When emotional valence modulates audiovisual integration

We constantly integrate the information that is available to our various senses. The extent to which the mechanisms of multisensory integration are subject to the influences of attention, emotion, and/or motivation is currently unknown. The ??ventriloquist effect?? is widely assumed to be an automatic crossmodal phenomenon, shifting the perceived location of an auditory stimulus toward a concurrently presented visual stimulus. In the present study, we examined whether audiovisual binding, as indicated by the magnitude of the ventriloquist effect, is influenced by threatening auditory stimuli presented prior to the ventriloquist experiment. Syllables spoken in a fearful voice were presented from one of eight loudspeakers, while syllables spoken in a neutral voice were presented from the other seven locations. Subsequently, participants had to localize pure tones while trying to ignore concurrent visual stimuli (both the auditory and the visual stimuli here were emotionally neutral). A reliable ventriloquist effect was observed. The emotional stimulus manipulation resulted in a reduction of the magnitude of the subsequently measured ventriloquist effect in both hemifields, as compared to a control group exposed to a similar attention-capturing, but nonemotional, manipulation. These results suggest that the emotional system is capable of influencing multisensory binding processes that have heretofore been considered automatic.     

Exploring Parent-Adolescent Communication About Gender: Results from Adolescent and Emerging Adult Samples

Although parents are assumed to be children's primary models of socialization when it comes to gender, little is known about direct communication of gendered values in the family. Accordingly, this study assessed the amount and content of recalled parental gender socialization messages using data from 291 U.S. college undergraduates attending a large Midwestern university and 259 U.S. adolescents enrolled in public high schools in the Midwest. The study examined the amount and content of parental communications of five gendered discourses and then tested for connections to current gender beliefs. Findings indicate that gender socialization may be quite similar for sons and daughters, with some evidence of gender typing in patterns of communication. No significant age differences emerged in the patterns of socialization, although high school students reported receiving greater amounts of communication than college students on two of the five discourses. In general, receiving messages promoting traditional gender roles was associated with more traditional gender beliefs (and vice versa), although interpretation of some messages appeared to vary by gender.     

How modality specific is the iambic-trochaic law? Evidence from vision

The iambic-trochaic law has been proposed to account for the grouping of auditory stimuli: Sequences of sounds that differ only in duration are grouped as iambs (i.e., the most prominent element marks the end of a sequence of sounds), and sequences that differ only in pitch or intensity are grouped as trochees (i.e., the most prominent element marks the beginning of a sequence). In 3 experiments, comprising a familiarization and a test phase, we investigated whether a similar grouping principle is also present in the visual modality. During familiarization, sequences of visual stimuli were repeatedly presented to participants, who were asked to memorize their order of presentation. In the test phase, participants were better at remembering fragments of the familiarization sequences that were consistent with the iambic-trochaic law. Thus, they were better at remembering fragments that had the element with longer duration in final position (iambs) and fragments that had the element with either higher temporal frequency or higher intensity in initial position (trochees), as compared with fragments that were inconsistent with the iambic-trochaic law or that never occurred during familiarization.     

Human, transhuman, posthuman. Representations of the body between incompleteness and enhancement

"Posthuman" is often used to indicate some position, practice, perspective and vision concerning the future of human beings closely related to the use of contemporary technologies. This contribution would like to analyze some conceptions of the notion of posthuman and to present it as a possible form of "non-anthropocentric" thought which considers technological changes as non-human realities strictly involved in the construction and the definition of what constitutes a human being (and his body) and its predicates. Contrary to anthropocentrism which has characterized Western thought from humanism up to the extreme outcomes of transhumanism, non-anthropocentric posthumanism shows how the human being, who has always been the product of hybridization with the non-human (environment, animals and techniques), is built not only by his own strength but always through his partnership and his environment. The idea of enhancement of the body by technology to reach another stage of human evolution is one of the constant elements characterizing transhumanism. Posthumanism suggests no longer considering the interface with technology as an ergonomic relationship with an external tool that just extends the human body, but as a hybrid, or interpenetration that questions the separation of the body and its centrality. In this perspective, the question is not of simply establishing which is a good use of a technology but, every time, of redefining ourselves in our perspectives and our predicates with regard to what a technology allows and opens up to us.     

Aping expressions? Chimpanzees produce distinct laugh types when responding to laughter of others

Humans have the ability to replicate the emotional expressions of others even when they undergo different emotions. Such distinct responses of expressions, especially positive expressions, play a central role in everyday social communication of humans and may give the responding individuals important advantages in cooperation and communication. The present work examined laughter in chimpanzees to test whether nonhuman primates also use their expressions in such distinct ways. The approach was first to examine the form and occurrence of laugh replications (laughter after the laughter of others) and spontaneous laughter of chimpanzees during social play and then to test whether their laugh replications represented laugh-elicited laugh responses (laughter triggered by the laughter of others) by using a quantitative method designed to measure responses in natural social settings. The results of this study indicated that chimpanzees produce laugh-elicited laughter that is distinct in form and occurrence from their spontaneous laughter. These findings provide the first empirical evidence that nonhuman primates have the ability to replicate the expressions of others by producing expressions that differ in their underlying emotions and social implications. The data further showed that the laugh-elicited laugh responses of the subjects were closely linked to play maintenance, suggesting that chimpanzees might gain important cooperative and communicative advantages by responding with laughter to the laughter of their social partners. Notably, some chimpanzee groups of this study responded more with laughter than others, an outcome that provides empirical support of a socialization of expressions in great apes similar to that of humans.     

