Familiarisation with faces selectively enhances sensitivity to changes made to the eyes

Two experiments were designed to isolate the facial information utilised in the learning of new faces. In experiments 1 and 2, two groups of subjects were each trained on different groups of faces by means of a dynamic video presentation. They were then shown both trained and novel faces in a same-different decision task, where 'different' trials included manipulations of internal and external facial features, and the task was to decide whether two images were identical or had a difference in one or more features. Both experiments showed that hair change was most easily detected in untrained (unfamiliar) faces. When faces had been trained (familiar), detection of eye changes was selectively enhanced and sensitivity to hair changes was maintained. While previous studies have suggested that familiar face representations are weighted towards their internal features, our experimental results show that this is due to selective enhancement of sensitivity to changes made to the eyes alone, with no reduction in the salience of the hair. Moreover, within the limits of the familiarisation used here, there was no enhancement of the representation of the other internal face features examined.     

Cognitive complexity and the validity of clinicians' judgments

Efforts to explain why some neuropsychologists are more accurate than others have been unsuccessful. In the present study, the relation between the cognitive complexity of clinicians and the validity of their judgments was investigated. Forty-two neuropsychologists completed a measure of cognitive complexity. The hypothesis that neuropsychologists who are high in cognitive complexity will be more accurate than those who are low in cognitive complexity was not supported. It is not clear why cognitive complexity was not significantly related to the validity of diagnostic ratings: One explanation is that the measure of cognitive complexity used in this study was inadequate but another possibility is that neuropsychologists who are low in cognitive complexity may still be able to achieve high levels of accuracy if they attend to normative data when they interpret test results.     

Loss of rapid phonological recoding in reading Hanja, the logographic script of Korean

The role that recent experience has in the processing of Korean Hanja characters was investigated in two masked priming experiments. Two groups of Korean native speakers that differed in their recent exposure to Hanja were asked to name single Hanja characters (targets) that were immediately preceded by masked presentations of the same characters (repetition priming), Hanja characters that were homophones of the target (homophone priming), or unrelated characters (baseline). The results showed that the group that had been less recently exposed made more errors and were slower than the group that had been the more recently exposed. Furthermore, there was no character homophone priming for the less recently exposed group, although they did show a robust repetition priming effect. On the other hand, the more recently exposed group showed both strong character repetition and homophone priming effects. We suggest that regular exposure to characters supports their rapid and automatic processing. It is argued that the different patterns of priming for the two groups were due to how rapidly the orthographic and phonological information of the prime could be resolved.     

Interpretation of significance levels by psychological researchers: the .05 cliff effect may be overstated

Comments about previous studies indicate that the interpretation of significance levels by psychological researchers is unequivocally dictated by a binary decision-making framework. In particular, confidence in ap level would drop abruptly just beyond the fateful .05 level (cliff effect). A replication of Rosenthal and Gaito’s (1963) experiment on the degree of confidence inp levels shows that these claims should be moderated. Detailed analysis of individual curves reveals that the attitude of researchers towardp values is far from being as homogeneous as might be expected. However, most psychological researchers in our study rated graduated confidence judgments, as either exponential or linear. Only a minority ofall-or-none respondents exhibited an abrupt drop in confidence.     

The Embodiment of Birth

This paper rejects dualism between mind and body toview the self as an embodied biological entity. Rather thanseeing the body operating by passive mechanisms as Descartesargues, it holds it actively moves in and even defines its world. Carrying this perspective to medicine presents an attempt toincorporate or work with internal processes of the body; it issensitive to how patients identify with their bodies. Thecurrent discussion over the extent to which women should try tohave natural childbirths provides a concrete example of thedifferences between mechanistic and embodied approaches tomedicine.     

Feature localization and identification

Theories on visual search differ substantially with respect to the relationship they assume between localization and identification processes. The aim of the present study was to rigorously compare the alternative theoretical notions on how localization and identification processes are related. In two experiments, participants searched for a target with a unique line orientation among distractors containing another orientation. Localization and identification performance were measured in combination, as function of display size and target eccentricity. To compare the alternative theories, formal binomial models were developed and compared with respect to their goodness of fit to the individual data. The formal analyses showed that the model assuming identification processes to be conditioned on localization processes provided the best fit to the individual data. Furthermore, maximum likelihood estimates of the parameter corresponding to identification processes were differently affected by display size than identification performance was. The results were discussed in terms of their implication for current theories on visual search.     

The effect of practice on recall of emotional information in individuals with generalized social phobia

Understanding memory processes in social anxiety is important because these individuals often report negative memories of anxiety-provoking situations and because of the recent emphasis on learning and memory in models of anxiety. The authors examined the effect of learning on memory for negative social, positive social, and nonsocial information using the retrieval-induced forgetting paradigm in individuals with generalized social phobia (GSPs) and in nonanxious controls (NACs). Words were presented in 1 of 3 practice conditions: practiced words from a practiced category, unpracticed words from a practiced category, and unpracticed words from an unpracticed category. GSPs and NACs showed the same patterns of memory for practice categories for positive social and nonsocial words. However, for negative social words, GSPs benefited less from practice and were hurt less from the effect of practicing competing negative social information than were NACs. This pattern of processing may hamper GSPs' learning of, and habituation to, negative social information.