Covert and overt orienting of attention to emotional faces in anxiety

Attentional biases for emotional faces were investigated in high, medium, and low anxiety groups (N = 54) using a probe detection task. Four types of facial expression (threat, sad, happy, neutral) were used to examine the specificity of the bias. Attentional bias measures were derived from manual reaction times (RTs) to probes and the direction of initial eye movement (EM) to the faces. The RT data indicated enhanced vigilance for threat rather than neutral faces in high and medium, but not low, state anxiety. The bias for negative faces appeared to be a combined function of stimulus threat value and the individual's anxiety level. The RT bias did not seem to depend on overt orienting, as many participants made few EMs. However, those who made frequent EMs to the faces showed concordance between the RT and EM bias measures, and so the RT measure of attentional bias for negative versus positive faces at 500 ms appears to provide a valid index of the direction of initial orienting to emotional stimuli. There was no evidence of an anxiety - related bias for happy faces (predicted by the emotionality hypothesis), nor a dysphoria - related bias for sad faces. However, increased dysphoria scores were associated with reduced attentiveness to happy faces.     

Presentism and the objection from being-supervenience

In this paper, we show that presentism—the view that the way things are is the way things presently are—is not undermined by the objection from being-supervenience. This objection claims, roughly, that presentism has trouble accounting for the truth-value of past-tense claims. Our demonstration amounts to the articulation and defence of a novel version of presentism. This is brute past presentism, according to which the truth-value of past-tense claims is determined by the past understood as a fundamental aspect of reality different from things and how things are.     

Identifying Differences of Environmental Ethics and Place Attachment Among Visitors and Managers at State Parks

ABSTRACT

Understanding place attachment and environmental ethic variables may improve management of natural areas, including enhanced communication related to management practices, managing various natural resources for specific or designated uses, and mediating significant differences between visitors and managers. Bridging any gaps of knowledge and understanding between visitors and those taking care of these natural places may enhance use and management of those areas into the future. This study elicited place attachment, environmental ethics, and demographic information from visitors to four state parks in Oklahoma. State park managers and state park visitors were found to be significantly different in their levels of place attachment and environmental ethics. Using t tests and discriminant analysis, researchers were able to use proenvironmental ethics and place identity to explain and predict the significant differences between the two groups. Implications for natural resource management include improved resource conservation and sustainability through enhanced education, interpretation efforts, and specific programming to connect people to natural places.     

SHS-Related Pediatric Sick Visits are Linked to Maternal Depressive Symptoms Among Low-Income African American Smokers: Opportunity for Intervention in Pediatrics

Maternal smoking and depressive symptoms are independently linked to poor child health outcomes. However, little is known about factors that may predict maternal depressive symptoms among low-income, African American maternal smokers—an understudied population with children known to have increased morbidity and mortality risks. The objective of this study was to test the hypothesis that secondhand smoke exposure (SHSe)-related pediatric sick visits are associated with significant maternal depressive symptoms among low-income, African American maternal smokers in the context of other depression-related factors. Prior to randomization in a behavioral counseling trial to reduce child SHSe, 307 maternal smokers in Philadelphia completed the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression (CES-D) and questionnaires measuring stressful events, nicotine dependence, social support, child health and demographics. CES-D was dichotomized at the clinical cutoff to differentiate mothers with significant versus low depressive symptoms. Results from direct entry logistic regression demonstrated that maternal smokers reporting more than one SHSe-related sick visit (OR 1.38, p < .001), greater perceived life stress (OR 1.05, p < .001) and less social support (OR 0.82, p < .001) within the last 3 months were more likely to report significant depressive symptoms than mothers with fewer clinic visits, less stress, and greater social support. These results suggest opportunities for future hypothesis-driven evaluation, and exploration of intervention strategies in pediatric primary care. Maternal depression, smoking and child illness may present as a reciprocally-determined phenomenon that points to the potential utility of treating one chronic maternal condition to facilitate change in the other chronic condition, regardless of which primary presenting problem is addressed. Future longitudinal research could attempt to confirm this hypothesis.     

