Visual Attention Patterns of Socially Anxious Individuals When Using Facebook: An Eye Tracking Study

Social networking sites (SNSs) are an increasingly used medium for social interactions. For socially anxious individuals, SNS-based communication is often preferred over traditional face-to-face socializing. Yet, research on SNSs usage and social anxiety is still less common, with extant studies being mostly correlational among healthy nonanxious participants. Conversely, here, we examined differences in actual gaze patterns to social and nonsocial stimuli between socially anxious and nonanxious individuals while using Facebook. Socially anxious and nonanxious student participants freely viewed a genuine Facebook profile page designed for the present study, for 3.5 minutes, containing 12 social and 12 nonsocial picture stimuli. Gaze patterns on social and nonsocial areas of interest (AOIs) were explored. Subjective uneasiness experienced when viewing the social pictures and state anxiety were also assessed. Finally, 2 weeks following the task, we evaluated participants’ willingness to participate in a follow-up (fictitious) study that required them to passively view their own Facebook profile, and then to actively use it. Results showed that compared with nonanxious participants, socially anxious participants demonstrated a viewing pattern less favoring social pictures, reflecting an attentional avoidance tendency. A significant inverse correlation between subjective uneasiness and percent of dwell time spent on the social AOI emerged. Socially anxious participants also reported higher levels of state anxiety, which was significantly positively correlated with uneasiness scores. Finally, socially anxious participants were also less willing to actively use their Facebook profile page. This study suggests that social anxious individuals are characterized by attentional and behavioral avoidance tendencies when using Facebook.     

Functional connectivity dynamics during film viewing reveal common networks for different emotional experiences

Recent theoretical and empirical work has highlighted the role of domain-general, large-scale brain networks in generating emotional experiences. These networks are hypothesized to process aspects of emotional experiences that are not unique to a specific emotional category (e.g., “sadness,” “happiness”), but rather that generalize across categories. In this article, we examined the dynamic interactions (i.e., changing cohesiveness) between specific domain-general networks across time while participants experienced various instances of sadness, fear, and anger. We used a novel method for probing the network connectivity dynamics between two salience networks and three amygdala-based networks. We hypothesized, and found, that the functional connectivity between these networks covaried with the intensity of different emotional experiences. Stronger connectivity between the dorsal salience network and the medial amygdala network was associated with more intense ratings of emotional experience across six different instances of the three emotion categories examined. Also, stronger connectivity between the dorsal salience network and the ventrolateral amygdala network was associated with more intense ratings of emotional experience across five out of the six different instances. Our findings demonstrate that a variety of emotional experiences are associated with dynamic interactions of domain-general neural systems.     

"I Can Tell You If I'll Really Lose All That Weight": Dispositional and Situated Optimism as Predictors of Weight Loss Following a Group Intervention

Weight loss is difficult to achieve and predict. We used Carver & Scheier's (1998 ) self-regulation theory to investigate the role of dispositional and situated optimism in weight loss following a group intervention. The theory proposes that dispositional optimism is related to persistence in goal pursuit as a result of greater confidence in goal attainment. Findings showed that situated optimism (higher goals, greater confidence in their attainment) predicted greater weight loss; whereas dispositional optimism, perceptions of controllability, timeline, and consequences of the weight problem were unrelated to weight loss. Changes in situated optimism following the intervention were related to weight-loss success/failure. The findings suggest that people possess quite accurate knowledge of their chances of success, which could be used to tailor interventions to participants.     

Multifactorial context effects on visual recognition memory

While effects of contextual change or constancy on memory are widely found when tested by free and cued recall, there is greater inconsistency in context effects on recognition. This study employed a paradigm maximizing target-context interactivity and specificity to reveal three levels of context effects on successful retrieval, as well as context effects on the generation of false alarms, thereby revealing separable contributions of target-context binding, additive familiarity, and configural constancy. The separability of these factors enables the use of memory context effects as tools for investigating associative memory.     

Ontic Structuralism and the Symmetries of Particle Physics

According to structural realism, in mature science there is structural continuity along theoretical change. A major counterexample to this thesis is the transition from the Eightfold Way to the Standard Model in particle physics. Nevertheless, the notion of structure is significantly important in comprehending the theoretical picture of particle physics, where particles change and undergo transmutations, while the only thing which remains unchanged is the basic structure, i.e. the symmetry group which controls the transmutations. This kind of view agrees with the paradigmatic case where the structure is an internal symmetry and the instantiations are the elementary particles. The metaphysical view which reflects this situation is a version of ontic structuralism.     

Can Population-Based Carrier Screening Be Left to the Community?

As more genes and mutations are identified in diseases for which particular populations are at increased risk, it is becoming more important to address the social interface between communities and carrier screening. While disproportionately targeted in genetic research, the Orthodox Jewish community often shies away, due to social and religious constraints, from genetic testing and counseling offered by the public health system. The solution is provided by Dor Yeshorim—a program which has become for many a prototype for the successful merging of modern reprogenetic screening and traditional communities. My commentary focuses on the gaps between the rationale and practice of Dor Yeshorim, and the implications of these gaps regarding the trade-off involved in leaving carrier screening to the community. I conclude with a set of questions raised by the implications of the unintended consequences of community genetics.     

Brain stem evoked response suppression during speech production

Auditory brain stem evoked responses (BSERs) to repetitive clicks were recorded in subjects engaged in overt speech, whispering, silent articulation, and covert verbal rehearsal tasks and during a control condition of attending to the clicks. Overt speech and whispering resulted in a significant amplitude reduction of the fifth peak of BSERs without affecting the amplitudes or the latencies of the earlier peaks. These data strongly suggest efferent inhibition of irrelevant auditory input at the level of the upper brain stem.     

Beyond Constructivism: Autonomy-Oriented Educaton

This paper reviews Constructivism and the sources of its influence overIsraeli educational discourse. Then, it describes examples ofConstructivists projects in the teaching of sciences and technology inIsrael (Sela, Media Plus), as well as a project that is based on theConstructivist approach to teaching (Together), and several Constructivistexperimental schools, followed by a summary of the obstacles to theimplementation of such projects. Next, it stresses two basic flaws in theConstructivist view and introduces a post-constructivist educationalparadigm, the Autonomy Oriented Education (AOE), which uses `reflectionon experiments in living' as its major tool and aims to enable thedevelopment of autonomous, belonging and moral individuals.     

Age-related differences in recognition memory for items and associations: Contribution of individual differences in working memory and metamemory

Ability to form new associations between unrelated items is particularly sensitive to aging, but the reasons for such differential vulnerability are unclear. In this study, we examined the role of objective and subjective factors (working memory and beliefs about memory strategies) on differential relations of age with recognition of items and associations. Healthy adults (N = 100, age 21 to 79) studied word pairs, completed item and association recognition tests, and rated the effectiveness of shallow (e.g., repetition) and deep (e.g., imagery or sentence generation) encoding strategies. Advanced age was associated with reduced working memory (WM) capacity and poorer associative recognition. In addition, reduced WM capacity, beliefs in the utility of ineffective encoding strategies, and lack of endorsement of effective ones were independently associated with impaired associative memory. Thus, maladaptive beliefs about memory in conjunction with reduced cognitive resources account in part for differences in associative memory commonly attributed to aging. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).