The development of facial emotion recognition: the role of configural information

The development of children's ability to recognize facial emotions and the role of configural information in this development were investigated. In the study, 100 5-, 7-, 9-, and 11-year-olds and 26 adults needed to recognize the emotion displayed by upright and upside-down faces. The same participants needed to recognize the emotion displayed by the top half of an upright or upside-down face that was or was not aligned with a bottom half that displayed another emotion. The results showed that the ability to recognize facial emotion develops with age, with a developmental course that depends on the emotion to be recognized. Moreover, children at all ages and adults exhibited both an inversion effect and a composite effect, suggesting that children rely on configural information to recognize facial emotions.     

Aging and visual 3-D shape recognition from motion

Two experiments were conducted to evaluate the ability of younger and older adults to recognize 3-D object shape from patterns of optical motion. In Experiment 1, participants were required to identify dotted surfaces that rotated in depth (i.e., surface structure portrayed using the kinetic depth effect). The task difficulty was manipulated by limiting the surface point lifetimes within the stimulus apparent motion sequences. In Experiment 2, the participants identified solid, naturally shaped objects (replicas of bell peppers, Capsicum annuum) that were defined by occlusion boundary contours, patterns of specular highlights, or combined optical patterns containing both boundary contours and specular highlights. Significant and adverse effects of increased age were found in both experiments. Despite the fact that previous research has found that increases in age do not reduce solid shape discrimination, our current results indicated that the same conclusion does not hold for shape identification. We demonstrated that aging results in a reduction in the ability to visually recognize 3-D shape independent of how the 3-D structure is defined (motions of isolated points, deformations of smooth optical fields containing specular highlights, etc.).     

Configural information in gender categorisation

The role of configural information in gender categorisation was studied by aligning the top half of one face with the bottom half of another. The two faces had the same or different genders. Experiment 1 shows that participants were slower and made more errors in categorising the gender in either half of these composite faces when the two faces had a different gender, relative to control conditions where the two faces were nonaligned or had the same gender. This result parallels the composite effect for face recognition (Young et al, 1987 Perception 16 747-759) and facial-expression recognition (Calder et al, 2000 Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 26 527-551). Similarly to responses to face identity and expression, the composite effect on gender discrimination was disrupted by inverting the faces (experiment 2). Both experiments also show that the composite paradigm is sensitive to general contextual interference in gender categorisation.     

The impact of implicit prejudice about the elderly on the reaction to stereotype confirmation and disconfirmation

Previous research demonstrated that perceivers explicitly condemn ingroup members who use racial stereotypes but that they are implicitly more likely to favor those ingroup members rather than ingroup members who do not use racial stereotypes (Castelli et al., 2001). The present study has two main goals. First, we want to investigate whether the same effects can be detected in the domain of ageism. In particular, we predicted that young adults would implicitly but not explicitly favor a young male who describes an old man in a stereotype-consistent way rather than in a stereotypeinconsistent way. Most importantly, we hypothesized that this tendency is related to participants’ prejudice level as assessed through an implicit measure (IAT, Greenwald et al., 1998), so that high prejudice individuals will implicitly favor stereotypere and derogate ingroup members who use stereotype-inconsistent information. Results provide general support for the hypotheses, and their implications for stereotype maintenance and change are discussed. Preparation of this paper was supported by a research grant from the University of Padova to the first author (CPDG018859).     

Does Sex Matter? The Moderating Role of Sex on the Relationship Between Stress Biomarkers and Cognition

We examined the moderating role of sex on the relationship between salivary cortisol and alpha-amylase (sAA) and a diverse battery of cognitive outcomes including measures of working memory capacity, executive functioning, and prospective memory in addition to a more traditional memory measure (episodic memory). The final sample for the analyses included 144 participants (34 men and 110 women). Multiple regressions were performed to test the moderating role of sex on the stress biomarker-cognition relationship. For backward counting performance, higher cortisol levels were related to worse performance in men, but not women. Higher cortisol levels were also related to lower word recall, but only in men. Finally, men, but not women, had higher switching costs in the Trail Making task as levels of sAA rose. The results provide evidence that sex moderates the stress biomarker-cognition relationship in a variety of cognitive outcomes. Although not part of the primary analysis, sAA and cortisol interacted such that increased sAA levels were only negatively related to backward counting performance when cortisol levels were low. The findings are discussed primarily in terms of biological sex differences in the stress response.     

Integrated Behavioral Health in Rural Settings: A Course Design

ABSTRACT

Rurality is a vital component of cultural diversity, making it essential to train future counselors on comprehensive mental health counseling practice with rural populations. In this article, we describe the development of a master’s level course that reflects an integrated approach to providing mental health counseling services in rural communities. First, the pedagogical foundation for the course design and positionality are discussed. Second, the course objectives are outlined, and corresponding teaching methods and creative learning assignments are provided. Last, we discuss the strengths and challenges of the course design and implementation.