A Markov Chain Analysis of Emotional Exchange in Voice‐to‐Voice Communication: Testing for the Mimicry Hypothesis of Emotional Contagion

Mimicry is a central plank of the emotional contagion theory; however, it was only tested with facial and postural emotional stimuli. This study explores the existence of mimicry in voice‐to‐voice communication by analyzing 8,747 sequences of emotional displays between customers and employees in a call‐center context. We listened live to 967 telephone interactions, registered the sequences of emotional displays, and analyzed them with a Markov chain. We also explored other propositions of emotional contagion theory that were yet to be tested in vocal contexts. Results supported that mimicry is significantly present at all levels. Our findings fill an important gap in the emotional contagion theory; have practical implications regarding voice‐to‐voice interactions; and open doors for future vocal mimicry research.     

Workplace mobbing and effects on workers' health

In this work, we analyze various consequences of the phenomenon of mobbing on the health of a work sector with special characteristics: the agro fruit sector. For this purpose, we collected data from a sample of 396 workers (61 men and 331 women) belonging to this sector in the Region of Murcia (Spain). A questionnaire with the following measurement instruments was administered: a Spanish adaptation of the revised Negative Acts Questionnaire (Sáez, García, & Llor, 2003), the Psychosomatic Problems Questionnaire (Hock, 1988), and a measure of absenteeism. The results revealed a significant and positive relation between workplace mobbing and psychosomatic symptoms, but not with absenteeism. The implications of the results for future research are discussed.     

Effects of SB-205384, a positive modulator of alpha3-subunit-containing GABA-A receptors, on isolation-induced aggression in male mice

GABA-A receptors are involved in the control of aggressive behaviour. Various studies suggest a role for a1-containing GABA-A receptors in modulating aggression. However, the possible involvement of a3 subunit of GABA-A receptors has not been examined. In this study, we analysed the effect of SB-205384 (0.5-4 mg/kg, i.p), a positive modulator of GABA-A receptors containing a3 subunit, on agonistic behaviour elicited by isolation in male mice. Half of the mice were housed during 30 days and employed as experimental or control animals; the remainder were used as and were temporally rendered anosmic by zinc sulphate. Individually housed mice were exposed to anosmic opponents in a neutral area 30 minutes after the drug administration and encounters were videotaped and evaluated using an ethopharmacologically-based analysis. The results indicated that SB-205384 did not produce any significant behavioural changes, suggesting that GABA-A receptors which contain the a3 subunit may not be involved in the modulation of aggression.     

The concept of love in a Spanish representative sample

The model of romantic love and the acceptance of related myths have been granted wide relevance in our context. It has also been suggested that the concept of love can play a role in the origin and maintenance of gender violence. As an initial step towards researching this relationship, the objective of this article is to study the prevailing concept of love in the Spanish population, as well as to analyze any differences that gender and age may introduce in this conception. A reduced version of the Love Attitudes Scale was administered to a representative sample of 1,351 people. Results show that both men and women widely accept the love styles Eros, Agape, Storge and Pragma, reject the Ludus style, and are indifferent to the Mania style. However, the order of preference for love styles is different for men and women and for different age groups. These results are analyzed and discussed.     

Improving attention behaviour in primary and secondary school children with a Computer Assisted Instruction procedure

