Facial appearance and impressions of ‘credibility’: The effects of facial babyishness and age on person perception

T he babyface overgeneralization effect is perceiving that people whose facial features resemble those of children have childlike traits, and treating them accordingly. This experiment sought to replicate the US findings with a South‐European sample, to examine the impact of facial maturity on impressions of truthfulness, and to examine the influence of age on person perception. Three‐hundred and twenty‐four Spanish undergraduates were shown a photograph and had to rate it on a series of behavioural‐tendency and trait scales measuring honesty, truthfulness, strength, dominance, intelligence, naivety, and warmth. The photographs were babyfaced, intermediate, and mature faced computer‐manipulated versions of three pictures of the same individual at three different ages. Results indicate that the experimental manipulations significantly affected most of the dependent variables. Babyfaced individuals were perceived as the most truthful, and children as the most deceitful. However, when the deceit concerned a sexual abuse allegation, children were rated as the least deceitful. These results support the existence of (a) the babyface overgeneralization effect, (b) the stereotype that children are unreliable witnesses, and (c) the belief that children never lie about sexual abuse offenses. They also suggest that facial babyishness and age may be static perceived deception cues that may account for the demeanour bias found in nonverbal research on the detection of deceit.     

Sensitivity reductions in false recognition: a measure of false memories with stronger theoretical implications

Signal detection analyses of recognition memory indicate that a bias to respond "old" is large for critical words that are centrally related with previously encoded word lists, is small for words that are less related, and is not observed for unrelated words. Also, recognition sensitivity has not been previously shown to differ between those conditions, which has focused debate over how to explain false recognition on the bias differences. In 3 experiments, critical-word sensitivity was lower than sensitivity for other word types, but related-word sensitivity was not lower than sensitivity for unrelated words. Extant models that predict reduced critical-word sensitivity also predict lower sensitivity for related words than for unrelated words. These results provide crucial new constraints on theoretical explanations of false memories.     

Glucocorticoid involvement in memory formation in a rat model for traumatic memory

Contextual fear conditioning under training conditions involving high stressor intensities has been proposed as an animal model for traumatic memories. The strength of memory for this task has been related to the intensity of the conditioning stressor and post-training corticosterone values. However, administration of a glucocorticoid receptor (GR) antagonist only attenuated memory for this task in rats conditioned at a moderate shock intensity (0.4 mA), but failed to influence conditioning in rats trained at a high shock intensity (1 mA). Here, we further questioned whether interfering with glucocorticoid action at the time of training might be effective in influencing contextual fear conditioning in rats trained under different shock intensities. Rats were subcutaneously injected with the glucocorticoid synthesis inhibitor metyrapone (50, 100 mg/kg) 90 min before being trained in the contextual fear conditioning task, at either 0.4 or 1 mA shock intensities. The results showed that metyrapone, in a dose-dependent manner: (i) attenuated long-term expression of contextual fear conditioning, both in 0.4- and 1 mA-trained rats; and (ii) efficiently prevented increased plasma corticosterone concentration. In addition to further supporting a facilitating role of glucocorticoids in memory consolidation, these findings suggest a critical involvement of these hormones in the formation of traumatic memories.     

Assessment of antisocial behaviour in children and adolescents: new data with the ASB scale

Information is given about a series of studies with Allsopp and Feldman's ASB scale (1976) in its Spanish version, which compliments the information collected in Silva, Martorell and Clemente (1986a). It deals with test-retest reliability with an interval of 12 months; with comparisons between anonymous and non-anonymous data, and comparison between self-evaluation and evaluation by others. The results support the metric quality of the ASB scale, inviting revision of some of the common criticisms made of these types of instruments.     

Training of practitioners and beliefs about family skills in family-based prevention programmes

To ensure close adherence to the contents of a family-based cognitive-behavioural programme, and maintain a high standard of quality in its implementation, it is important that practitioners’ attitudes and beliefs regarding family skills coincide with those of the programme. This paper describes and analyses (observed) potential changes in these beliefs, after training courses held prior to the application of a prevention programme for families: the Family Competence Programme. A questionnaire was devised to examine practitioners’ beliefs regarding family skills; and completed both before and after the training course. The results point to significant changes in family dynamics, realistic expectations and active listening. Thus, it can be demonstrated that preliminary training courses promote practitioner attitudes and beliefs which are more coherent with a subsequent programme’s approach.     

Incivility at work,upset at home? Testing the cross‐level moderation effect of emotional dysregulation among female nurses from primary health care

Workplace incivility is a growing problem in nursing. However, most studies that explore this psychosocial risk and its consequences do so considering a single level and a between‐person perspective. The aims of the study were to explore whether the effects of experiencing incivility during work‐time could explain the daily levels of well‐being of nurses at home; and to analyze if that relationship could be moderated by their levels of emotional dysregulation as a trait. This is a multilevel study with diary methodology. The study was carried out in 18 primary health‐care centers belonging to Madrid and the Basque Country, in Spain. Ninety‐four nurses completed a general questionnaire and 54 of them a diary booklet over five consecutive working days in two different moments, immediately after work and at bedtime. The results showed that nurses’ emotional dysregulation moderated the relationship between daily workplace incivility and daily fatigue, and positive affect at night at home. However, there were no direct effects of daily incivility on these outcome variables. In conclusion, the presence of difficulties in emotional regulation among nurses can increase the negative effects of daily workplace incivility on their health and well‐being.     

Choose your lunch companion wisely: the relationships between lunch break companionship,psychological detachment,and daily vigour

This diary study examines psychological detachment, companionship, and content of conversation during lunch break as predictors of daily vigour after lunch break and at the end of the working day. Drawing on resource regulation theory and the effort recovery model (ERM), we hypothesize that companionship of the supervisor during lunch break is negatively and companionship of colleagues positively related to employee’s daily vigour. The companionship of both, supervisors and colleagues, as well as work-related conversations are hypothesized to decrease psychological detachment during lunch breaks. In total, 71 persons in administrative jobs completed daily surveys over one working week. Results of hierarchical linear modelling showed that psychological detachment is positively related to vigour after lunch break, but unrelated to vigour at the end of the working day. Lunch breaks with the supervisor predicted a lower level of vigour at the end of the working day, but a higher level of vigour after lunch break. Lunch breaks with colleagues were unrelated to vigour after lunch break, but associated with higher vigour at the end of a working day. The companionship of both—colleagues and supervisors—as well as work-related conversation decreased psychological detachment during lunch break.     

Word recognition in Alzheimer's disease: Effects of semantic degeneration

Impairments of word recognition in Alzheimer's disease (AD) have been less widely investigated than impairments affecting word retrieval and production. In particular, we know little about what makes individual words easier or harder for patients with AD to recognize. We used a lexical selection task in which participants were shown sets of four items, each set consisting of one word and three non‐words. The task was simply to point to the word on each trial. Forty patients with mild‐to‐moderate AD were significantly impaired on this task relative to matched controls who made very few errors. The number of patients with AD able to recognize each word correctly was predicted by the frequency, age of acquisition, and imageability of the words, but not by their length or number of orthographic neighbours. Patient Mini‐Mental State Examination and phonological fluency scores also predicted the number of words recognized. We propose that progressive degradation of central semantic representations in AD differentially affects the ability to recognize low‐imageability, low‐frequency, late‐acquired words, with the same factors affecting word recognition as affecting word retrieval.