An inner face advantage in children's recognition of familiar peers

Children’s recognition of familiar own-age peers was investigated. Chinese children (4-, 8-, and 14-year-olds) were asked to identify their classmates from photographs showing the entire face, the internal facial features only, the external facial features only, or the eyes, nose, or mouth only. Participants from all age groups were familiar with the faces used as stimuli for 1 academic year. The results showed that children from all age groups demonstrated an advantage for recognition of the internal facial features relative to their recognition of the external facial features. Thus, previous observations of a shift in reliance from external to internal facial features can be attributed to experience with faces rather than to age-related changes in face processing.     

Development and empirical validation of symmetric component measures of multidimensional constructs: customer and competitor orientation

Atheoretical measure purification may lead to construct deficient measures. The purpose of this paper is to provide a theoretically driven procedure for the development and empirical validation of symmetric component measures of multidimensional constructs. Particular emphasis is placed on establishing a formalized three-step procedure for achieving a posteriori content validity. Then the procedure is applied to development and empirical validation of two symmetrical component measures of market orientation, customer orientation and competitor orientation. Analysis suggests that average variance extracted is particularly critical to reliability in the respecification of multi-indicator measures. In relation to this, the results also identify possible deficiencies in using Cronbach alpha for establishing reliable and valid measures.     

Three-month-olds' detection of alliteration in syllables

Using an auditory-preference procedure we found that 3-month-olds listened significantly longer to alliterative CVCs than to non-alliterative CVCs. This finding demonstrates that 3-month-olds are sensitive to syllable onsets and is discussed in relation to early speech perception and similar results found with 9-month-olds [Jusczyk, P. W., Goodman, M. B., & Baumann, A. (1999). Nine-month-olds' attention to sound similarities in syllables. Journal of Memory & Language, 40, 62-82].     

Covert detection of attractiveness among the neurologically intact: evidence from skin-conductance responses

Several studies have shown that participants, without a deficit in face recognition, give an increased skin conductance response (SCR) to familiar faces when presented subliminally, hence suggesting covert recognition of these faces. In the experiment presented here we manipulated familiarity and attractiveness and tested whether participants distinguished between faces for these variables when presented too fast to allow conscious recognition. Three sets of faces were presented: famous attractive; unfamiliar attractive; and unfamiliar less attractive. SCRs were the same for each category of faces whether presented subliminally or supraliminally, and were the same for attractive faces, whether famous or unfamiliar; however, SCRs differed between the attractive and less attractive faces. The findings support those of Stone et al (2001 Cognitive, Affective and Behavioral Neuroscience 1 183-191) and suggest that higher SCRs to famous faces are not necessarily due to covert recognition, but may be a response to the positive affective valence of the stimuli.     

The pleasure is momentary…the expense damnable?: The influence of pornography on rape and sexual assault

The effects of pornography, whether violent or non-violent, on sexual aggression have been debated for decades. The current review examines evidence about the influence of pornography on sexual aggression in correlational and experimental studies and in real world violent crime data. Evidence for a causal relationship between exposure to pornography and sexual aggression is slim and may, at certain times, have been exaggerated by politicians, pressure groups and some social scientists. Some of the debate has focused on violent pornography, but evidence of any negative effects is inconsistent, and violent pornography is comparatively rare in the real world. Victimization rates for rape in the United States demonstrate an inverse relationship between pornography consumption and rape rates. Data from other nations have suggested similar relationships. Although these data cannot be used to determine that pornography has a cathartic effect on rape behavior, combined with the weak evidence in support of negative causal hypotheses from the scientific literature, it is concluded that it is time to discard the hypothesis that pornography contributes to increased sexual assault behavior.     

Infant preference for female faces occurs for same‐ but not other‐race faces

There has been a recent surge of interest in the question of how infants respond to the social attributes of race and gender information in faces. This work has demonstrated that by 3 months of age, infants will respond preferentially to same‐race faces and faces depicting the gender of the primary caregiver. In the current study, we investigated emergence of the female face preference for same‐ versus other‐race faces to examine whether the determinants of preference for face gender and race are independent or interactive in young infants. In Expt 1, 3‐month‐old Caucasian infants displayed a preference for female over male faces when the faces were Caucasian, but not when the faces were Asian. In Expt 2, new‐born Caucasian infants did not demonstrate a preference for female over male faces for Caucasian faces. The results are discussed in terms of a face prototype that becomes progressively tuned as it is structured by the interaction of the gender and race of faces that are experienced during early development.     

Call usage learning in gray seals (Halichoerus grypus)

Call usage learning can be demonstrated on 4 different levels: signaling on command, signaling and refraining from signaling on command, responding to a trained stimulus with a signal from a specific signal class, and responding to the playback of any untrained stimulus with one from the same signal class. Two young gray seals (Halichoerus grypus) were trained successfully to demonstrate the first 2 levels. They also learned to respond to 9 moan stimuli and 9 growl stimuli with vocalizations of the same class (Level 3). However, novel moan and growl stimuli tended to elicit growls. This casts doubt on the possibility that gray seals can reach the 4th level, but it demonstrates that they are capable of the first 3 levels of usage learning.     

Aggregate Theory Versus Set Theory

Maddy's (1990) arguments against Aggregate Theory were undermined by the shift in her position in 1997. The present paper considers Aggregate Theory in the light of this, and the recent search for `New Axioms for Mathematics'. If Set Theory is the part-whole theory of singletons, then identifying singletons with their single members collapses Set Theory into Aggregate Theory. But if singletons are not identical to their single members, then they are not extensional objects and so are not a basis for Science. Either way, the Continuum Hypothesis has no physical interest.     

Novelty,familiarity, and infant reasoning

Where stimuli are possibly discriminable but do not elicit spontaneous differential looking it is customary to use one or other variation of the habituation–dishabituation method in order to investigate their discriminability, and the literature abounds with such studies. However, there are many variations on habituation–dishabituation procedures, varying both within and between the sensory modalities investigated. Additionally, infant attention is a dynamic process which is likely to change over time, and given the great variations in procedures it can often be difficult to know whether infants are giving a familiarity or a novelty preference at test, which can make interpretation of results a difficult, and often controversial problem. Houston‐Price and Nakai give some clear examples of the changing nature of infant preferences, and relate them particularly to the amount of familiarisation prior to testing. The model they favour (and which receives a good deal of support) is that put forward by (among others) Hunter and Ames (1988) in which preferences change over the course of familiarisation time, from preference for neither familiarity or novelty, to familiarity, to no preference, to a novelty preference. They suggest that ‘If an attentional shift from what is familiar to what is novel is always found as the encoding of a familiar stimulus… is completed… then the pattern of change in preference over time should provide crucial information regarding the identity of the obtained effect’. I will argue that this attentional shift is not always found, and that in many instances we need converging evidence in order to clarify experimental findings. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.