The effect of familiarity on face adaptation

Face aftereffects can provide information on how faces are stored by the human visual system (eg Leopold et al, 2001 Nature Neuroscience 4 89-94), but few studies have used robustly represented (highly familiar) faces. In this study we investigated the influence of facial familiarity on adaptation effects. Participants were adapted to a series of distorted faces (their own face, a famous face, or an unfamiliar face). In experiment 1, figural aftereffects were significantly smaller when participants were adapted to their own face than when they were adapted to the other faces (ie their own face appeared significantly less distorted than a famous or unfamiliar face). Experiment 2 showed that this 'own-face' effect did not occur when the same faces were used as adaptation stimuli for participants who were unfamiliar with them. Experiment 3 replicated experiment 1, but included a pre-adaptation baseline. The results highlight the importance of considering facial familiarity when conducting research on face aftereffects.     

Healing the wounds and the wounds of healing: a journey of the spirit

This article is a reflective narrative about the death of a parent told from the perspective of her daughter. It is an experience-based account. This shared journey of mother and child links the familiar realm of the conscious and known self to a realm that is not known in the same way and is not merely the self. It is as if one end is in the midst of life's struggles and crises and the other in another realm; yet the whole works together as a single force. In this way the idea is introduced that the very challenges and trauma of life can be a wound that is a healing of wounds, in so far as it prompts recognition of the realm that is out of sight, though the wound certainly is real enough.     

Attributions of responsibility for date and stranger rape

This study examined the effects of the victim-perpetrator relationship on college students' attributions of responsibility for rape. In addition, the rape specificity of these attributions was investigated. College females and males read one of six scenarios that depicted a rape or a proposition, and that varied according to the victim-perpetrator relationship (steady dating partners/acquaintances on a first date/strangers). Then they rated seven responsibility attributions for the rape or proposition. Results indicated that most forms of victim responsibility were stronger for the rape and proposition on a date than for the incidents between strangers, and the findings concerning the perpetrator's responsibility were mixed. The pattern of both victim- and perpetrator-responsibility attributions suggests that both a rape and proposition on a date, compared to incidents between strangers, elicit stronger sex role and sexual attributions. Moreover, male subjects, in comparison to female subjects, gave higher ratings to several responsibility attributions, and these, also, are linked to sex role and sexual considerations. Further, the data revealed that only the perpetrator-responsibility attributions were stronger for the rape than the proposition.This research was supported by the University of Connecticut Research Foundation Grant No. 1171-000-22-00215-35-760. The authors thank Laurin Hafner for his help with the data analysis.     

Methodological improvements to a Procedure for Rapidly Establishing Steady-State Behavior

We performed three experiments to improve the quality and retention of data obtained from a Procedure for Rapidly Establishing Steady-State Behavior (PRESS-B; Klapes et al., 2020). In Experiment 1, 120 participants worked on nine concurrent random-interval random-interval (conc RI RI) schedules and were assigned to four conditions of varying changeover delay (COD) length. The 0.5-s COD condition group exhibited the fewest instances of exclusive reinforcer acquisition. Importantly, this group did not differ in generalized matching law (GML) fit quality from the other groups. In Experiment 2, 60 participants worked on nine conc RI RI schedules with a wider range of scheduled reinforcement rate ratios than was used in Experiment 1. Participants showed dramatic reductions in exclusive reinforcer acquisition. Experiment 3 entailed a replication of Experiment 2 wherein blackout periods were implemented between the schedule presentations and each schedule remained in operation until at least one reinforcer was acquired on each alternative. GML fit quality was slightly more consistent in Experiment 3 than in the previous experiments. Thus, these results suggest that future PRESS-B studies should implement a shorter COD, a wider and richer scheduled reinforcement rate ratio range, and brief blackouts between schedule presentations for optimal data quality and retention.     

Maintaining One's Self-Image Vis-à-Vis Others: The Role of Self-Affirmation in the Social Evaluation of the Self

Three studies examined how people maintain their self-images when they face threat to interpersonal aspects of the self. In Studies 1 and 2, we found evidence that low self-esteem people lower their estimates of their performance when they expect immediate feedback in order to protect themselves from the interpersonal threat inherent in such feedback, and that self-affirmation reduces this tendency among low self-esteem people. In Study 3, we found that when people are self-affirmed they are more likely to engage in upward social comparisons and less likely to engage in downward social comparisons. Together these findings suggest that people can cope with threats to interpersonal aspects of the self by affirming other important aspects of the self.