Pain in the eye of the beholder: Variations in pain visual representations as a function of face ethnicity and culture

Pain experienced by Black individuals is systematically underestimated, and recent studies have shown that part of this bias is rooted in perceptual factors. We used Reverse Correlation to estimate visual representations of the pain expression in Black and White faces, in participants originating from both Western and African countries. Groups of raters were then asked to evaluate the presence of pain and other emotions in these representations. A second group of White raters then evaluated those same representations placed over a neutral background face (50% White; 50% Black). Image-based analyses show significant effects of culture and face ethnicity, but no interaction between the two factors. Western representations were more likely to be judged as expressing pain than African representations. For both cultural groups, raters also perceived more pain in White face representations than in Black face representations. However, when changing the background stimulus to the neutral background face, this effect of face ethnic profile disappeared. Overall, these results suggest that individuals have different expectations of how pain is expressed by Black and White individuals, and that cultural factors may explain a part of this phenomenon     

Irrelevant behaviour,information processing and arousal homeostasis

Summary This paper expands a new hypothesis on the causal mechanisms underlying irrelevant behaviour. It begins with a critical summary of earlier theories which attempted to explain displacement activities, but failed to predict the consistency with which certain types of behaviour are shown in stressful situations by a variety of species. Behavioural and physiological studies suggest that these behaviour patterns are closely associated with the incipient activation of sleep. The functional significance of this link and some of the causal processes which may be responsible for it are discussed. Paradoxically, however, displacement activities occur when animals are in a state of high arousal. The concept of arousal is reconsidered in the light of information theory and assumed to be closely correlated with the information processing rate in the nervous system. The relationships between neural and autonomic arousal are considered in this context. It is argued that over-arousal may occur when information handling exceeds the limited channel capacity of the system, with a consequent loss of efficiency. It is pointed out that there are mechanisms capable of controlling the information influx into the brain, and it is hypothesized that they are tied up in a feedback mechanism which regulates arousal and which involves the activation of a de-arousal system, corresponding to the neurological sleep mechanism. Displacement activities are viewed as consequences of this regulatory activation of the sleep system. This hypothesis is then compared with existing theories of displacement and its relationship with them is discussed.

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Zusammenfassung Die Arbeit erweitert eine neue Hypothese über die kausalen Mechanismen, die dem übersprungverhalten zugrunde liegen. Sie beginnt mit einer kritischen Übersicht der früher vorgeschlagenen Theorien und zeigt auf, daß diese nicht die Beständigkeit, mit der gewisse Verhaltensweisen von einer Anzahl von Tierarten in Stress-Situationen gezeigt werden, erklären. Verhaltens- und physiologische Studien deuten an, daß diese Verhaltensweisen in einem engen Zusammenhang mit einer partiellen Schlafaktivierung stehen. Die funktionelle Bedeutung dieses Zusammenhanges und die möglichen physiologischen Mechanismen, die dafür verantwortlich sein könnten, werden diskutiert. Paradoxerweise werden aber Übersprungsverhalten dann gezeigt, wenn sich Tiere in einem gesteigerten Wachzustand befinden. In diesem Zusammenhang wird das Arousal-Konzept im Lichte der Informationstheorie neu beleuchtet und es wird angenommen, daß der Arousal-Zustand eines Tieres im engen Zusammenhang mit der jeweiligen Informationsverarbeitungsrate im Nervensystem steht. Die Verhältnisse zwischen neuralem und autonomischen Arousal werden diskutiert. Es wird vorgeschlagen, daß sich Überarousal dann einstellt, wenn die Informationsverarbeitungsrate die Kanalkapazität des Systems übersteigt mit einem sich daraus ergebenen Wirkungsgradverlust. Es wird darauf hingewiesen, daß es Mechanismen gibt, die den Informationsfluß in das Gehirn regeln und angenommen, daß diese innerhalb eines Rückkopplungssystems funktionieren, welches Arousal reguliert. Diese Regelung benötigt die Aktivierung eines Arousal herabsetzenden Systems, das in den neurologischen Schlafmechanismen besteht. Das Auftreten von Übersprungsverhalten wird als eine Konsequenz dieser regulatorischen Aktivierung des Schlafsystems angesehen. Die Hypothese wird dann mit den vorhandenen Übersprungsverhaltenstheorien verglichen.

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The research underlying this paper has been supported by grants from the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research through the European Office of Aerospace Research, the Science Research Council and the Royal Society to Professor N. Tinbergen, F. R. S. and myself. It was partly carried out at the Department of Zoology, Oxford. I am grateful to Dr. S. A. Hillyard who by revising an earlier version contributed much to whatever merits this paper has.     

