Childhood behaviour and adult personality in male and female subjects

In a follow-up study, teacher ratings of behaviour at 13 years of age were analysed in relation to personality factors in adults (mean age 27 years) for a group of 77 male and 84 female subjects. In the male group, ratings of Aggressiveness, Motor Restlessness, and Concentration Dificulties correlated positively with a broad psychopathy-related factor. Furthermore, ratings of Timidity correlated positively with two anxiety factors. In the female group, ratings of Motor Restlessness correlated positively with an extraversion factor. The rated childhood behaviours and the adult personality factors were assumed to be a differential reflection of vulnerability to externalizing and internalizing psychosocial disturbances.     

Fighting inequalities in times of pandemic: The role of politicized identities and interdependent self-construal in coping with economic threat

During the COVID-19 pandemic, institutions encouraged social isolation and non-interaction with other people to prevent contagion. Still, the response to an impending economic crisis must be through the collective organization. In this set of pre-registered studies, we analyse two possible mechanisms of coping with collective economic threats: shared social identity and interdependent self-construction. We conducted three correlational studies during the pandemic in May–October 2020 (Study 1, N = 363; Study 2, N = 250; Study 3, N = 416). Results show that shared identity at two levels of politicization (i.e., working-class and 99% identities) and interdependent self-construal mediated the relationship between collective economic threat, intolerance towards economic inequality and collective actions to reduce it. The results highlight that the collective economic threat can reinforce the sense of community—either through the activation of a politicized collective identity, such as the working class or the 99% or through the activation of an interdependent self—which in turn can trigger greater involvement in the fight against economic inequality. Please refer to the Supplementary Material section to find this article's Community and Social Impact Statement .     

Trauma memories on trial: is cross-examination a safeguard against distorted analogue traumatic memories?

Trauma memories can feel more disorganised than more mundane memories. That may be problematic in legal contexts. Here we examined: (a) whether that disorganised feeling makes people more susceptible to suggestive questioning during direct examination; and (b) whether cross-examination is the safeguard it is purported to be: that is, we examined whether cross-examination can uncover and correct distorted trauma memories. We showed participants a film depicting a graphic car accident. For some participants, the film unfolded in a temporally disorganised way. We then interviewed participants immediately after the film regarding what they had seen: this ‘direct examination’ included free recall, cued recall and yes/no questions, some of which were misleading. Then, 48 hours later, a second interviewer cross-examined participants. Contrary to our predictions, neither manipulation of the film's temporal organisation, nor participants’ self-reported feelings of event disorganisation significantly affected their accuracy of the film during direct or cross-examination nor their recognition memory of the film. Instead, we found that regardless of whether participants’ memories were distorted by the direct examination, the suggestive nature of the cross-examination introduced sufficient doubt that participants were willing to change their answers. We conclude that traumatic memories are vulnerable to suggestive questioning and, unfortunately, cross-examination is not the legal system's fail-safe corrective influence.     

Early parafoveal processing in reading Chinese sentences

The possibility that during Chinese reading information is extracted at the beginning of the current fixation was examined in this study. Twenty-four participants read for comprehension while their eye movements were being recorded. A pretarget-target two-character word pair was embedded in each sentence and target word visibility was manipulated in two time intervals (initial 140 ms or after 140 ms) during pretarget viewing. Substantial beginning- and end-of-fixation preview effects were observed together with beginning-of-fixation effects on the pretarget. Apparently parafoveal information at least at the character level can be extracted relatively early during ongoing fixations. Results are highly relevant for ongoing debates on spatially distributed linguistic processing and address fundamental questions about how the human mind solves the task of reading within the constraints of different writing systems.     

