Gesture and metaphor comprehension: Electrophysiological evidence of cross-modal coordination by audiovisual stimulation

In recent years, studies have suggested that gestures influence comprehension of linguistic expressions, for example, eliciting an N400 component in response to a speech/gesture mismatch. In this paper, we investigate the role of gestural information in the understanding of metaphors. Event related potentials (ERPs) were recorded while participants viewed video clips of an actor uttering metaphorical expressions and producing bodily gestures that were congruent or incongruent with the metaphorical meaning of such expressions. This modality of stimuli presentation allows a more ecological approach to meaning integration. When ERPs were calculated using gesture stroke as time-lock event, gesture incongruity with metaphorical expression modulated the amplitude of the N400 and of the late positive complex (LPC). This suggests that gestural and speech information are combined online to make sense of the interlocutor’s linguistic production in an early stage of metaphor comprehension. Our data favor the idea that meaning construction is globally integrative and highly context-sensitive.     

Empathy and emotion recognition in semantic dementia: A case report

Recent studies have demonstrated that patients suffering from frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD) show impairments in empathy and emotional processing. In this study, we examined two different aspects of these abilities in a patient with semantic dementia (SD), a variant of FTLD. The first aspect was the assessment of the cognitive and emotional components of empathy through the Interpersonal Reactivity Index. The second was the naming and comprehension of emotions using the Ekman 60 Faces Test. The patient’s emotion word knowledge was spared and the emotional aspects of empathy preserved. Conversely, the patient performed below average for all of the basic emotions when an emotion word had to be matched with a picture. When picture-to-picture matching was tested, however, the patient was able to recognize happiness. This case is a good example of a dissociation of covert and overt emotional functioning in SD. Results are discussed in terms of the impaired empathic behavior and emotional functioning in FTLD.     

Does IOR occur in discrimination tasks? Yes, it does, but later

When a stimulus appears in a previously cued location several hundred milliseconds after the cue, the time required to detect that stimulus is greater than when it appears in an uncued location. This increase in detection time is known as inhibition of return (IOR). It has been suggested that IOR reflects the action of a general attentional mechanism that prevents attention from returning to previously explored loci. At the same time, the robustness of IOR has been recently disputed, given several failures to obtain the effect in tasks requiring discrimination rather than detection. In a series of eight experiments, we evaluated the differences between detection and discrimination tasks with regard to IOR. We found that IOR was consistently obtained with both tasks, although the temporal parameters required to observe IOR were different in detection and discrimination tasks. In our detection task, the effect appeared after a 400-msec delay between cue and target, and was still present after 1,300 msec. In our discrimination task, the effect appeared later and disappeared sooner. The implications of these data for theoretical accounts of IOR are discussed.     

EFFECTS OF REINFORCER QUALITY ON BEHAVIORAL MOMENTUM: COORDINATED APPLIED AND BASIC RESEARCH

The high-probability (high-p) instructional sequence has been an effective treatment for noncompliance. However, treatment failures have also been reported. We hypothesized that the efficacy of the high-p treatment may be improved by using higher quality reinforcers for compliance to high-p instructions. The resistance of compliance to change was tested by varying reinforcer quality in two applied studies and a basic laboratory experiment. Experiment 1 tested the hypothesis that an increase in reinforcer quality for high-p compliance will increase the effectiveness of the high-p treatment when it fails to increase compliance. Experiment 2 assessed the effects of reinforcer quality on resistance of compliance to change by presenting successive low-p requests following the high-p treatment. A basic laboratory study (Experiment 3) was conducted to further isolate the relation between reinforcer quality and behavioral momentum. Two different liquid reinforcers (sucrose and citric acid solutions) were presented in a two-component multiple variable-interval variable-interval schedule followed by a single extinction test session. Results of all three experiments showed a generally consistent relationship between reinforcer quality and behavioral momentum.     

The Constable's New Clothes: Effects of Uniforms on Perceptions and Problems of Police Officers1

Popular beliefs concerning the effect of clothing styles on behavior have had important policy ramifications. For instance, in the interest of developing better police-community relations, numerous police departments have considered changing from a traditional police uniform to a more “civilian” style of dress. Effects of such an alteration were examined in the laboratory and in the field. No positive effects of the uniform change were found. Compared to officers wearing a blazer-style uniform, officers wearing traditional uniforms were perceived as more honest, more active, more helpful, more competent, more “good”, more valuable, faster, and as possessing better judgment. Data on arrests for resisting arrest and assaults on a police officer were obtained from a police department which adopted, then 8 years later abandoned, a civilian style blazer uniform. No effect of the uniform change on the number of assaults on police officers and arrests for resisting arrest was found, contrary to previous reports.     

