Orientation congruency effects for familiar objects: coordinate transformations in object recognition

How do observers recognize objects after spatial transformations? Recent neurocomputational models have proposed that object recognition is based on coordinate transformations that align memory and stimulus representations. If the recognition of a misoriented object is achieved by adjusting a coordinate system (or reference frame), then recognition should be facilitated when the object is preceded by a different object in the same orientation. In the two experiments reported here, two objects were presented in brief masked displays that were in close temporal contiguity; the objects were in either congruent or incongruent picture-plane orientations. Results showed that naming accuracy was higher for congruent than for incongruent orientations. The congruency effect was independent of superordinate category membership (Experiment 1) and was found for objects with different main axes of elongation (Experiment 2). The results indicate congruency effects for common familiar objects even when they have dissimilar shapes. These findings are compatible with models in which object recognition is achieved by an adjustment of a perceptual coordinate system.     

Bivalency is costly: bivalent stimuli elicit cautious responding

When performing tasks in alternation, substantial slowing occurs when the stimuli have features relevant to both tasks (i.e., when stimuli are bivalent as opposed to univalent). One possible source of this slowing, herein called a bivalency cost, is that encountering bivalent stimuli leads to a more cautious response style. To investigate this, we employed a paradigm that required performing three simple tasks, with bivalent stimuli occasionally encountered on one task. The results show that regardless of the feature overlap among the stimuli used for the different tasks, the introduction of bivalent stimuli slowed responding on all tasks and it was accompanied by a decrease in response errors. Overall, it appears that bivalent stimuli recruit a more cautious approach to task-switching performance.     

Further experiments on probability-matching in the pigeon

In a discrete-trials, two-key choice situation, probability-learning by pigeons was studied under a variety of training conditions. Matching was found in simultaneous and in successive problems, but a spatial problem produced only maximizing. In the simultaneous problem, noncorrection produced maximizing, while correction produced matching. Guidance produced maximizing when the animals were required to earn each opportunity for choice by pecking a center key on FR-5, but matching when the center key was not used. In a discrete-trials one-key situation, with latency as the measure, frequency and probability of reinforcement were varied independently. Differences in probability produced differences in latency of response, but differences in frequency did not.     

Investigating Emotional Body Posture Recognition in Adolescents with Conduct Disorder Using Eye-Tracking Methods

Research on Child and Adolescent Psychopathology - Adolescents with Conduct Disorder (CD) show deficits in recognizing facial expressions of emotion, but it is not known whether these difficulties...     

How Accurate Are National Stereotypes? A Test of Different Methodological Approaches

We compared different methodological approaches in research on the accuracy of national stereotypes that use aggregated mean scores of real people's personality traits as criteria for stereotype accuracy. Our sample comprised 16,713 participants from the Central Europe and 1,090 participants from the Baltic Sea region. Participants rated national stereotypes of their own country using the National Character Survey (NCS) and their personality traits using either the Revised NEO Personality Inventory or the NCS. We examined the effects of different (i) methods for rating of real people (Revised NEO Personality Inventory vs. NCS) and national stereotypes (NCS); (ii) norms for converting raw scores into T‐scores (Russian vs. international norms); and (iii) correlation techniques (intraclass correlations vs. Pearson correlations vs. rank‐order correlations) on the resulting agreement between the ratings of national stereotypes and real people. We showed that the accuracy of national stereotypes depended on the employed methodology. The accuracy was the highest when ratings of real people and national stereotypes were made using the same method and when rank order correlations were used to estimate the agreement between national stereotypes and personality profiles of real people. We propose a new statistical procedure for determining national stereotype accuracy that overcomes limitations of past studies. We provide methodological recommendations applicable to a wider range of cross national stereotype accuracy studies. Copyright © 2018 European Association of Personality Psychology     

The initial capitalization superiority effect in German: evidence for a perceptual frequency variant of the orthographic cue hypothesis of visual word recognition

A perceptual frequency variant of the orthographic cue (OC) hypothesis (Peressotti, Cubelli, & Job, 2003) was tested in two perceptual identification experiments using the variable viewing position technique: German nouns and non-nouns that are most frequently perceived with or without initial letter capitalization, respectively, were tachistoscopically presented in upper-case, lower-case, or with initial capitalization. The results indicated that words were best recognized in the form they are most frequently perceived in, which suggests that during reading acquisition abstract as well as case- and item-specific OCs may be learned and used for recognition.     

