Virtual Humans and Persuasion: The Effects of Agency and Behavioral Realism

Two studies examined whether participant attitudes would change toward positions advocated by an ingroup member even if the latter was known to be an embodied agent; that is, a human-like representation of a computer algorithm. While immersed in a virtual environment, participants listened to a persuasive communication from a digital representation of another student. The latter was actually an embodied agent (a computer-controlled digital representation of a human). Study 1 examined the extent to which gender of the virtual human, participant gender, and the agent's behavior affected attitude change. Results revealed gender-based ingroup favoritism in the form of greater attitude change for same gender virtual humans. Study 2 examined behavioral realism and agency beliefs; that is, whether participants believed the other to be an agent or an avatar (an online representation of an actual person). Results supported Blascovich and colleague's model of social influence within immersive virtual environments. Specifically, the prediction that virtual humans high in behavioral realism would be more influential than those low in behavioral realism was supported, but this effect was moderated by the gender of the virtual human and the research participant. Implications of these findings for the model are discussed.     

Sociobiologia evolutiva: La socialización ¿Proyecto inútil?

RESUMEN

Una de las principales motivaciones del psicólogo reside en su confianza en la perfeccionalidad humana, en la posibilidad de cambio y mejora. La Sociobiología, ciencia interesada en el estudio de las bases biológicas de la conducta social tanto animal como humana, cuestiona esa posibilidad de cambio y justifica un interesado inmovilismo social, según sostiene el autor. En el presente artículo se esboza la elaboración teórica sobre la naturaleza humana desde la perspectiva de la Sociobiología, basada en la concepción del organismo -animal y humano- como un “sistema que tiene el DNA para fabricar más DNA”, según expresión de Edward Wilson. El artículo recoge las críticas que ha recibido la Sociobiología y especula con las consecuencias sociales de asumir sus postulados sobre la naturaleza humana. La Sociobiología ha hecho una identificación del animal con el hombre que merece ser matizada: se debe recordar la naturaleza social y cultural, a la vez que la biológica, del comportamiento humano. Y esto exige superar el determinismo genético.     

El reconocimiento de emociones a través de la voz

RESUMEN

Este artículo constituye un intento de evaluar la exactitud con que los sujetos pueden reconocer cuatro estados emocionales básicos -alegría, tristeza, miedo y cólera- a partir de la información vocal no verbal del habla. Para ello los sujetos fueron expuestos a una misma frase de contenido neutro repetida por un actor profesional simulando los cuatro estados emocionales básicos y un estado neutro. Se pretende también evaluar la contribución relativa de un parámetro acústico concreto: el perfil de tono en el reconocimiento emocional a través de la presentación de frases neutras cuyos valores en el perfil de tono fueron artificialmente aproximados a los de las frases juzgadas como emocionales mediante la utilización de técnicas de procesamiento y síntesis digital de voz (modelo LPC). Los resultados indican que los rasgos vocales no verbales del habla transmiten la suficiente información como para permitir altos porcentajes de acierto en la identificación de las cuatro categorías emocionales manejadas. Asimismo, los sujetos fueron capaces de reconocer las emociones de tristeza y cólera a partir únicamente de sus perfiles de tono característicos.     

Revisión del constructo lugar de control a partir de sus instrumentos de evaluación sobre poblaciones infantiles

Resumen

Se realiza una revisión de las principales escalas de evaluación de las Expectativas de Lugar de Control existentes para niños y adolescentes, tanto en lo concerniente a sus características formales como a su fiabilidad y validez de constructo. El objetivo doble que se persigue reside, en primer lugar, en ofrecer una información que permita al lector escoger la escala más apropiada en función de los intereses que persiga. En segundo lugar, analizar el constructo a partir del cumplimiento de las predicciones realizadas por los autores de las mismas. Se discuten, al final, los hallazgos revisados en el contexto de la teoría del Aprendizaje Social y de la naturaleza y capacidad predictiva del constructo.     

Learning to read and write in Spanish: phonology in addition to which other processes? / Aprendiendo a leer y escribir en español: además de la fonología, ¿qué otros procesos?