Evaluating performance in continuous experiments with feedback to subjects

Consider an experiment in which a subject guesses repeatedly at a randomly chosen target on a continuum. To guarantee a positive probability of success, the continuum is partitioned into a finite but large number of segments. The subject is given directional feedback. General guessing strategies are characterized, and an optimal strategy is identified. The hypothesis that the subject's performance can be explained by chance alone is of interest in such experiments. A test is developed based on comparing the subject's performance to expected performance using the optimal strategy. A skill-scoring procedure is developed for assessing a subject's performance in light of the strategy used, and a test based on skill-scoring is advanced.Research by the first author is supported in part by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research under grant AFOSR 77-3180.The authors wish to thank the referees for remarks that led to improvements in both content and clarity.     

Opponent processes in human emotions? An experimental investigation of hedonic contrast and affective interactions

Three hypotheses of opponent process theory (e.g., Solomon, 1980) were examined: (1) Following the removal of emotionally charged stimuli, an emotional response opposite in hedonic tone to the initial affective response will occur; (2) this response occurs as a reaction to the initial affective response (and is not the result of perceptual processes or reinterpretations of the situation); and (3) when opponent affective processes cooccur, they tend to cancel each other's effects.Individuals were led to associate happiness and sadness with stimuli through hypnotic inductions; other stimuli were conditioned to the emotional responses that followed the offset of these stimuli. On both physiological and self-report measures, affective afterreactions were observed following the termination of a stimulus eliciting happiness in a context where this result could not be attributed to individuals' perceptions of the likelihood of future pleasant events or to changes in the individuals' adaptation levels. In agreement with previous findings, no afterreaction following the termination of a stimulus eliciting sadness was observed. Evidence that affective processes interact was also obtained. When opponent affective processes cooccur, they appear to interact and cancel. When two nonopponent affective processes are elicited simultaneously, they appear to add or average. This result supports the assumption, common to many theories of emotion, that affective processes interact to determine individuals' observed emotional states.It is my pleasure to thank Patricia Barchas, Gordon Bower, Nelson Donegan, Mary Rothbart, Roger Shepard, and Philip Zimbardo for their advice and encouragement, and to express a special thanks to Phoebe Ellsworth for her invaluable assistance.     

How the brain understands intention: different neural circuits identify the componential features of motor and prior intentions

In this paper we present theoretical and experimental evidence for a set of mechanisms by which intention is understood. We propose that three basic aspects are involved in the understanding of intention. The first aspect to consider is intention recognition, i.e., the process by which we recognize other people's intentions, distinguishing among different types. The second aspect concerns the attribution of intention to its author: the existence of shared neural representations provides a parsimonious explanation of how we recognize other people's intentions (what they are doing), but in and of itself, is not sufficient to determine who the agent is. Once the intention has been recognized and attributed to an agent, the reasons for, and the aim of, the intention are to be considered. Hence, the third aspect concerns the aim-intention motivating the execution of a certain action. We discuss the neural basis of these three theoretical aspects suggesting a conceptual synthesis.     

Mobbing: its relationships with organizational culture and personal outcomes

A study dealing with the effects of both organizational culture and mobbing on personal and organizational outcomes of a sample of Spanish emergency workers, is reported here. It was found that there is a strong impact of organizational culture dimensions on mobbing, and that mobbing affects job satisfaction, organizational commitment and organizational citizenship behaviour. Results concerning organizational commitment show that this variable is not a mere effect of mobbing in general, but rather that it is also a direct impact of culture on this outcome.     

Transactive memory in decision-making teams: implications for team effectiveness

The transactive memory system (TMS) construct is one of the most extended theoretical approaches to understand the role of cognitive processes at group level in the effectiveness of work teams. This study examined the relationships among TMS, performance, satisfaction and functional communication in decision-making teams. 40 four-person teams were asked to suppose they were expert consulting teams advising a fictitious organization on how to solve a problem with their employees. Results showed a mediating effect of TMS on the relationships between functional communication, perceived team performance and satisfaction. Contrary to our expectations, TMSs were not related to performance as evaluated by external raters. These findings suggest the importance of team communication in the formation of TMSs, as well as their implications for the effectiveness of decision-making teams.