Character mediation of story generation via protagonist insertion

The current study set out to examine how the presence or absence of depicted characters in visual narratives influences the degree of character-related content in improvised stories. The experiment consisted of trials of oral storytelling that were prompted by wordless comics. The degree of character content in the storylines was varied from being character-based—showing people engaging in social interactions—to being characterless, for example scenes depicting natural phenomena. An intermediate “character-implied” condition was also investigated, exemplified by the scene of a tornado passing through a town, where no people were depicted but in which their presence was strongly suggested. Linguistic content analysis of 472 stories demonstrated indistinguishable use of third-person pronouns (she/he) between character-implied and character-containing scenarios. An analysis of character presence demonstrated that storytellers inserted protagonists into the character-implied stories as vehicles for the actions taking place. This phenomenon reveals the character-driven nature of story creation.     

Decision-making competence in younger and older adults: which cognitive abilities contribute to the application of decision rules?

Older adults perform worse than younger adults when applying decision rules to choose between options that vary along multiple attributes. Although previous studies have shown that general fluid cognitive abilities contribute to the accurate application of decision rules, relatively little is known about which specific cognitive abilities play the most important role. We examined the independent roles of working memory, verbal fluency, semantic knowledge, and components of executive functioning. We found that age-related decline in applying decision rules was statistically mediated by age-related decline in working memory and verbal fluency. Our results have implications for theories of aging and decision-making.     

How sleeping neonates smile

Infants over one month of age tend to produce two types of smiling during especially positive social interactions, Duchenne smiles involving cheek raising and open‐mouth smiles. Little is known, however, about the prevalence, frequency, duration and organization of these smiles among neonates. Twenty‐five full‐term, healthy neonates (12 female) were videotaped during six minutes of sleep. Smiles were identified and analysed using an anatomically based coding system (FACS/Baby FACS). One‐half of the neonates showed bilateral Duchenne smiles. One‐quarter of the neonates showed bilateral Duchenne smiles at a mature level of intensity whose median duration was 1? s. By contrast, open‐mouth bilateral smiles occurred in less than one‐tenth of the sample. The contrast between the more frequent bilateral Duchenne smiles and the less frequent open‐mouth smile is discussed in terms of the early synergistic functioning of facial muscles and contrasted with the smiling patterns of older infants.     

Finger-digit compatibility in Arabic numeral processing

Finger-digit response compatibility was tested by asking participants to identify Arabic digits by pressing 1 of 10 keys with all 10 fingers. The direction of the finger-digit mapping was varied by manipulating the global direction of the hand-digit mapping as well as the direction of the finger-digit mapping within each hand (in each case, from small to large digits, or the reverse). The hypothesis of a left-to-right mental number line predicted that a complete left-to-right mapping should be easier whereas the hypothesis of a representation based on finger counting predicted that a counting-congruent mapping should be easier. The results show that when all 10 fingers are used to answer, a mapping congruent with the prototypical finger-counting strategy reported by the participants leads to better performance than does a mapping congruent with a left-to-right oriented mental number line, both in palm-down and palm-up postures of the hands, and they demonstrate that finger-counting strategies influence the way that numerical information is mentally represented and processed.     

Once upon a time…: Using fairy tales as a form of vicarious contact to prevent stigma-based bullying among schoolchildren

We conducted a vicarious contact intervention with the aim of promoting bystanders' intentions to react to stigma-based bullying among schoolchildren. Participants were Italian primary schoolchildren (N = 117 first to third graders); the outgroup was represented by foreign children. Vicarious contact was operationalized with story reading, creating fairy tales on stigma-based bullying where minority characters were bullied by majority characters. Once a week for 3 weeks, participants were read fairy tales in small groups by an experimenter and engaged in reinforcing activities. Results revealed that the intervention increased intergroup empathy (but not intergroup perspective-taking) and anti-bullying peer norms and fostered contact intentions. The intervention also had indirect effects via intergroup empathy on helping and contact intentions and on bystanders' reactions to stigma based-bullying. We discuss theoretical and practical implications, also in terms of the relevance of the present results for school policy. Please refer to the Supplementary Material section to find this article's Community and Social Impact Statement .     

Does the body talk to the body? The relationship between different body representations while observing others’ body parts

The way human bodies are represented is central in everyday activities. The cognitive system must combine internal, visceral, and somatosensory, signals to external, visually driven information generated from the spatial placement of others’ bodies and the own body in the space. However, how different body representations covertly interact among them when observing human body parts is still unclear. Therefore, we investigated the implicit processing of body parts by manipulating either the body part stimuli’ posture (conditions a and b) or the participants’ response body posture (conditions c, d, and e) in healthy participants (N = 70) using a spatial compatibility task called Sidedness task. The task requires participants to judge the colour of a circle superimposed on a task-irrelevant body part picture. Responses are facilitated when the spatial side of the responding hand corresponds to the spatial code generated by the hand stimulus's position with respect to a body of reference. Results showed that the observation of the task-irrelevant body parts oriented participants’ attention and facilitated responses that were spatial compatible with the spatial position such body parts have within a configural representation of the body structure (i.e., Body Structural Representation) in all the five experimental conditions. Notably, the body part stimuli were mentally attached to the body according to the most comfortable and less awkward postures, following the anatomo-physiological constraints. Moreover, the pattern of the results was not influenced by manipulating the participants’ response postures, suggesting that the automatic and implicit coding of the body part stimuli does not rely on proprioceptive information about one's body (i.e., Body Schema). We propose that the human body's morphometry knowledge is enriched by biomechanical and anatomo-physiological information about the real body movement possibilities. Moreover, we discuss the importance of the automatic orienting of attention based on the sidedness within the context of imitational learning.     

Investigating how internet gaming disorder and bodily dissociation experiences vary by game genres

Cognitive Processing - This study aims to investigate whether Internet gaming disorder (IGD) and bodily dissociation vary depending on the most frequently used game genre. Seven hundred and fifteen...     

Ask and you might receive: The actor–partner interdependence model approach to estimating cultural and gender variations in social support

As an essential part of close relationships, social support is a dynamic interactive process. This paper aims to simultaneously investigate social support‐seeking and provision behaviours using the Actor–Partner Interdependence Model (APIM). Ninety‐two friendship dyads participated in this study. Supportive versus negative friendship qualities were used to predict different support‐seeking and support‐provision behaviours during an experimental task. Cultural and gender variations were also examined. Results showed that self‐reported friendship qualities influence support‐seeking and provision behaviours intrapersonally and interpersonally. Female participants were more likely to provide emotion‐focused support than were male participants. After accounting for friendship qualities in the dyads, there was no evidence of cultural group differences on support‐seeking or provision behaviours among same‐sex friends. These results demonstrate the conceptual and empirical advantages of using APIM to unpack cultural and gender variations in social support processes.