Normal face-based judgements of social characteristics despite severely impaired holistic face processing

Initial evidence indicates that face-based judgements of socially relevant characteristics such as people's trustworthiness or attractiveness are linked to the configural/holistic processing of facial cues. What remains a matter of debate, however, is whether such processing is actually necessary for normal social judgements to occur and whether it resembles the type of integrative processing as required for facial identification. To address these issues, we asked a well-characterized case of acquired prosopagnosia (PS) with a marked deficit in holistic processing for face identity to rate a series of faces on several dimensions of social relevance. PS provided ratings within the normal range for most of the social characteristics probed (i.e., aggression, attractiveness, confidence, intelligence, sociability, trustworthiness). Her evaluations deviated from those of healthy controls only when facial dominance was concerned. Taken together, these data demonstrate that the inability to integrate facial information during face individuation does not necessarily translate into a generalized deficit to evaluate faces on social dimensions.     

The place of words and numbers in psychiatric research

In recent decades, there has been widespread debate in the human and social sciences regarding the compatibility and the relative merits of quantitative and qualitative approaches in research. In psychiatry, depending on disciplines and traditions, objects of study can be represented either in words or using two types of mathematization. In the latter case, the use of mathematics in psychiatry is most often only local, as opposed to global as in the case of classical mechanics. Relationships between these objects of study can in turn be explored in three different ways: 1/ by a hermeneutic process, 2/ using statistics, the most frequent method in psychiatric research today, 3/ using equations, i.e. using mathematical relationships that are formal and deterministic. The 3 ways of representing entities (with language, locally with mathematics or globally with mathematics) and the 3 ways of expressing the relationships between entities (using hermeneutics, statistics or equations) can be combined in a cross-tabulation, and nearly all nine combinations can be described using examples. A typology of this nature may be useful in assessing which epistemological perspectives are currently dominant in a constantly evolving field such as psychiatry, and which other perspectives still need to be developed. It also contributes to undermining the overly simplistic and counterproductive beliefs that accompany the assumption of a Manichean “quantitative/qualitative” dichotomy. Systematic examination of this set of typologies could be useful in indicating new directions for future research beyond the quantitative/qualitative divide.     

Objective age-of-acquisition (AoA) norms for a set of 230 object names in French: Relationships with psycholinguistic variables,the English data from Morrison et al. (1997), and naming latencies

Picture naming speed is strongly influenced by the age of acquisition (AoA) of words. Most studies of AoA have relied on adults' AoA ratings. However, objective AoA has been found to be a stronger determinant of picture naming latencies. Whereas objective AoA norms for words have been collected for some language communities, no objective AoA measures for words were previously available in French. The study provides objective AoA norms for a set of 230 object names following the procedures used by Morrison, Chappell, and Ellis (1997) to collect objective AoA measures in English. The relationships between objective AoA measures, rated AoA, other variables used in psycholinguistic experiments (name agreement, image agreement, conceptual familiarity, etc.), the English data collected by Morrison et al., and naming latencies are analysed and discussed. In addition, reanalyses of data on picture naming latencies (Bonin, Chalard, Méot, & Fayol, 2002) with the use of objective AoA norms are provided. Stepwise multiple analyses show that objective AoA is a stronger determinant of (spoken and written) naming latencies than rated AoA, whereas objective word frequency is not a reliable independent determinant and does not interact reliably with AoA in any of the analyses.     

When does action resist visual illusions?

Over the past decade, many studies of non-pathological individuals have reported functional dissociations between perceptual judgments and motor responses. These results suggested an interpretation of the ventral and dorsal streams in the primate visual system as independent modules for visual awareness and the visual guidance of actions. However, recent comparisons of perception and grasping responses in size-contrast displays have been widely reported to show that apparent dissociations are actually experimental artifacts. An overview of the literature suggests that the issue of visuomotor dissociations in healthy individuals is far from settled. Some results suggest that immunity from visual illusions might be found when task requirements emphasize observer-relative reference frames. These results suggest that the functional specialization of the two visual subsystems might be less rigid than originally posited.     

