Mimetic Relation as Matching-to-Sample Observing Response and the Emergence of Speaker Relations in Children with and without Hearing Impairments

This study investigated the effect of matching-to-sample and mimetic-relations teaching on the emergence of signed tact and textual repertoire through a multiple-baseline design, across three groups of three words in children with and without hearing impairments and with no reading repertoire. Following mimetic-relations teaching and the establishment of nine three-member stimulus classes containing signs, pictures, and printed words via matching-to-sample procedure, including the mimetic relation as the differential observing response, tact (signing in the presence of a picture) and textual (signing in the presence of a printed word) emergent repertoires were tested. Results showed the emergence of signed tact and textual responses. The mimetic relation brought in under the contextual control of a matching-to-sample task may have allowed participants to simultaneously learn speaker and listener relations to the particular signs used.

     

Personality traits in people with synaesthesia: Do synaesthetes have an atypical personality profile?

People with synaesthesia not only have – by definition – unusual experiences (e.g., numbers triggering colour), they also have a different cognitive profile (e.g., in terms of their memory and perceptual abilities) and a bias towards certain interests and activities (e.g., towards the arts). However, virtually nothing is known about whether synaesthetes have an atypical personality profile. In this study, a standard measure of personality was administered (Big Five Inventory) along with two questionnaire measures of empathy. Synaesthetes, relative to demographically matched controls, reported higher levels of ‘Openness to Experience’ which is known to be related to imagination and artistic tendencies. They also reported higher levels of ‘Fantasizing’ on one of the empathy measures, which is conceptually related to Openness, although their self-reported empathy did not differ in other respects. In addition, synaesthetes reported lower levels of Agreeableness which we did not predict in advance.     

Feeling Good & Doing Well: Development of a Mental Health Promotion Program for Youth

There is a significant dearth of programs for mental health promotion developed to suit the needs of Indian youth. The paper describes the development of a program entitled "Feeling Good and Doing Well" for enhancement of well being and functioning in college youth. The program development was based on extensive field assessment of stakeholders' perspectives and needs. It is a broad based program that encompasses three inter related themes namely, discovery and application of strengths, pursuit of goals and regulation of emotions. It is delivered in a group format in the form of experiential workshop series comprising of six core sessions, apart from one orientation session at the beginning and a closure session at the end. The program is currently being field tested and has a high potential for large scale applications across colleges in the country.     

Men are more accurate than women in aiming at targets in both near space and extrapersonal space

Men excel at motor tasks requiring aiming accuracy whereas women excel at different tasks requiring fine motor skill. However, these tasks are confounded with proximity to the body, as fine motor tasks are performed proximally and aiming tasks are directed at distal targets. As such, it is not known whether the male advantage on tasks requiring aiming accuracy is because men have better aim or is better in the proximal domain in which the task is usually presented. 18 men (M age = 20.6 yr., SD = 3.0) and 20 women (M age = 18.7 yr., SD = 0.9) performed 2 tasks of extrapersonal aiming accuracy (>2 m away), 2 tasks of aiming accuracy performed in near space (< 1 m from them), and a task of fine motor skill. Men outperformed women on both the extrapersonal aiming tasks, and women outperformed men on the task of fine motor skill. However, a male advantage was observed for one of the aiming tasks performed in near space, suggesting that the male advantage for aiming accuracy does not result from proximity.     

Novel stimuli are negative stimuli: evidence that negative affect is reduced in the mere exposure effect

Repeated exposure of a nonreinforced stimulus results in an increased preference for that stimulus, the mere exposure effect. The present study repeatedly presented positive, negative, and neutrally affective faces to 48 participants while they made judgments about the emotional expression. Participants then rated the likeability of novel neutrally expressive faces and some of these previously presented faces, this time in their neutral expression. Faces originally presented as happy were rated as the most likeable, followed by faces originally presented as neutral. Negative and novel faces were not rated significantly differently from each other. These findings support the notion that the increase in preference towards repeatedly presented stimuli is the result of the reduction in negative affect, consistent with the modified two-factor uncertainty-reduction model and classical conditioning model of the mere exposure effect.     

Grouping illumination frameworks

According to Koffka (1935), the lightness of a target surface is determined by the relationship between the target and the illumination frame of reference to which it belongs. However, each scene contains numerous illumination frames, and judging each one separately would lead to an enormous amount of computing. Grouping those frames that are in the same illumination would simplify the computation. We report a series of experiments demonstrating that nonadjacent regions of the visual field under the same illumination level are perceptually grouped together and function, to some extent, as a single framework. A small coplanar group of patches under its own illumination exhibits compression of perceived range of gray shades. We obtained the reduction in compression in the presence of an identically illuminated 25-patch Mondrian tableau mounted nearby the coplanar group. The influence of the Mondrian display was reduced when it was (a) moved laterally away from the test display, (b) moved farther back in depth from the test display, or (c) rotated to a different orientation.     

Lifetime history of cigarette smoking associated with aggression and impulsivity in both healthy and personality disordered volunteers

Cigarette smoking has been associated with several personality and behavioral traits including impulsivity and aggression, primarily in adolescents and/or pregnant women. In this study, the authors tested the hypothesis that history of cigarette smoking is also associated with dimensional measures of aggression and impulsivity in adult subjects. Subjects were 179 personality disordered (PD), and healthy volunteer control (HV), subjects in whom history of cigarette smoking and measures of both aggression and impulsivity were collected. Scores on measures of both aggression and impulsivity were elevated as a function of personality disorder status and history of cigarette smoking status; no interaction between these two factors were noted on these measures. Including socio-economic status and global psychosocial functioning in the model eliminated the difference associated with diagnostic grouping and impulsivity but not the difference in aggression associated with lifetime history of smoking. These data suggest that lifetime history of cigarette smoking is associated with elevations in life history of aggression regardless of the presence of psychiatric disorder in nontreatment seeking individuals.