Sensorimotor simulation and emotion processing: Impairing facial action increases semantic retrieval demands

Sensorimotor models suggest that understanding the emotional content of a face recruits a simulation process in which a viewer partially reproduces the facial expression in their own sensorimotor system. An important prediction of these models is that disrupting simulation should make emotion recognition more difficult. Here we used electroencephalogram (EEG) and facial electromyogram (EMG) to investigate how interfering with sensorimotor signals from the face influences the real-time processing of emotional faces. EEG and EMG were recorded as healthy adults viewed emotional faces and rated their valence. During control blocks, participants held a conjoined pair of chopsticks loosely between their lips. During interference blocks, participants held the chopsticks horizontally between their teeth and lips to generate motor noise on the lower part of the face. This noise was confirmed by EMG at the zygomaticus. Analysis of EEG indicated that faces expressing happiness or disgust—lower face expressions—elicited larger amplitude N400 when they were presented during the interference than the control blocks, suggesting interference led to greater semantic retrieval demands. The selective impact of facial motor interference on the brain response to lower face expressions supports sensorimotor models of emotion understanding.     

The efficacy of the Microsoft Kinect<Superscript>TM</Superscript> to assess human bimanual coordination

The Microsoft Kinect has been used in studies examining posture and gait. Despite the advantages of portability and low cost, this device has not been used to assess interlimb coordination. Fundamental insights into movement control, variability, health, and functional status can be gained by examining coordination patterns. In this study, we investigated the efficacy of the Microsoft Kinect to capture bimanual coordination relative to a research-grade motion capture system. Twenty-four healthy adults performed coordinated hand movements in two patterns (in-phase and antiphase) at eight movement frequencies (1.00–3.33 Hz). Continuous relative phase (CRP) and discrete relative phase (DRP) were used to quantify the means (mCRP and mDRP) and variability (sdCRP and sdDRP) of coordination patterns. Between-device agreement was assessed using Bland–Altman bias with 95 % limits of agreement, concordance correlation coefficients (absolute agreement), and Pearson correlation coefficients (relative agreement). Modest-to-excellent relative and absolute agreements were found for mCRP in all conditions. However, mDRP showed poor agreement for the in-phase pattern at low frequencies, due to large between-device differences in a subset of participants. By contrast, poor absolute agreement was observed for both sdCRP and sdDRP, while relative agreement ranged from poor to excellent. Overall, the Kinect captures the macroscopic patterns of bimanual coordination better than coordination variability.     

McGurk Effect in Gender Identification: Vision Trumps Audition in Voice Judgments

Demonstrations of non-speech McGurk effects are rare, mostly limited to emotion identification, and sometimes not considered true analogues. We presented videos of males and females singing a single syllable on the same pitch and asked participants to indicate the true range of the voice–soprano, alto, tenor, or bass. For one group of participants, the gender shown on the video matched the gender of the voice heard, and for the other group they were mismatched. Soprano or alto responses were interpreted as “female voice” decisions and tenor or bass responses as “male voice” decisions. Identification of the voice gender was 100% correct in the preceding audio-only condition. However, whereas performance was also 100% correct in the matched video/audio condition, it was only 31% correct in the mismatched video/audio condition. Thus, the visual gender information overrode the voice gender identification, showing a robust non-speech McGurk effect.     

Outside Color from Just Outside

Chirimuuta's view and my own are as close as they are because we both take two quite controversial stances: pragmatism as against a correspondence‐based view of perceptual success, and adverbialism as against a representational view of color experience. Unsurprisingly, of course, we do not understand these positions in precisely the same ways. In these comments I would like to see if I can persuade Chirimuuta to take two steps in my direction. The first step is to broaden her pragmatism so that it treats truth and accuracy in similar ways, for belief as well as perception, and for all sorts of properties. The second is to narrow her adverbialism so that it applies only to the fine‐grained appearances of the colors, and leaves aside the coarse‐grained colors themselves, which seem to remain as constant properties of objects, even as their appearances change.     

When being far away is good: Exploring how mortality salience,regulatory mode,and goal progress affect judgments of meaning in life

Research indicates that death‐relevant thoughts (mortality salience) have a nuanced effect on judgments of life's meaningfulness. Thoughts of death diminish meaning in life only among people who lack or do not readily engage psychological structures that confer meaning. Building on this past research, the current research examined how an important source of meaning, long‐term goal progress, affects the ways that death‐relevant cognitions impact judgments of life's meaning. In Study 1 (N = 118), mortality salience decreased perceptions of meaning in life only among participants who were induced to feel closer to (vs. farther from) completing a long‐term goal. Study 2 (N = 259) extended these findings by demonstrating the moderating influence of individual differences in locomotion. Mortality salience again decreased perceptions of meaning in life among participants who felt closer to accomplishing a long‐term goal, but it only did so among people who do not quickly adopt new goals to pursue (i.e., those low in locomotion). The implications of these findings for better understanding how people maintain meaning in the face of existential concerns and how aspects of goal pursuit affect these processes are discussed.     

