On the (mis)categorization of unattractive brides and attractive prostitutes: extending evaluative congruency effects to social category activation

Numerous studies have shown that social categorization is a flexible process that partly depends on contextual variables. However, little is known about the role of affect in people's access to categorical dimensions. We investigated the hypothesis that social category activation is facilitated on evaluatively congruent dimensions. Two studies provide support for this evaluative-matching hypothesis, in which social categorization was found to be faster and more accurate for evaluatively congruent categories (i.e., unattractive foreigners, unattractive prostitutes, attractive fellow-citizens and attractive brides) than for evaluatively incongruent categories (i.e., attractive foreigners, attractive prostitutes, unattractive fellow-citizens and unattractive brides). We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these findings.     

Infant preference for female faces occurs for same‐ but not other‐race faces

There has been a recent surge of interest in the question of how infants respond to the social attributes of race and gender information in faces. This work has demonstrated that by 3 months of age, infants will respond preferentially to same‐race faces and faces depicting the gender of the primary caregiver. In the current study, we investigated emergence of the female face preference for same‐ versus other‐race faces to examine whether the determinants of preference for face gender and race are independent or interactive in young infants. In Expt 1, 3‐month‐old Caucasian infants displayed a preference for female over male faces when the faces were Caucasian, but not when the faces were Asian. In Expt 2, new‐born Caucasian infants did not demonstrate a preference for female over male faces for Caucasian faces. The results are discussed in terms of a face prototype that becomes progressively tuned as it is structured by the interaction of the gender and race of faces that are experienced during early development.     

Mood trajectories following daily life events

Little is known about the magnitude and duration of mood responses to daily negative events as a function of gender, history of mood disorder, and current substance use. Using computerized ambulatory monitoring techniques, perceived negativity of minor daily events and state affect were prospectively examined every 3 h on average for a 7-day period. Event negativity was associated with depressed mood for 6–9 h following event occurrence, and was associated with happy mood for 3–6 h. Gender and substance use moderated the relationship between event negativity and mood states concurrently, and remained influential for approximately 3 h following the event. History of mood disorder did not moderate any within- or across-day relationships between event negativity and mood. No evidence was found for mood uplifts following daily events in either within- or across-day analyses. The findings are discussed relative to assessment timing in investigations of vulnerability-stress theories.     

An inner face advantage in children's recognition of familiar peers

Children’s recognition of familiar own-age peers was investigated. Chinese children (4-, 8-, and 14-year-olds) were asked to identify their classmates from photographs showing the entire face, the internal facial features only, the external facial features only, or the eyes, nose, or mouth only. Participants from all age groups were familiar with the faces used as stimuli for 1 academic year. The results showed that children from all age groups demonstrated an advantage for recognition of the internal facial features relative to their recognition of the external facial features. Thus, previous observations of a shift in reliance from external to internal facial features can be attributed to experience with faces rather than to age-related changes in face processing.     

Hippocampal low-frequency stimulation and chronic mild stress similarly disrupt fear extinction memory in rats

Disruptions of fear extinction-related potentiation of synaptic efficacy in the connection between the hippocampus (HPC) and the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) have been shown to impair the recall of extinction memory. This study was undertaken to examine if chronic mild stress (CMS), which is known to alter induction of HPC–mPFC long-term potentiation, would also interfere with both extinction-related HPC–mPFC potentiation and extinction memory. Following fear conditioning (5 tone-shock pairings), rats were submitted to fear extinction (20 tone-alone presentations), which produced an increase in the amplitude of HPC–mPFC field potentials. HPC low-frequency stimulation (LFS), applied immediately after training, suppressed these changes and induced fear return during the retention test (5 tone-alone presentations). CMS, delivered before fear conditioning, did not interfere with fear extinction but blocked the development of extinction-related potentiation in the HPC–mPFC pathway and impaired the recall of extinction. These findings suggest that HPC LFS may provoke metaplastic changes in HPC outputs that may mimic alterations associated with a history of chronic stress.     

The Cerebellum in Frontotemporal Dementia: a Meta-Analysis of Neuroimaging Studies

Neuropsychology Review - Frontotemporal dementia (FTD) is a neurodegenerative brain disorder primarily affecting the frontal and/or temporal lobes. Three main subtypes have been recognized:...     

External details revisited – A new taxonomy for coding ‘non-episodic’ content during autobiographical memory retrieval

Autobiographical memory (ABM) is typically held to comprise episodic and semantic elements, with the vast majority of studies to date focusing on profiles of episodic details in health and disease. In this context, ‘non-episodic’ elements are often considered to reflect semantic processing or are discounted from analyses entirely. Mounting evidence suggests that rather than reflecting one unitary entity, semantic autobiographical information may contain discrete subcomponents, which vary in their relative degree of semantic or episodic content. This study aimed to (1) review the existing literature to formally characterize the variability in analysis of ‘non-episodic’ content (i.e., external details) on the Autobiographical Interview and (2) use these findings to create a theoretically grounded framework for coding external details. Our review exposed discrepancies in the reporting and interpretation of external details across studies, reinforcing the need for a new, consistent approach. We validated our new external details scoring protocol (the ‘NExt’ taxonomy) in patients with Alzheimer's disease (n = 18) and semantic dementia (n = 13), and 20 healthy older Control participants and compared profiles of the NExt subcategories across groups and time periods. Our results revealed increased sensitivity of the NExt taxonomy in discriminating between ABM profiles of patient groups, when compared to traditionally used internal and external detail metrics. Further, remote and recent autobiographical memories displayed distinct compositions of the NExt detail types. This study is the first to provide a fine-grained and comprehensive taxonomy to parse external details into intuitive subcategories and to validate this protocol in neurodegenerative disorders.     

Applying the attractor field model to social cognition: Perceptual discrimination is facilitated, but memory is impaired for faces displaying evaluatively congruent expressions

A new model of mental representation is applied to social cognition: the attractor field model. Using the model, the authors predicted and found a perceptual advantage but a memory disadvantage for faces displaying evaluatively congruent expressions. In Experiment 1, participants completed a same/different perceptual discrimination task involving morphed pairs of angry-to-happy Black and White faces. Pairs of faces displaying evaluatively incongruent expressions (i.e., happy Black, angry White) were more likely to be labeled as similar and were less likely to be accurately discriminated from one another than faces displaying evaluatively congruent expressions (i.e., angry Black, happy White). Experiment 2 replicated this finding and showed that objective discriminability of stimuli moderated the impact of attractor field effects on perceptual discrimination accuracy. In Experiment 3, participants completed a recognition task for angry and happy Black and White faces. Consistent with the attractor field model, memory accuracy was better for faces displaying evaluatively incongruent expressions. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.     

Origins of adolescents' ideal self: an intergenerational perspective

The present longitudinal study traced the ideal self of 120 adolescents to the ideals that parents hold for themselves and for their children. Ideals were assessed using Q sorts for personality attributes and life goals. After permutation analysis was used to control for random similarity, moderate parent-child ideal-self similarity was evident. Three intermediate transmission steps accounted for this intergenerational similarity: (a) transfer of parents' ideal self to ideals for their children, (b) children's perception, and (c) acceptance of these parental ideals. The last 2 processes related to parenting practices, with parental warmth augmenting parent-child concordance and restrictiveness reducing it. Compared with boys' ideal self, that of girls was more similar to the ideals that parents hold for their children and for themselves. Analyses of patterns over time suggested a growth of ideal-self stability across adolescence.