Ultrafast scene detection and recognition with limited visual information

Humans can detect target colour pictures of scenes depicting concepts like picnic or harbour in sequences of six or 12 pictures presented as briefly as 13?ms, even when the target is named after the sequence. Such rapid detection suggests that feedforward processing alone enabled detection without recurrent cortical feedback. There is debate about whether coarse, global, low spatial frequencies (LSFs) provide predictive information to high cortical levels through the rapid magnocellular (M) projection of the visual path, enabling top-down prediction of possible object identities. To test the “Fast M” hypothesis, we compared detection of a named target across five stimulus conditions: unaltered colour, blurred colour, greyscale, thresholded monochrome, and LSF pictures. The pictures were presented for 13–80?ms in six-picture rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) sequences. Blurred, monochrome, and LSF pictures were detected less accurately than normal colour or greyscale pictures. When the target was named before the sequence, all picture types except LSF resulted in above-chance detection at all durations. Crucially, when the name was given only after the sequence, performance dropped and the monochrome and LSF pictures (but not the blurred pictures) were at or near chance. Thus, without advance information, monochrome and LSF pictures were rarely understood. The results offer only limited support for the Fast M hypothesis, suggesting instead that feedforward processing is able to activate conceptual representations without complementary reentrant processing.     

Assessing the effectiveness of conflict management training in a health sector organization: evidence from subjective and objective indicators

This study assessed the effectiveness of an intervention for handling interpersonal conflicts at work. In contrast to the mainstream approach in the health care industry, which focuses on developing formal systems of conflict resolution, our intervention consisted of enhancing health care workers’ conflict management skills through training. A pre- and post-test nonequivalent comparison group design was used (intervention group = 258 workers; comparison group = 243 workers). Participants perceived that the training was successful in reducing the number and intensity of conflicts with co-workers, patients, and patients’ relatives. Moreover, organizational indicators calculated on the basis of data obtained from human resources (HR) records show that the intervention was effective, insofar as the number of requests for third-party interventions to mediate conflicts at work, the number of patients’ complaints, and the level of absenteeism all decreased for trained workers, whereas workers from the comparison group exhibited no corresponding changes over time. In the light of these results, this article discusses the design of conflict management measures which could help improve both employees’ well-being and organizational productivity.     

A Longitudinal Study of Cultural Adaptation among Mexican and Dominican Immigrant Women

The present longitudinal study examined cultural adaptation (i.e., acculturation and enculturation) and its correlates in a sample of 189 Mexican and Dominican immigrant women. Acculturation and enculturation were measured within the domains of language competence, identity, and cultural knowledge at two time points over a 1-year period. Across groups and domains, cultural adaptation was generally stable over time; only American cultural knowledge showed change and only for MA women. Several correlates of cultural adaptation were identified. For Mexican women, living in poverty and in immigrant-dense neighborhoods was associated with lower acculturation. For Dominican women, age at immigration was the most robust correlate and was associated with more acculturation and less enculturation, though poverty and neighborhood characteristics emerged as significant for Dominican women too. Findings are consistent with the notion of cultural adaptation as a complex construct that is influenced by cultural context as well as individual immigrant characteristics.     

Counterfactual Evaluation of Outcomes in Social Risk Decision-Making Situations: The Cognitive Developmental Paradox Revisited

We report a study that examined the existence of a cognitive developmental paradox in the counterfactual evaluation of decision-making outcomes. According to this paradox adolescents and young adults could be able to apply counterfactual reasoning and, yet, their counterfactual evaluation of outcomes could be biased in a salient socio-emotional context. To this aim, we analyzed the impact of health and social feedback on the counterfactual evaluation of outcomes in a laboratory decision-making task involving short narratives with the presence of peers. Forty risky (e.g., taking or refusing a drug), forty neutral decisions (e.g., eating a hamburger or a hotdog), and emotions felt following positive or negative outcomes were examined in 256 early, mid- and late adolescents, and young adults, evenly distributed. Results showed that emotional ratings to negative outcomes (regret and disappointment) but not to positive outcomes (relief and elation) were attenuated when feedback was provided. Evidence of development of cognitive decision-making capacities did also exist, as the capacity to perform faster emotional ratings and to differentially allocate more resources to the elaboration of emotional ratings when no feedback information was available increased with age. Overall, we interpret these findings as challenging the traditional cognitive developmental assumption that development necessarily proceeds from lesser to greater capacities, reflecting the impact of socio-emotional processes that could bias the counterfactual evaluation of social decision-making outcomes.     

Justification of interpersonal aggression in Japanese,American, and Spanish students

Six hundred and thirty‐two university students of both sexes—242 Japanese (137 males and 105 females), 190 Spanish (71 males and 119 females), and 200 American (100 males and 100 females)—completed a questionnaire that examined their attitudes toward various kinds of aggression directed at other people in different situations that ranged from self‐defense to a method of overcoming communication problems. Factor analysis revealed three factors: physical aggression (killing, torture, and hitting), direct verbal aggression (shouting and rage), and indirect verbal aggression (being ironic and hindering). The basic factor structure of the Japanese, the Spanish, and the USA samples was similar. In all samples, men showed a higher justification of physical aggressive acts in any situation and of indirect verbal aggression in nondefensive circumstances. Cultural differences were found in the degree of justification of the three factors: in all kinds of situations, Japanese students showed a lower justification of indirect verbal aggression but a higher justification of direct verbal aggression than USA and Spain samples. Physical aggression in defensive situations is justified more by Americans than by Japanese and Spanish students. These findings suggest the existence of a common basic moral code about physical aggressive acts, but there seems to be a cultural influence on moral codes concerning verbal aggressive acts. Oriental cultures, with an interdependent construal of self, seem to be more permissive of direct verbal aggression compared with Western cultures, but they have less tolerance for indirect verbal aggression. There were practically no significant differences between American and Spanish scores. Aggr. Behav. 25:185–195, 1999. © 1999 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.     

