Does mimicking others change your self-view?

Does mimicking affect the way you think about yourself in relation to other people? In the present study, we instructed participants to either mimic or not mimic the expressions of their interaction partner. After a 3-minute interaction, participants' self-view in relation to others was measured. Results revealed that mimickers defined themselves more in relation to others than nonmimickers. Thus, mimicking others, compared to not mimicking others, changes your self-view.     

Parental strategies and trajectories of peer victimization in 4 to 5 year olds

This study was designed to examine how parental strategies contribute to explaining trajectories of peer victimization in young children. A total of 73 4 and 5 year old children identified as victims of peer aggression in the fall semester and their parents were recruited from 46 classrooms in 18 schools in the Netherlands. All children were followed-up twice in order to determine for whom victimization was stable. Hypothetical vignettes describing various forms of victimization were presented to one parent of each child in order to assess parental responses to victimization events. Findings indicated that autonomy supporting and autonomy neutral strategies were associated with a decrease of victimization in the first semester of the school year. No protective effects were found in the second semester. Autonomy undermining strategies were not related to the course of peer victimization. These findings underscore the importance of joint and coordinated efforts of teachers and parents as partners in supporting victimized young children at school.     

Orange as a perceptual representation of the Dutch nation: Effects on perceived national identification and color evaluation

Although it is generally accepted that colors carry meaning, experimental research about individual, situational, and cultural differences in the meaning of colors is scarce. The current research examines whether the Dutch national color functions as a perceptual representation of The Netherlands. A person dressed in orange clothing was judged to identify more with his nation compared with the same person dressed in blue (Study 1). When national identification was salient, such as during (versus before/after) the European soccer championship, or when participants recalled an experience in which they identified (versus not identified) with The Netherlands, and people were more aware of the use of the color orange as a perceptual representation of The Netherlands, orange was evaluated more positively (Studies 2 and 3). Furthermore, orange evaluations correlated with self‐reported national identification. These results support the hypothesis that national colors carry psychological meaning, which can influence person perception and color evaluations. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The consequences of mimicry for prosocials and proselfs: Effects of social value orientation on the mimicry–liking link

People often mimic each other's behaviors. As a consequence, they share each other's emotional and cognitive states, which facilitates liking. Mimicry, however, does not always affect liking. In two studies, we investigate whether the mimicry–liking link is influenced by people's social value orientations. More specifically, we examine whether prosocials and proselfs are differently affected when being mimicked or not. Prosocials and proselfs indicated their liking for the interaction partner after being or not being mimicked in a face‐to‐face interaction. The results of two studies showed that prosocials rated the interaction partner as less likeable when they were not mimicked than when they were mimicked. Proselfs, however, were not affected by mimicry. These results show that people's social motives play a role in whether or not the effects of mimicry on liking occur: Proselfs are less sensitive to the mimicry acts of others. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Regional differences in the listener's phonemic inventory affect semantic processing: A mismatch negativity (MMN) study

Using the mismatch negativity (MMN) response, we examined how Standard French and Southern French speakers access the meaning of words ending in /e/ or /ε/ vowels which are contrastive in Standard French but not in Southern French. In Standard French speakers, there was a significant difference in the amplitude of the brain response after the deviant-minus-standard subtraction between the frontocentral (FC) and right lateral (RL) recording sites for the final-/ε/ word but not the final-/e/ word. In contrast, the difference in the amplitude of the brain response between the FC and RL recording sites did not significantly vary as a function of the word’s final vowel in Southern French speakers. Our findings provide evidence that access to lexical meaning in spoken word recognition depends on the speaker’s native regional accent.     

