Engaging the motor system with masked orthographic primes: A kinematic analysis

We report two experiments in which participants categorized target words (e.g., BLOOD or CUCUMBER) according to their canonical colour of red or green by pointing to a red square on the left or a green square on the right. Unbeknownst to the participants, the target words were preceded by the prime words “red” or “green”. We found that the curvature of participants’ pointing trajectories was greater following incongruent primes (green–BLOOD) than it was following congruent primes, indicating that individuals initiated a response on the basis of the prime and then corrected that response mid-flight. This finding establishes that the processing of masked orthographic stimuli extends down to include the formulation of an overt manual response.     

Does religious priming increase the prosocial behaviour of a Japanese sample in an anonymous economic game?

We examined the effect of religious priming on a Japanese sample in an anonymous dictator game whereas previous studies on religious priming on prosociality had mainly been conducted within Western contexts. The current study attempted to examine whether religion increases prosocial behaviour in a Japanese sample through the replication of ‘God is Watching You’ (Shariff & Norenzayan, 2007) where it was found that participants primed with religion‐related words and secular justice‐related words behaved more prosocially than participants primed with neutral words in an anonymous dictator game. The current experiment was conducted with Japanese students (n = 106) to examine whether the results of the original study could be applied to Japanese people. The results showed that among the three priming conditions (control, religion, secular justice), there was no difference in the amount of money participants allocated to anonymous strangers, although in the secular justice priming condition, theists allocated more money than atheists. The results might be due to the fact that the religious priming words used in the original study did not precisely activate the propositional network of religion that Japanese participants have. More culture‐specific studies are necessary to examine how religious priming works for non‐Westerners.     

Decline of Hip Joint Movement Relates to Overestimation of Maximum Forward Reach in Elderly Persons

The authors aimed to characterize age-related changes in the performance of maximum reach and identify kinematic parameters that explain the age-related discrepancy between perceived and actual maximum reach distance. Maximum reach was evaluated in 22 younger women (21.3 years old) and 20 older women (81.2 years old). Both the perceived and actual maximum forward reach and forward excursion of the center of pressure was shorter in older women. Older women also overestimated their maximum reach distance to a greater extent. Decline of movement at the hip joint specifically correlated with both the maximum distance and the overestimation. Based on these results, decline of hip control may be a primary factor for the age-related retardation of perceived and actual maximum reach.     

Natural-scene perception requires attention

Is visual attention required for visual consciousness? In the past decade, many researchers have claimed that awareness can arise in the absence of attention. This claim is largely based on the notion that natural scene (or "gist") perception occurs without attention. This article presents evidence against this idea. We show that when observers perform a variety of demanding, sustained-attention tasks, inattentional blindness occurs for natural scenes. In addition, scene perception is impaired under dual-task conditions, but only when the primary task is sufficiently demanding. This finding suggests that previous studies that have been interpreted as demonstrating scene perception without attention failed to fully engage attention and that natural-scene perception does indeed require attention. Thus, natural-scene perception is not a preattentive process and cannot be used to support the idea of awareness without attention.     

Development of infant crying behavior: A longitudinal case study

This study documents the development of infant crying behavior during the second half of the first year (across a key developmental transition). Two female infants were observed twice a month for 6 months when the infants were between 7 and 14 months of age. The infants exhibited crying behavior that seemed to become more sophisticated with increasing age. This marked a proactive stance in communicating with the mother on the part of the infant. Interestingly, at 11–12 months, “fake crying” was observed during a naturalistic interaction with the mother. This implied that deceptive infant behavior could be seen at quite an early stage.     

Role of biological-motion information in recognition of facial expressions by young children

Data on the development of the perception of facial biological motion during preschool years are disproportionately scarce. We investigated the ability of preschoolers to recognise happy, angry, and surprised expressions, and eye-closing facial movements on the basis of facial biological motion. Children aged 4 years (n = 18) and 5-6 years (n = 19), and adults (n = 17) participated in a matching task, in which they were required to match the point-light displays of facial expressions to prototypic schematic images of facial expressions and facial movement. The results revealed that the ability to recognise facial expressions from biological motion emerges as early as the age of 4 years. This ability was evident for happy expressions at the age of 4 years; 5-6-year-olds reliably recognised surprised as well as happy expressions. The theoretical significances of these findings are discussed.     

Face detection in normal and prosopagnosic individuals

Face detection, the process of finding a face in a visual scene, is a critical step in face processing, yet it has received relatively little attention compared with other face processes. The present study addresses this crucial first stage by investigating the effect of inversion on face detection and by examining how individuals with developmental prosopagnosia perform on face detection tasks. Fourteen control participants and fourteen individuals with developmental prosopagnosia (DPs) were tested with two face detection tasks: (1) Face versus Non‐Face, where arrays of small images were presented, one of which could contain a face and (2) Face versus Face Parts, where a two‐tone face could be embedded in a larger array of similar two‐tone face parts. On each trial, participants made a speeded response if a face was present in the visual display. On almost all measures both normal and prosopagnosic individuals showed strong inversion effects with significantly worse performance with inverted faces. This shows that the simple task of detection can show inversion effects comparable to those seen for other face tasks, including recognition. Finally, while there were prosopagnosics who were well within the normal range for detection, there were significant group differences, particularly for the case of the Face versus Face Parts, where prosopagnosics were worse than controls on upright but not on inverted face detection.