The effect of conspecifics on corticoadrenal response of rats to a novel environment

The effect of housing conditions and the presence of a conspecific on corticoadrenal response to a novel environment was studied in male Sprague-Dawley rats. The response to a novel environment was the same in rats housed in groups and rats housed alone for 20 days before testing, suggesting that isolation during adulthood did not affect corticoadrenal response to a novel environment. The presence of a nonfamiliar rat (proceeding from another home cage) did not modify corticoadrenal response to the novel environment but the presence of a rat proceeding from the same home cage induced a higher corticoadrenal response to this stressful stimuli. These results can be explained considering that rats exhibit greater emotional reactivity, as measured by adrenal function, in situations which combine familiar (the other rat) and novel (the box) elements than those completely unfamiliar.     

Measuring Religiosity/Spirituality in Diverse Religious Groups: A Consideration of Methods

Minority religious groups continue to grow in the United States, and traditional religious groups are becoming more diverse. The purpose of this paper is to detail the methodology of the measure adaptation and psychometric phase of an ongoing study that is designed to describe the relationship between R/S, emotional extremes, and risk behaviors in Christian, Jewish, and Muslim high school students as they transition to college. Unique challenges associated with measurement, recruitment, and research team dynamics were encountered. These challenges and possible solutions are discussed in the context of conducting research that focuses on religious minority groups.     

Selective attention to global and local information: Effects of visual angle,exposure duration,and eccentricity on processing dominance

Abstract

The size and exposure duration of stimuli have been found to be relevant factors to the issue of processing dominance. Nevertheless, the relation between these two factors and their possible effects on processing dominance have never been studied. The aim of the present research was twofold: (a) to examine whether size and the exposure duration of stimuli affect processing dominance; (b) to examine whether these effects depend on the same/different eccentricity of global and local levels. Stimuli were presented at three exposure durations: 140 msec, 70 msec, and 40 msec. The overall sizes of stimuli were varied at three levels: small (3[ddot]), intermediate (6[ddot]) and large (12[ddot]). In Experiment 1 stimuli were used whose global and local levels were at different eccentricity (Hs and Ss stimuli). In Experiment 2 stimuli whose global and local levels were at the same eccentricity (Cs stimuli) were used. The results showed that the effects of visual angle on processing dominance are independent of the exposure duration of stimuli used. The transition from global to local dominance as visual angle is increased depends on the eccentricity of global and local information: It only appears when the eccentricity is different and biased towards the local level (Hs and Ss stimuli). Finally, the size of the effect is modulated by the visual angle subtended by the stimuli: the size of the effect of global advantage was inversely related to visual angle. The size of the interference effect from the local level to the global level was directly related to the visual angle, whereas that from the global level to the local level was inversely related to the visual angle subtended by the stimuli.     

Effects of perceptual grouping on positive and negative priming

The effects of perceptual grouping/segregation of targets and distractors by means of colour on positive and negative priming were examined in two experiments. In Experiments 1 and 2 we examined whether grouping of target and distractors by means of common colour in the prime display affected positive and negative priming, or whether these effects depend on prime–probe contextual similarity in colour. In addition, we examined the effects of the predictability of target colour in the prime and the probe displays across the experiments using mixed (Experiment 1) or blocked procedures (Experiment 2). The pattern of results was similar in both experiments, indicating that the positive priming effect was determined by target repetition and enhanced by perceptual segregation of target from distractors in the prime display. The negative priming effect was determined by grouping the target and distractors by common colour in the prime display. The results of the present experiments are consistent with inhibition-based models of negative priming.     

The phenomenology of self-presentation: describing the structures of intercorporeality with Erving Goffman

Self-presentation is a term that indicates conscious and unconscious strategies for controlling or managing how one is perceived by others in terms of both appearance and comportment. In this article, I will discuss the phenomenology of self-presentation with respect to the phenomenological insights of Edmund Husserl and Merleau-Ponty regarding the visibility of the body within intercorporeal relations through ‘behaviour’ and ‘expression.’ In doing so, I will turn to the work of the Canadian sociologist and social theorist Erving Goffman. Goffman’s account of self-presentation suggests why embodied subjects adopt certain styles of ordered bodily behaviour as determined by the broader social order, giving existential and social significance to the ontological structures of intercorporeal bodily communication. Following Goffman, I will suggest that the embodied subject is continuously—and constitutionally—engaged in implicit and explicit strategies to manage how the body is presented to others. In articulating self-presentation as a feature of intercorporeality, my aim in this article is to use Goffman’s insights to extend Husserl’s and Merleau-Ponty’s accounts of bodily communication by demonstrating that bodily communication that is instantiated at the level of intercorporeality is always expressed through social life with its various historical, cultural and linguistic dimensions.     