The education of attention as explanation of variability of practice effects: learning the final approach phase in a flight simulator

The present study reports two experiments in which a total of 20 participants without prior flight experience practiced the final approach phase in a fixed-base simulator. All participants received self-controlled concurrent feedback during 180 practice trials. Experiment 1 shows that participants learn more quickly under variable practice conditions than under constant practice conditions. This finding is attributed to the education of attention to the more useful informational variables: Variability of practice reduces the usefulness of initially used informational variables, which leads to a quicker change in variable use, and hence to a larger improvement in performance. In the practice phase of Experiment 2 variability was selectively applied to some experimental factors but not to others. Participants tended to converge toward the variables that were useful in the specific conditions that they encountered during practice. This indicates that an explanation for variability of practice effects in terms of the education of attention is a useful alternative to traditional explanations based on the notion of the generalized motor program and to explanations based on the notions of noise and local minima.     

Cerebellar-induced apraxic agraphia: a review and three new cases

Apraxic agraphia is a writing disorder due to a loss or lack of access to motor engrams that program the movements necessary to produce letters. Clinical and functional neuroimaging studies have demonstrated that the neural network responsible for writing includes the superior parietal region and the dorsolateral and medial premotor cortex. Recent studies of two cases with atypical lesion localisations in the left thalamus and the right cerebellum support the hypothesis that the written language network is larger than previously assumed. The aim of this study is twofold: (1) to provide a survey of cases of apraxic agraphia published between 1973 and June 2010, and (2) to provide further evidence for a role of the cerebellum in writing via three additional cases who presented with apraxic agraphia after ischemic damage in the cerebellum. Functional neuroimaging studies by means of brain perfusion SPECT showed perfusional deficits in the anatomoclinically suspected supratentorial areas, subserving language dynamics, syntax, naming, writing and executive functioning.     

Telling things apart: the distance between response keys influences categorization times

People use spatial distance to talk and think about differences between concepts, and it has been argued that using space to think about different categories provides a scaffold for the categorization process. In the current study, we investigated the possibility that the distance between response keys can influence categorization times in binary classification tasks. In line with the hypothesis that distance between response keys can facilitate response selection in a key-press version of the Stroop task, our results showed that responses on incongruent Stroop trials were significantly facilitated when participants performed the Stroop task with response keys located far apart, compared with when they performed the task with response keys located close together. These results support the idea that the spatial structuring of response options facilitates categorizations that require cognitive effort, and that people can incorporate environmental structures such as spatial distance in their thought processes. Keeping your hands apart might actually help to keep things apart in your mind.     

“It wasn’t your fault,but …...”: Schadenfreude about an undeserved misfortune

Although it is well-established that an objectively deserved misfortune promotes schadenfreude about the misfortune, there is a small body of research suggesting that an undeserved misfortune can also enhance schadenfreude. The aim of the present study was to investigate the processes that underlie schadenfreude about an undeserved misfortune. Participants (N?=?61) were asked to respond to a scenario in which a person was responsible or not responsible for a negative action. In the responsible condition, two independent routes to schadenfreude were observed: deservingness of the misfortune (traditional route) and resentment towards the target. More importantly, results showed that when the target of the misfortune was not responsible for the negative action, the relationship between schadenfreude and resentment towards the target was mediated by the re-construal of an objectively undeserved misfortune as a ‘deserved’ misfortune. The study further found that expressing schadenfreude about another’s misfortune makes one feel better about oneself without affecting moral emotions. The findings expand our understanding of schadenfreude about undeserved negative outcomes.     

Reopening the study of extreme social behaviors: Obedience to authority within an immersive video environment

In this study, we used a paradigm similar to the one used by Milgram in his classic obedience study, using an immersive video environment. We manipulated the victim's degree of visibility and his ethnicity. When the victim was hidden, the level of obedience we obtained was similar to Milgram's. Replicating previous findings observed in real environments, participants were more obedient when the victim was hidden than when he was visible, and the more obedient participants negated their own responsibility by projecting responsibility on both the victim and the experimenter. State‐anger and right‐wing authoritarianism (RWA) emerged as two significant predictors of the level of obedience. Illustrating an underlying process of racial‐dehumanization, participants reported less anxiety and distress when the victim was a North African than when the victim was of the same racial origin as the participant. These results underscore the usefulness of using immersive environments when studying extreme social behaviors. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.