Valence-specific laterality effects in vocal emotion: interactions with stimulus type, blocking and sex

Valence-specific laterality effects have been frequently obtained in facial emotion perception but not in vocal emotion perception. We report a dichotic listening study further examining whether valence-specific laterality effects generalise to vocal emotions. Based on previous literature, we tested whether valence-specific laterality effects were dependent on blocked presentation of the emotion conditions, on the naturalness of the emotional stimuli, or on listener sex. We presented happy and sad sentences, paired with neutral counterparts, dichotically in an emotion localisation task, with vocal stimuli being preceded by verbal labels indicating target emotions. The measure was accuracy. When stimuli of the same emotion were presented as a block, a valence-specific laterality effect was demonstrated, but only in original stimuli and not morphed stimuli. There was a separate interaction with listener sex. We interpret our findings as suggesting that the valence-specific laterality hypothesis is supported only in certain circumstances. We discuss modulating factors, and we consider whether the mechanisms underlying those factors may be attentional or experiential in nature.     

Preferring the One in the Middle: Further Evidence for the Centre‐stage Effect

The location of an item influences a person's preference for that item, but it is unclear whether there is a preference for items located on the right or in the centre. In replication of the centre‐stage effect, it was found that when participants were presented with a line of five pictures, they preferred pictures in the centre rather than at either end. This applies when the line of pictures was arranged horizontally or vertically and when participants selected from five pairs of identical socks arranged vertically. The results support the centre‐stage explanation of location‐based preference rather than the hemispheric difference or body‐specific accounts. Implications of the effects of location on consumer choices and preference decisions are discussed. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Salient material properties and haptic volume perception: The influences of surface texture, thermal conductivity, and compliance

We investigated the influences of surface texture, thermal conductivity, and compliance on the haptic perception of the volume of small cubes. It was hypothesized that an object containing highly salient material properties would be perceived as larger in volume than the same object without these properties. Blindfolded subjects were asked to explore pairs of cubes differing in their material properties and to select the one with the larger volume. The results showed that, counterintuitively, a smooth cube was perceived as being significantly larger than a rough cube of the same physical volume, with average biases of about 19 %. Furthermore, cubes with a higher thermal conductivity were perceived as significantly larger than cubes with a lower thermal conductivity (average bias of about 7 %). In addition, the magnitude of the bias in this condition was not changed by increasing or decreasing the temperature of the test objects, suggesting that the effect of thermal conductivity could not be attributed directly to the heat flow. Finally, a hard cube was perceived as significantly larger than a soft cube of equal physical volume, with an average bias of about 25 %. These results reveal that the studied material properties have significant and consistent influences on the haptic perception of volume. The observed biases provide an indication of the levels at which the processing of haptic information on volume and material properties occurs.     

Preference for Violent Electronic Games and Aggressive Behavior among Children: The Beginning of the Downward Spiral?

A one-year longitudinal study with 324 German third and fourth graders was conducted in order to find out whether a preference for violent electronic games socializes children to become more aggressive or whether aggressive individuals tend to select this type of game. Cross-lagged panel analyses suggest that children who were rated as openly aggressive at Time 1 intensified their preference for violent electronic games over time. We determined that it could be ruled out that this selection effect was due to a number of underlying variables ranging from ecological variables (neighborhood) to family variables (migration status, older brother) and child variables (gender, self-esteem, level of achievement). Discussion focuses on the emerging preference for violent electronic games among children.     

The use of exploratory procedures by blind and sighted adults and children

The study examined exploratory procedures (EPs) of congenitally blind and sighted children and adults on a haptic match-to-sample task. The aim was to examine the influence of age, visual status, and familiarity on the use of EPs when people haptically examine the object properties of weight, size, exact shape, and texture. EPs in the first and last of four series of trials were compared. The results showed that all four groups chose the same dominant EP for examining the four different object properties, all of them in agreement with the ones found by Lederman and Klatzky (Cognitive Psychology 19:342–368, 1987). Children were found to use more EPs, rather than using only the most efficient EP, for the dimension under study. Overall, performance was affected more by age than by visual status, and repeating the task led to increased efficiency in all groups. To describe exploratory behaviors in more detail, actions were introduced. Actions are single or sequential hand movements occurring in parallel with the EPs or apart from the EPs. The use of actions explained, in part, individual variation among the participants.     

