Gaze direction and maternal pitch in surprise-eliciting situations

The purpose of this study was to test the hypothesis that not only do babies use emotional signals from adults in order to relate emotions to specific situations (e.g., Campos & Stenberg, 1981) but also that mothers seek out emotional information from their infants ( Emde, 1992). Three groups of mothers and their infants, 3, 5 and 9 months old were video- and audio-taped, while playing in their homes with a soft toy and a remote-control Jack-in-the-box. During surprise-eliciting play with the Jack-in-the-box, maternal and infant gaze direction and their emotional expressions of surprise, pleasure, fear and neutral expressions were coded in three regions of the face. In addition, the mean fundamental frequency of maternal surprise-vocalisations was analysed. Maternal exclamations of surprise were compared with similar utterances of these mothers while playing with a soft toy as a baseline. During the surprise event, maternal and infant gaze directions as well as infant age were analysed in relation to maternal pitch. Results are discussed in terms of maternal use of the pitch of her voice to mark surprising situations, depending on the gaze-direction of the infant.     

Mimicking emotions: how 3–12-month-old infants use the facial expressions and eyes of a model

While there is an extensive literature on the tendency to mimic emotional expressions in adults, it is unclear how this skill emerges and develops over time. Specifically, it is unclear whether infants mimic discrete emotion-related facial actions, whether their facial displays are moderated by contextual cues and whether infants’ emotional mimicry is constrained by developmental changes in the ability to discriminate emotions. We therefore investigate these questions using Baby-FACS to code infants’ facial displays and eye-movement tracking to examine infants’ looking times at facial expressions. Three-, 7-, and 12-month-old participants were exposed to dynamic facial expressions (joy, anger, fear, disgust, sadness) of a virtual model which either looked at the infant or had an averted gaze. Infants did not match emotion-specific facial actions shown by the model, but they produced valence-congruent facial responses to the distinct expressions. Furthermore, only the 7- and 12-month-olds displayed negative responses to the model’s negative expressions and they looked more at areas of the face recruiting facial actions involved in specific expressions. Our results suggest that valence-congruent expressions emerge in infancy during a period where the decoding of facial expressions becomes increasingly sensitive to the social signal value of emotions.     

Checking and bootstrapping lexical norms by means of word similarity indexes

In psychology, lexical norms related to the semantic properties of words, such as concreteness and valence, are important research resources. Collecting such norms by asking judges to rate the words is very time consuming, which strongly limits the number of words that compose them. In the present article, we present a technique for estimating lexical norms based on the latent semantic analysis of a corpus. The analyses conducted emphasize the technique??s effectiveness for several semantic dimensions. In addition to the extension of norms, this technique can be used to check human ratings to identify words for which the rating is very different from the corpus-based estimate.     

Ambivalence over emotional expression in major depression

High ambivalence over the expression of emotions (AEE) has consistently been associated with high levels of depression in previous research. However, there is a lack of studies examining this construct and its associations in a clinical sample of patients with major depressive disorder (MDD). Therefore, the present study compared 76 MDD with 77 non-depressed controls (NC) regarding AEE. As expected, MDD reported greater AEE as compared to ND. Furthermore, levels of AEE and levels of depression were positively correlated in the MDD group. These findings extend previous work and underline the importance of AEE as a central construct in depression. Targeting AEE in treatments of depression may help to modify maladaptive interpersonal patterns of emotional expression.     

The P-psychopathy continuum: Facets of Psychoticism and their associations with psychopathic tendencies

Eysenck proposed that psychopathy is at the extreme end of the Psychoticism (P) personality dimension (Eysenck & Eysenck, 1976). This study examined (i) whether psychopathy-relevant P items of the EPQ-R can form psychometrically valid facets that map onto the conceptualization of the two-, three- or four-factor models of psychopathy using confirmatory factor analysis (N = 577) in a normal population; and (ii) whether those P-facets have criteria-related validity in associations with self-reported primary and secondary psychopathy, impulsivity (subsample N = 306), and measures of trait empathy and aggression (subsample N = 212). The four-factor model incorporating affective, interpersonal, impulsive, and antisocial facets of P was superior to the two-factor model; however, the three-factor conceptualization excluding the antisocial P-facet was the best fit. The facets show predicted divergent associations with primary and secondary self-reported psychopathy and trait measures. Findings are discussed in light of Eysenck’s P-psychopathy continuity hypothesis and the applicability of facet approaches to the prediction of psychopathic and antisocial tendencies.     

Saving or Subordinating Life? Popular Views in Israel and Germany of Donor Siblings Created through PGD

To explore how cultural beliefs are reflected in different popular views of pre-implantation genetic diagnosis for human leukocyte antigen match (popularly known as “savior siblings”), we compare the reception and interpretations, in Germany and Israel, of the novel/film My Sister’s Keeper. Qualitative analysis of reviews, commentaries and posts is used to classify and compare normative assessments of PGD for HLA and how they reproduce, negotiate or oppose the national policy and its underlying cultural and ethical premises. Four major themes emanated from the comparison: loss of self-determination and autonomy; loss of dignity through instrumentalization; eugenics and euthanasia; and saving life. In both countries, most commentaries represented a dominant position, with a few negotiated positions. We also highlight the decoding of a relatively less explored bioethical aspect of My Sister’s Keeper’s narrative, namely the meaning of euthanasia. We conclude by discussing how the findings relate to attempts of providing cultural explanations for the regulation of HLA-PGD.     

Alcohol intoxication and memory for events: a snapshot of alcohol myopia in a real-world drinking scenario

Alcohol typically has a detrimental impact on memory across a variety of encoding and retrieval conditions (e.g., Mintzer, 2007; Ray & Bates, 2006). No research has addressed alcohol's effect on memory for lengthy and interactive events and little has tested alcohol's effect on free recall. In this study 94 participants were randomly assigned to alcohol, placebo, or control groups and consumed drinks in a bar-lab setting while interacting with a "bartender". Immediately afterwards all participants freely recalled the bar interaction. Consistent with alcohol myopia theory, intoxicated participants only differed from placebo and control groups when recalling peripheral information. Expanding on the original hypervigilance hypothesis, placebo participants showed more conservative reporting behaviour than the alcohol or control groups by providing more uncertain and "don't know" responses. Thus, alcohol intoxication had confined effects on memory for events, supporting and extending current theories.