Relationship of Prosody Perception to Personality and Aggression

One-hundred-fifteen participants (73 female, 42 male) were evaluated for prosody, or vocal emotion, perception, personality factors, relational aggression and physical aggression. The male participants reported higher levels of physical aggression, and the female participants reported greater Neuroticism, consistent with other data. For the male participants, better perception of prosody was related to both greater Extraversion and greater Conscientiousness, all involved in interpersonal functioning. These relationships were not found in the female participants, but there was a relationship between perception of prosody and relational aggression. Women who were better at perceiving the emotional status of others based on vocal cues were less relationally aggressive. Perhaps greater relational aggression reflects a poor adaptation to diminished ability to perceive emotional status.     

Scene structure enhances change detection

Theories of objects recognition, scene perception, and neural representation of scenes imply that jumbling a coherent scene should reduce change detection. However, evidence from the change detection literature questions whether jumbling affects change detection. The experiments reported here demonstrate that jumbling does, in fact, reduce change detection. In Experiments 1 and 2, change detection was better for normal scenes than for jumbled scenes. In Experiment 3, inversion failed to interfere with change detection, demonstrating that the disruption of surface and object continuity inherent to jumbling is responsible for reduced change detection. These findings provide a crucial commonality between change detection research and theories of scene perception and neural representation. We also discuss why previous research may have failed to find effects of jumbling.     

An empirical investigation of the statistical properties of generalized single-case randomization tests

Adapting Edgington's [J. Psychol. 90 (1975) 57] randomly determined intervention start-point model, Levin and Wampold [Sch. Psychol. Quart. 14 (1999) 59] proposed a set of nonparametric randomization tests for analyzing the data from single-case designs. In the present study, the performance of Levin and Wampold's four basic tests (independent start-point general and comparative effectiveness, simultaneous start-point general and comparative effectiveness) was examined with respect to their Type I error rates and statistical power. Of Levin and Wampold's four tests, all except the independent start-point comparative effectiveness test maintained their empirical Type I error rates and had acceptable power at larger sample-size and effect-size combinations. The one-tailed comparative intervention effectiveness test for the independent start-point model was found to be too liberal, in that it did not maintain its Type I error rate. Although a two-tailed application of that test was found to be conservative at longer series lengths, it had acceptable power at larger sample-size and effect-size combinations. The results support the utility of a versatile new class of single-case designs that permit both within- and between-unit statistical assessments of intervention effectiveness.     

Perceived Group Status Differences and the Effects of Gender, Ethnicity, and Religion on Social Dominance Orientation

Social dominance orientation (SDO) is a measure of general desire for group-based dominance. According to social dominance theory, the higher the status of one's group, the higher one's level of SDO should be. This study examined the extent to which between-group differences in SDO increase as the size of the perceived status gap between the groups increases. Data were collected in Israel, Northern Ireland, and the United States. In agreement with expectations, differences in SDO between arbitrary-set groups (e.g., ethnic and religious groups) were found to be greater when the status gap between the groups was perceived to be larger. In contrast, gender differences in SDO did not vary as a function of the size of the perceived status gap between men and women: Men had higher levels of SDO than women even when the gender status gap was perceived to be very small. These findings highlight the effects of perceived group status on SDO and the degree to which these effects vary depending on whether the salient group distinction is based on gender, ethnicity, or religion.     

Comparison of grasping movements made by healthy subjects in a 3-dimensional immersive virtual versus physical environment

Virtual reality (VR) technology is being used with increasing frequency as a training medium for motor rehabilitation. However, before addressing training effectiveness in virtual environments (VEs), it is necessary to identify if movements made in such environments are kinematically similar to those made in physical environments (PEs) and the effect of provision of haptic feedback on these movement patterns. These questions are important since reach-to-grasp movements may be inaccurate when visual or haptic feedback is altered or absent. Our goal was to compare kinematics of reaching and grasping movements to three objects performed in an immersive three-dimensional (3D) VE with haptic feedback (cyberglove/grasp system) viewed through a head-mounted display to those made in an equivalent physical environment (PE). We also compared movements in PE made with and without wearing the cyberglove/grasp haptic feedback system. Ten healthy subjects (8 women, 62.1 ± 8.8 years) reached and grasped objects requiring 3 different grasp types (can, diameter 65.6 mm, cylindrical grasp; screwdriver, diameter 31.6 mm, power grasp; pen, diameter 7.5 mm, precision grasp) in PE and visually similar virtual objects in VE. Temporal and spatial arm and trunk kinematics were analyzed. Movements were slower and grip apertures were wider when wearing the glove in both the PE and the VE compared to movements made in the PE without the glove. When wearing the glove, subjects used similar reaching trajectories in both environments, preserved the coordination between reaching and grasping and scaled grip aperture to object size for the larger object (cylindrical grasp). However, in VE compared to PE, movements were slower and had longer deceleration times, elbow extension was greater when reaching to the smallest object and apertures were wider for the power and precision grip tasks. Overall, the differences in spatial and temporal kinematics of movements between environments were greater than those due only to wearing the cyberglove/grasp system. Differences in movement kinematics due to the viewing environment were likely due to a lack of prior experience with the virtual environment, an uncertainty of object location and the restricted field-of-view when wearing the head-mounted display. The results can be used to inform the design and disposition of objects within 3D VEs for the study of the control of prehension and for upper limb rehabilitation.     

