How children remember neutral and emotional pictures: boundary extension in children's scene memories

Boundary extension is the tendency to remember more of a scene than was actually shown. The dominant interpretation of this memory illusion is that it originates from schemata that people construct when viewing a scene. Evidence of boundary extension has been obtained primarily with adult participants who remember neutral pictures. The current study addressed the developmental stability of this phenomenon. Therefore, we investigated whether children aged 10-12 years display boundary extension for neutral pictures. Moreover, we examined emotional scene memory. Eighty-seven children drew pictures from memory after they had seen either neutral or emotional pictures. Both their neutral and emotional drawings revealed boundary extension. Apparently, the schema construction that underlies boundary extension is a robust and ubiquitous process.     

Universal sex differences in the desire for sexual variety: tests from 52 nations, 6 continents,and 13 islands

Evolutionary psychologists have hypothesized that men and women possess both long-term and short-term mating strategies, with men's short-term strategy differentially rooted in the desire for sexual variety. In this article, findings from a cross-cultural survey of 16,288 people across 10 major world regions (including North America, South America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Southern Europe, Middle East, Africa, Oceania, South/Southeast Asia, and East Asia) demonstrate that sex differences in the desire for sexual variety are culturally universal throughout these world regions. Sex differences were evident regardless of whether mean, median, distributional, or categorical indexes of sexual differentiation were evaluated. Sex differences were evident regardless of the measures used to evaluate them. Among contemporary theories of human mating, pluralistic approaches that hypothesize sex differences in the evolved design of short-term mating provide the most compelling account of these robust empirical findings.     

Emotional facilitation of sensory processing in the visual cortex

A key function of emotion is the preparation for action. However, organization of successful behavioral strategies depends on efficient stimulus encoding. The present study tested the hypothesis that perceptual encoding in the visual cortex is modulated by the emotional significance of visual stimuli. Event-related brain potentials were measured while subjects viewed pleasant, neutral, and unpleasant pictures. Early selective encoding of pleasant and unpleasant images was associated with a posterior negativity, indicating primary sources of activation in the visual cortex. The study also replicated previous findings in that affective cues also elicited enlarged late positive potentials, indexing increased stimulus relevance at higher-order stages of stimulus processing. These results support the hypothesis that sensory encoding of affective stimuli is facilitated implicitly by natural selective attention. Thus, the affect system not only modulates motor output (i.e., favoring approach or avoidance dispositions), but already operates at an early level of sensory encoding.     

The potential conflict between clinical and judicial decision making heuristics.

The Gudjonsson Suggestibility Scale (GSS; Gudjonsson, 1984) was introduced as a tool for identifying suspects who are at risk of making false confessions. High GSS-scores indicate a greater risk of making false confessions. Recently, some authors have claimed that low GSS-scores can be used to support the credibility of recovered memories. This new application broadens the use of the GSS in two ways. First, low GSS-scores are considered to possess diagnostic value. Second, the GSS is advocated as a practical tool in clinical settings. This article critically evaluates such a clinical application of the GSS. Our main argument has to do with the incompatibility of basic clinical and judicial decision making heuristics. Psychotherapists, and other medical professionals, should base their decisions on different parameters than judicial professionals. Compared to judicial heuristics, clinical heuristics can be characterized as more empathetic, less critical, and less conservative. Given these differences, clinical conclusions (including those about the accuracy of recovered memories) cannot be easily translated into judicial decisions. If they do enter the judicial domain, these conclusions may lead to dubious forensic decisions.     

The structure of specific phobia symptoms among children and adolescents.

Previous research [Frederikson, M., Annas, P., Fisher, H. & Wik, G. (1996). Gender and age differences in the prevalence of specific fears and phobias. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 34, 33-39.] has shown that specific phobia symptoms of adults cluster into three subtypes: animal phobia, blood-injection-injury phobia and environmental-situational phobia. The present study examined whether these specific phobia subtypes can also be found in children. 996 children aged between 7 and 19 years completed a brief questionnaire regarding the frequency with which they experienced specific phobia symptoms. Confirmatory factor analysis was employed to examine the structure of these data. Results showed that childhood specific phobia symptoms indeed cluster into the three subtypes as described by Frederikson et al. and that these subtypes are either intercorrelated or the product of a single higher order factor. This structure appeared to be largely invariant across genders and age groups.     

Fear relevance and diminution of unconditioned skin conductance responses.

