Role of motion signals in recognizing subtle facial expressions of emotion

Three studies investigated the importance of movement for the recognition of subtle and intense expressions of emotion. In the first experiment, 36 facial emotion displays were duplicated in three conditions either upright or inverted in orientation. A dynamic condition addressed the perception of motion by using four still frames run together to encapsulate a moving sequence to show the expression emerging from neutral to the subtle emotion. The multi‐static condition contained the same four stills presented in succession, but with a visual noise mask (200 ms) between each frame to disrupt the apparent motion, whilst in the single‐static condition, only the last still image (subtle expression) was presented. Results showed a significant advantage for the dynamic condition, over the single‐ and multi‐static conditions, suggesting that motion signals provide a more accurate and robust mental representation of the expression. A second experiment demonstrated that the advantage of movement was reduced with expressions of a higher intensity, and the results of the third experiment showed that the advantage for the dynamic condition for recognizing subtle emotions was due to the motion signal rather than additional static information contained in the sequence. It is concluded that motion signals associated with the emergence of facial expressions can be a useful cue in the recognition process, especially when the expressions are subtle.     

Positive Coping among Wives of Male Christian Clergy

Clergy spouses experience various life stressors, yet many cope and function effectively in the midst of their daily challenges. Mental health professionals were asked to identify wives of male clergy who exemplify emotional and spiritual health. Nominees were contacted and interviews conducted with 25 women. Each interviewee was asked about coping with normal life stressors, stressors associated with being married to a minister, and catastrophic life events. All interviews were transcribed and coded, using grounded theory. Participants emphasized the importance of spirituality, social support, limit-setting, and healthy lifestyle choices. Implications are discussed.

Perceptual adaptation to facial asymmetries

Humans and other animals are highly sensitive to deviations from bilateral symmetry and prefer symmetric mates. Fluctuating asymmetries (FAs) are random deviations from perfect symmetry that can result from developmental instability. Human perceptions of facial asymmetry are driven by FAs and insensitive to directional asymmetries (DAs), which have a consistent direction of bias (e.g., left side always larger) across the population and are unrelated to developmental stability. We hypothesized that perceptual adaptation may filter out DAs and provide a proximate mechanism for this perceptual focus on FAs. We created a small population of faces with DAs by applying a unilateral distortion to the same side of each face. After 5 min of adaptation, (new) faces with these DAs looked less asymmetric and the most symmetric-looking distortion shifted toward the adapting asymmetry level. Parallel changes occurred for attractiveness. We suggest that perceptual adaptation may provide the proximate mechanism for an evolutionarily adaptive focus on FAs.     

Learning Through Shared Christian Praxis: Reflective Practice in the Classroom

The cultivation of reflective practice has become a commonly accepted goal of theological education. However, theological educators must face the challenge of teaching and assessing reflective practice. Hypothesizing that this concern is best addressed in community, the authors of this article devised a collaborative action‐research project using Thomas Groome's “shared Christian praxis” model. They describe the ways in which they have, over the course of the project, modified their pedagogy to improve their students' reflection on practice.     

Effect of dichotomous thinking on the association of depression with BMI and weight change among obese females

This study tested whether a dichotomous thinking style moderates the association of depression with body mass, and investigated the effect of dichotomous thinking and depression on weight loss during a cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) intervention.Overweight and obese females (n = 76) participated in CBT for weight management for 12 weeks. Before treatment, dichotomous thinking moderated the association of depression with BMI, such that depression was positively associated with BMI among those with low dichotomous thinking, but was not associated among those with high dichotomous thinking. Weight loss was negatively associated with pre-treatment depression and frequency of treatment attendance, but not with dichotomous thinking. Females who regard their weight as unacceptably high and who think dichotomously may experience high levels of depression irrespective of their actual weight, while depression may be proportionate to the degree of obesity among those who do not think dichotomously. Depression, but not dichotomous thinking, is likely to interfere with the ability to adhere to short-term weight loss strategies.     

Fetal testosterone and autistic traits

Studies of amniotic testosterone in humans suggest that fetal testosterone (fT) is related to specific (but not all) sexually dimorphic aspects of cognition and behaviour. It has also been suggested that autism may be an extreme manifestation of some male‐typical traits, both in terms of cognition and neuroanatomy. In this paper, we examine the possibility of a link between autistic traits and fT levels measured in amniotic fluid during routine amniocentesis. Two instruments measuring number of autistic traits (the Childhood Autism Spectrum Test (CAST) and the Child Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ‐Child)) were completed by these women about their children (N=235), ages 6–10 years. Intelligence Quotient (IQ) was measured in a subset of these children (N=74). fT levels were positively associated with higher scores on the CAST and AQ‐Child. This relationship was seen within sex as well as when the sexes were combined, suggesting this is an effect of fT rather than of sex per se. No relationships were found between overall IQ and the predictor variables, or between IQ and CAST or AQ‐Child. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that prenatal androgen exposure is related to children exhibiting more autistic traits. These results need to be followed up in a much larger sample to test if clinical cases of ASC have elevated fT.     

Stripping the Political Cynic: A Psychological Exploration of the Concept of Political Cynicism

The high level of political cynicism in contemporary society is often considered a serious threat to democracy. The concept, however, has received only scant attention in psychology. The current work introduces political cynicism and extensively explores its psychological implications by investigating the concept's validity, predictive utility and status as a dispositional variable. Our results revealed that political cynicism is empirically distinguishable from the closely related constructs of social cynicism and political trust. Furthermore, political cynicism was found to strongly related to a wide range of political variables, such as voting intentions, political normlessness and political estrangement, as well as to broad social attitudes and racial prejudice. Finally, we show that political cynicism yields limited but meaningful relationships with Neuroticism and Agreeableness, although social cynicism is more clearly related to the Five‐Factor Model personality dimensions. It is therefore concluded that political cynicism can be reliably measured and distinguished from closely related concepts and that it yields meaningful relationships with other relevant psychological variables. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Associations between appearance-related self-discrepancies and young women's and men's affect, body satisfaction, and emotional eating: a comparison of fixed-item and participant-generated self-discrepancies

This study examines the associations between appearance-related, actual-ideal self-discrepancies--from both own and romantic partner's standpoints--and negative affect, body satisfaction, and eating behavior. It extends previous research through studying both genders and the romantic partner standpoint, but its main novel contribution is a systematic comparison between idiographic, participant-generated, and nomothetic, fixed-item measures of appearance-related self-discrepancies. The findings show that these measures cannot be, and should not be, treated as equivalent. The idiographic measures were superior in predicting outcome variables when considering the own standpoint. Nomothetic measures did demonstrate some gender-specific associations, but only from the romantic partner standpoint, and only for women. These findings can be explained with respect to the assessment of accessible, versus available, self-discrepancies. Implications for self-discrepancy and body image theory and research are discussed.     

More questions for mirror neurons

The mirror neuron system is widely held to provide direct access to the motor goals of others. This paper critically investigates this idea, focusing on the so-called ‘intentional worry’. I explore two answers to the intentional worry: first that the worry is premised on too limited an understanding of mirror neuron behaviour (Sections 2 Mirror neurons and the intentional worry, 3 What is the mechanism behind motor chain embeddings?), second that the appeal made to mirror neurons can be refined in such a way as to avoid the worry (Section 4). I argue that the first response requires an account of the mechanism by which small-scale gestures are supposedly mapped to larger chains of actions but that none of the extant accounts of this mechanism are plausible. Section 4 then briefly examines refinements of the mirror neuron-mindreading hypothesis which avoid the intentional worry. I conclude that these refinements may well be plausible but that they undermine many of the claims standardly made for mirror neurons.