A dot that went for a walk: People prefer lines drawn with human-like kinematics

A dominant theory of embodied aesthetic experience (Freedberg & Gallese, 2007, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 11, 197) posits that the appreciation of visual art is linked to the artist’s movements when creating the artwork, yet a direct link between the kinematics of drawing actions and the aesthetics of drawing outcomes has not been experimentally demonstrated. Across four experiments, we measured aesthetic responses of students from arts and non-arts backgrounds to drawing movements generated from computational models of human writing. Experiment 1 demonstrated that human-like drawing movements with bell-shaped velocity profiles (Sigma Lognormal [SL] and Minimum Jerk [MJ]) are perceived as more natural and pleasant than movements with a uniform profile, and in both Experiments 1 and 2 movements that were perceived as more natural were also preferred. Experiment 3 showed that this effect persists if lower-level dynamic stimulus features are fully matched across experimental and control conditions. Furthermore, aesthetic preference for human-like movements were associated with greater perceptual fluency in Experiment 3, evidenced by unbiased estimations of the duration of natural movements. In Experiment 4, line drawings with visual features consistent with the dynamics of natural, human-like movements were preferred, but only by art students. Our findings directly link the aesthetics of human action to the visual aesthetics of drawings, but highlight the importance of incorporating artistic expertise into embodied accounts of aesthetic experience.     

Paper-and-pencil and web-based testing: the measurement invariance of the Big Five personality tests in applied settings

This study investigates the measurement equivalence of a five-factor measure of personality across two groups applying for jobs, who completed the same questionnaire using either a paper-and-pencil (n = 429) or a web online answer format (n = 651). The data were collected using the Big Five Questionnaire-2 (BFQ-2; which is a measure of the Five Factor Model) of personality traits. Multiple-group confirmatory factor analysis was used to test for the equivalence of factor covariance and mean structures of the BFQ-2. Findings suggested that the Five Factor Model scales have the same measurement unit and origin across applicants using different administration modes. However, latent means were slightly higher for applicants who responded in a web and unproctored condition than for applicants who completed a paper-and-pencil version of the same test. Practical implications for personality assessment are discussed.     

Affective regulation of cognitive-control adjustments in remitted depressive patients after acute tryptophan depletion

Negative affect in healthy populations regulates the appraisal of demanding situations, which tunes subsequent effort mobilization and adjustments in cognitive control. In the present study, we hypothesized that dysphoria in depressed individuals similarly modulates this adaptation, possibly through a neural mechanism involving serotonergic regulation. We tested the effect of dysphoria induced by acute tryptophan depletion (ATD) in remitted depressed patients on conflict adaptation in a Simon task. ATD temporarily lowers the availability of the serotonin precursor L-Tryptophan and is known to increase depressive symptoms in approximately half of remitted depressed participants. We found that depressive symptoms induced by ATD were associated with increased conflict adaptation. Our finding extends recent observations implying an important role of affect in regulating conflict-driven cognitive control.     

The Semantics of Power Among People With Eating Disorders

The study aimed to empirically test the hypothesis, developed within the systemic-constructionist theory of family semantic polarities, that the semantics of power are particularly meaningful for people with eating disorders. The repertory grid technique was used to elicit constructs from 30 young patients (10 anorexic, 10 bulimic, and 10 obese) and from a matched control group; the two sets of constructs were compared in terms of their semantic content. Overall the results confirmed the hypothesis, although further investigation into the semantic peculiarities of individual eating disorders is required. Methodological limitations and possible clinical applications are discussed.     

Tracking job performance trajectories over time: A six-year longitudinal study

There is considerable interest in moving beyond static investigations of job performance to studying the dynamics of job performance over relatively long periods of time. In the present research, we investigated the development of job performance using a large sample of 420 employees followed over a six-year period for which yearly job performance evaluations by managers were available. Latent growth models indicated the presence of a nonlinear trajectory, with alternating phases of stability, sharp increase, and abrupt decrease. Level of education, the perception of one’s direct supervisor, and self-efficacy significantly predicted individual job performance levels observed at Wave 2. Quadratic job tenure, level of education, the perception of one’s direct supervisor, and self-efficacy were found to be significant predictors of job performance development. Findings are discussed in the light of their implications for future studies examining job performance longitudinally.     

