Target animacy influences chimpanzee handedness

We employed a bottom-up, quantitative method to investigate great ape handedness. Our previous investigation of gorillas (Gorilla gorilla gorilla) demonstrated that contextual information influenced an individual’s handedness toward target objects. Specifically, we found a significant right-hand bias for unimanual actions directed toward inanimate target objects but not for actions directed to animate target objects (Forrester et al. in Anim Cogn 14(6):903–907, 2011). Using the identical methodological technique, we investigated the spontaneous hand actions of nine captive chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) during naturalistic, spontaneous behavior. We assessed both the frequencies and proportions of lateralized hand actions directed toward animate and inanimate targets employing focal follow video sampling. Like the gorillas, the chimpanzees demonstrated a right-handed bias for actions directed toward inanimate targets, but not toward animate targets. This pattern was evident at the group level and for the majority of subjects at the individual level. We postulate that a right-hand bias for only inanimate targets reflects the left hemisphere’s dominant neural processing capabilities for objects that have functional properties (inanimate objects). We further speculate that a population-level right-hand bias is not a human-unique characteristic, but one that was inherited from a common human-ape ancestor.     

The mediating role of disgust sensitivity and thought‐action fusion between religiosity and obsessive compulsive symptoms

Psychological theories of obsessions and compulsions have long recognised that strict religious codes and moral standards might promote thought‐action fusion (TAF) appraisals. These appraisals have been implicated in the transformation of normally occurring intrusions into clinically distressing obsessions. Furthermore, increased disgust sensitivity has also been reported to be associated with obsessive compulsive (OC) symptoms. No research, however, has investigated the mediating roles of TAF and disgust sensitivity between religiosity and OC symptoms. This study was composed of 244 undergraduate students who completed measures of OC symptoms, TAF, disgust sensitivity, religiosity and negative effect. Analyses revealed that the relationship between religiosity and OC symptoms was mediated by TAF and disgust sensitivity. More importantly, the mediating role of TAF was not different across OC symptom subtypes, whereas the mediating role of disgust sensitivity showed different patterns across OC symptom subtypes. These findings indicate that the tendency for highly religious Muslims to experience greater OC symptoms is related to their heightened beliefs about disgust sensitivity and the importance of thoughts.     

Ensemble coding of faces occurs in children and develops dissociably from coding of individual faces

Ensemble coding allows adults to access useful information about average properties of groups, sometimes even in the absence of detailed representations of individual group members. This form of coding may emerge early in development with initial reports of ensemble coding for simple properties (size, numerosity) in young children and even infants. Here we demonstrate that ensemble coding of faces, which provides information about average properties of social groups, is already present in 6–8‐year‐old children. This access to average information increases with age from 6 to 18 years and its development is dissociable from age‐related improvements in the coding of individual face identities. This dissociation provides the first direct evidence that distinct processes underlie ensemble and individual coding of face identity, evidence that has been lacking from adult studies. More generally, our results add to the emerging evidence for impressively mature sensitivity to statistical properties of the visual environment in children. They indicate that children have access to gist information about social groups that may facilitate adaptive social behaviour.     

The procedural learning deficit hypothesis of language learning disorders: we see some problems

Impaired procedural learning has been suggested as a possible cause of developmental dyslexia (DD) and specific language impairment (SLI). This study examined the relationship between measures of verbal and non‐verbal implicit and explicit learning and measures of language, literacy and arithmetic attainment in a large sample of 7 to 8‐year‐old children. Measures of verbal explicit learning were correlated with measures of attainment. In contrast, no relationships between measures of implicit learning and attainment were found. Critically, the reliability of the implicit learning tasks was poor. Our results show that measures of procedural learning, as currently used, are typically unreliable and insensitive to individual differences. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnvV-BvNWSo     

States of Exile and Marginalization

The experience of marginality is visceral. The artist Tracey Moffatt, Australia’s representative at the 2017 Vienna biennale, understands this exquisitely. Her work depicts marginality and states of exile powerfully and compels us to respond. In speaking to the traumatic images in her work I am aware that words are inadequate. The Lacanian Real of trauma is always an excess, the beyond of words. This is recognized by Moffatt in her largely wordless work, which nevertheless speaks to many states of exile engendered by geographical isolation, cultural domination and hybridity, powerlessness, and dependence, as well as alienated states produced by everyday misattunements.     

Reaping the Whirlwind: Reply to Garth Stevens,Gillian Eagle,Margarita Kahn,and Donna Orange

Drawing on the work of ?i?ek (1992) on the neighbor, this paper grapples with Orange’s ethical challenges in this regard. Continuing a focus on the complexity of extending a hand to the Other, the paper then address Kahn’s ideas concerning how one pole of a binary defines itself through the Other, and I speak to the issue of victims and rescuers. The resistance of the erstwhile oppressed to being defined by the Other is taken up in Eagle’s paper. Eagle discusses the perils of reflection and interpretation when at the receiving end of the jouissance of embodied and enacted hatred. In this reply I elaborate these thoughts, and then move to discuss Stevens’s paper, which offers thoughts on how to respond constructively to this jouissance so as not to make a bad situation worse.     

“Das Ding”: Excessive Existence: Discussion of “Melancholic Psychosis”

Derek Hook’s (this issue) excellent paper provides illustrations of complex Lacanian concepts through the relatively rare presentation of Lacanian case material. His paper lends itself to reading Freud with Lacan. This reply to his paper engages such a reading to show that the idea of the over present object emphasised by Lacan is prefigured in Freud in his 1917 paper on Mourning and Melancholia. My reply to Hook affirms the additional clinical themes he introduces and indicates that these themes would be anticipated if, as Lacan argues, melancholia is seen to be underpinned by a psychotic structure. Finally, the reply argues for a resurrection of the Lacanian notion of Das Ding, as it connotes differently to objet a despite overlaps in meaning and the fact that in later Lacan the term Das Ding was dropped.     

Perceptual experience shapes our ability to categorize faces by national origin: A new other-race effect

People are better at recognizing own-race than other-race faces. This other-race effect has been argued to be the result of perceptual expertise, whereby face-specific perceptual mechanisms are tuned through experience. We designed new tasks to determine whether other-race effects extend to categorizing faces by national origin. We began by selecting sets of face stimuli for these tasks that are typical in appearance for each of six nations (three Caucasian, three Asian) according to people from those nations (Study 1). Caucasian and Asian participants then categorized these faces by national origin (Study 2). Own-race faces were categorized more accurately than other-race faces. In contrast, Asian American participants, with more extensive other-race experience than the first Asian group, categorized other-race faces better than own-race faces, demonstrating a reversal of the other-race effect. Therefore, other-race effects extend to the ability to categorize faces by national origin, but only if participants have greater perceptual experience with own-race, than other-race faces. Study 3 ruled out non-perceptual accounts by showing that Caucasian and Asian faces were sorted more accurately by own-race than other-race participants, even in a sorting task without any explicit labelling required. Together, our results demonstrate a new other-race effect in sensitivity to national origin of faces that is linked to perceptual expertise.