Age-related differences in the distractor previewing effect with schematic faces of emotions

Young and older adults searched for a unique face in a set of three schematic faces and identified a secondary feature of the target. The faces could be negative, positive, or neutral. Young adults were slower and less accurate in searching for a negative face among neutral faces when they had previewed a display of negative faces than when they had previewed neutral faces, indicating an emotional distractor previewing effect (DPE), but this effect was eliminated with inverted faces. The DPE is an index of inter-trial inhibition to keep attention away from previewed, non-target information. Older adults also showed such an emotional DPE, but it was present with both upright and inverted faces. These results show that, in general, both young and old participants are sensitive to trial history, yet the different patterns of results suggest that these two groups remember and use different types of perceptual information when searching through emotional faces.     

The ability to recognize objects from bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus) echoes generalizes across multiple orientations in humans and neural networks

Object constancy, the ability to recognize objects despite changes in orientation, has not been well studied in the auditory modality. Dolphins use echolocation for object recognition, and objects ensonified by dolphins produce echoes that can vary significantly as a function of orientation. In this experiment, human listeners had to classify echoes from objects varying in material, shape, and size that were ensonified with dolphin signals. Participants were trained to discriminate among the objects using an 18-echo stimulus from a 10° range of aspect angles, then tested with novel aspect angles across a 60° range. Participants were typically successful recognizing the objects at all angles (M = 78 %). Artificial neural networks were trained and tested with the same stimuli with the purpose of identifying acoustic cues that enable object recognition. A multilayer perceptron performed similarly to the humans and revealed that recognition was enabled by both the amplitude and frequency of echoes, as well as the temporal dynamics of these features over the course of echo trains. These results provide insight into representational processes underlying echoic recognition in dolphins and suggest that object constancy perceived through the auditory modality is likely to parallel what has been found in the visual domain in studies with both humans and animals.     

Rewarding context accelerates implicit guidance in visual search

It is well known that observers can implicitly learn the spatial context of complex visual searches, such that future searches through repeated contexts are completed faster than those through novel contexts, even though observers remain at chance at discriminating repeated from new contexts. This contextual-cueing effect arises quickly (within less than five exposures) and asymptotes within 30 exposures to repeated contexts. In spite of being a robust effect (its magnitude is over 100 ms at the asymptotic level), the effect is implicit: Participants are usually at chance at discriminating old from new contexts at the end of an experiment, in spite of having seen each repeated context more than 30 times throughout a 50-min experiment. Here, we demonstrate that the speed at which the contextual-cueing effect arises can be modulated by external rewards associated with the search contexts (not with the performance itself). Following each visual search trial (and irrespective of a participant’s search speed on the trial), we provided a reward, a penalty, or no feedback to the participant. Crucially, the type of feedback obtained was associated with the specific contexts, such that some repeated contexts were always associated with reward, and others were always associated with penalties. Implicit learning occurred fastest for contexts associated with positive feedback, though penalizing contexts also showed a learning benefit. Consistent feedback also produced faster learning than did variable feedback, though unexpected penalties produced the largest immediate effects on search performance.     

Actitudes,evaluación y racionalidad

RESUMEN

Crespo comienza manifestando que su propósito es sondear, aunque sea de forma elemental, la posibilidad y potencial productividad de una consideración de la racionalidad como elemento explicativo dentro de una teoría social de las actitudes. El autor explica que un concepto no exclusivamente utilitario o instrumental de la racionalidad puede ser de utilidad para comprender ciertos desarrollos de la dinámica actitudinal, en concreto, aquellos en que es posible pensar que cambiamos de actitud porque somos argumentalmente convencidos. Crespo resalta la posibilidad de considerar las actitudes, entendidas como procesos de significación evaluativa o toma de postura respecto a otros significativos, como procesos sociales susceptibles de enjuiciamiento y eventualmente necesitados de legitimación o justificación. El autor finaliza su trabajo repasando extensamente algunas características del concepto de actitud en relación con su carácter evaluativo y su vinculación a la acción. Los comentarios de Amalio Blanco, Charles Antaki y M^a Dolores Avia valorando esta exposición siguen a la misma, al igual que la respuesta de Crespo a estos autores.     

The Nature of the Transference Between Anna Freud and Melanie Kleins: Learning from the Controversies

As we work through our theories, we rejoice in discovering the logic of concepts and their articulation in clinical experience. Such joy hides other movements, in which the only stakes are demands for love, sexual curiosity and the satisfaction of hate, transferred from infancy to others worlds, idealised or despised. When we participate in our psychoanalytical institutions, we feel pride or even vanity to be participating in the great historical movement of psychoanalysis. This conceals the working of transference in our institutional life; transference which is crudely sexual at its origins, and implies maternal, paternal or fraternal objects. This is its constraining power. We should be fully aware of this, as Strachey or Balint have already shown, in order to attenuate the violence of transference and stimulate our creativity. Anna Freud and Melanie Klein's controversies had a reality of their own. This reality was quickly forgotten and trapped in various conflicts, as those existing between Jones and Freud or between Glover and the rest of the British Psychoanalytical Society of his times. These re-elaborations gave rise to ideological elements, which have ever since pervaded the history of psychoanalytical theory, influencing psychoanalytical methods and clinics. It is important for us today to elucidate these ideologies in order to improve our achievements.     

The Many Faces of Commitment: Facet-Level Links to Performance in Military Contexts

Over the past two decades, considerable progress has been achieved in an effort to better identify and understand the various types of organizational commitment, the foci toward which such committed bonds are directed, and the myriad outcomes associated with these bonds. This research adds to and extends such work within a military context. Specifically, we explore relations among various forms (e.g., affective, normative, and continuance) of both team- and military-focused commitment and several supervisory-rated performance criteria. Across the different criteria, team-focused commitment tended to be a stronger predictor of performance than military-oriented commitment did. However, military-oriented commitment was inversely related to supervisory ratings of soldiers' negative behaviors. We discuss the psychological mechanisms that likely drive these findings, the implications of this work, and several potentially fruitful next steps within this research domain.