Cross-group recognition bias generalizes to diverse non-face representations of digital identity

We investigated the potential for cross-group recognition bias, the reliable tendency for perceivers to better recognize people who share their ethnic or social groups than people who do not share their ethnic or social groups, with diverse non-face representations of digital identity. We compared German participants' memory for people they believed to be German or French when those people were identified using non-face pictorial representations of identity (Studies 1 and 2) and verbal written representations of identity (Study 3) taken from the World Wide Web. Participants better recognized ingroup targets than outgroup targets regardless of type of identity representation. These results generalize cross-group recognition bias to an important new domain as well as to a new class of stimuli and suggest that process explanations of cross-group recognition bias that are domain specific to faces do not provide a comprehensive account of the bias.     

Modality effects in rhythm processing: Auditory encoding of visual rhythms is neither obligatory nor automatic

Modality effects in rhythm processing were examined using a tempo judgment paradigm, in which participants made speeding-up or slowing-down judgments for auditory and visual sequences. A key element of stimulus construction was that the expected pattern of tempo judgments for critical test stimuli depended on a beat-based encoding of the sequence. A model-based measure of degree of beat-based encoding computed from the pattern of tempo judgments revealed greater beat sensitivity for auditory rhythms than for visual rhythms. Visual rhythms with prior auditory exposure were more likely to show a pattern of tempo judgments similar to that for auditory rhythms than were visual rhythms without prior auditory exposure, but only for a beat period of 600 msec. Slowing down the rhythms eliminated the effect of prior auditory exposure on visual rhythm processing. Taken together, the findings in this study support the view that auditory rhythms demonstrate an advantage over visual rhythms in beat-based encoding and that the auditory encoding of visual rhythms can be facilitated with prior auditory exposure, but only within a limited temporal range. The broad conclusion from this research is that “hearing visual rhythms” is neither obligatory nor automatic, as was previously claimed by Guttman, Gilroy, and Blake (2005).     

Alcohol Reverses Religion's Prosocial Influence on Aggression

The relationship between religion and violence is controversial. Discrepant findings exist between survey studies and the limited number of experimental investigations of religiosity's influence on aggressive behavior. We have attempted to resolve this discrepancy by addressing previous limitations in the literature and assessing a heretofore‐untested moderator of religiosity and aggression: alcohol intoxication. This investigation included a community sample of 251 men and 269 women randomly assigned to either an acute alcohol intoxication condition or a placebo condition. Participants completed a series of questions drawn from standardized instruments of religiosity and spirituality prior to competing on an aggression laboratory paradigm in which electric shocks were received from, and administered to, a fictitious opponent under the guise of a competitive reaction‐time task. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed a significant beverage‐by‐religiosity interaction. Religiosity predicted lower levels of aggression for participants in the placebo group and higher levels of aggression for intoxicated participants. Results indicated that high religiosity coupled with alcohol intoxication may be a risk factor for aggression. This novel finding may help to clarify previous discrepancies in studies of religiosity and aggression.     

The Phenomenology of Hairpulling in College Students

This study examined the phenomenology of hairpulling in a large nonclinical college student sample. Given that hairpulling is conceptualized as occurring on a continuum of severity, we expected to inform the assessment and treatment of Trichotillomania (TTM) by examining hairpulling behavior across its range of presentation. Hairpulling occurred at a rate of 9.7%, while average age of onset was 13.57 years. Self-reported hairpulling styles were identified with 31.3% endorsing focused hairpulling, while 68.7% endorsed an automatic hairpulling style. The most commonly endorsed ritual was “examine the root (37.3%) while the scalp was the most frequently endorsed hairpulling site (49%). Eyelashes were more frequently endorsed as a pulling site by focused (43.8) compared to automatic (5.7%) hairpullers. The hairpulling environments most often endorsed were “while reading” and “while studying” (75%). Affective states were found to change across the pulling cycle in support of hairpulling serving in an emotion regulation capacity. Focused hairpullers endorsed significantly higher trait anxiety than automatic hairpullers. Depression scores (BDI) were elevated for hairpullers compared to non-hairpullers. Implications for assessment and treatment were discussed and directions for future research were provided.     