Looking back at ‘looking back’: operationalising referential gaze for dingoes in an unsolvable task

This paper examined the performance of dingoes (Canis dingo) on the rope-pulling task, previously used by Miklósi et al. (Curr Biol 13:763–766, 2003) to highlight a key distinction in the problem-solving behaviour of wolves compared to dogs when in the company of humans. That is, when dogs were confronted with an unsolvable task, following a solvable version of the task they looked back or gazed at the human, whereas, wolves did not. We replicated the rope-pulling task using 12 sanctuary-housed dingoes and used the Miklósi et al. (Curr Biol 13:763–766, 2003) definition of looking back behaviour to analyse the data. However, at least three different types of look backs were observed in our study. We, then developed a more accurate operational definition of looking back behaviour that was task specific and reanalysed the data. We found that the operational definition employed greatly influences the results, with vague definitions potentially overestimating the prevalence of looking back behaviour. Thus, caution must be taken when interpreting the results of studies utilising looking back as behaviour linked to assistance seeking during problem solving. We present a more stringent definition and make suggestions for future research.     

The Place of Emotion in Stories Told by Children: An Exploratory Study

This study explored the relationship between developmental changes in children's understanding of emotions and their use of affective content (Wilkinson, Barnsley, Hanna, & Swan, 1980) and affective structure (Brewer & Lichtenstein, 1982) in the production of stories. We hypothesized that children with an advanced understanding of emotions would make more use of both affective content and affective structure. This relationship was found only for affective content, which was more advanced in girls than boys. Affective structure did not relate to affective understanding or sex but, rather, to verbal intelligence. The implications of these results for the part played by psychological processes in children's story telling are discussed.     

The influence of semantic property and grammatical class on semantic selection

Research to-date has not successfully demonstrated consistent neural distinctions for different types of ambiguity or explored the effect of grammatical class on semantic selection. We conducted a relatedness judgment task using event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to further explore these topics. Participants judged relatedness within word pairs. Consistent and inconsistent conditions were included along with filler items. Imaging results revealed a main effect of ambiguity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and parietal cortices. A main effect of grammatical class was observed in the parahippocampal and lingual gyri, and a main effect of consistency was found in the DLPFC, ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC) and occipital cortices. Interactions among these factors were observed in the cingulate gyrus and motor cortices in addition to the DLPFC. These results suggest that both ambiguity type and grammatical class modulate semantic selection through different neural regions.     

Deviance and Social Control in an Alternative Community: The Unique Case of the Rainbow Family of Living Light

This article employs ethnographic fieldwork and interviews to examine social control and redefined deviance in a utopian countercultural group, The Rainbow Family of Living Light, to answer the question of how socially marginalized groups create and maintain collective identity. Working within a symbolic interactionist paradigm, and drawing on theoretical perspectives on reintegrative shaming, the authors examine the experiences of Rainbow Gatherers during a national gathering in the summer of 2010. Through interviews and observations, we illustrate how Rainbow Gatherers redefine deviance, use covert informal social control, create new definitions of proscribed behavior, and construct an internal hierarchical structure. We note a key paradox, in that although the very existence of a hierarchy and rules runs counter to their stated ideology, participants nonetheless acknowledge, observe, and culturally transmit rules and social norms. To navigate this paradox, Gatherers frame control within a familial reintegrative shaming paradigm, exerting covert informal social control within a milieu of family, peace, and cooperation. By drawing on members’ sense of collective harmony, belonging, and family (including often using sibling references), Gatherers can both foster integrations and reaffirm power-symmetry, and thus foster “appropriate” behavior in non-authoritarian ways. This framework allows them to simultaneously control the behaviors of their participants while maintaining their collective anti-control ideology. Findings show that the use of covert informal social control fosters collective identity in the group.     

Geometric cues,reference frames,and the equivalence of experienced-aligned and novel-aligned views in human spatial memory

Spatial memories are often organized around reference frames, and environmental shape provides a salient cue to reference frame selection. To date, however, the environmental cues responsible for influencing reference frame selection remain relatively unknown. To connect research on reference frame selection with that on orientation via environmental shape, we explored the extent to which geometric cues were incidentally encoded and represented in memory by evaluating their influence on reference frame selection. Using a virtual environment equipped with a head-mounted-display, we presented participants with to-be-remembered object arrays. We manipulated whether the experienced viewpoint was aligned or misaligned with global (i.e., the principal axis of space) or local (i.e., wall orientations) geometric cues. During subsequent judgments of relative direction (i.e., participants imagined standing at one object, facing a second object, and pointed toward a third object), we show that performance was best when imagining perspectives aligned with these geometric cues; moreover, global geometric cues were sufficient for reference frame selection, global and local geometric cues were capable of exerting differential influence on reference frame selection, and performance from experienced-imagined perspectives was equivalent to novel-imagined perspectives aligned with geometric cues. These results explicitly connect theory regarding spatial reference frame selection and spatial orientation via environmental shape and indicate that spatial memories are organized around fundamental geometric properties of space.