Are Automatic Conceptual Cores the Gold Standard of Semantic Processing? The Context‐Dependence of Spatial Meaning in Grounded Congruency Effects

According to grounded cognition, words whose semantics contain sensory‐motor features activate sensory‐motor simulations, which, in turn, interact with spatial responses to produce grounded congruency effects (e.g., processing the spatial feature of up for sky should be faster for up vs. down responses). Growing evidence shows these congruency effects do not always occur, suggesting instead that the grounded features in a word's meaning do not become active automatically across contexts. Researchers sometimes use this as evidence that concepts are not grounded, further concluding that grounded information is peripheral to the amodal cores of concepts. We first review broad evidence that words do not have conceptual cores, and that even the most salient features in a word's meaning are not activated automatically. Then, in three experiments, we provide further evidence that grounded congruency effects rely dynamically on context, with the central grounded features in a concept becoming active only when the current context makes them salient. Even when grounded features are central to a word's meaning, their activation depends on task conditions.     

The “Good” Psychologist, “Good” Torture,and “Good” Reputation—Response to O’Donohue,Snipes, Dalto,Soto, Maragakis,and Im (2014) “The Ethics of Enhanced Interrogations and Torture”

O’Donohue et al. (2014) sought to derive, from classical ethical theories, the ethical obligation of psychologists to assist “enhanced interrogations and torture” (EIT) in national defense scenarios under strict EIT criteria. They asked the American Psychological Association to adopt an ethics code obligating psychologists to assist such EIT and to uphold the reputation of EIT psychologists. We contest the authors’ ethical analyses as supports for psychologists’ forays into torture interrogation when (if ever) the EIT criteria obtain. We also contend that the authors’ application of these ethical analyses violates the Geneva Conventions, contravenes military doctrine and operations, and undermines psychology as a profession. We conclude that “good” public reputation is not owed to, or expected by, “good” intelligence professionals, and collaborating operational psychologists must share their providence.     

Aging and comparative search for feature differences

In a comparative visual search experiment, two halves of a display contained visual primitives of various shapes and colors. These halves were identical (50% of trials) or contained a non-matching pair (50% of trials). Response time (RT), accuracy, and eye movements were measured in both young and older adults. There were Age Group x Display Size interactions found for RT, with older adult RT affected more than younger adult RT by increases in display size. This interaction was consistent with predictions generated by sequential-sampling models for RT. There were age group main effects on fixation number and fixation duration, but no age group main effects on accuracy, saccade amplitude, or measures of scan-path efficiency; this indicated that search strategies were similar across age groups. Overall, the results showed no special age group deficits for comparative visual search.     

Spontaneous emotion regulation during evaluated speaking tasks: associations with negative affect, anxiety expression, memory, and physiological responding

In these studies, the correlates of spontaneously using expressive suppression and cognitive reappraisal during stressful speeches were examined. Spontaneous emotion regulation means that there were no instructions of how to regulate emotions during the speech. Instead, participants indicated after the speech to what extent they used self-motivated expressive suppression or reappraisal during the task. The results show that suppression is associated with less anxiety expression, greater physiological responding, and less memory for the speech while having no impact on negative affect. In contrast, reappraisal has no impact on physiology and memory while leading to less expression and affect. Taken together, spontaneous emotion regulation in active coping tasks has similar consequences as experimentally induced emotion regulation in passive tasks.     

The future is now: prospective temporal self-appraisals among defensive pessimists and optimists

Three studies found that prospective temporal self-appraisals can be part of defensive pessimists' strategy; they felt closer to equally distant negative than positive futures. In Study 1, defensive pessimists felt closer to future failures and reported more negative affect than those considering success. In Study 2, when manipulated negative futures were close, defensive pessimists felt bad and performed well; results suggested that viewing negative futures as close may be part of their natural strategy. Study 3 found that prospective self-appraisals influenced performances through felt preparation. Optimists did not use prospective self-appraisals (Study 1) and their performances were unaffected by manipulated temporal distance (Studies 2 and 3). Discussion centers on prospective self-appraisals and multiple strategies of defensive pessimists.     

The situated nature of concepts

For decades the importance of background situations has been documented across all areas of cognition. Nevertheless, theories of concepts generally ignore background situations, focusing largely on bottom-up, stimulus-based processing. Furthermore, empirical research on concepts typically ignores background situations, not incorporating them into experimental designs. A selective review of relevant literatures demonstrates that concepts are not abstracted out of situations but instead are situated. Background situations constrain conceptual processing in many tasks (e.g., recall, recognition, categorization, lexical decision, color naming, property verification, property generation) across many areas of cognition (e.g., episodic memory, conceptual processing, visual object recognition, language comprehension). A taxonomy of situations is proposed in which grain size, meaningfulness, and tangibility distinguish the cumulative situations that structure cognition hierarchically.     

Fear and pain: investigating the interaction between aversive states

Pain and fear often co-occur and appear to interact, although the nature and direction of their relation is not clearly delineated. The present study investigates how exposure to the experience of one of these states subsequently affects responding to the other. Pressure stimulation and carbon dioxide-enriched air (CO2) were used to induce pain and fear, respectively, in 48 healthy individuals. The order in which the stimuli were introduced was manipulated, as was the CO2 level. Measures of overt behavior, physiological responding, and self-report were obtained; analyses of stimuli effects generally supported their ability to produce pain or fear. Results indicate that the stimulus rated as the most aversive, the higher level of CO2, led to the highest levels of distressed responding across dependent measures. This pattern was replicated for the stimuli found to be less aversive (i.e., pressure stimulation and low-level CO2, respectively). The authors conclude that fear and pain, in and of themselves, do not dictate the nature of their interaction; the most important factor is how aversive they are perceived to be in relation to one another.     

Hearing a face: cross-modal speaker matching using isolated visible speech

An experiment was performed to test whether cross-modal speaker matches could be made using isolated visible speech movement information. Visible speech movements were isolated using a point-light technique. In five conditions, subjects were asked to match a voice to one of two (unimodal) speaking point-light faces on the basis of speaker identity. Two of these conditions were designed to maintain the idiosyncratic speech dynamics of the speakers, whereas three of the conditions deleted or distorted the dynamics in various ways. Some of these conditions also equated video frames across dynamically correct and distorted movements. The results revealed generally better matching performance in the conditions that maintained the correct speech dynamics than in those conditions that did not, despite containing exactly the same video frames. The results suggest that visible speech movements themselves can support cross-modal speaker matching.