Neural computation as a tool to differentiate perceptual from emotional processes: The case of anger superiority effect

Research findings in social and cognitive psychology imply that it is easier to detect angry faces than happy faces in a crowd of neutral faces [Hansen, C. H., & Hansen, R. D. (1988). Finding the face in the crowd – An anger superiority effect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54(6), 917–924]. This phenomenon has been held to have evolved over phylogenetic development because it was adaptive to quickly and accurately detect a potential threat in the environment. However, across recent studies, a controversy has emerged about the underlying perceptual versus emotional factors responsible for this so-called anger superiority effect [Juth, P., Lundqvist, D., Karlsson, A., & Ohman, A. (2005). Looking for foes and friends: Perceptual and emotional factors when finding a face in the crowd. Emotion, 5(4), 379–395; Purcell, D. G., Stewart, A. L., & Skov, R. B. (1996). It takes a confounded face to pop out of a crowd. Perception, 25(9), 1091–1108]. To tease apart emotional and perceptual processes, we used neural network analyzes of human faces in two different simulations. Results show that a perceptual bias is probably acting against faster and more accurate identification of anger faces compared to happy faces at a purely perceptual level. We suggest that a parsimonious hypothesis related to the simple perceptual properties of the stimuli might explain these behavioral results without reference to evolutionary processes. We discuss the importance of statistical or connectionist analysis for empirical studies that seek to isolate perceptual from emotional factors, but also learned vs. innate factors in the processing of facial expression of emotion.     

Post-training cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2) inhibition impairs memory consolidation

Evidence indicates that prostanoids, such as prostaglandins, play a regulatory role in several forms of neural plasticity, including long-term potentiation, a cellular model for certain forms of learning and memory. In these experiments, the significance of the COX isoforms cyclooxygenase-1 (COX-1) and cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2) in post-training memory processes was assessed. Adult male Long-Evans rats underwent an eight-trial (30-sec intertrial interval) training session on a hippocampus-dependent (hidden platform) or dorsal striatal–dependent (visible platform) tasks in a water maze. After the completion of training, rats received an intraperitoneal injection of the nonselective COX inhibitor indomethacin, the COX-1–specific inhibitor piroxicam, the COX-2–specific inhibitor N-[2-cyclohexyloxy-4-nitrophenyl]-methanesulfonamide (NS-398), vehicle (45% 2-hydroxypropyl-β-cyclodextrin in distilled water), or saline. On a two-trial retention test session 24 h later, latency to mount the escape platform was used as a measure of memory. In the hidden platform task, the retention test escape latencies of rats administered indomethacin (5 and 10 mg/kg) or NS-398 (2 and 5 mg/kg) were significantly higher than those of vehicle-treated rats, indicating an impairment in retention. Injections of indomethacin or NS-398 that were delayed 2 h post-training had no effect on retention. Post-training indomethacin or NS-398 had no influence on retention of the visible platform version of the water maze at any of the doses administered. Furthermore, selective inhibition of COX-1 via post-training piroxicam administration had no effect on retention of either task. These findings indicate that COX-2 is a required biochemical component mediating the consolidation of hippocampal-dependent memory.     

Low-ball and compliance to a request: an application in a field setting

The low-ball refers to a compliance technique in which a demand of someone to agree to a request is followed by telling the person the real cost of the request. The number of people who maintain their first decision is larger than the number in the condition in which the real cost of the request is stated prior to the initial compliance. Researches in this paradigm traditionally included a request addressed by a professor to students but was never tested between strangers. So, an experiment was carried out in which people were solicited to keep a dog (8 kg) on a lead until a male confederate returned from a visit to someone in a hospital. In low-ball condition, the confederate told the subject who agreed to the request that it would take 30 min., whereas in the control condition the confederate gave this information when stating his request. Analysis showed that low-ball technique leads people to maintain their first decision.     

