Vestibular stimulation interferes with the dynamics of an internal representation of gravity

The remembered vanishing location of a moving target has been found to be displaced downward in the direction of gravity (representational gravity) and more so with increasing retention intervals, suggesting that the visual spatial updating recruits an internal model of gravity. Despite being consistently linked with gravity, few inquiries have been made about the role of vestibular information in these trends. Previous experiments with static tilting of observers’ bodies suggest that under conflicting cues between the idiotropic vector and vestibular signals, the dynamic drift in memory is reduced to a constant displacement along the body’s main axis. The present experiment aims to replicate and extend these outcomes while keeping the observers’ bodies unchanged in relation to physical gravity by varying the gravito-inertial acceleration using a short-radius centrifuge. Observers were shown, while accelerated to varying degrees, targets moving along several directions and were required to indicate the perceived vanishing location after a variable interval. Increases of the gravito-inertial force (up to 1.4G), orthogonal to the idiotropic vector, did not affect the direction of representational gravity, but significantly disrupted its time course. The role and functioning of an internal model of gravity for spatial perception and orientation are discussed in light of the results.     

Interplay between Attachment to Peers and Parents in Korean Adolescents’ Behavior Problems

The present study investigated the relative contribution of style of peer attachment (secure, anxious, avoidant) and quality of attachment to parents on behavior problems in Korean adolescents. In addition, we examined the role of paternal and maternal attachment separately as a potential moderator in the relationship between style of peer attachment and internalizing and externalizing behavior problems. Middle school students (245 males, 209 females) completed the Korean version of the Adolescent Friendship Attachment Scale, Inventory of Parental and Peer Attachment-Revised, and Youth Self-Report. Attachment to peers and parents as predictors of behavior problems were tested via hierarchical multiple regression analyses. Results revealed that anxious peer attachment remained the strongest predictor of behavior problems among adolescents (internalizing behavior problems β?=?.18, p?<?.01; externalizing behavior problems β?=?.21, p? <?.001), indicating the relative importance of peer relationship compared to attachment to parents. Paternal attachment significantly moderated the relationship between avoidant peer attachment and externalizing behavior problems (β?=?.15, p?<?.05), even when the main effect of avoidant peer attachment on externalizing behavior problems was not significant. Results highlight the role of both attachments to peers and parents on adolescents’ psychological adjustment.     

On surviving suicide in South India – exploring support mechanisms from the perspectives of survivors and service providers

The suicide rate in India (15.84) currently exceeds the global average (11.23) making suicide a significant public health concern. Although suicides in India are debated on medico-legal, socio-cultural, economic and political fronts, the help that is offered to people during times of crisis, before and after the attempt is very minimal. The paper aims to explore support mechanisms from the perspectives of 15 survivors, eight mental health professionals and seven traditional healers in south India. The data were analysed thematically and explored using Bourdieu’s theoretical concepts. Data indicated medical intervention as a prominent method with reservations towards psychological therapies. Reliance upon religious and traditional healing systems was culturally accepted source of support. The social and cultural power experienced by service users and service providers demonstrated a potential to influence behaviours, attitudes, decisions, approaches to services and strategies for support.     

Experimental manipulation of infant temperament affects amygdala functional connectivity

In this functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study we examined neural processing of infant faces associated with a happy or a sad temperament in nulliparous women. We experimentally manipulated adult perception of infant temperament in a probabilistic learning task. In this task, participants learned about an infant's temperament through repeated pairing of the infant face with positive or negative facial expressions and vocalizations. At the end of the task, participants were able to differentiate between “mostly sad” infants who cried often and “mostly happy” infants who laughed often. Afterwards, brain responses to neutral faces of infants with a happy or a sad temperament were measured with fMRI and compared to brain responses to neutral infants with no temperament association. Our findings show that a brief experimental manipulation of temperament can change brain responses to infant signals. We found increased amygdala connectivity with frontal regions and the visual cortex, including the occipital fusiform gyrus, during the perception of infants with a happy temperament. In addition, amygdala connectivity was positively related to the post-manipulation ratings of infant temperament, indicating that amygdala connectivity is involved in the encoding of the rewarding value of an infant with a happy temperament.     

