The development of emotion recognition from facial expressions and non‐linguistic vocalizations during childhood

Sensitivity to facial and vocal emotion is fundamental to children's social competence. Previous research has focused on children's facial emotion recognition, and few studies have investigated non‐linguistic vocal emotion processing in childhood. We compared facial and vocal emotion recognition and processing biases in 4‐ to 11‐year‐olds and adults. Eighty‐eight 4‐ to 11‐year‐olds and 21 adults participated. Participants viewed/listened to faces and voices (angry, happy, and sad) at three intensity levels (50%, 75%, and 100%). Non‐linguistic tones were used. For each modality, participants completed an emotion identification task. Accuracy and bias for each emotion and modality were compared across 4‐ to 5‐, 6‐ to 9‐ and 10‐ to 11‐year‐olds and adults. The results showed that children's emotion recognition improved with age; preschoolers were less accurate than other groups. Facial emotion recognition reached adult levels by 11 years, whereas vocal emotion recognition continued to develop in late childhood. Response bias decreased with age. For both modalities, sadness recognition was delayed across development relative to anger and happiness. The results demonstrate that developmental trajectories of emotion processing differ as a function of emotion type and stimulus modality. In addition, vocal emotion processing showed a more protracted developmental trajectory, compared to facial emotion processing. The results have important implications for programmes aiming to improve children's socio‐emotional competence.     

Ambivalent Classism: The Importance of Assessing Hostile and Benevolent Ideologies about Poor People

Abstract

We present a model of ambivalent classism in which hostile (overtly negative and insulting) and benevolent (subjectively positive but condescending) attitudes about poor people co-exist and independently predict endorsement of restrictive and poverty-perpetuating welfare policies. Whereas existing classism scales predominantly measure antipathy toward poor people, we developed and validated the Ambivalent Classism Inventory (ACI), a 20-item scale that captures both hostile and benevolent attitudes toward poor people. The ACI has one hostile factor (hostile classism) and two benevolent factors (protective paternalism and complementary class differentiation). Data from four samples (total n?=?1,543) indicate that the ACI has good reliability and validity. Findings underscore the role of benevolent beliefs in classist attitudes. Item generation, analytical methods, and implications are discussed.     

The delay-reduction hypothesis: Effects of informative events on response rates and choice

The present study replicated a prior one by Pearce and Collins (1985) in which informative events displayed greater reinforcing strength than did uninformative ones despite higher rates of reinforcement on the uninformative alternative, both in a choice test and in a test that presented the events successively. The delay-reduction hypothesis of choice and conditioned reinforcement is consistent with results from the successive test but cannot account for the choice results. As the original study conducted the choice test following the successive test for all subjects, and as no reversals of the choice procedure were carried out, the present study replicated Pearce and Collins (1985) while controlling for order effects. Pigeons' relative rate of responding on the informative side was significantly greater in the successive procedure than in the choice procedure (as in the prior study); however, the uninformative side was significantly preferred to the informative side in the choice procedure when order of exposure to the two types of procedures was controlled. Both findings are consistent with the delay-reduction hypothesis.     

Creation is Incarnation: The Metaphysical Peculiarity of the Logoi in Maximus Confessor

Maximian logoi or the “principles” of created being are often virtually identified with Platonic ideas or forms. This assumption obscures what is distinctive about Maximus's concept of the logoi. I first note two metaphysical peculiarities of his doctrine, and then propose that these only make sense if we follow Maximus's own directive to read the logoi through Christology proper – that is, as describing creation as the Word's cosmic Incarnation. This suggests, in creative tension with a good deal of twentieth‐century philosophical theology, that the God‐world relation is not fully exhausted by the analogia entis: Maximus divines a still deeper hypostatic (not natural) identity between Word and world that actually generates natural difference – for perhaps the first and only time in the history of Christian thought. Here I assay a first step toward retrieving that relation.