Abstract

This study reviews some of the most relevant cognitive skills related to literacy acquisition in Spanish. Beyond the well-known influence of phonological segmental skills, it highlights the growing importance of other cognitive skills needed for acquisition, whether explicit or implicit in nature, to which too little attention has been devoted, including suprasegmental or prosodic skills, morphological skills and the implicit learning of linguistic regularities. It appears that all these skills constitute relevant factors that should be taken into account in order to understand typical as well as atypical literacy development.     

Trauma and healing: from ‘furor sanandi’ to ‘animus sanandi’

In his last period (1928–33), Ferenczi tried to complement the ‘negative’ technical principles first introduced by Freud in the 1910s. He introduced diverse and successive ‘positive instructions’, and specific techniques known as ‘elastic’ of ‘relaxation and neocatharsis’, and also made an unsucessful attempt to introduce ‘mutual analysis’. These techniques are implemented around a series of new technical principles including ‘tact’, ‘empathy’, ‘indulgence’, ‘intense sympathy’. All of these positive technical principles and innovations demonstrate the importance of considering the dimension of ‘healing’ in all analytic experiences and the importance of the analyst's functioning as the ‘healer’. The emphasis on the use of these new technical principles is consistent with the emphasis Ferenczi places upon countertransference and traumatic factors in psychopathogenesis.     

Post‐Traumatic Symptoms Among Victims of Workplace Bullying: Exploring Gender Differences and Shattered Assumptions

The aims of the present study were twofold: assessing the prevalence and intensity of post‐traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms in victims of bullying, and exploring whether victims of bullying differ in their basic assumptions compared to a control group. A total of 183 victims of bullying and 183 control group participants took part in the research. The results showed that 42.6% of the total sample met all DSM‐IV‐TR criteria for PTSD, whereas 54.1% did not fulfill the A1 criterion. Post‐traumatic symptoms were more prevalent among women (49%), as compared to men (35.3%). Furthermore, victims showed significantly more negative beliefs about the world, the people, and themselves, compared to their non‐bullied controls. These results fit well with cognitive theory of trauma.     

Syndromes or symptoms in the assessment of aphasic patients?

The procedure generally used to diagnose aphasic patients consists of classifying them in one of the classic syndromes on the basis of the analysis of their symptoms. However, this taxonomy has several important problems, the main one being that it does not take into account the variability of aphasic patients, as there are many more disorder profiles than those included in the syndromes. In order to test the homogeneity of a sample of patients diagnosed with the classic taxonomy, 15 aphasic patients (5 Broca, 5 Wernicke and 5 Conduction) and 5 healthy controls were tested with nine comprehension and production tasks. Participants were aged 38 to 81 years old. The results indicate the existence of great variability in patients labeled with the same diagnosis, as revealed by the differences in within-group scores in each task, and a limited adjustment to the expected profile, with some patients showing symptoms allegedly corresponding to other syndromes. Our results call attention to the need to study each patient individually and interpret their disorders regardless of the syndromes.     

Effects of computer-assisted practice on reading and spelling in children with learning disabilities

The main purpose of this study was to analyze the effects of computer-assisted practice on reading and spelling in children with learning disabilities (LD). We compared three practice conditions, one with reading and two with spelling, in order to test whether computer-based reading and spelling practice has an influence on the development of reading and spelling ability in children with LD. A sample was selected of 85 children with LD, with age range between 8 years and 10 years (age, M=111.02, SD=9.6), whose spelling performance was two years below grade level. The participants were randomly assigned to one of four groups: 1) Copy the target word from the computer screen (n=22), 2) Memorize the target word and write it from memory (n=21), 3) Word reading (n=21), and 4) the untrained control group (n=21). We administered measures of pseudoword reading, phonological awareness, phonological word decoding and orthographical word decoding tasks. We examined the learning effects and transfer effects on words classified as a function of length, consistency, and complexity of syllable structure. Overall, the results showed that reading training did not improve spelling; however, the children who participated in the copy training condition improved their spelling skills.