Knowledge about the probability of change affects change detection performance

The visual system continually selects some information for processing while bypassing the processing of other information, and as a consequence, participants often fail to notice large changes to visual stimuli. In the present studies, the authors investigated whether knowledge about the probability of particular changes occurring over time increased the likelihood that changes that were likely to occur in the real world (probable changes) would be detected. The results of two experiments showed that participants were more likely to detect probable changes. This occurred whether or not they were processing the scene in a meaningful manner or actively searching the scene for changes. Furthermore, participants were unable to accurately predict change detection performance for probable and improbable changes.     

An Examination of Gender Differences in Adolescent Adjustment: The Effect of Competence on Gender Role Differences in Symptoms of Psychopathology

Numerous studies have documented gender differences in psychopathology; girls generally report more internalizing symptoms and boys generally report more externalizing symptoms. These gender differences are partially accounted for by the gender-typed personality characteristics of boys and girls. This study was designed to investigate how gender roles influence symptoms of psychopathology by examining the mediating effects of self- and peer-rated competencies. Using a multiple regression approach to path analysis with a sample of primarily White, middle-class high school students, gender roles significantly predicted symptoms of psychopathology and mediated the gender differences in those symptoms. In addition, the adolescents' self- and peer-rated competence in various domains helped to explain the effect of gender roles on symptoms of psychopathology. Specifically, self-rated social attractiveness and global self-worth fully mediated the relation between instrumentality (i.e., masculinity) and internalizing symptoms. Global self-worth and both self- and peer-rated achievement/conduct partially mediated the relation between expressivity (i.e., femininity) and externalizing symptoms. Practical and theoretical implications are discussed.     

Timing variability in circle drawing and tapping: probing the relationship between event and emergent timing

R. Ivry, R. M. Spencer, H. N. Zelaznik, and J. Diedrichsen (2002) have proposed a distinction between timed movements in which a temporal representation is part of the task goal (event timing) and those in which timing properties are emergent. The issue addressed in the present experiment was how timing in conditions conducive to emergent timing becomes established. According to what the authors term the transformation hypothesis, timing initially requires an event-based representation when the temporal goal is defined externally (e.g., by a metronome), but over the first few movement cycles, control processes become established that allow timing to become emergent. Different groups of participants (N = 84) executed either 1 timed interval, 4 timed intervals, or 2 timed intervals separated by a pause. They produced the intervals by either circle drawing, a task associated with emergent timing, or tapping, a task associated with event timing. Analyses of movement variability suggested that similar timing processes were used in the 2 tasks only during the 1st interval. Those results are consistent with the transformation hypothesis and lead to the inference that the transition from event-based control to emergent timing can occur rapidly during continuous movements.     

The role of inferences about referential intent in word learning: evidence from autism

Young children are readily able to use known labels to constrain hypotheses about the meanings of new words under conditions of referential ambiguity. At issue is the kind of information children use to constrain such hypotheses. According to one theory, children take into account the speaker's intention when solving a referential puzzle. In the present studies, children with autism were impaired in monitoring referential intent, but were equally successful as normally developing 24-month-old toddlers at mapping novel words to unnamed items under conditions of referential ambiguity. Therefore, constraints that lead the child to map a novel label to a previously unnamed object under these circumstances are not solely based on assessments of speakers' intentions.     

Disentangling encoding versus retrieval explanations of the bizarreness effect: Implications for distinctiveness

Recall effects attributed to distinctiveness have been explained by both encoding and retrieval accounts. Resolution of this theoretical controversy has been clouded because the typical methodology confounds the encoding and retrieval contexts. Using bizarre and common sentences as materials, we introduce a paradigm that decouples the nature of the encoding context (mixed vs. unmixed lists of items) from the retrieval set (mixed vs. unmixed retrieval sets). Experiment 1 presented unmixed lists for study, and Experiment 2 presented mixed lists for study. In both experiments, significant bizarreness effects were obtained in free recall when the retrieval set intermixed items but not when the retrieval set consisted of only one item type. Also, Experiment 1, using a repeated testing procedure, did not reveal evidence for more extensive encoding of bizarre sentences than of common sentences. The results support the idea that retrieval dynamics primarily mediate the bizarreness effect, and perhaps more generally, distinctiveness effects.     

