Physiologic reactivity to startling tones in women with posttraumatic stress disorder.

Autonomic and eyeblink reactivity to startling tones were investigated in women with histories of childhood sexual abuse (CSA). Twenty-one women with current posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), 23 with lifetime but not current PTSD, and 13 women who never had PTSD listened to 15 95-dB, 500-ms, 1000-Hz tones with a 0-ms rise time while heart rate (HR), skin conductance (SC), and orbicularis oculi electromyogram (EMG) responses were measured. Participants in the current and lifetime PTSD groups produced larger HR responses across tones and showed slower absolute habituation of SC response magnitude compared with the never PTSD group. EMG response magnitudes did not differ among groups. Women with CSA-related PTSD showed increased autonomic reactivity and slower habituation to high-intensity tones similar to that observed in primarily male, combat PTSD samples. This suggests that heightened autonomic responsivity to startling stimuli in PTSD is not gender or event specific.     

Instructions for Authors

Instructions for Authors

Instructions for Authors     

Branded Into Submission: Brand Attributes and Hierarchization Behavior in Same-Sex and Mixed-Sex Dyads

In 2 experiments, the role of brand attributes in the process of nonconscious hierarchization in dyadic interactions was examined. Experiment 1 showed that in same-sex dyads, brands that are associated with an agent and that are rated high on the brand personality dimension of competence ( Aaker, 1997 ) induced patterns of nonverbal submissive behavior on the part of the interaction partner. This effect was more pronounced for individuals with a low intrinsic tendency for dominant behavior. Experiment 2 extended these findings to mixed-sex dyads and brands that varied in overall status. Moreover, participant gender moderated the effects, such that the impact of brand status on hierarchization behavior and on agent likability was more pronounced for women than for men.     

Classification as diagnostic reasoning

An ongoing goal in the field of categorization has been to determine how objects’ features provide evidence of membership in one category versus another. Well-known findings include that feature diagnosticity is a function of how often the feature appears in category members versus nonmembers, their perceptual salience, how features are used in support of inferences, and how observable features are related to other observable features. We tested how diagnosticity is affected by causal relations between observable and unobserved features. Consistent with our view of classification as diagnostic reasoning, we found that observable features are more diagnostic to the extent that they are caused by underlying features that define category membership, because the presence of the latter can be (causally) inferred from the former. Implications of these results for current views of conceptual structure and models of categorization are discussed.     

Statistical learning of phonetic categories: insights from a computational approach

Recent evidence ( Maye, Werker & Gerken, 2002 ) suggests that statistical learning may be an important mechanism for the acquisition of phonetic categories in the infant's native language. We examined the sufficiency of this hypothesis and its implications for development by implementing a statistical learning mechanism in a computational model based on a mixture of Gaussians (MOG) architecture. Statistical learning alone was found to be insufficient for phonetic category learning – an additional competition mechanism was required in order for the categories in the input to be successfully learnt. When competition was added to the MOG architecture, this class of models successfully accounted for developmental enhancement and loss of sensitivity to phonetic contrasts. Moreover, the MOG with competition model was used to explore a potentially important distributional property of early speech categories – sparseness – in which portions of the space between phonetic categories are unmapped. Sparseness was found in all successful models and quickly emerged during development even when the initial parameters favoured continuous representations with no gaps. The implications of these models for phonetic category learning in infants are discussed.     

Influence of object size on baseline identification, priming, and explicit memory

We investigated the influence of size on identification, priming, and explicit memory for color photos of common objects. Participants studied objects displayed in small, medium, and large sizes and memory was assessed with both implicit identification and explicit recognition tests. Overall, large objects were easier to identify than small objects and study-to-test changes in object size impeded performance on explicit but not implicit memory tests. In contrast to previous findings with line-drawings of objects but consistent with predictions from the distance-as-filtering hypothesis, we found that study-test size manipulations had large effects on old/new recognition memory test for objects displayed in large size at test but not for objects displayed small or medium at test. Our findings add to the growing body of literature showing that the findings obtained using line-drawings of objects do not necessarily generalize to color photos of common objects. We discuss implications of our findings for theories of object perception, memory, and eyewitness identification accuracy for objects.     

Relative Necessity Reformulated

This paper discusses some serious difficulties for what we shall call the standard account of various kinds of relative necessity, according to which any given kind of relative necessity may be defined by a strict conditional - necessarily, if C then p - where C is a suitable constant proposition, such as a conjunction of physical laws. We argue, with the help of Humberstone (Reports on Mathematical Logic, 31, 33–421, 1981), that the standard account has several unpalatable consequences. We argue that Humberstone’s alternative account has certain disadvantages, and offer another - considerably simpler - solution.     

Children's Uncertain Responses when Testifying about Alleged Sexual Abuse in Scottish Courts

This study examined the uncertain responses of 56 alleged sexual abuse victims, aged 5–17 years, testifying in Scottish criminal court trials. Don't know/remember ground rules were explained to 38% of the children and each child reported uncertainty in response to 15% of the questions on average. Uncertain responding was associated with expressions of resistance and confusion, questioning context (proportionally more regarding substantive than non‐substantive issues), question content (least to disclosure‐focused questions), utterance type (more to directives, particularly those posed by defense lawyers; more to recall‐based than recognition prompts), and age (children in mid‐adolescence were less likely to respond uncertainly than those who were either older or younger). There were no associations between expressions of uncertainty and ground rule administration, or with whether or not the question focused on central rather than peripheral details about the alleged crimes. Findings highlight concerns surrounding preparatory procedures to help witnesses, especially adolescents, indicate uncertainty when testifying. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.