Human melody singing by bullfinches (Pyrrhula pyrrula) gives hints about a cognitive note sequence processing

We studied human melody perception and production in a songbird in the light of current concepts from the cognitive neuroscience of music. Bullfinches are the species best known for learning melodies from human teachers. The study is based on the historical data of 15 bullfinches, raised by 3 different human tutors and studied later by Jürgen Nicolai (JN) in the period 1967–1975. These hand-raised bullfinches learned human folk melodies (sequences of 20–50 notes) accurately. The tutoring was interactive and variable, starting before fledging and JN continued it later throughout the birds’ lives. All 15 bullfinches learned to sing alternately melody modules with JN (alternate singing). We focus on the aspects of note sequencing and timing studying song variability when singing the learned melody alone and the accuracy of listening-singing interactions during alternatively singing with JN by analyzing song recordings of 5 different males. The following results were obtained as follows: (1) Sequencing: The note sequence variability when singing alone suggests that the bullfinches retrieve the note sequence from the memory as different sets of note groups (=modules), as chunks (sensu Miller in Psychol Rev 63:81–87, 1956). (2) Auditory–motor interactions, the coupling of listening and singing the human melody: Alternate singing provides insights into the bird’s brain melody processing from listening to the actually whistled part of the human melody by JN to the bird’s own accurately singing the consecutive parts. We document how variable and correctly bullfinches and JN alternated in their singing the note sequences. Alternate singing demonstrates that melody-singing bullfinches did not only follow attentively the just whistled note contribution of the human by auditory feedback, but also could synchronously anticipate singing the consecutive part of the learned melody. These data suggest that both listening and singing may depend on a single learned human melody representation (=coupling between perception and production).     

How Emotional Media Reports Influence Attitude Formation and Change: The Interplay of Attitude Base,Attitude Certainty,and Persuasion

This study examined the influence of an emotionally arousing writing style on attitude formation and change. It has been proposed that different writing styles induce attitudes based on either affect or cognition and with either high or low certainty. Previous work indicates that the interplay of these attitude characteristics determines the persuasiveness of emotional and rational media appeals. To test the hypotheses, participants in an experimental study read articles from a magazine about a fictitious attitude object. In the first step, 4 different types of attitudes varying in base and level of certainty were induced through a respectively manipulated article. In the second step, these attitudes were challenged by an additional article, which presented either an emotional or rational persuasive appeal. The results supported hypotheses on attitude induction through media stimuli and 3 of 4 hypotheses regarding the persuasiveness of emotionally and rationally written articles.     

Analogue Mental Transformations in 3‐Year‐Olds: Introducing a New Mental Rotation Paradigm Suitable for Young Children

Until now, a successful application of the mental rotation paradigm was restricted to children 5 years or older. By contrast, recent findings suggest that even infants can perform mental rotation. Unlike the methods used in infant studies (looking time), our new research paradigm allows for the measurement and interpretation of reaction times. Kindergartners (aged 3–6 years) were presented with a stimulus configuration on a touchscreen and asked to bring a rotated stimulus into an upright position using the shortest path. Mean reaction time (RT) increased linearly with angular disparity. The ensuing linear trend was significant not only for the entire sample but also for the youngest age group analysed separately. To exclude the possibility that linearity was due to movement planning, 3‐year‐olds had to manually rotate a stimulus about the same trajectory without the need for a corresponding mental transformation in a second experiment. Here, no linear trend was observed. These results are interpreted as evidence for an analogue mental transformation in 3‐year‐olds, equal to the transformation processes in older children's and adults' mental rotation. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Trauma exposure is associated with increased context-dependent adjustments of cognitive control in patients with posttraumatic stress disorder and healthy controls

Recent evidence has suggested that posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is associated with alterations in prefrontal-cortex-dependent cognitive processes (e.g., working memory, cognitive control). However, it remains unclear whether these cognitive dysfunctions are related to PTSD symptomatology or trauma exposure. Furthermore, regarding cognitive control, research has only focused on the integrity of selected control functions, but not their dynamic regulation in response to changing environmental demands. Therefore, the present study investigated dynamic variations in interference control, in addition to overall interference susceptibility and working memory (WM) performance in matched groups of 24 PTSD patients and 26 traumatized and 30 nontraumatized healthy controls. The Simon task was used to measure overall interference susceptibility and the flexible adjustment of cognitive control, on the basis of the occurrence of response conflicts (conflict adaptation effect). WM performance was assessed with the forward and backward digit span tasks. Since we have previously shown that trauma exposure per se is associated with reduced hair cortisol concentrations (HCC), we further explored whether PTSD/trauma-related cognitive alterations are related to HCC in proximal 3-cm hair segments. The results revealed that PTSD patients and traumatized controls showed significantly more pronounced conflict adaptation effects than nontraumatized controls. Moreover, the conflict adaptation effect was positively related to the number of lifetime traumatic events and the frequency of traumatization. The groups did not differ in overall interference susceptibility or WM performance. Exploratory analyses revealed no association between HCC and the observed cognitive differences. These results suggest that context-driven control adjustments constitute a sensitive correlate of trauma exposure, irrespective of PTSD.     