Distinctive features,dichotic competition,and the encoding of stop consonants

“Same”-“different” response latencies were measured for dichotic CV syllables at stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs) of 20–480 msec. The results showed a consistent effect of distinctive feature separation on latencies and error rates, which persisted at longer SOAs. This supports the idea that phonemes are retained in memory in a distinctive feature code at least for half a second, and that such a code is also involved in the comparison of successive phonemes. The pattern of errors and latencies suggested two components in dichotic competition: “perceptual integration” at short SOAs and “perceptual noise” at longer SOAs. A “perceptual space” analogy is suggested: two stimuli must be separated by a minimum distance (including time separation as a dimension) to be perceived as distinct; if they are perceived as distinct, they are first categorized and then compared by assessing their distance in a phonetic space.     

Cross-modality matching of muscular tension to loudness

In a single session, Ss produced and estimated a series of electromyographically measured tensions, estimated the loudness of pure tones, and then matched muscular tension to tonal loudness. In all cases, power functions adequately represented the estimation and matching data. For two Ss, who scaled tension in the abductor of the little finger, the slopes of the estimation functions successfully predicted the slopes of the matching functions. For the other Ss the prediction from estimation to matching data was fair, but not good; these Ss scaled adductor tension, for which the electromyographic measurements were methodologically questionable. The data suggest that a consistent scale of muscular tension can be constructed, and that the scale can be validated by crossmodal comparison.     

The Incremental Validity of the Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire (TEIQue): A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

A criticism leveled against the conceptualization of emotional intelligence (EI) as a personality trait is that it overlaps considerably with the higher order personality dimensions and, therefore, has weak utility. To investigate this criticism, a systematic review and meta-analysis were conducted to synthesize the literature examining the incremental validity of the 2 adult self-report forms of the Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire (TEIQue). Twenty-four articles reporting 114 incremental validity analyses of the TEIQue were reviewed according to the studies' methodological features. Additionally, data from 18 studies (providing 105 effect sizes) were pooled in a meta-analysis. Results suggest that the TEIQue consistently explains incremental variance in criteria pertaining to different areas of functioning, beyond higher order personality dimensions and other emotion-related variables. The pooled effect size was relatively small, but statistically and practically significant (ΔR² = .06, SE = .0116; 95% CI [.03, .08]). The number of covariates controlled for, the form of the TEIQue, and the focus on higher order personality dimensions versus other individual-difference constructs as baseline predictors did not affect the effect size. Analyses conducted at the factor level indicated that the incremental contribution is mainly due to the well-being and self-control factors of trait EI. Methodological issues and directions for future research are discussed.     

The Denial of the World from an Impartial View

Starting point: And remember, he who rebukes the world is rebuked by the world. (Kipling 1895 Kipling, Rudyard 1895. The Second Jungle Book. London: Macmillan, 1966 edition10.5962/bhl.title.59116.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar], 116) The above quote describes the mechanism which ensures that the affirmation of the world prevails. Positively minded people have a better survival value and the survivors are always right. But are the survivors also the winners? Not from a Buddhist point of view, which suggests that we should rather leave the wheel of reincarnation.

Type of Problem: Is our perception of suffering and risk distorted? How would an impartial observer evaluate the world?

Method: Two metaphors with the same structure (a happy majority and a suffering individual) but different messages are examined. The first suggests denying the world out of compassion; the second suggests limiting compassion and affirming the world.Using an impartial perspective, the issue of compassion is transformed into an issue of risk. After this transformation the denial of the world can be expressed in terms of uncertainty-aversion.

Result: From a strictly hedonistic and impartial perspective it is uncertain if life’s chances outweigh the risks. There is no indisputable metric for measuring risks and no reliable forecast. Given this uncertainty the denial of the world cannot easily be dismissed as being irrational.     

Correction to: Self-referential propositions

Synthese - Unfortunately, there is a mistake in line 10 of Section 1.2. The correct reference should read: As Kripke pointed out, we can produce one simply by baptizing the string ‘Jack is...