Empathic Blushing in Friends and Strangers

Three volunteers watched a previously recorded video of one of them singing, as cheek sensors monitored their blushing. When performers watched videotapes of their performance, they blushed significantly more than strangers, but not more than their own friends, watching with them. Friends and strangers did not differ significantly in blushing, however. Skin conductance arousal responses of performers and friends, but not performers and strangers, or friends of performers and strangers, were correlated. In a second experiment, strangers who sang before watching another person sing blushed more than strangers who did not sing first, or who sang and then watched a neutral video. This suggests that performing the embarrassing act may have predisposed people to blush, perhaps empathically, later. No gender differences were seen in blushing. Embarrassability questionnaire scores did not correlate with blushing. Empathic accuracy, and associative learning, are proposed to account for the results.     

K-ABC simultaneous processing, DAS nonverbal reasoning, and Horn's expanded fluid-crystallized theory.

Horn's distinction between--fluid intelligence (Gf) and visualization (Gv) was investigated with two Nonverbal Reasoning subtests from the Differential Ability Scales and three Simultaneous Processing subtests from the Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children. The sample comprised a predominantly Euro-American groups of 57 normal boys and girls between the ages of 6 and 12 years. Principal factor analysis yielded clear-cut Gf and Gv dimensions. The Gf factor was composed both of Differential Ability Scales and Kaufman-ABC subtests, suggesting that the construct of simultaneous processing is not merely a measure of Gv, as researchers have hypothesized, but also measures Horn's Gf fluid intelligence to a considerable extent.     

A longitudinal study of negative affect and self-perceived competence in young adolescents.

In a 4-wave, 2-year longitudinal design, the authors obtained measures of negative affect (NA) and self-perceived competence from 220 boys and 216 girls who were 7th graders at the beginning of this study. NA was operationalized as the common dimension underlying self-reports of depressive symptoms, anxiety symptoms, and negative emotions. Self-perceived competence consisted of 2 higher order constructs: a well-behaved/good-student factor and an attractive/athletic/popular factor. Structural equation modeling revealed very high stability estimates for all constructs. Nevertheless, self-perceived competence in the attractive/athletic/popular domain predicted changes in NA. Conversely, NA predicted changes in self-perceived competence in the well-behaved/good-student domain. The primacy of NA versus self-cognitions depends, in part, on the type of self-cognitions being examined.     

Infants' Perception of Causal Chains

Three experiments examined infants' and adults' perception of causal sequences of events. In a causal-chain sequence, the first action causes a second action that then causes a final outcome; in a temporal-chain sequence, the first two actions are independent and the second action causes a final outcome. Infants and adults were shown the same event sequences; infants were tested using a visual habituation paradigm, whereas adults were given a questionnaire. Experiment 1 indicated that 15-month-old infants perceive the primary cause of the final outcome to be the first action in a causal chain but the second action in a temporal chain. Experiment 2 showed that adults interpret the causal sequences in a manner similar to that of 15-month-olds. Finally, Experiment 3 showed that 10-month-old infants do not yet perceive causal sequences in the same manner as 15-month-olds and adults. These results are interpreted in terms of both infants' developing knowledge of causal events and adults' attributions of causality in complex events.     

Personality and Attraction to the Charismatic Movement: a study among Anglican clergy

A sample of 172 male clergy within the Church of England completed the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire together with an index of charismatic experience. The data demonstrate that charismatic experience is positively associated with extroversion, but related to neither neuroticism nor psychoticism.     

A grouping interpretation of the modality effect in immediate probed recognition

In a series of experiments on immediate probed recognition for eight 3-digit numbers, it was shown that if the target modality involved auditory components and the effect of the similarity of the modality of the probe to that of the targets was controlled, unequivocal evidence was obtained for an auditory superiority effect (modality effect) for hit rates for the final items of the list. Moreover, false-alarm rates were significantly lower following targets with an auditory component than they were following silently seen targets. It is argued that this pattern of hits and false alarms is consistent with the idea that targets that have an auditory component yield memory representations that are better grouped as units than are those for targets that are only silently seen; in particular, if a new probe has a first digit that accidentally matches the first digit of a target item, it is more likely that the subject will mistakenly identify this new probe as old (give a false alarm) if the target has only been partially encoded because it was only silently seen.     

Varying reinforcement magnitude on interval schedules

In Experiment 1, rats were trained on either a random-interval or a variable-interval 60-sec schedule of reinforcement, and reinforcement magnitude was varied across conditions between one and four pellets. Although the two schedules maintained different patterns of behaviour, patterns and rates of responding were not systematically affected by the variation in reinforcement magnitude. In Experiment 2, a regulated probability interval schedule that generated similar rates of reinforcement to those of the schedules of Experiment 1 was used, with the pattern of behaviour generated resembling that typical of a random-interval schedule. Changing reinforcement magnitude again produced few systematic changes in behaviour. In Experiment 3, a variable-ratio schedule was used within a procedure that otherwise resembled that of Experiments 1 and 2. Increasing the reinforcement magnitude now decreased the rates of responding, and examination of the patterns of responding showed that this came about because rates of responding were higher early in the interreinforcer interval in the one-pellet condition. These experiments demonstrate the insensitivity of behaviour under interval schedules to changes in reinforcement magnitude and suggest the operation of mechanisms different from those engaged by ratio schedules and discretetrial learning procedures.     

Adaptation in Visuomanual Tracking Depends on Intact Proprioception

The role of arm proprioception in motor learning was investigated in experiments in which, by moving the arm, subjects followed the motion of a target displayed on a monitor screen. Adaptive capabilities were tested in visuomanual tracking tasks following alterations in the relationship between the observer's actual arm movement and visual feedback of the arm movement given by a cursor motion on the screen. Tracking performance and adaptive changes, measured in terms of spatiotemporal error, tracking trajectory curvature, and spatial gain, were compared in 7 control subjects (CSs) and in 1 deafferented subject (DS). CSs adapted appropriately to altered visuomanual relationships; those changes were present in trials immediately after restoration of normal scaling. In contrast, although the DS modified his tracking strategy from trial to trial according to the altered conditions, he did not show plastic changes in internal visuomanual scaling. Like the results of prismatic adaptation experiments, the present results suggest that arm proprioception contributes to the plastic changes that follow alterations in the scaling of visuomanual gain.