Are personality disorders associated with social welfare burden in the United States?

This study examined the association between personality disorders and use of major social welfare services in a nationally representative sample of U.S. adults (N = 43,093). Social welfare services received and diagnoses of personality, substance use, mood, and anxiety disorders were assessed with the Alcohol Use Disorder and Associated Disabilities Interview Schedule-DSM-IV-version. Analyses quantified the association between personality disorders and forms of public assistance while controlling for numerous confounds. Logistic regression analyses revealed dependent personality disorder, paranoid personality disorder, antisocial personality disorder, and avoidant personality disorder were significantly associated with increased odds of receiving public assistance. In contrast, persons diagnosed with histrionic, schizoid, and obsessive-personality disorder were not significantly more likely to receive any public welfare service. Development of effective prevention and treatment of personality disorders would likely lead to reductions in overall social welfare burden.     

Musical rhythm discrimination explains individual differences in grammar skills in children

This study considered a relation between rhythm perception skills and individual differences in phonological awareness and grammar abilities, which are two language skills crucial for academic achievement. Twenty‐five typically developing 6‐year‐old children were given standardized assessments of rhythm perception, phonological awareness, morpho‐syntactic competence, and non‐verbal cognitive ability. Rhythm perception accounted for 48% of the variance in morpho‐syntactic competence after controlling for non‐verbal IQ, socioeconomic status, and prior musical activities. Children with higher phonological awareness scores were better able to discriminate complex rhythms than children with lower scores, but not after controlling for IQ. This study is the first to show a relation between rhythm perception skills and morpho‐syntactic production in children with typical language development. These findings extend the literature showing substantial overlap of neurocognitive resources for processing music and language. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at: http://youtu.be/_lO692qHDNg     

Cortisol,stress, and attentional bias toward threat

Abstract

Attentional bias toward threatening stimuli is a central characteristic of anxiety and acute stress. Recent small-scale studies have provided divergent perspectives on the association between the stress hormone cortisol and attentional bias toward threat cues. In a larger sample size than previous studies, we examined this association by investigating the impact of cortisol on attentional bias in two studies using a psychological stressor (N=35) and a physical stressor (N=65), respectively. Attentional bias and salivary cortisol were measured prior to and following the administration of a stressful task designed to increase cortisol levels. Results across these studies were equivocal relative to the association between baseline cortisol and baseline attentional bias. In addition, the association between acute change in cortisol and change in attentional bias appeared to differ as a function of the presence or absence of psychological stress. There was a trend toward a stronger negative association between acute cortisol change and attentional bias change among women relative to men. These results imply that the association between cortisol and attentional bias may be moderated by additional factors, such as gender or presence of stress.     

Same-Sex Intimate Partner Violence: Lesbian,Gay, and Bisexual Affirmative Outreach and Advocacy

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is pervasive and crosses all boundaries of sexual orientation, race, and class. Scholars contend that the intimidation of another person through abusive acts and words is not a gender issue. Organizations seeking to offer equitable services to survivors of IPV must intentionally establish themselves as inclusive agencies. This article presents a review of common societal myths and barriers to help-seeking for survivors of same-sex partner violence and offers program guidelines for lesbian, gay, and bisexual affirmative outreach services and advocate training.     

Functional principal components analysis of workload capacity functions

Workload capacity, an important concept in many areas of psychology, describes processing efficiency across changes in workload. The capacity coefficient is a function across time that provides a useful measure of this construct. Until now, most analyses of the capacity coefficient have focused on the magnitude of this function, and often only in terms of a qualitative comparison (greater than or less than one). This work explains how a functional extension of principal components analysis can capture the time-extended information of these functional data, using a small number of scalar values chosen to emphasize the variance between participants and conditions. This approach provides many possibilities for a more fine-grained study of differences in workload capacity across tasks and individuals.