What they think of us: Meta-beliefs and solidarity-based collective action among the advantaged

Collective action researchers have recently started investigating solidarity-based collective action by advantaged groups. This literature, however, has overlooked intergroup meta-beliefs (MBs, i.e., beliefs about the outgroup's beliefs), which we argue are crucial, since solidarity inherently involves protesting for the outgroup. In the context of racial inequality in the U.S., we focused on three MBs White Americans could hold: responsibility, inactivity, and allyship. In two studies (N_total = 648), we found that inactive and responsible MBs predicted higher collective action tendencies among low White identifiers via guilt and obligation to act. Conversely, we found that both predicted lower collective action tendencies among high White identifiers, via perceived unfairness. Finally, we found that ally MB was positively associated with collective action tendencies, regardless of identification. We highlight the importance of the meta-perspective in understanding solidarity-based collective action, and discuss conceptual and practical implications of these findings.     

Parents’ differential susceptibility to the effects of marital quality on sensitivity across the first year

The current investigation examined the differential susceptibility of parents to the effects of marital quality on changes in parenting. We predicted that parents who were high on the personality constructs Negative Affect and Constraint would be more susceptible to the effects of marital quality on their level of sensitivity. Sensitivity was assessed at 3.5 and 13 months for both mothers and fathers during a triadic interaction. Consistent with the differential susceptibility theory, results suggested that when mothers were high on Negative Affect and when fathers were high on Constraint, their marital quality was associated with changes in sensitivity. This investigation suggests that personality factors may create “vulnerabilities” in parents that make them differentially susceptible to the effects of the family environment on parenting.     

Stare in the crowd: frontal face guides overt attention independently of its gaze direction

Whether or not a stare in the midst of many faces can guide visual attention is a controversial issue. Two experiments are reported that investigate the hypothesis that visual attention is guided toward a frontal face in the search for a stare among faces with varied head angles. The participants were required to search for a face with a direct gaze in a context where the target could be at any of various head angles and the target's head angle was unpredictable in one trial. The search performance was better for a frontal-face target than for deviated-face targets. Furthermore, eye-movement analyses revealed that a frontal-face stimulus tended to be initially fixated prior to deviated-face stimuli, and many of the initially fixated frontal-face stimuli had an averted gaze. The findings suggest that a frontal face guides overt attention independently of its gaze direction in the search for a stare in a crowd. The validity of prioritising a frontal face in order to find a direct gaze among faces and the characteristics of a human-face detection system are discussed.     

Focus on the positive: Anxiety modulates the effects of emotional stimuli on hemispheric attention

People with high levels of trait anxiety are said to orient attention selectively to threatening stimuli ( and ), but this effect is sometimes difficult to replicate. We suggest a reason for this difficulty is that typical tests of the spatial attention bias in anxiety failed to consider together: (1) the differential effects of positive and threatening stimuli on attention in anxiety, (2) the separate contributions of each hemisphere to the attention bias, and (3) whether the attention bias in anxiety is restricted to orienting or can be observed more strongly in the conflict or alerting networks of attention. We compared the effects of schematic angry, happy, and neutral face cues using a lateralized version of Posner’s Attention Network Task (Lateralized Attention Network Test) which distinguishes spatial Orienting Cost (due to an invalid cue; disengagement) from spatial Orienting Benefit (due to a valid cue; hypervigilance), and which considers executive Conflict resolution and Alerting in addition to spatial Orienting in each hemisphere separately. We tested participants with high and low trait anxiety measured by the STAI-TA (Spielberger, Gorsuch, & Lushene, 1983). Surprisingly, happy face cues rather than angry face cues interacted with target visual field and participant level of anxiety. Happy face cues presented to participants with low anxiety elicited maximal Orienting Benefit and minimal Orienting Cost for targets presented to the left visual field. Anxious individuals failed to benefit from happy cues in the left visual field. We suggest that lateralized positive cues can provide a more sensitive index of attention changes in anxiety than is provided by centrally-presented threatening cues.     

How brand names are special: brands,words, and hemispheres

Previous research has consistently shown differences between the processing of proper names and of common nouns, leading to the belief that proper names possess a special neuropsychological status. We investigate the category of brand names and suggest that brand names also have a special neuropsychological status, but one which is different from proper names. The findings suggest that the hemispheric lexical status of the brand names is mixed--they behave like words in some respects and like nonwords in others. Our study used familiar upper case brand names, common nouns, and two different types of nonwords ("weird" and "normal") differing in length, as stimuli in a lateralized lexical decision task (LDT). Common nouns, brand names, weird nonwords, and normal nonwords were recognized in that decreasing order of speed and accuracy. A right visual field (RVF) advantage was found for all four lexical types. Interestingly, brand names, similar to nonwords, were found to be less lateralized than common nouns, consistent with theories of category-specific lexical processing. Further, brand names were the only type of lexical items to show a capitalization effect: brand names were recognized faster when they were presented in upper case than in lower case. In addition, while string length affected the recognition of common nouns only in the left visual field (LVF) and the recognition of nonwords only in the RVF, brand names behaved like common nouns in exhibiting length effects only in the LVF.     

