Central inhibition ability modulates attention-induced motion blindness

Impaired motion perception can be induced in normal observers in a rapid serial visual presentation task. Essential for this effect is the presence of motion distractors prior to the motion target, and we proposed that this attention-induced motion blindness results from high-level inhibition produced by the distractors. To investigate this, we compared the extent of the attention-induced motion blindness effect with performance on central inhibition tasks: Stroop colour naming and negative priming. A negative correlation between Stroop interference and motion performance reflected that low Stroop scores, indicative of strong inhibition ability, was associated with more severe impairments in motion perception. This association could not be explained by individual differences in fluid intelligence, task switching or response speed. Negative priming was not specifically associated with attention-induced motion blindness. The results confirm that attention can modulate motion perception and suggest that the processes involved may be shared with high-level cognitive abilities.     

Discrete emotions and persuasion: the role of emotion-induced expectancies

The authors argue that specific emotions can alter the persuasive impact of messages as a function of the emotional framing of persuasive appeals. Because specific emotions inflate expectancies for events possessing matching emotional overtones (D. DeSteno, R. E. Petty, D. T. Wegener, & D. D. Rucker, 2000), the authors predicted that attempts at persuasion would be more successful when messages were framed with emotional overtones matching the emotional state of the receiver and that these changes would be mediated by emotion-induced biases involving expectancies attached to arguments contained in the messages. Two studies manipulating discrete negative emotional states and message frames (i.e., sadness and anger) confirmed these predictions. The functioning of this emotion-matching bias in parallel with emotion-induced processing differences and the limitations of a valence-based approach to the study of attitude change are also considered.     

Functional analysis and treatment of self-injurious behavior in young children a summary of 30 cases

The assessment and treatment of self-injurious behavior (SIB) has received much attention in the literature; however, few studies have focused on early intervention for this behavior. In the current study, functional analyses with developmentally appropriate modifications were conducted in an outpatient clinic with 30 children (aged 10 months to 4 years 11 months) to assess SIB and problem behavior in its early stages. The reported mean age of SIB onset was 17 months, and head banging was the most prevalent topography. Functional analyses identified sources of reinforcement for SIB in 62.1% of cases; with the inclusion of all forms of problem behavior, sources of reinforcement were identified for 87.5% of cases. Function-based treatments were developed for 24 cases, with functional communication training prescribed most often (70.8% of cases). Implications of these findings for the development of early intervention programs for SIB are discussed.     

Tightness shifts in the U.S. and China: Implications of tightening or loosening norms during the coronavirus pandemic

Emergent research identifies cultural tightness-looseness as an important factor for understanding cross-national outcome differences during the coronavirus pandemic. Because perceived tightness-looseness can be measured as an individual-level difference rather than a nation-level difference, and because tightness-looseness may shift during large-scale crises, we investigated whether such shifts occurred early in the coronavirus pandemic in both China (a relatively tight nation, n = 3642) and the U.S. (a relatively loose nation, n = 3583) across three cohorts. Tightness increased across cohorts in China and reduced across cohorts in the U.S. These changes transmitted corresponding indirect effects whereby compliance and institutional trust (scientific and government) about the pandemic were increased in China across cohorts, but decreased in the U.S. across cohorts. These patterns extend advice that national governments can increase compliance and trust via “tightening” by cautioning against norm-setters signaling the reverse (that norms about compliance are loose) given the outcomes observed in the U.S. samples.     

Evidence for a young adult face bias in accuracy and consensus of age estimates

Adults' face processing may be specialized for the dimensions of young adult faces. For example, young and older adults exhibit increased accuracy in normality judgments and greater agreement in attractiveness ratings for young versus older adult faces. The present study was designed to examine whether there is a similar young adult face bias in facial age estimates. In Experiment 1, we created a face age continuum by morphing an averaged young adult face with an averaged older adult face in 5% increments, for a total of 21 faces ranging from 0 to 100% old. Young and older adults estimated facial age for three stimulus age categories [young (morphs 0–30%), middle‐aged (morphs 35–65%), and older adult (morphs 70–100%)]. Both age groups showed the least differentiation in age estimates for young adult faces, despite showing greater consensus across participants in estimates for young faces. In Experiment 2, young and older adults made age estimates for individual young and older adult identities. Both age groups were more accurate and showed greater consensus in age estimates for young faces. Collectively, these results provide evidence for a bias in processing young adult faces beyond that which is often observed in recognition and normality/attractiveness judgment tasks.     

Misgendering and Its Moral Contestability

In this article, I consider the harms inflicted upon transgender persons through “misgendering,” that is, such deployments of gender terms that diminish transgender persons' self‐respect, limit the discursive resources at their disposal to define their own gender, and cause them microaggressive psychological harms. Such deployments are morally contestable, that is, they can be challenged on ethical or political grounds. Two characterizations of “woman” proposed in the feminist literature are critiqued from this perspective. When we consider what would happen to transgender women upon the broad implementation of these characterizations within transgender women's social context, we discover that they suffer from two defects: they either exclude at least some transgender women, or else they implicitly foster hierarchies among women, marginalizing transgender women in particular. In conclusion, I claim that the moral contestability of gender‐term deployments acts as a stimulus to regularly consider the provisionality and revisability of our deployments of the term “woman.”     

Models of Development: Understanding Risk in Adolescence

In this paper, we review developmental models for understanding adolescence as they might be applied to emerging sexuality and the challenges and risks that may be associated with different sexual orientations and identities. Models have been identified as: cumulative events or simultaneous change, accentuation, or trajectory models. Inclusion of risk and protective factors and considering the extent of balance between these elements of an adolescent's life is also discussed in terms of predicting mental health outcomes. These models have been particularly useful in the study of the development of psychopathology and clearly relate to the broader issue of understanding suicide risk during adolescence.     

Age-related increase in top-down activation of visual features

Previous research suggests that, during visual search and discrimination tasks, older adults place greater emphasis than younger adults on top-down attention. This experiment investigated the relative contribution of target activation and distractor inhibition to this age difference. Younger and older adults performed a singleton discrimination task in which either an E or an R target (colour singleton) was present among distractor letters. Relative to a baseline condition in which the colours of the targets and distractors remained constant, an age-related slowing of performance was evident when either the colour of the target or that of the distractors varied across trials. The age-related slowing was more pronounced in response to target colour variation, suggesting that older adults place relatively greater emphasis on the top-down activation of target features.