The female advantage: sex as a possible protective factor against emotion recognition impairment following traumatic brain injury

Although moderate to severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) leads to facial affect recognition impairments in up to 39% of individuals, protective and risk factors for these deficits are unknown. The aim of the current study was to examine the effect of sex on emotion recognition abilities following TBI. We administered two separate emotion recognition tests (one static and one dynamic) to 53 individuals with moderate to severe TBI (females = 28) and 49 demographically matched comparisons (females = 22). We then investigated the presence of a sex-by-group interaction in emotion recognition accuracy. In the comparison group, there were no sex differences. In the TBI group, however, females significantly outperformed males in the dynamic (but not the static) task. Moreover, males (but not females) with TBI performed significantly worse than comparison participants in the dynamic task. Further analysis revealed that sex differences in emotion recognition abilities within the TBI group could not be explained by lesion location, TBI severity, or other neuropsychological variables. These findings suggest that sex may serve as a protective factor for social impairment following TBI and inform clinicians working with TBI as well as research on the neurophysiological correlates of sex differences in social functioning.     

Sensitizing Potential Jurors to Variations in Eyewitness Evidence Quality Using Counterfactual Thinking

Jurors often have difficulty evaluating eyewitness testimony. Counterfactual thinking is a type of mental simulation that informs causal inference. Encouraging jurors to think counterfactually about eyewitness factors may sensitize them to these factors' causal influence on eyewitness identification and testimony accuracy, improving their overall judgments (such as verdicts). One hundred twenty‐one undergraduate participants were randomly assigned to read a scenario containing either high‐quality or low‐quality eyewitness evidence and to evaluate eyewitness factors adopting either their default or a counterfactual mindset via a question‐order manipulation. Logistic regressions and analyses of variance revealed that a counterfactual mindset lowered perceptions of eyewitness accuracy and guilty verdicts (compared with the default mindset) when the evidence was poor; a counterfactual mindset, however, did not increase perceptions of accuracy and guilty verdicts when evidence was strong. We discuss possible mechanisms underlying these effects and identify several potential avenues for future research.Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Learning by looking: Infants' social looking behavior across the transition from crawling to walking

This study investigated how infants gather information about their environment through looking and how that changes with increases in motor skills. In Experiment 1, 9.5- and 14-month-olds participated in a 10-min free play session with both a stranger and ambiguous toys present. There was a significant developmental progression from passive to active social engagement, as evidenced by younger infants watching others communicate more and older infants making more bids for social interaction. Experiment 2 examined longitudinally the impact of age and walking onset on this progression. The transition to independent walking marked significant changes in how often infants watched others communicate and made active bids for social interaction. Results suggest that infants transition from passive observers as crawlers to active participants in their social environment with the onset of walking.     

Examinations of identity invariance in facial expression adaptation

Faces provide a wealth of information essential to social interaction, including both static features, such as identity, and dynamic features, such as emotional state. Classic models of face perception propose separate neural-processing routes for identity and facial expression (Bruce & Young, 1986), but more recent models suggest that these routes are not independent of each other (Calder & Young, 2005). Using a perceptual adaptation paradigm in the present study, we attempted to further examine the nature of the relation between the neural representations of identity and emotional expression. In Experiment 1, adaptation to the basic emotions of anger, surprise, disgust, and fear resulted in significantly biased perception away from the adapting expression. A significantly decreased aftereffect was observed when the adapting and the test faces differed in identity. With a statistical model that separated surface texture and reflectance from underlying expression geometry, Experiment 2 showed a similar decrease in adaptation when the face stimuli had identical underlying prototypical geometry but differed in the static surface features supporting identity. These results provide evidence that expression adaptation depends on perceptual features important for identity processing and thus suggest at least partly overlapping neural processing of identity and facial expression.     

Teacher preference, peer rejection, and student aggression: A prospective study of transactional influence and independent contributions to emotional adjustment and grades

This study assessed the importance of teacher preference of individual students, relative to peer rejection and student aggression, as an independent predictor of children's emotional adjustment and grades. First, a longitudinal, cross-lagged path analysis was conducted to determine the patterns of influence among teacher preference, peer rejection, and student aggression. Then, parallel growth analyses were examined to test whether lower initial and declining teacher preference, beyond the influence of initial level and change in peer rejection and student aggression, predicted change in loneliness, depression, social anxiety, and grades. Social adjustment, emotional adjustment, and academic adjustment were assessed in the fall and spring of two consecutive school years with 1193 third-grade students via peer-, teacher-, and self-report instruments as well as school records. In the cross-lagged path analysis, reciprocal influence over time between teacher preference and peer rejection was found, and student aggression predicted lower teacher preference and higher peer rejection. In the growth analyses, initial and declining teacher preference were independent predictors of increasing loneliness and declining grades. Discussion focuses on the relevance of the results within a transactional model of school adaptation.