Psychological interventions for infertile patients: a review of existing research and A new comprehensive approach

The usefulness of psychological support for infertile patients has been highlighted in the literature over the past number of years. This article provides a review of existing research on psychological interventions for infertile patients, and presents the Fertility Group Intervention as an example of the application of existing research. There is clear empirical evidence of high levels of depressive symptoms, anxiety, and distress among infertile patients undergoing assisted reproductive treatment (ART). Infertile patients need and require increased psychological support. Various studies indicate the efficacy of psychological interventions for infertile patients with respect to their mental health and, in part, pregnancy rates. However, many such studies exhibit methodological problems. Therefore, in future research, additional studies of high‐quality design are needed to achieve more definitive answers on the efficacy and indication of psychological interventions for infertile patients. Currently, the Fertility Group Intervention represents a comprehensive therapeutic approach integrating established empirical and theoretical approaches with the aim of helping infertile patients – particularly those undergoing ART – cope with distress related to their infertility and medical treatment. This article further outlines the therapeutic background and structures, treatment goals, practical implications, and feasibility of the Fertility Group Intervention.     

How Fragile Is Conditional Cooperation? A Field Experiment with Smartphones during the 2014 Soccer World Cup

We conducted an experiment in a highly cooperative environment to find out how a disruption, similar to a broken window, affects behavior. A centipede game was framed as a game of soccer and run with smartphones during a soccer public viewing event, that is, a Bavarian beer garden with a large screen displaying a soccer game. We provided some subjects with information that was supportive to cooperation and others with disruptive information, aimed at inducing a broken window effect. The disruption reduced the willingness to cooperate at the final stage of the game. But expectations regarding teammates remained unaffected such that cooperation at earlier stages remained high. Cooperation is thus not as fragile as one might fear. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Activation and elaboration effects in recognition and word priming

Two experiments investigated the effect of direct and indirect activation on subsequent accessibility to individual items. In the first experiment, words were semantically processed in the context of either phonologically (rhyming) or conceptually (categorical) related words and tested subsequently for recognition and word completion. On the completion test the initial three letters of a word are presented for completion. The previously presented target word is one of several possible completions. The presence of different contexts had no differential effect either on recognition memory—which persisted at high levels for two days—or on completion—which decayed in the course of about 15 min.

In the second experiment, the contexts were presented but the target words were not. Thus the rhyming and categorical contexts were directly activated but not the actual words that were scored on the subsequent tests. Prior activation of phonologically similar items affected both recognition and completion performance on immediate testing, but not after 10 min. Conceptual activation affected only recognition—an effect that lasted for a period of days. Completion performance demonstrates access to the integration component of recognition. The results were compared with attempts to demonstrate independence of recognition and completion.     

Deferred imitation in 18-month-olds from two cultural contexts: The case of Cameroonian Nso farmer and German-middle class infants

Imitative learning has been described in naturalistic studies for different cultures, but lab-based research studying imitative learning across different cultural contexts is almost missing. Therefore, imitative learning was assessed with 18-month-old German middle-class and Cameroonian Nso farmer infants – representing two highly different eco-cultural contexts associated with different cultural models, the psychological autonomy and the hierarchical relatedness – by using the deferred imitation paradigm. Study 1 revealed that the infants from both cultural contexts performed a higher number of target actions in the deferred imitation than in the baseline phase. Moreover, it was found that German middle-class infants showed a higher mean imitation rate as they performed more target actions in the deferred imitation phase compared with Cameroonian Nso farmer infants. It was speculated that the opportunity to manipulate the test objects directly after the demonstration of the target actions could enhance the mean deferred imitation rate of the Cameroonian Nso farmer infants which was confirmed in Study 2. Possible explanations for the differences in the amount of imitated target actions of German middle-class and Cameroonian Nso farmer infants are discussed considering the object-related, dyadic setting of the imitation paradigm with respect to the different learning contexts underlying the different cultural models of learning.