Evidence and a computational explanation of cultural differences in facial expression recognition

Facial expressions are crucial to human social communication, but the extent to which they are innate and universal versus learned and culture dependent is a subject of debate. Two studies explored the effect of culture and learning on facial expression understanding. In Experiment 1, Japanese and U.S. participants interpreted facial expressions of emotion. Each group was better than the other at classifying facial expressions posed by members of the same culture. In Experiment 2, this reciprocal in-group advantage was reproduced by a neurocomputational model trained in either a Japanese cultural context or an American cultural context. The model demonstrates how each of us, interacting with others in a particular cultural context, learns to recognize a culture-specific facial expression dialect.     

The Impact of a Leader Model on High Dominant Women’s Self-Selection for Leadership

The present study examined how the gender of a leader model affected high dominant women’s decisions to become leaders when instructed to complete a masculine-typed task and paired with a man. One hundred ninety undergraduates at a university in the southeastern United States were paired according to Dominance scores and shown the task, which required a leader and a follower. Pairs were presented with either a female or male leader model. Independent observers recorded who became the leader. Results suggest that when high dominant women are presented with a female leader model, they are more likely to take on the leadership role in the presence of a male partner than when they are presented with a male leader model.     

Category contingent aftereffects for faces of different races, ages and species

Exposure to faces biases perceptions of subsequently viewed faces such that normality judgments of similar faces are increased. Simultaneously inducing such an aftereffect in opposite directions for two groups of faces might indicate discrete responding of the neural populations coding for those groups. Here we show such "category contingent" aftereffects following exposure to faces differing in eye-spacing (wide versus narrow) for European versus African faces, adult versus infant faces, and human versus monkey faces. As aftereffects reflect changes in responses of neural populations that code faces, our results may then suggest that functionally distinct neural populations code faces of different ages, races and species and that the human brain potentially contains discrete representations of these categories.     

Why the unskilled are unaware: Further explorations of (absent) self-insight among the incompetent

People are typically overly optimistic when evaluating the quality of their performance on social and intellectual tasks. In particular, poor performers grossly overestimate their performances because their incompetence deprives them of the skills needed to recognize their deficits. Five studies demonstrated that poor performers lack insight into their shortcomings even in real world settings and when given incentives to be accurate. An additional meta-analysis showed that it was lack of insight into their own errors (and not mistaken assessments of their peers) that led to overly optimistic estimates among poor performers. Along the way, these studies ruled out recent alternative accounts that have been proposed to explain why poor performers hold such positive impressions of their performance.     

Therapeutic alliance and cohesion variables as predictors of outcome in short-term group psychotherapy

The current study explored the relative ability of aggregate therapeutic alliance and cohesion variables to predict short-term group therapy outcome. Data were collected from a comparative trial of two forms of time-limited group psychotherapy for complicated grief (Piper, McCallum, Joyce, Rosie, & Ogrodniczuk, 2001). The therapeutic alliance and elements of the cohesion construct were measured from the perspectives of each patient and the group therapist at intervals during the groups; scores were aggregated across assessments. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses, adjusting for the effects of treatment approach (interpretive vs. supportive) and specific group membership, demonstrated that the patient-rated alliance was a consistent predictor of outcome. Two cohesion measures, reflecting other participants' (therapist, other members) views of the patient's "fit" with the group, also accounted for variation in outcome. Implications of the findings for research and clinical practice, and the limitations of the measurement approach taken in this study, are considered.     

Retrograde facilitation under midazolam: The role of general and specific interference

In a double-blind, placebo-controlled experiment that usedmidazolam, a benzodiazepine that creates temporary amnesia, we compared acquisition and retention of paired associates of different types. Some word pairs were studied before the injection of saline or midazolam, and two lists of word pairs were studied after the injection. Critical comparisons involved retention of pairs that were practiced on all three lists, pairs studied on only one list, and pairs that involved recombining cue and response terms from one list to the next, as a function of drug condition. Previous research with benzodiazepines had found retrograde facilitation for material acquired prior to injection, compared with the control condition. One explanation for this facilitation is that the anterograde amnesia produced by the benzodiazepine frees up the hippocampus to better consolidate previously learned material (Wixted, 2004, 2005). We accounted for a rich data set using a simple computational model that incorporated interference effects (cue overload) at retrieval for both general (experimental context) interference and specific (stimulus term) interference without the need to postulate a role for consolidation. The computational model as an Excel spreadsheet may be downloaded from www.psychonomic.org/archive.