The time-course of visual threat processing: High trait anxious individuals eventually avert their gaze from angry faces

Several experiments have shown that anxious individuals have an attentional bias towards threat cues. It is also known, however, that exposure to a subjectively threatening but relatively harmless stimulus tends to lead to a reduction in fear. Accordingly, some authors have hypothesised that high trait anxious individuals have a vigilant-avoidant pattern of visual attention to threatening stimuli. In the present study, 52 high trait anxious and 48 low trait anxious subjects were shown pairs of emotional faces, while their direction of gaze was continuously monitored. For 0-1000 ms, both groups were found to view angry faces more than happy faces. For 2000-3000 ms, however, only high trait anxious subjects averted their gaze from angry faces more than they did from happy faces.     

A rhythm recognition computer program to advocate interactivist perception

This paper advocates the main ideas of the interactive model of representation of Mark Bickhard and the assimilation/accommodation framework of Jean Piaget, through a rhythm recognition demonstration program. Although completely unsupervised, the program progressively learns to recognize more and more complex rhythms struck on the user’s keyboard. It does so without any recording of the input flow, and without any pattern matching in the usual sense. On the contrary, internal processes are dynamically constructed to follow and anticipate the user’s actions. We show that these processes are representations of the rhythms in the interactivist sense, and that they emerge from non representational grounds, avoiding the symbol-grounding problem. They are not copies or transductions of reality, but ideal internal constructions of the agent, avoiding the circularity pointed out by Piaget. In practice, the active nature of this recognition process allows it to work even with noisy and complex input flows.     

RELATIONAL HEALTH, ATTACHMENT, AND PSYCHOLOGICAL DISTRESS IN COLLEGE WOMEN AND MEN

This study examines relational health, parental attachment, and psychological distress in college men and women from the perspective of the relational-cultural model ( Jordan, Kaplan, Miller, Stiver, & Surrey, 1991 ; Miller, 1984 ). Peer, mentor, and community relationships, as well as secure parental attachment and year in school, were hypothesized to predict psychological distress, although predictive patterns were expected to differ in women and men. Overall, results supported the hypotheses. Secure parental attachment predicted decreased distress for both women and men. Authentic, empowered, and engaged community relationships significantly predicted decreased distress for women and men. However, for women, peer relational quality was also a significant predictor. The relational-cultural model, which suggests that differentiation and the "felt sense of self" ( Jordan, 1997 , p. 15) evolve through meaningful connections with others rather than as a result of the separation-individuation process, is applied as a framework for interpreting the findings.