When lack of control enhances closeness to others: The case of unemployment and economic threat

When personal control is threatened, people often turn to their own group and show negativity towards others. In three studies, we tested an alternative prediction that the salient lack of personal control (vs. control) experienced in the context of unemployment can lead to connectedness and more positive perception of similar others (e.g., members of groups affected by unemployment or the economic crisis). In two European countries, we found experimental (Study 1: Poland) and correlational (Study 2: Spain) evidence that a lowered sense of control of unemployed people was related to more favorable intergroup evaluations. Furthermore, when lack of control related to unemployment threat was experimentally induced, participants perceived a Greek outgroup more positively, and this effect was mediated by identification with and similarity to this group (Study 3). We discuss the role of the shared experience of collective uncontrollability in promoting positive intergroup relations.     

Applicability and attachment findings of the Strange Situation Paradigm in infants with visual impairment

Attachment studies with diverse populations enrich the understanding of infants’ socioemotional development by documenting both universal and idiosyncratic aspects of attachment. Given the effects of attachment in children's socioemotional outcomes, such studies are necessary to investigate the impact of children's sensory impairments on attachment development. Yet, very little attachment research has focused on infants with visual impairment (VI infants), a population in which infant–caregiver emotional exchanges through visual means are reduced/absent. We investigated the applicability of the Strange Situation Paradigm (SSP), with added instructions to compensate for degraded visual input, in 20 VI infants (with no additional disabilities and who were receiving developmental counseling). In all but 1 of the SSPs coded, VI infants displayed observable attachment behavior that was classifiable. Nineteen VI infants showed attachment by 12 months of age. Across the ages tested (fractional age range = 0.9–2.33 months), most VI infants’ attachment patterns were classified as secure and organized.     

‘I didn’t realise I was such a sausage’: men’s accounts of whole-body scanning,body image,and expected changes in health-related behaviours

Objective: Whole-body scanning is now available in stores to assist buyers in choosing well-fitting clothes. This study was designed to investigate men’s accounts of scanning, body image and expectations of behaviour change. Design: Ten men aged 18–39 years without histories of eating disorders or previous experience of whole-body scanning, took part in semi-structured interviews before and after scanning. Data were analysed using inductive thematic analysis. Results: Pre-scan, men’s body ideals were tall, slender and relatively muscular. Post-scan, seven reported looking shorter, fatter, thinner and/or less symmetrical than they hoped; three were pleasantly surprised by the images. Men were interested in scans as an objective view of their bodies and as a ‘wake-up call’ to motivate healthy behaviours. Five men intended to change their behaviour as a result of scanning, and repeat scanning was seen as a good way to monitor behavioural changes. Participants suggested that scanning may raise body concerns in other men, though downplayed impacts on their own body image. Conclusion: Whole-body scanning may encourage men to exercise and eat more healthily. However, men became more negative about their bodies as a result of seeing their body scans, so scanning needs to be carried out with supervision and support.     

Processing of disyllabic compound words in Chinese aphasia: evidence for the processing limitations account

The current study addresses the debate between so-called 'structural' and 'processing limitation' accounts of aphasia, i.e., whether language impairments reflect the 'loss' of linguistic knowledge or its representations, or instead reflect a limitation in processing resources. Confrontation-naming task and category-judgment tasks were used to examine and compare the performance of non-fluent and fluent aphasics on different compound types of nouns and verbs. We demonstrate that aphasic patients' performance is modulated by the canonicity of the particular compound type, a result that holds true even for the category in which patients show a 'selective category deficit.' These findings weigh against the 'loss' of linguistic representations as the underlying cause of noun-verb deficits, instead supporting a 'processing limitations' approach.     

Emotional impact feedback affects how people remember an analogue trauma event

Do external motivational processes—in the form of social influences—shape people's memories for trauma? In this experiment, we examined the effects of social influence on memory and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptomology for an analogue traumatic event. Seventy-two participants watched a distressing film; some received feedback about others' reactions to the film that either emphasised or downplayed the distressing nature of the film; control participants received no feedback. A week later, participants reported their symptoms, rated their memory on a number of characteristics and we tested their memory for the film's content. Participants who received feedback downplaying the film reported fewer PTSD-related analogue symptoms and weaker memory characteristics than their counterparts. The results suggest that people's memory phenomenology and analogue symptoms are influenced by others' feedback, but only when others' reactions downplayed the distressing nature of the film.