Recognition of facial emotions in neuropsychiatric disorders

Recognition of facial emotions represents an important aspect of interpersonal communication and is governed by select neural substrates. We present data on emotion recognition in healthy young adults utilizing a novel set of color photographs of evoked universal emotions. In addition, we review the recent literature on emotion recognition in psychiatric and neurologic disorders, and studies that compare different disorders.     

The memory of noise

The memory of auditory random waveforms (i.e., noise) is a special case of auditory memory for sensory information. Five experiments are reported that evaluate the dynamics of this storage system as well as interactions with new input. Periodic waveforms can be discriminated from uncorrelated noise by naive listeners up to a cycle length of 20 s, with the major decline in performance between 5 and 10 s. Even single repetitions of a piece of the waveform can be detected up to a stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) of 6 s. The capacity of this storage system is limited to a few items of, in total, a few hundred milliseconds length. Within this capacity, however, items do not interfere strongly. These results are compatible with the view that auditory sensory memory is a modality-specific module of short-term memory.     

John A. Snyder

Conclusion Wise counseling can relieve the anxiety and inner conflict of parents torn between the dread of their retarded offspring becoming a parent and the fear of an operation they believe to be illegal, immoral, and castrating.By knowing where to refer patients, clergymen can make it possible for some of these deprived members of society to find support and love within marriage without being overburdened by children they are not capable of rearing properly.     

Neural basis for sentence comprehension deficits in frontotemporal dementia

Many patients with frontotemporal dementia (FTD) have impaired sentence comprehension. However, the pattern of comprehension difficulty appears to vary depending on the clinical subgroup. The purpose of this study was to elucidate the neural basis for these deficits in FTD. We studied patients with two different presentations: Three patients with Progressive Non-Fluent Ahasia (PNFA), and five non-aphasic patients with a dysexecutive and social impairment (EXEC). The FTD patient subgroups were compared to a cohort of 11 healthy seniors with intact sentence comprehension. We monitored regional cerebral activity with blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while subjects read sentences featuring both a grammatically complex object-relative center-embedded clause and a long linkage between the head noun phrase (NP) and the gap where the NP is interpreted in the center-embedded clause. Subjects decided whether the agent of the action is a male or a female. Healthy seniors activated both ventral portions of inferior frontal cortex (vIFC) and dorsal portions of IFC (dIFC) in the left hemisphere, often associated with grammatical and working memory components of these sentences, respectively. PNFA patients differed from healthy controls since they have reduced activation of left vIFC, while EXEC patients have less recruitment of left dIFC. We conclude that FTD subgroups have distinct patterns of sentence comprehension difficulty in part because of selective interruptions of a large-scale neural network for sentence processing.     

A justification-suppression model of the expression and experience of prejudice

The authors propose a justification-suppression model (JSM), which characterizes the processes that lead to prejudice expression and the experience of one's own prejudice. They suggest that "genuine" prejudices are not directly expressed but are restrained by beliefs, values, and norms that suppress them. Prejudices are expressed when justifications (e.g., attributions, ideologies, stereotypes) release suppressed prejudices. The same process accounts for which prejudices are accepted into the self-concept The JSM is used to organize the prejudice literature, and many empirical findings are recharacterized as factors affecting suppression or justification, rather than directly affecting genuine prejudice. The authors discuss the implications of the JSM for several topics, including prejudice measurement, ambivalence, and the distinction between prejudice and its expression.     

The Newell Test for a theory of cognition

Newell (1980; 1990) proposed that cognitive theories be developed in an effort to satisfy multiple criteria and to avoid theoretical myopia. He provided two overlapping lists of 13 criteria that the human cognitive architecture would have to satisfy in order to be functional. We have distilled these into 12 criteria: flexible behavior, real-time performance, adaptive behavior, vast knowledge base, dynamic behavior, knowledge integration, natural language, learning, development, evolution, and brain realization. There would be greater theoretical progress if we evaluated theories by a broad set of criteria such as these and attended to the weaknesses such evaluations revealed. To illustrate how theories can be evaluated we apply these criteria to both classical connectionism (McClelland & Rumelhart 1986; Rumelhart & McClelland 1986b) and the ACT-R theory (Anderson & Lebiere 1998). The strengths of classical connectionism on this test derive from its intense effort in addressing empirical phenomena in such domains as language and cognitive development. Its weaknesses derive from its failure to acknowledge a symbolic level to thought. In contrast, ACT-R includes both symbolic and sub-symbolic components. The strengths of the ACT-R theory derive from its tight integration of the symbolic component with the sub-symbolic component. Its weaknesses largely derive from its failure, as yet, to adequately engage in intensive analyses of issues related to certain criteria on Newell's list.     

Family, School, and Community Factors and Relationships to Racial–Ethnic Attitudes and Academic Achievement

This study examined family, school, and community factors and the relationships to racial–ethnic attitudes and academic achievement among 98 African American fourth-grade children. It has been posited that young people who feel better about their racial–ethnic background have better behavioral and academic outcomes, yet there is a need for more empirical tests of this premise. Psychometric information is reported on measures of parent, teacher, and child racial–ethnic attitudes. Path analysis was used to investigate ecological variables potentially related to children's racial–ethnic attitudes and achievement. Parental education and level of racial–ethnic pride were correlated and both were related to children's achievement though in the final path model, only the path from parental education level was statistically significant. Children whose teachers exhibited higher levels of racial–ethnic trust and perceived fewer barriers due to race and ethnicity evidenced more trust and optimism as well. Children living in communities with higher proportions of college-educated residents also exhibited more positive racial–ethnic attitudes. For children, higher racial–ethnic pride was related to higher achievement measured by grades and standardized test scores, while racial distrust and perception of barriers due to race were related to reduced performance. This study suggests that family, school, and community are all important factors related to children's racial–ethnic attitudes and also to their academic achievement.     

Toward a Theory of Solidarity

Many types of `other-regarding' acts and beliefs cannotbe accounted for satisfactorilyas instances of sophisticated selfishness, altruism,team-reasoning, Kantian duty, kinselection etc. This paper argues in favour ofre-inventing the notion of solidarity as ananalytical category capable of shedding importantnew light on hitherto under-explainedaspects of human motivation. Unlike altruism andnatural sympathy (which turn theinterests of specific others into one's own), orteam-reasoning (which applies exclusivelyto members of some team), or Kantian duty (whichdemands universalisable principlesof action), the essence of solidarity lies in thehypothesis that people are capable ofresponding sympathetically to (or empathising with)a condition afflicting others,irrespectively of who those others are or whetherone cares for them personally. Andwhen that condition is a social artefact, we argue,solidarity turns radical.