Is the Right Anterior Temporal Variant of Prosopagnosia a Form of ‘Associative Prosopagnosia’ or a Form of ‘Multimodal Person Recognition Disorder’?

The construct of associative prosopagnosia is strongly debated for two main reasons. The first is that, according to some authors, even patients with putative forms of associative visual agnosia necessarily present perceptual defects, that are the cause of their recognition impairment. The second is that in patients with right anterior temporal lobe (ATL) lesions (and sparing of the occipital and fusiform face areas), who can present a defect of familiar people recognition, with normal results on tests of face perception, the disorder is often multimodal, affecting voices (and to a lesser extent names) in addition to faces. The present review was prompted by the claim, recently advanced by some authors, that face recognition disorders observed in patients with right ATL lesions should be considered as an associative or amnestic form of prosopagnosia, because in them both face perception and retrieval of personal semantic knowledge from name are spared. In order to check this claim, we surveyed all the cases of patients who satisfied the criteria of associative prosopagnosia reported in the literature, to see if their defect was circumscribed to the visual modality or also affected other channels of people recognition. The review showed that in most patients the study had been limited to the visual modality, but that, when the other modalities of people recognition had been taken into account, the defect was often multimodal, affecting voice (and to a lesser extent name) in addition to face.     

On the Role of Vertical Texture Cues in Height Perception

When people judge height from the top looking down they tend to overestimate vertical distance. Initial findings suggest that this perceptual bias may be in part due to the experienced fear of falling. However, previous studies did not control for potentially relevant optical invariants, especially vertical texture gradient cues, that may inform such perceptual judgments. In this study, we examined to what degree texture gradient cues may account for the perceptual bias in height perception. To this end, in 2 different conditions in which vertical texture gradient cues were either present or absent, participants provided distance and size judgments from an elevated position (5.68 m) and from the ground. Results revealed a systematic overestimation of vertical extent and object size when judged from a height. Yet, the absence or presence of texture gradient cues did not differentially influence these judgments. Finally, although fear levels were reported to be larger at the elevated position than on the ground, fear levels did not correlate with the perceptual bias, thereby demanding further research into the mechanisms underlying the perceptual bias in height perception.     

Computing Strong and Weak Permissions in Defeasible Logic

In this paper we propose an extension of Defeasible Logic to represent and compute different concepts of defeasible permission. In particular, we discuss some types of explicit permissive norms that work as exceptions to opposite obligations or encode permissive rights. Moreover, we show how strong permissions can be represented both with, and without introducing a new consequence relation for inferring conclusions from explicit permissive norms. Finally, we illustrate how a preference operator applicable to contrary-to-duty obligations can be combined with a new operator representing ordered sequences of strong permissions. The logical system is studied from a computational standpoint and is shown to have linear computational complexity.     

Voluntary Engagement in an Open Web-Based Encyclopedia: Wikipedians and Why They Do It

The online encyclopedia Wikipedia is a highly successful “open content” project, written and maintained completely by volunteers. Little is known, however, about the motivation of these volunteers. Results from an online survey among 106 contributors to the German Wikipedia project are presented. Both motives derived from social sciences (perceived benefits, identification with Wikipedia, etc.) as well as perceived task characteristics (autonomy, skill variety, etc.) were assessed as potential predictors of contributors' satisfaction and self-reported engagement. Satisfaction ratings were particularly determined by perceived benefits, identification with the Wikipedia community, and task characteristics. Engagement was particularly determined by high tolerance for opportunity costs and by task characteristics, the latter effect being partially mediated by intrinsic motivation. Relevant task characteristics for contributors' engagement and satisfaction were perceived autonomy, task significance, skill variety, and feedback. Models from social sciences and work psychology complemented each other by suggesting that favorable task experiences might counter perceived opportunity costs in Wikipedia contributors. Moreover, additional data reported by Wikipedia authors indicate the importance of generativity motives.