Attention disorders are one of the major sources of poor school performance. This research project was designed to examine whether a Computer Assisted Instruction (CAI) approach would be successful in achieving higher rates of attention. In order to increase attention behaviour during school time, psychologically‐designed software was developed. The software, called “How to improve your mental skills,” consists of three games based on multimedia perception tasks. First, 155 elementary school children with an average age of 12.4 years, from Cadiz (Spain) School District, were evaluated with two attention tests, the Perception Differences Test (PDT), and the subtest Spatial of Primary Mental Aptitude (S‐PMA). Students were divided and balanced into one experimental and two control groups, according to their scores on the PDT. Then, 10 training sessions, of 25 minutes each, with the software “How to improve your mental skills”, were administered to the experimental group. Children from control group 1 played with a well‐known computer game during the same period of time, whereas children from control group 2 remained in the classroom with nonspecific training. Finally, after the experimental sessions, all the children were re‐evaluated with standard attention tests. Analyses of data included: (1) pre‐ and post‐training comparison of the experimental group scores on the PDT; (2) comparison of the experimental and control group 1 and 2 scores on the PDT and S‐PMA tests after training; and (3) gender and grade interference effects on attention behaviour. Results suggest that children from the experimental group significantly improved their attention behaviour as assessed by the PDT and S‐PMA tests after 10 training sessions with the specific computer software. No gender and grade interference effects on attention behaviour were found. Les désordres d'attention sont une des sources majeures de pauvre performance scolaire. Ce projet de recherche fut conçu pour examiner comment une approche d'enseignement assisté par ordinateur peut être efficace pour obtenir de plus hauts niveaux d'attention. Afin d'augmenter le comportement d'attention en classe, un programme informatique intitulé «Comment améliorer vos habiletés mentales» fut développé. Ce programme, basé sur la psychologie de la peception, consiste en trois jeux multimédias interactifs. L'étude s'est déroulée en trois phases. Premièrement, 155 enfants de L'école primaire, âgés en moyenne de 12,4 ans et issus du district scolaire de Cadiz, en Espagne, furent évalués à partir de deux tests d'attention: le Perception Differences Test (PDT) et le sous‐test Spatial of Primary Mental Aptitude (S‐PMA). Les élèves furent divisés en trois groupes, un groupe expérimental et deux groupes contrôle, en fonction de leur score au PDT. En deuxième lieu, le groupe expérimental fut soumis à 10 sessions d'entraînement, chacune d'une durée de 25 minutes, lors desquelles le programme informatique « Comment améliorer vos habiletés mentales » fut administré. Les enfants du premier groupe contrôle ont joué avec un autre programme informatique bien connu durant ces mêmes sessions, tandis que les enfants du second groupe contrôle demeuraient en classe sans recevoir d'entraînement particulier. En troisième lieu, tous les enfants furent réévalués à L'aide de tests d'attention standardisés. Trois séries d'analyses furent menées. La première visait à comparer les scores obtenus au PDT, au pré‐test et au post‐test, pour le groupe expérimental. La seconde consistait à comparer les scores obtenus au PDT et au S‐PMA, au post‐test, par les trois groupes. La troisième série d'analyses visait à examiner les effets du genre et du niveau de scolarité sur le comportement d'attention. Les résultats suggèrent que les enfants du groupe expérimental ont significativement amélioré leur comportement d'attention suite aux sessions d'entraînement avec le programme informatique. De plus, aucune interférence du genre et du niveau de scolarité ne fut observée. Los déficits de atención son una de las causas más frecuentes de fracaso escolar. La presente investigación se diseñó para someter a prueba si la Enseñanza Asistida por Ordenador (CAI) puede ser un procedimiento eficaz para conseguir mayores niveles de atención. Con el fin de conseguir una mejora de la atención en la escuela, se ha desarrollado un programa informático fundamentado en la psicología de la percepción que consiste en tres juegos interactivos multimedia. El estudio se realizó en tres fases. Primero, se evaluó a 155 niños de edad escolar del distrito de Cádiz (España) con dos pruebas estandarizadas de atención, Perception Differences Test (PDT), y sub‐test Spatial of Primary Mental Aptitude (S‐PMA). Tras ello, se formó un grupo experimental al que se realizaron 10 sesiones de entrenamiento de 25 minutos de duración cada una con el programa “Cómo mejorar tus habilidades mentales.” Otro grupo de alumnos a los que se les denominó control‐1 permanecieron jugando con un conocido juego informático durante el mismo período de tiempo. Los niños del grupo control‐2 permanecieron en sus clases sin un entrenamiento específico. Tras las sesiones experimentales, se evaluó de nuevo a todos los niños con las pruebas estandarizadas de atención. Primero, se comparó las calificaciones del grupo experimental en la PDT antes del entrenamiento y después del entrenamiento; segundo, se comparó las calificaciones del grupo experimental y de los grupos control 1 y 2 en las pruebas PDT y S‐PMA después del entrenamiento; y tercero, se analizó los efectos de interferencia del grado escolar y el género. Los resultados indican que los participantes del grupo experimental mejoraron su conducta atencional tras las sesiones de entrenamiento con el programa informático. No se encontraron efectos de interferencia del grado escolar o del género sobre la conducta de atención.     

