Automatic auditory disambiguation of visual awareness

Multisensory integration can play a critical role in producing unified and reliable perceptual experience. When sensory information in one modality is degraded or ambiguous, information from other senses can crossmodally resolve perceptual ambiguities. Prior research suggests that auditory information can disambiguate the contents of visual awareness by facilitating perception of intermodally consistent stimuli. However, it is unclear whether these effects are truly due to crossmodal facilitation or are mediated by voluntary selective attention to audiovisually congruent stimuli. Here, we demonstrate that sounds can bias competition in binocular rivalry toward audiovisually congruent percepts, even when participants have no recognition of the congruency. When speech sounds were presented in synchrony with speech-like deformations of rivalling ellipses, ellipses with crossmodally congruent deformations were perceptually dominant over those with incongruent deformations. This effect was observed in participants who could not identify the crossmodal congruency in an open-ended interview (Experiment 1) or detect it in a simple 2AFC task (Experiment 2), suggesting that the effect was not due to voluntary selective attention or response bias. These results suggest that sound can automatically disambiguate the contents of visual awareness by facilitating perception of audiovisually congruent stimuli.     

Psychometric Properties and Normative Data of the Zuckerman–Kuhlman Personality Questionnaire in a Psychiatric Outpatient Sample

The Zuckerman–Kuhlman Personality Questionnaire (ZKPQ; Zuckerman, Kuhlman, Joireman, Teta, &; Kraft, 1993 Zuckerman, M., Kuhlman, D. M., Joireman, J., Teta, P., &; Kraft, M. (1993). A comparison of three structural models for personality: The big three, the big five, and the alternative five. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65, 757–768. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.65.4.757[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) was designed for the assessment of personality. The goal of this work was to determine the psychometric properties of the ZKPQ, as well as to establish normative data by gender and age in an outpatient sample attending primary mental health care services. We administered the questionnaire to 314 participants (34.7% males) 18 to 81 years old. The most prevalent primary diagnoses were mood (37.9%) and adjustment disorders (35.0%). Concerning the psychometric properties of the ZKPQ, the pattern of internal consistencies was similar to that previously found among general population, student, or clinical samples. Regarding gender differences, a general pattern was found, with women scoring higher on neuroticism and sociability, and lower on aggression-hostility. As for age, in general, scores declined with age. Norm-based decision making has the potential for significant and long-lasting consequences, and the quality of decisions based on score comparisons can be improved when scores are compared to norms fitted to the group of reference. The availability of the ZKPQ norms by gender and age in mental health care will benefit the accuracy of assessment and therapeutic decision making, providing more effective treatment planning overall.     

On the learnability of frequent and infrequent word orders: An artificial language learning study

Most languages have a basic or "canonical" word order, which determines the relative positions of the subject (S), the verb (V), and the object (O) in a typical declarative sentence. The frequency of occurrence of the six possible word orders among world languages is not distributed uniformly. While SVO and SOV represent around 85% of world languages, orders like VSO (9%) or OSV (0.5%) are much less frequent or extremely rare. One possible explanation for this asymmetry is that biological and cognitive constraints for structured sequence processing make some word orders easier to be processed than others. Therefore, the high frequency of these word orders would be related to their higher learnability. The aim of the present study was to compare the learnability of different word orders between groups of adult subjects. Four artificial languages with different word orders were trained: two frequent (SVO, SOV) and two infrequent (VSO, OSV). In a test stage, subjects were asked to discriminate between new correct sentences and syntax or semantic violations. Higher performance rates and faster responses were observed for more frequent word orders. The results support the hypothesis that more frequent word orders are more easily learned.     

Congruence of the Marital Relationship During Transition to Parenthood: A Study with Couples Who Conceived Spontaneously or Through Assisted Reproductive Technologies

In this study we examined the congruence between partners’ perceptions of their marital relationship during the transition to parenthood and the effect of depression during pregnancy on couples’ congruence during the early postpartum period. Thirty-one couples who conceived spontaneously, along with thirty-five who conceived through assisted reproductive technologies (ART), provided data on their marital relationship and depression at their 24th pregnancy week and four months after the partum. All couples reported a decrease in marital congruence. Couples who conceived through ART reported lower marital congruence. For these subjects, women’s depression was associated with lower congruence. Interventions that focus on strengthening the marital relationship across the transition to parenthood should assess and promote couples’ congruence.     

The use of the effect size in JCR Spanish journals of psychology: from theory to fact

In 1999, Wilkinson and the Task Force on Statistical Inference published "Statistical Methods and Psychology: Guidelines and Explanation." The authors made several recommendations about how to improve the quality of Psychology research papers. One of these was to report some effect-size index in the results of the research. In 2001, the fifth edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association included this recommendation. In Spain, in 2003, scientific journals like Psicothema or the International Journal of Clinical and Health Psychology (IJCHP) published editorials and papers expressing the need to calculate the effect size in the research papers. The aim of this study is to determine whether the papers published from 2003 to 2008 in the four Spanish journals indexed in the Journal Citation Reports have reported some effect-size index of their results. The findings indicate that, in general, the followup of the norm has been scanty, though the evolution over the analyzed period is different depending on the journal.     