Impaired strategic regulation of contents of conscious awareness in schizophrenia

Conscious awareness comprises two distinct states, autonoetic and noetic awareness. Schizophrenia impairs autonoetic, but not noetic, awareness. We investigated the strategic regulation of relevant and irrelevant contents of conscious awareness in schizophrenia using a directed forgetting paradigm. Twenty-one patients with schizophrenia and 21 normal controls were presented with words and told to learn some of them and forget others. In a subsequent test, they were asked to recognize all the words they had seen previously and give remember, know or guess responses according to whether they recognized words on the basis of autonoetic awareness, noetic awareness, or guessing. Overall, patients showed the same degree of a directed forgetting effect as normal subjects. However, whereas the effect was observed both for remember and know responses in normal subjects, it was observed for know, but not for remember, responses in patients. These results indicate that patients with schizophrenia exhibit an impaired strategic regulation of contents of autonetic awareness for relevant and irrelevant information.     

Influence of education on the benton visual retention test performance as mediated by a strategic search component

Age-related cognitive decline has been reported by several studies. However, little investigations have dealt with the effect of education on this decline. In the present study, we examined the influence of educational level on visual working memory, evaluated by the Benton Visual Retention Test (BVRT in recognition format) in 829 elderly participants of the PAQUID study. A multivariate linear model suggested that the effect of education on BVRT performance was not mediated by visual discrimination abilities suggesting that it was mainly supported by better executive abilities. Moreover, the analysis of success and error location suggested that subjects with higher educational level use a more exhaustive exploration strategy during the recognition phase than subjects with lower educational level, which permit them to better perform. The ability of high educational level subjects to use more efficient strategies may participate to the 'cognitive reserve' capacity.     

Sense of Competence and Beliefs About Parental Roles in Mothers and Fathers as Predictors of Coparenting and Child Engagement in Mother–Father–Infant Triadic Interactions

The aim of this study was to assess the extent to which a sense of competence and beliefs about parental roles in mothers and fathers influence coparenting and child engagement in triadic interactions during the first 2 years of the child's life, after other influential variables such as marital satisfaction and postpartum depression have been controlled for. The sample constituted 69 mother–father–infant families, whose sense of competence, beliefs in parental roles, postpartum depression, and marital satisfaction were assessed in our laboratory at 3, 9, and 18 months with self‐reported questionnaires. Coparenting support and conflict and child engagement were assessed with the Lausanne Trilogue Play. Results show that (i) predictors of coparenting and child engagement are not the same at each time point; (ii) a sense of competence in mothers is positively linked with coparenting support, particularly at 3 months, whereas in fathers, it is negatively linked with support, particularly at 18 months; (iii) discrepancies between mothers and fathers in beliefs about the importance of the mother's role is the main predictor of coparenting conflict at 18 months; and (iv) paternal beliefs about the importance of the father's and mother's roles are the main predictor of child engagement at 18 months. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Toward a transnational history of the social sciences

Historical accounts of the social sciences have too often accepted local or national institutions as a self-evident framework of analysis, instead of considering them as being embedded in transnational relations of various kinds. Evolving patterns of transnational mobility and exchange cut through the neat distinction between the local, the national, and the inter-national, and thus represent an essential component in the dynamics of the social sciences, as well as a fruitful perspective for rethinking their historical development. In this programmatic outline, it is argued that a transnational history of the social sciences may be fruitfully understood on the basis of three general mechanisms, which have structured the transnational flows of people and ideas in decisive ways: (a) the functioning of international scholarly institutions, (b) the transnational mobility of scholars, and (c) the politics of trans-national exchange of nonacademic institutions. The article subsequently examines and illustrates each of these mechanisms.     

Data-driven Processing and Priming Effects in a Word-fragment Completion Task

An experiment was designed to examine the role and importance of data-driven processing in an implicit memory task: Word-fragment completion. We investigated the effects of priming and manipulating the context in which the target words had been read. Three main results emerged. First, replicating MacLeod's experiment (1989), we found that there was a very small priming effect for words previously studied in a text. Second, the magnitude of the priming effect increased with the perceptual difficulty of information intake during reading. Third, these variations in priming for the texts were functionally independent of subjects' recall of the text read. These results suggest that data-driven processing plays a critical role in priming. They are consistent with the transfer-appropriate processing theory recently advocated by Roediger, Weldon, and Challis (1989).