Cognition and Emotion over twenty-five years

In the 25 years since its foundation, Cognition and Emotion has become a leading psychological journal of research on emotion. Here we review some of the ways in which this has occurred. Questions have included how parallel systems of cognition and emotion can operate in emotion regulation and psychological therapies (including the issue of free will), how the cognitive approach to emotion works, how emotion affects attention, memory, and decision making, and how emotion research is moving beyond the individual mind into the space of the interpersonal.     

Social marketing,parental purchasing decisions,and unhealthy food in developing countries: A Nigerian typology

Developing nations are emerging from food poverty and overcoming associated externalities such as malnutrition. However, there is a growing possibility that due to the globalization of food markets and widespread use of different marketing approaches, children immediately then become exposed to a new set of externalities associated with unhealthy food choices, such as obesity. In this article, we explore the relatively under‐researched area of the influence that marketing and packaging may have on parents' food purchasing behaviour in developing countries. We present the results of a multivariate analysis of a survey of parents in Nigeria as a case study, exploring the characteristics and attitudes of parents to develop a typology of consumers whose young children may be at risk from eating unhealthy food. In addition, we consider the role that social marketing could play in encouraging segments of parents to purchase more healthy food for their children and changing children's purchasing behaviour. While older parents appear to be more susceptible to children's food purchasing requests, younger households appear to be vulnerable to forming unhealthy consumption habits, which could create further economic, social, and humanitarian development issues as countries try to raise national incomes. The importance of segmented social marketing and globalized versus local marketing differentiation is emphasized A social marketing approach may not only reduce worrying trends relating to childhood obesity but also play a role in reducing malnutrition, as it is important that corporations and governments ensure that developing nations do not emerge from one food‐health crisis only to encounter another. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Growth points in research on memory and hippocampus.

We present an overview of two of our on-going projects relating processes in the hippocampus to memory. We are trying to understand why retrograde amnesia occurs after damage to the hippocampus. Our experiments establish the generality of several new retrograde amnesia phenomena that are at odds with the consensus view of the role of the hippocampus in memory. We show in many memory tasks that complete damage to the hippocampus produces retrograde amnesia that is equivalent for recent and remote memories. Retrograde amnesia affects a much wider range of memory tasks than anterograde amnesia. Normal hippocampal processes can interfere with retention of a long-term memory stored outside the hippocampus. We conclude that the hippocampus competes with nonhippocampal systems during memory encoding and retrieval. Finally, we outline a project to understand and manipulate adult hippocampal neurogenesis in order to repair damaged hippocampal circuitry to recover lost cognitive functions.     

Grasp size and accuracy of approach in reaching

In reaching for an object in the environment, it has been suggested that movement components concerned with transport of the hand toward the object and those related to grasping the object are organized and executed independently. An experiment is reported that demonstrates people adjust grasp aperture to compensate for factors affecting transport error. Grasp aperture was found to be greater in reaching movements performed faster than normal, and grasp aperture was also found to be wider when reaching with the eyes closed. In both cases, transport was spatially less accurate. It is argued that, in advance of movement, formation of grasp is planned to take into account not only the perceived characteristics of the object but, also, internalized information based on past experience about the likely accuracy of the transport component.     

Shock-induced threat and biting by the turtle

Shock-induced biting and threat by the male painted turtle (Chrysemys picta marginata) were studied in three experiments. When restrained facing each other, the turtles threatened and bit other turtles in response to electric shock. Shock alone caused turtles to threaten an unshocked turtle; the movements of a shocked turtle were sufficient to cause an unshocked but restrained turtle to threaten. When the turtles were free to move, they avoided an encounter when shocked, even reversing a strong position preference in order to do so.