A near-death experience among the Mapuche people

This paper describes a possible near-death experience (NDE) among the Mapuche people of Chile. The individual reporting the experience was in a cataleptic-like state for two days, the experience itself occurring at the end of this period. Some common features of NDEs, such as encounters with deceased people and being sent back, are present, together with clear evidence that past and present cultural environment shape in part the content of mental experiences.This work was funded in part by the University of Chile (DTI Project Q-3064).The author thanks Editorial Andrés Bello for permissionto translate the near death account into English.     

Visual influences on auditory pluck and bow judgments

In the McGurk effect, visual information specifying a speaker’s articulatory movements can influence auditory judgments of speech. In the present study, we attempted to find an analogue of the McGurk effect by using nonspeech stimuli—the discrepant audiovisual tokens of plucks and bows on a cello. The results of an initial experiment revealed that subjects’ auditory judgments were influenced significantly by the visual pluck and bow stimuli. However, a second experiment in which speech syllables were used demonstrated that the visual influence on consonants was significantly greater than the visual influence observed for pluck-bow stimuli. This result could be interpreted to suggest that the nonspeech visual influence was not a true McGurk effect. In a third experiment, visual stimuli consisting of the wordspluck andbow were found to have no influence over auditory pluck and bow judgments. This result could suggest that the nonspeech effects found in Experiment 1 were based on the audio and visual information’s having an ostensive lawful relation to the specified event. These results are discussed in terms of motor-theory, ecological, and FLMP approaches to speech perception.     

On becoming a leader: Effects of gender and cultural differences on power distance reduction

The present research focused on power processes in a simulated organizational structure consisting of three hierarchical levels occupied by different numbers of mules and females. Subjects were presented with a chart showing the organizational hierarchy of which they were a member placed at the lowest level, and asked to nominate any person for the leader position vacated by the current incumbent. The results of Experiment I (n = 88 Dutch male and female university students) showed that male subjects strongly overnominated themselves, whereas a majority of the female subjects nominated either self or another female. Of the others that were nominated by both males and females, almost all were occupants of positions immediately below the leader position, indicating the normative influence of a bureaucratic rule of leader succession. Experiment 2 was a replicational study carried out in a different culture (n = lOl Polish male and female university students). Polish subjects adhered to the bureaucratic rule more strongly than their Dutch counterparts, and both females and males nominated mostly males. Results are discussed with reference to gender self-stereotypes and cultural differences.     

Grading the ‘cultural literacy’ project

The essay examines the argument advanced by E.D. Hirsch, Jr., for instituting ‘cultural literacy’ as a fundamental priority of schools. A number of confusions and equivocations in Hirsch's reasoning are identified, and the propensity of his project to indoctrinate is exposed. Among the features of Hirsch's argument shown to be troubling are his shifting construal of ‘language’, his inconsistency about the requirements of cultural literacy, and his uncritical relation to traditional images of the American past and present. The upshot is to raise the question why Hirsch's project has elicited wide support and praise.     

Referenzsemantik in der Partnermodellierung

How can we explain that an assertion on something perceived can be understood in the same manner by somebody who cannot perceive that scene? This problem bases the interest in computational linguistics in how listener modeling could possibly be harmonized with reference semantics. Mental images substituting real perception appear as a way out. The architecture of the listener model has to be adapted to the creation and use of such pictorial data structures. Furthermore, the relation between the latter and a verbal (i. e., propositional) representation must be understood. The resulting architecture of a listener model with reference semantics can be employed to solve communicational problems from three general classes in a better way, as is demonstrated by an example implementation.     

An alternative assessment of children's comprehension of relative clauses

Methodological difficulties are identified in the assessment of children's comprehension of relative clauses (RCs) by means of the standard acting-out procedure. An alternative experimental task is proposed which attempts to minimize these difficulties while exploring the advantages of the acting-out technique. An experiment is reported in which Portuguese-speaking 3- to 6-year olds were tested by means of this alternative task. The results show children being affected by both the position and the focus of the RC in the same way adults have been reported to be and an error analysis suggests that most of children's difficulties can be ascribed to memory overload while RCs are processed as noun modifier sentences. These results contradict the view that there are developmental differences with regard to the way sentences with RCs are parsed and that processing load induces errors particularly manifested in right-branching subject focus sentences. Developmental changes taking place between the ages of 3 and 6 are considered and questions are raised concerning development from the age of 5.The research reported here was carried out while the author read for the PhD degree at the University of London. The writing up of this paper was financially supported by a postdoctoral grant from the Brazilian Research Council (CNPq: 302103-86.4).     

Report of the ACA Ethics Committee: 1993–1994

The activities of the American Counseling Association (ACA) Ethics Committee are reviewed for the year 1993–1994. Summary data of ethical complaints and formal inquiries received during the year are presented followed by a brief discussion of trends noted. Updated information about the revision of the ACA Ethical Standards and the Policies and Procedures for Processing Complaints of Ethical Violations is also provided.