Affective states leak into movement execution: Automatic avoidance of threatening stimuli in fear of spider is visible in reach trajectories

Approach-like actions are initiated faster with stimuli of positive valence. Conversely, avoidance-like actions are initiated faster with threatening stimuli of negative valence. We went beyond reaction time measures and investigated whether threatening stimuli also affect the way in which an action is carried out. Participants moved their hand either away from the picture of a spider (avoidance) or they moved their hand toward the picture of a spider (approach). We compared spider-fearful participants to non-anxious participants. When reaching away from the threatening spider picture, spider-fearful participants moved more directly to the target than controls. When reaching toward the threatening spider, spider-fearful participants moved less directly to the target than controls. Some conditions that showed clear differences in movement trajectories between spider-fearful and control participants were devoid of differences in reaction time. The deviation away from threatening stimuli provides evidence for the claim that affective states like fear leak into movement programming and produce deviations away from threatening stimuli in movement execution. Avoidance of threatening stimuli is rapidly integrated into ongoing motor behaviour in order to increase the distance between the participant's body and the threatening stimulus.     

Manifestation of altruism: Perceptions among counselling students in the United Kingdom

Aims: The purpose of this study was to examine the applicability of a proposed model of the development of altruism, or unselfish caring for others, as perceived by counselling students in the UK. Method: Semi‐structured interviews were conducted with eight counsellors‐in‐training. The data analysis involved open coding, axial coding, and the development of a coding paradigm. Findings: The findings address the four factors (biological, cognitive, social learning, and religiosity/spirituality) proposed in the model. Additional themes included: (a) community development and sustainability, (b) altruism across the lifespan, and (c) the counselling profession. Implications: The findings suggest a relationship between altruism and counsellor success. This supports the integration of altruism within the counselling curriculum, as it relates to the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP) Ethical Framework (2010). Furthermore, the findings support future research focused on altruism.     

Higher sensitivity for low spatial frequency expressions in social anxiety: Evident in indirect but not direct tasks?

We tested whether socially anxious individuals perform better in processing facial information with low spatial frequencies (LSFs). For this, we presented socially anxious and nonanxious participants with hybrid face stimuli that contained independent facial expressions in high (HSF) and LSF bands. In two tasks, participants either rated the images according to "angriness" or had to learn how hybrid facial expressions predicted the location of an upcoming target. We found mostly additive effects of LSF and HSF information in the rating task for both groups. In contrast, socially anxious participants showed better prediction performance for LSF expressions in the implicit learning task. We conclude that socially anxious participants are more sensitive to facial information within LSFs, but this higher sensitivity may become mostly evident in indirect tasks. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).     

Identifying Representational Competence With Multi-Representational Displays

Increasingly, multi-representational educational technologies are being deployed in science classrooms to support science learning and the development of representational competence. Several studies have indicated that students experience significant challenges working with these multi-representational displays and prefer to use only one representation while problem solving. Here, we examine the use of one such display, a multi-representational molecular mechanics animation, by organic chemistry undergraduates in a problem-solving interview. Using both protocol analysis and eye fixation data, our analysis indicates that students rely mainly on two visual–spatial representations in the display and do not make use of two accompanying mathematical representations. Moreover, we explore how eye fixation data complement verbal protocols by providing information about how students allocate their attention to different locations of a multi-representational display with and without concurrent verbal utterances. Our analysis indicates that verbal protocols and eye movement data are highly correlated, suggesting that eye fixations and verbalizations reflect similar cognitive processes in such studies.     

Representational Translation With Concrete Models in Organic Chemistry

In representation-rich domains such as organic chemistry, students must be facile and accurate when translating between different 2D representations, such as diagrams. We hypothesized that translating between organic chemistry diagrams would be more accurate when concrete models were used because difficult mental processes could be augmented by external actions on the models. In three studies, the task was to translate between different diagrams of molecules with or without a model. The model groups outperformed control groups, and students who received and used models outperformed those who received but did not use models. Uses of the model suggested that participants were performing external actions to support or replace difficult mental spatial processes. Spatial ability was a much weaker predictor of performance than model use. Results suggest that concrete molecular models can be an effective learning tool but some students need direct instruction to be able to take advantage of models.     

A Semantic Network Approach to the Creativity Quotient (CQ)

The Creativity Quotient (CQ) is a novel metric building on ideational fluency that accounts for both the number of novel ideas (ideation) and the number of distinct categories (fluency) these ideas fall into. Categories are, however, difficult to define unambiguously and objectively. We propose that the principal contribution of this article is an entirely algorithmic approach based on concept networks, and an information metric defined thereon. It requires only measures of the similarity between concepts, which may come from databases such as Wordnet, Wikipedia, Google, or corpus analysis tools. In the special case of strong, unique categories it reduces directly to CQ.     

Philosophy,psychology and the moral crisis: Reflections on compassion “between tradition and another beginning”

Abstract

The author presents, and his thinking passes through, the work of Werner Marx who seeks a non‐metaphysical ethical mooring via compassion, grounded in emotional dimensions of existential‐phenomenology. Through Marx's re‐centered compassion the author inquires if reason and faith cannot be resurrected in intrinsic and holistic form. Marx's ethics is introduced as one of the directions humanistic thinking is taking, suggesting this latter's considerable prospective role as a human vision in the ethical debate in transition between failed modern and ethically vulnerable postmodern paradigms.