Motor planning and execution in left- and right-handed individuals during a bimanual grasping and placing task

The issue of handedness has been the topic of great interest for researchers in a number of scientific domains. It is typically observed that the dominant hand yields numerous behavioral advantages over the non-dominant hand during unimanual tasks, which provides evidence of hemispheric specialization. In contrast to advantages for the dominant hand during motor execution, recent research has demonstrated that the right hand has advantages during motor planning (regardless of handedness), indicating that motor planning is a specialized function of the left hemisphere. In the present study we explored hemispheric advantages in motor planning and execution in left- and right-handed individuals during a bimanual grasping and placing task. Replicating previous findings, both motor planning and execution was influenced by object end-orientation congruency. In addition, although motor planning (i.e., end-state comfort) was not influenced by hand or handedness, motor execution differed between left and right hand, with shorter object transport times observed for the left hand, regardless of handedness. These results demonstrate that the hemispheric advantages often observed in unimanual tasks do not extend to discrete bimanual tasks. We propose that the differences in object transport time between the two hands arise from overt shifting visual fixation between the two hands/objects.     

Impaired awareness of movement disorders in Parkinson’s disease

Background

This study analyzed the presence of awareness of movement disorders (dyskinesias and hypokinesias) in 25 patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD) and motor fluctuations (dyskinesias, wearing off, on–off fluctuations). Of the few studies that have dealt with this topic, none have analyzed the differences in the awareness of motor deficits by comparing the on and off states using motor scales and an extensive battery of tests to assess cognitive and behavioral functioning.

Methods

PD patients were compared on three different scales that we have devised to measure awareness of movement disorders: Global Awareness of Movement (GAM) Disorders, dyskinesia/hypo-bradykinesia rating scales.

Results

Data showed that PD patients had greater awareness and psychological suffering in the off state than in the on state. In particular, they were troubled by motor disabilities related to hypokinesias and had mood-related symptoms and a perception of disability in activities of daily living. Interestingly, patients only showed a selective reduction of awareness of movement disorders associated with executive functions and related to dyskinesias in the on state, compared to a preserved awareness of hypokinesias in the off state. On the contrary, no association with executive functions was found in the off state.

Conclusion

Our findings suggest that the dopaminergic overstimulation of mesocorticolimbic pathways may cause a dysfunction of prefrontal–subcortical connections related to the impaired insight.     

Historiography of psychology in Brazil: pioneer works, recent developments

The evolution of the historiography of psychology in Brazil is surveyed, to describe how the field has evolved from the seminal works of the pioneer, mostly self-taught, psychologists, to the now professional historians working from a variety of theoretical models and methods of inquiry. The first accounts of the history of psychology written by Brazilians and by foreigners are surveyed, as well as the recent works made by researchers linked to the Work Group on the History of Psychology of the Brazilian Association of Research and Graduate Education in Psychology and published in periodicals such as Memorandum and Mnemosine. The present historiography focuses mainly the relationship of psychological knowledge to specific social and cultural conditions, emphasizing themes such as women's participation in the construction of the field, the development of psychology as a science and as a profession in education and health, and the development of psychology as an expression of Brazilian culture and of the experience of resistance of local communities to domination. To reveal this process of identity construction, a cultural historiography is an important tool, coupled with methodological pluralism.     

Usage frequencies of complement-taking verbs in Spanish and English: Data from Spanish monolinguals and Spanish—English bilinguals

Verb bias, or the tendency of a verb to appear with a certain type of complement, has been employed in psycholinguistic literature as a tool to test competing models of sentence processing. To date, the vast majority of sentence processing research involving verb bias has been conducted almost exclusively with monolingual speakers, and predominantly with monolingual English speakers, despite the fact that most of the world’s population is bilingual. To test the generality of competing theories of sentence comprehension, it is important to conduct cross-linguistic studies of sentence processing and to add bilingual data to theories of sentence comprehension. Given this, it is critical for the field to develop verb bias estimates from monolingual speakers of languages other than English and from bilingual populations. We begin to address these issues in two norming studies. Study 1 provides verb bias norming data for 135 Spanish verbs. A second aim of Study 1 was to determine whether verb bias estimates remain stable over time. In Study 2, we asked whether Spanish—English speakers are able to learn verb-specific information, such as verb bias, in their second language. The answer to this question is critical to conducting studies that examine when, during the course of sentence comprehension, bilingual speakers exploit verb information specific to the second language. To facilitate cross-linguistic work, we compared our verb bias results with those provided by monolingual English speakers in a previous norming study conducted by Garnsey, Lotocky, Pearlmutter, and Myers (1997). Our Spanish data demonstrated that individual verbs showed significant similarities in their verb bias across the 3 years of data collection. We also show that bilinguals are able to learn the biases of verbs in their second language, even when immersed in the first language environment. Appendixes A–C, containing the bilingual norms discussed in the article, may be downloaded from http://brm.psychonomic-journals.org/content/supplemental.