The Defeasibility of Knowledge‐How

Reductive intellectualists (e.g., Stanley & Williamson 2001; Stanley 2011a; 2011b; Brogaard 2008; 2009; 2011) hold that knowledge‐how is a kind of knowledge‐that. If this thesis is correct, then we should expect the defeasibility conditions for knowledge‐how and knowledge‐that to be uniform—viz., that the mechanisms of epistemic defeat which undermine propositional knowledge will be equally capable of imperilling knowledge‐how. The goal of this paper is twofold: first, against intellectualism, we will show that knowledge‐how is in fact resilient to being undermined by the very kinds of traditional (propositional) epistemic defeaters which clearly defeat the items of propositional knowledge which intellectualists identify with knowledge‐how. Second, we aim to fill an important lacuna in the contemporary debate, which is to develop an alternative way in which epistemic defeat for knowledge‐how could be modelled within an anti‐intellectualist framework.     

Not every credible interval is credible: Evaluating robustness in the presence of contamination in Bayesian data analysis

As Bayesian methods become more popular among behavioral scientists, they will inevitably be applied in situations that violate the assumptions underpinning typical models used to guide statistical inference. With this in mind, it is important to know something about how robust Bayesian methods are to the violation of those assumptions. In this paper, we focus on the problem of contaminated data (such as data with outliers or conflicts present), with specific application to the problem of estimating a credible interval for the population mean. We evaluate five Bayesian methods for constructing a credible interval, using toy examples to illustrate the qualitative behavior of different approaches in the presence of contaminants, and an extensive simulation study to quantify the robustness of each method. We find that the “default” normal model used in most Bayesian data analyses is not robust, and that approaches based on the Bayesian bootstrap are only robust in limited circumstances. A simple parametric model based on Tukey’s “contaminated normal model” and a model based on the t-distribution were markedly more robust. However, the contaminated normal model had the added benefit of estimating which data points were discounted as outliers and which were not.     

Analyzing the RULEX model of category learning

Recent approaches to human category learning have often (re)invoked the notion of systematic search for good rules. The RULEX model of category learning is emblematic of this renewed interest in rule-based categorization, and is able to account for crucial findings previously thought to provide evidence in favor of prototype or exemplar models. However, a major difficulty in comparing RULEX to other models is that RULEX is framed in terms of a stochastic search process, with no analytic expressions available for its predictions. The result is that RULEX predictions can only be found through time consuming simulations, making model-fitting very difficult, and all but prohibiting more detailed investigations of the model. To remedy this problem, this paper describes an algorithmic method of calculating RULEX predictions that does not rely on numerical simulation, and yields some insight into the behavior of the model itself.     

DRAPER IN SPAIN: THE CONFLICTING CIRCULATION OF THE CONFLICT THESIS

This article delves into the reception of John W. Draper's History of the Conflict between Religion and Science in Spain. With two translations into Spanish appearing almost simultaneously in 1876, the conflict became a weapon in a long political dispute. The tensions between conservatives and liberals, between monarchists and republicans had the university and pedagogical reforms as one of the main battlefields. One of the chief reformist movements was informed by “Krausism,” an ideology that had academic freedom as one if its central tenets. The similarities between the educational agenda of Draper and that of Krausists explain why the former's book resonated among members of the latter group. The article argues that in order to understand the reception of Draper in Spain, one should pay attention to the disputes about national identity and educational reforms, so as to place the so‐called conflict thesis in the context of opposing Spanish patriotisms.     

The effects of psychological therapies under clinically representative conditions: a meta-analysis

Recently, concern has arisen that meta-analyses overestimate the effects of psychological therapies and that those therapies may not work under clinically representative conditions. This meta-analysis of 90 studies found that therapies are effective over a range of clinical representativeness. The projected effects of an ideal study of clinically representative therapy are similar to effect sizes in past meta-analyses. Effects increase with larger dose and when outcome measures are specific to treatment. Some clinically representative studies used self-selected treatment clients who were more distressed than available controls, and these quasi-experiments underestimated therapy effects. This study illustrates the joint use of fixed and random effects models, use of pretest effect sizes to study selection bias in quasi-experiments, and use of regression analysis to project results to an ideal study in the spirit of response surface modeling.