Normative and idiosyncratic measures of positive and negative affect in sport

Objectives: The purposes of the study were to: (a) ascertain the degree of similarity amongst normative and idiosyncratic measures of affect; (b) test the notion of reversal effects on the functional impact and the hedonic tone of emotions; (c) analyse the differences on the intensity of facilitating-positive, facilitating-negative, inhibiting-positive, and inhibiting-negative performance emotion content categories, and (d) test whether competitive trait anxiety intensity could predict pre-performance normative or idiosyncratic negative affect intensity.Design: A cross-sectional study design was employed using normative and idiosyncratic measures of affect.Methods: Experienced male soccer and volleyball players (N =124) were individually assessed. Normative scales were the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) used as a sport-specific trait measure of competitive affect, and the Sport Anxiety Scale (SAS) administered for the assessment of competitive trait anxiety. Idiosyncratic affect occurring prior to or during optimal and poor competitions was identified in the conceptual framework of the Hanin's Individual Zones of Optimal Functioning (IZOF) model (Hanin, Y.L. (1997). Emotions and athletic performance: Individual zones of optimal functioning model. European Yearbook of Sport Psychology, 1, 29–72).Results: Findings revealed low overlap amongst the PANAS items and the idiosyncratic items, reversal effects on the functional impact and the hedonic tone of emotions, higher level of positive affect associated with optimal performance when compared with all other affect categories, and lower levels of facilitating-negative category when compared with the facilitating-positive. Moreover, sport trait anxiety intensity was found to predict negative affect intensity as assessed by the PANAS normative scales and by the idiosyncratic items. For idiosyncratic affect, however, significant differences emerged only when comparing individuals with very high or very low anxiety symptoms.Conclusions: Idiosyncratic affect scales together with normative scales are recommended for research and applied purposes. The functional impact as well as the hedonic tone of emotion items need to be examined according to individual perception.     

Facial expressions and speech acts: experimental evidences on the role of the upper face as an illocutionary force indicating device in language comprehension

Language scientists have broadly addressed the problem of explaining how language users recognize the kind of speech act performed by a speaker uttering a sentence in a particular context. They have done so by investigating the role played by the illocutionary force indicating devices (IFIDs), i.e., all linguistic elements that indicate the illocutionary force of an utterance. The present work takes a first step in the direction of an experimental investigation of non-verbal IFIDs because it investigates the role played by facial expressions and, in particular, of upper-face action units (AUs) in the comprehension of three basic types of illocutionary force: assertions, questions, and orders. The results from a pilot experiment on production and two comprehension experiments showed that (1) certain upper-face AUs seem to constitute non-verbal signals that contribute to the understanding of the illocutionary force of questions and orders; (2) assertions are not expected to be marked by any upper-face AU; (3) some upper-face AUs can be associated, with different degrees of compatibility, with both questions and orders.     

Personality disorders in patients with burning mouth syndrome

Burning Mouth Syndrome (BMS) presents high rates of comorbid Axis I disorders while no controlled studies have addressed the question of Axis II comorbidities. The aim of the present study was to examine DSM-IV (APA, 1994) Axis II comorbidity in BMS patients and to control for the specificity of this association. Seventy BMS patients were compared to a nonpsychiatric population sample and to patients with other Somatoform Disorders for the presence of personality disorders (assessed with the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV Axis II Personality Disorders [SCID-II; First, Gibbon, Spitzer, & Williams, 1997). Prevalence rates were compared using the Pearson's chi square test. At least one personality disorder (PD) was found in 85.7%, 24.3%, and 88.6% of subjects in the three groups, respectively. When examining PD subgroups, significant differences emerged even between the BMS and the somatoform disorder group, with BMS patients showing more Cluster A and fewer Cluster B PDs. Our results suggest that BMS is associated with a specific pattern of Axis II comorbidity.     

Long-tailed macaques avoid conflicts during short-term crowding

Crowding has been viewed as a factor eliciting increased levels of aggression and tension in gregarious animals. The present study tested predictions derived from two models, the “density/aggression” model and the “active coping” model, which have been proposed to explain the responses of primates to crowding. In particular, we investigated the responses of a well-established group of long-tailed macaques (Macaca fascicularis) to short-term crowding. The group was periodically crowded for 2-3 hr into a familiar area. Control observations were carried out when the monkeys were in a six times larger enclosure. Data from 42 individuals belonging to different age-sex classes showed that only mild forms of aggression increased under the crowded condition. Crowding also resulted in a decrease in counteraggression, allogrooming, playing, and exploring the environment, while it produced an increase in huddling with companions. The frequency of reconciliation and redirection was not affected by crowding. These findings do not support either of the models but suggest that macaques adopt a “conflict-avoidance strategy” during short-term crowding. They reduce the risk of severe aggression in an environment where interindividual distances are small by simply decreasing the level of activity. Interestingly, however, when aggression occurs during crowding, tension reduction mechanisms such as reconciliation and redirection are used as often as in control conditions. © 1995 Wiley-Liss, Inc.     

Extending Everything with Nothing

Philosophia - In this paper we offer a new solution to the old paradox of nothingness. This new solution develops in two steps. The first step consists in showing how to resolve the contradiction...     

Space coding for sensorimotor transformations can emerge through unsupervised learning

The posterior parietal cortex (PPC) is fundamental for sensorimotor transformations because it combines multiple sensory inputs and posture signals into different spatial reference frames that drive motor programming. Here, we present a computational model mimicking the sensorimotor transformations occurring in the PPC. A recurrent neural network with one layer of hidden neurons (restricted Boltzmann machine) learned a stochastic generative model of the sensory data without supervision. After the unsupervised learning phase, the activity of the hidden neurons was used to compute a motor program (a population code on a bidimensional map) through a simple linear projection and delta rule learning. The average motor error, calculated as the difference between the expected and the computed output, was less than 3°. Importantly, analyses of the hidden neurons revealed gain-modulated visual receptive fields, thereby showing that space coding for sensorimotor transformations similar to that observed in the PPC can emerge through unsupervised learning. These results suggest that gain modulation is an efficient coding strategy to integrate visual and postural information toward the generation of motor commands.