It felt fluent but I did not like it: fluency effects in faces versus patterns

Whether you like a person or not is often appraised in a glance. However, under such short presentation durations stimuli are harder to perceive and, according to hedonic fluency theory-which holds that higher fluency is linked to higher liking-thus, are liked less. Given that liking considerably influences person perception, we tested how shorter and longer presentation durations affect liking for faces and compared this with abstract patterns. To capture facets of fluency of processing we assessed felt fluency, liking, and certainty ratings. Following predictions of fluency theory, longer presentation durations led to higher felt fluency, certainty, and positively affected liking judgments in the abstract patterns. In faces, felt fluency and certainty also increased with longer durations. However, with longer durations, faces were liked less, and liking was not related to felt fluency. In other words, in contrast to hedonic fluency theory, faces are more attractive when only seen for a short amount of time. Thus, fluency does not inevitably lead to more positive evaluations—it rather depends on the stimulus category. We discuss these findings in terms of the special status that faces have with regard to human perception and evaluation.     

Adaptation effects of highly familiar faces: Immediate and long lasting

A central problem of face identification is forming stable representations from entities that vary--both in a rigid and nonrigid manner--over time, under different viewing conditions, and with altering appearances. Three experiments investigated the underlying mechanism that is more flexible than has often been supposed. The experiments used highly familiar faces that were first inspected as configurally manipulated versions. When participants had to select the veridical version (known from TV/media/movies) out of a series of gradually altered versions, their selections were biased toward the previously inspected manipulated versions. This adaptation effect (face identity aftereffect, Leopold, Rhodes, Müller, & Jeffery, 2005) was demonstrated even for a delay of 24 h between inspection and test phase. Moreover, the inspection of a specific image version of a famous person not only changed the veridicality decision of the same image, but also transferred to other images of this person as well. Thus, this adaptation effect is apparently not based on simple pictorial grounds, but appears to have a rather structural basis. Importantly, as indicated by Experiment 3, the adaptation effect was not based on a simple averaging mechanism or an episodic memory effect, but on identity-specific information.     

The symbol in the body: the un-doing of a dissociation through Embodied Active Imagination in Jungian analysis

Jung understood dissociation as a natural state of the psyche, capable of turning defensive through development. Based on this premise, and its conception on the equivalence between psyche and matter, the present work describes the un-doing of a dissociation expressed through a chronic enterocolitis disorder. When the symbol remains closer to the body and its most instinctive manifestations, we need to descend to that level in order to let the vertical axis connection be gradually restored through the therapeutic relationship – the horizontal axis. In other words, this un-doing requires that patient and analyst follow the unconscious path proposed by symbolic expressions that gradually emerge through the patient’s body and active imagination. Movement is our most primitive and fundamental experience. Many authors (Stern, Panksepp, Gallese) have agreed that, in addition to being first in terms of development, movement continues to have primacy over any other experience throughout life. This means that emotions, bodily concepts and, later, speech, evolve from a somatic basis. In the light of such neuroscientific findings, Jung’s vision of the correspondence of psyche and matter will be revisited in order to portray how the analytic bond provides a context for the re-establishment of the linking/creative function of the archetype, and allows the restoring of the ego-Self axis connection by including non-verbal approaches, such as body-based active imagination, also known as Authentic Movement. Authentic Movement is an amplification of Jung’s active imagination method that enables a dialogue between the ego and the diverse configurations of the unconscious. When such dialogue is grounded in the body, there is an easier access to the affective dimension stored in implicit memory. That which was relived through the body can gradually be remembered, and affects hitherto rejected, find other symbolic ways of being expressed and contained in the analytic vas.