Factorial structure and age-related psychometrics of the MIDUS personality adjective items across the life span

The present study addresses issues of measurement invariance and comparability of factor parameters of Big Five personality adjective items across age. Data from the Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) survey were used to investigate age-related developmental psychometrics of the MIDUS personality adjective items in 2 large cross-sectional samples (exploratory sample: N = 862; analysis sample: N = 3,000). After having established and replicated a comprehensive 5-factor structure of the measure, increasing levels of measurement invariance were tested across 10 age groups. Results indicate that the measure demonstrates strict measurement invariance in terms of number of factors and factor loadings. Also, we found that factor variances and covariances were equal across age groups. By contrast, a number of age-related factor mean differences emerged. The practical implications of these results are discussed, and future research is suggested.     

Differential responses to con- and allospecific visual cues in juvenile ravens (Corvus corax): the ontogeny of gaze following and social predictions

Animal Cognition - Gaze following refers to the ability to co-orient with others’ gaze directions. Ontogenetic studies on gaze following in animals have predominantly used human experimenters...     

Sound Predicts Meaning: Cross-Modal Associations Between Formant Frequency and Emotional Tone in Stanzas

Research on the relation between sound and meaning in language has reported substantial evidence for implicit associations between articulatory–acoustic characteristics of phonemes and emotions. In the present study, we specifically tested the relation between the acoustic properties of a text and its emotional tone as perceived by readers. To this end, we asked participants to assess the emotional tone of single stanzas extracted from a large variety of poems. The selected stanzas had either an extremely high, a neutral, or an extremely low average formant dispersion. To assess the average formant dispersion per stanza, all words were phonetically transcribed and the distance between the first and second formant per vowel was calculated. Building on a long tradition of research on associations between sound frequency on the one hand and non-acoustic concepts such as size, strength, or happiness on the other hand, we hypothesized that stanzas with an extremely high average formant dispersion would be rated lower on items referring to Potency (dominance) and higher on items referring to Activity (arousal) and Evaluation (emotional valence). The results confirmed our hypotheses for the dimensions of Potency and Evaluation, but not for the dimension of Activity. We conclude that, at least in poetic language, extreme values of acoustic features of vowels are a significant predictor for the emotional tone of a text.     

The selfish preen: absence of allopreening in Palaeognathae and its socio-cognitive implications

Animal Cognition - Preening behaviours are widespread in extant birds. While most birds appear to autopreen (self-directed preening), allopreening (preening directed at conspecifics) seems to have...