Implications of Religious Identity Salience,Religious Involvement,and Religious Commitment on Aggression

Social identity can affect perceptions of external threats and the type of response elicited to those threats. Religion is a social identity with eternal group membership and revered beliefs and values; thus, religious identity salience, religious commitment, and religious involvement may have implications for aggressive responses to perceived threats to a person’s religious identity. In a sample of 176 Christians, Muslims, and Jews, we investigated whether people respond aggressively to collective threat as a function of religious identity salience, religious commitment, and religious involvement. Religious commitment was positively related to anger only when religious identity was salient. Religious involvement was negatively related to anger and hostility only when religious identity was salient. Religious identity salience appears to act as a moderator by either enhancing perceptions of threat or by activating internal religious beliefs and values.     

Variability discrimination in humans and animals: implications for adaptive action

Both humans and animals live in a rich world of events. Some events repeat themselves, whereas others constantly change. The authors propose that discriminating this stability, sameness, and uniformity from change, differentness, and diversity is fundamental to adaptive action. Evidence from many areas of behavioral science indicates that the discrimination of and preference for stimulus variability affects both human and animal action. Recent comparative research with humans and animals illustrates a promising approach to the study of these issues. Discovering and understanding the behavioral and neural processes related to stimulus variability and its consequences for behavior offer distinctive challenges and important new opportunities for psychologists and neuroscientists.     

The contributions of static visual cues, nonvisual cues, and optic flow in distance estimation

By systematically varying cue availability in the stimulus and response phases of a series of same-modality and cross-modality distance matching tasks, we examined the contributions of static visual information, idiothetic information, and optic flow information. The experiment was conducted in a large-scale, open, outdoor environment. Subjects were presented with information about a distance and were then required to turn 180 before producing a distance estimate. Distance encoding and responding occurred via: (i) visually perceived target distance, or (ii) traversed distance through either blindfolded locomotion or during sighted locomotion. The results demonstrated that subjects performed with similar accuracy across all conditions. In conditions in which the stimulus and the response were delivered in the same mode, when visual information was absent, constant error was minimal; whereas, when visual information was present, overestimation was observed. In conditions in which the stimulus and response modes differed, a consistent error pattern was observed. By systematically comparing complementary conditions, we found that the availability of visual information during locomotion (particularly optic flow) led to an 'under-perception' of movement relative to conditions in which visual information was absent during locomotion.     

Emotion perception from dynamic and static body expressions in point-light and full-light displays

Research on emotion recognition has been dominated by studies of photographs of facial expressions. A full understanding of emotion perception and its neural substrate will require investigations that employ dynamic displays and means of expression other than the face. Our aims were: (i) to develop a set of dynamic and static whole-body expressions of basic emotions for systematic investigations of clinical populations, and for use in functional-imaging studies; (ii) to assess forced-choice emotion-classification performance with these stimuli relative to the results of previous studies; and (iii) to test the hypotheses that more exaggerated whole-body movements would produce (a) more accurate emotion classification and (b) higher ratings of emotional intensity. Ten actors portrayed 5 emotions (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, and sadness) at 3 levels of exaggeration, with their faces covered. Two identical sets of 150 emotion portrayals (full-light and point-light) were created from the same digital footage, along with corresponding static images of the 'peak' of each emotion portrayal. Recognition tasks confirmed previous findings that basic emotions are readily identifiable from body movements, even when static form information is minimised by use of point-light displays, and that full-light and even point-light displays can convey identifiable emotions, though rather less efficiently than dynamic displays. Recognition success differed for individual emotions, corroborating earlier results about the importance of distinguishing differences in movement characteristics for different emotional expressions. The patterns of misclassifications were in keeping with earlier findings on emotional clustering. Exaggeration of body movement (a) enhanced recognition accuracy, especially for the dynamic point-light displays, but notably not for sadness, and (b) produced higher emotional-intensity ratings, regardless of lighting condition, for movies but to a lesser extent for stills, indicating that intensity judgments of body gestures rely more on movement (or form-from-movement) than static form information.     

Factor structure and differential validity of the expanded Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale

The Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale (BPRS) is one of the most widely used measures in psychiatric outcome and clinical psychopharmacology research. To date, however; research on the psychometric properties of the expanded version of the BPRS (BPRS-E) has been limited. An exploratory factor analysis (n = 360) using maximum likelihood extraction with oblimin rotation found a four-factor solution (Thought Disturbance, Animation, Mood Disturbance, Apathy) to underlie the BPRS-E. Furthermore, these factors were logical in nature and estimates of internal consistency were acceptable. A confirmatory factor analysis conducted on a second, independent sample (n = 280)found that for the five models currently available in the literature, the model developed herein provided the best fit to the data. Again, estimates of internal consistency were found acceptable. Finally, the four factors demonstrated appropriate differential validity with regards to both demographic variables and various psychiatric diagnoses.