Social influence: The role of originality

Two experiments investigated the role of message originality vs. conventionality in social influence. It was hypothesized that subjects would generate more original proposals when confronted with a minority advocating an original viewpoint than when confronted with a conventional minority proposal or with an original majority proposal. In the first experiment, subjects exposed to an original minority paired with a conventional majority produced a wider range and more original proposals than those exposed either to a conventional minority paired with a conventional majority or to a majority source only. The second experiment further demonstrated that the original message induced creative processing only when attributed to a minority source but not when attributed to a majority source. It also showed that the original minority elicited creative processing mainly when paired with a conventional majority, but not when paired with a majority advocating an equally original position. Findings are interpreted in the frame of Nemeth's (1986) minority influence theory.     

From horror to ethical responsibility: Carl Gustav Jung and Stephen King encounter the dark half within us,between us and in the world

This paper explores the experience of horror. The term is usually understood collectively to refer to experiences of terrorism, racism and other conflicts; however, the paper explores the equal horror for the individual of facing deep and painful psychic contents and traumatic experiences. The paper explores the way that both C.G. Jung, through analysis of the psyche, and the author Stephen King, through his horror novels, have accepted and explored the experience of encountering ‘the dark half’ or ‘It’ that is the other within themselves, forming images and symbols capable of linking their personal experience to that of the collective. This encounter is transformed, as far as Jung is concerned by analytical psychology and for King by fiction, through an attitude of active imagination. This led both men to developing an ethical responsibility towards the images of the unconscious, as well as the personal and collective contents of human life. The paper depicts how encountering the ‘dark half’, through Jung and King can provide a Jungian analyst with a special attitude with which to deeply explore and ethically process the experience of horror in different fields, including therapeutic practice, analytical training and in the traumatic and conflictual facing of the other, with which, today as always, the world presents us.     

rTMS stimulation on left DLPFC increases the correct recognition of memories for emotional target and distractor words

According to a recent hypothesis, the prefrontal cortex has been proposed as the site of emotional memory integration, because it is sensitive to the recognition of emotional contents. In the present research, we explored the role of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) in memory recognition processes for positive versus negative emotional stimuli when old (target) and new (distractor, either semantically related or unrelated to the target) stimuli were presented. The role of the DLPFC was analysed using an rTMS (repeated transcranial magnetic stimulation) paradigm that induced increased cortical activation of the left DLPFC. The subjects were required to perform a task that consisted of two experimental phases (i.e., an encoding and a recognition phase) in which the targets and the distractors were presented and recognition performance was measured. rTMS stimulation was provided over the left DLPFC during the recognition phase. We found that the rTMS stimulation affected the memory recognition of positive emotional material. Moreover, related and unrelated distractors were discarded better when they were positively valenced, and a more significant effect (i.e., increased performance) was produced in response to related distractors. This result suggests that the activation of the left DLPFC favours the memory recognition of positive emotional information, and that such activation is able to induce a more appropriate selective process to distinguish target from distractor stimuli in the presence of more complex processes (related distractors). The valence model of emotional cue processing may explain this increased performance by demonstrating the distinct role of the left hemisphere in the retrieval of positive emotional information.     

The Parental Reflective Functioning Questionnaire in Mothers and Fathers of School-Aged Children

Research on parental reflective functioning (PRF)—defined as parents’ capacity to comprehend the developing mind of their child, reflect upon it, and hold in mind the inner life of the child—has mostly involved mothers of infants and young children, and rarely fathers and parents of school-aged children. The present study sought to extend research on PRF by examining aspects of the construct that are still scarcely explored, such as the role of gender and attachment; to investigate whether there were differences between mothers’ and fathers’ PRF and whether there were differences in PRF related to the gender and age of the child; and, finally, to assess the association between PRF and each parent’s attachment style. The Parental Reflective Functioning Questionnaire (PRFQ) and the Attachment Style Questionnaire (ASQ) were administered to a community sample of mothers and fathers of 385 children aged 3–10 years. A multi-group factor analysis supported the hypothesized three-factor model among both fathers and mothers. Univariate and multivariate analyses of variance showed that mothers had higher levels of interest and curiosity in their children’s mental states than fathers. Parents of daughters showed higher pre-mentalizing modes than parents of sons. Parents of preschool children showed less nonmentalizing modes than parents of children aged 8–10. Correlations between PRFQ and ASQ showed that both mothers’ and fathers’ interest in thinking about their child’s internal experience and in taking the child’s perspective were correlated with higher levels of secure attachment style. Research implications are discussed.     

The role of the nucleus basalis magnocellularis in fear conditioning consolidation in the rat

The nucleus basalis magnocellularis (NBM) is known to be involved in the memorization of several conditioned responses. To investigate the role of the NBM in fear conditioning memorization, this neural site was subjected to fully reversible tetrodotoxin (TTX) inactivation during consolidation in adult male Wistar rats that had undergone fear training to acoustic conditioned stimulus (CS) and context. TTX was stereotaxically administered to different groups of rats at increasing intervals after the acquisition session. Memory was assessed as the conditioned freezing duration measured during retention testing, always performed 72 and 96 h after TTX administration. In this way, there was no interference with normal NBM function during either acquisition or retrieval phases, allowing any amnesic effect to be due only to consolidation disruption. The results show that for contextual fear response memory consolidation, NBM functional integrity is necessary up to 24 h post-acquisition. On the other hand, NBM functional integrity was shown to be necessary for memory consolidation of the acoustic CS fear response only immediately after acquisition and not 24-h post-acquisition. The present findings help to elucidate the role of the NBM in memory consolidation and better define the neural circuits involved in fear memories.     

Three-month-olds' visual preference for faces and its underlying visual processing mechanisms

This study was aimed at investigating the face preference phenomenon and its underlying mechanisms at 3 months of age. Using an eye-tracker apparatus, Experiment 1 demonstrated that 3-month-olds prefer natural face images to unnatural ones, replicating and extending previous evidence obtained with schematic facelike stimuli. Experiments 2 and 3 showed that the general mechanisms that induce face preference in newborns could not explain the same phenomenon at 3 months of age, when infants are attracted by perceptual cues more specific to faces. This suggests that signs of a process of cognitive specialization are already present in 3-month-olds' visual behavior toward faces.     

Getting rid of blinkers: the case of mirror self-recognition in horses (Equus caballus)

Animal Cognition - The commentary by Gallup and Anderson (Anim Cogn https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-021-01538-9 , 2021) on the original article by Baragli, Scopa, Maglieri, and Palagi (Anim Cogn...