According to Donegan and Wagner's priming model [1987], a signalled UCS will elicit a smaller UCR than an unsignalled UCS. Assuming that fear-relevant CSs are good predictors of aversive UCSs, while fear-irrelevant CSs are relatively bad predictors of aversive UCSs, the present study examined the effect of fear relevance on electrodermal UCR diminution during the acquisition phase of a single cue conditioning procedure. Four groups were studied, each of which consisted of 12 subjects. Group 1 had a fear-relevant CS (a slide of an angry face) paired with a UCS (7 mA shock), whereas group 2 had a fear-irrelevant CS (a slide of a happy face) paired with a UCS. Groups 3 and 4 had unpaired presentations of the CS and UCS and served as control groups for 1 and 2. There were 4 habituation, 8 acquisition, 4 recovery (UCS-only), and 6 extinction (CS-only) trials. While overall UCR levels were lower in the paired than in the unpaired control groups, it was also found that the size of UCR decrement and subsequent recovery was greater in the angry face CS-paired group than in the happy face CS-paired group. This finding is in line with the predictions that flow from the Donegan and Wagner model.     

Validation of the German version of Cloninger's TPQ: Replication and correlations with stress coping, mood measures and drug use

The tridimensional personality questionnaire (TPQ) was developed by Cloninger (1986, 1987a) to measure the independent personality dimensions Novelty Seeking (NS), Harm Avoidance (HA) and Reward Dependence (RD). After having investigated the basic psychometric properties of a German version of the TPQ in a first study (Weyers et al., 1995), a new sample of 200 subjects was collected to investigate the reliability of the results of this first study and to add further validity data by including measures of stress coping, mood and drug use. In general, the results of the first study were replicated. The internal consistencies of the superscales NS, HA and RD were high, and a factor analysis of the TPQ subscales yielded some support for Cloninger's personality theory. Because of its strong correlations with Psychoticism, Extraversion, Impulsiveness and Sensation Seeking NS seems to tap an impulsivity factor while HA correlates with Neuroticism and Introversion and appears to measure a behavioral inhibition factor, the latter interpretation being supported by correlations between HA and some mood measures like anxiety and self-confidence. In addition, HA showed substantial positive correlations with coping strategies like Rumination, Resignation and Self-pity and substantial negative correlations with strategies like Self-aggrandizement by Comparison with Others and Positive Self-instructions, while the other two TPQ superscales hardly correlate with any of the coping strategies measured. With respect to drug use, only NS showed small but substantial bivariate correlations with the use of nicotine and psychodysleptics for the last 12 weeks and last 2 years. However, a configurational analysis of the TPQ superscales demonstrated that the type II alcoholism pattern proposed by Cloninger (high NS, low HA and low RD) was associated with a strong alcohol consumption.     

The robustness of communication of emotion via facial expression: Emotion recognition from photographs with deteriorated pictorial quality

This study

1 The studies reported here were conducted within the TELEMED project which is funded by the European Community within the RACE program.

examines whether the recognition of emotion from facial expressions is impaired by deterioration of spatial resolution, contrast resolution, and picture size. Eighty judges rated 65 stimuli under 11 conditions: Undistorted, reduced spatial resolution (three steps), reduced contrast resolution (three steps), reduced picture size (three steps), and a very ‘hard’ condition combining the severest spatial and contrast resolution. Variation in picture quality was achieved by using a digital video recorder. Recognition rate and intensity ratings were not significantly affected by variations in contrast resolution or picture size. The only significant reduction of recognition rate and intensity ratings resulted from reduction in spatial resolution, but only with the largest deterioration in such resolution. Results are discussed with respect to the fundamental importance of facial expressions in interaction and communication, and with respect to applications, such as tele-conferencing systems.     

Vocal cues in emotion encoding and decoding

This research examines the correspondence between theoretical predictions on vocal expression patterns in naturally occurring emotions (as based on the component process theory of emotion; Scherer, 1986) and empirical data on the acoustic characteristics of actors' portrayals. Two male and two female professional radio actors portrayed anger, sadness, joy, fear, and disgust based on realistic scenarios of emotion-eliciting events. A series of judgment studies was conducted to assess the degree to which judges are able to recognize the intended emotion expressions. Disgust was relatively poorly recognized; average recognition accuracy for the other emotions attained 62.8% across studies. A set of portrayals reaching a satisfactory level of recognition accuracy underwent digital acoustic analysis. The results for the acoustic parameters extracted from the speech signal show a number of significant differences between emotions, generally confirming the theoretical predictions.This research was supported by a grant from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (Sche 156/8-5). The authors acknowledge collaboration of Westdeutscher Rundfunk, Cologne, in producing professional versions of actor emotion portrayals, and thank Kurt Balser, Theodor Gehm, Christoph Gierschner, Judy Hall, Ursula Hess, Alice Isen, and one anonymous reviewer for helpful comments and contributions.