The Daily Grind: A Rhizomatic Approach to Narratives of Managing Commuter Stress During Traffic Congestion in Metro Manila

Robust literature on commuter stress has shown the multiple impact of daily commuting in people's lives. Framed within a rhizomatic approach to narratives, we analyzed stories of 11 working and 9 student Filipino commuters by looking at the ways they act on or reconstruct themselves to manage stress. In urban Metro Manila, our findings showed three narrative “stress entryways”: getting caught by the wave, seating privileges, and stuck in transit. Theoretical and practical implications of findings on commuter well-being (e.g., keeping emotions in, releasing tensions), technologies of the “fit” commuter, and enriching conversations in traffic psychology and urban living are discussed.     

Object imagery and object identification: object imagers are better at identifying spatially-filtered visual objects

Object imagery refers to the ability to construct pictorial images of objects. Individuals with high object imagery (high-OI) produce more vivid mental images than individuals with low object imagery (low-OI), and they encode and process both mental images and visual stimuli in a more global and holistic way. In the present study, we investigated whether and how level of object imagery may affect the way in which individuals identify visual objects. High-OI and low-OI participants were asked to perform a visual identification task with spatially-filtered pictures of real objects. Each picture was presented at nine levels of filtering, starting from the most blurred (level 1: only low spatial frequencies—global configuration) and gradually adding high spatial frequencies up to the complete version (level 9: global configuration plus local and internal details). Our data showed that high-OI participants identified stimuli at a lower level of filtering than participants with low-OI, indicating that they were better able than low-OI participants to identify visual objects at lower spatial frequencies. Implications of the results and future developments are discussed.     

Empathy and emotion recognition in semantic dementia: A case report

Recent studies have demonstrated that patients suffering from frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD) show impairments in empathy and emotional processing. In this study, we examined two different aspects of these abilities in a patient with semantic dementia (SD), a variant of FTLD. The first aspect was the assessment of the cognitive and emotional components of empathy through the Interpersonal Reactivity Index. The second was the naming and comprehension of emotions using the Ekman 60 Faces Test. The patient’s emotion word knowledge was spared and the emotional aspects of empathy preserved. Conversely, the patient performed below average for all of the basic emotions when an emotion word had to be matched with a picture. When picture-to-picture matching was tested, however, the patient was able to recognize happiness. This case is a good example of a dissociation of covert and overt emotional functioning in SD. Results are discussed in terms of the impaired empathic behavior and emotional functioning in FTLD.     

Naming disorders and semantic representations

The status of semantic conceptual structures in aphasia was investigated with relation to naming disorders in spontaneous and constrained speech production. A battery of six tasks was administered to 25 control subjects and 25 aphasics: spontaneous speech production (from which the percentage of nouns was calculated), confrontation naming, understanding class relationships (verbal and pictorial), and understanding thematic relationships (verbal and pictorial). Results indicated the important role of taxonomic abilities for naming, while other conceptual structures (i.e., thematic relations) do not seem to play any important role in the process of naming. These results are discussed in terms of the internal organization of semantic information.This work was supported by grants to Drs. Semenza and Bisiacchi from the Ministero della Pubblica Istruzione and by the Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche Unita 14, Scienza del Comportamento.     

Repetition priming in simple addition depends on surface form and typicality

Repetition priming and recognition memory for numbers were measured in four experiments using single-digit addition. Results of the first two experiments indicate that when numbers were presented as number words and dot configurations, preexposure of the same problem in the same notation produced greater reaction-time benefit than did preexposure of the same problem in Arabic-digit notation. In contrast, when numbers were presented as Arabic digits, preexposure of the same problem in Arabic digit, number word, and dot notation produced the same amount of priming. In the third experiment, priming was shown to be greatest, for all three notations, when the task performed on preexposure trials (addition or multiplication) matched the task performed on repetition trials (addition). Results of the fourth experiment, measuring recognition memory, were comparable to the priming results in the sense that memory was superior when notation matched across repetitions if the test involved number words and dot configurations but not Arabic digits. These data are interpreted in terms of models of numerical cognition, and they support the hypothesis that the influence of surface form on repetition priming depends on the typicality of the input for the task.     

Why are Girls Less Physically Aggressive than Boys? Personality and Parenting Mediators of Physical Aggression

The primary goal of the present analysis was todetermine whether the commonly observed genderdifference in physical aggression could be accounted forby gender differences in selected personality and social contextual factors. Eighty-nineadolescents (M age = 16.0; 52% female; 53%European-Americans, 38% Latinos)completed self-reportmeasures, including sympathy (empathic concern andperspective taking) and parental involvement (support andmonitoring). Mediation analyses revealed that relativelyhigh levels of both empathic concern and parentalmonitoring accounted for relatively low levels ofphysical aggression. In addition, sympathy (for males)and parental involvement (males and females) werenegatively related to physical aggression. Discussionfocused on theoretical and practical implications of these findings.     

Egocentric and relative spatial codes in S-R compatibility

Summary It has been shown that spatial compatibility is due to a comparison between the spatial codes that describe stimulus and response positions. Such codes are often defined in right-left terms. There are, however, two types of right-left codes that can be used for describing a position in space. One is formed with relation to the egocentric axes and can be termed side, whereas the other is formed with relation to an external reference location and can be termed relative position. Five experiments were conducted to determine the role of these different codes in producing spatial compatibility effects. In Experiments 1 and 2 the position of the stimulus provided the relevant cue for choosing the correct response (i.e., the situation was typical of spatial compability proper), whereas in Experiments 3, 4, and 5 the stimulus provided a locational cue that was not necessary for choosing the correct response (i.e., the situation was typical of the Simon effect). The experimental manipulations concerned the task demands and the time elapsing between availability of the stimulus code and availability of the response code. The results showed that upon stimulus presentation, both stimulus codes (that concerning side and that concerning relative position) were formed, but experimental manipulations determined the one that was effective in yielding compatibility effects. When the task required the use of one type of code, then spatial compatibility depended on that code alone. When the two coding processes were separated in time, then spatial compatibility depended only on the code that was formed simultaneously with the response code.