Effects of early institutionalization on the development of emotion processing: a case for relative sparing?

We tested the capacity to perceive visual expressions of emotion, and to use those expressions as guides to social decisions, in three groups of 8‐ to 10‐year‐old Romanian children: children abandoned to institutions then randomly assigned to remain in ‘care as usual’ (institutional care); children abandoned to institutions then randomly assigned to a foster care intervention; and community children who had never been institutionalized. Experiment 1 examined children's recognition of happy, sad, fearful, and angry facial expressions that varied in intensity. Children assigned to institutional care had higher thresholds for identifying happy expressions than foster care or community children, but did not differ in their thresholds for identifying the other facial expressions. Moreover, the error rates of the three groups of children were the same for all of the facial expressions. Experiment 2 examined children's ability to use facial expressions of emotion to guide social decisions about whom to befriend and whom to help. Children assigned to institutional care were less accurate than foster care or community children at deciding whom to befriend; however, the groups did not differ in their ability to decide whom to help. Overall, although there were group differences in some abilities, all three groups of children performed well across tasks. The results are discussed in the context of theoretical accounts of the development of emotion processing.     

FORGETTING AND THE TASK OF SEEING: Ordinary Oblivion,Plato, and Ethics

The gaps, fissures, and lapses of attention in a life—what I call “ordinary oblivions”—are fertile fragilities that present a compelling source for ethics. Plato, not Aristotle, is the ancient philosopher specially poised to speak to this feature of human life. Drawing upon poet C. K. Williams's idea that forgetting is a “looking away” that makes possible “beginning again,” I present a Platonic approach to ethics as an alternative to Aristotelian or virtue ethics. Plato's Phaedrus is a key source text for this alternate picture; from it I suggest how we might construe Iris Murdoch's “task of seeing” in terms of the engagement with written form. Poetry is a central locale for such engagement, and thus suggests a kind of ethical praxis that arises from the theoretical emphases of my examination of forgetting, the unmoored self, remade other‐regard, and sacred sources.     

POSITIVE EMOTIONS ENHANCE RECALL OF PERIPHERAL DETAILS

Emotional arousal and negative affect enhance recall of central aspects of an event. However, the role of discrete emotions in selective memory processing is understudied. Undergraduates were asked to recall and rate autobiographical memories of eight emotional events. Details of each memory were rated as central or peripheral to the event. Significance of the event, vividness, reliving and other aspects of remembering were also rated for each event. Positive affect enhanced recall of peripheral details. Furthermore, the impairment of peripheral recall was greatest in memories of anger, not of fear. Reliving the experience at retrieval was negatively correlated with recall of peripheral details for some emotions (e.g., anger) but not others (e.g., fear), irrespective of similarities in affect and intensity. Within individuals, recall of peripheral details was correlated with less belief in the memory's accuracy and more likelihood to recall the memory from one's own eyes (i.e., a field perspective).