Reasoning about emotional contents following shocking terrorist attacks: a tale of three cities

The authors examined reasoning following the terrorist attacks carried out in London in July 2005. They tested participants in London (United Kingdom), Manchester (United Kingdom), and London (Canada) within 1 week of the attacks and again 6 months later. Participants reasoned about syllogisms of 3 types: neutral, generally emotional, and emotionally related to terrorism. Participants also provided self-reports of emotion and risk estimates. Participants generally reasoned more accurately on neutral problems, compared with generally emotional and terrorism-related problems. However, participants in London (United Kingdom) provided more logically valid answers when reasoning about problems related to terrorism and were less likely to answer on the basis of beliefs, despite reporting higher levels of emotions.     

Anxiety and the interpretation of ambiguous facial expressions: the influence of contextual cues

In 3 experiments, we investigate how anxiety influences interpretation of ambiguous facial expressions of emotion. Specifically, we examine whether anxiety modulates the effect of contextual cues on interpretation. Participants saw ambiguous facial expressions. Simultaneously, positive or negative contextual information appeared on the screen. Participants judged whether each expression was positive or negative. We examined the impact of verbal and visual contextual cues on participants' judgements. We used 3 different anxiety induction procedures and measured levels of trait anxiety (Experiment 2). Results showed that high state anxiety resulted in greater use of contextual information in the interpretation of the facial expressions. Trait anxiety was associated with mood-congruent effects on interpretation, but not greater use of contextual information.     

Nonconscious influences of religion on prosociality: a priming study

Past literature on the automaticity of social behavior indicates that priming a concept automatically activates related behavioral schemas. In the two present studies we examined the impact of religion on prosociality. In the first study, we tested the impact of subliminal priming of religious concepts on prosocial behavior intentions. We found a main effect of this priming, moderated by valence: prosocial behavior tendencies were stronger when positive religious words had previously been subliminally primed. In the second study, we examined the accessibility of prosocial concepts, after the supraliminal activation of religion. Indeed, we found that not only were religion‐related attributes more accessible when primed, but positive religious primes were also able to activate prosocial concepts. While previous research has shown the religion‐prosociality link at the explicit level and in terms of the role of individual religiousness, these results indicate that religious concepts by themselves can nonconsciously activate prosocial behavioral schemas. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Effect of MAO A deficiency on different kinds of aggression and social investigation in mice

Monoamine oxidase A (MAO A) degrades serotonin, dopamine and noradrenaline, factors critically involved in the regulation of aggression. Different kinds of aggression were investigated in Tg8, a transgenic mouse strain lacking a functional MAO A gene. MAO A-deficient mice differ from wild-type C3H/HeJ (C3H) in terms of showing higher territorial, predatory and isolation-induced aggression. Tg8 demonstrated shorter latencies to cricket killing and to the first attack after 6 weeks isolation than C3H mice. In the resident-intruder paradigm, MAO A-lacking mice were more aggressive than C3H when tested as intruders. In contrast to C3H, attack in Tg8 mice did not depend on different aggressiveness of intruders of BALB/c, A/Sn and C3H strains. Tg8 mice displayed no increase in aggression but demonstrated reduced social investigation towards anesthetized, as well as towards juvenile BALB/c males. Thus, MAO A deficiency in Tg8 mice is accompanied by increased expression of different kinds of aggression, as well as by disruption of normal pattern of social interaction.     

Cognitive decline and human (Homo sapiens) aging: an investigation using a comparative neuropsychological approach

Using a comparative neuropsychological approach, the authors compared performance of younger and healthy older adults ages 65 and over on tasks originally developed to measure cognition in animals. A battery of 6 tasks was used to evaluate object discrimination, egocentric spatial abilities, visual and spatial working memory, and response shifting. Older adults performed more poorly than younger adults on tasks that evaluate egocentric spatial abilities, response shifting, and to a lesser extent object recognition. The two groups did not differ for tasks that evaluate spatial working memory and object discrimination. The impairments the authors observed in tasks that evaluate response shifting and object recognition are consistent with those found in canines and primates as well as those found in Alzheimer's disease. The results are consistent with the notion that cognitive processes supported by the amygdala and the orbitofrontal cortex are among the first to decline with increasing age in both humans and animals.     

The influence of an emotional processing strategy on visual threat detection by police trainees and officers

Threat detection is an important skill for police officers, but few studies have examined the impact of processing strategies on this ability. The first aim of our study was to compare the visual detection of threatening and neutral targets in 38 police trainees and 53 police officers. The other aims were to examine the effect of emotional or semantic strategies on this process and the effect of psychopathological symptoms. In a visual search task, participants had to detect a threatening or neutral target among neutral distractors. Participants answered a question used to induce a more emotional or semantic processing strategy. Results revealed that threatening targets were detected faster than neutral ones. This effect was enhanced with an emotional processing strategy but unaffected by symptoms. Processing strategy also had led to faster reaction time overall. This study shows that inducing processing strategies can influence threat detection in police trainees and officers.     

Learnability of Pregroup Grammars

This paper investigates the learnability by positive examples in the sense of Gold of Pregroup Grammars. In a first part, Pregroup Grammars are presented and a new parsing strategy is proposed. Then, theoretical learnability and non-learnability results for subclasses of Pregroup Grammars are proved. In the last two parts, we focus on learning Pregroup Grammars from a special kind of input called feature-tagged examples. A learning algorithm based on the parsing strategy presented in the first part is given. Its validity is proved and its properties are examplified.     

Effets comportementaux et attitudinaux d’une procédure de Pied-dans-la-porte en entreprise

The present research investigates attitudinal and behavioral effects of a Foot-in-the-door paradigm (Freedman & Fraser, 1966), adapted to a company world. Moreover, it measures the impact of a variable whose integration to the paradigm has been discussed (Joule and Beauvois, 1998; Joule, Py & Bernard, 2004) although its effect has not been experimentally demonstrated: Action Identification (Vallacher and Wegner, 1985). Results show a response rate to the target request and a mean of affective commitment to the organization (Allen & Meyer, 1990) higher in the F.I.T.D. condition, particularly when the level of action identification is taking into account. Results are discussed in terms of commitment theory and action identification theory.     

Developmental dyspraxia and developmental coordination disorder

This article discusses the role developmental dyspraxia plays in developmental coordination disorder (DCD), based upon a review of literature on apraxia, developmental dyspraxia, and DCD. Apraxia and dyspraxia have often been equated with DCD. However, it is argued that apraxia and dyspraxia primarily refer to the problems of motor sequencing and selection, which not all children with DCD exhibit. The author proposes to distinguish developmental dyspraxia from DCD. Other issues discussed include the assessment, etiology, and treatment of developmental dyspraxia and DCD, and the relationship between DCD and learning disabilities. A research agenda is offered regarding future directions to overcome current limitation.