Neural and genetic foundations of face recognition and prosopagnosia

Faces are of essential importance for human social life. They provide valuable information about the identity, expression, gaze, health, and age of a person. Recent face‐processing models assume highly interconnected neural structures between different temporal, occipital, and frontal brain areas with several feedback loops. A selective deficit in the visual learning and recognition of faces is known as prosopagnosia, which can be found both in acquired and congenital form. Recently, a hereditary sub‐type of congenital prosopagnosia with a very high prevalence rate of 2.5% has been identified. Recent research results show that hereditary prosopagnosia is a clearly circumscribed face‐processing deficit with a characteristic set of clinical symptoms. Comparing face processing of people of prosopagnosia with that of controls can help to develop a more conclusive and integrated model of face processing. Here, we provide a summary of the current state of face processing research. We also describe the different types of prosopagnosia and present the set of typical symptoms found in the hereditary type. Finally, we will discuss the implications for future face recognition research.     

Action Research: A Missing Component in the Emergence of Social and Cross‐Cultural Psychology as a Fully Inter‐Connected Global Enterprise

Action research, as envisaged by Lewin, uses research to solve a social problem and provide theoretical knowledge. It involves a cyclical–spiral of planning, action, and evaluation with feedback between parties, taking into account power and value differences and empowering change agents. This has been all but abandoned by social psychologists today. Contemporary ‘participatory’ action research has migrated to fields like education and development and community studies that emphasize a social constructionist epistemology with a qualitative approach of recording bottom‐up processes of social change and community self‐awareness. The globalization of psychology affords new opportunities for a return to more top‐down Lewinian traditions, where academics in the developing world – embedded within a cultural milieu of interconnectedness and relatively exempt from pressures to publish or perish – can work together with academics in wealthy countries to produce a process oriented psychology that is capable of making a difference under conditions of climate change and the end of cheap oil. Asian social psychology, where strongly indigenous psychologies have taken root in growing economies, may take a leading role in this movement.     

Reducing emergency medical service use in patients with chronic psychotic disorders: results from the FAST intervention study

Patients with schizophrenia have disproportionately high rates of emergency medical service use, likely contributing to the high cost this illness places on society. The aim of this study was to examine the impact of a theory-based, behavioral intervention on immediate and long-term use of emergency medical services. Older patients with schizophrenia (n=240) were randomized to receive either a behavioral, skills-building intervention known as Functional Adaptation and Skills Training (FAST) or a time-equivalent attention-control condition (AC). Logistic regression analyses indicated that AC participants were nearly twice as likely to use emergency medical services in general (OR=2.54; p=0.02) and emergency psychiatric services in particular (OR=3.69; p=0.05) during the active intervention phase of the study. However, there were no differences between the interventions in terms of emergency service use during the long-term follow-up phase of the study (i.e., 6-18 months post-baseline). The FAST intervention appears efficacious for reducing the short-term risk of using emergency medical services. However, the long-term efficacy of the FAST intervention appears less clear. Future studies may want to provide more powerful maintenance sessions to encourage continued use of skills in patients' real-world settings.     

Long‐term immigrant adaptation: Eight‐year follow‐up study among immigrants from Russia and Estonia living in Finland

This study was a longitudinal investigation of the three different dimensions of long‐term immigrant adaptation (i.e., psychological, sociocultural, and socioeconomic adaptation) and the relationships between them in an 8‐year follow‐up with panel data. The 282 respondents were immigrants in Finland, born between 1961 and 1976, coming from the former Soviet Union. The results suggest that the adaptation of these immigrants has developed favourably. In 8 years, the respondents had improved their Finnish language skills and their position in the labour market. No differences were observed in their levels of psychological well‐being between the two assessments. Of the three adaptation dimensions assessed, sociocultural adaptation, measured as proficiency in understanding, speaking, reading, and writing Finnish, turned out to be the most significant predictor of the two other long‐term outcomes of immigrant adaptation (i.e., socioeconomic and psychological). In particular, the better the initial command of the Finnish language, the better were their socioeconomic and psychological adaptation outcomes after 8 years of residence. These results demonstrate the importance of parallel and longitudinal assessments of the different outcomes of immigrant adaptation in order to address which particular dimensions of adaptation are most critical in the beginning of acculturation in terms of determining positive development and long‐term immigrant adaptation.     

Influence analysis for the factor analysis model with ranking data

Influence analysis is an important component of data analysis, and the local influence approach has been widely applied to many statistical models to identify influential observations and assess minor model perturbations since the pioneering work of Cook (1986) . The approach is often adopted to develop influence analysis procedures for factor analysis models with ranking data. However, as this well‐known approach is based on the observed data likelihood, which involves multidimensional integrals, directly applying it to develop influence analysis procedures for the factor analysis models with ranking data is difficult. To address this difficulty, a Monte Carlo expectation and maximization algorithm (MCEM) is used to obtain the maximum‐likelihood estimate of the model parameters, and measures for influence analysis on the basis of the conditional expectation of the complete data log likelihood at the E‐step of the MCEM algorithm are then obtained. Very little additional computation is needed to compute the influence measures, because it is possible to make use of the by‐products of the estimation procedure. Influence measures that are based on several typical perturbation schemes are discussed in detail, and the proposed method is illustrated with two real examples and an artificial example.     

Parent Characteristics as Antecedents of Maternal Gatekeeping and Fathering Behavior

The present study examined the role of prebirth parent characteristics as predictors of maternal gatekeeping (mothers' attempts to encourage or discourage fathers' interaction with their infant) and fathering behavior. Parents' idealization of their relationships within their families of origin, beliefs about the roles of fathers, and personality attributes (negative emotionality and communion) were assessed before their infant's birth. At 3.5 months postpartum, maternal gatekeeping behaviors (negative control, facilitation) and fathers' involvement and competence with their infants were assessed during observation of triadic play and child care. Results suggest reciprocal relations between maternal gatekeeping and fathering behavior. Furthermore, greater paternal communion was associated with greater paternal competence during play, whereas greater maternal communion was associated with lower paternal competence during child care. Greater maternal communion and greater maternal idealization related to fathers' lower relative involvement during play. As for maternal gatekeeping behavior, high negative emotionality in 1 parent was only accompanied by high levels of inhibitory maternal gatekeeping when the other parent had less progressive beliefs about the father's role. The implications of these findings for clinicians and practitioners are discussed.     

Disregarding Preliminary Information When Rating Job Applicants' Performance: Mission Impossible?1

Firms allocate considerable resources to test job applicants' skills and to ensure that hiring decisions are nondiscriminatory. Interpreting selection output in light of preliminary information may undermine the impartiality of personnel selection decisions. In this study, human resource managers were presented preliminary information about a candidate's performance and asked to rate him according to a detailed assessment‐center report of his performance. We examined several interventions for reducing reliance on preliminary information: retrieving assessment‐center information, generating a rating model, or both. Participants (N = 167) excluded preliminary information from the interventions, but relied on it when rating the candidate. The documented failure to control for the effects of preliminary information on subsequent judgments can contribute to improved selection procedures.