Trace‐strength and source‐monitoring accounts of accuracy and metacognitive resolution in the misinformation paradigm

Two experiments are reported that investigate the impact of misinformation on memory accuracy and metacognitive resolution. In Experiment 1, participants viewed a series of photographs depicting a crime scene, were exposed to misinformation that contradicted details in the slides, and later took a recognition memory test. For each answer, participants were required to indicate whether they were willing to testify (report) their answer to the Court and to rate confidence. Misinformation impaired memory accuracy but it had no effect on resolution, regardless of whether resolution was indexed with confidence‐rating measures (γ correlation and mean confidence) or a report‐option measure (type‐2 discrimination: d′). In Experiment 2, a similar accuracy‐confidence dissociation was found, and the misinformation effect occurred mostly with fine‐grained responses, suggesting that responding was based on recollected details. We argue that the results support source‐monitoring (SM) accounts of accuracy and resolution rather than accounts based on trace strength. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

WAIMH position paper: Infants’ rights in wartime

The World Association for Infant Mental Health (WAIMH) decided to compose a position paper on infants’ rights in wartime, as there is still a general lack of attention paid to the impact of war-related traumas on infants’ development and psychological health. Though there are numerous areas of violent conflicts around the globe, there have been few published studies that relate specifically to infants. Consequently, humanitarian aid programs tend to overlook infants’ psychological needs and to pay more attention to those of older children. This position paper first reviews the studies identified through a literature search, about the impact of war-related traumas during pregnancy and postnatal periods, then describes the existing recommendations that have been added to the Children Rights Convention and their implications for infant mental health clinicians.     

Examining the impact of social commerce dimensions on customers' value cocreation: The mediating effect of social trust

One of the main aspects of the Web 2.0 revolution has been social commerce that has resulted in many people across the world increasingly engaging with commercial activities over social media platforms. However, the academic and research interest in social commerce is still low, and more studies are required to accelerate awareness of the most important issues relating to social commerce, in particular, social trust and value cocreation. Thus, the present study aims to propose a conceptual model that is intended to enable greater understanding of the causal interactions between social commerce constructs, social trust, and customer value cocreation. We collected data using a sample of 300 followers and fans of online Facebook communities, and we analysed them by using a structural equation model. The results show that social commerce constructs positively impact on social trust. Furthermore, we found that social trust positively impacts on the three dimensions of customer value cocreation. We found that social trust mediates the relationship between the social commerce and customer value cocreation dimensions. The paper presents a considerable theoretical contribution for being the first study that links social commerce constructs with social trust. The linkage between social commerce constructs, social trust, and customer value cocreation dimensions will also be beneficial for social media marketing strategists and managers.     

How international is psychology?

Psychology claims to be an international discipline. This claim has been based upon subjective estimates of attendance at international congresses, status reports from selected countries published within edited volumes, and a survey of the member countries of the International Union of Psychological Science (IUPsyS) (Rosenzweig, 1992). However, to be truly international, the work of psychologists in countries around the world must be internationally disseminated. Systematic examination of international congress presentations and abstracts of published psychological literature indexed on widely available electronic databases (e.g., PsycLIT) provides a more objective means of documenting the international presence of psychology. In this article, counts by country were made of research contributions reported within PsycLIT and on the programs of International Congresses of Applied Psychology over the five years in which the congresses were held from 1982 to 1998. Analyses of these data revealed PsycLIT to be more international in scope than previously assumed—45% of its entries were by authors from outside the US. Coverage of research from developing countries was even more limited within PsycLIT (4.67%), but proportionally greater within international congresses (10%). PsycLIT entries not in the English language were found noticeably to have declined from approximately 12–14% levels in the 1980s to only about 6% in the 1990s. An index of the presence of psychology in each country, based upon presentations at IAAP congresses, memberships in international associations, and the extent of PsycLIT entries over the previous three decades, provided an objective, empirically‐based answer to the question ‘How International is Psychology?' This index indicated that psychology has a significant presence in 47 countries, a presence in another 22 countries, but minimal or no presence in 82 other countries. The meaning of these data for the discipline and ways in which psychology's worldwide presence might be strengthened and extended were discussed.