The boundary conditions of priming of visual search: From passive viewing through task-relevant working memory load

Priming of visual search has a dominating effect upon attentional shifts and is thought to play a decisive role in visual stability. Despite this importance, the nature of the memory underlying priming remains controversial. To understand more fully the necessary conditions for priming, we contrasted passive versus active viewing of visual search arrays. There was no priming from passive viewing of search arrays, while it was strong for active search of the same displays. Displays requiring no search resulted in no priming, again showing that search is needed for priming to occur. Finally, we introduced working memory load during visual search in an effort to disrupt priming. The memorized items had either the same colors as or different colors from the visual search items. Retaining items in working memory inhibited priming of the working memory task-relevant colors, while little interference was observed for unrelated colors. The picture that emerges of priming is that it requires active attentional processing of the search items in addition to the operation of visual working memory, where the task relevance of the working memory load plays a key role.     

Social support network and adjustment of minors in residential child care

In this study, the relationship between the social support network and the personal, social and academic adjustment of minors in residential care is analyzed. The sample consisted of 102 minors who lived in residential care and who completed the Social Support Questionnaire and the TAMAI. The results show that social support from the family, despite its being the greatest provider of support, does not affect the minors' adjustment. Neither does social support from peers affect their adjustment. However, social support from adults outside the family, and mainly their affection, seems to have a positive influence on the minors' adjustment, particularly at school and in social settings. These results are discussed in relation to their implications for the improvement of programs of residential child care.     

Men dissociate sexual attraction from moral judgement more than women

Would you find an opposite‐sex individual physically less attractive if you knew that he/she was a bad person? Would you feel the same if you were a man or a woman? This study examined whether gender differences exist in the influence of moral judgements on heterosexual physical attraction. In a first Experiment, participants (N = 214) rated on attractiveness photographs of opposite‐sex persons. Each photograph was paired with a “good” and a “bad” (from a moral point of view) sentence to depict a quality or activity of the displayed person (i.e., she/he is a defender of human rights in an NGO vs. she/he belongs to a terrorist group). Compared with women, men were significantly less influenced by sentence valence in their attractiveness ratings. A second Experiment (N = 105) using photographs of very attractive people showed the same pattern of results. The data suggest that sexual attraction is relatively less permeable to moral factors in men, and that this sex difference is consistent with an evolutionary approach to human sexuality.     

Narrative form and identity in the conventionalization of memories of national histories / Forma narrativa e identidad en la convencionalización del recuerdo de historias nacionales

This paper studies the effect of narrative forms on the remembering of historical accounts. Drawing on Bartlett’s method of repeated reproduction, we analyse how two different historical versions of the Irish conflict — constructed with the same historical events but through different narrative forms — are remembered in three recall sessions by subjects with different national feelings of belonging (Spanish and Basque) and positions in relation to that conflict. The conventionalization and rationalization of memories is also analysed by examining the transformation of the material in the three sessions. Results show two different recall profiles resulting from each version of the story. While in the pro-Irish version repressive events justifying the struggle for Irish independence were more remembered, the pro-British version is reconstructed on those more institutional events that legitimize the maintenance of the United Kingdom. The bias of the narrative form on the remembering of the stories is discussed in regard to history teaching.     

Estimating the effect of emotional intelligence in wellbeing among priests

Background/Objective: Emotional intelligence is a variable which has been the subject of significantly increased research in recent years. Relationships have been shown with both physical and psychological problems. The aim of this study is to analyse the direct and indirect effect that emotional intelligence exerts over the manifestation of physical and psychological clinical symptomatology and to severe disorders such as burnout syndrome in a professional group in which social function is fundamental. Method: So that, 881 Latin-American catholic priests (M_age = 45.89; SD_age = 11.58) were evaluated using the Trait Meta-Mood Scale-24, the Maslach Burnout Inventory-22 and the General Health Questionnaire-28. Results: Using path analysis, emotional intelligence, especially Attention and Emotional Clarity, shows a high effect on psychological and somatic issues. Conclusions: Thus, both specific disorders and general well-being are related to emotional intelligence. Providing effective emotional intelligence training sessions seems to be able to reduce possible physical and emotional disorders.     

The contribution of facial regions to judgements of happiness and trustworthiness from dynamic expressions

What expressive facial features and processing mechanisms make a person look trustworthy, relative to happy? Participants judged the un/happiness or un/trustworthiness of people with dynamic expressions in which the eyes and/or the mouth unfolded from neutral to happy or vice versa. Faces with an unfolding smile looked more trustworthy and happier than faces with a neutral mouth, regardless of the eye expression. Unfolding happy eyes increased both trustworthiness and happiness only in the presence of a congruent unfolding smiling mouth. Nevertheless, the contribution of the mouth was greater for happiness than for trustworthiness; and the mouth was especially visually salient for expressions favouring happiness more than trustworthiness. We conclude that the categorisation of facial happiness is more automatically driven by the visual saliency of a single feature, that is, the smiling mouth, while perception of trustworthiness is more strategic, with the eyes being necessarily incorporated into a configural face representation.     

Memory bias for threatening information related to anxiety: an updated meta-analytic review

The evidence for an anxiety-related memory bias is contradictory. We compiled 171 articles published until October 2016 including a group with clinical or subclinical anxiety and a control group in tasks involving implicit or explicit memory using threatening stimuli. There was an anxiety-related memory bias in free recall tasks, but it was not observed in another memory task. The between-groups differences showed that the anxious group recalled more threatening stimuli than the control group (d?=?0.321). When we compared the group differences (anxious vs. control participants) in the within-groups effect (threatening vs. neutral stimuli), a moderate effect size emerged (d_bw?=?0.714). This anxiety-related memory bias was observed with shallow processing, that is consistent with attentional biases related to anxiety. There was also evidence that high-anxious persons recall fewer positive stimuli. Future research is needed to investigate whether this result is a memory or encoding bias and explore other moderator variables.     

Implicit and explicit self-esteem discrepancies in paranoia and depression

The main purpose of the present study was to examine implicit and explicit self-esteem (SE) in patients with persecutory delusions. In samples of paranoid patients, depressed patients, and healthy controls, implicit SE was assessed using the experimental go/no-go association task, whereas explicit SE was measured using 2 self-reporting questionnaires: the self-worth subscale of the World Assumption Scale (Janoff-Bulman, 1989) and the self-acceptance subscale of the Scales of Psychological Well-Being (Ryff & Keyes, 1995). Our analysis revealed that depressed patients showed lower explicit SE than did paranoid and healthy control participants. However, participants with persecutory delusions had significantly lower implicit SE scores than did healthy controls. We interpret the discrepancies observed between overt and covert measures in the paranoid group as psychological defense mechanisms. The present study stresses the clinical and theoretical importance of the use of implicit measures in psychopathology.