Better the devil you know? Nonconscious processing of identity and affect of famous faces

The nonconscious recognition of facial identity was investigated in two experiments featuring brief (17-msec) masked stimulus presentation to prevent conscious recognition. Faces were presented in simultaneous pairs of one famous face and one unfamiliar face, and participants attempted to select the famous face. Subsequently, participants rated the famous persons as ”good“ or ”evil“ (Experiment 1) or liked or disliked (Experiment 2). In Experiments 1 and 2, responses were less accurate to faces of persons rated evil/disliked than to faces of persons rated good/liked, and faces of persons rated evil/disliked were selected significantly below chance. Experiment 2 showed the effect in a within-items analysis: A famous face was selected less often by participants who disliked the person than by participants who liked the person, and the former were selected below chance accuracy. The within-items analysis rules out possible confounding factors based on variations in physical characteristics of the stimulus faces and confirms that the effects are due to participants’ attitudes toward the famous persons. The results suggest that facial identity is recognized preconsciously, and that responses may be based on affect rather than familiarity.     

Do strict rules and moving images increase the reliability of sequential identification procedures?

Live identification procedures in England and Wales have been replaced by use of video, which provides a sequential presentation of facial images. Sequential presentation of photographs provides some protection to innocent suspects from mistaken identification when used with strict instructions designed to prevent relative judgements (Lindsay, Lea, & Fulford, 1991 ). However, the current procedure in England and Wales is incompatible with these strict instructions. The reported research investigated whether strict instructions would enhance the reliability of identification from video. The effect of using moving rather than still video clips was also investigated. Participants witnessed a live staged incident, and attempted to identify the culprit later from police video lineups, which were run double blind. Strict instructions produced a significantly lower rate of correct identifications in culprit present lineups, but did not significantly reduce the rate of mistaken identification in culprit absent lineups. Moving images yielded fewer mistaken identifications in culprit absent lineups. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The effects of attrition on baseline comparability in randomized experiments in education: a meta-analysis

Using meta-analysis, randomized experiments in education that either clearly did or clearly did not experience student attrition were examined for the baseline comparability of groups. Results from 35 studies suggested that after attrition, the observed measures of baseline comparability of groups did not differ more than would be expected given sampling error. The degree of either overall or differential attrition did not relate to baseline comparability, a finding that held under sensitivity analyses. Also, both overall and differential attrition rates were unrelated to posttest effect sizes. All of these analyses, however, lacked sufficient statistical power to detect small but potentially meaningful effects. Results suggest caution is warranted when applying quality scales and other blanket rules pertaining to attrition that are meant to either serve as inclusion-exclusion criteria or in scoring study quality. Much greater attention is needed to both the reporting of attrition in primary studies and to the development of conceptual and empirical models of the attrition process. These developments would aid further investigation of the relation between attrition and study outcomes.     

Ethics Code Awareness,Perceived Ethical Values,and Organizational Commitment

This study examines the relationships among ethics code awareness, perceived corporate ethical values, and organizational commitment. Three key findings emerged. First, those aware of the existence of an ethics code in their organizations perceived their organizations as having more ethical values than those not aware of an ethics code in their organizations. Second, respondents exhibited higher levels of organizational commitment when they were aware of an ethics code in their companies. Finally, the relationship between ethics code awareness and organizational commitment was fully mediated by perceptions of an organization’s ethical values. The results suggest that ethics codes may lead to higher levels of organizational commitment by increasing the belief that their organizations have strong ethical values, as long as the existence of ethics codes are adequately communicated.     

Establishment and replication of emotion regulation profiles: implications for psychological health

Background and Objectives: A promising method of capturing the complex nature of emotion regulation is to assess composite profiles of regulation (i.e., default pattern of regulation across multiple strategies). However, it remains unclear whether regulatory profiles demonstrate consistency across samples and in relation to mental health. Design: Two studies are presented here. Both utilized a cross-sectional design, and the second study presents a replication of the first. Method: Both studies utilized self-report data from independent undergraduate samples to perform latent profile analyses of emotion regulation use. Results: Studies 1 and 2 demonstrated evidence for four replicable regulatory profiles: Adaptive, Accepting (with or without Suppression), Non-accepting, and Maladaptive. Profiles were also related to symptoms of depression and anxiety, such that those consistently relying on adaptive strategies reported lower symptoms than those relying more heavily on maladaptive strategies. Conclusions: These findings clarify previous work which tied regulatory profiles to psychological health by extending a person-centered approach to understanding the ways in which individuals regulate their emotions.     

Linear and nonlinear effects of aging on categorizing and naming faces.

Subjects aged 54-84 performed 5 separate tasks involving various aspects of face processing: structural decisions (1), familiarity decisions (2), semantic decisions (3), first-name decisions (4), and name retrieval (5). For the categorization tasks (1-4), the mean reaction times for the older subjects (over 65) were plotted against the corresponding means for the younger subjects (under 65). This produced a linear function (slope greater than 1, intercept less than 0), providing only partial support for a simple, multiplicative model of cognitive slowing with age. Reaction time distributions were also plotted for each of the 5 tasks (older vs. younger subjects). The resulting functions were almost perfectly linear, with the exception of name retrieval, which was exponential with respect to age. This was attributed to the increased probability of a tip-of-the-tongue state with age caused by insufficient activation at the level of the name information (the final state of face identification).     

Concomitant Pavlovian conditioning of heart rate and leg flexion responses in the rat

Pavlovian conditioning was studied in male Fischer 344 rats using tones as the conditioned stimulus (CS) and footshock as the unconditioned stimulus (UCS). Different groups of animals received (a) contiguous CS-UCS pairings with a 0.5 sec CS, (b) contiguous CS-UCS pairings with a 4.0 sec CS, or (c) a random sequence of noncontiguous tones and shocks using either a 0.5 sec or a 4.0 sec CS. Heart rate (HR) and leg flexion (LF) responses were recorded. Leg flexion conditioning occurred only in the 0.5 sec contiguous group. Decelerative HR CRs occurred only in the 4.0 sec contiguous group. Accelerative HR changes occurred in the other two groups but were significantly greater in the 0.5 sec contiguous group. These results are similar to but not identical to those obtained during eyeblink or nictitating membrane conditioning in rabbits, and suggest that the topography of the Pavlovian HR CR is dependent on the simultaneous occurrence of other classically conditioned responses.     

Effects of chlordiazepoxide and d-amphetamine on responding suppressed by conditioned punishment

Key pecking by two pigeons, maintained under a variable-interval two-minute schedule of food presentation, was suppressed when each response produced a five-second visual stimulus that was occasionally paired with shock. Stimulus-shock pairings occurred independently of responding according to a variable-time six-minute schedule for one bird or once per session for the other bird. The effects of chlordiazepoxide and d-amphetamine were assessed on this baseline of behavior suppressed by conditioned punishment. Chlordiazepoxide produced dose-related increases in the rate of punished responding, whereas d-amphetamine produced only decreases. In addition, chlordiazepoxide produced dose-related increases in response rate during the response-produced and response-independent stimulus presentations; d-amphetamine, however, only decreased responding during stimulus presentations.