A cross-national comparison of aggressors, victims and defenders in preschools in England, Spain and Italy

There is a small, but growing, body of research investigating peer-victimisation between preschoolers, an age which has been identified as being important both theoretically and practically for the development of interventions. This study compares aggressive and defending behaviour and victim status of preschoolers in three European countries; England, Spain and Italy. The results provide further confirmation that some children behave aggressively towards their peers during preschool in each of the countries studied. There are similarities between preschool children involved in peer-victimisation in the three countries in terms of the roles taken, sex differences and the types of aggressive behaviours used and experienced by the children. There were differences in the profiles of children identified as taking the roles by teachers and peers. Overall, it was found that those children identified by peers or teachers as being aggressive were more likely to be male, rated as physically strong and more likely to be rejected by classmates. Also, in general, the targets of peer-victimisation differed depending on the reporter. Peer-nominated victims were not identifiable in terms of gender, popularity or physical strength. Teacher-nominated victims were more likely to be socially rejected and physically weak. There are several subtle differences between the countries which deserve further investigation. The findings are discussed in relation to furthering our understanding of the development of peer-victimisation in preschools and the need for interventions which address this phenomenon.     

Communication between domestic dogs and humans: effects of shelter housing upon the gaze to the human

It is widely known that gaze plays an essential role in communicative interactions. Domestic dogs tend to look at the human face in situations of conflict and uncertainty. This study compares the gaze of shelter and pet dogs during acquisition and extinction phases in a situation involving a reward in sight but out of reach. Even though no significant differences between the groups were recorded during acquisition, gaze duration decreased in both groups during extinction, with shelter dogs showing a significant shorter duration. This could be related to their different living conditions and to the fact that through their ordinary everyday interactions, pet dogs have more opportunities to learn to persist in their communicative responses when they do not get what they want. These results highlight the relevance of learning experiences during ontogeny, which would therefore modulate communicative responses.     

Atypical categorization in children with high-functioning autism spectrum disorder

Children with autism spectrum disorder process many perceptual and social events differently from typically developing children, suggesting that they may also form and recognize categories differently. We used a dot pattern categorization task and prototype comparison modeling to compare categorical processing in children with high-functioning autism spectrum disorder and matched typical controls. We were interested in whether there were differences in how children with autism use average similarity information about a category to make decisions. During testing, the group with autism spectrum disorder endorsed prototypes less and was seemingly less sensitive to differences between to-be-categorized items and the prototype. The findings suggest that individuals with high-functioning autism spectrum disorder are less likely to use overall average similarity when forming categories or making categorical decisions. Such differences in category formation and use may negatively impact processing of socially relevant information, such as facial expressions. A supplemental appendix for this article may be downloaded from http://pbr.psychonomic-journals.org/content/supplemental.     

The users of an online psychological advice service: a sociodemographic analysis

Although online psychological services and research based on them are increasing rapidly, it is not that easy to find investigations that focus on the kind of people that demand them. To know their profile could help to improve the online psychological services that are offered to them. For this purpose, we analysed the sociodemographic characteristics of 1052 participants, all of them having posed a psychological question to our online advice service. The relations between sociodemographics and variables related to the psychological consultation are analysed herein. Features such as age distribution, a high proportion of long-term problems, the large quantity of questions from Latin America, or the under representation of the lowest socioeconomic and educational levels could lead to clinical, social and legal implications that we comment on in this work.     

Acute stress or systemic insulin injection increases flunitrazepam sensitive-GABAA receptor density in synaptosomes of chick forebrain: Modulation by systemic epinephrine

Interactions between acute stress and systemic insulin and epinephrine on GABAA receptor density in the forebrain were studied. Here, 10 day-old chicks were intraperitoneally injected with insulin, epinephrine or vehicle and then immediately stressed by partial water immersion for 15 min and killed by decapitation. Non-stressed controls were similarly injected, then returned to their rearing boxes for 15 min and then killed. Forebrains were dissected and GABAA receptor density was measured ex vivo in synaptosomes by 3[H]-flunitrazepam binding assay. In non-stressed chicks, insulin at 1.25, 2.50 and 5.00 IU/kg of body weight (non-hypoglycemic doses) increased Bmax by 33, 53 and 44% compared to saline, respectively. A similar increase of 41% was observed in receptor density after stress. However, the insulin effect was not additive to the stress-induced increase suggesting that both effects occur through similar mechanisms. In contrast, epinephrine, at 0.25 and 0.5 mg/kg did not induce any changes in Bmax in non-stressed chicks. Nevertheless, after stress these doses increased the receptor density by about 13 and 27%, respectively. Similarly, the same epinephrine doses co-administered with insulin (2.50 IU/kg), increased the receptor density by about 20% compared to insulin alone. These results suggest that systemic epinephrine, perhaps by evoking central norepinephrine release, modulates the increase in forebrain GABAA receptor binding induced by both insulin and stress.