the two models better explains the human interpretation. The result of the model selection is then predicted by three metaphor properties (i.e., vehicle conventionality, aptness, and interpretive diversity) to test the three views. The simulation experiment for Japanese metaphors demonstrates that both interpretive diversity and vehicle conventionality affect the choice between the two processes. On the other hand, it is found that metaphor aptness does not affect this choice. This result can be treated as computational evidence supporting the interpretive diversity and conventionality views.     

Discordance in Recovery Between Altered Locomotion and Muscle Atrophy Induced by Simulated Microgravity in Rats

Exposure to a microgravity environment leads to adverse effects in motion and musculoskeletal properties. However, few studies have investigated the recovery of altered locomotion and muscle atrophy simultaneously. The authors investigated altered locomotion in rats submitted to simulated microgravity by hindlimb unloading for 2 weeks. Motion deficits were characterized by hyperextension of the knees and ankle joints and forward-shifted limb motion. Furthermore, these locomotor deficits did not revert to their original form after a 2-week recovery period, although muscle atrophy in the hindlimbs had recovered, implying discordance in recovery between altered locomotion and muscle atrophy, and that other factors such as neural drives might control behavioral adaptations to microgravity.     

RNA interference: a new mechanism by which FMRP acts in the normal brain? What can Drosophila teach us?

Fragile X syndrome is the most common heritable form of mental retardation caused by loss-of-function mutations in the FMR1 gene. The FMR1 gene encodes an RNA-binding protein that associates with translating ribosomes and acts as a negative translational regulator. Recent work in Drosophila melanogaster has shown that the fly homolog of FMR1 (dFMR1) plays an important role in regulating neuronal morphology, which may underlie the observed deficits in behaviors of dFMR1 mutant flies. Biochemical analysis has revealed that dFMR1 forms a complex that includes ribosomal proteins and, surprisingly, Argonaute2 (AGO2), an essential component of the RNA-induced silencing complex (RISC) that mediates RNA interference (RNAi) in Drosophila. dFMR1 also associates with Dicer, another essential processing enzyme of the RNAi pathway. Moreover, both a micro-RNA (miRNA) and short interfering RNAs (siRNAs) can coimmunoprecipitate with dFMR1. Together these findings suggest that dFMR1 functions in an RNAi-related apparatus to regulate the expression of its target genes at the level of translation. These findings raise the possibility that Fragile X syndrome may be the result of a protein synthesis abnormality caused by a defect in an RNAi-related apparatus. Because the core mechanisms of complex behaviors such as learning and memory and circadian rhythms appear to be conserved, studies of Fragile X syndrome using Drosophila as a model provide an economy-of-scale for identifying biological processes that likely underlie the abnormal morphology of dendritic spines and behavioral disturbances observed in Fragile X patients.     

Individual differences in working memory: introduction to the special section.

This special section includes a set of 5 articles that examine the nature of inter- and intraindividual differences in working memory, using working memory span tasks as the main research tools. These span tasks are different from traditional short-term memory spans (e.g., digit or word span) in that they require participants to maintain some target memory items (e.g., words) while simultaneously performing some other tasks (e.g., reading sentences). In this introduction, a brief discussion of these working memory span tasks and their characteristics is provided first. This is followed by an overview of 2 major theoretical issues that are addressed by the subsequent articles--(a) the factors influencing the inter- and intraindividual differences in working memory performance and (b) the domain generality versus domain specificity of working memory--and also of some important issues that must be kept in mind when readers try to evaluate the claims regarding these 2 theoretical issues.