Perceived Social Support,Perceived Community Functioning,and Civic Participation Across the Life Span: Evidence from the Former East Germany

Are social contexts as important to civic participation in adulthood as they are in adolescence? And does their significance for civic participation vary across adulthood? Using data from a cross-sectional sample of German adults aged 18 to 75 who were surveyed in 2013 by mail, the authors investigated the relationships of perceived family support, perceived support from friends, place attachment, social cohesion, and organizational collective efficacy with three indicators of civic participation. The authors split the sample into four age groups: 18 to 29 (n₁ = 442), 30 to 44 (n₂ = 596), 45 to 59 (n₃ = 1,095), and 60 to 75 (n₄ = 931). Perceived support from family was negatively associated with the breadth (i.e., the number of domains) of civic participation in the youngest group and with future intentions for civic participation in three age groups. Perceived support from friends had positive relationships with the intensity (i.e., frequency) of civic participation and with future intentions at age 30 to 44. Place attachment and organizational collective efficacy were positively related to all indicators of civic participation, and some of these associations held across age groups. In contrast, social cohesion had no significant effects. The authors discuss implications for fostering civic participation across adulthood.     

COGNITIVE AND SOCIOEMOTIONAL FUNCTIONING AT 4½ YEARS IN CHILDREN BORN TO MOTHERS WHO HAVE RECEIVED TREATMENT FOR SUBSTANCE‐ABUSE PROBLEMS WHILE PREGNANT

Cognitive and socioemotional functioning at 4½ years of age were examined in children born to mothers with substance‐abuse problems (n = 22) recruited from residential treatment institutions while pregnant, and then compared to children born to mothers with mental health problems (n = 18) and children from a low‐risk group (n = 26). No significant group differences in cognitive functioning were found, but the children born to mothers with substance‐abuse problems showed more caregiver‐reported socioemotional problems than did the low‐risk children, like the children born to mothers with mental health problems. Birth weight had an effect on internalizing problems at 4½ years and mediated the relation between group and socioemotional problems, although not when controlling for caregiver education, single parenthood, and anxiety and depression. At 4½ years, 7 children born to mothers with substance‐abuse problems were placed in foster care. These children had lower birth weight and higher caregiver‐rated internalizing problems. In addition to emphasizing the importance of the quality of the prenatal environment, this study suggests that families with previous substance abuse are in need of long‐term follow‐up to address socioemotional problems and enhance further positive child cognitive development. The foster‐placed children may be in particular need of long‐term follow‐up.     

Predicting parental sunscreen use: Disentangling the role of action planning in the intention–behavior relationship

Structural equation modeling was used to examine antecedents of parental sunscreen use (N = 436) in a longitudinal design. The influence of a volitional planning cognition was assessed in several path models, investigating potential mediation and moderation of the intention–behavior relationship. Premotivational and motivational variables accounted for 55.1% of the variance in intention to use sunscreen. Intention emerged as the most powerful predictor of behavior, followed by action planning and self-efficacy expectations, together explaining 35.4% of parental sunscreen use after five months. Strong support was found for both mediating and moderating influences of action planning on the intention–behavior relationship. Action planning also partially mediated the impact of self-efficacy on behavior. The results support theoretical considerations to add postintentional cognitions to current health behavior models. Although action planning is an important component in the transition from intention to behavior, the impact of intention and of other premotivational and motivational variables should not be overlooked when developing health educational interventions.     

Emotion Regulation and the Quality of Social Interaction: Does the Ability to Evaluate Emotional Situations and Identify Effective Responses Matter?

We examined self and friends' ratings of social relationship quality and everyday social interactions in 3 studies involving 544 college students in Germany, Spain, and the United States. Scores on a situational judgment test measuring strategic emotion regulation ability (SERA) were negatively related to conflict with others. SERA was more consistently and strongly related to conflict with others than to the positive dimension of relationship quality (support, companionship, and nurturance). The relationship between SERA and conflict was generally not mediated by trait positive or negative affect, and it remained significant or marginally significant controlling for the Big Five personality traits. These findings highlight the importance of the ability to evaluate emotional situations and identify effective responses to these in interpersonal emotion regulation. Furthermore, they suggest that situational judgment and flexible response selection may help people to manage conflicts more than to bond with others.     

Seeing and feeling volumes: The influence of shape on volume perception

The volume of common objects can be perceived visually, haptically or by a combination of both senses. The present study shows large effects of the object's shape on volume perception within all these modalities, with an average bias of 36%. In all conditions, the volume of a tetrahedron was overestimated compared to that of a cube or a sphere, and the volume of a cube was overestimated compared to that of a sphere. Additional analyses revealed that the biases could be explained by the dependence of the volume judgment on different geometric properties. During visual volume perception, the strategies depended on the objects that were compared and they were also subject-dependent. However, analysis of the haptic and bimodal data showed more consistent results and revealed that surface area of the stimuli influenced haptic as well as bimodal volume perception. This suggests that bimodal volume perception is more influenced by haptic input than by visual information.