Presentation Matters: The Effect of Wrapping Neatness on Gift Attitudes

While gift‐givers typically wrap gifts prior to presenting them, little is known about the effect of how the gift is wrapped on recipients’ expectations and attitudes toward the gift inside. We propose that when recipients open a gift from a friend, they like it less when the giver has wrapped it neatly as opposed to sloppily and we draw on expectation disconfirmation theory to explain the effect. Specifically, recipients set higher (lower) expectations for neatly (sloppily)‐wrapped gifts, making it harder (easier) for the gifts to meet these expectations, resulting in contrast effects that lead to less (more) positive attitudes toward the gifts once unwrapped. However, when the gift‐giver is an acquaintance, there is ambiguity in the relationship status and wrapping neatness serves as a cue about the relationship rather than the gift itself. This leads to assimilation effects where the recipient likes the gift more when neatly wrapped. We assess these effects across three studies and find that they hold for desirable, neutral, and undesirable gifts, as well as with both hypothetical and real gifts.     

How Does Family Connectedness Contribute to Youths’ Health? The Mediating Role of Coping Strategies

Family connectedness has important implications for adolescents’ well-being, contributing to their physical, psychological, and social health. However, little is known about the mechanisms underlying these effects. The present longitudinal study examined the process by which family connectedness, as perceived by adolescents, predicted greater positive and fewer negative health behaviors in adolescents over time. In particular, we sought to determine whether adaptive and maladaptive coping strategies mediated the link between family connectedness and adolescents’ self-reported health status. Data were obtained from 1,774 New Zealand adolescents aged 10–17 years, who completed a self-report survey three times at one-year intervals. With longitudinal mediation path models, we tested whether maladaptive and adaptive coping strategies at T2 functioned as mediators between family connectedness at T1 and overall health, vitality, sleep sufficiency, body satisfaction, substance use, and self-harm at T3. Findings revealed that family connectedness predicted greater levels of adaptive coping, which, in turn, predicted better health indicators but not decreases in ill-health indicators. Furthermore, family connectedness predicted lower maladaptive coping, which, in turn, predicted higher levels of positive health outcomes and fewer negative health outcomes. Results showed that the positive effect of family connectedness on adolescents’ health occurred through increased use of adaptive coping strategies, decreased use of maladaptive coping strategies, or both. These results have important implications for practitioners working with adolescents and parents, as well as for health promotion program developers.     

Aggressive behavior of pigeons: Suppression by archistriatal lesions

The agonistic responses of pigeons to the introduction of a stick and the experimenter's hand into their home cages is described. The effects of lesions of the archistriatum, a presumed homologue of the mammalian amygdala, of lesions of the overlying neostriatum and of control sham operations on this behavior in selected aggressive pigeons are reported. Only archistriatal lesions lead to a persistent depression of the aggressive and a converse increment of the avoidance components of the pigeon's response to both test stimuli. The results are discussed in relation to other evidence on the role of the avian archistriatum and this structure's correspondence with the amygdala.     

Effect of anosmia on the behavior of standard non-aggressive male mice opponents during agonistic encounters

This study assessed whether the differences observed in a previous experiment [Martinez M, Salvador A, Simon VM (1994): Aggressive Behavior 20:441–451] in the behavior of isolated male mice over several agonistic encounters in which they confronted either an “anosmic” or an “intact” non-aggressive “standard opponent” were due to the differences in the behavior of the opponents themselves. Ethologically-inspired analysis was used to assess the behavior of the opponents during the first agonistic encounter. Anosmic opponents spent less time in social investigation and defense and more time in immobility than intact ones. These results suggest that the differences in the behavior of the opponents could be one of the causes of the differences observed in the behavior of the aggressive males confronting them. However, more research is needed to study if other variables, such as the production of odors, are also affected by the state (deprived or intact) of the olfactory sense. These findings provide additional support for the view that the type of opponent used in studies on intermale aggression is of paramount importance.Aggr. Behav. 23:179–181, 1997.© 1997 Wiley-Liss, Inc.     

Arguing about tobacco and its effects on social representations

This study analysed the influence of social debate (group discussion) on previously held antagonistic social representations about tobacco. In the first phase of our study, we contacted 130 subjects in order to know what type of social representations they held. Two representations were found: a ‘psychopathological’ representation and a ‘critical’ one. After obtaining these results, and in a second phase, we randomly divided 100 subjects into 10 discussion groups, whilst another 30 subjects were assigned to the control condition (non-discussion group). The group discussion (social debate) led to a convergence of previously held representations. Debate emerged as a mechanism which could reduce the distance between groups who hold previously opposing representations.