Traumatization,Marital Adjustment,and Parenting among Veterans and Their Spouses: A Longitudinal Study of Reciprocal Relations

Despite considerable research on secondary traumatization, the ramifications of veterans’ and their wives’ posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSS) for the family system remain largely uninvestigated. Beginning to fill this gap, the current study aims to investigate the reciprocal relations between both spouses’ PTSS and marital adjustment, and the implications these bear for their parental functioning. Two hundred and twenty‐five Israeli veterans (mean age = 58.62, SD = 7.6) from the 1973 Yom Kippur War and their wives (mean age = 58.28, SD = 5.79) were examined at two points in time: 30 (T1) and 35–37 years after the war (T2). Analysis included longitudinal actor–partner interdependence modeling and sequential mediation analyses. The results show that higher PTSS among the wives at T1 predicted higher PTSS among husbands at T2, and vice versa, and predicted their husbands’ marital adjustment at T2. Moreover, wives’ PTSS at T1 had a significant effect on parental overinvolvement of both parents at T2, but neither their PTSS nor their husbands’ PTSS had an impact on positive parenting. In the intrapersonal domain, better marital adjustment at T1 predicted positive parenting among both spouses in subsequent measurement. Interpersonally, wives’ lower marital adjustment at T1 predicted husbands’ higher parental functioning, but not vice versa. Furthermore, marital adjustment mediated the association between PTSS and positive parenting for both spouses. The results emphasize the detrimental ramifications of war trauma on the interpersonal domains in veterans’ families. Hence, both marital and parental consequences of trauma should be considered in clinical family interventions.     

Depression and anxious apprehension distinguish frontocingulate cortical activity during top-down attentional control

A network consisting of left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (LDLPFC) and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) has been implicated in top-down attentional control. Few studies have systematically investigated how this network is altered in psychopathology, despite evidence that depression and anxiety are associated with attentional control impairments. Functional MRI and dense-array event-related brain potential (ERP) data were collected in separate sessions from 100 participants during a color-word Stroop task. Functional MRI results guided ERP source modeling to characterize the time course of activity in LDLPFC (300-440 ms) and dACC (520-680 ms). At low levels of depression, LDLPFC activity was indirectly related to Stroop interference and only via dACC activity. In contrast, at high levels of depression, dACC did not play an intervening role, and increased LDLPFC activity was directly related to decreased Stroop interference. Specific to high levels of anxious apprehension, higher dACC activity was related to more Stroop interference. Results indicate that depression and anxious apprehension modulate temporally and functionally distinct aspects of the frontocingulate network involved in top-down attention control.     

Evidence for hypodescent and racial hierarchy in the categorization and perception of biracial individuals

Individuals who qualify equally for membership in two racial groups provide a rare window into social categorization and perception. In 5 experiments, we tested the extent to which a rule of hypodescent, whereby biracial individuals are assigned the status of their socially subordinate parent group, would govern perceptions of Asian-White and Black-White targets. In Experiment 1, in spite of posing explicit questions concerning Asian-White and Black-White targets, hypodescent was observed in both cases and more strongly in Black-White social categorization. Experiments 2A and 2B used a speeded response task and again revealed evidence of hypodescent in both cases, as well as a stronger effect in the Black-White target condition. In Experiments 3A and 3B, social perception was studied with a face-morphing task. Participants required a face to be lower in proportion minority to be perceived as minority than in proportion White to be perceived as White. Again, the threshold for being perceived as White was higher for Black-White than for Asian-White targets. An independent categorization task in Experiment 3B further confirmed the rule of hypodescent and variation in it that reflected the current racial hierarchy in the United States. These results documenting biases in the social categorization and perception of biracials have implications for resistance to change in the American racial hierarchy.