Examining gender differences in received,provided, and invisible social control: an application of the dual-effects model

The dual-effects model of social control not only assumes that social control leads to better health practices but also arouses psychological distress. However, findings are inconsistent. The present study advances the current literature by examining social control from a dyadic perspective in the context of smoking. In addition, the study examines whether control, continuous smoking abstinence, and affect are differentially related for men and women. Before and three weeks after a self-set quit attempt, we examined 106 smokers (77 men, mean age: 40.67, average number of cigarettes smoked per day: 16.59 [SD = 8.52, range = 1–40] at baseline and 5.27 [SD = 6.97, range = 0–40] at follow-up) and their nonsmoking heterosexual partners, assessing received and provided control, continuous abstinence, and affect. With regard to smoker's affective reactions, partner's provided control was related to an increase in positive and to a decrease in negative affect, but only for female smokers. Moreover, the greater the discrepancy between smoker received and partner's provided control was the more positive affect increased and the more negative affect decreased, but again only for female smokers. These findings demonstrate that female smokers' well-being was raised over time if they were not aware of the control attempts of their nonsmoking partners, indicating positive effects of invisible social control. This study's results emphasize the importance of applying a dyadic perspective and taking gender differences in the dual-effects model of social control into account.     

Effects of Marital Distress on Turkish Adolescents’ Psychological Adjustment

This research explores the effects of parental marital distress on Turkish adolescents’ psychological adjustment, as mediated by adolescents’ perceptions of maternal and paternal acceptance–rejection. This issue has generated considerable interest within the United States, but only recently internationally. The study draws from a sample of 180 12- through 18-year-old Turkish adolescents (94 females and 86 males; mean age of 16 years) and their parents. Assessments of the level of husbands’ and wives’ marital distress were made using the Turkish language version of the Intimate Partner Acceptance–Rejection/Control Questionnaire IPAR/CQ. Adolescents’ perceptions of the level of parental acceptance were made using the mother and father forms of the Child Parental Acceptance–Rejection/Control Questionnaire. Adolescents’ psychological adjustment was assessed using the child version of the Personality Assessment Questionnaire. Mediation analyses revealed that adolescents’ perceptions of both maternal and paternal acceptance mediated the relationship between the adolescents’ (both sons’ and daughters’) psychological adjustment and wives’ perceptions of their husbands’ acceptance. Thus, the spillover hypothesis was partially supported as was one of the central postulates of parental acceptance–rejection theory.     

Would you post that picture and let your dad see it? Culture,honor, and Facebook

Honor means “high respect; esteem,” but it has different associations for different cultures. In honor cultures (Turkey), esteem depends on one's own perception of self‐worth and on other people's opinions. In those cultures, honor is easily lost and difficult to regain. In dignity cultures (northern America), esteem mainly depends on the individual and cannot be taken away by others. One way to lose honor in Turkey is through behaviors that may be seen as “potentially improper.” Thus, we expected that posting pictures of such behaviors on Facebook (e.g., at a party; with one's boyfriend/girlfriend) and letting others see them would be less likely in Turkey than in the northern United States. Moreover, we investigated whether honor endorsement was the reason for this difference. We examined participants' posting intentions and actual Facebook behaviors. As expected, Turkish participants were less willing to post and let others (especially their relatives) see their potentially improper pictures compared with northern Americans. Moreover, honor endorsement negatively predicted the willingness to post such pictures only in Turkey, especially for women. This suggests that in honor cultures, the concern for losing honor could be the underlying reason for avoiding social media postings that could be potentially perceived as improper. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Religious agency,identity, and communication: reflections on history and theory of religion

Abstract

This paper discusses the applicability of recent theories of religion to the problem of describing and explaining religious transformation in the period between the final Bronze Age and Late Antiquity. Instead of evolutionist and cognitive approaches, it proposes a model of religion that tries to analyze religion in terms of its making by starting from the individual's appropriation and creation of religious tradition. Religion is understood as a strategy to attribute agency to agents that do not appear immediately plausible. Recent scholarly discussions on human agency suggest categorizing human religious agency into the three subsets, namely: (1) acting religiously with regards to past, present, and future; (2) collective religious identity; and (3) religious communication. These subsets are shown to produce fruitful questions for research on historical sources. Against this backdrop, religion is explained as a precarious cultural resource articulated through the agency of individuals and allowing changed attributions of individual agency.