Home,homelessness and nowhere-ness in early infancy

The construction of a sense of home in early infancy is a complex achievement. It is intertwined throughout life with the child’s pursuit of a safe physio-mental coverage. This process will be described as an interaction between: (a) a safe dwelling in the body-as-mother (constitution); (b) the internalisation of the mother-as-me (internal object space) and (c) establishing Oedipal triangular space which is responsible for the capacity to move between narcissism-as-a-home and the world-as-a-home. The construction of a home as an interplay between these elements is accompanied by distinct anxieties and unconscious phantasies. Disruptions in this early process, due to deficit, internal object relations or environmental factors, might lead to severe pathologies, mindlessness, hatred, violence and murderousness. A distinction will be made between these mental states of being-at-home, homelessness and nowhere-ness based on the corresponding levels of early development and typical anxieties. Home and homelessness are seen as more developed states of object relating accompanied by some capacity for feelings of loss, mourning and longing. Nowhere-ness, however, stems from early states of anxieties-of-being which are characterised by confusion between self and object, by nameless grief, nameless dread and devastation. The varieties of home, homelessness and nowhere-ness will be discussed with the help of clinical material taken from an analysis of a refugee child on the autistic spectrum and of his father. The role of psychoanalysis and of the psychoanalyst in promoting the creation of an internal home will be described with reference to technique.     

Factors Associated with Healthy and Impaired Social Functioning in Young Adolescents with ADHD

There is variability in the extent to which adolescents with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) exhibit social impairment, as the same diagnosis does not necessarily entail impairment in the same area(s) of functioning. The current study entailed a cross-sectional examination of enhancers to healthy social functioning and risk factors to parent- and self-rated social impairment in 324 middle school youth (ages 10–14 years) with ADHD. A series of binary logistic regression analyses were conducted to evaluate a risk-resilience model for social functioning, including testing compensatory (i.e., main; buffering) and protective (i.e., interaction) effects of enhancers in the presence of identified risk factors. Youth conduct problems, youth depression, and negative parenting emerged as risk factors. Self-rated social acceptance, activity participation (breadth and intensity), and parent involvement were enhancers of healthy social functioning. Of these enhancers, activity participation (breadth and intensity) and parent involvement showed buffering effects against the negative impact of the risk factors on social functioning. None of the enhancers displayed protective effects. The findings of this study enhance our understanding of the social functioning of young adolescents with ADHD, who comprise an understudied population relative to younger children with similar problems.     

Is the Positive Illusory Bias Common in Young Adolescents with ADHD? A Fresh Look at Prevalence and Stability Using Latent Profile and Transition Analyses

The goal of this study was to use novel approaches that do not require the use of arbitrary cut-points (i.e., latent profile/transition analysis) to evaluate the prevalence and stability of the positive illusory bias (PIB) in young adolescents with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Participants were 326 middle-school students diagnosed with ADHD (Mage = 12.26 years, 71% male, 77% Caucasian). The Self-Perception Profile for Children (SPPC) was completed by participants and their parents at baseline and again 12 and 18 months later. Cross-sectional results revealed four subgroups based on SPPC responses. Only a small subset (18.4%) of youth with ADHD exhibited a global PIB, across the behavioral, scholastic, and social domains, with an additional 29% displaying a PIB in the scholastic domain only. Additionally, average parent/adolescent-rated competence within each subgroup was in line with an objective measure of scholastic competence (i.e., grades). When examined longitudinally, only a PIB in the social domain was stable across the 18-month study period and only for half of the sample. These findings suggest that the PIB is not ubiquitous in youth with ADHD, with many young adolescents rating themselves accurately relative to their parents and their grades. Further, when stability across time is considered, the PIB may be specific to social functioning, as opposed to a global, cross-domain phenomenon. Implications for the future measurement of the PIB are discussed.     

Term Kinds and the Formality of Aristotelian Modal Logic

Recent formalizations of Aristotle's modal syllogistic have made use of an interpretative assumption with precedent in traditional commentary: That Aristotle implicitly relies on a distinction between two classes of terms. I argue that the way Rini (2011. Aristotle's Modal Proofs: Prior Analytics A8–22 in Predicate Logic, Dordrecht: Springer) employs this distinction undermines her attempt to show that Aristotle gives valid proofs of his modal syllogisms. Rini does not establish that Aristotle gives valid proofs of the arguments which she takes to best represent Aristotle's modal syllogisms, nor that Aristotle's modal syllogisms are instances of any other system of schemata that could be used to define an alternative notion of validity. On the other hand, I argue, Robert Kilwardby's ca. 1240 commentary on the Prior Analytics makes use of a term-kind distinction so as to provide truth conditions for Aristotle's necessity propositions which render Aristotle's conversion rules and first figure modal syllogisms formally valid. I reconstruct a suppositio semantics for syllogistic necessity propositions based on Kilwardby's text, and yield a consequence relation which validates key results in the assertoric, pure necessity and mixed necessity-assertoric syllogistics.