Processing of basic speech acts following localized brain damage: a new light on the neuroanatomy of language

We examined the effect of localized brain lesions on processing of the basic speech acts (BSAs) of question, assertion, request, and command. Both left and right cerebral damage produced significant deficits relative to normal controls, and left brain damaged patients performed worse than patients with right-sided lesions. This finding argues against the common conjecture that the right hemisphere of most right-handers plays a dominant role in natural language pragmatics. In right-hemisphere damaged patients, there was no correlation between location and extent of lesion in perisylvian cortex and performance on BSAs. By contrast, processing of the different BSAs by left hemisphere-damaged patients was strongly affected by perisylvian lesion location, with each BSA showing a distinct pattern of localization. This finding raises the possibility that the classical left perisylvian localization of language functions, as measured by clinical aphasia batteries, partly reflects the localization of the BSAs required to perform these functions.     

Nominal and physical decision criteria insame-different judgments

We propose a model in which the physical and nominal dimensions of letter pairs are compared independently of whether subjects use physical (shape task) or nominal (name task) identity as the decision criterion. We attempt to explain the fast-same effect, the preponderance of false-different errors, and thenominal-physical disparity as results of congruent and incongruent outputs of physical and nominal comparison devices that function in both tasks. Subjects performed both tasks with and without response deadlines. The stimuli were presented foveally or unilaterally to one or the other hemisphere. With foveal presentations, thenominal-physical disparity disappeared when congruent and incongruent cells were compared, the fast-same effect occurred only in the shape task, and there was a preponderance offalse-different errors only in the name task. Response times and error patterns from centrally presented trials conformed to the predictions of the model. Performance patterns from the lateralized trials conformed only partially. The implications of the data are discussed in the context of several theoretical models ofsame/ different judgments.     

Effects of Right- and Left-Hemisphere Damage on Understanding Conversational Implicatures

Processing of implicatures was examined in 27 right-brain-damaged (RBD) and 31 left-brain-damaged (LBD) stroke patients with focal lesions using a new implicatures battery (IB) as part of an exploration of the neural basis and modularity of natural language pragmatics. Following Grice, we sampled implicatures of Quantity, Quality, Relation, and Manner. Verbal implicatures consisted of two-sentence conversational vignettes which are literally problematic. Nonverbal implicatures consisted mostly of famous paintings that are literally problematic (e.g., Magritte's "Le Domain d'Arnheim"). The patient has to identify and solve the problem. To compare with performance on the IB, patients also received a Hebrew adaptation of Gardner and Brownell's Right Hemisphere Communication Battery, a new test of basic speech acts (verbal and nonverbal assertions, questions, requests, and commands), a Hebrew version of the Western Aphasia Battery, and standardized neuropsychological tests. Both LBD and RBD patients were significantly impaired in implicature processing relative to age-matched normal controls. In general, both patient groups showed weak correlations of implicatures with extents of lesions in left perisylvian language area or its right-hemisphere (RH) homolog. However, performance of LBD and RBD patients on the IB revealed different patterns of correlations with other pragmatic, language, and nonlanguage tests. In LBD patients, there was a greater association between performance on verbal and nonverbal implicatures and between performance on implicatures and basic speech acts than in RBD patients. Given the different modes in which right-and left-hemisphere (LH) damage affect the processing of conversational implicatures, it remains to be discovered how the two hemispheres interact to process natural language pragmatics in the normal brain in real time.     

Visual field differences in the magnitude of the Oppel-Kundt illusion vary with processing time

Three experiments were performed to investigate hemispheric differences in susceptibility to the Oppel-Kundt illusion presented tachistoscopically to the two visual hemifields. Experiment 1 used a successive comparison mode, in which 16 undergraduate students indicated whether the second of two successive extents looked shorter or longer than the first. Experiment 2 (20 under-graduates) and Experiment 3 (1 commissurotomy patient) required judgments of two extents presented simultaneously. The first experiment found no significant visual field differences, although females were more susceptible than males. In the second experiment, the illusion magnitude was greater in the left visual field, and in the third experiment, it was greater in the right visual field. Post hoc analyses resolve the conflicting results and show that in all three experiments, the susceptibility of the right hemisphere declined more than that of the left hemisphere during illusion processing. An interpretation is offered in terms of two parallel processes, one that is fast, uses feature extraction, and is performed more effectively in the left hemisphere, and one that is slow, uses visuospatial analysis to compute distances between parts of the illusion figure, and is performed more effectively in the right hemisphere.