Smiling and relative status in news photographs

To test the hypothesis that lower social status is associated with more smiling, the authors used newspaper photographs and their associated news stories as the basis for scoring the smiling and relative social status of the 2 individuals in each photograph. Independent raters judged smiling and 5 dimensions of relative status for 496 individuals in 248 newspaper photographs. There was no relation between status and smiling, although status and smiling were both related to other variables such as gender, age, and story valence. These findings add to a growing body of evidence that there is no generalized relation between smiling and status.     

Molecular analyses of the principal components of response strength

Killeen and Hall (2001) showed that a common factor called strength underlies the key dependent variables of response probability, latency, and rate, and that overall response rate is a good predictor of strength. In a search for the mechanisms that underlie those correlations, this article shows that (a) the probability of responding on a trial is a two-state Markov process; (b) latency and rate of responding can be described in terms of the probability and period of stochastic machines called clocked Bernoulli modules, and (c) one such machine, the refractory Poisson process, provides a functional relation between the probability of observing a response during any epoch and the rate of responding. This relation is one of proportionality at low rates and curvilinearity at higher rates.     

Spatial stimulus cue information supplying auditory saltation

Auditory saltation is a misperception of the spatial location of repetitive, transient stimuli. It arises when clicks at one location are followed in perfect temporal cadence by identical clicks at a second location. This report describes two psychophysical experiments designed to examine the sensitivity of auditory saltation to different stimulus cues for auditory spatial perception. Experiment 1 was a dichotic study in which six different six-click train stimuli were used to generate the saltation effect. Clicks lateralised by using interaural time differences and clicks lateralised by using interaural level differences produced equivalent saltation effects, confirming an earlier finding. Switching the stimulus cue from an interaural time difference to an interaural level difference (or the reverse) in mid train was inconsequential to the saltation illusion. Experiment 2 was a free-field study in which subjects rated the illusory motion generated by clicks emitted from two sound sources symmetrically disposed around the interaural axis, ie on the same cone of confusion in the auditory hemifield opposite one ear. Stimuli in such positions produce spatial location judgments that are based more heavily on monaural spectral information than on binaural computations. The free-field stimuli produced robust saltation. The data from both experiments are consistent with the view that auditory saltation can emerge from spatial processing, irrespective of the stimulus cue information used to determine click laterality or location.     

Parent coping styles and schizophrenic patient behavior as predictors of expressed emotion

Several studies have examined relationships between levels of expressed emotion in relatives of individuals with schizophrenia and the coping strategies these relatives employ. In an attempt to elucidate these relationships, 44 parents were assessed using the Camberwell Family Interview and the Strategic Approach to Coping Scale. Associations between these measures were examined. Additionally, interactions between parent coping style and patient aggression were assessed with respect to expressed emotion. The results indicate that scores on the coping scale generally were not directly related to levels of expressed emotion. However, an interaction was found between parent coping style and patient behavior which predicted level of expressed emotion. This finding supports the idea that research into the variables underlying expressed emotion should include the assessment of both parent and patient characteristics and examine the interactions between these variables.     

Reaction of mock jurors to testimony of a court appointed expert

A study was conducted to assess the impact of court appointed experts on the judgments of mock jurors. A civil proceeding was adopted for the experiment. Mock jurors heard testimony about a plaintiff's injury in an automobile accident. In some conditions, medical testimony for the plaintiff and defendant was provided by experts hired by each side. In other conditions, a medical expert appointed by the court testified in addition to the two adversarial experts. In one of these conditions, the court expert sided with the plaintiff; in another, the expert sided with the defendant. The plaintiff in the case was always an individual. The defendant was sometimes a corporation and sometimes an individual. The results showed that mock jurors sided with the court appointed expert in every condition except when the expert favored a corporate defendant. The results were discussed in terms of heuristic processing of persuasive information.     

The relationship between anxiety, fatigue and spontaneous recovery in stuttering

There is apparently no formalized hypothesis regarding the antecedents of spontaneous recovery of stuttering. Since adaptation and recovery appear to be functionally related, antecedents of adaptation have been considered to be antecedent to spontaneous recovery. Two disparate hypotheses of adaptation which have experimental support are the anxiety hypothesis and the fatigue hypothesis. The present study was initiated to investigate the relationship of anxiety and/or fatigue, if any, to spontaneous recovery. Twenty-one subjects (stutterers) participated in four conditions. Each condition consisted of eight oral readings of a passage. The experimental variables were introduced into the respective conditions after the fifth oral reading. They were: (I) no rest, same passage; (II) rest, same passage; (III) no rest, different passage; and, (IV) rest, different passage. Palmar sweat fingerprints of anxiety were taken concurrently with the first thirty seconds of trials one, three, five, six, seven and eight for all conditions. The results of the investigation led to the conclusions that: (1) there was no necessary relationship between a change in the frequency of stuttering and a change in the anxiety level ; (2) the Hullian concepts of reactive and conditioned inhibition appeared to provide a meaningful approach to the question of spontaneous recovery of stuttering behaviour.     

Correlative effects of psychogenetic selection: A study of the roman high and low avoidance strains of rats

A sample of 86 rats of the RHA and RLA strains, selectively bred in Rome for speed of acquisition of conditioned avoidance responses (CAR), was given the open-field test of emotionality, and re-tested for conditioning in their new environment. Both sexes were included in a balanced-order design. The standardized open-field test and a conventional shuttle-box with buzzer as the conditioned stimulus and shock as the unconditioned stimulus were used. The results show that the Roman strains do not differ in respect of open-field defecation. While the RHA strain was confirmed as superior in measures of CAR formation, it was also found to be significantly more active both in the open-field (ambulation) and in inter-trial activity during conditioning. No effects attributable either to order of test administration or the previous history of the subjects were detected, and those due to their sex merely confirmed previous findings. These results are contrasted with the findings for the Maudsley strains of reactive and non-reactive rats which differ significantly in respect of emotional elimination as a result of a similar selection procedure, but which also display a similar difference in CAR acquisition and in mature body weight.     

Sexual deviations as conditioned behaviour: A hypothesis

While it has been frequently suggested that sexual deviations are learned, the learning has usually been thought of as taking place during one traumatic experience. From a study of 45 sexual deviants, the authors believe that it is often a much more gradual process occurring during masturbation to a memory, which need not have been sexually stimulating at the time of the initial experience and which often alters with the passage of time. The hypothesis is illustrated from case histories of pedophilia, exhibitionism, homosexuality, voyeurism and transvestism. The implications for both aversive treatment of deviations and positive conditioning to normal sex are considered.